Music Blog

The last few days have been spent deliberating my career. On Thursday night, Rebecca gave me “Janet Jackson - Live in Hawaii.” Now, everyone knows how much I love my Janet. The concert is friggin’ awesome. Janet is amazing. I like her music even more now.

While I do agree that Jessica Simpson’s latest video is racy and in the same vein as the Paris Hilton hamburger commercial, I don’t see why Christians would be any more upset with her than with Paris.

Britney Spears: Get real man! She’ll only want to go out with guys with convertible!
True-Gossiper: You think so? I mean, I won’t stand a chance at all?

Hey, hey we're the Monkees! I'm on an oldies kick, listening to the Monkees, the Mamas and Papas, Bob Dylan, Three Dog Night, etc. I guess I finally turned into my dad, because I think the old stuff is better than the new stuff, at least what would/could be called pop. The Monkees ARE BETTER than Britney Spears. There is good stuff today; Green Day, Nine Inch Nails, Foo Fighters, Mindless Self Indulgence, Modest Mouse. I'm no music critic, but I know what I hate, and I don't hate that stuff.

So last week there was the TechEd Party. And the Scissor Sisters played there...And after the show I had to get the album. And there it is. Ordered on Thursday. Arrived at Saturday....

Hey, I’m soooo generous, I’ve decided to give out free ‘butt genes’ to anyone in need. Forget botox, or what that crazy humongous-yet-oddly-protruding-butted Jennifer Lopez did to hers!

Hilary Duff’s new commercial for Candies & Kohl’s which features Hilary’s new single “Wake Up” has been put up on the Candies website. You can check it out here

La próxima vez que alguno de tus amigos se queje porque aparece poco favorecido en la última foto que le sacaste, tránquilo, cuenta hasta 10 y trágate eso de “de donde no hay no se puede sacar”. Invítale amablemente a visitar el site de Glen C. Feron, un profesional del retoque fotográfico, y dile que le pida presupuesto. Glen no tiene nada que ver con esos aprendices que veíamos el otro día (que se dedicaban a desfigurar a inocentes niñas). Glen es un maestro del Photoshop, y cuenta en su cartera de clientes con rostros tan famosos como los de Beyonce Knowles (Destiny’s Child), Usher, Alicia Keys, Tyra Banks, Halle Berry (Catwoman), y un corto pero adinerado etcétera. En su web podemos ver el antes y el después de sus trabajos, casi de bisturí, y ciertamente muchas de esas estrellas decepcionan bastante al natural: celulitis por todas partes, carnes flácidas, pechos caidos y de diferente tamaño, estrías y arrugas pronunciadícimas… en definitiva, humanos.

In the rush to laugh off the albums of such “now I’m an actress now I make crappy dance music” notables as Linsday Lohan and J.Lo (yeah, Lohan can’t act and Lopez hasn’t done anything worth watching since Out of Sight, but you get the picture), it can be easy to forget that it’s been happening forever. In that vein I proudly bring you the absurdly manufactured can’t-enjoy-it-even-in-an-ironic-way pop stylings of Lisa Whelchel (you will remember her as Blair from The Facts of Life.)

Also, if you missed Live 8 (like me), you can see all the performances here. I was surprised at some of the bands that played..like A-HA… there’s a trip down memory lane right there. Green Day completely rocked, of course. And Rachel got to fulfill her desire for really old guys by watching Bruce Cockburn (pronounced COCK BURN) play in Canada.

Right now I'm watching Ringo Starr being interviewd by Craig. While I like a lot of rock and roll bands, I still think the Beatles were the best and the most influential.

While I’m on this jaunt, I also want to mention that a singer is not always a dancer. How can you tell? When a singer moves their arms and not their feet, they are not dancing! The worst offender of the singer/dancer combo is Britney Spears. Here’s how you can judge for yourself if she is a dancer or not. Watch her in a concert performance. She might move her feet a little bit but those AROUND her do the dancing to trick you into thinking she is dancing, too. Britney just moves her arms around.

A few singer/dancers who earned that title the hard way are Prince, Janet Jackson, *NSYNC, Madonna and Sammy Davis, Jr.

I'm an all time fan of LP(Somewhere I Belong and With you and Numb and Session and Pushing me Away), Maiden( FEAR OF THE DARK, DREAM OF MIRRORS, BRAVE NEW WORLD, BLOOD BROTHERS, HALLOWED BE THY NAME) , Evanescence(Going Under, Everybody's Fool, Bring me to Life, My Immortal), U2(elevation and vertigo), Hoobastank( The Reason and Disappear), Metallica(Unforgiven I and II along with For whom the Bell Tolls), Maroon 5(She will be loved, Harder to Breathe) and the Rasmus(In the Shadows, Still Standing, The one I love) and the Beatles(Every song available).

I went to Chicago over the 4th for a friends wedding, which was a blast. He lives in the heart of Chicago, on the 52nd floor overlooking the entire city. I would post pictures, but I didn't have my digital camera and I'm waiting to get the pictures sent to me by those that did have cameras. I will say this much, one picture might be of me proving that I've got mojo by doing an impression of Beyonce's boodie shakin on stage with a large black woman that was singing at Chicago Blues. I was called out, and after seeing the guy before get ridiculed for refusing to show his mojo, I figured a little on stage boodie shakin was in order.

