When I Was 16

...this was what I wanted to be when I grew up. Complete with the "1" at the bottom of my Les Paul. Or for me, maybe an "8". I'd probably wrench my arm if I tried to windmill like that...
Posted by Mitch on October 31, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Weekend Earworm

Earworm, from the German ohrwurm, is the "technical" term for "those songs that drill themselves into your head for hours or days or weeks, and you can't stop thinking/humming them". I get 'em all the time. In 1991, I hummed...
Posted by Mitch on October 30, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (2) | TrackBack

People Say...

...that I march to the beat of a different drummer. It may be true. My drummer is... ...Keith Moon. That is all....
Posted by Mitch on October 27, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (4) | TrackBack

Cheap, Inscrutable, Fun

The last time I saw this vid, it was 4AM on a lonely Sunday morning watching "Night Trax" on WTBS, in probably 1984. I still don't know what it means, but I still love it....
Posted by Mitch on October 19, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (10) | TrackBack

Illusions Shattered

Two simple facts on background:The first music video I ever saw was in the fall of 1979, on some late-night TV show ("Late Night Video" or some such imaginative title, if memory serves, hosted by some guy on some Max...
Posted by Mitch on October 15, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (7) | TrackBack

The Mystery and the Downside of Its' Solving

I play guitar. It's still my best, and favorite, instrument. So much of this post will make sense only to guitar players. I learned to play entirely by ear. In ninth grade, I'd put my guitar on the floor next...
Posted by Mitch on October 12, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (13) | TrackBack

Men Without Women

YouTube has justified its existence. I have three favorite albums of the rock and roll era; Springsteen's Darkness On The Edge Of Town, The Who's Who's Next... ...and one you've never heard of; Little Steven and the Disciples of Soul's...
Posted by Mitch on September 27, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (4) | TrackBack

One Of The Great Injustices...

Is that the Cranberries succeeded vastly beyond their meager talent... ...while In Tua Nua languished in obscurity....
Posted by Mitch on September 22, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (5) | TrackBack

Electric Landlady

One of music's great injustices is that Kirsty MacColl - a British singer best known in the US for writing Tracy Ullman's one hit and helping introduce the Pogues to America - was a wonderful singer and a great songwriter....
Posted by Mitch on September 11, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (3) | TrackBack

More Music Is Better

Atomizer saw my Big Country and Pretenders opens, and raised me with Big Black. I raise him Throbbing Gristle. Throbbing Gristle. Where can I go from here? Where, oh where?...
Posted by Mitch on August 20, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (1) | TrackBack

We Got To Write The Powers That Be

I am the Northern Alliance's Minister of Funk. Damnation by faint praise, perhaps - but as far as I know I'm among very few christian conservative republicans that has ever worked as a rap DJ. In my day, I was...
Posted by Mitch on August 18, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (3) | TrackBack

Stop Snivelling

I didn't even know this song had ever been on video. (Below the fold)...
Posted by Mitch on August 17, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (1) | TrackBack

The Best Music To...

I got this one from Red, natch....
Posted by Mitch on August 03, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (3) | TrackBack

Music Review

I loved Tapes 'n Tapes the first time I heard them... ...when there were called Something Fierce....
Posted by Mitch on August 02, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (3) | TrackBack

End of an Era

Adios, Viking Bar:"The smoking ban did us in," said Mike Nelson, whose family has owned the bar for all of its 47 years...The Viking had endured a rough reputation over the decades because of occasionally violent incidents, including the stabbing...
Posted by Mitch on August 01, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Things I Think When I'm Bored

Rock and Roll started 52 years ago. So - the half-life of the rock and roll era was 1980. Everything released before 1980 was released in the first half of the era. Which means that everything from "Hound Dog" through...
Posted by Mitch on July 14, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (6) | TrackBack

