I think it might make more sense if we had some examples.

The lyrics would definitely be coming from a pro-fat, pro-sex, pro-queer, pro-bicycle, feminist, anticonsumer culture, situationist prospective.

Whatever it is, it doesn’t sound like fun party music, does it?

Was anyone else surprised by the Fed’s quarter point rate cut yesterday?

I haven’t been following the financial sites lately, and apparently I shouldn’t have been surprised, but I was. It seemed like a good time to sit back and do not too damned much.

Does anyone else think that it’s sort of cool that the Chinese government now has a super secret underground lair?

Well, maybe not so super secret since everyone seems to know about it, but it does fit the bad guy image they’ve been cultivating of late, doesn’t it? And, no, I’m not particularly worried about the thing; I’m pretty sure James Bond managed to single-handedly destroy more impressive super secret underground lairs a few times in his career. Once call to our friends in the UK and that thing is toast.

Does anyone else think that Josef Fritzl is going straight to hell when he dies--and that his is a clear case where his government should give him a helpful push down the path?

There are reasons that we keep the words “monster” and “evil” in our non-ironic lexicon. He serves as a reminder that evil is very real, that there are monsters in the world, and that we need to remain vigilant if we plan to keep citizens safe from the worst of us.

Is anyone else terrified of the fact that we’re having a worldwide spike in food prices and availability because, largely, of destructive government policies?

Let me continue that thought for a moment: most modern food shortages occur because of natural events. Floods, droughts, disease--acts of God if you will. The food shortages now (because we are tying our food policy to our energy policy, because trade barriers are being erected, because the cost to bring food to market are growing wildly) are manmade. I’m sure that, as we always do, we’ll absorb the painful losses, change our policies somewhat, and adjust to new realities and costs. We always do. What scares me, though, is that if our policies aren’t changes wisely, what happens to energy costs, food costs, and food availability when God visits us will a really good flood, drought, or plant disease that severely limits the supply of some staple grain? Because what has happened over the last year or so has happened without dips in actual production.

I might be missing something that makes it all okay, but this has me worried.

Does anyone else think that the whole Lesbos/Lesbian thing is absolutely hilarious?

I’ve got nothing to add to that. It’s just funny, I tell you.

Does anyone else think that the Open Source Boob Project kerfuffle sort of goes to prove all the worst stereotypes about a certain subset of geekdom?

To the point, that this class of geek imagine themselves to be extra-special-evolved in cultural terms while the rest of us just recognize the reality of their sexually immature, juvenile social ineptitude. To try to somehow demystify breasts by making such a big deal about an ongoing gropefest seems a good way to miss the actual point of their point.

That’s only compounded by the native geek tendency to suck the spontaneous fun out of a thing by codifying it, over-explaining it, and extending it like overeager schoolboys into places where it doesn’t belong. All the while they see it as a way to make a social statement of some indistinct kind.

Hi, I’m socially evolved and don’t buy into the cultural taboos about boobs. Can I fondle you now? I promise it will be totally non-sexual.

Proving with impressive emphasis that some of the worlds smartest people can still buy into stupid like nobody’s business. Especially when breasts are the topic.

I originally saw this on Scalzi’s site. He’s nicer than I am.

For the record: any deals you make to grope or be groped by another consenting adult aren’t any of my business, I know. But pretending to some heightened sexual enlightenment because of something like the oddly named “Open Source Boob Project” just looks dumb.

In the face of high royalty payments owed by online radio stations, does anyone else think that we’d all be better off when the record companies had to pay for their stuff to get played?

Instead of working toward the destruction of Internet radio, we would see a boom in the number of stations, the variety of music, and the financial health of the businesses that, for all intents and purposes, are advertisers for the record companies. By comparison to this superhighway robbery, was payola really such a bad thing? Hell, I think it was more honest.

