Going to Finish this post before I pass out...School of Rock and Revelations

I just went to a local memorial day celebration, got a lot of dirty looks from the soldiers and firemen as I was all decked out in my Monday best dumpster diving attire, 60 day beard and my dirty straw cowboy/migrant worker hat. i must have forgotten to show them my "These colors don't run" tattoo on my left  calf....

I love you guys anyway for what you've sacrificed which allows me able to walk to my local park with my boy on a national holiday, drink alarmingly light beer out of a tap attached to a truck with NASCAR icons on it, watch rotund Augustus Gloop lookin' 8 year old boys knock my son around the inflatable Moon Bounce like he was a mark in a WWF tag team champion bout,  and buy that raffle ticket in hopes of winning a ticket to the Daughtry/Three Doors Down show at the closest summer shed. I got there without having to maneuver around any bombs under a burka or snipers in the suburbs...so thank you.

There was music at the park and that is what motivated me to write before i float away in a beer belly balloon full of Miller genuine Draft towards the land called Drinktoforget....5th Dimension break..."Up, up and away in my beer belly, my beer belly ballooooooooonnnnnnn!" On one hill under a tent was a band called "The Flower Power Band" playing every moldy, corroded rusty chestnut in the classic rock songbook, sloppily and not without every exasperating  ounce of effort a sextogenarian could muster. BorntoBebadTotheBoneZiggystarDustin theWindwoolybullyOldtimeRockandRollbland in full effect..lots of bandanas around bald heads, half blind men sitting on stools singing lyrics from a music stand, bad state highway worker tan skin and smoke wrinkles......like fucking surgery sans anesthesia, like shrapnel shooting through a shin bone........

But down the hill was the local sect of the Paul Green School of Rock. This i found out by standing uphill engulfing a meat by product hot dog and hearing the strange and wonderful sounds of Frank Zappa's "Cosmik Debris" coming from a cover band.  Hmmmm...that's never happened in my life time!Cover bands are too pussy to try anything with more than four chords. Interest piqued tenfold! How colorful! Follow the sound, Seano, you rockologist! Mine that source.! The feeling i got when i reached the faraway tent and saw a cluster of mere pre- teens tearing this song up was akin to skipping church on sunday to drink tallboys in the park while the girls showed up in their high hair and half shirts in hand me down Hondas!  Wow.

I have never really thought much of Paul Green's School of Rock. i saw the movie, loved it...and have wanted to be that overbearing stage father who forces his son to do paradiddles and mixolydian scales before he can bust out of the prison that is training wheels. But as i sat there and watched these pimply Pete Townshends and bony Tony Iommis blaze thru Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, The Police's Next To You, Bowie's Moonage Daydream, Blondie's Call Me, and a plethora of deep classic cuts that those creaky geezers up the hill might burst a colostomy bag trying to do, I was transformed.

You see, on any given day, I tend to give up on humanity. We've got greedy BP fucking up our ecology in the gulf for centuries, we've got religious shit stains wanting to picket at a Ronnie James Dio memorial, we've got tea baggers, birthers, trepanners, treehuggers, juggalos and people actually on "Team Big" or "Team Aidan". Before you throw stones at me, and please do, sometimes pain is a beautiful test that breaks up the static, know that I am a card carrying member of The Scions of Self Deprecation, so go OD on your chill pill somewhere while nobody important or influential is watching.

As much as i have criticized the youth here at COF for their gaming, their scant attention spans and their lemming like existence, I always held out hope. The youth, no matter what curmudgeons like moi tend to toss at them from our easy chairs, are the future. the future of Politics, Culture,Education, Leadership, Awareness, and Influence. That would include art and music as well.

Paul Green's School of Rock is obviously teaching these kids how to play, and play well. When those finger muscles and memory bust out of puberty and meld with the rebellious mind, virtuosos will be made. But I was more impressed with the obvious APPRECIATION that these pre teens must have been taught. Stop look and listen to where your music derived from, kids. Without history, there can be no future. Connect the dots..build your maps. Big Mama Thornton to Loretta to Patsy to Aretha to Janis to Joni to Stevie to Chrissy to Siouxie to Joan to Debbie to Madonna to Bjork to Joanna to MIA. These kids get it.  My kid is gonna get it too.

