A contact I have at the RNC just sent me the cover art and a couple of the tracks off of Michael Steele's new GOP Minority Outreach CD. He's obviously trying to capture that Obama magic but I don't know...I don't think he gets it.



1 - Intro: Hands Off My Papers
2 - Fear of a Black Republican
3 - The "Gay" Agenda

I'm supposed to be getting some more tracks next week. Apparently there's one called, "How Are You Supposed To Get Paid If Liberals Take Your Guns?" You can't blame the GOP for trying, at least...

Labels: humor, music, politics

Robin made chicken cutlets for dinner. Baked. They were pretty good. We drank iced tea with the meal. After dinner we made our way to the metro, took it to Farragut West, and walked seven blocks down to DAR Constitution Hall. We’re walking up the steps to the venue when we see a guy on a motorcycle spill and slide halfway down 18th Street. Another guy in a pick-up truck gets out, asks if the motorcycle guy is alright, says he didn’t realize “it was a one-way street.” We couldn’t figure out what just happen, who was going which way and who almost hit who, but we made our way inside thinking that would be the only anomaly to an otherwise perfect evening.

Boy, were we wrong.

We get drinks at the bar. Robin gets a Bud Light, I get a Heineken. We can’t drink the beers at our seats so we hang outside the auditorium, people-watching. I’m amazed at how the Smashing Pumpkins fans are all in their 30s. At first it looked like a fanbase that grew up with the band but on closer inspection, seeing all of the sports coats and polo shirts, I realized this was a nostalgia trip for most of the audience. Chances are this is the first time most of these folks would be hearing songs from Adore, the Machina albums, or Zeitgeist. For the sake of the show, I was hoping they wouldn’t be hearing too many of those songs for the first time.

Boy, was I wrong.

We take our seats and there’s this girl sitting in front of us. She reeks of sour milk and she’s as high as a kite attached to a fucking rocket. I think she asks us what seats we’re in, I can’t be sure. Her boyfriend comes over and gobbles her up into his arms, gets her hair off her neck, asks if she’s alright. She responds by projectile vomiting on the guy in front of her. The dude has metal hair and now it’s covered with chunks of white vomit. It’s all over his shirt. The girl’s boyfriend quickly escorts her out of the auditorium. The guy with puke all over him runs after the two of them and says something along the lines of, “Dude, she puked in my fucking hair.” The boyfriend says something like, “What the hell am I supposed to do? Say I’m sorry? I’m sorry!” Robin goes to get someone to clean the shit up. The guy with puke all over him takes his shirt off and reveals the most mother-fucking metal tattoo of all time across his entire back. No-one’s coming to clean up the puke – it smells rancid. I figure they’ll get to it before the music starts.

Boy, was I wrong.

The lights go out and Jimmy Chamberlin starts pounding on the drums. The rest of the band comes on stage. There’s puke everywhere and people standing in the aisles, waiting for someone to clean it up. As Billy Corgan begins wailing into the microphone someone comes out with a mop, a dustpan, and a paper towel. That’s what’s used to clean the puke. It doesn’t do the job. The Pumpkins are doing all post-Mellon Collie songs; no-one knows what the fuck’s going on except for a select few. The applause are restrained, the crowd is bored. It tracks like “Tonight” and “Today” to get people into it. And then it’s back to the Machina and Zeitgeist tracks and the audience never really comes back. But the girl that puked came back and she was so fucked up that she didn’t even realize she was standing and dancing in her own puke and rubbing her body against the puke-covered chair. The Pumpkins keep rocking, they sounded so tight. They did “The Beginning is the End is the Beginning” and the nerd in me couldn’t help but picture Dr. Manhattan destroying Vietnamese soldiers. They end with a noise art track that would put Sonic Youth to shame and then walk off. I imagined they’d never grace this lame-ass audience with an encore.

Boy, was I wrong.

I firmly believe that most bands consider three options for the encore. The rocking encore, the no encore, and, if the audience really sucks, the “Fuck You” Encore. If this wasn’t a Fuck You encore I don’t know what is. They did “We Only Come Out at Night,” a great track but not an encore track. Oh…and they didn’t really sing the whole song – they used kazoos for half of it. Then Billy Corgan got heckled by an audience member, he heckled right back (UPDATE: Some more on the heckler here. Also, reading through the site's archived post I'm realizing the Pumpkins are happily becoming the Andy Kaufmans of rock). He then starts talking about how they haven’t sold out in over twenty years. About how they spent three weeks rehearsing for this two-night show where they were spreading 48 songs out over five-hours of playing. And how that’s not what sell-outs do. It was awkward disguised as funny. And that was their encore. It was, without a doubt, a “Fuck You” encore.

