Telemarketer Nightmare

This is the way to handle those oh so annoying telemarketers.

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CD Review: The Hold Steady Boys and Girls in America

With the release of their third album (fuck it, I'm still calling them albums) in three years, most are still not familiar with The Hold Steady. That is indeed a shame. Those that are familiar with them are polarized into those that think they are abysmal and those that think they are the best kept secret in indie music.

Following 2005's mind-blowing Separation Sunday, it was hard to fathom that Craig Finn and his band could top what many considered the best album of last year. In my opinion, Boys and Girls in America succeeds, and should be ranked amongst the best releases of 2006 at year-end.

Finn's talk-sing delivery leans a bit more to the singing side this time around but not to the detriment of his amzing storytelling. Another reviewer remarked that "this is Born to Run 30 years later," and that compliment is not overstated. There are most definitely comparisons to be made to Springsteen's no-hold barred storytelling. Finn's stories just tend to have a few seedier characters in them.

The disc opens with one of the many standout tracks "Stuck Between Stations" with direct references to Kerouac's Sal Paradise from his novel "On The Road." Kerouac's ode to the road seems to weave throughout Boys and Girls with the recurring theme that "boys and girls in America...they have such a sad time together."

"Chips Ahoy!" continues the magic with a tale about a female junkie with a penchant for picking horses. This ain't your daddy's music.

Additional standouts include "Massive Night", "Southtown Girls" and "Chill Out Tent" with the dueling male/female lovestruck in a drugged haze story of two people finding temporary love, where else, but in the chill out tent at a show.

Bottom line, this is not for everyone, but anyone who likes captivating storytelling delivered in a wildly original style needs to give this band a listen. This is the stuff that gives me hope for the future of music. Yup...it's really that good.

Google Buys YouTube...and Everyone Has an Opinion

When Album Covers Attack

This is just too darn cool...

Wait'll Next Year

And so it goes. It's not easy being a Padres fan. Every spring starts with such wide-eyed promise, like the kid on Christmas morning expecting this to be the year he gets the pony. Well, 2006 was not to be the Year of the Pony for Padres fans.

You know what? I thought they had a shot this year. Maybe not to win it all, but maybe, just maybe, to get to the big dance and show a little something. '84 and '98 were not pretty. It's not enough to just "be there" when you look like the Toledo Mudhens doing it.

We've suffered through thirty-eight seasons. OK, so I'm sure there are a few Cubs fans out there telling me to 'shut the fuck up' but it doesn't make it any easier to know that there is another team out there that sucks worse than us. And the Cubs never had uniforms that made them look like a taco.

So we look forward to March, when hope springs eternal once again. And I'll be there. Along with the other dedicated Friars fans that continue to hold out hope that "this will be the year."

Please Kevin Towers...take a look at Albert Pujols and get us one of those. I don't know about you, but I want that fuckin' pony.

Lactose Intolerance

OK, I'll warn ya ahead of time...this is not for the faint of stomach. Funny stuff though. From the first season of Jackass, the episodes that MTV only showed one time and then pulled them. You'll never look at milk the same again. Bottoms up!

It's the End, The End of the Century...

Legendary punk venue CBGBs will close its doors in NY's Bowery district on October 15th. After 33 years showcasing the newest and now uber-legendary punk acts, this famed launching pad for bands like The Ramones, Blondie, Talking Heads, Patti Smith Group and so many more, says goodnight.

The full name is CBGB & OMFUG which stands for "Country Bluegrass Blues and Other Music For Uplifting Gormandizers". Gormandizer usually means a ravenous eater of food, but according to CBGB founder Hilly Kristal here it means "a voracious eater of ... music" according to the official CBGB website. Country, Bluegrass, & Blues...not the place you would expect to be considered the birthplace of punk. But indeed it was. The band Television was the first of the punk acts to play there. Sometimes to a deafening crowd of 10 or so. In August of 1974, a sloppy four-piece band argued their way through an amateurish 25-minute set. The band was The Ramones. The music world would never be the same again.

Check out this blistering 1977 Ramones performance at CBGBs.


The final show will include a performance from the godmother of punk Patti Smith and an acoustic set from Debbie Harry & Chris Stein of Blondie. A fitting way to close the book on the greatest punk stage ever presented.

The club is closing thanks to skyrocketing rent costs. In another incarnation, CBGBs will relocate to Las Vegas, and expected to open in 2008.