All Right

Wow. I remember watchin this when it was first on; Cheap Trick doing "Surrender". Sometimes it's hard to explain to my kids that funny, ironic power-pop did not begin with "All-American Rejects". And that's Ted Nugent doing the intro, back...
Posted by Mitch on July 11, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (4) | TrackBack

Tonight My Baby And Me Are Gonna Ride To The Sea

It was 28 years ago today that Darkness on the Edge of Town came out. For the past 25 or so years, it's been my favorite album of all time....
Posted by Mitch on June 02, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (13) | TrackBack

YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

Elder linked to a work of staggering genius by John J. Miller - the 50 Greatest Conservative Rock Songs of all time. #1 on the list, naturally, is the Who's "Won't Get Fooled Again" - which happens to be among...
Posted by Mitch on May 30, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (19) | TrackBack

Peggy Lee

My hometown, Jamestown ND, spawned a number of famous poeple - Western writer Louis L'Amour, disc jockey Shadoe Stevens (older brother of the guy who got me into radio, as it happens), California Angels center fielder Darren Erstad... ...and Peggy...
Posted by Mitch on May 27, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Return Of The Blues (Saloon)?

In the eighties and early nineties, the Blues Saloon gave malevolent dives a good name. The saloon - a grungy open room that felt like a converted barn, above a pizzeria at the corner of Thomas and Western, deep in...
Posted by Mitch on May 24, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (4) | TrackBack

No Cigar

(Note: This post was originally from yesterday. But it's fun, and I've added an update, so I'm bumping it to today). We all remember the great albums of all time - music that you associate with great moments in your...
Posted by Mitch on May 19, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (61) | TrackBack

Hey, Ho, Let's Go

I checked out Rock and Roll High School at the video store the other day. The lure of perhaps the dumbest fun movie - or the dumbest fun movie - of all time (not to mention P.J. Soles) won out,...
Posted by Mitch on May 16, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Found Again

I didn't even know there was a video for this song - "Sweet Sweet Baby" by Lone Justice, distinguished by being the best workout song ever written. No, seriously - once the background singers kick in? Put it this way...
Posted by Mitch on March 28, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (3) | TrackBack

The Power Fights Back

Hah!...
Posted by Mitch on March 21, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (1) | TrackBack

The Wonder of the One Hit Wonder

Premise; I love one-hit wonders and obscure music. Some of my favorite music of all time is stuff that crossed the ether to me on some lonely drive across the prairie on some lovesick night back in 1982; a ghostly,...
Posted by Mitch on March 06, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (6) | TrackBack

Found Music

Congrats on the new IPod, Sheila! As one of your commenters noted, it'd be just wrong to indulge in coveting during the holy season. One of your other commenters brought up a bit of deja vu, with a remark about...
Posted by Mitch on March 03, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (3) | TrackBack

Bits and Pieces

Leonard Cohen has always been one of those artists that I noddingly enjoy - but not to the point where I've developed a lifelong obsession. Still, reading his biography, I was fascinated by this bit here:War is an enduring theme...
Posted by Mitch on February 28, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (3) | TrackBack

Flaming Ember

One of my favorite one-hit wonders has always been "Westbound Number Nine" by classic white soul group "The Flaming Ember", an 1971 one-shot that I just love. I've been hearing that song for, oh, 25 years now. And I've never...
Posted by Mitch on February 25, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (9) | TrackBack

Kanye 3:16: "The Career Bell Curve That Goes Up, Eventually Comes Down"

Yanking Christians' chains must be good business. Rapper Kanye West says he should be a character in a revised Bible.Cocky rap star KANYE WEST is calling for a revised edition of THE BIBLE, because he thinks he should be a...
Posted by Mitch on February 10, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (8) | TrackBack

Out In The Street

I did a little busking here and there; over in Europe, I'd play guitar on the street (in Basel and Koln) for beer money, and in Minneapolis, back in the eighties, for grocery money. On night, my drummer, his brother...
Posted by Mitch on February 07, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (9) | TrackBack

Happy Birthday, Danny Federici!

