Triptych Cryptic  

Thursday, May 15, 2008

My Kinda Show











If I went, I would get soooooo drunk. :)~

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14:30 c-dog

Thursday, May 01, 2008


Stuck in the Middle
Fittingly for a band that pissed away so much of its potential, the Replacements still haven't really gotten the posthumous treatment they deserve. Rhino will be reissuing all the 'Mats albums, the Twin/Tone era is already out and getting good reviews. Rhino generally does a good job with this sort of thing and it'll certainly be better than All for Nothing/Nothing for All the greatest hits/B-side collection that was limited to only the major label years.

Still, a slew of reissues, featuring some bonus tracks looks more like a money gouge for those of us who already have the original and some boots. I can't buy a CD for one song. I just don't work that way. Sooner or later they'll get a boxed set. Every moron with more than six albums gets a boxed set eventually, are you telling me the 'Mats won't?

I recently finished The Replacements: All Over But the Shouting, An Oral History by Minneapolis rocker and writer Jim Walsh. Good enough, I'd even say it's must ... for the fans. A really great history of the Replacements would probably be interesting even to people who didn't like indie music. The youth - Tommy Stinson really was 14 when they started - the booze, the expectations, pissing away those expectations, playing the greatest rock songs ever written, playing so poorly you get things thrown at you. All Over But the Shouting captures some of it, but it's not the history they deserve.

Apparently the story about the 'Mats sneaking back into Twin/Tone to toss their master tapes into the river is true. Manager Peter Jeperson had made other copies, making the reissues possible. Smart guy.

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12:20 bone daddy

Monday, March 03, 2008

Jeff Healey dies at 41, apparently from the same cancer that took his sight.

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17:28 bone daddy

Friday, December 14, 2007

C-Dog's 2007 Faves


Albums

Dropkick Murphys - "The Meanest of Times": I can't imagine any Battle of the Bands format the Murphys wouldn't win ... and I'm not only imagining formats where the band members have to do shots of whiskey chased with Guinness between songs, where success is measured by the vivacity of the mosh pit, where the bands play in front of a soused crowd of laborers in the sweaty basement of a union hall, etc...

Tim Armstrong - "A Poet's Life" : I don't know if Armstrong is more than thirty years old but, even if not, he might want to take Mencken's quip to heart. As much as I like this album, the title makes me cringe. Once you get past his "I'm a poet and a sex-drugs-and-rock-n-rolling party man" posing, there's no denying the wickedly danceable ska-inflected groovealiciousness.


Books (Read for the First Time Regardless of Year Published)

Kim Stanley Robinson - "Sixty Days and Counting"



Richard Dawkins - "The God Delusion"

Richard McEwan - "Atonement: A Novel"

Richard Harris - "The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason": Did we need both "The God Delusion" and "The End of Faith"? Evidently, yes.

China Mieville - "Perdido Street Station"



Movies

The Bourne Ultimatum

Michael Clayton

Live Free or Die Hard

Eastern Promises

A more macho list of manly-men movies would be hard to imagine. I'm really not trying to exclude female filmmakers (nor authors, nor musicians) ... but, wow, take the Y chromosone out and you're not left with much here. Although, I actually thought China Mieville was a woman until I saw his picture in the back of "Perdido Street Station".


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09:32 c-dog

Thursday, December 13, 2007

"I understand Led Zeppelin's menorah totally sucks."
Yo La Tengo wraps up its Maxwell's Hannukah shows, all eight of them. Obscure covers and guests galore, just what Hannukah in Hoboken needs.

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09:01 bone daddy

Friday, November 16, 2007

Love them Lists More music lists ... Blender picks the top 100 indie albums of all time. I always think 100 is something of a cop out. You can probably correctly guess about 60 of them. Not that it's a horrible list, just that this has been done before and, as always, I think New Day Rising and Zen Arcade should switch places. Same with Daydream Nation and the unlisted Sister. Most egregious ommission: Psychocandy. Seems like they feared being called too old. Is Arcade Fire that good?

The A.V. Club goes a little more original with a 21 item lists of good albums that would have been great E.P.s. Right off the top of my head I'd say Dinosaur Jr's Bug. I haven't listened to the whole album in about ten years. E.P. version: Freak Scene/No Bones/They Always Come/Yeah We Know/ The Post. And you could switch pretty much any of the other noise-fest songs for "Yeah We Know" if you wanted.

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08:17 bone daddy

Saturday, November 10, 2007

You know the movie song
Here's a fun exercise: think of four songs you'd like to see made into movies.

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14:49 c-dog

Wednesday, November 07, 2007

Carrie Brownstein of the great, now-defunct Sleater-Kinney has started a music oriented blog, Monitor Mix on NPR's site.

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14:38 bone daddy

Saturday, September 08, 2007

"Romeo and Juliet" Covered by the Killers
Caught this on the "Live from Abbey Road" show on Sundance. Not included in this clip is the the band talking about how much they love Dire Straits, this song, and hoping that by trying to do it justice they can introduce some of their younger listeners to Mark Knopfler & co.

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15:36 c-dog

Gorilla on drums.

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13:34 bone daddy

Wednesday, August 08, 2007

The Enduring Bond Between Huey Lewis and the Developmentally Disabled. A great article on why "retarded people love them some Huey Lewis." Not as cruel as it sounds, but as funny.

