Jon: Well, so much for the “civic duty” I believed would guilt the Popdose community into following the political conventions: Even my heretofore partner in blogging crime, Ted Asredagoo, abandoned our noble cause to catch a Waifs concert last night! (You know, Ted, Hootie & the Blowfish played a gig not five miles from my house on Tuesday night, but did I skip out on Hillary’s orange “traveling pantsuit” to catch them? Noooooooo! I thought to myself, Hill, I only wanna be with you…)

Before I introduce our guest analyst for the Bill & Biden show, allow me to note that, after two evenings dominated by women, the Democrats finally let the testosterone flow last night. As a result, there are no women to objectify – except MSNBC’s Norah O’Donnell, about whom I always have just one thing to say (even when she’s eight months pregnant): Hubba hubba. So, without further ado, our surprise curmudgeon: Dw. Dunphy!

Dw.: These Democrats sure can talk! Don’t they know I gotta work in the morning? Anyway, it’s my turn to hang out with Jon and the ‘Bots on the Satellite of Love. Dr. Forrester’s evil show for the evening: Bill Clinton and Joe Biden. I’ll make sure I have extra hamdingers at the ready.

Jon: WTF is a hamdinger?

(Editor’s note: Jon, betraying a lack of pop-culture understanding that should get him banned from Popdose forever, apparently is unaware that hamdingers are deviled-ham patties that were sold by the block and often used for fish bait – a fact that is common knowledge to fans of Mystery Science Theatre 3000, as hamdingers played a key role in episode 512 and made a brief appearance in episode 513.)

Jon: What a bunch of dweebs I’m working with here! (Hey! I just figured out what that pretentious “Dw.” thing is all about.) Last night Ted blew 200 words on Vulcans, and now I have to deal with MST3K? Read the rest of this entry »

The freshman’s bags sat on the floor next to the bed his mother had just finished making up. It would be the last time she made his bed and the last time his dorm room would look this neat. He and his parents had already met the R.A., toured the music building, and eaten dinner at one of the uptown restaurants. It was time to say goodbye.

His father and mother had timed it so that they would leave for home just as he was walking across the campus of Bowling Green State University to his first meeting of incoming marching band members; the young man was at school a week early for band camp. After hugs and kisses, his parents departed and he headed over to the music hall with butterflies in his stomach.

In the massive band rehearsal room he sat among a group of fellow freshmen and some upperclassmen. He didn’t know it at the time but the people who would become his best friends and future roommates were also sitting in that room, probably feeling just as anxious as he was.

Later that night, when these new students had returned to their dorm rooms with instructions to get plenty of sleep (they had a long day ahead of them), the freshman found himself alone in a vast, empty dorm building. His R.A. was already hitting the bars and the rest of his classmates were living in a group of dorms where 90% of all incoming freshmen lived. He was away from them, having been placed in an upperclassmen dorm due to the fact that he would be rooming with his cousin, a sophomore.

While groups of kids began to mingle and form friendships, the young man propped his feet up on the windowsill and continued reading John Irving’s The World According to Garp.

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Over the next year Terje Fjelde has agreed to listen to nothing but David Foster on his iPod. He’s loaded the thing with over 1,200 songs produced, arranged, composed, and/or played by David Foster. A deal with the devil? He keeps wondering.

I’m procrastinating. I really don’t want to think about David Foster today, Neither do you, of course, but I’m bound by my promise to write about the guy every week for a year, so I’m kinda stuck here.

The weather’s really beautiful — and that rarely ever occurs in Norwegian summertime. I’m hangin’ out with my friends and family by the mountainside, and all I really want to do is to join them for a beer or maybe play some soccer - but I’m stuck in my room with freakin’ David Foster. Am I sensing fatigue? Well, maybe a little bit, but it’s just a phase. I’ll be back at the top of my game next week, I promise — when the weather has returned to its usual cold, grey self. Autumn is just around the corner.

