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Tom Waits is a name you’ve probably heard, if nowhere else from me, but may not be familiar with much of his music. I’m not going to present myself as an expert, because I’m not, but in short his career has gone through a couple of distinct curves.

One of which he wrote and sang the kind of songs you would here in a bar where the lives of interesting characters were playing out. The second is more experimental, leaving the troubadoriality mostly behind to experiment with the way his songs sound. Those songs now are a feast and a nifty 3 disc set just came out that compiles some new songs and others from soundtracks and the like.

Wait’s isn’t a particularly public guy so I’m pretty stoked to see him doing interviews because he is as interesting a person as he is a songwriter.

Here are one and two recent interviews that I recommend checking out. Also, a link to a couple of free downloads courtesy of his record label (scroll about halfway down) and an interview and song from yesterday’s The Daily Show.

Second, is what can only be described as a masterful and jaw dropping performance by Beck on the 10-28-06 edition of Saturday Night Live. He did the song Clap Hands with himself singing and playing guitar while his band played a complete table setting. Plates, forks, spoons, the floor it all sat on. It was blankin’ awesome. You Tube had the video but took it down, but here’s audio of the broadcast.
I’ll see if I can figure a small video file.

Enjoy some sock kicking goodness.

This posting is mostly directed at my homies, following up an e-mail thread but since I think sharing is important any folks randomly happening upon Note To Self who be into these bands might dig as well.

First up is a short excerpt of Primus breaking into Metallica’s Master Of Puppets. It’s a small section chopped out of the song Too Many Puppies (not my favourite Primus number). This is a bootleg of course, and was recorded November 10 in Upper Darby, PA. It’s common trivial knowledge, but in case you hadn’t heard; Les Claypool and Metallica’s guitarist Kirk Hammet are friends and after Cliff Burton (Metallica’s original bassist) died Kirk suggested to the Lars and James that Les replace him. Hetfield responded something like, “Why does he use his thumb so much?”

Most folks are aware of Living Colour due there 1988 song Cult Of Personality. That’s certainly when I became aware of them. Mike and I walked up to Sound Wherehouse in a sleeting winter blizzard when he bought that tape. I bought the Metallica cassingle for ‘One’ and a cd*. We listened to it a lot that night and I’ve been a fan ever since. These tracks are from the Sziget Festival (yeah, I’ve never heard of it either) in Budapest, Hungary where King’s X’s Doug Pinnick sat in for singer Cory Glover who was playing Judas in J.C. Superstar (and not in Budapest on that same day). The quality of the recording isn’t that grand, but a few of the tracks are worthy listens. Including…

Living Colour – Looking For Love. They wisely put a King’s X song into the set. As they should because it’s a really good song. I like King’s X quite a bit but nowhere near the dedication of my friends Shag and Kyle. Enjoy guys.

The other track from that show is called Flying. The studio version is on the 2002 reunion album Collideoscope, which was largely a disappointment to me. Only a few songs were awesome, but if for no other reason they covered (very very poorly) Back In Black. Why the heck for? Were they trying to be funny? Ironic perhaps? Their version sucked donkey regardless of the intention. I haven’t given too much thought to the lyrics of this song but they are intriguing.

Last, is a demo King’s X did sometime around 1982 when they were known as The Edge. It’s a cover of a George Harrison song that we all know and love.

Enjoy

*Debbie Gibson’s second album. You may shake your head but remember that I have Vixen imports and a loaded bazooka.

No, they haven’t been sighted together, hanging out in effort to crossbreed their key demographics. 

I read the short review of the new Clay Aiken record in Rolling Stone recently and it starts on this note:  Like flunking out of junior college, making an album this soul suckingly awful must have taken some hard work. 

That lofty criticism reminded me of the following review of Courtney Loves’s early 2004 record ‘America’s Sweetheart’.  The review may have been for the first single (Mono) but I don’t remember.  This was from Pitchfork.com, and it’s soooo dang funny. 