My MP3 player (a second generation iPod Nano) has done good things for my music listening habits. On the positive side, in place of the stacks of CDs that I used to keep in my car and office, I now have a mini library of music wherever I go that I can easily change and which holds enough music to match nearly my many moods and tastes.

On the negative side, I rarely listen to albums anymore. Unless it’s a new purchase, my favorite tracks get picked and placed with others to create some wonderful mixes, but the cohesive pleasure of listening to a great album from front to back is mostly gone. So, today I’m reacquainting myself with my favorite albums while I’m working.

Not that I don’t enjoy the playlists that I create--because, I’m here to tell you, I am the playlist king--but I know that there are hundreds of songs that I haven’t listened to in some time because they don’t easily fit into any of the playlists that I make. Like Screaming Trees’ “Look at You” from the first album on my list, Dust. It’s a gorgeous love song, but I haven’t heard it in quite some time.

The point being, since I doubt that I’m alone in the near abandonment of listening regularly to albums, you’re invited to play along and rediscover your own favorite albums. If you do play along, though, I’d love it if you would let me know what you’re listening to--it might give me some ideas for my own rediscoveries.

First up for me, as I noted, is Dust--the Trees’ last album is a wonderful little rocker. Not great, perhaps, but with some brilliant moments.

Update: This is list of albums thus far.

1. Dust, by Screaming Trees
2. Consider the Birds by Woven Hand
3. Definitive Collection, Disc 1, by Alan Parsons Project
4. Pet Sounds by Beach Boys
5. Sex, Love and Rock n’ Roll by Social Distortion
6. Deliverance by Corrosion of Conformity
7. Acadie by Daniel Lanois

And definitely look in the extended entry for some worthy suggestions.

Suddenly, for no real reason whatsoever, I’m in the mood for the national anthem.

Long, long ago, I wrote of the amazing version of Opie Gone Bad’s Jake Schroeder singing the national anthem before the Colorado Avalanche home games. Now, through the magic of YouTube, here’s Jake.

Unfortunately, the sound isn’t the best, but it gives a good idea of his voice--and maybe a good idea of why I get a little misty when he sings it. I’ve heard him do it quite a few times and there wasn’t once where I doubted the depth of his respect for the song, his belief in its words.

A little Opie Gone Bad in the extended entry for the curious--and the sound is significantly better.

Read the Rest...

I was in the mood for a variety of mellow songs and thought it would be nice to share. You’ll find a little Toad the Wet Sprocket, Twilight Singers, Isobel Campbell, Otis Taylor, Sam Cooke, and, frankly, just a bunch of other stuff that fit my mood.

Enjoy it while it’s here because I don’t know how Seeqpad works--but my guess is that the streams are from either the sites that originally provided the songs or from temporary caches. Either way, they probably won’t be there forever.

Steve talks cover songs and I can’t help but think about some of my own personal favorite covers. While it’s true that it’s very rare for a cover to outshine the original, I think it’s just as true that many cover versions bring something new out of the song. Update: And check out Jed’s post (and thanks for the link) on the subject.

These are a few of my favorite things, although I’ve done it with a twist. Every other song is something covered by Mark Lanegan or a Lanegan-related group. If you don’t like his voice, you might want to skip those; if you do like his voice, they would make a tremendous EP all on their own.

Jeff Buckley - Hallelujah
Leonard Cohen penned a beautiful song, but Jeff Buckley’s voice and arrangement made it into something as near perfect as can be. It’s not often that I would call a man’s voice angelic, but Buckley’s qualifies. The entirety of Grace is worth hearing, but “Hallelujah” is tremendous.

Twilight Singers - Live with Me
Massive Attack’s “Live with Me” is a sort of mutant cross between electronica and blues with Terry Callier on vocals. Great stuff. Greg Dulli’s Twilight Singers slow it down a bit, bring out the full-on blues experience, and gives Mark Lanegan the chance to make it more desperate and earthy than the original.