Anyway, we’ve covered the ’70s pretty well so far, wouldn’t you agree? It’s worth mentioning that Foster’s career got its first big boost in 1979, when he won a Grammy for co-writing Earth, Wind & Fire’s “After the Love Is Gone” with Jay Graydon and Bill Champlin. This award set him up for all kinds of wonderful adventures in sound as the ’80s dawned, but I figure everyone knows the tune, so we’ll just skip it gently. Read the rest of this entry »

In March of this year, independent singer/songwriter Kelly Buchanan suffered a traumatic brain injury while playing street hockey at a rink in downtown Manhattan. The injury left her unable to speak, stand, or walk in the months following the incident, and she suffers continued effects in the form of constant headaches, dizziness, and other symptoms consistent with a high-grade concussion

Buchanan—known for her personal, penetrating lyrics, her intense performances, and her appearance in a TV commercial for the news channel NY1 (she’s the blonde/cherry red-haired bass player)—has been unable to work or perform since the incident. She had been readying a wonderful new album (titled Kelly Buchanan) for release prior to the injury, but it remains largely undistributed and virtually unpromoted.

Until now. On Wednesday, September 10, the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP) is holding a benefit show for Kelly at New York’s Knitting Factory. Headlined by acoustic sets by Nada Surf, members of Fountains of Wayne, and Measure, the evening will also feature an all-star band performing songs from Kelly Buchanan, giving the album the release party Kelly was unable to give it herself. It’s an all-ages, general admission show; tickets are $25 each, available through Ticketweb. For more information check out the Knitting Factory website and ASCAP’s Events Calendar page for the show.

While you’re at it, head over to Kelly’s website and listen to a stream of song samples from Kelly Buchanan (“Favorite Zero” is my fave). You can order a copy through her site, or download it through iTunes. The record really deserves attention; in addition to the terrible physical effects of Kelly’s injury, it’s also a real shame the wonderful music she created has gone largely unheard.

It was the summer of 1985. There was me, Kromlock the Warrior, my friend Dennis, better known as Garmo the Wizard, and Peter, a.k.a. Hendrix the half-even ranger. We were wandering the dark woods of Falcomar at the mercy of Doug Dexter, our dungeon master.

Doug Dexter was the best dungeon master I had ever known. It was easy enough to read aloud the buoyant prose that framed “The Temple of Elemental Evil” or “Against the Giants,” but Doug Dexter was downright theatrical. He had a million voices, a million accents and dialects from Halfling to Lizard Man. When we stayed up for 32 hours straight trying to defeat “The Tomb of Horrors,” Doug Dexter’s Acererak voice was absolutely horrific. “WHO DARES DISTURB THE SLEEP OF ACERERAK!?!” He would roar with a flashlight shining under his chin.

Doug Dexter had cassettes of classical and baroque music that he had cadged from the local public library. These tapes would play quietly on his Radio Shack tape player under the table while we wandered the dark woods or asked around a sleepy hamlet for information about a local guild of thieves hiding in the area. But whenever we entered a combat situation, Doug would slam the tape player on the table, hit play, and the distorted assault of King Crimson, Rush, Black Sabbath, or Gustav Holtz ‘The Planets’ would blare from that crappy tinny-sounding speaker.

Those marathon D&D sessions were my first exposure to King Crimson and their fantastic Red album. To this day, when I hear the title track, that initial blast of wooshing keyboards and harsh guitars, I reach for an imaginary d20 on my dashboard or my desk to roll for initiative. In later games, things like Slayer or Metallica became our “battle music,” but there was something about that proggy King Crimson or Rush vibe that made the game feel more epic.

Which brings me to Black Mountain and their epic album, In the Future. Replete with trippy album art and a grimoire full of hype, “In the Future” is the Canadian band’s follow-up to their self-titled 2005 debut. You can get it on two big greasy slabs of vinyl or one shiny CD, though a 2-CD bonus edition exists. Read the rest of this entry »

This past weekend, drummer Steve Foley passed away at the age of 49. Foley, of course, is best known for replacing Chris Mars in the Replacements for their final tour in 1991 after years spent gigging on the local Minneapolis music scene. Upon hearing word of his passing, I found myself revisiting a thought — a concept, if you will — that’s been vying for more space in my mind as of late.