“Did you miss meeeee?” is the seething battle cry of Courtney Love, leading up to the overdriven distorto-chorus of the leadoff single of her forthcoming solo debut, America’s Sweetheart. The answer: a resounding “f_ck no.” In recent days, Love has degenerated into something of a Michael Jackson-esque media phenom, a culturally inevasive trainwreck who becomes increasingly creepy, depraved and plastic with each passing week. This song is her “One More Chance”.  “Co-”written by Linda Perry (Pink, Christina Aguilera), “Mono” exacts a desperate, Liz Phair-like approach at garnering radio play. The track is pure cane sugar, an obvious rehash of a sound that’s already known to sell records, written by songwriters who sell records, with what appears to be the express aim of selling records. In a way, it’s the best option for Love, whose punk cred is so shot it might as well be lying in Converse on her greenhouse floor.* She obviously doesn’t have the voice for balladeering, she’s thuggish but not near gully enough to pass off a Neptunes production, and not even Epitaph subsidiary Anti could revive her critically. If she hopes to sustain her persona for future gossip columns (and she certainly does!), the choice is clear.  There’s not much to say about the song itself, an unsurprising return to overproduced, bratty, sneering mallpunk, other than that I really wish it didn’t have to happen. It’s all digifried, chorused guitars blaring like a disingenuous Andrew W.K. track, and Love’s pitch-corrected, bratty, sneering catchphrases about “their handjob lives” and how you “can’t make a hooker cum” contrasting with Loverboyisms like “three chords in your pocket tonight” and “blow out all of the lights tonight” and “you’re gonna let me hear the lost chord tonight.” If “Mono” is a hit, it’s just one more drip from the stinking anus of injustice re-enforcing America’s role as a Gomorrahic hell on earth in which no one is allowed to escape the tortured banshee wails of the damned and everyone goes home crying. If it’s not, haw-haw. [Ryan Schreiber; January 20th, 2004]

*When Kurt Cobain was found dead it was on his greenhouse floor, wearing Converse.

My friend Dylan, host of Good Times at KDHX, asked me to fill in for him this week and I of course happily accepted.

I’ve got some groovy stuff planned out and some crazy heavy stuff too.  Check it out if your up at midnite. 

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Update, 11-17-06:  Click the link above to listen to the show.

Before it gets to close to Thanksgiving I wanted to post a couple shots of Porter’s Halloween costume.  He went as Popsicle Guy and he looked great.  The children’s gene for candy kicked in right away too.  He doesn’t eat much candy but some obscure protein chain in his genes kicked in and before we knew he had scoffed down 2 1/2 Hershey kisses (the other 1/2 was all over his face).

Anyway, here’s picture 1 and picture 2.

Everything else is grand.  We made an 1800 mile car trip last Thursday thru Monday and the kids did great, though it’s only just yesterday that Porter is back on some semblance of a schedule.  Sunday we drove from about an hour from Philadelphia to Dayton and he didn’t wet his diaper once.  We’re very impressed.  Every time we stopped for gas/Jessie we went to the potty and he took care of business.  Something like 5 times.  One diaper, and a box of wipes to clean the stank off the seat before a human hiney could touch it.  Potty training is going swimmingly.

Jessie is doing great too and I’ll post some pics this weekend maybe.

The past 2 nights Porter has been very talkative into the microphone and was kind enough to record Farmer In The Dell and with some bribery, Where Is Thumbkin.  Both will make you smile.

It’s election day, so get out and vote. It’s one of many rights we enjoy and subsequently take for granted, forgetting how many other countries don’t have that right.

That said, you guys may have had to (or chose to) read Joseph Heller’s WWII novel Catch 22. Salon.com had an article soliciting different analogies to Iraq after Sen. Santorum (R, PA) compared Iraq to Lord Of The Rings. One enterprising person submitted the following.

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Iraq is Catch-22. And Bush, well this is tough – he could be Colonel Cargill (but maybe Cheney is a better choice for that), or he could be Major Major.

* Colonel Cargill: “Colonel Cargill was a forceful, ruddy man. Before the war, he had been an alert, hard-hitting, aggressive marketing executive. He was a very bad marketing executive. Colonel Cargill was so bad a marketing executive that his services were much sought after by firms eager to establish losses for tax purposes. Throughout the civilized world, from Battery Park to Fulton Street, he was known as a dependable man for a fast tax write-off. His prices were high, for failure often did not come easily. He had to start at the top and work himself down, and with sympathetic friends in Washington, losing money was no simple matter. It took months of hard work and careful misplanning. A person misplaced, disorganized, miscalculated, overlooked everything and opened every loophole, and just when he thought he had it made, the government gave him a lake or a forest or an oilfield and spoiled everything. Even with such handicaps, Colonel Cargill could be relied on to run the most prosperous enterprise into the ground. He was a self-made man who owed his lack of success to nobody.”

* Major Major: “Major Major had been born too late and too mediocre. Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them. With Major Major it had been all three. Even among men lacking all distinction he inevitably stood out as a man lacking more distinction than all the rest, and people who met him were always impressed by how unimpressive he was.”

* Yossarian, is of course, everyone who can think for themselves: “Morale was deteriorating and it was all Yossarian’s fault. The country was in peril; he was jeopardizing his traditional rights of freedom and independence by daring to exercise them.”

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There was another that compared Iraq to Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy but it wasn’t as informed. The gist was that the financing for Iraq could only be bistromath and that Bush is banking on infinite probability to get us out.

The link is here, though you may have to be a subscriber to read it.