Slobberbone - To Love Somebody
The Bee Gees’ wonderful “To Love Somebody” has been covered by more people than I can remember. Some of the best--and, to me, most surprising--were Janis Joplin, The Flying Burrito Brothers, and Slobberbone. And it’s Slobberbone’s version that I like the most. Slobberbone turns the R&B number into a slow, warm country ballad. Great stuff.

The Walkabouts - Feel Like Going Home
When Charlie Rich sang “Feel Like Going Home”, it came out pretty and nice. When The Walkabouts sing “Feel Like Going Home” it becomes something more personal and the weariness of “everything I done is wrong” becomes more real. Mark Lanegan’s voice comes in on the third verse ("Cloudy skies are closing in...") like an old man facing his death after a long life and wanting the release. It would be brutal if it weren’t so pretty.

The Gourds - Gin and Juice
Snoop Dogg’s “Gin and Juice” wouldn’t normally seem like a perfect fit for a bluegrass makeover, but it is one of the most fun songs to come from the 90’s alt.country (whatever that means) movement. Enjoy the groove and laugh when you hear the heavy accents singing about ghetto thug life.

Mark Lanegan - Carry Home
The original from the late Jeffrey Lee Pierce is a little rock number from The Gun Club’s album, Miami, but Mark Lanegan makes it his own. From his album of covers, I’ll Take Care of You, “Carry Home” becomes a sparse slice of Americana that is hardly recognizable as the original--just a simple guitar framing Lanegan’s rich, deep voice. 

Johnny Cash - Hurt
When Nine Inch Nails recorded “Hurt,” I would never have imagined that Johnny Cash could turn it into a deeper lament than the original. But his aging voice and emotional reading of the lyrics stand as one of the most blatant and affecting looks at failure, regret, and mortality.

Screaming Trees - Darkness Darkness
Basically a throw-away from the song from the Trees for the True Lies soundtrack, their cover stands well against The Youngblood’s original. It’s fun to hear Lanegan and company hitting full rock stride with a song that fit beautifully with their own work. A perfect fit.

Israel Kamakawiwo’ole - Hawai’i ‘78
Best known for his shockingly pretty cover of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” Israel Kamakawiwo’ole also covered “Hawai’i ‘78”, a song originally recorded by The Makaha Sons of Ni’ihau. Iz’s voice was truly special; sadly he died far too young from complications related to his morbid obesity (at one time weighing well over 700 pounds).

Soulsavers - Blues Run the Game
If you’ve heard “Blues Run the Game,” it was probably Simon & Garfunkel’s pretty cover of the little-known Jackson C. Frank original. The Soulsavers trade the folk guitar in for gentle piano and cello. Folkies will always love the original, but for the rest, the Soulsavers created a song that won’t ever be stuck in one time zone. Others have covered the tune, but none quite so effectively.

Bonus - Megadeth - These Boots
Nancy Sinatra couldn’t pull off the rocking attitude that comes with Megadeth’s speed-metal version of her rebellious classic. To be fair, Dave Mustaine will never be as cute as she was when she sang the song, but his growl does have a certain charm.

Big Bonus Territory
In the extended entry is an assortment of the songs and artists listed here. Where I couldn’t find an original or a cover, I went with something by the covering artist. And, yes, Megadeth is there at the end.

Enjoy.

Read the Rest...

Enjoy.

After watching American Idol I like to listen to music that is suits me more than what I hear on the TV. That could be something loud if they’ve been foolishly praising the rock bona fides of some wannabe crooner or it could be the original of something that one of the contestants massacred the night before. Whatever else it does, American Idol helps me appreciate my own record collection more by showing me how bad or cynically calculated music really can be. Not that there aren’t good performances on the show, of course, but the bulk of the stuff is one or another variety of bad.

After watching Chikezie go last night--not a bad choice, although it really should have been Ramiele--I’ve been listening to my Lizz Wright albums. Her voice is amazing and a few of her songs are amongst the most beautiful I’ve ever heard. For that matter, some of her covers are striking, too. You should hear what Zep’s “Thank You” when she’s done with it.

