More marathon observations

I picked up my wedding band in the South End last night and thought I'd head over to Copley Square to jump on the Green Line. Of course, since I worked yesterday I forgot about the little road race. But things were getting back to normal by then, with the streets reopening and everything. And though I haven't drunkenly watched the marathon in person in a few years now, two memories immediately surfaced:

As a kid, I remember watching the 6:00 news with their live reports from the route, and seeing all these people still running the thing (the first wave always completes it a little after 2:00). It always makes me a little sad, because these are the people who are not being cheered at Wellesley and not being watched on television… all the parties are over and everyone's either gone home or changed the channel. As if to emphasize this, the roads are now open and these poor runners have to keep to the curb, whereas earlier finishers had the luxury of not needing to be aware of passing traffic or oncoming headlights. And then there are the 11:00 live feeds, with people still going. Oh boy. Anyway, my heart always goes out to them.

And then there are the annoying astronauts. When people finish the race, all these handlers rush out to them to give them water and stuff, and to wrap them in those tinfoil-like blankets. I have no idea what they're for but there must be a scientific body-preserving effect attached. Great. But many runners are determined to wear these the entire rest of the day and night while walking around the city, in a very I-ran-the-marathon-and-you-did-not-because-I-am-hot-shit manner. Sorry, dude, I was busy drinking my ass off and not bleeding out of my nipples. Fight the real enemy!

Pizzeria Uno? Cheesecake Factory? It must be the Boston Marathon!

The wedding is less than two weeks away and Saturday I had to pick up my new suit at the tailor. I brought it in last weekend and he told me to pick it up in a week, and since I was blinded by the quick turnaround I said "Great!" Wish I had consulted a calendar though (a Massachusetts or Maine calendar, that is), in which case I would have said "Great! But I'll come the following Tuesday instead, thanks."

For today is the regional holiday know as Patriot's Day. Otherwise known at my company as an optional holiday (used them up already, rats). Otherwise known in Lexington as Fuck You, Concord, We Started the Revolution Day. What this manufactured holiday has really become, though, is Boston Marathon Day. (Also, Crazy-Early Red Sox Game Day.) It is truly shocking what happens to this city every year for a few days—it gets mobbed almost as badly as New Year's Eve, with Back Bay close to non-navigable.

So that greeted me Saturday. Not only were they setting up the bleachers in front of the library and closing off streets (thankfully I don't live around there anymore), but the mob was out. International mobs too, you can tell by how rude and oblivious they are. Say what you will about Americans, but for the most part we are a friendly and courteous collection of people. We generally take our backpacks off in the subway and walk in single-file on the sidewalk instead of side by side, thereby blocking people who might need to pick up his suit before he starts slugging everyone. Plus (again, for the most part) our sunglasses are not nearly as ridiculous as everyone else's.

Never mind. Visiting Americans and non-Americans alike were flocking to the chain restaurants. The tailor is right above a Pizzeria Uno on Boylston Street, a block from the finish line, and apparently everyone was afraid they'd lose their prime real estate if they ventured farther than that. So yeah, I had to plow through a crowd of people just dying for some deep-dish, or otherwise too lazy to see if this "Boss-tin" has any other restaurants.

And they do… they also have a Cheesecake Factory! After picking up the suit and getting the hell out of there, I went to the Prudential Center mall because I still needed to get shoes for the big day. (No luck. I've determined that my fashion tastes run about a year or two behind, because I was and still am looking for some square-toed shoes. Unfortunately the style now seems to be sissy pointy-toed things. Also, my initial suit idea was for one with four buttons, and several people came just short of laughing in my face. Ah, fat cats.) So after recognizing that Johnston & Murphy and Florsheim are stores that I will never again patronize (not that I ever did, but I had high hopes because they sound like good shoe-brand names) I decided I would rather go home and drink beer (perhaps I could have borrowed one of the dozens of fanny packs I saw that afternoon and stuffed a couple of drinks in there). Of course, the Prudential subway stop is adjacent to the Cheesecake Factory, and there was another lazy mob waiting to eat exactly what they could eat at home. Even though there have to be a hundred restaurants within five blocks of there. Side streets and quaint neighborhoods be damned, I guess.

Now, I understand the safe familiarity of a chain restaurant—wasn't that the idea behind McDonald's in the first place, and didn't that work out alright?—but if I'm visiting San Francisco or Chicago or something I really hope I'm bold enough to look for something with a little more local flavor.

Like Chili's!

This guy here, this is the guy

I'm a big fan of the Fire Joe Morgan blog. What a stiff. But his suckiness honestly doesn't bother me because I never watch a non-Red Sox baseball game and therefore I'm rarely put upon by network broadcasters, only when the Sox are in the playoffs or on national TV (I wanted to set Joe Buck and that cretin Tim McCarver on fire in 2004). So the only way Morgan affects my life is when the FJM guys skewer his abilities, and for that alone I hope he never actually is fired. Or, at least, not until after this internet fad passes.

My real Joe Morgan is Joe Theismann, a.k.a. The Loudmouth Joe Theismann. Needless to say I was pleased with last week's decision to replace him in the Monday Night Football booth, because football is something I do watch even if the Patriots aren't playing. (I don't like Ron Jaworski either, but he's not as reprehensible… yet.) MNF has never been much of a big deal to me: too many commercials, too many celebrity interviews, too much Hank Williams, Jr. And every announcer I've ever liked—Boomer Esiason, Dan Fouts, post-scandal Frank Gifford, even Dennis Miller (the broadcast is a giant variety show anyway, so why not do it right?)—has been pushed out. Unless it's a big game, I'm unlikely to tune in just to spend most of the night yelling at the moronic analysts. Who needs that?