The electric guitar in the hands of anyone who can turn an amp to 10 and play a power chord is ideal for communicating raw power; in the hands of better players, it can be much more nuanced, of course....
Posted by Mitch on January 23, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (9) | TrackBack

Sam Alito, Laura Ingraham and Me

Another reason the three of us are so freakin' cool:His music tastes tend toward Beethoven and Bruce Springsteen but "I force him to listen to Scarlatti and Bach," Mrs. Alito said in a Washington Post interview published Monday. He once...
Posted by Mitch on January 09, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (40) | TrackBack

Twenty-Five Years Ago Today...

Rachel Irene from My Opera Life (as far as I know the only blog about opera in the MOB, at least until JB Doubtless decides to clue us in on his hidden life) wrote about Händel's Messiah the other day......
Posted by Mitch on December 19, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Moment of Agreement

Oddly, for a couple of rock-ribbed conservatives, JB Doubtless (of Fraters Libertas and occasionally Nihilist) and I disagree about a thing or two. Especially where it comes to music and pop culture in general. I aspire to the cultural omnipathy...
Posted by Mitch on December 16, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (6) | TrackBack

As Much...

...as I have always detested nineties British grunge band Bush and their singer/bassist Gavin Rossdale, there are days when "Glycerine" is the perfect song. Those days invariably involve sitting in an endless traffic jam in howling wind and whipping snow....
Posted by Mitch on November 29, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (5) | TrackBack

Proud To Be An American

My Northern Alliance colleague JB Doubtless, in quoting a song by country/pop duo Big and Rich, says that conservatives should be listening to Country/Western music. Well, what would I know - I only worked at three c&w stations over the...
Posted by Mitch on November 19, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (26) | TrackBack

100 Essential Country Songs

JB Doubtless (a freelance blogger who writes occasionally for Fraters and Nihilist) and I have been in an ongoing debate about music. Sort of. Anyway, I was driving around last night and I caught a show on MPR - didn't...
Posted by Mitch on October 03, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (11) | TrackBack

Bagpipes Save The Day

A nurse tries to figure out how to help an Alzheimers' patient:The new nurse in the Alzheimer's unit noticed a striking picture on the wall of one patient's room. It was a black-and-white photo of him in England during World...
Posted by Mitch on September 28, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (6) | TrackBack

My Happy Place

Willie's American Guitars - on Cleveland Avenue in Saint Paul is one of the coolest places on earth:A slender, soft-spoken man who sports a small triangle of beard below his lower lip, Westgor, 47, is a former guitar player and...
Posted by Mitch on September 28, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (9) | TrackBack

Bruce at 56

Sheila O'Malley, as so often happens, sums up what I really mean to say:It's funny when an artist somehow - explains your own life to you - at different stages of your life ... Like, you grow along with the...
Posted by Mitch on September 23, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (31) | TrackBack

Bruuuuuuuce!

It's Bruce Springsteen's 56th birthday today. I'm going to write more later today - but Red went and exhumed some of the stuff I already wrote (wow - did I write that? Thanks Sheila!). That'll hold ya for a while....
Posted by Mitch on September 23, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (7) | TrackBack

Green Parent

Karl Rove loves punk rock. No, really. It's why I, a conservative nonpareil, am allowed to love an album like Green Day's American Idiot. It's a great record. Oh, sure, it bashes Bush and Republicans, you say. But I look...
Posted by Mitch on September 16, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (15) | TrackBack

Last-Minute Frenzy

Posting will probably be light-ish today; I have a bunch of last-minute work to do before I start a new gig on Monday. Upside: Not only is it a new gig, but it is by all appearances a pretty cool...
Posted by Mitch on September 09, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (4) | TrackBack

I'll Call You

Among the conversations with Lileks the other night at the MOB party - a revelation about Blondie's "Call Me":Blondie killed New Wave. It started with “Heart of Glass,” which sounded fresh and new-wavey when it debuted, but now sounds like...
Posted by Mitch on September 06, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (4) | TrackBack

