Back When There Was Some Good Music

I’m away (far away) and had to set this post to publish ahead of time.

Badass, huh?  Do you remember seeing this video and thinking how cool U2 was?  I was watching a special on VH1 Classic about classic albums and they covered The Joshua Tree.  It was a pretty cool show because they intereviewed the engineers and producers, not just the band, and showed how they built the sound for the album.  Remember albums?

Check it out and Tivo if you catch it.

T Minus Eleven Days

Until Rock Band for Wii is released. I’m so looking forward to the hours I’m sure to lose learning to play the drums. I’ve been getting amped up for this release by watching guys who are good at it play on YouTube–the ultimate in dorkdom.

I’ve always heard that Neil Peart of Rush is an amazing drummer, but I never fully understood why until I was able to watch what it takes to play Tom Sawyer on Rock Band. This guy is good–and it’s cool the way he has the cameras set up so you can see the foot pedal, drum pads, and the screen at the same time.

Everything I Need To Know I Learned From Hip Hop

The sad thing is, this isn’t really hip hop, and that’s at least one side of the point of this clip. As the “rapper” states at the beginning of the song, there’s no way to go platinum doing songs with hooks and concepts.

I was listening to the Old School Rap channel on cable the other night. I can’t believe how bland and boring rap has become in comparison to the old stuff. I thought new country was bad until I compared old and new rap.

Anyway, enjoy the video and its social commentary. There’s actually a point if you understand that this is satire.

Not safe for work, at least at most jobs.

[youtube rN2VqFPNS8w]

H/T Instapundit.

Life Changing Event Today

I played Rock Band.

Yeah, I’m old…didn’t even know this game existed, or didn’t pay attention when I saw something about it. Either way, this game rocks. I’ve never understood Guitar Hero. Even my buddy who introduced me to Rock Band says Guitar Hero is boring. I can play a little bit, so it never made sense to get a game to fake play guitar.

But a chance to fake play the drums? Now that’s a different story. I SUCK at playing real drums. Well, actually I suck at playing Rock Band drums too, but oh well. I am so glad I don’t own an XBox 360 or I’d have to go out and buy this game immediately.

I don’t know what the GTA IV hype is all about. Everyone is saying it’s the best game ever. It must be pretty damn good if this is coming from people who have played Rock Band.

Pandora Online Radio–It Rocks

It’s free. No really, it’s completely free.

I’ve been using Pandora internet radio for a couple of weeks now. I hesitated to mention it here because I was afraid that by “free” they meant “free to register” or “free for a little while.” Nope–it’s seriously free. It’s good too, and has one of the coolest interfaces I’ve seen on the web.

Not only do they allow you to set up your own stations that you can listen to from anywhere, but by telling Pandora what you like and dislike it also finds new music for you that it thinks you’ll dig. So far it’s been dead on for me as far as suggestions, and I’ve found some cool new music.

Pandora allows you to purchase music straight through Amazon or iTunes. That’s where they make their money, which I guess is how they are able to offer the service for free.

Sundown in the City Explained

If you aren’t local to Knoxville, you probably haven’t heard of Sundown in the City. If you are local to Knoxville and haven’t heard of Sundown in the City, I’d make the case that you aren’t really local. The quick skinny is this–it’s a series of outdoor concerts held downtown that features acts that are longer on talent than they are on notoriety. There is no fee for entry–cost is covered by sponsors and the the City.

The music is great, but many of the acts continue to be underappreciated by the KTown crowd. That’s because the social component of SITC is just as big, if not bigger, than the music. The sell beer, so you inevitably end up with pockets of people who all know each other standing around gossiping about their mutual friends who didn’t make it to Sundown that week. The loud music in the background is borderline distracting to them. It also offers the “pretend-we-live-in-Greenwich-Connecticut” crowd from West Knoxville and Farragut the chance to come see how the “pretend-we-live-in-Greenwich-Village” downtown crowd rolls.

One of my friends contends that he is more or less required to go every week since his taxes go to support it. And to him, Sundown in the City and Boomsday are the only two legitimate functions of City government.

Anyway, this year’s lineup has been announced. There are a couple of must sees on here for me (Robert Earl Keen and The Presidents of the United States of America) and a couple of others I’ll go check out if I have the time, which I probably won’t. If I’m lucky there will be a group of people standing around gossiping about me.

