Still In My Top 5

Jets To Brazil's Orange Rhyming Dictionary is still one of my top 5 albums ever. I just listened to it all the way through, twice. I forgot how crazy fun it is.

"People, They're No Fun"

"Fuck Me, Ray Bradbury" is transcendentally hilarious. But before that, back when I was in college, a great punk musician wrote a song that covered the same topic.

The Marsist

My favorite Frank Black song maybe. Live.

The Industrial Revolution Has Slipped The Bitch On Evolution

...and prosperity via simpleton culture: the idiots are taking over.

Justin Bond Is A Genius

Much-needed Fun

Ok, who else saw American Ninja 2 on USA's Up All Night?

Green Day The Musical

From American Idiot:

Album Review: American Idiot The Musical

Am I listening to a Broadway version of an album by a band that I saw in a shit-hole in Birmingham back in 1993? Really?

I'm the son of rage and love
The Jesus of Suburbia
From the bible of none of the above

Green Day's Tony-nominated American Idiot is unsettling. It is a surreal confluence of Broadway and my love of punk rock (and my love of Green Day's album by the same name). I don't know if I feel more gay or less gay listening to it. But it is brilliant nonetheless...I couldn't recommend it more.

Green Day always was very pro-gay.

Album Review: Nobody's Daughter

I'm a huge fan of Courtney Love's solo album. So I was excited that she was recording again, presumably sober.

Her new album with Hole is disappointing. It sounds like some great musicians are holding up a great junkie punk rocker has-been to get out an album. Even the good songs are sad compared to Love's solo album. But you do get her crazy, unhinged, angry voice for a few songs. And her fans, including me, can hope that it does well enough to get her out of her funk.

The gays are rooting for you sister!

I Want To Go Back To Chicago

Lollapalooza 2010 in Grant Park will feature Green Day, Lady Gaga, and my winner for best album of 2009: Arcade Fire! All in Frank Gehry's brilliant Jay Pritzker Pavilion.

I gotta get out of here...

Ed. note: Lollapalooza is in Grant Park, not Millennium Park. Still, to watch those bands in that architecturally significant surrounding...

Forget Chicago, I'm Going To NYC This Summer

Green Day is turning their epic album American Idiot into a Broadway play.

Architecture, history, art, great food, martinis, and a punk musical...who's with me?

Anyone?

Worth The Ten Bucks

The Yeah Yeah Yeahs have a download on iTunes that includes original accoustic recordings of some of their songs along with some of the album verstions that you may already have. However, you have to buy the full album to get the new recordings and the double-plus bonus: interviews about each of the songs.

Karen O is not a great interview; she gives lots of "uh"s and "um"s and "you know"s and some sound that resembles an octogenarian chain-smoker trying to hit a flat C (how does that raspy speaking voice make that singing voice?). But some of the nuggets from the interviews are great.

However, pay the $10 to get the greatest recording of "Maps" (my favorite song by them) EVER!

____________________________________________________

Oops! So you can buy the original songs individually, including "Maps," but you can't get the interviews. I'd buy it anyway: support good music.

I Finally Got My Favorite Pixies Cover

"I said this can't be me, it must be my double."

Way back when I was a teenager in high school, my best friend got a CD called I'm Your Fan: The Songs of Leonard Cohen. I loved Leonard Cohen, and I dubbed a copy of this tribute CD on a tape. Every morning of my high school senior year, I had an alarm clock with a tape deck that played the Pixies' cover of "I Can't Forget" to wake me up.

iTunes doesn't have the album, and none of the Pixies' compilations have this song. So I bought the CD off of Amazon. Sixteen years after I first heard it, "I Can't Forget" is still my favorite Pixies cover, and it remains one of the top ten songs they ever did. In addition, most of the other covers remain brilliant, including REM's "First We Take Manhattan" and Nick Cave's "Tower of Song."



"I'll be there today with a big bouquet of cactus."

Yeah Yeah Yeah Fans Will Find A Lot To Love

I bought and listened to the complete soundtrack to Where The Wild Things Are. If the movie is as good as the soundtrack, it will be a cult classic.

Karen O: All Is Love

From Where The Wild Things Are, available at iTunes:



Brilliant!

A Fun List

Top 30 Atheist Songs

I think we can all agree on #1: "Dear God" by XTC.



I'm glad to see Green Day's recent "East Jesus Nowhere" made it on the list. Can you believe they played that song on Good Morning America and corrupted a young girl?

Album Review: 21st Century Breakdown

I don't think it's as good as American Idiot, but it's close. Technically, it may be the prettiest punk rock album since Bossanova.

Visionary Rock

I'll list the new album by the Decemberists with the following visionary modern rock-n-roll albums:

Pixies: Doolittle
The Pogues: Rum, Sodomy, and the Lash
REM: Reconstruction of the Fables
Echo and the Bunnymen: Songs to Learn and Sing
The Cure: Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me
Green Day: American Idiot

All hail the visionary rock-n-rollers...thanks to MTV we have precious few left.

The Germs: No God

A The Germs Movie?

Nobody tells me these things! A movie has been made about the homo-fronted, Belinda Carlisle-drummed (well, briefly), breakthrough LA punk band The Germs.

I'm buying it as soon as I can get my hands on the DVD. What's next, a Big Boys movie?