Tramps Like Us

Bruce Springsteen released Born To Run thirty years ago today. Thirty years. The album is twice as old as I was when I first heard it. Amazing. I hear the album today, and it's still just as fresh as it...
Posted by Mitch on September 01, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (32) | TrackBack

Unclear On The Concept

King Banaian takes the music meme from Monday and... ...cheats. He went and found some list of much cooler music from George Harrison only knows where. C'mon, King - the whole fun of the meme was to pick through the...
Posted by Mitch on August 31, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Music in '81

I caught this meme on Red's site - rate the music of the year you graduated from high school. Red, I'm sure, has no idea how lucky she was she graduated from high school in 1985 (the year I got...
Posted by Mitch on August 29, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (8) | TrackBack

Best Music Review Ever

Lileks:It contains two near-fatal doses of Joan Baez, each of which contain such concentrated hippieness you could soak it in vat of Curtis LeMay’s urine and it would never dissolve.I'm still wondering if "Curtis LeMay's Urine" is a wacky enough...
Posted by Mitch on August 25, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (3) | TrackBack

I Smell Racket

Why is it... No. Let me start over and put the proper emphasis in place. Why in the freaking friggin' fecking freak does "An Everlasting Love by Natalie Cole not only have to be in the theatre and TV trailers...
Posted by Mitch on August 05, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (3) | TrackBack

The Only Thing Wrong...

...with with this idea is that I didn't think of it first. Well, except for the dress bit....
Posted by Mitch on July 25, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Injustice

So when people do revivals of eighties music, we get all sorts of Flock of Seagulls and Kajagoogoo and Pat Benatar... ...but when was the last time you heard Welcome To The Boomtown" on your eighties' station? I swear, some...
Posted by Mitch on July 24, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Horslips

So if someone were to ask you "Who was the first successful Celtic Rock band", who would you answer? You might ask that the quizmaster please "Define Celtic-Rock" and "Define Successful". If the quizmaster says "They mine a deeply Celtic...
Posted by Mitch on July 01, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (12) | TrackBack

Best Rhythm Part

OK, since we had so much fun yesterday with solos, let's go esoteric. Steve Gigl prompts the question - what is the best "riff" in rock history? Not a solo - but a signature rhythm guitar part. The classic definition...
Posted by Mitch on June 29, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (38) | TrackBack

The Perfect Solo

I started thinking about this earlier: What are examples of the perfect guitar solo? By perfect, I don't necessarily mean "blisteringly fast"; I'm talking less about blazing displays of technique than about solos that are the perfect emotional and stylistic...
Posted by Mitch on June 28, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (54) | TrackBack

At Any Other Time...

Powerline informs us that there's a great opportunity for some enterprising blogger to live-blog Bob Geldof's Live8 festivities next week in Edinburgh, Scotland. The devil, of course, is in the details - you have to be able to be away...
Posted by Mitch on June 27, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (8) | TrackBack

RIP Karl Mueller

Karl Mueller, bass player for Soul Asylum, died yesterday of cancer at (gulp) 41. The Strib article is a long chain of names from my twenties. My old band (actually a couple of bands) used to practice in a basement...
Posted by Mitch on June 18, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (6) | TrackBack

There Was A Time...

Julianne Shepherd of the City Pages has written a prose ode to watching the sun rising over the Atlantic from a beach on the Barrier Islands, the morning after she found she'd recovered fully from advanced cancer.Sleater-Kinney's 2002 album, One...
Posted by Mitch on June 16, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (4) | TrackBack

Noted in Passing

At the end of Sheila O'Malley's unauthorized biography of Dave Grohl, someone left a comment that prompted me to think... ...It's true. It's been years since I've listened to "Don't Fear the Reaper" by Blue Oyster Cult and noticed anything...
Posted by Mitch on June 01, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (3) | TrackBack