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09:02 bone daddy

Friday, July 20, 2007

I Feel Like I Ought to be Appalled ...
But I really like the amped up version of Squeeze's "Goodbye Girl" in the Under Armour commercial. According to the website, Squeeze actually rerecorded the song. I'd like to hear the full version, not just the 30 second snippet.

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20:42 c-dog

Thursday, July 12, 2007

Christian Metal Band or Star Trek episode? A quiz.

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10:40 bone daddy

Tuesday, July 10, 2007

Bands inspired by the Harry Potter books are probably busy right now. I actually have a couple of songs in iTunes by Harry and the Potters, but nothing by Draco and the Malfoys. Any girl group looking to form should grab the name The Weird Sisters before it's taken.

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16:03 bone daddy

Friday, June 22, 2007

Beatbox Français

via Ikram "The Dude"

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13:57 c-dog

Monday, June 18, 2007

The Wonderful and Frightening World of Mark E. Smith
Haven't watched it yet, just noting that it's out there.

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10:34 c-dog

Monday, May 28, 2007

Songs To Which Baby Girl Dances (And Doesn't)
My 1 year old daughter loves to dance. She's got two main dances: a sway with left leg lift, and a bummy bouncer. She likes to watch Jack's Big Music Show and pretty much anything Laurie Berkner but she also likes ska; Hepcat, Bigger Thomas, UB40, and the English Beat seem to be her favorites.

I was flipping through the music channels tonight and noticed that she really liked Howard Jones's "Life in One Day" ... but stopped cold and looked irritated when "Rudebox" by Robbie Williams came on. I'm not saying that makes one good and one bad, but ...

Summing up:
Dances to Howard Jones – Life in One Day
Irritated by Robbie Williams – Rudebox

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19:56 c-dog

Friday, April 20, 2007

Authentic Pop
The Monkees not authentic enough for you? What is?

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09:46 c-dog

Tuesday, April 03, 2007

Marvin Gaye sings the National Anthem at the 1983 NBA All-Star Game. Wow.

Thomas Dolby and Stevie Wonder tell the tale.

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21:47 HD

Wednesday, March 14, 2007

Yo La Tengo will take requests and sing cover songs live for $100 pledges to New York's WFMU radio station on Friday night.

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20:55 HD

Saturday, February 24, 2007

Fugazi Live CD Series

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20:53 c-dog

Saturday, February 17, 2007

Lots and lots of rock tattoos. Many of htem cool. Many of them so sad they must be real.

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22:38 bone daddy

Thursday, February 15, 2007

I realize this is late and I'm not really much of a fan, but I'm endlessly amused that the Dixie Chicks won a bunch of Grammies for their song "I'm So Not Apologizing To You Twits."

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11:03 bone daddy

Monday, February 12, 2007

I've put a finetune list together as well. Western Swing, Alt-Country, Honky Tonk type stuff. Looks like I've also migrated us to the new blogger. See how that goes.

I've turned the blogger comments on. They'll be moderated. I set it to me but I'd really rather not do it, I think I'd rather just drop the comments all together, so if another cryptonaut would like to take it over, please feel free.

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21:10 c-dog

Friday, February 09, 2007

I started using finetune, a internet radio/playlist site that lets you set up and then stream music. (To satisfy copyright law, you have to set up a 45 song list with no more than three songs from any one artist and it plays in random order. Also other people can see and listen to it.) They give you an "I'm lazy" button to fill in the rest of your list if you don't have the time to fill up to 45. So it only took me about ten minutes to set up this playlist, filled with that shoe-gazery stuff I occassionally push on unsuspecting visitors. I haven't really tested it out - i.e. played it while working on a bunch of other things or tested "If you like X try Y" tags - but it seems to be a nice alternative to iTunes radio.

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14:21 bone daddy

Monday, December 11, 2006

Is this the way you remember the video for Sonic Youth's Schizophrenia? Maybe Sonic Youth have been around for longer than I thought.

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23:18 bone daddy

Saturday, October 28, 2006

Sonic Youth will release an album of b-sides and rarities, probably the last thing they do for Geffen. I'm curious if they'll land at another major. I'm also curious about the b-sides. I just got finished reading Confusion is Next: the sonic youth story, detailing a lot of their side stuff, and Sonic Nurse continues to jump in my CD player on a regular basis.

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23:52 bone daddy

Sunday, October 08, 2006

Sugarcube
I could've sworn I posted this before, but I don't see where I did ... so apologies if this is a dupe. Great song, hilarious video.


Special bonus: Tom Courtenay.

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14:32 c-dog

Monday, September 25, 2006

What I Like Most About This Review ...
of Yo La Tengo's "I Am Not Afraid of You And I Will Beat Your Ass" isn't that it praises the album, which is praiseworthy if not one that I think would make new listeners love the band, rather it's how huge the picture of the reviewer is in the article.

I imagine this will be fixed, so if you follow the link and it's a normal sized picture, well ... I don't know what to tell you.

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13:24 c-dog

Wednesday, September 20, 2006

A Message to You, Ska Fan
If you're jonesing for some fresh ska-dub-rockin' then you could do far worse than picking up a copy of The Stolen Records "Basement Songs" at CDFreedom.com. If CDFreedom sells out, try CDbaby.com. I don't know if you'll find it anywhere else, it's one of those little indie things not on iTunes ... nor even at Newbury Comics.

RIYL: Hepcat, The Slackers, Weaker Youth Ensemble, Steady Earnest.

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20:47 c-dog