This was the first performance I’ve gotten to see of The Buddhahood in their new formulation without Tony, with the addition of Bob Olson on guitar. I mostly know of Bob from The Mysterious Blues Band, another of Tony’s projects. I think everyone would agree that no one can replace Tony, but it seems very apropos that the person filling in the guitar slot is someone with a long musical relationship with Tony and it doesn’t hurt to have killer chops, which Bob has in spades.

It’s cool they way they’re splitting up vocal duties in the band, sort of decentralizing the front man role. Drew seems to take the lion’s share of the vocals, which since he’s a very strong vocalist makes sense, but they’ve either added or enriched the harmonies of many tracks as well. I suspect that has something to do with creating something new where what Tony brought to the band was not replaceable. It is a tribute to the survival instinct of music that such a great sound can come out of such a tragic loss for all of us.

The show was great, filled with a bunch of stuff that I of course knew, with about three songs or so that I didn’t.  Julia Figaris, the show’s host, seemed genuinely both entertained by the music and surprised by the vociferousness of we in the audience.  The guy running around with the steady cam actually started filming crew members at the end of the show who couldn’t resist the temptation to dance to the music.  I really hope that makes the final cut, because it proves a point that all of us who are Buddhahoodlums already know: you can’t be in the room and not fall into the groove.

Lyrics by Niel Peart of Rush. I’ve always loved this song, but upon recently getting the remastered version of the Signals album, it occurred to me how the current situation seems even more relevant to the lyrics than the Cold War era he wrote them about. I’ve taken the liberty of adding some pictorial links for emphasis:

We’ve got nothing to fear but fear itself
Not fate, not failure, not fatal tragedy
Not the faulty units in this mad machinery
Not the broken contacts in emotional chemistry

With an iron fist in a velvet glove
We are sheltered under the gun
In the glory game or the power train
Thy kingdom’s will be done

And the things that we fear
Are a weapon to be held against us

Chorus:

He’s not afraid of your judgment
He knows of horrors worse than your hell
He’s a little bit afraid of dying, but he’s a lot more afraid of you lying

And the things that he fears
Are a weapon to be held against him

Can any part of life be larger than life?
Even love must be limited by time
And those who push us down that they might climb
Is any killer worth more than his crime?

Like a steely blade in a silken sheath
We don’t see what they’re made of
They shout about love, but when push comes to shove
They live for things they’re afraid of

And the knowledge that they fear
Is a weapon to be used against them

This is kinda cool: the Chicago Tribune put together a menagerie of terrible, terrible album covers for you. I’m not sure, however, if they’re all legit. One album is called “Can I Borrow a Feelin’,” which is the album and hit single of none other than Kirk Van Houten of The Simpsons.

Anyway, check it out:

“I Seen Her First.” Classic!

What does it say that the man who invented acid lives to be 102? Probably nothing, but I’m glad this man got to live a long, long life. He changed my life, like so many others, and I’ll never hear Yes Close to the Edge the same way again. Thanks, Al.

Father of LSD takes final trip - World - smh.com.au

The father of LSD and the first person to experience an “acid trip”, Albert Hoffman, has died aged 102.

Swiss-born Hoffman was renowned by chemists, pharmacists and hippies the world over for stumbling across the world’s first synthesised hallucinogen, lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), in 1938.

Jane’s Addiction reunited for a gig.  Rolling Stone has the scoop.  Damn, Stephen Perkins got a little paunchy, but then who am I to criticize?  They played one gig in Rochester when I was a junior in high school and tragically unhip.  I totally missed what was probably the best show to come to Rochester since then.

Ah, well.  But hey, I did get to see the Monkeys reunion tour a few years before that. . . .

John Sacheli checks in with a post describing his growing ennui and why he’s sitting at home when Bruce Springsteen is playing.  I know how he feels, looking around and realizing none of the cool stuff you used to do as a kid applies to you now.  I think we both should probably make more of an effort; I know I’m getting a little antsy not playing music any more.

As for Bruce Springsteen, allow me to say that I think Bruce is kind of the Earnest Hemingway of rock-and-roll.  By this I mean:  I just don’t get it.  I know a lot of people whose musical and literary senses I admire - people whom I generally admire a great deal - who are just nuts about Bruce and/or Hemingway, and you would think that I would therefore have found the key to what they like, but nope.  Hemingway and Springsteen both embody something perhaps just a little too simplistically masculine for me to appreciate.

