Thanks to maru1221, I (and everyone else) can now see my wife Teresa at the Bon Jovi concert at the TD BankNorth Garden arena, July 10. She keeps a camera in front of her face during her screentime, but if you look closely, starting around 1:46, you can see her trying to focus past Richie Sambora (12 feet away from her) to get a better picture of Jon (way the hell across the stage). She does have her preferences, my Teresa. Also, that piercing fangirl scream? That’s her.
Teresa has decided to become a full-time groupie.
Not just the type who gushes about her band online, pins posters around her room and writes “Mrs. Bon Jovi” on her notebooks, although she does that too (not the Mrs. part, she said she has no interest in leaving our marriage or breaking his; I believe she has in mind more of a sophisticated arrangement, like a time-share). No, she plans to be the one who follows her band, concert to concert, city to city, country to country, becoming friends and confidant to the road crew. The fact that we’re broke has no bearing on this. You can’t deny your calling. She has already begun looking into which countries allow you to sell your children.
Yesterday, on an extended and carefully planned last minute whim, she flew to Boston to see Bon Jovi in concert. She’s even now in the air on her way back, possibly without waiting for the plane. With her are the well-wishes, advice, and (in some cases) open envy of the other ladies on the Bon Jovi forum she frequents. They have kept up on her doings from other forum members at the concert who are calling in song-by-song updates, and from me, as I’ve been hearing from Teresa and posting on her behalf with her account. (I am, apparently, “Mr. Teresa.”)
Britney, Britney, Britney.
By now you’ve heard all the blowback from your… spectacular… comeback performance at the MTV Video Music Awards, and I’m guessing you haven’t been pleased. When the preponderance of critical articles, even the positive ones, include the word “trainwreck” in the first paragraph, things are not looking good.
And there are many elements of blame that led inexorably to you stumping around the stage in a leather bikini lip-syncing very nearly all of the words to your new hit song, “Gimme More.” The New York Times has reported you were rushed into doing the show by your management. There were problems with your hair. You may have had relationship issues with Criss Angel weighing on your mind. One fan has gone all Zapruder and produced a slo-mo video to prove that your heel was broken throughout the show (although the possibility of a second broken heel working with the CIA has yet to be documented).
On Aug. 17, 1982, our relationship with our music changed forever. The compact disc was born.
It’s hard to explain, for those of you who weren’t around then, how big a change this was. You just popped a CD into your player, and it played. That was it. No longer did we have to go through the rituals of cleaning and wiping our vinyl albums to reduce (but rarely eliminate) the hisses and pops. No longer did we have to wince as our 8-tracks clunked to the next track. No longer did we have to fast-forward our cassettes when they started making that straining, whining sound. Music appreciation was not for the faint-hearted.
CDs changed the way we stored our music, too. Records had to be kept in the sleeves, upright, away from damp areas, or we’d find we had a wonderful collection of big taco shells. 8-tracks never stacked well and quickly filled up your car’s passenger side floor, and eventually they’d wear out and play the same four songs over and over and over, driving your mom insane when you left one running all night. We all became amateur splicers and learned how to get spilled Coke of our cassettes, and I remember the panic when the sound would suddenly stop and I’d have to scramble to pop it out before the tape erupted like the stereo was throwing up.
For the most part CDs just… worked.
You’ve got a month.
That’s how long you have to complete an album of 10 original songs or 35 minutes of original music, according to the RPM Challenge. Whip your band into shape and crank up the tunes. Better hurry, it’s a short month and most decent stage explosives have a 10-day waiting period.
If you’re not ready to record quite that quickly, hop over to February Album Writing Month and write the songs this year for next year’s album challenge. And then in June you can write a screenplay about your whacky experiences for ScriptFrenzy, or wait till November to write a novel about it for NaNoWriMo.
The whole point of these insanely deadlined events is to get your creative juices boiling and spilling out over the sides. Stop thinking about doing something and do it! Don’t worry about how good it is. No one else will be. Just do it, to prove to yourself you can do it after all.
“American Idol” is back and it’s bigger and better than ever! Simon is meaner, Paula is more… whatever Paula is, and that other guy is good, too! Come watch the drama as… yawn… as contestants fight to reach their, you know, dream, and… Nope, sorry, I can’t do it.