Still, I was intrigued last year when ESPN threw Tony Kornheiser in the booth. I'm a fan of him and Michael Wilbon on Pardon the Interruption but I was skeptical. Turns out they stuck him with a dud (Mike Tirico) and a loudmouth (The Loudmouth Joe Theismann) and he essentially sucked right alongside them. Besides, who honestly tunes in to televised sports based on the announcers? I never once watched a game because some dude was calling it.

Today it's too easy to watch whatever game you want and just mute the TV to avoid the nonsense altogether. If you're lucky you can turn on the radio and listen to those guys (always superior) and sync up the broadcasts. Difficult considering broadcast delays, even with DVRs, but it can be worth the hassle.

It's remarkable how much money and effort networks invest in these bozos, and in the seeming importance of maintaining consistency from season to season—as if I'm going to accidentally throw my hat out the window when Stephen Gostkowski scores three points unless John Madden clarifies that it's called a field goal and not a hat trick. These people have no bearing at all on the game itself (except for those pointless/priceless six-second interviews at the end of the half which succeed only in making the losing coach even angrier). They screw up a lot (one of the benefits of instant replay is hearing these guys make a definitive statement like "Oh, he clearly stepped out of bounds there, Jim", seeing on the replay that the player actually managed to stay in bounds and then listening to the dead air of an unacknowledged mistake). They think we repeatedly care that such-and-such-player's dying parents are in the stands. They think we're just as absent-mindedly taking in the action as they are, when instead we're curious about the specific game-oriented things that they aren't discussing (questioning coaches' decisions, recognizing how much or little respect a defense is giving a particular offensive player, wondering if Marty Schottenheimer was told before the game that someone dunked his headset in a bucket of hepatitis C). And half the time they're openly anticipating the moment when they have to plug Survivor or throw it back to the studio for a highlight. It's all a giant clusterfuck that gets in the way of enjoying a game.

The Sports Guy complains about announcers a lot and his assessments are usually on the mark, so I apologize if I accidentally recycled some of his sentiments. Last week—or at least I read it last week—he had some choice words about Billy Packer doing the college hoops tournament. I can't say one way or the other because I haven't really watched any, and the little I have has been at a bar where I couldn't hear anything (yet I still followed the games… somehow??), but he's probably right. And it's not a coincidence that the worst offenders are usually the ones who have been doing it the longest.

So remember, as you watch the Sox (or whomever) over the new and endless baseball season and as you suffer through Don Orsillo's boot-licking fanboy routine and Jerry Remy's cigarette-hack laughter (or the local equivalent): the mute button is your friend. Just have that instant-replay button handy, too, in case they show an old clip of some Redskins quarterback's knee being destroyed while he hollers out in agony. Because he'll never be more coherent or incisive again.

The year in something or other

What a 2006. Not only am I done with school for the rest of my life but I've finally admitted to myself, wholeheartedly, that attacking Iraq was a bad idea. I'm surrounded in Cambridge by so many knee-jerk liberals and anti-Bushies that I always feel a strong backlash against anything they favor, and for selfish reasons I didn't want them to be right. But they were. (For the right reasons? That's another discussion.)

Soooooo… at least it was a good year for music, right? There were more than five good new songs on popular radio this year… right? No? So it was exactly like every year since about 1993?

I guess that would explain why my what-I've-been-listening-to-this-year playlist is mostly made up of stuff from years past. Decades past, even. So for those interested, here is a mix that fits snugly on an eighty-minute CD. Do you even have a CD burner? A CD player? Maybe next year if I do this again I'll take a larger step backward by filling a ninety-minute cassette.

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1. Black Angels – Black Grease
The first song of theirs I heard, which I thought was some Spacemen 3 thing. FYI, this exact version has appeared on all three of their releases, from what I can tell, and I think that's a little fishy.

2. Edan – Rock and Roll
My lone New Englander. His whole album Beauty and the Beat (!) is a great trip: proper sampling is a lost art as everyone Diddy-tizes everything by lifting entire songs rather than bits and pieces from different ones, but Edan nails it in a Prince-Paul-in-1989 kind of way. Extra points here for sampling the Small Faces' "Ogdens' Nut Gone Flake," which I keep telling A. would make a great introduction song at our wedding reception, followed immediately by "Afterglow (of Your Love)" as the first dance. I will not win this one.

3. Syd Barrett – Octopus
My iPod just loves "Octopus." And it was either this or the Ummagumma version of "A Saucerful of Secrets," so consider yourself blessed.

4. Black Keys – Strange Desire
I wrote enough about these guys already… at least I intended to, until I waited too long to write my concert review and forgot all the show's details. It was hard to pick one song from Magic Potion but I think "Strange Desire" is the most unique of the bunch.

5. Taj Mahal – The Cuckoo
Finally broke down and got The Natch'l Blues and I'm angry at myself for waiting this long. It must have been odd to hear something like this (or the Kinks or the Band, for that matter) in 1968 when everyone was going berserk in the studio. Not that I'm complaining.

6. Elephant's Memory – Mongoose
"In the dark, the cobra waits and his eyes glow red. Like a flash comes the mongoose for the battle head to head. Mongoose! Mongoose! Mongoose! Mongoose!"

7. PJ Harvey – The Life and Death of Mr. Badmouth
Smell of female! Uh Huh Her was a criminally ignored album… by me, after I bought it the week it came out in 2004. Really solid all the way through, more so than I remember after my first couple of listens. I almost went with her cover of Howlin' Wolf's "Wang Dang Doodle" from this year's BBC comp but I was afraid it might seem an unintentional snub of her songwriting genius (seriously though, that songs kicks). Begs the question: why do I file PJ Harvey under P in my CD collection and the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion under J but the Jimi Hendrix Experience under H? I may need to seek therapy.