Here's to The School of Rock and soldiers, and teachers and protectors and those parents and caregivers who do the right thing for their kids every day. I got all soft at the end here, big marshmallow of memories and music and the meaning of life, but remember everything from the Alamo to Afghanistan too. The sacrifices will allowed our kids to grow and contribute with minds and hands more than we ever will. The persistence of protection and the preservation of freedom  that has been fought for all of these years allowed me to be able to sit down on a Memorial Day, safe in my home, after getting a light shined on me by the freaking School of Rock and  surrounded by a halo of Miller cans ....to write this blog post.

Throwing More Stones

Just cuz I want to:

When Charlie stares right at you around the 2:12 mark...be warned. He wants you to pay attention.

More Signs of the Apocalypse

Ellen Degeneres now has her own record label.
The second soundtrack in six months from Glee has been released.
Kiss is going to tour yet again.
You can buy a VIP ticket to a Bon Jovi show for $1875.00
People know who Justin Bieber is but have never heard of Gary Coleman.
Not one Rock/Music magazine put Ronnie James Dio on their cover as a tribute.
Sean "Diddy" Combs was just featured on Inside the Actors Studio.
Willie Nelson cut his ponytail off.
Reporters CONTINUE to ask Jimmy Page about a Zeppelin reunion.
The Dave Matthews Band has pretty much SOLD OUT all of their summer tour stops.  It's 2010 .
Brett Michaels is going to star in his 4th reality series this fall.
Thin Lizzy continues to tour even though Phil Lynott has been dead since 1986.
Jason Bonham is going out on the road with something called the Zeppelin Experience.

more to come......take cover.....

Review: The Rolling Stones-Exile On Main Street-Re-Issue

Exile on Main Street regularly switches places with The White Album, OK Computer, Highway To Hell and Led Zeppelin III as my favorite album of all time. Fuck, I cannot be alone, I know I'm not alone. even if I was 4 years old when the thing came out, I knew of its genius, its sweltering French basement based history, its failure to catch on as did Let it Bleed or Sticky Fingers, and its subsequent influence. I know it started as a "Keith" album. Mick was often too bothered to be distracted from courting Bianca to show up, it was Keith's house and those were Keith's hangers on and drug runners who contributed to the overall "retreat to the basement" vibe and ambience of the album.

I knew it became Mick's album when they returned to Sunset Sound and laid down vocals, black back up singing and more guitar laid to tape right after one of those handlers was able to rouse Keith from a three day binge.

I know every time I hear it, I feel transported  to that long shadowed sketchy juke joint in my subconscious, the one with the summer flies buzzing around the filthy ceiling fans while the zaftig french whores are weaving and whispering around the sunken shoulders of my brethren and I seated at the bar, am mouthwashing with whisky and waiting for the band to take the stage. The Stones saunter out and proceed to Rip That Joint a new one. Smoke starts billowing in tandem with the beat, dirty hands clapping, sweat dripping from heaving bosoms on the dance floor, the percussion of shot glasses toasting and smoky coughs are peppering the hoots and hollers.

When I heard they were remastering the Virgin release in 1994, I bought it. When I heard they were going to do it all over again in 2010, I was skeptical in a holy shit fanboy sort of way. So much influence, folklore, mystery and stories of disjointed revelry lay behind the masterpiece ....how could they possibly squeeze out any more from Exile? I wondered. It's the holy grail of blues rock and soul music. Nellcote is my Graceland, for christ's sake. Every time I walk around the room  all cocksure or tipsy with my pajama bottoms on clutching an acoustic, I'm channeling Keith on the patio fleshing out "Loving Cup" while Anita and Graham are nodded out in the pool chairs beside him. So then I hear rumblings of BONUS TRACKS..and the gooseflesh comes in waves like the DTs on a New Years Day. Whoahh, more from the gritty basement, those dank dusty blues had to be jammed out for hours, worked, reworked and sometimes left for dead for days on end, in between the binges, right? There must be a shitload of material that was culled from musty tape boxes in vaults or warehouses that Jimmy Miller found to be filler, right?  Well the day has come....Stoners!  Here's my take.

I won't waste time telling you that the original album has been cleaned up most spectacularly..warts and all intact, mood not lost on the slickness of technology 40 years on. The dryness of Charlie's snare, the warm crawl of Mick Taylor's slide, the spooky Nickey Hopkins/Billy Preston/Ian Stewart keys still spooky, dusty, and rollicking. All improved, as well as the vocals. "Happy" never sounded happier. I've never been closer to actually seeing his face as I have since listening to this mix of "I Just Want to See His Face". Its just fantastic.



