Ancient Album Review Part 1

As you may have read a couple posts ago, my girlfriend moved into my tiny apartment, and I needed to make some space.  One such consolidating project was putting my hundreds and hundreds of CD's into a book.  I have thought about doing this a number of times, but ultimately I find it hard to part with the plastic cases because I like to see the stickers to know where I bought them, or a sticker that says "hold for Kenneth," which means someone at the record store I worked at put it on hold for me.  And while it's easy to put the booklet of the CD into the flip book, sometimes I couldn't just throw away the back cover or the owe that could be seen when you open up the case - so that artwork just had to be stuffed in there as well.

Opening up all these discs was very nostalgic for me, and I thought I would share my memories and impressions of one disc with all of you: "Cosmic Slop" by Funkadelic from 1973.  The first Funkadelic record I heard was 1971's "Maggot Brain" which totally blew me away, so I was excited when, while working at the record store, one of our regulars brought in "Cosmic Slop."  This guy always smelled like beer and cigarettes, and the disc smelled like cigarettes for some time too (I'm surprised it still doesn't).  I loved it right away, and every song still sounds amazing.  Many of these tales make up stories in the inner city, struggles that people go through, only the music is way the hell better than any gangster rap album.

1. "Nappy Dugout" - A fantastic drum track over a song that, judging by the title, is probably about vaginas.

2. "You Can't Miss What You Can't Measure" - A song about heartache and break-ups, one of which involves a guy who calls a plumber over to his house to fix the leak in his pipes because his house is covered in water, and the plumber informs him that the tears from his eyes are the source of the flooding.

3. "March To the Witches Castle" - This one is about soldiers returning from the Vietnam War and going through the "nightmare of readjustment" and all through out is a marching drum beat and a weepy guitar riff.

I gotta go . . . .

Part 2 to come . . .

I saw Roger Waters from Pink Floyd play "The Wall" the Other Night . . .

. . . and here are some thoughts.

1. Roger aged very well into that big face of his, and believe it or not, he is a better looking 65-year-old man than a 25-year-old.

Here he is from the other night

And here he is in the Nineteen Seventies

There were ladies there saying that he looked like Richard Gere.  Yes.  Heart throb and American gigalo Richard Gere.  And these were young and attractive girls saying this.  Girls who would have no idea that back in the day he looked like Georges Muresan.  Of course they didn't know this because few really knew what rockers looked like back then, before the MTV days.  No band will ever make as many amazing records as Pink Floyd for a myriad of reasons, but one is that Roger could just be ugly and make art without people caring what he looked like, what brands he was wearing, or who his date was to the Grammies. 

(This guy didn't put out "Animals in 1977, but he is 7'7" and uglier than just about any animal.)

2. The show was at Wrigley Field, which is where the Cubs play and my favorite place on planet earth, so how could I miss the guy from my favorite band in my favorite place?  One thing you may know about me is that I love a good urinal trough.  What I noticed is that a lot of the people there were not the usual ballgame crowd, so they were shy and waiting for the stalls.  No way all those fellas had to go poop - they just didn't want to join in the trough fun.

Gross, yes.  But more efficient.  

3. During ''Young Lust," the one about him figuring out his wife was cheating on him so he decided to bang every groupie he could get his hands on, they showed very hot and naked women on a giant screen.  As a man in a long-distance relationship, it was all I could do to stop myself from flying in my girlfriend that very night.  Earlier in the show a bunch of little kids sang the chorus for "Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2," and my partner in crime that night, James Douglass Morison, said, "I hope those kids aren't still here.  They're all going to get their first wood tonight."


(She's naked right about 2:35)

4. When "Run Like Hell" was playing it reminded me of when I ran my first race as an adult.  I believe it was only 5 miles, but that was really hard for me back then because I was a long haired doughy guy who rarely worked out.  While running the race, my long stupid hair flopping around in a stupid pony tail, they played "Run Like Hell" over the loud speaker, and I just remember clapping along and feeling really good.  So, among all the other reasons I have to thank Roger and the remaining, surviving members of Pink Floyd, I can thank them for getting me into running, the thing that keeps me sane, where I can think straight, and put my universe back in order.  Thanks for everything, Floyd.

Also, click anywhere in this sentence for a link to the published version of my article about Rupaul's Drag Race.

New Show Hits Close To Home But Still Manages to Kind of Suck

I was kind of excited to watch that new show Love Monkey with the guy from Ed, so I taped it and watched it today. Why in the world would I get excited about a new sit-com? Well, it’s supposed to be about a guy that drinks with his buddies, has a series of failed relationships with women, and he’s a huge music fan. How could I NOT watch that?

This show has been billed as Sex and the City for men. I see the connection because it has the same obsession with narrating the SHIT out of something instead of letting the characters tell the story. “And then it occurred to Miranda: She had hair EXACTLY like Ziggy Stardust.” Have you seen those episodes? I mean, I like Bowie as much as the next guy, but I have no desire to have sex in ANY city with a girl that looks like an androgynous, fictional, rock God character that David Bowie portrayed, “God-given ass” or not. I always loved that line . . . Wow that was a tangent.

I guess a rock music related rant like that is case in point why I’m like the guy in Love Monkey. However, if I am ever portrayed in a movie, PLEASE write a better show to highlight my dysfunctional rock music obsession. There is one scene when a girl breaks up with him and says, “If you love someone set them free,” and they cut to him and the narration says, “Did she just quote Sting?” If I were writing that scene she would have been walking away and he would have muttered to himself, “Wait, fucking Sting!!?” Then hollering to her, “Fucking Sting! You’re breaking up with me using a Sting song?! Do you want to give me one of his speeches now about the rain forests or the two-hour-long tantric sex he claims to have with his wife?” See, funny, and no narration necessary.

There’s a couple things I liked about the show. I liked that Brandon from 90210 got fat. It makes sense though because he plays the complacent brother-in-law/friend of The Guy from Ed. I’m too fricking lazy to look up the names of these actors in case you can’t tell. I didn’t, however, like how his other friend was the stereotypical, oversexed, black man type just like in 40-Year-Old Virgin. I liked a couple of the music references and how he values good taste in music in girls he meets, but I think that they will not be able to keep the music tie-in going into later episodes, and then we’re left with a mediocre sit-com. I get the sense that there was a good script in there somewhere that would have been really good had it been on HBO, but because it’s on CBS, everything is cutesy and the plotlines and characters are all neat and tidy.

You know what else I didn’t like? I hated that there was a young songwriter act that The Guy from Ed is trying to sign and he is claiming that he is a genius, yet he’s a poor man’s John Mayer, and in my estimation, that is PISS poor. Does anyone else think John Mayer blows? I think he plays guitar okay, but his vocals are weak and constricted like someone has a wrench around his throat. My stomach still hasn’t stopped churning at the “body is wonderland” line. Why not your body is Disney Land or your body is Six Flags Great America. Your fucking body is like the ride The Edge that fucking killed a few guys! Now THAT is a compliment the likes of which a chick would not get every day. Your body is like drinking a can of Jolt cola while riding The Edge, or whatever they called that ride at your local Six Flags.

This is when the overnarration in my little story would chime in and say, “So, that’s when he decided to END his crazy, ranting blog entry . . .”