According to founder Hilly Kristal: "I am taking the bars with me, I am taking the stage—I'm taking the urinal that Joey (Ramone) pissed in with me. I'm going to take a lot of things—anything that makes this place CBGBs."

Sad to say, I never made it to CBGBs. I bet it would have really been something to remember. It is anyway.

"CBGB is a toilet. An impossibly scuzzy little club buried somewhere in the section of the village the cab-drivers don't like to drive through. It looks as if the proprietors kick holes in the walls and piss in the corners before they let the customers in: fo' the atmosphere, you dig."
- Charles Shaar Murray, NME magazine, June 1975

Knee Scope Surgery

I may be the worst blogger ever. Three months between posts. Nice, Scott.

So two weeks post-surgery to have my meniscus tear in my right knee fixed. Things are progressing well. I'm walking, albeit slowly. Physical therapy three times a week is kicking my ass but it's definitely speeding up the recovery time. And who wouldn't want a little faster recovery time, right?

Basically what they did was go in through two holes just below the kneecap. One hole is for the camera, the other for the surgical tools. Kinda cool what they found in there.

The meniscus is the cartilage in the knee that separates the two bones at the joint. Kind of functions as a gasket of sorts. They don't normally do repairs on people my age because it's a very slow healing process and most of the time doesn't work real well. So they pretty much just slice off the damaged part and leave ya with whatever healthy area remains. Here's a pic of my meniscus showing the tear.



See the stuff that looks like stringy crab meat? Crappy meniscus.

Since they were in there anyway...they decided to cruise around and see what they could find. Wouldn't ya know? The source of all my knee pain was a half-smoked doobie that someone left in my knee. Those darn rastas!



So they took that out too. I think I saw a couple of scrub nurses blazing it up....but then again, I was on some pretty serious pain meds.

Here's the knee all cleaned up.


Notice the shaggy stuff is gone. We'll refer to that as the "never gonna run again" stuff. Anybody else think this looks a little too much like something else?

Surprisingly, I've had very little pain. Only used two of the 30 Vicodin they gave me. I gave the rest of them to Terrell Owens. In hindsight, an error in judgment.

The Name Above The Title

Many have asked about the origin of the name of this here blog. Alright, so only my wife did. It's a nod to the 80's band Talk Talk and a line from their semi-hit of the same name. While not my favorite song or even merely memorable, it represents a bygone era for music that seems lost and gone forever. While I consider myself a child of the 70's, the 80's was the more enjoyable musical era of my life. It was a time when music could be simply fun, without public statement (The Cars, Adam & The Ants, Devo) or life-altering (The Clash, Ramones, Dead Kennedys). Most people I feel, listen to music. I've always lived it.

As far back as I can remember, music was a defining element of who I was. I remember lying on my bed on a Saturday morning writing up my own personal Top 20 each week. It was always a treat to find out who would come in at number one that week...even though it was a list no one saw but me. Music defines eras and for me this statement is very true. It was never merely just the song. It was a moment in time noted with an aural bookmark.

Music today is genre-averse. It would be too simplistic to define the music of today by the decade as we did in the 80's. Back then, Duran Duran could sit next to Whitesnake at a diner counter and get along famously. I don't expect the same would be true with today's current crop of artists. Just as there was no 90's genre of music, the 00's are even more decade ambiguous.

But I digress. So there you have it. For all one of you out there, (who am I kidding, no one's reading this garbage), that is the origin of this oh-so-eloquent gibberish. My 2006 version of my teenage Top 20 countdown. Go forth and blog young man. Blog like the wind.

Really, Scott? A Blog?

I know, I know. How trendy it is to have your own blog. How 2006 of me. So why do it? Dunno. I guess it's the frustrated writer in me. You see, back in high school I wanted to be a serious journalist until I found out how much (actually how little) money they made. Money, or lack thereof, can kill a passion like nobody's business. Then I planned on writing The Mediocre American Novel which of course never materialized either. So fast forward to 2006 and every 13-year old kid with a mouth full of braces has his own blog. So here I come world wide web. For better or for worse, Scott's gone cyber with his thoughts. God help us all.

My guess? You'll be back. Like a car crash that you can't look away from, you'll click that bookmark with a sort of feigned interest just to see what happens next. "Does anyone's mind really work that way?" you'll ponder. Yup, it really does. And yes, it's exhausting. So without further ado, welcome to the jungle.