Now onto the bonus material:  With only a reviewer's downloaded copy...no physical product in my hands, I give you my thoughts with a mix of what I've read up on and what I've heard. 10 tracks...

1) Pass The Wine(Sophia Loren)- an unrealized flow of blues rhythm phrases with patched in vocal from 67 yr old Mick complete with new lyrics that sounds like a deep cut from Undercover of The Night. Yeah, it really does.

2) Plundered My Soul- Nothing on this track sounds Exile- like, more new vocals and guitar overdubs are glaringly obvious, but its probably the best the Stones have sounded in 40 years.

3) I'm Not Signifying- This slow blues crawl across a dirt floor on a humid day is from the basement with a certificate of authenticity..but the bass is new..maybe Bill was there less than we thought. Mick Taylor's slide is greasy and perfect.

4) Following the River- Riddled with a patchwork of new vox and lyrics..really hard to tell or believe anything from this song was put to tape 40 years ago, and the strings via keys kinda pissed me off.

5) Dancing In The Light- Both Micks are new and not really improved...keys are the only thing that sound early 70s here...this probably started as a meandering jam just thrown around in repetition until Keith happened to be brought back from near death to contribute. Should have stayed that way...

6) So Divine(Aladdin Story) - Now we're talking. A muggy basement drug jam. Most likely untouched..with Keith slightly out of tune, off kilter and panned right. "There is a rose that bears your name, the bloom short lived its such a shame". The HIGHLIGHT of the bonus material. Like Keith stumbled in to a session winding down at 6 am, while he was just getting started.

7) Loving Cup- This early gospel stomp version, is a slight speed step behind the original, but with less inspired vocals and sloppy drums that don't sound like Charlie was anywhere near that kit on this one. Much more of Keith on the background vox. No horns, and they are missed. Ben Ratliff from the NY Times raved heavily about this version in his recent expose of Exile...cmon, Ben nothing tops the original....one of the best Rolling Stones....no, strike that!.. one of the best ROCK songs in history.

8) Soul Survivor- This is yer brain on drugs. Man oh man, this version has Keith taking lead vocals in which must have been narcotically improvised at around 5 am...."Well I just can't fuck it, well I just can't suck it, everytime she walks by"...LOVE the end as it fades out..."Et Cetera, Et cetera, Et cetera." says Keith. " That'll be all, boys, see you in a few days."

9) Good Time Women- Clearly this is an early, jacked up version of Tumbling Dice with different lyrics and a killer slide solo from Mr. Taylor, presumably.

10) Title 5-  "We need an even number of bonus tracks....Hmm, here's an instrumental that could have been recorded half a decade before Exile on Main Street. But it doesn't even sound like the Stones? Does it? It might be Herman's Hermits. That's all right we'll tack it on at the end, its less than 2 minutes long."

OK then, there you have it: : Remastered tracks worth the purchase alone. Much better quality than the'94 release with the integrity preserved.  Bonus Tracks: I'm Not Signifying and  So Divine are really the only keepers for me.  I can't understand, when clearly this re release was for Stones superfans, historians and purists alike, that Mick felt compelled to do surgery on the songs to the point where its glaringly obvious.

Most fans would buy the set sight unseen with the endless hours of wordless jams, unfinished songs, bits and pieces of the blueprint as a collection. That's what fanatics want. We want to do our own surgery. The Beatles got it right with the Anthology collection(excluding Free as a Bird and Real Love). Just give us the warts and all, don't fuck with the blueprint . Et cetera, Et cetera.

Coming Soon

I've been to Dartmouth, to NYC and Rochester and have left this blog to rust a bit. Look for posts on another Bang Camaro Show, review/story of the Pearl Jam show at MSG and a surprising review of the re- release of Exile On Main Street. I might just rant a bit about everything and anything. Its been a while.     Catch up with you later,

Seano

CD Review: Deftones-Diamond Eyes

Sacramento’s Deftones, have had their share of momentous heartache and adversity to face since their last release, 2006’s Saturday Night Wrist. The taut bond via musical creation and endeavor between a band of “brothers” became severely slackened by a serious car accident which put bassist Chi Cheng in a coma in the fall of 2008.