8. Make-Up – Substance Abuse
A tip of the hat to a recent decision to sell my turntable, since (honestly) flipping records—especially singles—is a real pain in the ass. I've got this single and it's a great one (b/w "Under the Impression" and "Have You Heard the Tapes?") but I also have the band's I Want Some singles compilation on CD… which do you think is easier? (By the way, anybody want to buy a turntable and some records?)

9. Electric Banana (a.k.a. Pretty Things) – It'll Never Be Me
Since the Pretty Things never cut it from a commercial perspective (thankfully, because I'm not sure a commercially successful band would have been given leeway to produce SF Sorrow and Parachute back to back) they masqueraded as Electric Banana to record soundtracks for cheesy sixties flicks in order to earn some bread. Never officially released, a lot of this stuff can stand head to head with the band's proper 1967–69 output. "It'll Never Be Me" is another iPod fave.

10. Julie Ruin – On Language
Kathleen Hanna's precursor to Le Tigre. The Kinks? The Guess Who? Buy this album now.

11. DJ Shadow – Fixed Income
2006: the year I asked "Why don't I own The Private Press?"

Here begins the underrated (and now dead) concept of side two. I know MP3s are making even "track one" a dated concept, but one thing CDs sure did was kill that side-two-track-one magic. It was once a big deal (more cassettes in my experience) to make the effort of flipping that thing over and beginning again. Bands usually rewarded you with one of an album's stronger songs too. Some bands today (Belle & Sebastian comes to mind) explicitly leave extra room "between sides" on their CDs, which is plain foolish. However, the powers that be should really practice this with CDs that first saw the light of day as LPs, where there were two (or four if you were self-indulgent/exceptional) distinct parts of an album. For instance, the CD of Led Zeppelin has no gap between "Dazed and Confused" (last song on side one) and "Your Time Is Gonna Come" (first song on side two). They weren't originally so right on top of each other due to the time it takes to flip a record, and knowing that is a little distracting to me. Enough. On with the show, good health to you…

12. Yo La Tengo – Pass the Hatchet, I Think I'm Goodkind
Either I'm a cheapskate or labels are spot-on in picking which songs to make freely available to me. And since the live Floyd didn't work out, this will fill the role of my excessively long track. That rhythm is implacable! I once led off the second side of a mixtape with Love's "Revelation" so I figure this is a good call. (Also, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass is the grandest of album titles, narrowly beating out Billy Joel's I Am the Death of Rock and Yes's No… No!)

13. Ice Cube – Dead Homiez
From the Kill at Will EP, which is included on the reissue of AmeriKKKa's Most Wanted that I broke down and bought a few months ago (then turned around and flipped the original AMW). People went nuts over "It Was a Good Day" in '92 while I thought it was a mediocre lull on the otherwise-great The Predator, but this song has a higher ratio of really-glad-I'm-not-a-gangbanger moments that add a nice comic element. Damn.

14. Split (a.k.a. George Brigman & Split) – Blowin' Smoke
Stooges-like guitar? Check. Stooges-like vocals (if less urgent)? Check. Stooges-like song title? Check. And on that note, tell me Brigman's solo Jungle Rot LP isn't what a 1975 Stooges album coulda shoulda woulda been. Another nice find courtesy of MIT's WMBR.

15. Dead Meadow – Stacy's Song
From last year's Feathers. Pretty laid back compared to a lot of their earlier crunchy-riff goodness, but it's giving me a pleasant Brian Jonestown Massacre vibe. I also realize I need to bump up the amount of women here—does a backup vocalist count?

16. Rolling Stones – Miss Amanda Jones
I love Between the Buttons. No one ever talks about it, likely because it came between the corner-turning (and gratuitous) Aftermath and the frequently shit-upon (but pretty good) Their Satanic Majesties Request. It's a somewhat shocking album because the band went all three-minute-pop-song on us, including a transparent (and pretty successful) attempt to write a Dylan song ("Who's Been Sleeping Here?"). Funny how "Miss Amanda Jones" previews what the band would be doing five years later with Exile on Main St. Even funnier (well, not funny funnier) considering Brian Jones, the driving force of the band's evolution in '66 and '67 (when BTB was written and recorded), was long gone by then. So this is a little tribute to him.

17. Mudhoney – Blindspots
The triumphant return of Mudhoney… again! We are all better for this band's persistence. "Blindspots" got me pretty excited for their new album Under a Billion Suns but after downloading the rest I determined it was just good (I'll keep trying). Still the song of the year.

18. James Brown – It's a New Day
Without the soul brother, it certainly is. RIP.

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Bonus EP alert! For you can't spell "excessive" without "excess." Or "vice."

19. Six Finger Satellite – Funny Like a Clown
Rhode Island's finest! I've been getting into 6FS again after recently scoring The Pigeon Is the Most Popular Bird (home of this song) on eBay. It's strange that every single one of their albums is out of print because they had a pretty strong college-radio (WZBC and WMBR) following around here. Sad days. At least you can get their final two on iTunes, though I'm guessing iTunes doesn't offer the photo from the Paranormalized insert of a chimpanzee examining a topless dancer with a stethoscope.

