GNR For Babies

If you are about to have a baby, or are thinking about ever having a baby this story is for you. As a father myself I can tell you that no matter how hard you try to make your kid like your music, no matter how many days in a row or at what age you start indoctrinating them with Nine Inch Nails or Motorhead or Nirvana, they will always prefer kid’s music. Trust me. You might trick your kid into liking the Foo Fighters’ “Monkey Wrench” because it has the word “monkey” in it, but if he hears “Banana Phone” coming from another stereo while you’re trying to listen to your music he will barrage you with whining. He will become an unstoppable maelstrom of irritation, a hurricane of annoyance. You can try to reason with him all you want. “But you like this song.” “It’s the one with the monkeys. See right there, he just said ‘monkey.’” “That banana song is for babies and you’re not a baby. You’re a big boy, right?” “Do you want me to set fire to all of your toys?” “I will stop this car and get the tire iron out of the trunk and GIVE you something to whine about if you don’t shut up.” “I will have your mother’s head on a pike in the front yard by sundown. And I will fill her torso with bees so every time you try to hug her still bleeding body you will get sprayed with swarms of killer bees.” None of these time tested attempts to rationally reason with your child will work, so you will save yourself a lot of time and effort, not to mention life in prison, simply by chiseling off another hunk of your soul, swallowing the bile creeping up from your stomach and putting on “Banana Phone.” And the alternate-versions-of-cool-songs method doesn’t really work either because your child will always prefer the child friendly version of the song. Take this latest attempt from the Rockabye Baby company who market products to “youngish parents with hard-rock pasts who don’t want to kill their cool factor with Raffi CDs” They have just released Lullaby Renditions Of Guns N’ Roses, a 12-track album that gives kids Muzak-esque versions of GNR classics. These are instrumental-only so you don’t have to worry about your kid learning about the glory of heroin, whores and hedonism before the ripe old age of 5, however I question the logic here on all fronts. First up, what’s the logic in making your kid a fan of GNR? So that when he turns 6 he can move on to the real versions of the songs like “Used to Love Her” where he can hear that the pleasant melody he’s been humming since he was a toddler was for a song about murdering a woman because she complained to much? And where’s the fun for the adult? Do you think it’s going to be any less annoying hearing “Mr. Brownstone” slowed down 200% and played on a Casio? You may as well just put on “Banana Phone.” And really, if I’ve learned anything in my life either from experience or from the experience of other, it’s that no matter how hard a parent tries to get a kid to do something, the kid will go as hard in the opposite direction as possible.

Breast Cancer For Peter Criss

OK people, I know we’re all fragile flowers, but there is a limit to how much stock you should put into the opinion of others. A certain amount of concern for public perception is healthy because that’s what keeps us all from walking around in grubby Thundercats jammies and Snuggies all day. But when it comes to potentially embarrassing cancer, feel free to eat a big bag of floppy ones. Peter Criss has cancer, but since it’s breast cancer he chose to shut up about it, telling only his wife. He says, “I was petrified. I went into total shock. My wife and I discussed it a lot and we were like, we can’t let anyone know this because the tabloids are vicious.” Ultimately he decided to go public so that he might inspire other men who believe they make have breast cancer to go get it checked out. I say this, I don’t care where you think the cancer is, boobs, ass or sack, go to the doctor. Screw what people think. Besides it’s a lot easier to karate chop those people in the throat when you’re NOT six feet under due to an completely curable, yet untreated tumor.

Turns Out I’m God

You know how sometimes when you wonder something aloud and your question is answered the next day and you start to think that maybe you are in fact the center of the universe? Well, guess what, you’re not. I mean, do you really think the universe would chose a guy with skidmarked undies, a pot belly and a receding hairline on whom to hinge itself? Hell no. The vast expanse of space and time, the cosmos and beyond does not bend to someone as insignificant as you. It bends to me. And I have proof. Just yesterday I wondered aloud why Zombie even bothered to make his latest record, especially while trying to make the latest Halloween installment and putting the finishing touches on his animated flick, El Super Beasto. I suggested that he chose between movie making and being a rock star. Be one or the other, but not both. Well, as a clear response to my completely unique opinion and further proving my ability to bend the universe to my whim, Zombie responded to the question saying that he made this record because he was obligated to Geffen and that this could well be his last. He says, “This is the last record that I owe Geffen. My contract is up. Whether or not I re-sign, we haven’t had that conversation, but this is the last record I’m obligated to make. I mean, I’ve been on the label now for like 19 years. So I don’t know.” He went on to give me a shout out addressing me a His Royal Benevolent Overlord and Master of All Thing Seen and Unseen, then sacrificed a three toed sloth in my honor.  As reported yesterday, Zombie’s new record has been pushed back from its release date here in the next couple of weeks to some undetermined time in 2010, which may in fact turn out to be never.

