So check it out: The Chicago Reader asked me to interview legendary frontman David Yow (The Jesus Lizard, Scratch Acid) in one of their “Artist on Artist” segments. See, Scratch Acid is on tour. And I’m in this band.
Of course pants were removed. Do you even have to ask? Shame on you for doubting.
In related news, I’m told that I am a contributing author to the forthcoming in 2012 Akashic Books title Book aka The Jesus Lizard “coffee table” book.
Sure…coffee. Right.
Boardwalk Empire's Michael K. Williams shares home improvement tips
I watch HBO’s Boardwalk Empire. This show’s major strengths are its art direction and set design, which really are a joy. Its music direction, faithful to its Jazz Age period runs a close second, and might even have placed first, if not for one inexplicable decision.
In a stark and ugly contrast to the rest of the show’s attention to production standards, Boardwalk Empire‘s title theme music is a disaster. For some reason, a chunk of sheer hackwork in the form of throwaway bar-band blues-rock culled from the catalog of the resolutely inessential Brian Jonestown Massacre was chosen to usher viewers into each week’s episode.
This isn’t about anachronism. I’m not saying that a rock song could never work in this role. I’m saying the chosen rock song relates to the show only in one sense: Each time I hear it, I lament that Atlantic City, endowed today with van-loads of creatively vacant, Stones-tribute bar bands who suck far less than San Francisco’s Brian Jonestown Massacre, couldn’t contribute to its namesake “death and titty” cable drama when the time came to slap a shitty rock song in the theme hole.
One habit I inherited from my father is to give lyrics to annoying tunes. In that tradition, I offer to all Boardwalk fans a means to put a happier spin on this most bullshit of title themes. Take these lyrics to Boardwalk Empire in the shared hope that a saddened nation can, as one, polish away this small spot of musical tarnish from our Sunday nights.
Lyrics To The Boardwalk Empire Theme
Boy, this theme sucks
Lemme tell ya
God, this theme sucks
Like a hoover
Stupid blues riff
What the fuck, man?
Sounds like Oasis
Fuck you
(repeat 1x)
And it’s cloudy
In the 1920s
And Buscemi
Looks especially worn
Hey, it’s water
What are those, bottles?
Fly away, seagull
Shitty solo ahoy!
Baaaaaw woooo-awooooo oooo-ooo-ooooo
(Singers give tempo ruboto impression of awful guitar solo)
(rest)
Please just start the show
And end this theme
Just start the show
Already please
(repeat after rest)
What’s that sound? It’s Mark E. Claus, trapped in your chimney, complaining bitterly about the soot. The least you can do is get him a pint.
In a turkey(monkey) coma this Thanksgiving? Snap out of it with these 1995 clips of DEVO’s Gerald V. Casale as he tells the story of five pilgrims from Akron, OH who sailed to Los Angeles in a Plymouth only to collide with a rock called the music industry.
Marvel at tales of Booji Boy, he who is old as the mountains but as yet unborn! Learn of the earliest days of Art DEVO, of the Poot Man and his dairy intake, of janitor supply stores, McDonald’s restaurant managers and other stanchions of Akronian society!
It’s a wiggly world full of strange pursuits and unkeyed chroma. Light up a stogie (really?) with Gerry and reflect on a job well done.
I wrote some stuff in this, and the whole thing is funny, so buy it.
They call it a coffee table book, but I’ve never been able to fit a coffee table in the bathroom.
We get a glimpse of show business’s hidden ritual abuse of musicians as Dave discusses the effrontery of the show’s performance arrangements for Pere Ubu in the 1989(?) clip. As per the show’s other longstanding policy of requiring musical performances to be shared by Paul Schaeffer and the house band, the forced hybridization of Ubu is in this case not a displeasing one.
I’ve written before about how I love the web music service Pandora and its nerdy roots as a musical categorization engine. Underneath Pandora lurks the Music Genome Project, a smartly designed effort to identify properties present in individual recordings regardless of artist, genre, label, era, or any other strictly nonmusical characteristics. These musical properties are used to make automated decisions about your playlist – if you start with a song that uses electric guitars, minor key tonality, chromatic harmonic structure and uptempo pacing, you’re likely to get more of these characteristics in subsequent songs – no matter what artist, era or genre. It makes for great listening and surprising discovery.
I talked to Pandora CEO Tim Westergren in 2007 when I worked for Gearwire.com. Here’s Tim’s Wall Street Journal interview from today. The upshot: Pandora’s now profitable, working out the privacy problems that Facebook’s shifting policies have foisted upon them.
And what the heck, here’s my Pandora profile. Below, a 2008 clip with Tim, Pandora’s Dancing Monkey (and crew).