20. Can – Mother Sky
Clearly a band I need to research. If I get to know them better I might fall in love.

21. Howlin' Wolf – Moanin' at Midnight
Add it to the list after I picked up His Best last week. It was either that or the Moanin' in the Moonlight/Howlin' Wolf two-fer, and this one has "Three Hundred Pounds of Joy," so what would you do? Here's a guy I've liked awhile but I only reached the buying stage after watching the documentary The Howlin' Wolf Story. I don't know why they don't release that juke-joint set they kept cutting to (the one where a drunken Son House is flailing about)—other than the heavy-handed saxophone it's a marvelous performance.

22. The Brian Jonestown Massacre – Servo
23. Mr. Lif – Phantom
These two are lifted from an exercise in weeding out internet friends early on ("Do you like Ryan Adams?"). It was odd desperation that now reeks of content diarrhea, as if six posts in my first weeks of blogging weren't enough. I'd like to help myself to Cat Power's "Free" and Mountain's "Sittin' on a Rainbow" as well but thirty minutes is already stretching the definition of an EP.

24. Vanilla Fudge – You Keep Me Hangin' On
A couple of months ago I did this Supremes song at a work karaoke party. Once I realized it wasn't working (not ten seconds in) I resorted to recreating the Fudge cover by slowing down the delivery and ad-libbing a bunch of begging/pleading nonsense. Open bar? Indeed! Here's the single version. Sometimes tighter is better and, again, thirty minutes.

So happy new year everyone! You stay classy. I haven't seen Borat yet.

Blacky MacBlackenblack & His Blackest Blackness

If you're tuning in from last month then you know I recently saw the Black Keys and the Black Angels. (I guess Black Mountain and Blackalicious had other black plans.) I'm firmly putting this show in my all-time top five, alongside (in no particular order): Unwound/Blonde Redhead at the Middle East in '98; the Reverend Horton Heat at Avalon in '94; Kiss at Great Woods in '01 (where I cracked up everyone around me with a shouted request for "Love Theme From Kiss"); and the AC/DC cover band Fat Angus at a Somerville dump called Good Times a couple of years ago. AC/DC cover band!

(The funny thing about the Unwound and Rev. shows is that my expectations were low, low, low. I'd seen Unwound about a year earlier and they had a shitload of technical problems, culminating in the amps breaking down one last time and the band becoming fed up and walking off the stage. Vern was a prick but Justin realized it wasn't the crowd's fault, so returned to the mic to tell us "Sorry for all that shit and thanks for sitting through our crappy show…" only the mic stopped working after two syllables—it was like a bad sketch. When they came back to town I might have considered not going, except that Blonde Redhead were opening and I'd been wanting to see them awhile. And let me tell you, Blonde Redhead killed. They were so good I actually felt bad for Unwound having to follow them, especially with the baggage—same club, too. But wouldn't you know it, Unwound blew me away. Just an awesome night. Hard to believe they would emerge as the decade's Yes within two years.)

(Meanwhile, I saw the Rev. on the Liquor in the Front tour. They came out and played the first two songs off that album right in a row without even acknowledging the crowd, and I immediately thought "Pricks!" They warmed up though and put on a good show, having a bunch of fun with us too (including soliciting and accepting shots of Jägermeister from the crowd). It's funny, this was in the days when I was up front at every show and pogoed the whole time—no wonder I was twenty pounds lighter back then—so whenever I hear them now I think of how much I sweat during those two hours.)

Where were we? Black. It's been a month since the show and I'm honestly not remembering it too well. A. came with me though, which was cool because she got into the Black Keys soon after I did (around Thickfreakness). I was afraid she would hate the Black Angels because she's not so much into the feedback/distortion sound (i.e., not at all). But she's a trooper and thought they were decent enough. Truly, though, once "Manipulation" started playing I thought to myself "This is the song she'll walk out during." I wasn't far off.

The band was great but I developed a bias against the female keyboard player. She had what Lee Ranaldo called the I'm-in-a-band look and was doing some sort of swaying/grooving thing throughout. I'm certain it was supposed to look cool and blithe and sexy but it too closely resembled what happens when you're walking along and your knee kind of gives out for a second, except over and over. Other than that it was a great performance, and I was glad for them that it was nearly a full house (either I underestimated how popular they are or I don't give Boston music fans enough credit). Also, I made some remark to A. about how impressed I was with the use of a sitar on the band's newish Passover (good album, great artwork), only there wasn't a single sitar on stage and the music sounded exactly like it did on record. So now I'm the non-musician with an opinion about a non-existent sitar—George Harrison and Brian Jones are not happy. (Hey, at least I wasn't that-guy standing in front of us who bought a Black Keys tee shirt and put it on between sets. As much as I love the entirety of PCU, its greatest contribution to society is the "don't be that guy" sequence where Piven yells at Favreau for wearing a shirt of the band he's going to see.)

I wish I could give some kind of set list of what the Black Keys played, but I just don't remember anymore. I can say they hit everything I wanted to hear, including "I've Grown So Ugly" in the encore. I might have pouted for a week had they not played that. It's a lot of noise for two guys. You wonder how much overdubbing goes on in the studio when a small band makes a big sound, but nothing was lacking in the live show. Dan and Patrick are just really good at what they do.

So here are Dan and Patrick, tearing the place apart, whaling on us. A mercilessly excellent show. Patrick is something to watch on the drums, a big gangly dude who's just flailing his arms and legs, but not in a spastic way. Because of the format has to turn his kit into a lead instrument à la Ginger Baker and I'm all for that. It was hard to take your eyes off him. (I read a recent interview with him where he discussed hip-hop and how much he likes it—aren't the best drummers always hip-hop fans?)

Anyway, it's become apparent to me that I waited too long to write this. But the Black Keys were awesome for the whole ninety minutes, seemed very gracious in front of an adoring crowd (I later learned this was the first show of the tour) and really exceeded our high expectations. Pound for pound, my favorite show in about eight years. And despite the awful album art, Magic Potion is probably my favorite album of the year, which may or may not be saying something because I've bought maybe three 2006 albums. More on that later.