If I weren’t already in love with the most wonderful woman in the world, I’m pretty sure I’d be obsessed with Lizz Wright. Here’s her singing a live version of the gorgeous “Hit the Ground.”

If you like this, I highly recommend buying her albums The Orchard and Dreaming Wide Awake. And if you liked that, there’s a bonus video in the extended entry of her singing Joe Henry’s “Stop.” Madonna covered the song, too, but it’s better if we pretend that never happened.

Read the Rest...

“...You can’t have it.”

Speak truth to power, Brother Nuge!

On the plus side, the music is far better than the film. Sadly, the music is tremendously uneven.

The movie (that is, the characters, the plot, and the dialog) is a mess that suffers hugely from Julie Taymor’s need to distort the story so dramatically to fit the many re-interpretations of the Beatles’ classics that make up the film’s soundtrack. Peopled almost exclusively, it seems, with names drawn from the Beatles’ catalog of characters--Jude and Lucy, the main characters, Maxwell, whose hammer is hardly silver nor terribly relevant, dear Prudence the slyly lesbian cheerleader, Sadie, who provides many of the musical highlights, and JoJo, Sadie’s Hendrix-esque boyfriend--the story never lets these characters grown into much other than cutouts of 60’s cliches. Worse, their stories are strung together so haphazardly that the disconnect from scene to scene left me caring little for what little character had grown.

It’s mushy, stupid fare for people who will be wowed by the visuals and who don’t understand the violence done to classic Beatles songs by Evan Rachel Wood who makes every song sound like a high school musical production. Jim Sturgess, the British actor who plays Jude, does better with his songs, although even he falls down in spots--most especially on “Revolution” which distracts from what might otherwise have been an interesting dramatic point in the movie. And maybe that’s the point: with the focus so heavily on the songs (and the songs so uneven in execution), they take away from the drama of the film.

This isn’t surprising to me. Taymor’s Titus was a shockingly gorgeous movie, but not a particularly well-directed film. I felt the same about Frida, although both of those movies put Across the Universe to shame.

But there are some charming bits. Dana Fuchs’ Janis Joplin impression works surprisingly well on most of her songs. “Do it in the Road” and “Helter Skelter” are rocking gems. I found myself wishing that Martin Luther McCoy had a few more opportunities to sing, too, as his voice provided some much needed warmth and charisma. “Let it Be” fulfills its gospel roots sung by a full choir to beautiful effect--one of a handful of flawless musical moments.

Bono shows up both to sing and to play a cameo as an LSD evangelist--and, while funny, his crazy tone is at odds with the irritatingly over-earnest feeling of the rest of the cast. If there had been a little more self-aware wackiness, it might actually have helped the movie along quite a bit. Of course, Eddie Izzard’s lunacy just bugged me while he gave a skewed take on “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite.” At least when Bono sings the songs are nice.

The best musical moment is given by Joe Cocker on a dirty, buzzing “Come Together.” Shame he didn’t do a few more of the songs.

According to darling girl, the movie was at least 12 hours long. I corrected her, of course: the movie was only a bit over two hours. It only felt like it took as long as the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy.

Sitting in the office, enjoying a warm day, and listening to Metallica’s brilliant instrumental “Orion.”

Oh, Metallica, why have you forsaken the True Path of Metal? Why do you give us St. Anger instead of a worthy follow up to Master of Puppets? Repent and return to the Path and we will forgive your wrongs. Yea, verily, though it will be hard, we will even forgive Load and Reload (although, perhaps not “Unforgiven II” which, at best, we can pretend didn’t happen). 

Our blogging buddy, Nathan, has gifted us with a little light jazz. Go, listen, download, and let him know what you think.

There are rumors of an album in the works…

Marketwatch’s Chris Pummer takes careful aim at an AP story about consumer confidence in the US.

