Knights in White Lycra

Not many bands can say, "Hey, we have a 'Kokomo', too!" Thank the Lord.

The Moody Blues, however, got their midlife-crisis one-off out there like a pro with "In Your Wildest Dreams", a mauldin look back with some young guys posing as them in the video (John Stamos was too busy learning transindental meditation to appear). Released in 1986, you know the Mellotrons were replaced with a Korg or two at this point. Fair enough.

But it's 1987, and you're playing live for the BBC, for some reason, and you open with "Tuesday Afternoon", and it sounds like the title must refer to a tone in your Casio's sound bank under the "Synth Lead" subheading; fretless bass? Sequenced keytar parts? Drums so synthed out that Johnny 5 has a hard pecker? Yuck. At least Stamos played a real set of bongos.

The Moody Blues were a pretty revered band in Britain; do those blokes over there see "In Your Wildest Dreams" the same way we proud Americans see the uber-stoopid "Kokomo"? Someone from across the pond should respond to this. I'll read it right after I cut off my pinkie for FREAKING DEFENDING JOHN STAMOS.

Random Thoughts Inspired by Prime Cutz

1) I found a website that describes the band Would-Be King as "a good prog-rock band" that "didn't hit it off well with the local arbiters of taste". This statement is similar to saying that Adolf Hitler was "a good basketball player" that "didn't hit it off well with the local arbiters of Judaism".

2) I know, you think that smell is coming from a fourteen-year-old 4H goat herder, bedecked in fat-assed jeans and Garth Brooks "Sevens" tee shirt, getting to third base with a drunk Idahoan carney. You're right. The Washington County Fair arrives later this month. Too bad that current cultural trends turns"white-trash mulleted bumpkin" sightings into "meth addict" sightings instead. Some things get lost in translation; we'll always have the Ferris Wheel, though.

3) Both my sister and my mother asked me, to make certain, that I didn't try to kill myself yesterday. I assured them that I did not. This is the truth. And it had nothing to do with the thought of Prime Cutz' hot, furious piss soaking six feet down to my coffin. But, seriously? When my sister asked, "you didn't do it on purpose, did you," I did think to myself, "Good Lord, if I die from taking the wrong insulin and people thought I killed myself? Some of those people would pee on me. I know for sure of one."

4) I have three other words to say. The first word is "little". The second is "math". For the sake of the living, and the lives we now live, I will not say the third.

Tired Old Genius Mails It In

Imagine for a second that you are a member of a four-man experimental rock band. Tonight the inspiration comes from a ancient source: Japan. In a tiny room each instrumentalist picks a corner to set up their amps or drums. Coats are hung from the rafters to baffle what will be hearing loss level of sound. For good measure someone tacky-tapes up pictures of an afro'ed policeman at a karate exibition. Then it begins.

Remember that.

I'll forgive Mike Patton for not even trying to maintain his revelence as long as the product is still compelling (hey, I kind of like Weird Little Boy, so game on). It seemed like Tomahawk was just Faith No More Redux, and that was teriffic; Album of the Year was, for me, headed in a good direction, and the first Tomahawk album seemed to be a more rocking extention of that idea. Mit Gas may be a little less straight forward but is even more compelling.

And Anonymous had me going through the first three tracks. An album made up of songs inspired by Native American songs and material sounds like a great pallett for rock music; Duane Denison was inspired by a stay at an Indian Reservation while on tour, so the idea is coming from a sincere place. Fire that baby up!

Then. . .

A funny thing happened as I got to "Red Fox". The timbre of the instruments went south, from "adding to the feel of the concept" to "hey, these were left over from the Lovage sessions!" English lyrics added to the music and got clunky (it worked for The Director's Cut, I know, but it was only used sparingly there. Imagine putting a french fry into a kiddie pool full of ketchup. Too much) "Antelope Ceremony" sounds like a track lost from The Man From Utopia.

By this time I had made my way through the cd case and learned that 1) Kevin Rudiments had left the band, and 2) Duane Denison and John Stainer [guitar and drums, respectively] recorded their parts in Nashville [geetar and skins, thankee] and mailed them to Mike Patton in San Francisco [-- a gay joke--, respectively] to dub over the vocals.

Say what you want about how everyone does it now, but the chemistry of proximity alone helps, and it probably could have helped this album. After a while the idea of the sound, the timbre, of the album falls apart into each person's individual goal. Mike Patton might be a genius, but a band is a band, not a bunch of people. If the whole album kept up with the first three tracks, I'd be loving it. Instead I'll think of playing nearly racist Asian pentachords on a keyboard, getting more and more disjointed as the little band in the little room disjoins the idea together. Like bands do.

Bung Tea

I know you've seen the video from the "band" Ming Tea for the song called "BBC" . If you need a refresher, it's the band from the Austin Powers movie. Austin Powers is their singer.

Did you feel uncomfortable when you saw that? Did you want to say, "Hey, Mike Meyers, I think you're being a bit too serious here. You're not a singer in a rock band. You're acting like this might be a big hit for you. It will not. Don't make me frown at you." Did it make you feel a little weird, huh?

Well, multiply that feeling by ten fucking million and that's how I feel when I hear "Pride & Joy" by Coverdale/Page. Does David Coverdale have any idea how rediculious he sounds trying to sound like Robert Plant? He got enough greif from it in Whitesnake; having Jimmy Page next to you and wearing a puffy shirt/vest combo does not help. You made me pull off the road and really listen, really CONCENTRATE on how pathetic it was when it came on the radio.

Please, David Coverdale, cease and desist. You don't see Plant wearing gossamer gowns and flaunting his man boobs on the hood of a Camaro like Tawny Katain. Unless you were in Istanbul in May of 2002, and I don't think you were.

On Tha Down Low!

A quick post to try out this new format. . .

Surely if Cee-Lo Green had ever heard Divine's "Psychedellic Shack", that mother would've been on the Gnarles Barkley album in an instant.

Really, "Gone Daddy, Gone"? Really?