Shame and the electric jug

[As promised, I now return to these lands with more regularity. I've just completed a pretty rigorous graphic design certificate program, which took up a large chunk of the last three years of my life. I can't even tell you how awesome it was to watch Pats games without constantly thinking to myself "OK, I've got to start my homework after the next drive." So, honestly, congratulations to me. I look forward to writing a bunch of new nonsense that matters to no one but my reader and me. Such as this!]

Is it wrong to buy a band's compilation album? I always experience semi-guilt here, not because of the great "go to the mall" scene in High Fidelity but because I feel I'm letting myself down with a lack of commitment.

Example: I recently bought Going Up: The Very Best of the 13th Floor Elevators. Aside from the atrocious title—oh, because of the elevator!—it's a really solid disc. I never could make up my mind whether to get The Psychedelic Sounds of… or Easter Everywhere (the latter of which has to be tied with the Zombies' Odessey and Oracle as the most over-mentioned "influential" album in interviews with up-and-coming shit bands that likely have never heard either). Anyway, this disc does a nice job of picking the best stuff from their three studio albums, plus a B-side and a live track for good measure. My only complaint is the inclusion of the single version (my worst enemy) of "Slip Inside This House," one of my favorite songs. But what are you gonna do, I'll just hang onto the MP3.

I'd say this resignation is a sign of aging and laziness, and maybe a little cheapness. But every now and then I've broken down and decided an artist doesn't have a proper album that's strong enough to buy, so I'm going to buy whatever has the highest ratio of songs I like. Sometimes you just have to suck it up and get the greatest fucking hits.

Shame didn't elude me with the Elevators, just like it didn't when I got The Best of Mountain. Going through my CD collection, here are the other culprits, with defensive arguments where appropriate:

13th Floor Elevators – Going Up: The Very Best of the 13th Floor Elevators
See above. It's a truly solid mix, but I'd swap in "Street Song" for "May the Circle Remain Unbroken."

Aerosmith – Gems
That's right: Aerosmith. Screw you.

Animals – The Story of the Animals
Singles band through and through. This has almost every song you would want from these guys, especially if you have horrible taste and favor the wretched '83 reunion track "The Night." (Seriously though, this two-disc set's a keeper.)

Chet Baker – The Best of Chet Baker Sings
Essentially the album Chet Baker Sings plus a handful of other songs, so I'm not sure it counts.

Beastie Boys – The Sounds of Science
Got this for the rare stuff. Surprisingly good flow considering the time it spans.

David Bowie – The Best of David Bowie 1969–1974
Every time I go to Newbury Comics (the local record store that used to be awesome and undercut everyone else by at least $3 a CD but has since jacked up their prices, stopped including coupons in the Sunday Herald and instead decided to focus on crap like barista action figures and ska calendars) I pick up either The Man Who Sold the World, Hunky Dory, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust & the Spiders From Mars or Aladdin Sane and almost buy it, until I remember they all have at least two throwaway tracks that are just bad enough to keep me from shelling out the dough. Plus, this comp is actually really good. So I got that going for me. Which is nice.

The Brian Jonestown Massacre – Tepid Peppermint Wonderland
I wrote about this already. Kind of a hit-or-miss band, but T-P-Dub pulls together quite a lot of the cream.

James Brown – Classic
James Brown – Motherlode
James Brown – In the Jungle Groove
James Brown – Make It Funky: The Big Payback
The wheels really come off here, but I'm not sure which LP is better than any of these (maybe The Payback). In the Jungle Groove is indispensable.

Johnny Cash – Murder
Excepting the American Recordings releases, wasn't he mostly a singles artist? That's what I'm going with.

John Coltrane – The Best of John Coltrane
This is the first Coltrane CD I ever got, when I was curious about jazz back in college. It's basically five of the "best" songs recorded live in Europe in 1962 and 1963 that ended up on countless Pablo Records albums. I couldn't be happier to have dumb-lucked myself into this instead of a studio collection because it's terrific and, without getting all spacey, it really opened my mind (Elvin Jones is a maniac). I also learned that the Doors ripped off Mongo Santamaría's original "Afro Blue" riff for their own "Universal Mind." Drunken thief. Anyway, I've since gotten a shitload of Coltrane stuff.

Donovan – Greatest Hits
Another mostly-singles artist. Plus the liner notes are the shit, like when he explains how "Led Zeppelin" played on "Hurdy Gurdy Man," which isn't nearly as true as he'd like. (Jones yes, Page maybe, Bonham no).

Go-Go's – Go-Go's Greatest
Who needs more than one CD by this band? Beside me, that is, since I also have the God Bless the Go-Go's reunion album.

Kinks – Greatest Hits
Most of their early singles are on this, predating their album-oriented run that probably began with Something Else by the Kinks. (By the way, I'm sick of this popular belief that The Kink Kontrovery was an immature effort and that the "good Kinks" era began with Face to Face; Face is a good album but, goddammit, so is Kontroversy, despite what these riff-o-phobic pussies prefer.) I love these guys.

MC5 – The Big Bang: The Best of the MC5
This is a good mix, but I'm puzzled by some of the song selections. Love the early singles at the beginning and the selections from the first and last albums (which I have), but why the fuck is Back in the U.S.A. the most heavily represented? Can we all agree that it's sort of an underwhelming mess?

Mountain – The Best of Mountain
No guilt whatsoever here. I would fight anyone who has a problem with Mountain and/or The Best of Mountain. People who don't like "Mississippi Queen" are assholes.