Associated Press economics writer Jeannine Aversa referred to confidence falling to an “all-time low” in her first paragraph, a spin that landed the Jan. 11 story on Yahoo’s home page, a prime position for stories to reach millions of readers.

Only at the end of the second paragraph does the reader discover the result is from a Royal Bank of Canada survey begun only in 2002, a survey that is often at odds with highly tracked readings from The Conference Board and University of Michigan.

“If the story said a second-tier survey hit a six-year low, it wouldn’t get any attention,” says Ken Goldstein, senior labor economist for The Conference Board. “It doesn’t pass the smell test and it shouldn’t.”

I love a good take-down.

Which is precisely why everyone should vote for my house band over at the brand new, freakin’ awesome Whiskey in my Sippy Cup. Because I am worthy and hopeful and not at all a prognosticator of doom.

Actually, to be fair, there are a number of really good covers in that mix. 

I might-shoulda called this one “Midnight Torture for Country Music Haters,” but, somehow, it fits my mood.

It’s honest-to-God country music, so it isn’t particularly sophisticated and it doesn’t have much in the way of pretense. If you can take it for waht it is--without any sense of irony or that knowing, self-conscious attitude that robs art of any sense of its own honesty--you’ll find a simple story about a man who loves a woman, only, in grand country tradition (like it’s brother, the grand blues tradition), happiness isn’t a feature of this love.

The story isn’t presented with flowery poetry, it just unrolls slowly and simply from the first lines--"He said I’ll love you ‘til I die. She told him you’ll forget in time"--building up to its tear-jerking conclusion with an inevitability that doesn’t make it any less tragic. Again, if you can simply take it on its own terms, it really might be the saddest song I’ve ever heard, and I am a collector of sad songs.

George Jones didn’t write the song, but he gave it the perfect voice. He’s unpretentious, but affecting, and brings out the sense of loneliness and sadness that the lyrics so perfectly describe. This is, indeed, beer drinking music and one of the few country songs that regularly finds room on my iPod.

“He Stopped Loving Her Today” just may be the world’s saddest song.

Bonus for the haters, though: the cheesy, early-eighties aesthetics are almost painful.

Enjoy.

American Idol featured a woman who was a recovered meth addict. The show producers delved into her stories of woe, giving us a great hardship and triumph story worthy of John Edward’s mills and Huckabee’s substandard hotel reservations. Which is nice, I suppose? Who doesn’t love a story of triumph in the face of overwhelmingly bad odds.

But I just can’t connect on this one. I’m not trying to be cruel, nor am I saying that addictions aren’t scary bad things for some people. For that matter, I’m not saying that I’m stronger, smarter, tougher, or better than anyone else. I have my weaknesses, I know them well, and I combat them daily.

But I just can’t connect to this one.

During the happy-fun-bartending years, I tried pretty much any pharma-product that came my way. Whether it came in pill or powder, I was happy to give it a shot. The only thing that I never got around to was injecting myself simply because that seemed to be going a step too far. Poking extra holes in my skin to facilitate a drug felt a little desperate.

My drug of choice was coke, but I dabbled a few times with meth, and it wasn’t the terrifying destroyer of lives that I’ve heard other people describe. It was a brutal high, it lasted too long, it crashed too hard, and it made me feel twitchy. I didn’t like it and experimentation ended after a few very long nights (very long--both time lasting a few days of finding ways to fill my hours with even more mistakes than usual).

I never had that happy high that I had with coke--that booze, coke, and limo excursion with a big group of friends on the way to see U2 playing Mile High. I had a little wager going with one of my friends as to which of us could get more kisses from random passers by while we were stuck in ridiculous traffic. She managed a few smooches from some of the cars going by. Being on the other side of the limo, I got a little more action from girls walking toward the stadium. The best smooch came from one very pretty, very young woman with a very irritated boyfriend. Oddly, I had propositioned her friend, who looked to be flying solo, but I wasn’t disappointed by the trade. After a few blissful moments and a little bit of tongue, she asked if I was important and if she could come with us to the concert.

