Great Bands With an Average Singer

I've been obsessed with America's obsession with mediocrity lately. There are so many people who settle for settling..from the off- white(read:safe) Home Depot paint they choose for a powder room, to touting a new pair of Crocs to fine dining at Olive Garden to downloading Daughtry.

It hurts to see this everywhere..it has given me a furrowed brow and a chip on my shoulder. However,the chip comes from years of research(read:magazines and wandering) I know I am not an almighty arbiter of taste or expert on excellence. I did not come from money and I didn't finish college(not to say that those who have are any better at knowing the difference between shit and diamonds). I am not a card carrying member of anything, I just think I know what sucks and what doesn't. There are plenty of subjects I wouldn't dare comment on because I simply do not know enough,it may not be on my radar or I think it may be irrelevant to the joie de vivre. Most choices that we make in life are a combination of our different upbringings, our value systems,and what we learned on The View.

Mine come from common sense. I love that I have a tight grip on common sense. I know that after a 10 beer/3 Jagr night...always find a way to make your last beverage a tall glass/gallon of water. I know that texting is for kids, I know that you should never have to pull your pants up repeatedly as you walk, etc.

These last few posts have reeked of negativity and I'm sorry. Tonight its something positive and not coming within several Dancing Stars of mediocrity. A List of

Great Bands With an Average Singer
1)Lynyrd Skynyrd-Ronnie, Johnny, Donnie...whatever. They all sound the same to me.
2)The Black Crowes-Great Fronting Chris, but your phrasing and delivery is hard to take.
3)Weezer-Rivers is just....There.
4)The Jimi Hendrix Experience-Who Cares,right? But his lyrics would have been so much better sung by someone else. Even Noel Redding had a better voice.
5)Pink Floyd-After Syd singing, Roger was a step up, but everything except Animals was hard to take if you weren't dosing in your basement with the lights off.
6)Grand Funk Railroad- Most people don't even know who the singer was...and thats the problem.
7)The Knack- a power pop masterpiece that sounds like its sung by a substitute teacher.
8)Peter Frampton- I know why he used that talk box so much on Frampton Comes Alive now.
9)The Kinks- Hard English accents overpowering a legacy of brilliant songs.
10)The Beach Boys(when Brian Sang)- made me want to crawl under my sandbox.
11) Smashing Pumpkins- Billy could do it all except when he sung through his nose, which was from 1990 to now.
12) Any band Eric Clapton was in after Blind Faith.

Could you add to this list?

2009 MTV Video Music Awards Predictions

I am so excited.
Its The VMAs.
And if you believe that, come on over and I'll show you my extremely rare collection of illegally extracted gold plated teeth..taken from sleeping hip hop artists. I'm a big fan of alls kinds 'a grills.

Text me when its over.

Here are my predictions...

Lots of vampires representin' everything...while around them in tight suits, sitting clueless in their seats (wondering how to sue the next 12 year old girl who downloaded 20 Taylor Swift mp3s) are the real bloodsuckers.

Beyonce will be nominated and win for most appearances on consecutive award shows. She will pick up her moon man and quickly rush off to a waiting lear jet a la Phil Collins to take her to the Slovenian Soul Train awards held live in Ljubljana.

Lady Gaga picks up her award for best Butterface/Poker face in a Video. She wears a mask and walks in backwards, showing her good side.

Kanye West will get his Jaw wired shut again by an angry mob after complaining about not winning a video music award from a network that doesn't play video music.
(update-Kanye sabotaged Taylor Swift's acceptance speech proclaiming that Beyonce made the "best video of all time".... fo' real.)

The allure of Green Day will continue to baffle me, but they will show up and win something(and Drummer Tre Cool will make a kooky "why am I here meets Ridalin face)

The commercials will all be Tweens chillin' at Sears wearing sideways caps and skateboarding through hallways at schools/malls "rocking" to the not too loud soundtrack provided by the Walt Disney company.

Michael Jackson will be honored by every person in the room who stole his moves, kissed his ass and dropped him like a Hot Pocket during his alleged "diddling phase".