Mudhoney – March to Fuzz
Hey, I'm listening to this right now! Nice to have all the rarities together on the second disc. I will like Mudhoney my entire life.

Nina Simone – Compact Jazz
No real defense here, I'd heard "Feeling Good" and had to get something that included it, but I also wanted "Mood Indigo" and "I Put a Spell on You." Plus the disc ends with ten minutes of "Sinnerman," and as you may or may not have figured out I like pretty much anything longer than seven minutes.

Run-DMC – Greatest Hits
Similar to Bowie, Run-DMC has no great album—just way too much filler. I guess it couldn't be helped when putting out an album a year in the mid-eighties, before sampling got creative enough to stretch things out. Let's face it, though: most Run-DMC songs are exactly the same. Glasses, rock and Jam-Master Jay… that's about all they rapped about.

Temptations – Psychedelic Soul
Almost all their psych shit on two discs. Except for the alternate mix of "Ball of Confusion" (what in the worldwide fuck?), I couldn't be more content. Bonus points for several full-length versions too.

Troggs – The Best of the Troggs
They've got good songs not included here ("The Raver" and "66-5-4-3-2-1" come to mind) but I think this generally represents their best stuff, excepting a lack of Troggs Tapes meltdowns.

Van Halen – Fuckin' Van Halen
I can't even tell you how awesome this homemade mix is. Unfortunately, Van Halen is another one (like Bowie) that sprinkled otherwise strong albums with capital-F filler (though "Sunday Afternoon in the Park" might be one of the best filler tracks ever).

Link Wray – Rumble: The Best of Link Wray
That's right, I first heard of this guy because of Quentin Tarantino. But I'll still take "Rumble," "Jack the Ripper" and "Hidden Charms" any day of the week.

So there it is, every compilation I own. Surprisingly more than I expected but hey, I like them all. Fuck it.

Let the Polamalu suck-off begin!

OK, I meant to write this last week. My bad. I hope it's not too late to throw another knee-jerk NFL preview log on the fire, even with the benefit of 20/20 week-one hindsight.

I'm going to hold myself to one sentence per team here (though beware of cheating with semi-colons and parentheses and stuff). I do this partly to focus on what I really think (rather than going off on tangents and shit), partly because I'll likely recycle a lot of what I've already read and heard (unconsciously or otherwise) and partly because I don't necessarily know much about teams that don't start with N and end in S and have an ewenglandpatriot in the middle. And I won't pick a Super Bowl victor because that should be painfully obvious by the end due to my thorough impartiality.

(Just one remark on the post title: I think Troy Polamalu is a fine player, but if I hear one more analyst or ESPN2 douchebag talk about what a nice guy he is off the field and what an intense competitor he is on the field I will shun the color yellow for the rest of my life. Ed Reed is better anyway.)

I'm doing this pinko-style, straight-up alphabetical order:

Arizona Cardinals
Everyone's calling this the sleeper team, just like everyone did last year, which tells me that everyone is an idiot.

Atlanta Falcons
Ron Mexico is in the house and I won't hate the player, I'll hate the game—because he is too fun to watch.

Baltimore Ravens
If Ray Lewis tackled Steve McNair, would they both end up on injured reserve?

Buffalo Bills
Gave the Pats a good game last week so I'm wondering if they could challenge the Dolphins for second in the AFC East; in fact, I think Willis McGahee could find the real killers.

Carolina Panthers
I thought these guys would coast to the Super Bowl last year, so I have no idea what to make of them; on the other hand, Steve Smith Steve Smith Steve Smith Steve Smith Steve Smith Steve Smith.

Chicago Bears
Everyone's saying "Hey, it was only the Packers," but to do that in Green Bay is still impressive; on a related note, I'll be buying all my furniture in Chicago from now on.

Cincinnati Bengals
If I'm flipping around on a Sunday and the Cincinnati offense is on the field, I'll park it because I don't want to miss the Chad Johnson Experience (I'm not being sarcastic here, I think he's the best).

Cleveland Browns
I can type the name Willie McGinest without sobbing, but just barely.

Dallas Cowboys
I don't know anyone around here who doesn't want Bledsoe to do well; matter of fact, the somehow-still-employed-by-the-Globe Ron Borges wishes he was still our starting quarterback.

Denver Broncos
Fuckers.

Detroit Lions
I don't have anything to say about the Lions, except that Thanksgiving might be my favorite holiday.

Green Bay Packers
Favre right now is as selfish as T.O. has ever been, and I can't believe no one's mentioning it; he said last year that it's not his job to mentor a young quarterback—what a prick.

Houston Texans
Still can't believe the Oilers aren't around; great name, great uniforms, great Bum.

Indianapolis Colts
Hold on a second: this is a team that couldn't win the "Let's win this for coach" game against the Seahawks last year (they were resting their starters, but come on), they lost Edgerrin James, Peyton proves again and again that he has no game management skills in the playoffs… and everyone's picking them to win the Super Bowl?

Jacksonville Jaguars
To paraphrase Flavor Flav: we got three black quarterbacks so step back!

Kansas City Chiefs
I miss that Snickers commercial where the grounds-crew guy accidentally paints Chefs in the Arrowhead end zone, and then mumbles "Great googity boogity."

Miami Dolphins
A few years ago my friends and I traveled to East Lansing for a Michigan State/Penn State football game (long story); Nick Saban was the MSU coach at the time, and the undisputed highlight of the weekend was some guy shouting "You suck, Saban!" from a few seats away—we still make each other laugh with that one.

Minnesota Vikings
I'll avoid the obvious Sex Boat thing and say the decision to put the viking horns down the length of the pant legs was unsound.