The quintet had just about finished an album in progress at the time, titled Eros, when the accident occurred . The band made the difficult decision to shelve it, out of respect to Chi. These unreleased tracks would lie in wait, to be completed upon his hopeful return to the fold. With their band dynamic corrupted, they stared out into a choppy sea of unknown territory, eventually enlisting former Quicksand bassist Sergio Vega to fill in as bassist and started writing. Passion and purpose kicked in, and what resulted was an intense record of introspect and inner strength called Diamond Eyes.

The title track is the album opener, and we're welcomed by blunted blasts of shockwave guitar that burrow behind Chino Moreno’s blissed-out vocals, carrying the listener overhead as he wails warmly in the chorus, “ Time will see us realign, diamonds will rain across the sky.” During the second track, “Royal”, whose fantasy laden lyrics leave messages to a sky-bound deity or an elusive woman , ethereal harmonies ride parallel in complement to Chino’s bloodcurdling phrases as the guitar/ drum thrust collides into verses like meteors gone awry. Lyrics like “ Come down, teach us the ropes, your concept, it keeps us provoked” ring out in synapse- fast turns that are propelled from a luded croon into a crushing scream.

Moreno has never sounded better. His trademark secretive hush, often interwoven with guitarist Stephen Carpenter’s reverberating crunch throughout their career, was often buried in effects and layered in electronic emotion. Here it shines clear and sermon strong, with a prowess that magnifies the message. The clarity could be decision made by the stellar work of producer Nick Raskulinecz (Foo Fighters, Alice in Chains) and could lure in the hard rock newbie with a clout of accessibility in songs like the massive and beautiful “Beauty School” or the sensual oceanic float of “Sextape”.

“Rocket Skates”, the first single, is a massive neck- swiveling barrage of riff and thump. This is track that will wind up the willing pits and release a hundred hurricanes of release.” Guns, Razors, Knives (Fuck with me!)” might be on a t-shirt next to you very soon. The weapon play/word play within the dangerous lyric serves as a precursor to an almost anthem-like call to move to the music. Move or get out of the way.

The album ends with a triad of mid tempo ,yet sublime songs including “976-Evil” which may or may not be a homage to Chi Cheng, as told by Moreno. “ For a thousand days,you’ve been staring away, are you phased or are you thinking ". There is a strange, alluring chill as the album ends, akin to a future left unwritten, frozen in a different time line.

The Deftones have not consciously made an effort to defy classification throughout their career, yet it continues to happen with every new release. These are guys who had Vulgar Display of Power and Disintegration in their cassette cases while growing up and the diversity of their sonic hues continues to show. This album may be as equally beautiful, as it is brutal, which will surely satisfy many hardcore fanboys and girls who will inevitably compare everything they do to their breakthrough album, White Pony. But Diamond Eyes shows a maturation and a renewed sense of brotherhood, highlighted by the strength of songwriting, that should bring many more open ears much closer to this collection, easily the best of their career.

Here's the video for Rocket Skates:





Article first published as Music Review: Deftones - Diamond Eyes on Blogcritics.

Mosh at Mass

My Good buddy Derek at Visions Of The Unexcused sent me this video today and I thought I would share it with all of you sinners out there. It made my cranky ass crack up.



If only I could have reacted this way during all of my years as a lapsed catholic.. instead, I sat in the pew as a wee lad ,sweating and scratching in an over colored Sunday sweater, zoning out during the sermons and fake mouthing the words to all of those tedious hymns. replacing them with the lyrics to "Dream Police" or "Whole Lotta Rosie"..it sure would have livened up the laypeople if Slayer was the house band..They would probably have to turn all of their crucifixes back to right side up after the service....all the wine would be gone,etc.

Phish and Keef on Jimmy Fallon

Phish rarely disappoint with their covers and for their appearance on Jimmy Fallon last week they aced "Loving Cup" in celebration of the upcoming Exile on Main Street re- release. The Dread Pirate Keef  showed up to introduce them..too bad he couldn't have traded a few licks with Mr. Anastasio. I can imagine Keith cornering Trey before they went on and asking how the chords went. All the yuppie stoners who used to smell like dread grease and vegan wraps who were in the audience wouldn't have cared.

Horns Up For Eternity

Ronnie, We will miss you.