Coke Heads Need To Stop It

Coke-heads, you wanna toot a few rails and dry hump each other in some dance club pumping Rhiana remixes, by all means help yourself. You want to stick your face in a pile of Bolivian and spend the next 36 hours writing self involved beat poetry detailing every vein on your schlong, neato.  But once you decide to ruin a perfectly good Floater show by running into the center of the floor and challenging the all comers in the crowd to a no-holds-barred death match, you’ve gone too far. But apparently that’s what just happened in San Francisco. Here’s how Floater recalled the evening.

“Before we could get to the end of our set I could see the sound guy signaling me with the universal sign for “it’s over,” the finger drawing a line across the throat. I didn’t know why the show was over, since we couldn’t see any problems and it was nowhere close to last call. Then we hear the house music coming on. So we head out to the bar, a bit confused. And that’s when I am asked one of the rudest questions I have ever had the displeasure of hearing. The bartender asks me, “What is it about you guys that brings out the cokeheads?”

It turns out that out of the hundreds of people at the show they had some a–hole who was coked-up and trying to fight with people. They kicked him out and he got in a fight with a security guard in front of the club. So, for this, the show was ended and I had to endure Floater being rudely and falsely labeled.

Kelly Osbourne Naked? It Almost Happened

The only thing worse than a dirty old man is a desperate dirty old man. See, regular dirty old men will shower, turning the over-powering stench of urine and dust into a more palatable odor of wet dog. A desperate dirty old man will avoid showering so as not to miss any potential women’s breasts busting out of their protective tube tops while jogging in front of his house. A dirty old man will make suggestive comments to the 16-year-old girl running the check-out at Safeway. A desperate dirty old man will chase the mail lady down the street with his hand stuffed in his stained, thread bare boxer shorts and a “Beaver Patrol” tank top. Dirty old men are easily dispatched with a crack about their age or their withered balls. Desperate dirty old men are unstoppable, unrelenting masturbating machines who will not stop until they have reached climax with a cops boot on the back of their neck and a couple of taser probes in their scrotum. And it appears that the once beloved Hugh Hefner may be making the transition from dirty old man to desperate dirty old man, which is weird because he wears painted, plasticine and puffed up blonde women like the Red Hot Chili Peppers wear socks, meaning on their penises. So it’s not like he’s not getting any. The dude has an assistant walking behind him at all times with a shotgun full of Viagra and whenever he gets the urge Sanja unloads a couple of rounds of blue pill bird shot into Hef’s ass leaving him strong like bull for the next hour. Yet he’s still making business decisions like a desperate dirty old man. His first was putting semi-nude pictures of Marge Simpson in his magazine (which, as predicted, showed nothing save for one nipple shot. One nipple shot of a middle-aged CARTOON mother of two!)His most recent desperate dirty old man decision was to ask Kelly Osbourne to appear nude in Playboy. The president immediately put the nation on immediate alert and raised the Fat-Con level to Kirsty Alley. Fortunately crisis was averted when Kelly (who fortunately owns a mirror and an internet connection) turned Hef down. Kelly says she was concerned that her father would see the pictures, which is understandable. The realization that daddy’s little girl grew up to look like one of Jabba’s Gamorrean guards and showed he sarlac in the pages of Playboy would certainly drive him to eat all of the heroin. Not just in LA or the U.S., but ALL OF IT.  

Bad News For Zombie

Have you ever heard someone say, “Ooo, that’s not a good sign” and wondered, “Gosh, I wonder what makes him say that?” Well, here is an example of “not a good sign” and I will gladly explain to you why it’s not. Rob Zombie’s fourth solo studio album, “Hellbilly Deluxe 2: Noble Jackals, Penny Dreadfuls and the Systematic Dehumanization of Cool”, has been pushed back to “an undetermined 2010 date” from the previously announced November 17. This is bad because that’s a sure sign that it’s crap. If they had a great record to try to sell right before Christmas you can bet your ass they’d sell it.