New England Patriots
I can't say anything here without sounding like a homer, so I'll just give another reason why Bill Belichick is the coolest: when asked if he cares whether his former assistants are successful as head coaches in the NFL, he responded "I don't sit around and cheer for other teams in the league… I root for the Patriots every Sunday, like a lot of other people around here do."

New Orleans Saints
Not sure if I'm inventing this conspiracy, but I think the NFL made the Texans not draft Reggie Bush so the Saints could, allowing them to reap the financial benefits (merchandising and game attendance) and remain in New Orleans; call me crazy.

New York Giants
Blah blah blah Manning Bowl blah blah blah Jeremy Shockey blah blah blah tough division; all overrated.

New York Jets
I can't think of the Jets (or the Steelers) without thinking of watching their 2005 playoff game at the People's Republic (Cambridge's faux commie bar) and being unable to decide which was worse: the "competition" itself or what passed for a Guinness "pint" (twelve ounces, five dollars).

Oakland Raiders
The Aaron Brooks??

Philadelphia Eagles
The secondary is so strong, they could put as much pressure on opposing offenses as Donovan McNabb's cornrows put on his hairline.

Pittsburgh Steelers
It pains me that this team won the Super Bowl last year; but then I remember the Terrible Towel and what a sissy little gimmick it is, only the team and its entire fanbase don't realize it; and then I think that Carson Daly might have something with this karma thing.

San Diego Chargers
I visited the San Diego Zoo once and took a picture of a rhinoceros standing next to a sign warning about the animal's "spray zone"—the sign had a cartoon rhino spraying urine out of its rear, and for maximum artistic effect I snapped the pic while facing the rhino's ass (luckily managing to not get spray-pissed on); I think there's a Marty Schottenheimer joke in there somewhere.

San Francisco 49ers
I was impressed that Vernon Davis, the tight end the team drafted this year, wasn't afraid to show emotion on national television when he was picked; I was also impressed with his hair, which reminded me of Predator, which is a symbol of American triumph.

Seattle Seahawks
Have fun with Deion Branch, he's a good player and a formerly sensible guy; just hope the Madden curse doesn't come through and shatter Shaun Alexander's kneecaps, therefore costing you a top-ten pick.

St. Louis Rams
The Sports Guy picked the Rams as his sleeper team this year, and since he did the same thing with the Bears last year I'm inclined to believe him; then again, he made one of those celebrity iMixes on iTunes and his taste in music is historically bad; so I don't know what to think.

Tampa Bay Buccaneers
Phil Simms is a terrible TV analyst, but he is a TV analyst, so every uptight sycophant in the media is afraid to say how much his QB son sucks.

Tennessee Titans
I hated that "Tennessee" group Arrested Development and, like with so many shit bands, I refused to bow down to their popularity and associated peer pressure… and I'm a better person today because of it; also at this party are Bon Jovi, the Spin Doctors and the Strokes, with Bloc Party knocking on the front door.

Washington Redskins
I'm no PC thug but it's about time to retire the name Redskins; the team's baseball hats have a cool R they could adopt as a new logo, and they could become something else that starts with R like the Rapscallions or the Republocrats.

Playoff picks
AFC division winners: Indianapolis, New England, Pittsburgh, San Diego
AFC wild-card teams: Jacksonville, Cincinnati
NFC division winners: Chicago, Carolina, Philadelphia, Seattle
NFC wild-card teams: Atlanta, New York
Super Bowl: New England, Chicago

Count it!

Love is...

If I ever hit my head and wonder who is this woman in my bed and why am I marrying her then I should reread this. It's an email she sent me yesterday. (She's an editor at a local publisher.)

Just had to share that in the new book I'm getting, which is a multicultural reader (essays from and about difficult cultures), in the section called "Comparison and Contrast" the authors have included an essay called "Puritans and Parrotheads: A Columnist Compares the Concerts and Fans of Bruce Springstreen and Jimmy Buffett." !!! Shouldn't this be in the "similarities" section ("A Columnist Compares the Fans of Bruce Springsteen and Jimmy Buffett and Concludes That They're Pretty Similar After All: Both Like Crappy Music")?

It should be noted that I once made a mix CD (a mix CD!) for her called No More Springsteen which basically compiled some songs from the sixties and seventies that I will play when I win the lottery and take over WZLX, Boston's sucky classic-rock station. They currently have about twenty songs in rotation and you've heard them all a million times, only the dregs who listen don't care and want to hear "Sweet Home Alabama" again even though they likely own it on five different albums.

I didn't put this one on her CD (she wouldn't have it) but the first song of my WZLX Reign of What-Took-Us-So-Long will be "Sister Ray." That should sift away the dead weight. Song number two? "Sister Ray," the live bootleg version! Shit yeah!

WEEI must be stopped

Ladies and gentlemen, your 2004 world champion Boston Red Sox!

Just wanted to remind everyone of that. Remember then? Glorious times. And it wasn't even two years ago. Aren't we still in a kind of grace period for a spell? I guess not, because this city and region are acting like it's 2000 all over again—it's become impossible to take. Sometimes I think I'm the only sane man around.

I mean, is it a real surprise that this team isn't going to win the World Series this year? Granted, the fact that the Yankees are doing so well—they are clearly the team to beat—isn't helping with the local psyche. But starting pretty early this season (somewhat out of necessity, yes, but also out of a desire for long-term success), Theo said "These young guys are going to have to play sooner or later, and we might as well get it out of the way at the same time. And don't think I won't Lucchino-tize anyone who utters 'rebuilding year' to the media."