Katy Perry will lip sync into a plastic banana, fuck up the words,grab her crotch and I will melt..drifting off and wishing I was a banana.

At around 11pm, after being inundated with hip hop flavoring in every commercial/segment/back up band/wardrobe change/nominee and acceptance speech...I will suddenly be washed over with a change of heart, drop my pretty playa hatin' machine and embrace the fun, the quality and the overall educationally influential message of hip hop...be brought to tears by the eloquence and importance of any one with a Single consenant or a 'Lil in front of their name and see God in every rhyme...feel the future in every slick beat........then be woken up by a cat licking his balls next to me.

Oh the kingdom, and the power and the glory of music....

Nothing Rhymes With Angst

Would You Rather:

Listen to only Gene Simmons or only Glen Beck for the rest of your life?

Speak in auto tune or have tourettes for the rest of your life?

Have to Read only Danielle Steel or only Star magazine " "?

Get free tickets to only Steve Miller band concerts for life or work for Live Nation "" ""?

Spend a day with a swine flu stricken Gwen Stefani or Madonna with horrible B.O and a chin boil?

Be the best ukelele player in the world or have a voice like Freddy Mercury but no teeth and a scarily protruding Adam's apple?

See the Gosselins or the Duggars or Octomom shipped off to a country where you are punished for having more than 4 children or be happy for them?

Live without ever seeing Bret Michael's do rags or Lil Waynes teeth?

Spend an entire drunken night with Angelina while wearing only a sopping wet and full pair of Depends or Brad Pitt while wearing only an over padded bra and Granny panties?

Get a lifetime supply of turtle wax or a lifetime membership to the Blink- 182 fan club?

Go backstage with the Stones in 1972 or on stage with the Stones in 2009?

Tell Jay Z his wife is butt ugly or spray paint "you suck donkey balls" on Kid Rock's American flag?

Push a button and be able to disintegrate Tila Tequila,Posh Spice, the cast of Gossip Girl, Nicole Richie,Simon Cowell,Gwyneth Paltrow and hubby,any future cast member of Dancing With the Stars, Elizabeth Hasselbeck, the creative director of VH1,Jennifer Aniston, Mario Lopez,Tom Brady,Ryan Seacrest, Tyra Banks,Ellen Degenerate, Chris Brown, anyone with "Lil" in their name, anyone walking around a mall sweating and wearing a trenchcoat, any postal worker who "will take their time, like it or not", any two people who take up more than six feet of sidewalk space, any grown woman who brings a child to a 10pm R rated movie, anyone who throws a wrapper out a car window, any Three Doors Down/Seven Mary Three/Third Eye Blind/Three Days Grace/Four Non Blondes/Five For Fighting/311/Matchbox 20 fan, anyone still wearing a tie dye anything for any reason, anyone with a dreamcatcher hanging from their rear view mirror, anyone with a "visualize whirled peas" bumper sticker",anyone besides a catcher on an MLB team wearing a baseball hat backwards or to the side, anyone with bangs, anyone using a pit bull or an obscenely loud car stereo as a substitute for a tiny dick, anyone using a guitar with a color other than black, white, gray, silver, clear, wood grain,bright orange or sunburst, any one who has a neck tattoo or love/hate letters tattooed on their knuckles, any human who texts more than they talk yet never think before they speak........or be blind, deaf and dumb/ not born yet?

Read Circle of Fits or the Drudge Report every day?

Tell Seano to stop his bitching, don't sweat the small stuff(everything I just wrote) and stop and smell the roses/glove/gasoline or let whomever deserves it, have it?

Toodles, seano

The Best Mixtapes I Ever Made

I am torn...I have very carefully stored most of my old cassette mixtapes and when I am shuffling through a pyramid like shelving unit in our kitchen and see all of them and pull them out to glance at the tracks, I am transported, like most of you out there who have mixtapes of your own, to the times and places of the past and the sweat and emotion that went into planning each one, the sequence of songs and such.

