Damn you Jenna Elfman! Oh what am I saying? I love you!!!

If you're somehow upset over the lack of posts lately you can blame this.

I went to the Family Values Tour. First off Torrid is making a killing off of those kids. I only saw one band, Deadsy, which was my original intention of going. They played a great set even though their bassist was out of commission with a broken finger and the singer had to play it instead. We found out they're embarking on a club tour soon. Very very good news. Oh and they ended with their Rush cover. Brilliant!

Within the the theme of the current season, The Spirit Of Autumn, I've declared this Smiths Week and I have been listening to nothing but The Smiths. This may explain my lethargic mood and not really wanting to update this right now. Maybe not. I know this is going to be a bad post. =(

I bought the new Justin Timberlake album. It's great. Timberland shows once again he's a genius producer. The newest single, "My Love", is a wonderous track and might be the neatest beat around right now. The best song however might be the "Cry Me A River" clone entitled "What Goes Around..." He has a tendency in a few tracks on the album to have these nice little outros so to speak in some of the songs where it's just like a remix of the song. "What Goes Around..." does this and makes you wish he just had two verisons of it on the track. Anyway that track is a great chill song and will be a hit if he releases it as a single. Look out for the last track, "(Another Song) All Over Again", a Rick Rubin produced track that sounds like The Roots doing 70s love makin' music.

Has anyone else heard that Elton John is making or has made a sequel to his awesomely awesome album "Captain Fantastic And The Brown Dirt Cowboy"? Weird.

Things I've bought since the last post and therefore may talk about soon:
-The new Morrissey album
-Daughters "Canada Songs" (these guys are just The Locust lite. Speaking of Daughters, stay far far away from their new album. Just trust me on this one. Please.)
-two Talk Talk albums, "Spirit Of Eden" and "It's My Life" (not liking Talk Talk is an unforgivable character flaw. It's all like super orchestrated shoegazer new wave! Come on people! This of course is the basis of my ridiculous "No Doubt is at least a neat and intelligent" band argument)

I believe that the very act of believing in something causes us to distance ourselves from that thing, thus a duality is created: oneself and the thing in which one believes. Now since we all know that in order to fully understand a thing one must be that thing - walk a mile in its shoes so to speak. It seems obvious that the state of believing in something inevitably causes us to not truly understand that thing in which we believe. This non-comprehension leads to all sorts of difficulties. "I believe in love" has a better than even chance of leading to divorce, while "I believe in God" seems to end in variations on the Spanish Inquisition. But - and it's a big but - if one were to love, one couldn't help but be affectionate and caring towards oneself and others. If one were God, one would act towards all beings and all things as if they were one's own creations. And that, my friends, is the secret to life.
Of course the secret could be more like listening to the three albums "Purple Rain" (Prince), "I'm With Stupid" (Aimee Mann) and "Graceland" (Paul Simon) on random.
We have to keep an open mind.

"The Simpsons are going to London!"

So the episode of The Simpsons where they go to London was on last night. Why is this important? Well because it has one of the funniest and truest lines about music on TV ever.
"Hey look it's Jimmy Page, one of the greastest thieves of American black music to ever walk the earth!"
It's not that I dislike Zeppelin although admittedly I don't really listen to them, they're not really my thing. I say this while wearing an Ebullition Records shirt. Hm.
The quote is funny because it's so God-awfully true. Heh.

By the by my favorite Zeppelin song is "Fool In The Rain" because it tells a great story and most of all it doesn't sound like Zeppelin.

Speaking of The Simpsons does anyone remember this?

The most popular terrible voice in the history of music

I don't like Bob Dylan. I understand why he's popular. I understand why the music is popular. I understand why the music should be wildly popular. I understand why people believe him to be a great lyricist. I understand where and why he stands in music history and how important he was to the sixties. All his credit is deserving. Given all of that I still don't like Bob Dylan.
Well lucky me it seems like he's everywhere right now. New album getting rave reviews, iPod commericals, cover of Rolling Stone (issue 1008) and even in my current home town playing a minor league baseball stadium.
Okay.
So when I read Rolling Stone the first thing I do is go to the last page and scan the charts. Next I go to the reviews. Next I run through the first bunch of pages scanning the bold print names to see if there's anything worth reading. Lastly I quickly flip through the rest of the pages to see if any of the articles are worth reading. In the newest issue, the one with Dylan on the cover, there's an article/interview with him.
Not liking Dylan I of course decided I wouldn't read the article.
Today I threw caution to the wind and read it. Wow. I don't even know. Wow. Dylan is a #$*&@*#!!! Seriously, fuck this guy.
He comes off as pompous and arrogant. While I didn't like him at least I could attempt to respect him. No longer.
It probably doesn't help that the whole thing is written by Dylan's number one super fanboy or so it seems. That in and of itself made me want to vomit. It's a character flaw to be that enamored with a pop/rock singer with such a terrible voice, no matter how great the lyrics may or may not be.
In the end my opinion of Dylan was high even though I staunchly disliked him. Now I feel like my distaste for him is completely justified by the only person who could wholly do it for me: Bob Dylan.

The Spirit Of Autumn

The newest JT single is just as good as "Sexy Back" and any of his other singles. I almost want to say that he's going to become the next MJ but we're not that far yet. You could equate BSB to The Jackson 5 if this becomes the case.

That old Toad The Wet Sprocket song "All I Want" that was on the Friends soundtrack came on the radio the other day. I smiled.

Anyone else notice that they dusted off an old Stabbing Westward single as the theme to the trailer for that new movie The Covenant? This is very odd indeed.

So who's going to be the first spazzy "hardcore" possibly Spock rock sounding band to cover "I Write Sins Not Tragedies"? I would love to hear The Blood Brothers circa their album "March On Electric Children" cover this. Or maybe even an "emo-violence" type band like Usurp Synapse or Jerome's Dream.

I'm so God damned tired of hearing about that OK Go video! Fuck!

Eddie Vedder still sounds like he has a mental disability to me.

The new Jewel single "Good Day" isn't very good. What happened to "Who Will Save Your Soul?" Now that was good. Well...at least it was neat.

Ok, ok, ok, ok, ok, ok, ENOUGH ALREADY! FUCK! I get it!!! Sufjan Stevens is good! Can you stop writing artcles and name dropping him? I'm talking to everyone!!!

And now on to the point of the post: The Spirit Of Autumn!
My friends and I are known for coming up with themes for current seasons. Past ones have included Ultra-Pretentious Spring, Devil-Lock Summer and Ultra-Punk Winter. This autumn's theme is The Spirit Of Autumn! So bust out your thick high water slacks, cuff up those jeans, dust off those old clunky thirft store black dress shoes and grab all your small collared shirts!!! You'll probably also need a copy of Catcher In The Rye, a scarf, lots of coffee (yet you're not jittery), a crush on a girl/boy you'll never have and lots of remembering of times when you were a kid.
As for the music that goes along with this theme (there's always music that goes along) here are some key artists and albums: Neil Young's "Harvest", Christie Front Drive, Boys Life, Braid, The Get Up Kids (especially "Woodson" and "Four Minute Mile"), Cap'n Jazz, Violent Femmes, old school Piebald, Gin Blossoms, Sunny Day Real Estate, you get the idea. The core of the music is definitely midwest, mid '90s indie rock. This is going to be GREAT fun!!! =)

And lastly, I want to welcome The TV Geek to the world of popular culture blogging. Check out his site, it's sure to be a good one within the next few weeks!