Overall, the Sox are below sea level against everyone except the National League and the Orioles. That is amazing. And this is supposed to be a team that deserves high expectations? Not to go all 20/20 hindsight here, but I did understand before the season started that this would be the first year of the youth movement, and I mean ever because I can't remember the team even once saying "Screw it, this is a lost year so let's start over."

(I'd also like to take credit for the George-Clooney-haircut craze from way back, because I had him beat by three years. In 1993 I saw the Butthole Surfers in Gardner at the PA Beach Club (né the Polish-American Citizens Club, renamed as if Kendall Pond were a season-long family destination; similarly, the band was abbreviated as "BH Surfers" on the ticket in a world of prudish acronyms gone mad). It drizzled all day and my hair eventually matted forward, prompting a friend to remark how cool it looked and paving the way for an international phenomenon. When Clooney and From Dusk Till Dawn stole my thunder three years later, anyone who said to me "You have George Clooney's haircut!" had to listen to a ten-minute tirade about how he really had mine.)

The Beckett deal really sold me on this rebuilding thing, even if he has been struggling (despite last night's strong showing against a good Angels team). In the past the team would have traded for Greg Maddux or Kenny Rogers or some other quick fix on a career downslope who, when it was all said and done, didn't really help (see Frank Viola and David Cone). And as haphazard (being nice here) as the young bullpen has been, did we really want to ship them out to bring in some journeyman third starter or reliever who would ultimately bring nothing to the table (Larry Anderson)? People are expecting the Nomar-level deal every July now, but the stars aligned just right for that one—let's not get greedy. (Contrasting this, Abreu is a great move for the Yankees. No good pitching available, so why not bring in a solid outfielder with a good OBP and score some more runs? He wouldn't have fit into the Sox line-up as successfully because he'd be asked to carry too much in what has become a wildly inconsistent offense, and we would have had to give up a lot. Consequently, if Pluto gets pissed off because it's no longer a planet and spins wildly out of its orbit, taking the Yankees team plan down with it, New York is done because they have no farm system—no one—they can promote. Steinbrenner would be better off buying the Brewers.)

Anyway, what it comes down to is this: the Yankees are probably going to win the world series, and THAT is what has everyone so worked up. If they were out of the picture and the Sox were doing this poorly then I guarantee it wouldn't be as big a deal. But you know what? We can still watch Manny and Papi on a daily basis, and will be able to for the next couple of years. Beckett will probably turn things around in the off-season, and once Lester and Papelbon mature we're going to have some exciting, long-term pitching for the first time in my twenty years of following the team. Also, we get to root for a team that is almost always competitive, encapsulated by a soul-crushing game seven loss in 2003 and then the transcendent victories in 2004. We're stuck with a winner here, and fans of few other teams can say that. (Yes, I do think this team will be back, probably starting next year. And yes, it will be good for everyone involved if they miss the playoffs this year so we can all cool out for six months.)

Lastly, we should just be happy that Captain Brady & His Patriot Men are back in our lives—now there is a team to get passionate about, counting competitors (Colts, Steelers) with whom we can have healthy rivalries, instead of the collective self-loathing the Yankees inspire in many mouth-breathing "Sox fans." Go Pats!

Between light and delete

In January, just in time for the Super Bowl (which sucked—and not only because those no-talent hacks who call themselves the Steelers won it), A. and I broke down and got a DVR box. I find DVR to be one of those technological developments that is impossible to recover from, like evolving from dial-up internet to broadband: there is no going back. Our timing was good because my VCR has been dying a slow death for about two years now, to the point where every now and then it would make a loud snapping sound out of nowhere, despite being switched off and empty. It was the right move.

I kind of fought it for a while, because I suspected it would ruin my life. And it has a bit. As I wrote a while ago, I have a tough time dealing with our Netflix queue and knowing we have so many rentals to plow through, and now I have to deal with all the shit we record on a near-daily basis. If anything sounds even remotely interesting it's going to get recorded (for instance, it was Red Dawn a few weeks ago; I was in middle school when that came out and we all thought it was awesome, because we knew those commies were bad—even if we didn't know why; and it turns out, of course, that twenty-plus years later it is a dreadful, dreadful movie on every level). The best part is the display that tells you how much of the hard drive is full—I become obsessed with idle passions that involve getting under a certain number by the end of such-and-such weekend. These are serious goals I set for myself. (I'll lighten up every now and then, though, like when we're at sixty-nine percent. I laugh and laugh.)

We're big on the "series recording" feature too. This only adds to the pile, and drives up our damned percentage. A. and I get into little contests too, like who can get through all of his or her shows first. A typical example of this is pitting my reruns of The Twilight Zone against her frequently aired What Not to Wear. We're so cute.

I have gotten into The Twilight Zone though, for real. I watched it for the first time a few years ago, probably on a July 4 weekend because the Sci-Fi Channel always runs a marathon then (not sure why). I think it was "Back There," still one of my favorites, where Russell "And the Rest" Johnson travels back in time and tries to prevent the Lincoln assassination. Just a great story-telling show. I'd become curious about it mostly because of The Simpsons, which frequently spoofs some of the better-known episodes, though I had always written it off as for nerds only. On the contrary, I was hooked immediately. Or not contrarily, and I'm a nerd too. (This is eerily similar to my eventual embrace of the Beatles: an ill-informed opinion of what they really were—i.e., Paul McCartney's worst—followed by randomly hearing "It's All Too Much" and instantly understanding what all the hype was about.)

So thankfully I no longer need to throw an eight-hour cassette into the VCR every July 4 and be happy with whatever episodes they're running. Now I watch what I want and then hit the delete button as fast as I can. Progress!