Guess Who's Still Alive: Advent Edition

[Because it's not Christmas until Dec. 25th.]

The following artists have Top 20 albums on Amazon:

• Susan Boyle (the top 2 spots, in fact. Maybe we're not an image-obsessed culture...)
• Taylor Swift (never mind)
• Josh Groban (continuing to labor under the delusion that the world needs someone to stand in for Bob Dylan)
• Big Time Rush (no no no...we're supposed to have Boy Band nostalgia in about 8-9 years, not NOW)
• Bruce Springsteen (because I know I want to pay 70 bucks to hear all the tracks that weren't good enough to make it onto Darkness on the Edge of Town)
• Hannah Montana (if we put her in a room together with Taylor Swift, and they saw each other, would the rift in the Space-Time Continuum cause each other to freak out and faint for a year or so, like in the Back to the Future sequels? Cause that would be pretty rad)
• Bob Dylan (see?)
• Christina Aguilera and Cher (we comment on the one who's gained as much weight as the average college freshman, and not the one who bleeds botox. I hate the media)
• Norah Jones (apparently she works with other artists! Who'da thunk it?)
• Buddy Guy (Good for him. No snark)

Talking Back to Punk Rock #11

"Okay, Henry. I get it. You're Damaged. As in, seriously soul-crushed. Utterly bereft in a way completely different from all other people and their damage. I'm entirely cognizant of the fact that you're spirit is in bound in invisible chains.

[NSFW below. You have been warned.]

Rating My CD's: I'm a Monster

22. The Flamin' Groovies -- Teenage Head

The Flamin' Groovies sit at a strange intersection of American Rock music. They came along too late to be considered merely garage rock, way too early to be punk. You can't quite classify them as part of the Velvets-MC5-Stooges-New York Dolls proto-Punk crew: they've got too much country in them. But try to toss them off as just another early 70's Hard Rock Stonesclone, and all that feedback, that clear speedfreak-soul line tracing back to the Sonics and Little Richard, comes in and dances on your head. In the end, like the Cramps, the Groovies sit their own perch on the great tree of Rock n' Roll.

Teenage Head, their offering from that Dark Year of Our Lord, 1971 (Hunter Thompson never quite rose above the silly, did he?), exemplifies this straddle perfectly. There's a wonderfully Stones-y swagger to the opener, "High-Flyin' Baby" to the point where you could well believe this was a cut that some Under Assistant West Coast Producer Man decided to cut from the Sticky Fingers sessions (The liner notes even claim that Mick Jagger thought Teenage Head superior to that album). "City Lights," which follows, goes full country-blues.

Talking Back to Punk Rock #10

"Governor Jerry Brown, huh? That's the problem with putting actual names in your songs; dates it rather quickly. I mean, it's not like Jerry Brown's ever going to be a force in California politics anytime soon.

Oh, wait..."

-The Dead Kennedys, "California Uber Alles"

NATO Causes Arcade Fire Show Cancellation.

In other news, NATO is awesome.

Okay, I don't hate Arcade Fire. But I feel like I should.

"And They Sucked at Altamont, Too!"

Lileks confronts the Beast:

“You listened to Starship?” the photographer said.


My wife said she had. The photog looked at me. “You a Starship fan?”

“No sir,” I said.

“Really? Aw dude, c’mon, We Built This City!”


“They didn’t build anything,” I said. “The idea of Grace Slick singing ‘they’re always changing corporation names’ when the band had three names is just the start of my problems, and ‘Marconi does the Mambo’ is the other.”

“Yeah, you’re right, it was Jefferson Airplane, then Jefferson Starship, then just Starship.”

“I hated them all,” I said. “‘White Rabbit’ is the Bolero of rock.”

“Okay well I can see you got opinions!”

Family by now is cringing. Yes, Daddy has opinions.

I always wondered who on earth ever liked "We Built This City". It surprises me not at all to discover they work at Disney.