I felt bad for her boyfriend and realized that there was no way that she wasn’t going to be happy with the crappy, top level tickets that my little crew had. Luckily, the cars were finally moving and I just laughed as I rolled up the window. She probably ended up far less happy with that smooch than I did, poor thing.

Point being, I have some happy memories of my cocaine days and nothing much happy or clear about the meth days. And, like every substance that I abused, when I decided to stop, I stopped. It was easy.

I fully realize that it isn’t the same way for others. For some reason, some people like the harsh high from the meth and they have a hard time putting it down. I get it, I just don’t care.

So, meth girl was pretty and she had a not-unpleasant voice, but the back story left me cold. I hope she does well partially because of the “she’s pretty” part and partially because I like the idea of having someone that I can refer to as “meth girl” throughout the contest. It’s a fun nickname. But they are really overplaying the tragic backstory thing this year. It may make me a complete bastard, but I really don’t care--in fact, I’d probably be more likely to appreciate a good, current heroin addict with talent than all the sob-story former tragedarians that they trot out to try to get me to connect to the second-rate talents that they usually trot out.

Oh, and this shouldn’t be construed as a blanket approval of drug use. I’ve been clean for almost a decade (honestly). Drugs are dumb. They lead to all sorts of bad stuff happening in everyone’s lives but my own. Once you start, you just can’t stop. You’ll probably go to hell if you inhale. Other bad things, too. Probably. So don’t do it.

Okay, love song might be pushing it. More like: goofy, retro, hard rock song with scantily clad women, sex obsessed lyrics, and a showcase for the power of loud guitars. Which is how I show my love. Look for cameos by Jack Black and Dave Grohl in really scary wigs.

Since I’m up late trying to finish up an ad and since I’ve ignored the blog for most of the weekend, it seemed a good time to post loud music. And, anyway, Jesse Hughes (the man with the porn ‘stache) cites Thomas Paine and Laura Ingraham as some of his favorite journalists and was, apparently, a speechwriter for Sonny Bono.

Enjoy the Eagles of Death Metal, folks.

Air Guitar Nation is hilarious. Not “laughing with you” hilarious, this is full on “laughing at you” stuff. A hard rockin’ documentary covering two American air guitarists doing their best to bring a world air guitar championship to the US with America’s first entry into the world championships.

Why funny? Aside from the obvious (c’mon, air guitar as a competitive skill?), there is the fact that some of these folks travel to Finland for a sort of air guitar boot camp where they are taught valuable skills, exercises, and awkward guitar god moves to help them win their championship. Leaving aside the fact that one of the students was wearing a Che t-shirt, focus on descriptions of former champion Zac Monro “state of the nation” address calling air guitar the last pure art form, an art that cannot be commercialized.

So, air guitar as an, ahem, art is not only a nearly talent-free zone in any normal reading of talent, but it is also an irritatingly pretentious talent-free zone practiced by people who take themselves far too seriously.

After a few shots of my wonderful Leopold’s Gin, watching these guys running in circles while exercising their windmill arm technique left me laughing hard enough to wake up the dog.

Her offended “boof” kind of put the whole thing into perspective, really.

No offense to Mr. Magnet, the Tobinator, or Mr. Metallizer, but if you don’t have a sense of the absurd in modern life before watching the movie, you’ll feel steeped in it afterward.

To their credit, some of the contestants seem to realize the ridiculousness of the thing (like the guy, Bjorn Turoque, whose quote I used as the title at the beginning of the movie and maybe a little less by the end), and that lends a sense of fun. I did feel a sense of jealousy when I watched C-Diddy, who admits to living in that talent-free zone I was talking about, autographing a cute girls breast who then gave him a quick peck on the cheek.