"Come down with fire, lift your spirit higher, someone's calling my name. Come and make me holy again.
I'm the man on a silver mountain" 

Nashville Flood: A story behind the story

This is a  story you may not have not heard about. As mother nature continues to throw down against all takers with no discrimination and no warning..lets do a roll call..Katrina, Indonesian Tsunami, Haiti, Guatemala, Iceland...icecaps melt and floods continue to flow...through places like Nashville..Music City...so how could musicians NOT be affected?...Well, they have been....here's a link to an NPR story that will make you cry..Although equipment and instruments do not have beating hearts...they are as alive and as much a part of those who write the songs as any body part..

They are the connection between the writer and his or her output. The connection between the artist and his or her children...a song, a particular sound from a particular amp, the way the rich melody resonates from a particular baby grand from another era.... They emit sounds that could never be duplicated and/or replaced by any other model any other axe..any other set of keys....These instruments..while so many musicians go on tour...are so precious...that they never get taken on the road, and get stored away in facilities and preserved..presumed safe from theft, or fire or anything really. Mother Nature , with her now permanent PMS, is bringing strange havok to places that have never seen it before  The guitars and pianos that were used to compose songs....some of which the world knows and loves...were flooded out...ruined...water logged...warped and changed forever..........Here is the story: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=126776761

Seano's Live Reviews: Black Tusk/ Struck By Lightning @ The Khyber

April 11....The Scene...is the Khyber(Pass) in Philadelphia...a legendary live dive that I had yet to visit before this evening. Savannah's Black Tusk were voted The "hot" metal band in Rolling Stone's annual HOT issue. I don't know how a metal band can be hot unless they're the house band down Hades way...but I had to dig through the fuss and report on it.  As usual and with pride, I'm all over the place....Here's what I got:

Dive is Home. This Khyber place is def in the deep end of dive ..chewed up floor, paneled walls..low ceiling.
 First band is Struck By Lightning. The stage is 2 1/2 feet up. The ceiling is 8 Ft high. The Sovtek head is 6 inches from the ceiling. There is SO MUCH volume, I hear nothing. A square wave of volume. The feedback is a back up singer. Never been to a show where you couldn't hear the drums. I scratch my head because singer's death shriek bellowed out below a jet black handlebar 'stache sounds like gossamery lilt against an agonizing wall of wattage. Whitenoise/blackdeath...strangely drawn to this black belly heave of static tonnage, but why?
Is it the release I see in the purveyors of angry metal-thrusting upon listeners like a wake up spike to the bone-ish part of the brain? Is it the cool denim vests? I can't seem to find it anywhere else. My reckoning is here and made of the black darkest tubes wire and wood. It is a pressure valve in concert with a thumb down over arterial spray of dark notes scattering dust bunnies in hollow halls of a sleepy soul.
There is a backwards feedback effect between every song..and the lithe blonde guitarist seems enamored with it. Sound akin to Local 17 Jackhammer crew trying to gnaw through girders in a tunnel. The set is over just before my ear canal fills with blood that loosens years of waxy buildup...this will wipe my murky hearing slate clean for my main event...Black Tusk.!!

A mere 6 tall boy gulps later and its.....Black Tusk time...the Savannah south's gonna do it again.Guitarist is all hair flailing and Explorer wailing..wielding an uppercut of infinite decibels...bassist is bald as a confederate eagle meets Billy Gibbons with a neck tat of a gun pressed to his ear. He looks like a school bully gone, bad, then worse. Drummer has scarred sleeves of ink nicked from either grease monkey Mopar surgeries or tool and die missteps...but he crushes the kit like its a snake in the tall grass...Lets roll....My eyes close and see Swamp Things strapped to steel guitars rising from darker than black lagoons, the sky is lit and the ground vibrates as this creature searches aimless for the rest of the burly herd covered in vines and blindness. His call is a monstrous riff strummed every 50 meters....I am lost in this vision as angry elbows encroach...and then.... There is an overwhelming fog of B.O. and chain grease in this crowd of misguided youth..if I pass out in my High Life, I better finish with a good thought...fuck I'm going to faint from ball sweat, pit trench stench that's wilting beard hair and killing grass that ain't even grown yet.. Somebody save me......eyes adrift and then....