I have never seen an entire episode of “American Idol.” Never seen more than 5 minutes of an episode, for that matter (although I have met William Hung). Just isn’t my thing. I have friends who are intensely interested and follow every nuance with baited breath so they can update complicated charts on how each Idolator is doing at any given moment, but I could never get into it. Partly because for me, this kind of competition peaked with “The Gong Show,” which had just as much talent and a faster elimination process.
No, what I want to see is “American Agent.”
Those of you who tune in regularly probably already know this, but WHTQ 96.5 FM recently dropped the long running syndicated morning show “The Big Show” to bring in some local DJing, namely the Birmingham, Alabama imports Richard Dixon and J. Willoughby. Dixon and Willoughby will be starting on January 2, bright and early. But for the time being, mornings on 96.5 have been just music.
Well, along with traffic reports — so vital in Orlando and on I-4 in the a.m. — and the obnoxious car dealer and appliance ads that make you want to renounce all electronic media forever and just hum to yourself, sure, but otherwise it’s been nuthin’ but tunes. No commentary. No call-ins. No cute skits or parody songs. No contests or trivia. No banter. No personalities. No one talking over the opening and closing of the songs they do manage to fit in.
I like it.
It wouldn’t attract the listeners or the advertising dollars that a morning show does, and I’ll admit that even though I tend to prefer Scott and Erica at MIX 105.1 part of me misses The Big Show already (ever have those days when you thought you were Billy and the rest of the world was John Boy?). But I’ve been arriving at work very relaxed these last few days, driving in circles around the parking lot to finish singing along with that last song before I have to bring my mobile concert to a close. Just music. Intact, not talked over, relatively uninterrupted music, one song after another.
Sigh. It’ll never catch on.
He was a driving force for peace and all that is Good. He was magical, angelic, demonic, a conscience in the wilderness, a tireless utopianist, and, to listen to some of his more enthusiastic fans, a young god among men.
Actually he was a good guitar player, a decent pianist, a wizard songwriter, a committed family man (eventually), an insightful philosopher, and that rarist of things, a social activist with a sense of humor. I think he’d have been shocked to learn how many people still consider him a role model, but the world become a bit less fun when John Lennon was shot to death 26 years ago today.
His widow, Yoko Ono, has asked that fans commemorate the anniversary of his death this year with a Day of Forgiveness, but I’ll spend it as I always have: with hours and hours of music. Are you doing anything to honor Lennon today?
The first election irregularities have appeared! Kanye West, furious at being named only the Best Hip Hop Artist at the MTV Europe Music Awards, stormed the stage and launched a rant after not winning Best Video even though his video “Touch the Sky” “cost a million dollars, Pamela Anderson was in it. I was jumping across canyons.” Best Video instead went to Justice and Simian for “We Are Your Friends.” No word yet on whether Diebold machines were involved.
 Drivl.com |
The Seven Stages of Owning an iPod. I’ve never actually owned one myself, but it turns out owning a puppy works exactly the same way.
And if you ever appear as a guest on The Colbert Report, Slate.com has a how-to guide to help you avoid looking stupid. Or more stupid than you need to, anyway.
According to an article in this week’s Rolling Stone, “First Hype, Then Kill: How the geeks who control the music blogosphere destroy the bands they love,” my constant bloglove for Weird Al Yankovic will surely result in a record deal for him, which is, apparently, creative death. I’m not sure how that works, but I’m eager to get on with it, so…
His latest CD, “Straight Outta Lynwood,” entered the Billboard charts at #10, making that his highest charting yet. Good reviews, although everyone seems to have their own favorite and most-hated songs. And starting sometime today you can submit your own fan-created “White and nerdy” video for Yahoo Music’s “Get Your Freak On”:
“Beginning October 11th, users will have the opportunity to submit video clips of themselves showing off the special characteristics that have gotten them shoved in lockers or dunked in toilets…from D&D and Star Trek to pocket protectors and calculator watches. The best performances will be selected and featured in the special fans-only video for the new track, premiering on Yahoo! Music October 30.”
Right now the page features Beyonce, so unless this Weird Al video is weirder than usual, I’m guessing it’s not up yet. But, to help you kill time till then, check out his interviews at Yahoo Music and IGN, his iTunes picks at The Onion, and, pretty much for the heck of it here’s an interview I did with the Weird One a few years back for his “Poodle Hat” tour.
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