There are entire websites devoted to the mixtape era(cassettefrommyex.com)out there. Its like a lost art form that has been buried under the guise of ease and the crushing influence of technology.....I am hesitant to convert my mixtapes into mere "Playlists" that can be whipped up like an afterthought between the download and the lawsuit, stored on the device of your choice and filed away among 11000 songs and videos.

I don't think cassettes will ever catch on again on the nostalgic backside. The vinyl afterlife has been prolonged by DJs, baby booming anti digital disgruntled luddites, and those crazy kids who like cool old things like turntables, roller derby and kickball. besides...cassettes didn't sound great like a warm blanket of vinyl did...they were portable from walkman to Alpine in the 80s-early 90s. They got the job done. They fit in your jean jacket.

So as I ponder trying to find all of the tracks from my fav mixtapes in a digital format ...I thought we could share some of our best work with each other.... I named all of mine and titles are included. If you don't know the artists and really wanna know...contact me.

From 1992 Feathers on Your Feet Maxell XLII 100

A
I've Got A Feeling
Crazy Love
You Don't Have To Cry
Look Out For My Love
The Love Song
Murder Tonight In the Trailer Park
Here Comes Sunshine
I Don't Want to Know
Hissing Of Summer Lawns
Lost Paraguayos
Thorn Tree In The Garden
Aint Wastin Time No More
For No One

B
Sing A Simple Song
I Would For You
Boogie On Reggae Woman
Isolation
Fields Of Joy
Although The Sun Is Shining
Haitian Divorce
Tell me That it Isn't True
Ten Years Gone
Come Down In Time
Running to Stand Still

The feeling is immediate: Martha's Vineyard on a deck, swordfish steaks, cusp of summer


From 1993 Semi Goosebump Blues TDK SA90
A
Let It Loose
Lazy
Three Days
Dead cats Dead Rats/Break On Thru
Sister Luck
New Mama
Albuquerque
Gasoline Alley

B
Call The Doctor
Loud Love
Leave My Blues At Home
Lord of the Thighs
Sea of Joy
I Need Some Money
Hear My Train a Comin'
Baboom/Mama Said
Torn and Frayed
Love at First Feel

The vision is clear: late night basement beer after delivering pizzas, Mazda truck seats smelling like long gone pepperoni.

From 1994 Illuminated Down TDK SA90
A
The Old Laughing Lady
Caroline,No
Court and Spark
Dreaming My Dreams With You
Black Peter
No Quarter
Magnolia
Seasons
Late Night
Moonlight Mile

B
Tin Pan Alley
Under Stars
Cars Hiss By My Window
Am I Inside
Stay
Lisa Says
Kingdoms of Rain
4+20
Down Where the Drunkards Roll
Hideaway
My Dream

Flashing before my eyes: hitting bottom on a nightly basis, shrouded in down, back in my hometown and proudly wallowing.

Man...its powerful, the pull. I remember how the songs flowed and how I felt when I knew what was creeping up next. And the fact that tapes had two sides(like albums)you could almost assign a mood/attitude for each side . You could plan it out ahead of time with your perfectly executed sequence.

Itunes just cannot do that for you. But I want to preserve the spirit, the snapshot..before the tapes wither away or a natural disaster claims my shelving unit.

Share with me your creations...............thoughts.....advice.

The Fuse is Lit

Like the title of the post says: This one ain't for the timid. This one ain't even for the people who know me and expect this kind of venom from miserable old me..I'm gonna sound like a cantankerous old coot who missed a day of his meds and left the trap door from his head to hell open....screws loose everywhere...wanting to hock loogies made of lava and strychnine at the world sort of mood....this high horse needs to be put down.

I have been away for a week again, up in NYC w/o a functioning fucking laptop and flat out refusing to sit at an internet cafe after some grimy tourist had been there trolling for bad broadway tickets and smelling like smoke.... just to post and complain about all of the little things in life that perturb me. So I'll do it on my labor day weekend vacation instead.