One of the oddest moments in the documentary--outside of the contests proper--is when Bjorn Turoque admits that he adopts alter egos because he’s not very good at being himself. I believe that the guitarist (who actually violates my talent free zone pronouncement) is Jean Luc Retard bassist for the New York band Nous Non Plus. While playing in a real band is, apparently, more satisfying than the air guitar, but the air guitar gig had given him more fame.

It’s when one of the organizers says that the competition is judged like an Olympic event and that it is less absurd to watch than figure skating that I want to start popping people politely upside the head. While they may have given the competition the trappings of a real event, the truth is that the contestants are just up there pretending to be playing guitar. This isn’t a sport; it’s escapist entertainment.

The first time I ever found myself at a drag show--with my lesbian friend, D, and another friend of ours from the goth bar days--I was shocked. It was a gay, lesbian, and transsexual beauty pageant, and it wasn’t the outfits, the politics, or the costumes that shocked me. It was that the talent portion of the competition turned out to be a lip-synching contest. I felt a little ripped off--real talent is your own singing, not vaguely pretending to sing along to pre-recorded music. Not unlike air guitar.

Figure skating may not be the height of Olympic competition for most people, but at least the skaters are actually being judged on their own actions. Air guitarists are being judged on how well they pretend to be doing the real thing.

Sorry, but one of these things is a talent and one of them is the wrong end of a joke.

For the record, the scores are compiled from the following categories: originality, charisma, feeling, technical ability, artistic merit, and airness. Airness is defined as “the extent to which the performance transcends the medium and becomes a higher form of artistic expression.”

Which sounds awfully stringent to me. I wonder if they have a point system for the more technically demanding windmill maneuvers.

“Air guitar is big business,” one woman says, who apparently didn’t get the memo about air guitar as an incorruptible pure art. “I really don’t think people realize how big air guitar really is.”

For old metal heads like me, though, the soundtrack eases the pain of some of the performances. Motorhead, Smashing Pumpkins, KISS, Priest, Cheap Trick, David Bowie, Queen, The Who, The Donnas, and David Lee Roth all pop up in little snippets as the guitarists flail and strut on the stage.

The contestants would be well advised to cut down a bit on the exposed flesh, though.

Seriously.

By the end, Bjorn Turoque’s determination to go to the air guitar championship in Finland despite his losses in both the East and West Coast Championships steps beyond the quixotic and right into the irritating regardless of the outcome. So does his offer to be a “sort of ambassador of air” to overcome the anti-American sentiment in Europe and show everyone how much we like peace, too. Likewise, the marginal political posturing of the Finnish originators of the championships (apparently, if everyone held an air guitar, no one would be able to hold guns or wage war) come across as laughable. But neither are utterly central to the film and neither get in the way of enjoying the thing.

Air guitar isn’t serious and it isn’t art and with the right attitude, it is fun, funny, and outrageous. Air Guitar Nation proves to be airy, insubstantial entertainment; it’s worth the rental but it won’t change any lives or illuminate any of the dark corners in your soul. After all, it is just air guitar.

I’m sure that some of you out there were worried about Kid Rock--and I’m here to tell you that he’s still out there living the white trash dream

Take these ingredients:

1- Kid Rock and Entourage
2- Late Night Stop at a Waffle House
3- Girl’s Slighted Honor

And this would be the result.

God bless Kid Rock for being Kid Rock.

I would have put these up earlier in the day, one after the other, but I really wanted to leave the post about Ryan Frazier above the fold for a bit. Now you get a triple shot of my favorite straight-edge writer*.

So, About Randi Rhodes
I read commentary at Kos, at Sadly, No, and at a few other smaller sites yesterday and the rush to blame conservatives for the Rhodes’ incident was almost giddy. The self-righteous preening about conservatives’ calling them on their bigotry after the real story--real non-story--came out was even funnier. I tried to have a polite conversation on one site--and ended it--when I was accused of arguing in bad faith because I hadn’t come with the proper apologetic attitude for my beliefs. Literally.