Kid in Candy Store

I was at Cheapo Records last night, and saw that they have the entire Stiff Little Fingers catalogue, remastered and with a slew of bonus cuts. I could blow a hundred bucks in less time than it's taking to write...
Posted by Mitch on April 26, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (3) | TrackBack

Infinite Degrees of Separation

Ever wish you could hold forth on the connections between bands like Jack Black and John Cusack in Hi Fidelity? Well, I do anyway. BandToBand.com : Hot Rockin! is amazing. Click any two artists, and the system shows you the...
Posted by Mitch on March 17, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (4) | TrackBack

Give Up A Little Bit

"Give A Little Bit" by Supertramp was one of the songs from seventh grade that I liked. At the time, I liked it a lot. It came out in the first thirty seconds of Supertramp's fifteen minutes of fame, long...
Posted by Mitch on February 24, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Current Impressions

So I spent most of the weekend listening to 89.3 The Current. Upside: It sounds like listening to someone else's IPod. Downside: That someone else is a 32-year-old mid-level bureaucrat at the Department of Education who graduated ten years ago...
Posted by Mitch on January 31, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (15) | TrackBack

What's So Funny 'Bout Thinking Endless Bacharach Homage is Dull?

When I was a kid, a young Bears fan growing up in North Dakota, the Vikings fans were, if anything, worse than the Vikings fans in Minnesota - "My team, right or wrong". I used to think they were bad...
Posted by Mitch on January 28, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (3) | TrackBack

A Worthwhile Experiment?

WCAL is dead and gone (barring an administrative coup d'etat with the FCC). The former Saint Olaf school station, in Northfield, MN, was easily the most interesting classical music station in the Twin Cities area; it exhibited a vastly greater...
Posted by Mitch on December 16, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (8) | TrackBack

Feeling Strangely Better

Marah has an new album. Life just got incrementally better....
Posted by Mitch on November 30, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0) | TrackBack

"We Don't Need No Copyright Lawyers..."

I always wondered - who were the kids who sang on the chorus of Pink Floyd's "Another Brick In The Wall", the megahit single from 1979's The Wall (which remains the only Pink Floyd album that should not be used...
Posted by Mitch on November 26, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (7) | TrackBack

Paging Laura Ingraham

Alice Cooper slams the ACT anti-Bush tour:"When I was a kid and my parents started talking about politics, I'd run to my room and put on the Rolling Stones as loud as I could. So when I see all these...
Posted by Mitch on August 24, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Audio Separated At Birth

Kevin Rowland, the weaselly, whiny voice behind "Dexy's Midnight Runners" (Come On Eileen), and Isaac Brock, the weaselly whiny voice of indie-rock critical raves/dubiously cools Modest Mouse...
Posted by Mitch on August 18, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Back To Class

Chumley notes: Mankato Mayor Jeff Kagermeier predicts President Bush will get a "fairly warm reception" from both sides of the political aisle when he visits on Wednesday. Kagermeier says a lot of people in Mankato, possibly because it's a college...
Posted by Mitch on July 30, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (5) | TrackBack

Robert Quine, 1943-2004

Robert Quine - old-school guitarist extraordinaire is dead of a heroin overdose....
Posted by Mitch on June 14, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (3)

Music Trivia Time

This is a question I've trotted out at music trivia smackdowns for years. See if you can do it without Googling. Got Google turned off? OK - let's start....
Posted by Mitch on June 11, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (14)

Meme Du Jour

From Silver Fox, via Red, one of those "fill in the blanks" surveys that I love so much. This one? Music, natch....
Posted by Mitch on June 11, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (8)

R.I.P. Ray Charles

The R'nB legend passed away today at 73. It's a pity that a whole generation remembers him more for doing Pepsi ads than for, say, this:In 1984 Ray Charles was hired by the Committee to Re-Elect the President to perform...
Posted by Mitch on June 10, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (1)