Ticketmaster/Live Nation: I am unloading the biggest angriest fuck you to this company today after failing to get Them Crooked Vulures tickets for the Philadelphia show on Oct. 12. Tickets went onsale at 10am today and I was there searching at 10:00000000000000000000000000000001 am TO NO AVAIL. NO CHANCE. OUT OF LUCK, BUCKO. Shot to the heart and you're to blame.

I'm sorry but there is NO WAY I should not have gotten through. THEM CROOKED VULTURES are not the Stones/U2/Springsteen/Phish or even Miley Jonas Cyrus and the High School Musicalists, OK!!! Them Crooked Vultures could not have sold out in less than one minute. Don't bullshit a bullshitter, Mr. Irving Azoff(look it up) and your foaming-at-the-mouth monopoly mongering flunkies!!!!!Fuck off! You allow scalpers with criminal line cracking software to digitally bully themselves in and jack all of the tickets and sell them on Stub Hub or Tickets Now at a maddening premium that only the sons and daughters of Hedge Fund managers can buy with Dad's credit card...pile all of their abysmally clueless turd gurgling friends into the Land Rover and down to the concert because its a scene...because somebody TWITTERED them to....because everyone in a one million mile radius is a blind and deaf lemming with the attention span of a fly post-windshield obliteration...with the attention span of 140 characters and a squat copped and a bedet cleanse. Fuck people. Stay away from most people, it's easier and there's less angry writing involved.

THE TRUE FANS LOSE with LIVE NATION/TICKETMASTER. THE FANS Will never win with a merger so preposterous as this. The fans should start staying home... Then artists will lose money from lack of regular tour revenue...unable to put a sixth car in the garage or feed a cadre of illegitimate kids and baby mamas...and will draw blood en masse at the Live Nation Headquarters. Irving Azoff will be de boweled in midtown Manhattan and stuffed with crumpled up "extra processing fee" printouts from a million rabid "customers" with blood in their eyes. His body will become a pyre of pyres for the true fans(survivors) to gather at once a year decades from now to mark the emancipation from Live Nation holiday that will become a US pastime three years from now coinciding with the much warned about end of days taken from the ancient Mayan Calendar. Those left on earth after the Apocalypse or War of Greed as it will be known will always point to the Live Nation/Ticketmaster merger as the catalyst or spark for the War Of Greed, just like Franz Ferdinand or Hitler or Dick Cheney were for the wars they are sparks of....

Yes, I do believe that if this happens to enough TRUE FANS of any band...who can't even get a fucking ticket to see that band in their own goddamn city unless they sell a kidney,win the gene lottery, pay a cretinous scalper or suck someone off on a casting couch or in a green room somewhere...that the built up anger between the haves(of Ticketmaster) and the have nots(the hardworking lay person) over this proposed merger could very well be the spark that starts WWIII !

I for one am ready for blood now. Where are my fucking SPARTANS????
First we start with an army of ninja like true fans armed with tasers to the tenth degree to surround the scalpers all stealth like at the shows. You've seen 'em. Just look for someone on a corner near a venue with dreadlocks and dirty jeans walking really fast at times....ambush his punk ass with some fine voltage to his tailbone or the back of his grimy neck and as the tickets fly out of his hands to be scooped up by a chosen re-distributor of our clan, you reach down with your hand hovering over his face cradling some fine red Krylon and spray "FACE VALUE, MOTHERFUCKER" all over his Patriots jersey. We redistribute the tickets through fan forums and blogs like this one, and notify those interested in our day of show ambush of a parking lot where they can get their face value tickets from the back of a mid nineties minivan.

We can do this. I know we can. Peaceful protest and parades are for pussies. No retreat! Get a seat!

Repeat after me: NO RETREAT,ENJOY YOUR SEAT.
NO RETREAT,ENJOY YOUR SEAT!!!!

This is our new rallying cry! We've got three years before 2012...I don't know about you, but I'm gonna get my kicks before the whole shithouse goes up in flames!!!!