April 17: Galactic with Garage Deluxe
April 24: Susan Tedeschi with Todd Steed and the Suns of Phere
May 1: Umphrey’s McGee
May 8: Josh Ritter and the Hackensaw Boys
May 15: North Mississippi All Stars
May 22: The Presidents of the United States of America with Cutthroat Shamrock
May 29: Robert EarlKeen with Jypsi June
June 5: (not yet booked)
June 12: Citizen Cope
June 19: Marc Broussard with Erick Baker
June 26: The Everybodyfields and Amy LaVere
July 3: The Wild Magnolias

5 Reasons Bret Michaels is the Lamest “Rock Star” Ever

I remember when Poison was really popular and I thought they were stupid. Mostly it was because I was a music snob back then, but a lot of it had to do with the fact that they just sucked.

Now we have Rock Of Love, and honestly, I can think of 5 people I know right now who are happily married with kids and regular ol’ jobs who act more like rock stars than Bret Michaels. I had Easter dinner with one of them (and our wives and kids) today, after he got out of church of course. I think we drank enough beer between the two of us–it had to have been 2/3 of a six pack–to put Bret Michaels under the table.

I wouldn’t let this guy be a roadie for a boy band–that’s how NOT Rock Star he is. I submit these five facts for your consideration.

1. He has no game. None.

You would think that after having girls throw themselves at him for a few years in the 80s, he would at least have a little bit of game. This guy couldn’t close the deal with a drunk hooker if he had crapped crack and pissed liquid gold. Want to see a rock star with game? Give me (of course) David Lee Roth.

2. No famous chicks want to date him

Bret Michaels is was actually attractive and famous. And he has to go on TV to get a date? Yeah he dated Pam Anderson (briefly) a long time ago. But my guess is she quickly figured out how lame he is (see reason #1). Even the girl he picked in the first season of Rock of Love didn’t want to date him, presumably because she was already too famous for him. Let me have Rick Ocasek, Billie Joel, Adam Clayton, Kid Rock or instead of this Z-list supporter.

3. He took the girls’ exes to Dave and Busters.

Not a trip into and out of Vegas for a weekend on a private jet. Not a run to Tijuana to get tats and piercings. Not even a strip club. Dave and Freaking Busters. Give me a break. Nothing says ROCK STAR like sipping on a Zima and playing a few rounds of skee-ball and wak-a-mole, huh? Instead, I’d like to see Lemmy from Motorhead. Yeah, he’s not going to go anywhere uber-cool either, but he’ll show up with a cooler full of beer and keep you up all night telling funny stories and burning you with cigarettes when he catches you nodding off. That’s cool.

4. He’s never fought a member of Motley Crue

As far as I know, he hasn’t fought anybody. Not that I’m surprised by that–I’m sure he’d get his ass kicked. But he’s never even shown that he has a temper. I’ve never heard stories of dressing rooms being trashed. I’ve never heard of him being thrown out of a club for breaking a beer bottle across someone’s face. Nothing. I’d so much rather watch this show with Tommy Lee, who I bet has fought EVERY member of Motley Crue at one time or another.

5. He’s never been to rehab

That’s actually admirable for people like me and you. But this is America. We like our rock stars either troubled, violent, or toxic–preferably all three. He’s never even been drunk on his own “party like a rock star” TV show. I have a feeling that “Bret’s Brew” is actually 30% lemonade, 30% fruit punch, 30% Sprite and 10% soda water. Give me Bret’s old guitar player, C.C. DeVille in his place. At least there’s a chance he’ll go on a coke binge and freak out right in front of our eyes.

Time For SNL To Get Beat Down By the Hansons

SlapshotA couple of weeks ago I watched Saturday Night Live for the first time in a long time. It was the first show after the writers’ strike ended, and Tina Fey was hosting. It was one of the best episodes I’ve ever seen. I didn’t get to see last week’s episode, but I started watching tonight thinking they’d gotten back on track.

Nope. Honestly, I think it may be time to end this show. Just a few reasons why…

Weekend Update

Weekend Update, when it was good, worked because of the snarky commentary on current events. But it doesn’t work anymore. Why? Because by the time I watch the Weekend Update snarky commentary on Tuesday’s primaries, I’ve already been reading snarky commentary on blogs for five days.