Ragged Glory

Saint Paul has a terriffic post on a gig we both would love to have seen - and a scene we'd have loved to have parodied....
Posted by Mitch on June 01, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

Had a Good Time

I've written a piece or two about my two and a half decade interest in the Iron City Houserockers. The Houserockers were a band from Pittsburgh that released several of the best rock and roll albums of the 1980's. Last...
Posted by Mitch on May 24, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (1)

Underrated

Every morning, I wake with a keen realization that there are colossal wrongs that need to be righted. Yeah, yeah - dictatorships and injustice, too. But for the purposes of this post, I'm talking about music, here....
Posted by Mitch on May 19, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (12)

Strings Attached

I started playing guitar 27 years ago last month. In that time, I've heard a lot of guitar players. A few have influenced me, even moved me, greatly. I've been bouncing back and forth for a while; "do I do...
Posted by Mitch on May 06, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (17)

Post Punk

My love of punk goes way back. The Sex Pistols, the Dead Boys, the Clash, the Ramones, Stiff Little Fingers...all the way back to the birth of the form. Except for Patti Smith....
Posted by Mitch on April 28, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (9)

JB Doubtless Loses It

The upcoming debate on the Northern Alliance radio show between the Fraters' JB Doubtless and I is rapidly becoming less a programming idea and more of an intervention. After reading this piece from today, I'm starting to worry:I have to...
Posted by Mitch on April 24, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (8)

Simply DeFreakingPressing

It's 3:45 AM, and I flipped on the TV to an infomercial... ...starring Roger Daltrey. It's for some Time/Life classic rock CD collection. Worst part of all - it's a long-form 30 minute ad featuring a lot of depressingly blah-looking...
Posted by Mitch on April 24, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (2)

Stupid Kids

Blender Magazine just published one of those meaningless-yet-addictive "Worst Records" lists - the kind of thing I could sit and write for days. The list itself? Just fine. We Built This City is the single worst single ever constructed, according...
Posted by Mitch on April 20, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (2)

Have a Good Time... -

Have a Good Time... - I'm deliriously happy to say that the new CD by Joe Grushecky and the Houserockers - the latest incarnation of the Iron City Houserockers, a band to whom I produced this tribute website, is the...
Posted by Mitch on March 26, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

Mojo Setting

Mojo Setting - Via Ken Layne and Steve Gigl, I see that Mojo Nixon is retiring from music. He says: "'I have nothing more to say,' says Nixon. 'Not only am I empty, but obviously nobody gives a rat's ass...
Posted by Mitch on March 10, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

First Ten Songs

First Ten Songs - I just hit shuffle on my MP3 player. Here are the next ten songs:Wall of Death - Richard and Linda Thompson. Very appropriate, these days. No, not what you think. You have to know the song...Duke's...
Posted by Mitch on March 02, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

It's Got A Beat

It's Got A Beat - There was a time when music radio didn't bore me stiff. That time passed long, long ago. But just about the time I was ready to turn off all non-talk radio in town (and most...
Posted by Mitch on February 23, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

Kast Not Your Pearls Before Swyne

Fraters' JB Doubtless asks: "When did the Grammys turn into the Teen Choice Awards? "Shortly after they became the "sleazy industry insider awards". Hipsters like the Strib's John Remenschneider have to know that Outkast is a joke, but I doubt...
Posted by Mitch on February 11, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

Thoughts on Listening to What My Daughter is Listening To

Thoughts on Listening to What My Daughter is Listening To - Speaking as someone who has had to get along in a foreign language, I have to admire Avril Lavigne, the Canadian pop-punk teen idol. In the hands of a...
Posted by Mitch on February 09, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

Shocking?

Pepsi has just put out a press release about its lineup of Super Bowl ads. The big deal, of course, is the 100 million download music giveaway:Pepsi iTunes – “I Fought The Law” This groundbreaking ad, featuring 16 real-life...
Posted by Mitch on January 29, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

The Dean Dance

The Dean Dance - Lileks' techno remix of Mad How's classic screeawwwp. Soon to replace "Hamster Dance" on my kids' MP3 player....
Posted by Mitch on January 21, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

Bagpipes, Day 3 - OK.