Jack White Says Spears More Authentic Than Dylan

If I was a rock star right now, I’d be laying on top of a sweaty pile of all your moms. Just a big, sweaty, naked, sticky writhing pile of moms. And gummy worms. Moms and gummy worms with me lounging at the top of a mom mountain sucking gummy worms into my ever fatter face, but that’s just me.  Not all rock stars choose the defiling America’s matriarchs route. Some actually take the whole thing seriously and avoid doing your mom altogether, which just leaves all the more for me. Jack White is one of those serious rock stars, which is especially frustrating because he is one of the few rockers worthy of a fat pile of moms. Widely considered to be the last real rock STAR, Jack White clings to his artistry and ponders the place for his art in the world. And over the weekend he did that pondering out loud while attending a talk at the University Philosophical Society at Ireland’s Trinity College. While receiving an honorary patronage (which I looked up and is not in any way a mom gifted to Jack White to defile at his whim but is instead the highest award the society can give to non-members) Jack White pondered what makes a musician authentic and who should be acknowledged for their authenticity. He says, “I don’t know if Bob Dylan and Tom Waits are as authentic as I think they are. Perhaps they’re not…Sometimes you start thinking that maybe Britney Spears or someone like that who’s doing exactly what they want to do in the way that they best know how, is more authentic than any of those people you could mention.”

Also during his discussion with the Irish Philosophical Society, whose members include everyone in the entire country about 15 minutes before closing time at the pub, Jack told the story again of how when he was working as an upholsterer he would hide a vinyl copy of his old band’s EP inside people’s couches. So if you feel like playing the Jack White lottery, take an axe to your ottoman and if you find a record inside from a band called The Upholsterers, you win!   

Someone’s Going To Rehab

Now, Mr. White could take some cues from the guys in Def Leppard. It has long been acknowledged that when terms like “unforeseen personal matters” are used in conjunction with a rock star, that means someone’s going to rehab. And while we don’t know who is getting blasted before shows, we do know that whoever it is just cost Def Leppard the rest of their tour. That’s because the band just cancelled the rest of their US tour “due to unforeseen personal matters.”

Today’s blog should be printed out and distributed in journalism classes across the country. If you are a journalism professor or perhaps you are in the editorial department of a major metropolitan newspaper, you have my permission to go to KUFO.com after the show and to copy and distribute this blog to your staff and students. That’s because today we’re talking about the sorry state of the interview, especially as it pertains to rock stars. I have two examples. One is something you should avoid and one, while a little staid and boring, provided interesting results.

Example 1:

Dave Mustaine was interviewed by Terrorizer Magazine in the UK and was asked the question, “Is Megadeth’s “Endgame” better than Metallica’s “Death Magnetic?” This is a terrible question. It’s like me asking who you love more, your mom or Jeffrey Dahmer while your mom is sitting next to you. Even if the answer was Dahmer, you’re going to say “mom” because she’s sitting right there. Mustaine is promoting a record, a record that he presumably likes quite a bit or at least one that he likes more than the one just put out by his former band mates. And even if he did think “Death Magnetic was better, he’s say “Endgame” because he wants you to go buy it. Regardless, Mustaine said,
“To me, one sounds like a record and the other sounds like a jam. Plus we have two lead guitar players. In Metallica you’ve got one and he ripped me off anyway. I used to have this thing that I was secretly pining over one day, getting up there and playing with them again. And I’m thinking, what song would I play? And how could I even stand it? I like playing with guys who can keep time.” Granted you got him to slam Lars and Kirk, but he’d do that without prompting. It’s like throwing a rock at a bee hive and expecting everyone to applaud when the bees start to swarm. Well yeah, what did you think was going to happen? It’s a wasted, obvious question. Try harder. 

Example 2:

Now mind you, this isn’t exactly what I would call great journalism, but it resulted in a scoop and, more importantly it was intended to pull the artist outside his comfort zone. Buzznet just interviewed Rivers Cuomo and at one point did the whole free-association thing where they say a word or name and Rivers is supposed to blurt out the first thing that pops into his head. Again, this little crutch has been around for a long time, made famous by Barbara Walters and often results in bring answers, but, depending on what you throw at them, it can result in some good stuff. For instance, when this interviewer said, Katy Perry” Rivers said, “We’re writing together next week. Can’t wait!” Yes, Rivers Cuomo and the chick who looks like a slutty version of Zooey Dechanel are going to write poppy, hooky, quirky songs together and it will probably be great because Rivers has been writing pop songs for years and Katy has gigantic boobs so she automatically gets my stamp of approval. The music they write will be on her next record, not Weezer’s but if it works who knows what will happen in the future. And speaking of Weezer’s next record, the band’s iTunes Pass launched yesterday at the iTunes Music Store. Anyone who pays $19.99 will get weekly installments of new Weezer material between now and November 24, starting with the band’s cover of the Clash’s “Should I Stay or Should I Go”. You also get the deluxe version of Raditude, as well as bonus tracks, live recordings, remixes, behind-the-scenes footage, and the video for “(If You’re Wondering If I Want You To) I Want You To”. But that’s not all!!! According to Pitchfork.com, you can now pre-order the Wuggie on weezer.com. What’s the Wuggie? Why it’s a Weezer-branded Snuggie!