Weekly Thank You's and F-You's

Thank Yous:
PBS "Frontline-Bush's War"
Bruce Springsteen
"I'm Not There" Film and Soundtrack
"30 Rock"
Chelsea Clinton
Mozart
"Children of Men"-Film
NPR
Bob Mould
Jesse Ventura
Baseball Season
The Onion
Mia Farrow
Bill Moyers
Larry David
"Into the Wild"-Film and Soundtrack

Fuck Yous
George Tennant, Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Scooter Libby, and a special place in hell for Dick Cheney and George W. Bush

"American Idol"
CNN' s Election Center
Chicago Bulls
Blackwater
Mother Nature
Fox's Chris Wallace
IRS
Hummer Owners
Courtney Love
Democratic Party-Florida and Michigan
MC Donald's

New Music Roundup

The past few weeks have seen the release of some of the most promising albums of 2008. How do they fare? Read on.....



Has there been another more frustrating band than R.E.M.? (See Counting Crows below) When drummer Bill Berry quit in 1997, I don't think any of their fans could have predicted the dire turn R.E.M.'s music would take. Since that fateful day, they have released 3 downbeat, simply boring CD's. My biggest problem with them wasn't just the lack of straight ahead melodies, the lack of decent guitar work we have come to expect from Peter Buck, or the fact that the songs sounded nothing like the same band I had been following since 1985; it was that the songs made me feel nothing at all. Something R.E.M. had always done was make you FEEL something, whether you had a clue what the song was about. The other frustrating thing was that anyone who saw the band live during the last 10 years knows that they are still one of the most best live rock bands on the planet. So why the bland studio releases?

In the months leading up to the release of 2008's 35 minute "Accelerate", I kept reading about how this was going to be the big return to rock and roll song craft the band was known for. Is it? The answer is absolutely. Starting out of the gate with the propelling "Living Well Is The Best Revenge", the band makes it known that they can still bring the ROCK. In fact, many of the 11 tracks on this disc are the hardest, most guitar heavy material Stipe, Peter Buck, and Mike Mills have ever produced. The war in Iraq, the media, and the general shitty state of the USA seem to be the prime lyrical content for Stipe. In some cases this is a good thing; in others, I long for the I.R.S. days when you couldn't understand a word he was singing.

Is this enough to change the minds of many who feel R.E.M had lost their stature as one of the best American bands of all time? The problem for me is that the two songs on the disc that rank as two of the worst in the band's cannon ("Houston" and "Sing For The Submarine") almost sink the entire thing. Take these two songs out, and you have a classic R.E.M. 28 minute EP. With them in, we have a flawed disc that I want to like more than I actually do. The other problem I have is that as much as I like the overall sound of most of the songs, they don't make me FEEL anything. Not happy, not sad, not excited, not mournful. Nothing. Maybe that is just my problem, but I fear many other fans will feel the same way. If I had to rank this with the rest of the band's discography, I would put it above "Up" and below "Green" on the scale. That would put it about in the middle of the pack. I guess the best thing about it is that it's good to hear some life back in the band. And that may just be enough for some...

R.E.M.-Horse to Water



Another huge musical frustration has been the career of the Counting Crows. When their classic debut came out in 1993, I was certain these guys were going to be as important in the history of rock as Van Morrison, Bruce Springsteen, or The Band. Unfortunately, The Crows not only haven't lived up to the original greatness of their debut, but their career has been plagued with some horrible decisions (think Shrek, Coke commercials, Vanessa Carlton, huge package stadium tours, and "Big Yellow Taxi"). The music on their subsequent released has ranged from great to embarrassing.

It has been 6 years since the release of their last studio disc. So was it worth the wait? Unfortunately, not really. The disc is split up into two "sections", with Saturday Nights being the rocking side and Sunday Mornings being the comedown. I like this idea in theory but unfortunately it puts a magnifying glass to a huge flaw of the band. That being that the Crows are best being mellow. They can definitely rock out as a band musically, but doing so tends to make vocalist Adam Duritz sing (yell) way out of a comfortable listening range and tends to make the content of the song sound overly dramatic.