My thought, of course, is that there’s really no less flattering sight than that of the aging rock ‘n’ roll musician. Now, before you respond with a sarcastic “boo-hoo,” hear me out. It’s one thing to show your age in a grey cubicle — as long as they make Dockers in your size, truth be told, you’re still good to go — but a rocker hitting his 40s is a whole ‘nother bag of hammers.

Rock ‘n’ roll’s very inception — or conception, if you will — was a reaction to the stodgy “grown-up” music of the day, and while its first real star, Bill Haley, was already pushing 30 (!) by the time “Rock Around the Clock” appeared in the closing credits of the film Blackboard Jungle and changed the face of popular music forever, rock ‘n’ roll still enjoyed an immediate and irrevocable connection to youth.

For teenagers in America who had long been stuck listening to the same music as their parents, rock ‘n’ roll was something they could call their own. Haley was a huge star, of course, but the proverbial elder statesman soon gave way to much younger idols with whom teenagers could more closely identify, including Elvis Presley, Frankie Avalon, and Ricky Nelson.

Presley, of course, is probably the best example of rock ‘n’ roll’s celebration of youth. After all, while talent surely had something to do with it, it was his youthful bravado and untamed sexuality that made him a star. He had the swagger of a young man who had no idea what he couldn’t do, and America’s teenagers loved every controversial shake of the hips and snarl of the lips. He, more than anyone, made sure that rock ‘n’ roll belonged to the young: he was young, the millions of adoring fans were young, and they saw something in each other that made for a beautiful relationship.

As he grew older, though, he lost touch with his audience and watched as bands like the Beatles and Rolling Stones stole his thunder. His final days were spent as a tired Vegas act going through the motions, lost in a drug-induced haze and utterly alone in a world that, for the most part, had moved on from him years ago. He was 42.

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The Gabe Dixon Band - The Gabe Dixon Band (Fantasy)
purchase this CD (Amazon)

I was never any good at math, but I know enough to understand the basic laws of rock-critic algebra, which clearly state that the quality of an album rises or falls in inverse proportion to the number of times a publicist has to beg writers to cover it. This is why I was surprised to discover, after receiving approximately three dozen e-mails and one unsolicited copy of The Gabe Dixon Band, that it does not suck.

It would be impossible to accurately convey my surprise at this discovery. To continue the math theme, it would be akin to learning that the square root of x cubed over y is orange. (An answer which, sadly, would have improved my high school test scores dramatically.) This calls into question the established order of the universe, as well as many of my assumptions about what leads publicists to repeatedly e-mail me about artists I clearly have no intention of covering. Maybe they, you know, really like the music or something.

Anyway, here’s the Gabe Dixon Band, which as apparently been a fixture on the granola-and-hacky sack circuit for some time, and is using its new deal with the recently revived Fantasy imprint as an excuse to harsh everyone’s mellow by applying a shiny coat of pop gloss to its formerly jam-friendly sound. (I believe this is known as “pulling an O.A.R.”) This rarely works to anyone’s advantage (just ask the members of O.A.R.), but damn if The Gabe Dixon Band doesn’t live up to most of the hype in all those e-mails I deleted. Read the rest of this entry »

Two Dog Garage - Pinboy
purchase this album (MySpace)

Two Dog Garage is Alex Kimmell, a Los Angeles-based singer/songwriter who’s spent his career to date doing the usual 21st-century singer/songwriter stuff, i.e. hearing his songs in movies and on television rather than the radio. Two Dog Garage, his “band” project, is a labor of love — in his introductory e-mail, Kimmell had me at “I recorded this in my closet while my wife and kid were asleep” — and although I’m sure not even Kimmell is enough of a wishful thinker to envision vast commercial horizons for Pinboy, he should take a small amount of consolation in knowing that, in a better world, this album would spin off at least one medium-sized hit.