The Intro Skit

This skit is almost always political in nature, and because of that it is much like Weekend Update…played out by the time Saturday rolls around. This week they did a spoof of Hillary’s “3 am phone call” commercial. That’s great. It was even better on YouTube this week when everybody else did it.

Musical Guests

I know I’m old, but geez. Does anyone care about these musical guests anymore? They had Tom Petty in his prime, The Cars in their prime, and next week’s musical guest is…Janet Jackson? She was on Tyra Banks this week…’nuff said.

Anyway, I turned SNL off and am watching Slapshot for the upteenth time instead. It’s still funny. Besides the digital shorts there’s nothing left worth watching on SNL.

Time to put on the foil coach.

How Would DLR Raise My Kids?

As I’ve said before, I often pause when I’m at a crossroads in my life to ask myself WWDLRD–What Would David Lee Roth Do?

I guess it’s reasonable to suspect that my perspective would change once I decided to unleash version 2.0 of this gene package onto the world. Then again, when have I been reasonable?

I remember reading an interview with DLR a long time ago where he described what his parents called “monkey hour” when he was a kid. He, being DLR, would act like a total lunatic for an hour.  According to him, he took Monkey Hour and turned it into a career.

I like the idea of Monkey Hour, and I think I want to have that at our house. One hour of anything goes madness (confined to one room). No rules–throw whatever you want at whatever you want, turn over the furniture and jump off it, leg drop of doom your younger siblings–whatever. Get all that energy out before bed (or a trip to the emergency room).

But at the end of the hour we have to clean up everything. Making them clean up will ensure that they don’t end up like DLR. Then again, they may just end up like one of his roadies instead, huh?

Sort The Viewers, Not The Movies

My buddy IB sent this article to me…very interesting.  Netflix is running a contest for data crunchers and offering $1M to anyone (or any team) that can beat their current recommendation system by 10%.  One of the leaders is a psychologist working by himself who is looking less at raw data and more at human nature.

One such phenomenon is the anchoring effect, a problem endemic to any numerical rating scheme. If a customer watches three movies in a row that merit four stars — say, the Star Wars trilogy — and then sees one that’s a bit better — say, Blade Runner — they’ll likely give the last movie five stars. But if they started the week with one-star stinkers like the Star Wars prequels, Blade Runner might get only a 4 or even a 3. Anchoring suggests that rating systems need to take account of inertia — a user who has recently given a lot of above-average ratings is likely to continue to do so.

I think this guy is onto something, and I’d like to see this move a step further.  Associating movies using k nearest neighbor is relatively straightforward, but attacking the other side of the equation (the viewer) is a lot tougher.  Here’s an example…

“The Outlaw Josie Wales” is one of my favorite movies, but that doesn’t mean that an algorithm could spit out a bunch of westerns and give me something I like.  Clint Eastwood movies wouldn’t do it either, but it would be a little closer.  The real way to suggest movies for me would be to look at some other factors that aren’t so obvious.  You need to be able to draw conclusions from my other favorites–“Fight Club”, “Pulp Fiction”, “Smoky and the Bandit”, and “Swingers”.  You may peg all of these as “guy movies”, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to like “Gladiator”.  In fact, I hated “Gladiator”.  A movie like “Thelma and Louise” is a much better suggestion for me than “Gladiator”.  Why?  Because it is much more quotable, and that’s something my favorite movies suggest that I like.

Just an example, but that’s the direction we’re going.  In order to make a powerful suggester for anything (books, movies, music, raincoats, etc.), it is now necessary to consider the individual making the purchase instead of a one-size-fits all approach.  How else can you help a guy like me who hates sci-fi but loved “The Matrix” and can’t stand to watch horror flicks but has seen “Scream” several times?

I’m oversimplifying it a bit, but this is a very difficult problem.  You’re basically tasked with generalizing a solution which has to consider literally millions of individual problems within the problem.  It’s very tough to quantify so many parameters in so many dimensions.

What amazes me most is that this is such a simple task for us to complete in our heads.  Computers are still so far behind us in our ability to do something as simple as watch a movie and think to ourselves, “That movie sucked, but my buddy really likes movies like this…I think I’ll suggest it to him.”