Bagpipes, Day 3 - OK. I'm not actually supposed to start playing the pipes for real for another five months; I have to pass two more tests before I'm up to that level yet. But they just keep calling -...
Posted by Mitch on January 17, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

Post-Punk'd

Post-Punk'd - RobbL Monkey is vexed:Infinite Monkeys: "Mitch over at Shot In The Dark picked up on Brad's post below about The Alarm's reunion on VH1. He refers to them as 'the third-best British band of the eighties'. Okay, I'll...
Posted by Mitch on January 06, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

Pack, Not A Herd

Pack, Not A Herd - You can keep your Lennons and McCartneys. Jagger? Fuggettaboutit. Even Pete Townshend, who wrote most of my favorite Brit Invasion music, is just a tad ofay and hyperintellectual in person for my tastes. Nossireebob -...
Posted by Mitch on January 06, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

The Joy of Shuffle Mode

Last five songs on my jukebox:"This Time", INXS"Minstrel Boy" (Blackhawk Down version), Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros."Romeo and Juliet", Dire Straits"Tonight I Think I'm Gonna Go Downtown", Joe Ely"Life Won't Wait", RancidPerfect....
Posted by Mitch on January 04, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

Be Alarmed

Found on Infinite Monkeys today - VH1 will be reuniting The Alarm, the third-best British band of the eighties. I'm happier already. That's enough to counterbalance the concomitant reunions of Kajagoogoo and Flock of Seagulls (Berlin will also put...
Posted by Mitch on January 02, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

Christmas Music

Warrior Monk over at Spitbull turns in a fairly capable list of Christmas classics for the holidayed-out. Not a bad list... ...except that any such list that doesn't include "Fairytale of New York" by the Pogues is invalid from the...
Posted by Mitch on December 28, 2003 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

Ramone Street

New York names a cross-street after Joey Ramone. It's a few weeks old, sure. But still pretty cool. Gabba gabba hey, indeed....
Posted by Mitch on December 26, 2003 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

Got my K-Tel On

Lileks, on his way to fisking the worst song of all time (Going Up The Country by Canned Heat) in a Bleat last week, gives a link I've been dreaming about for years; K-Tel Records. Bear in mind, my...
Posted by Mitch on November 03, 2003 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

The Curse of the CD

I listened to an artist's debut album the other day. It was an artist I wanted to like; I'd heard a few songs off the album, and I liked them. But when I finally listened to the whole thing, it...
Posted by Mitch on September 29, 2003 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

The Curse of the CD

I listened to an artist's debut album the other day. It was an artist I wanted to like; I'd heard a few songs off the album, and I liked them. But when I finally listened to the whole thing, it...
Posted by Mitch on September 29, 2003 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

Sleep When I'm Dead

Don't get me wrong - Fraters Libertas is one of the best blogs in the Twin Cities. It's on my daily read list. It should be on yours. But...how do I say this diplomatically? - JB Doubtless is to music...
Posted by Mitch on September 10, 2003 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

Stand By Yer List -

Stand By Yer List - Now, I love all music. Or, I should say, I love the top 5% of every genre of music there is. It doesn't matter what - classical, opera, punk rock, bluegrass, jazz, folk, rock and...
Posted by Mitch on June 07, 2003 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

Musical Separatism

A British R'nB singer is being pressured to kick a white guitarist out of his band. Craig David, to his credit, is pushing back. It's apparently a different world in the UK, where "urban" isn't entirely a euphemism for...
Posted by Mitch on November 16, 2002 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

Feedback

Thanks to everyone who wrote me about my Springsteen Album review yesterday. I posted the URL to the review on a few other sites, and it drew a few new people to Shot in the Dark - and my hit...
Posted by Mitch on August 06, 2002 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)