The band fares much better when they tone it down a notch. Mid-tempo rock or acoustic ballads are their strong suite so the disc is much better towards the latter half (tracks 7-14). The best song is an "Astral Weeks"-inspired ditty called "Le Ballet Dor". It is unlike anything I've heard them try before and it's good to hear these guys exploring some new musical (and lyrical)directions.

So once again, we get another frustrating release from Counting Crows that hints at greatness but doesn't consistently achieve it.


Counting Crows-Le Ballet Dor








I have long been under the impression that Jack (White Stripes) White is one of the most talented and prolific artists to come around in many moons. He has co-written, produced, and released 8 albums since 1999. This week finds the surprise release of the new disc from Jack's "side" project, The Raconteurs. The Raconteurs are the perfect anecdote for anyone who wondered what Jack White would sound like with a bass player, background vocals, and a more technical drummer. In true Jack White fashion, the disc was recorded last month and the record label didn't find out about the release plans until the week prior to the date. With that in mind, one would expect "Consolers of the Lonely" to have a thrown together vibe to it and it does; in a very good way.

The thing I didn't like about the first Raconteurs disc is that is sounded like two separate discs. With two primary singer-songwriters, I suppose that was to be expected but the disc just does not hold together for me as a whole. I'm sure most Jack White fans have deleted the Brendan Benson songs from their I-Pods by now. "Consolers of the Lonely" is much better in that area. The songs sound like the guys collaborated together more and had a blast doing so. I'm sure people will still split the tracks up into the White/Benson catagory, but there is no denying this is now a "band" and not just a vanity project for White.

The sound ranges from early 70's Bowie-esque romps to White Stripes style blues to Brendon Benson's Beatles channelling. Not all of the tracks are stellar, but there is an overall vibe that is impossible not to like. It makes for the best mix tape you didn't have to make yourself and it's a shoe-in for my summer album of 2008. Crank it up loud and remember the days when good artists made old-fashioned rock and roll for the fun of it!

The Raconteurs-Rich Kid's Blues

Yahoo Top Searches?

Ok, so you know how you go to Yahoo and they have the day's Top Searches? Well, I am obsessed by these for some reason. It's maybe the same reason it drives me crazy that those "Pirates of the Caribbean" movies make so much money. I wonder who are the people that actually enjoy those movies and why don't I? Anyway, I digress.

Check out the Top Searches for today. I can understand the nonsense culture we live in that makes people want to search for Jamie Lynn Spears and Carla Bruni but who the fuck is searching for the evil that is REO Speedwagon?! They haven't been relevant since "Three's Company" and indoor roller rinks. There must be some pop-culture reason for it but dammed if I can figure it out. These are the things that keep me up at night and yes, I realize I need help.

Please respond to me if you can help with my queries!

Today's Yahoo Top Searches-March 27, 2008
Jamie Lynn Spears
Miss Bimbo
Pregnant Man
Carla Bruni
Chelsea Clinton
Richard Widmark
D.B. Cooper
IRS
REO Speedwagon
Tuatara Lizard

Electronic Mix Tape #2

To help with the weekly grind, I thought I would give you all some good music to crank up. Here is my second installment in what I hoped would be weekly mix tapes. Again, there is not much rhyme or reason to these. They are just some songs I have been listening to lately. I've been loving some new albums by R.E.M., Bob Mould, Mike Doughty, and Drive-By Truckers so some of those tracks find their way in here. And like last time, the song titles are below the files for those who don't want to see the track list before listening. I hope you enjoy these tunes as much as I do!

Side A


Side B

Side A
1. R.E.M.-Living Well Is The Best Revenge
2. Bob Dylan-Can you Please Crawl Out Your Window
3. Devendra Banhart-Sea Horse
4. Steely Dan-Midnight Cruiser
5. Drive-By Truckers-The Opening Act
6. Feist-I Feel It All
7. Neil Young-Campaigner
8. Sufjan Stevens-Chicago
9. The National-Green Gloves
10. Levon Helm-The Mountain

Side B
11. Broken Social Scene-Fire Eye'd Boy
12. Gillian Welch-Tear My Stillhouse Down
13. Bob Mould-Very Temporary
14. Joe Jackson-Invisible Man
15. Beth Orton-Pass in Time
16. Old Crow Medicine Show-Wagon Wheel
17. Sleater-Kinney-One More Hour
18. R.E.M.-Until the Day is Done
19. Jerry Garcia-Rubin And Cherise
20. Mike Doughty-Navigating By The Stars At Night

New Wilco Track!