The Tusk is off and running again with a rolling storm of riff punches that can shove a thought back into your subconscious..walloping the caustic airthat is.bleeding like a gas leak..giving the bad whiffs a good beat down.....my nose hairs burnt to wicks and then.....guitars to the sky in J. Priest unison..guitars to the crowd like sacred sabres. en garde, motherfuckers!  Hulking power chords bringing shipwrecks to the surface with faultline decimating riff curls. All three members gargling with live bullets into the heat of the mics..spitting out songs like target practice into the crowd... like varmints in a Georgia back yard..we are being hunted down. We are predictably un- led to anywhere, we are leveled by a crushing melange unable to decipher any word, we are smiling through split lips from the burning brim of the pit.. yet still the message is clear from Black Tusk  arrive..annihilate...sell merch..burn road rubber...repeat. Message received, kind sirs.

Black Tusk cleared the air, cleared my mind, cauterized the wounds, bruised some new ones into place and rolled on . An aftermath of Pabst bottles like spent shells, ivory shards, broken bootlaces, trickles of blood, sweat and spit littered the jungle- like floor. An ambience of tinnitus and a halo of tiny black clouds guide me to the parking lot.  I am stunned but will recover.  Until release day. Then, the south's gonna do it to it again.

Black Tusk has a new album called Taste the Sin out on Relapse Records May 25

Do the right thing.

CD Review: Ted Leo and the Pharmacists-The Brutalist Bricks

Indie power pop mogul and mod god Ted Leo has had his hands full trying to get his political regimen to feed into his lyrics for over a decade. It could be considered his calling card: the protest pop punk elements that strengthen the repertoire, or the rallying cries in his choruses that raise the bar for sentiment. What is often overlooked is the fact that he just writes great songs. Leo grinds out album after album of memorable 3 minute blasts of emotion and pop craftsmanship on par with anything Joe Jackson or Elvis Costello had to offer in their heyday. His latest release, The Brutalist Bricks, is no different.


Right out of the gates, “The Mighty Sparrow” sweetly slays with an uptempo melody reminiscent of something off of an XTC box set. “Ativan Eyes” is a pop gem that lays down some happy chords with just the right amount of distortion. A chorus of ”I would listen while you played me through my fears/I would whisper just to have you come near” will resonate throughout your entire morning subway stand. These are lyrics you pay attention to.

Not one to leave his punk roots banished to the way back machine, Leo and the Pharmacists also lay out brute, brash shuffles through songs like “The Stick”, two and a half minutes of exhaustive angst, and “Where Was My Brain”, a whiplash-inducing uppercut of tight Germs riffs.
The album’s midpoint is highlight heavy with the brilliant travelogue “Bottled In Cork,” whose lyrics read like a GPS with a tour story in every stanza. The instantly anthemic “Woke Up Near Chelsea” follows with its brilliant hopeless to hopeful verse ”We are born of despair and we long for what’s fair”. This resonates to the rote as the feedback swells before the crushing chorus.

With The Brutalist Bricks, Ted Leo is certainly not trying to cover new ground. The clues are all here. His roots are showing, his subtle politic is in check and the lyrics provoke intense thought (if you can decipher them through the howl of his gritty tenor). But the songs have real staying power, no matter which genre in his wheelhouse rises to the occasion. The intensity, array of emotion and hard work percolate throughout to make this album easily his best since 2003’s Hearts of Oak.

Circle Of Fits needs layout help

I'm using one of the new templates that Blogger has provided after almost jumping ship to another blogging platform. I'm still toying around with the appearance, and need some help from you smarter people out there.

If you could help with these three things, I'd be grateful. I'd be so grateful that I'll send you a signed Columbia House cassette copy of Van Halen I......er, signed by ME!

But seriously... 1) I need to center my logo/banner. I have no idea why it is positioned to the left.
                       2) I need to spread out the left and right columns...My you tube vids don't fit, even when embedding them to the center column/body, they bleed over to the right column and are cut off by the ads and links.
                       3) I am looking for a very small mp3 player(similar looking to quicktime) to use when I want to feature certain songs...NOT video. Think sleek, long and compact.

I really do appreciate your help and any advice on the layout will be taken into consideration, pondered and filed away for eternity. Right now I just need to fix these three things.

email me at circleoffits@gmail.com

thanks  seano

More Exile Hype

Here is the trailer for the upcoming documentary "Stones In Exile". It will be released in tandem with the Exile on Main Street re-issue due on May 18th.....