I met Dave Schulthise, better known as Dave Blood of the Dead Milkmen in 1985 when i was 17. The Milkmen’s first Chicago show happened to also be my first stage appearance, playing bass for The Defoliants. Dave, sadly no longer with us, was a sweet and funny guy who really knew his way around a Music Man bass. This means he would have gotten a kick out of the complete bullshit that lives on his Wikipedia page:
Yeah, no. Abnormally good playing, abnormally great guy, normal tuning.
Word is that the Guitar Hero video game franchise is in trouble. Earlier this year game maker Activision reported disappointing sales of GH and associated title DJ Hero with new planned titles being squelched. Industry analysts agree: these are the signs of a depleted genre.
Why? Because these games don’t have enough realism. Even little kids know by now that Guitar Hero’s gameplay – effectively mashing plastic keys on the neck of a guitar-shaped controller in a vague rhythm – does not approach the rich tapestry of the live rock musician’s undertaking. Some gamers know this instinctively, and those who don’t eventually learn by listening to the sneering dismissals of the game offered by actual rock musicians desperate to crap on somebody. It seems nobody’s happy. Video gamers demand a more satisfying, realistic experience and will stop at nothing to get it (short of turning off their consoles and emerging into the actual world), while current
game offerings are lacking in the grit and tension of the real thing.
What this genre needs is a little design input from a veteran of rock and roll. Today, I am that veteran, ready to exaggerate where necessary to improve the product. Here, then, proposed to the industry’s design community in plenty of time for Christmas, are Eight Guitar Hero Spin-Offs:
Band Hero: The realistic interpersonal band simulation. Navigate the complex creative and emotional agendas of the other people in your band - and later in the game, that of their spouses. Collaboratively produce songs by subtly subverting each other’s hated contributions. Simultaneously discover and navigate disparate goal alignments with the payoffs measured solely in aesthetics, never income. Balance a straight career with the commitments of a band without compromising either. Game controller is shaped like a bottle of Chivas Regal. Contents: Chivas Regal.
Tour Hero: Perpetrate the affront to human dignity that is touring without suffering any of the health risks. Simulate four unwashed guys in a dilapidated van, a diet of indigestible road food, a steady supply of intoxicants and a single Red Sovine CD that the drummer/driver insists on repeating for hours at a time. Controller is shaped like a bundle of filthy laundry bunched into a pillow shape. Scoring is based on ability to arrive at gigs in time to not get a sound check.
Sound Check Hero: In the game’s early stages, you don’t get a sound check. When you finally do, your goal is to have the stage monitors produce sound of any kind. Next level: stop the shrieky feedback. Controller: Wii (shaped like a microphone). Scoring based on effectiveness of your vague pantomimes attempting to get the attention of the unseen soundguy. Bonus round: show up to the gig in enough time to get the check but not too early so as to be sitting around waiting.
Load-in Hero: Your goal is to move large, heavy black boxes from one side of town to another in your car. Rewards the obsessive with a Tetris-like puzzle scoring system based on equipment stacking, spiced with the added risk of damage to spine and fingers, because the game controller is shaped like a Marshall 4×12 speaker cabinet and weighs 90 pounds. 
Publishing Hero: While watching television, you discover your recordings have been used on TV commercials, shows and films with large audiences, yet you have not been told nor paid. Gameplay involves an odyssey of repeated attempts to have phone calls or emails returned from TV producers, networks or music publishers. Game controller is shaped like an empty mailbox.
Rehearsal Space Hero: You are stuck in a 10×10′ rehearsal space with laughably thin walls. Next door on one side is a Blues Lawyer / Blues Dentist band, and on the other, a Local Metal Band. Schedule conflicts ensure one or the other or both are rehearsing at the same time as your band, making it difficult to work. Game controller is shaped like a standard Guitar Hero guitar, which you use to play the neighboring band’s riffs back at them at dominating volume until you eventually force an ugly physical confrontation.
Guitar Store Hero: A simulated trip to a guitar chain store, where every minute spent serves to embarrass you further into rethinking your involvement with music. Scoring based on suppressing your impulse to choke the shit out of the guy over there who won’t stop loudly mangling the riff from “Enter Sandman” on a pointy guitar. Game controller shaped like a $50.00 guitar stand, manufactured in Malaysia out of seven cents worth of bimetal.
Mashup Hero: Your goal is to load looped segments of any two incongruous yet recognizable popular songs into Audiomulch, tweak the program BPM to 300+ and play the segments against each other until they overlap in locked tempo, producing “work”. Controller is (and is shaped like) a Windows PC running Audiomulch. Scoring is based upon real-life attention received for your efforts. Requires: Audiomulch license, shamelessness.
Eyewitness recounting of the Kent State shootings from DEVO’s co-founder. Witness the birth of DEVO – the sound of things falling apart – on a campus hilltop in Ohio.
http://www.ustream.tv/flash/video/6676985
(RW370 video embed not working)
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