Thank goodness for soundtrack albums. They are usually where us die hard fans can find the otherwise unreleased (album leftovers) songs from some of our favorite bands. Case in point; the new "Heroes" soundtrack which features "new" songs by Wilco, My Morning Jacket, Death Cab for Cutie, Nada Surf, and Jesus and Mary Chain.

The Wilco track is called "Glad It's Over" and when I listen to it, I feel like I am 7 years old again listening to AM radio in the back of parents car. It has a breezy Steely Dan vibe to it that would have fit perfectly on Wilco's recent "Sky Blue Sky" album. Me likely!

Wilco-"Glad It's Over"

Obama's Speech

With all the recent hubbub about the "radical" comments made by Barack Obama's former Reverend, I want to be sure people hear Obama's thoughts in his own words. With today's news being funneled to us in 30 second sound bites, I'm sure the eloquence of this speech will go unheard by many. Please give yourselves some time, and listen to why this guy needs to be the next President of the Unites States of America. Anyone else would have completely distanced himself from Reverend Wright with some bullshit speech written by someone else. Barack truly gave one from the heart today and win or lose, it is one I will remember for showing how good his character really is.

Here is an excerpt:
"Given my background, my politics, and my professed values and ideals, there will no doubt be those for whom my statements of condemnation are not enough. Why associate myself with Reverend Wright in the first place, they may ask? Why not join another church? And I confess that if all that I knew of Reverend Wright were the snippets of those sermons that have run in an endless loop on the television and You Tube, or if Trinity United Church of Christ conformed to the caricatures being peddled by some commentators, there is no doubt that I would react in much the same way

But the truth is, that isn't all that I know of the man. The man I met more than twenty years ago is a man who helped introduce me to my Christian faith, a man who spoke to me about our obligations to love one another; to care for the sick and lift up the poor. He is a man who served his country as a U.S. Marine; who has studied and lectured at some of the finest universities and seminaries in the country, and who for over thirty years led a church that serves the community by doing God's work here on Earth - by housing the homeless, ministering to the needy, providing day care services and scholarships and prison ministries, and reaching out to those suffering from HIV/AIDS.

In my first book, Dreams From My Father, I described the experience of my first service at Trinity:

"People began to shout, to rise from their seats and clap and cry out, a forceful wind carrying the reverend's voice up into the rafters....And in that single note - hope! - I heard something else; at the foot of that cross, inside the thousands of churches across the city, I imagined the stories of ordinary black people merging with the stories of David and Goliath, Moses and Pharaoh, the Christians in the lion's den, Ezekiel's field of dry bones. Those stories - of survival, and freedom, and hope - became our story, my story; the blood that had spilled was our blood, the tears our tears; until this black church, on this bright day, seemed once more a vessel carrying the story of a people into future generations and into a larger world. Our trials and triumphs became at once unique and universal, black and more than black; in chronicling our journey, the stories and songs gave us a means to reclaim memories that we didn't need to feel shame about...memories that all people might study and cherish - and with which we could start to rebuild."

That has been my experience at Trinity. Like other predominantly black churches across the country, Trinity embodies the black community in its entirety - the doctor and the welfare mom, the model student and the former gang-banger. Like other black churches, Trinity's services are full of raucous laughter and sometimes bawdy humor. They are full of dancing, clapping, screaming and shouting that may seem jarring to the untrained ear. The church contains in full the kindness and cruelty, the fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance, the struggles and successes, the love and yes, the bitterness and bias that make up the black experience in America.

And this helps explain, perhaps, my relationship with Reverend Wright. As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children. Not once in my conversations with him have I heard him talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms, or treat whites with whom he interacted with anything but courtesy and respect. He contains within him the contradictions - the good and the bad - of the community that he has served diligently for so many years.

I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother - a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.

These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love."

What Time is It??

The answer to that question posed in Milwaukee last night was...."BOSS TIME"!

Bruce and the E-Street Band rampaged the Bradley Center last night and more than lived up to their reputation as one of the finest live rock and roll bands.