I’ve tried to understand.  I bought myself For Whom the Bell Tolls for my birthday once.  I don’t get it.  I’ve stopped trying.

Over the weekend, I had the pleasure of meeting Greg from Jazz@Rochester.com, one of the best and most established blogs in the Rochester music scene.  There’s been some small discussion of bringing our two spheres of influence (such as they are) into synchronicity somehow.  Greg works with a lot of the local music and entertainment bloggers like Jason Crane a lot, especially when the Jazz Fest comes to town.  What a colaberation  between us might look like remains to be seen, and since we spent the entire time jawing about topics mostly unrelated to either of our two blogs, the meeting didn’t make anything clearer.

But one thing was clear, and that is that Greg is a definitely cool guy with great stuff going on at his blog.  We did manage to kick around a few ideas and get a sense of our styles the other night, hanging out at the old Moonbeans, the Starlight Cafe.  This blogging community could always use another unique voice, and I certainly don’t have any problems writing periodically on another blog.

Stay tuned!

Those of you who regularly stop back to this blog have no doubt noticed that a fair amount of the news updates are concerned with “DRM,” but many of you might not know what that means. You’ve seen Warner Brothers, Sony, Apple and iPod, along with lots of other big media names tied to those articles. I figured this morning would be a good opportunity to tackle some of the basic concepts surrounding “DRM,” and why I think they are important issues for progressives to be out in front of.

DRM means Digital Rights Management, but more importantly, it represents attempts by media conglomerates to use technological means to prevent users from copying content they’ve produced. Originally, it meant preventing CDs and DVDs from being copied, but with the digital age n full swing with MP3 players and digital downloads, it has meant a variety of other things in a variety of different venues all centered around the media industry’s “right” to make as much money as possible.

Concepts in this arena get messy quick, so I’m going to keep this post relatively short and leashed to only one relatively narrow topic: what is it about digital media that has so complicated copyright law?

» Continue Reading…

We cast a wide net with this week’s Douchebag award, but I felt ready to tackle an issue that must be addressed. This award is meant to cover a whole group of people for whom recognition is well past due and yet whom we only wish could be “unsung.”

This year, the airwaves, the gas stations, the malls and every other nook and cranny of our society reachable by radio have been drowned in a sea of Christmas standards, covered in the most objectionable ways by a host of musical miscreants. The soul singer warbling and yodeling through Nat King Cole’s Christmas Song, rendering it a meaningless, inaudible mess. The country singer trying to “Boot Scoot” through Carrol of the Bells. The sappy bubble-gum pop singer who thinks that four tracks of her whiny-ass voice abusing Jingle Bell Rock is a legitimate alternative to Bill Haley’s original. Its enough to make a music lover to want to deck the halls with balls of feces.

I’m not opposed to cover songs. I’m not opposed to remakes of Christmas tunes. I think both have their place, when they honor the original. And of course, I know that every year includes a few “updates” of old classics, to help people celebrate the season with voices they recognize. I get that.

But this year’s glut of reprehensible repertory is neither tribute nor celebration: it’s just the seepage of a corporate media that’s lost any sense of passion, joy or originality. It is uninspired and uninspiring pablum, tuned to what marketers and salesmen hope is a key that will elicit a Pavlovian compulsion to spend, spend, spend.

And it’s every-freakin’-where. It’s inescapable. I’ve tried. And it doesn’t make me want to spend, it makes me want to roast someone’s nuts over an open fire. It makes me want to run the responsible persons over in a one horse open sleigh. So, if you are one of the winners of this week’s award, do yourself a favour: if you should hear those sleigh bells ring-alin’, ding-ding, ding-alin’, do yourself a favour and get the hell out of the road.

Because somewhere at the root of all of it, there is some executive in a $1000 suit, furtively consulting his Blackberry, sipping a soy latte, flashing his million dollar smile at disinterested waitresses, chomping Viagra and making the decisions that will finally make Christmas as flaccid and ineffectual as his dick. Or maybe there’s more than one, who gives a shit? To him and to all of them, I proudly hand this week’s Douchebag of the Week award. Merry fucking Christmas, douchebag!

Ladies and gentlemen, Bela Fleck and the Flecktones: