Friday, July 28, 2006

Just Doing My Rock and Roll Duty...

Hey music fans...

It's hot where I am. I am tired. I have nothing really long and elaborate to write. But given the death of our fearless leaders laptop I feel I must keep up my end of things here. So with that... some thoughts for you to ponder over the weekend.

As the lovely Pitchy P pointed out, a lot of us got together for the first annual Tuningfork convention earlier this month. Conversation ranged from "why mistakenly making out with a girls eye in a dark room thinking it's her mouth won't get you a second date", "should we hunt down and punish the next person to refer to Loveless in a review", and most importantly "what album did you lose your virginity to?"

Actually let's make that last point interactive. All comments welcome. I'll get the ball rolling. Me = first Suicide record. You want to talk about not getting second dates... apparently girls think you're really fucked when going for it while singing along to Frankie Teardrop. "Oh yeah, baby, that's it.... Frankie put a gun to his head... yeah, baby right there...". You get the picture. Girl had a mo-hawk and Crass shirt, so I don't know what she was all uptight about. Perhaps long passionate foreplay to "Christ : The Album" was more her thing...

Speaking of Suicide. I worked with someone on an album recently who told me he got into Suicide when he was really young because he was a big Aldo Nova fan (what, he had big fans!), and someone told him Alan Vega & Aldo Nova were the same people. Awesome. I work with a guy who has a shirt that says "Life Is Just A Fantasy, Can You Live This Fantasy Life". Why does Aldo Nova keep coming up in conversation.

I was a big fan of Ted Nugent's "Wild Hunting Adventure" show on OLN a few years back. What wasn't to love? Ted takes some kids hunting and then roasts the kill while rocking out on Wang Bang Sweet Poontang on the acoustic guitar while sitting fireside. His line of beef jerky launched at the same time ruled. Without a trace of homo-erotic irony he was up on that buffalo on the packaging exclaiming "I test ride all my meat!". That leads me to recommending and endorsing the Nuge's new show "Ted Or Alive" (also on OLN) where Ted takes him some city slickers out to the ranch and runs them through the paces. Man, the Nuge. What an idiot. But so entertaining.

Anyone ever see the Styx behind the music where Ted is burning on Dennis DeYoung being to soft and then they cut to the clip of Damn Yankees "Can You Take Me Higher"? Yeah, Ted, "Babe" is for pussies, but Damn Yankees... they were tough as fuck. I mean how can anything involving members of Night Ranger not be... and can you still Rock In America? Remember in that episode when Dennis DeYoung is talking about developing light sensitivity partially due to rehearsing a musical adaptation of The Hunchback Of Notre Dame with Liza Minelli? What the fuck... did that ever happen?

Rock stars. Awesome.

SuperNova? Really? Like shit guys, how low can you go? I attended a live taping of a special on Voivod this week to launch their new record 'Katorz'. Jason Newstead... I'm sorry... Jasonic, called in for an interview. The best part of interview...'Working with Voivod was night and day to Metallica. They listened to me, they respected me, they liked my ideas, we got along great...". Geez, rough gig with Lars and the boys. But how's life with Gilby Clarke, and Tommy Lee in the mansion. I'm sorry but when I look at you all I can think is "fuck". Hands up everyone who rates that as their favorite line from "Some Kind Of Monster".

I saw Slayer a few weeks ago. They set up their Marshall stacks in 10 amp by 5 amp upside down crosses. Hot.
Children Of Bodom opened. Their singer had the best metal banter ever. An amazing grasp of all rock cliches. It led me to wonder what it would be like not growing up with English as a first language and being in some Scandinavian country with my only reference for English being on like Iron Maiden's 'Live After Death' record. And then you start a band and every night say "SCREAM FOR ME LONG BEACH" without realizing that Long Beach is a place. That's sort of how this dude came off... but it was highly entertaining. And a relief after being disappointed that Mastodon's set sounded like mud.

New Voivod album. Pretty damn good.

Getting a promo of The Best Of Cheap Trick seemed like a good way to start the day... but then the reality hit that it doesn't really rock as hard as I remembered 20 years ago.

Wouldn't it be awesome if John Carpenters "The Fog" was remade every year, but each year something different came out of the Fog. I mean shit, anything is better then Pirates... Pirates John...? 90 minutes later you give me pirates? Fucking Poltergeist was scarier dude.

Anyone else notice that new Wayans Brothers film "Little Man" is actually a plot line from a Flintstones episode.... seriously.

Okay then. How's that for 10 minutes of first thing that comes to mind writing. Wait, that's the shit that comes to my mind first. I'm feeling fear.