I've changed my plans for that super Tuesday coming up and will head to an independent record store to purchase this since I missed record store day with a bad case of the fuckedupandforgots. To commemorate the occasion I will wear a silk scarf that I'll steal from my wife, and a skull ring that I shall forge from the finest aluminum foil . I will stroll in to my local fav record store(gotta find one first) feigning drunkenness and humming "Loving Cup" and ask for my deluxe Exile set with overpowering Black Death Whiskey breath. When the bruises heal and I make bail, I'll finally be able to listen to it and review it for you.

The Black Keys release the Best Vid I've Seen Since the Triassic Age

The Black Keys- Next Girl, from their upcoming album "Brothers"

 

I can't keep my eyes off Frank..what a sexy Rexy.  
Erectosaurus wrecked!

Neil Tries Something New

The crack staff at Billboard.com has uncovered some great news. After almost two decades worth of albums that basically sound the same, Neil Young has decided to go into the studio to make a new album with one of the best producers of all time, Mr. Daniel Lanois. Here is the story...with comments from my crack staff immediately following.

Neil Young is indeed recording a new studio album in Los Angeles with U2/Dylan producer Daniel Lanois, Billboard.com can confirm. The sessions first came to light late last week in a Rolling Stone interview with longtime Young friend and bandmate David Crosby.

There's no other information about the project at present, which will be Young's first studio release since 2009's "Fork in the Road."

This is the first time Young and Lanois have worked together, and one of the first times Young has enlisted a big-name producer for one of his albums (he previously worked with Brendan O'Brien on the 1995 Pearl Jam collaboration "Mirror Ball"). Young's close music and film collaborator, Larry "L.A." Johnson, died in January, perhaps prompting Young to try teaming with someone new.
Young is about to begin a solo North American tour, with support from Bert Jansch. The trek gets underway May 18 in Albany, N.Y., and wraps June 7 in Dallas.

This is just what Neil needs at this point in his career. And I think Daniel Lanois can kick cranky Neil's creative but frozen ass into shape. I am a huge Neil Young fan, but I haven't been able to get through any of his albums since Harvest Moon in 1992. They all sound like geezer jams put to tape after one take out in Neil's barn..with his trademark Old Black guitar sound in the forefront. This sound is so popular that even Wilco's Jeff Tweedy tries to mimic it.

I feel that Neil is so prolific,that any change in sound, song structure or style might open the floodgates for him like it did for Johnny Cash/Rick Rubin. It's time to take a risk. He has before with albums like Trans and Everybody's Rockin'(which caused David Geffen to get his panties in a bunch and drop him from the label)...so I welcome this collaboration with Lanois whose sparse lushness could do wonders for Neil. Has anyone ever heard Neil's first album?  The Old Laughing Lady? I've Loved Her So Long? Masterpieces.....really weird masterpieces.

  I may get some shit flung at me for this, but Crazy Horse bores that very shit right outta me after three songs. (I hope they are sitting this one out)...except for Cortez the Killer...damn, I could listen to that on a loop, but I digress.  Here's to the new album.

Circle of Fists

I will not be censored tonight. I will not be censored here ever. This is Fortress of Fucking Solitude from here on out. This place is mine.

I will not waste time thinking about the caustic words that tumble out beneath my fingers at 10 words a minute and where to aim my flaming arrows and at whom.anymore. it interrupts my rhythm and in the end solves nothing. I'm just gonna shoot at the enemies en masse and hope they get taken out with words. I hope they bitchslap me right back..talk me some sense. We could all use some.  We are all targets. We are all critics.

Some of us strive to get better at scattering olive branches across the sky until the birds chirp melodically in tune and the people we were angry with take the branch and plant a forest for the trees. Fuck That. That's like putting a chastity belt around my mouth where all of the fuck yous come from. That's censorshit. You don't take a shit , you leave one. I'm taking the branches and building bonfires aligned like runways that make it easier for the angry winged mobs descending from the storms of heaven to land...talons scratching the pavement like landing gear...they've come to pluck the over sensitive and falsely entitled heathens from my airspace and hurl them into the purgatory of a negativeland void of response or discussion.

Be sure to leave a comment or run toward your dirty foxholes with your tails stapled to your stomachs.
How much of this is heresy or hearsay. Will the Circle of Fits be unbroken?


Just try me.