The last time I saw Bruce, he was supporting The Seeger Sessions disc singing traditional folk to a crowd that mostly wanted to hear "Thunder Road". That tour missed the mark because of Bruce's horrible decision to play that music in basketball stadiums. It was a rare opportunely to witness Bruce perform something special which was unfortunately lost on an arena crowd who didn't know Pete Seeger from Bob Seger.


That was certainly not a problem last night as Bruce and the E-Street band delivered the anthem rock his fans have come to love. I hadn't seen Bruce with the E-Streeters since 1999, but at that show I thought there were moments when Bruce seemed bored singing those songs again. There certainly was no boredom to be found last night as Springsteen was as loose as when I first saw him long ago in 1984. Bruce seemed engaged and energized all night long and the crowd responded in kind. No one can rock a stadium like Bruce, even if he may not be able to play to the back row like he once could. My only complaint is the same one I've had of the band since the mid-80's; that the music tends to sound so busy at times that it's impossible to pick out an nuance anymore. This is more a fault of stadium shows in general then of Bruce or the band.


I am enough of a Bruce geek to follow the setlists on a current tour, and I can say that we got special one last night. Opening with 1984's "No Surrender" into the new instant classic "Radio Nowhere", Bruce had the crowd eating out of his hand.


There were many "holy shit" moments for me, but the clear highlight was Bruce treating us to the rarely played album cut "Streets of Fire". As I watched Bruce shred two guitar solos during that tune, I felt like I was at the Roxy Theater back in 1978.


After a couple tracks from the new CD, Bruce did a totally reworked Tom Waits meets ZZ Top version of the "Nebraska" cut "Reason to Believe; complete with harmonica and Bruce singing through a bullet mic. Next, Bruce shocked the die-hards by playing the oldest song of the night; 1973's "It's Hard to Be a Saint in the City". This one featured a fiery guitar dual between Bruce and his long time foil, "Little" Steven Van Zant that proved that Van Zant hasn't lost his great soloing ability.


But this was no nostalgia show. Lest we forget Bruce is trying to sell a new CD, and the tracks played from the new disc sounded much better than the studio versions to my ears. I am of the opinion that Bruce's current producer makes dirty sounding discs that end of giving me a headache with their "kitchen sink" sound. Live, the "Magic" tracks were allowed to breath and it seemed to give new life to tracks like "Long Walk Home" and "Last to Die".


You can certainly tell that the current shitty state of our country is on Bruce's mind, but these songs were always followed by songs of hope. "Reason to Believe" followed the paranoia of "Magic", "The Promised Land" followed the "this can't be happening" theme of "Living in the Future", "The Rising" followed the shattered-soldier epic "Devils Arcade", and the new hopeful classic "Long Walk Home" followed the anti-war anthem "Last to Die". One of my favorite things about Springsteen is how each setlist tries to tell a tale, and I thought this was done masterfully last night.


The final "Holy Shit" moment for me was Bruce bringing out his old friend and bass player Richard Davis. Davis was the bass player on Van Morrison's masterpiece "Astral Weeks", and he played on the album versions of a few Bruce classics including the chilling "Meeting Across the River". That song was played last night with just Bruce, Davis, and the masterful pianist Roy Bittan on stage.


And just like on the Born to Run album, Bruce's epic "Jungleland" followed which brought chills to anyone in the crowd with a soul.


As Bruce has done on every show of the tour, he ended by playing the Pete Seeger inspired "American Land". The song is a Irish-style rave-up about the hopes and dreams of those coming to the Unites States. It was a perfect ending on this St. Patrick's night, and one came away with the feeling that our country can again be the beckon of hope that Springsteen has always sang about. Mission Accomplished Boss!


Bruce Springsteen & The E-Street Band-Bradley Center-Milwaukee, WI
Setlist:
No Surrender
Radio Nowhere
Lonesome Day
Streets of Fire
Gypsy Biker
Magic
Reason to Believe
It's Hard to Be a Saint in the City
Prove It All Night
She's the One
Livin' in the Future
The Promised Land
Cadillac Ranch
My Hometown
Devil's Arcade
The Rising
Last to Die
Long Walk Home
Badlands
* * *
Loose Ends
Meeting Across the River (with Richard Davis)
Jungleland
Born to Run
Ramrod
American Land