Truth is that there are times that I am wrong and I will accept that. I will admit to it, and I am willing to learn. What I won’t do is come to every conversation with the self-appointed enlightened few, hat in hand, apologizing for every difference of opinion.

Er, sorry. Back to the Rhodes show from yesterday, Shawn captures the mood nicely.

Despite the contentions of Rhodes’ own lawyer and Air America Radio—not likely members in good standing of the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy—Rhodes’ fans refused to let the hate crime narrative give up the ghost. “We are likely to be more accurate on this board than the entire domestic news industry,” one aficionado declared at Rhodes’ official site. Another seconded that dismissal: “Unfortunately the AAR statement was so vague it only worsened the situation.”

Vague? The reports of a presumed hate crime are unfounded seems to be the sentence-length antonym of vague. And even leaving aside whether a person whose profile lists his location as “The 13th Floor of the Tower of Terror” and auto-signs every post with the refrain, “Republicans will never be happy until they have completely destroyed the earth and ended all life as we know it” is going to be more accurate than the entire domestic news industry, is he going to be more accurate than Rhodes’ lawyer and uber-liberal employer?

Yeah, there was a lot of that posturing yesterday. I haven’t ventured that far to the left today, so I don’t know if it has died down or not.

Quiet Revolutions
Shawn went on a trip to see fringe left and right wing secession groups meet to carve out their bits of the United States in sort of a looney mimicry of the Yalta Conference. But while those folks were busily planning for something that will never happen--in fact, their suggestions, hopes, and plans will likely be ignored to death--Shawn met a man who cheerfully found a way to rebel against stupid government rules and intervention.

I used to drive a regular cab and wanted to keep doing it, but the hoops they make you jump through to get certified are crazy and way out of my budget,” he said. The more he tried to play by the rules, though, he said, the more the city regulators seemed to enjoy shutting him out. The board that grants licenses in Chattanooga is partially run by local cab company owners—would-be competitors, in other words. It’s a process that, if not actually corrupt, at least gives the impression corruption is a distinct possibility, as even local press and politicians have begun to note.

It’s a light story, but a very good one--a little inspiration for anyone who believes that part of the job of the citizen is to keep government’s power in check.

Update: And note how following my links can bring you to happy new information.

Well, Yeah...
Lastly, I thought everyone knew that The Bends was the artistic peak for professional mopesters, Radiohead.

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: Shawn deserves to be on your blogroll or in your RSS reader. If you want to comment on any of his stories, visit his site.

• For the record, Shawn may or may not be straight-edge. I’ve never quite been able to figure it out.

Good news for fans of brilliant, quirky music: the Soulsavers’ exceptional album, It’s Not How Far You Fall, It’s How You Land is finally available in the US. You can get it at decent local record stores, iTunes, or Amazon--although, on iTMS it is hilariously labeled as “Christian/Gospel” (not, to be fair, that I know what I would label the thing).

It certainly does have a gospel edge to it ("Revival" has a full blown gospel choir in the background) and is preoccupied with thoughts and images of religion. But I’m guessing the strange, Eastern drone of “Jesus of Nothing” wouldn’t grab your typical Christian as a statement of faith.

What do you get with this eclectic mix that still manages to feel all of a piece? Noisy rock, ambient, dance beats, mellow pop, fuzzy guitars, gospel, and something not far from blues. You also get Mark Lanegan’s voice in all its glory--and especially glorious it is on “Revival”, “Spiritual”, “Kingdoms of Rain”, and “No Expectations.” He appears on and wrote a good chunk of the songs on the CD, the result being something that sounds very much like a Lanegan solo album infused with electronic dance beats. I was skeptical of the mix, but it turns out beautifully.

Musical labels don’t quite suffice, so I’ll just say this: it is one of my favorite purchases of the last few years and is regularly in my CD player and on my iPod.

Buy it from iTunes. (This link will launch iTunes Music Store.)