GREEN DAY IS A VERY COOL PUNK BAND THERE NEWIST CD IS AMERICAN IDIOT THERE A REALLY FUN BAND AND IF U DONT LIKE THEM I THINK UR AN IDIOT

Heaven help us. Or, rather, heaven help the poor little babies. The New York Daily News is reporting that Britney Spears is carrying twins.

On another note… I think that Comfortably Numb is a cool song… the Scissor Sisters version anyway.

The show kicked off with a set from Nic Armstrong and the Thieves. I liked what I heard but it was wasted on the crowd. The poor bastards didn't even have any lights. Come on. How was anyone on the lawn supposed to see them? The one thing about these guys is that Nic Armstrong sounds so much like John Lennon from early period Beatles it is spooky. I guess that's not necessarily a bad thing. I'm sure they would sound fantastic in a bar setting.

So I went to the salon today and asked for Ashlee Simpson's hairstyle. I am not a fan of Ashlee Simpson or her music, but her hair is the best thing going right now as far as I'm concerned. The hair cut turned out well... I'm happy with it.

Friday nearly killed me without having to do Music, it's still 6 hours of exams that I had to do. But it was better than I had dreaded, and Music Technology on Saturday was perfect. One of the highlights with that was I had to write an essay on Take Your Mother Out by the Scissor Sisters. I'm quietly confident about that, but hell, anything could happen, so I won't say how much I kick ass yet.

The Jessica Simpson thread started, literally, months ago, since she was in town filming an American classic, The Dukes of Hazard. Yes, right here in Baton Rouge. She went to many of my haunts, like Phil's and Walk-Ons. She was in the news. People were talking about her. More recently, though, my wife and I had gone to see Mr. and Mrs. Smith, and one of the trailers was for the Dukes. My wife told me that we would have to go see it, if not for its cinematic value, then to see if we could recognize the sights and faces of Baton Rouge. The second part of this recent thread happened night before last. My wife was surfing the channels and saw that Jessica and Nick had a special. I explained to wife who they were, and so we watched another show. Yesterday, a co-worker of mine said that he had watched the Jessica and Nick special, because he was unsure of what she sang or what it was she did. He commented that she sang okay, but her dancing evoked Elaine's dance from Seinfeld.

The real place to be today was in front of your computer. AOL’s Live 8 Music Channel provided complete live broadcasts from 6 different venues: Paris, London, Berlin, Toronto, Philadelphia, and Rome. And as the live shows came to an end, AOL immediately began rebroadcasting each in its entirety. This means that I’ll probably spend much of the remaining holiday weekend catching up on the many artists I missed out on completely, like a-ha, Brian Wilson, Crosby Stills & Nash, Scissor Sisters, Travis, Duran Duran, The Bachman Cummings Band (aka The Guess Who), and Jet. Because of MTV’s heavily edited broadcast, I’ll also be re-watching many of the acts whose performances I was only allowed to see a small portion of, such as Green Day (one of the day’s standout performances, based on the two songs I did see), Coldplay, Joss Stone, Keane (their phenomenal set should have made them huge U.S. stars — and it would have, if MTV hadn’t cut it down to about 30 seconds), The Killers, R.E.M., U2, The Who, and The Dave Matthews Band.

The Beatles are a group which, with the possible exception of Bob Dylan (and maybe Bob Marley), have the largest following in inverse proportion to how much they deserve it.

Jessica Simpson says that despite the rumors, she didn’t misbehave while filming the movie The Dukes of Hazzard. She tells GQ magazine that she was amused by reports she was having an on-set affair with co-star Johnny Knoxville:"Oh, we both laughed about that. I really adore Johnny Knoxville, I think he’s great. If people wanna make that romantic, they can. But I’m married, and my husband is my romance."

As for highlights, I have to admit there were quite a few. The first act of the day in London - U2 and Paul McCartney doing the Beatles’ “Seargent Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” - U2’s part was excellent, as always, Coldplay and Richard Ashcroft doing The Verve’s “Bittersweet Symphony”, the amazing set of - and amazing reception to - Gordon Lightfoot, Green Day playing Queen’s “We are the Champions”, and of course, the Pink Floyd reunion set.

-If you don’t know yet, its U2’s world and the rest of us are just living in it. Sorry P. Diddy, 50 Cent, Beyonce, Jay-Z, you don’t have the bling or the rap to even get on the same stage as the boys from Dublin. Hell, Bono could probably buy all four of your record catalogues with his pocket change.

Anyhow, when Coldplay finished we had a sudden rush of something (not blood, perhaps enthusiasm?) to the head of our own, and a load of us piled up to Lost Vagueness, grinning and laughing. Can't really remember much else about the night, although we did get chatting to two girls in the queue for the toilet and find they were from our old home town. And we caught Bobby Friction, but missed the Scissor Sisters' secret DJ set. The next thing I remember is going in search of friends to lend us money at 5am, having given up on the queue for the cash machine near Pennards. Still, the photo of me and Troy at 1am is probably worth a thousand words.

Damn the last few days have been rediculous. I drove around forever. But had a ton of fun. Visited Ken Mike and Co in Cape May, crashed their senior week. Then saw Ted Leo & The Pharmacists. Ted Leo’s really cool, and his music is great. And Radio 4 takes it for best opener. Although the concert just wasn’t as crazy as, say, Green Day or Jimmy Eat World. But still a blast. Now I’m enjoying a day off. Oh, and for Jeff…

His eighth and final Grammy came for best R&B performance by a duo — the remake of “The Closer I Get to You,” sung with Beyonce Knowles.

I will only listen to The Beatles for an entire month….it’s going to be great.