The songs themselves don’t break any new ground, even in the rather exhaustively defined context of the genre, but they’re catchy and extremely well-written; fans of mid-’90s alt-pop by acts such as Counting Crows and Gin Blossoms should find a lot to love in these nine songs. Kimmell also did a tremendous job of engineering and producing the album, particularly considering its homebrewed origins; the line between his live and programmed drums isn’t as jagged as you’d expect, and everything has a warm, nicely rounded feel.

Kimmell doesn’t, ahem, bowl a strike with every song, but he comes close often enough to justify a purchase for anyone with a weakness for melody and a fondness for lyrics about real-life concerns. My favorite track is the aching, mandolin-laced “Everything Happens to Me” (download), but there really isn’t a bad song in the bunch. Stop by the Two Dog Garage MySpace page to hear more.

Pull out the headphones for this one, kids. Otherwise, you laptop toters will hear nothing until the 19-second mark. I wonder if a label would even allow a song like this to be recorded today. Man, what a sad thought that is.

It would not be a stretch to say that the Waltons owe every American fan they have to Barenaked Ladies. The Waltons opened up for BNL in 1995, right as their sophomore album Cock’s Crow hit the shelves. The band’s energetic live show led many a curious BNL fan to check out the record, including yours truly. Unfortunately, much like Barenaked Ladies’ albums, the studio never quite captured the buzz of the Waltons’ live show. The standout songs in their live show, namely “End of the World” and “You Ewe U,” felt like they were holding back a little on tape. On the flip side, the band’s softer moments, like “Heartless,” the Billy Joel-esque “Wascana” and the harmony-laden break of “Surprise,” proved to be some of album’s finer moments.

Nothing, however, comes close to “Heels Upon My Head” which Q magazine accurately described as the best song Neil Finn never wrote. Singer and principal songwriter Jason Plumb pulls back on his tendency to get overly chatty and drops the album’s simplest and most unforgettable melody. Opening with a quiet bass riff, then backed by a brush snare drum beat and some plinks on the piano, the song never rises above a simmer, and it never needs to. I never quite understood the lyrics, but outside of the line “I’ve come undone, it’s easy to see,” I didn’t feel like I needed to. That line says it all, really.

The Waltons – Heels Upon My Head

I’m writing this week’s post on a Sunday afternoon. Why is that significant? Because it’s the absolute best day of the week for ‘80s music. My wife and I end up finding our way to the car around noon every Sunday to flip on her XM and listen to reruns of Casey Kasem’s American Top 40. While it’s nice to hear the countdown in its original form, we both listen specifically for the long-distance dedication.

Quite frankly, it’s the finest moment of ‘80s radio, and the one thing in the car you’re not allowed to interrupt. Whether real or fake, the dedications are the pinnacle of cheesiness, and that’s what makes them wonderful. Every Sunday I listen to Casey read the week’s dedication in his finest heartbreaking radio voice, and I can’t help but think to myself how great a long-distance dedication writer I would have been. So I think it’s about time I lived out my dream. Let’s see …

“Today’s long-distance dedication comes to us from a shy 21-year-old girl in the tiny town of Pahrump, Nevada. She writes, ‘Casey, I have a problem. I’m in love with a guy that I can’t be with. We met three years ago when I was a senior in high school and our school hired him to be our janitor. Mike is his name and mopping is his game. He could remove gum from the floor like nobody’s business.

“One night after drama class, he was cleaning the stalls in the ladies’ bathroom and we started talking. It turns out he had dreams of one day owning a McDonald’s, just like me. He was short, kind of ugly, and smelled of bleach, but I slowly fell in love with the guy wearing the rubber gloves anyway. Everything was going great until January of this year, when Mike accidentally ran over a family of ducks with his tractor. He was given three years in prison for his crime.

“I visit him every week despite protests from my family and friends. Even though he told me before he left that fateful morning that he really hated ducks, I know he didn’t mean to hit more than one of them. I just want to let Mike know that I love him and that I will wait for him to be released. Would you please play Rick Dees’ ‘Disco Duck’ for the love of my life and let him know that I miss him every day? Sincerely, Tabitha.”

What do you think? That would have made it on the air, right?

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