Don’t get me wrong, the Pumpkins put on a great show. But between motorcycle accidents, puking girls, and a dead audience everything was just kind of killed. And to make things worse, McCormick & Schmick’s wasn’t having their usual late-night happy hour specials because it’s a holiday. And the calamari sucked. And Robin and I got into a mini-fight.

So, on the whole, a complete let-down of a night. I’ve been looking forward to it for a couple of months but, you know, shit happens. And that my Smashing Pumpkins concert review: shit happens.

Labels: music, review

I got my hands on a pamphlet going around to corporations that aims to pair hip-hop stars with international advertising campaigns. There were some interesting pieces in there, such as...

“It’s Me, Fifty, On Your Ringtone” By 50-Cent - In a move destined to corner the ringtone market, 50-Cent has agreed to team with Verizon Wireless to produce this track for his newest album, Ringtones. The track will consist of 50-Cent name-dropping the 200 most-popular names in the English language and informing each of them that he’s on their ringtone. Verizon is expected to distribute the song one line at a time.

Sample lyric: “Hey Maria, it’s me. It’s Fitty, on your ringtone.
Hey Brian, it’s me. It’s Fitty, on your ringtone.
Hey Jeremy, it’s me. It’s Fitty on your ringtone.
Hey Paul, it’s me. It’s Fitty on your ringtone”

“How My Dictate?” By Soulja Boy - Soulja Boy’s follow-up to his platinum-selling album souljaboytellem.com (working title: http://www.myspace.com/souljaboytellem) will take his keen sexual innuendo (established with fresh rhymes such as, “superman that ho”) to the next level by asking every dance club across America how his dictates. Already branded “grammatically offensive” by the American Federation of Teachers and “simply offensive” by the National Organization for Women, this track is guaranteed to light up the charts!

Sample lyric: “Hey girl, how my dictate? How my dictate? How my dictate?
Do you understand me?
How my dictate? How my dictate? How my dictate?
Do you get it?
Take this down girl. Take this dic…
…tate. How my dictate? How my dictate?”

“Yankee Doo-Doo’s No Dandy” By new talent Yankee Doo-Doo - We found this young, hip, nine-year old rap prodigy through a “Hot”lanta-based talent agency and he’s going to make the radio stations “Doo Doo” their pants! The first single features a fly beat from hip-hop super-producer Mr. Collipark that mashes up the sound of cash registers, a jet
crashing into an Ethiopian village, and a dope version of the familiar classic “Happy Birthday.” Massive cross-over appeal for that all-too-important youth demographic.

Sample lyric: “That’s Yankee Doo-Doo to you.
That’s Yankee Doo-Doo to you.
That’s Yankee Doo-Doo, I ain’t no dandy.
That’s Yankee Doo-Doo to you.”

Other sneak peeks include the next “Hard Rapper Meets Hollister-wearing Rocker” hit, the next rap/dance move from down in the Dirty South (The Polio), and the newest hip-hop inspired fashion-trend that’s going to have every Chinese sweat-shop's foreman on every American designer's speed-dial.

Labels: humor, music

I was born by the river in a little tent
Oh and just like the river I've been running ever since...

It's been a long, a long time coming
But I know a change gonna come, oh yes it will

It's been too hard living but I'm afraid to die
'Cause I don't know what's up there beyond the sky

It's been a long, a long time coming
But I know a change gonna come, oh yes it will

I go to the movies and I go downtown
And somebody telling me, "Don't hang around"

It's been a long, a long time coming
But I know a change gonna come, oh yes it will

Then I go to my brother and I say, "Brother, help me please."
And he winds up, knocking me back down on my knees

Lord, there were times that I thought I couldn't last for long
But now I think I'm able to carry on

It's been a long, a long time coming
But I know a change gonna come, oh yes it will

That's a little Sam Cooke for you. Barack Obama paraphrased that song during his acceptance speech last night. There's really nothing I could add to the punditry about Barack, but I'd thought I'd say a little something about this song since I've been reading about Sam for quite some time. "A Change Is Gonna Come" was Sam's masterpiece, one of the last songs he recorded before he died. He was inspired by Bob Dylan's "Blowing in the Wind" and "These Times Are a-Changing" and realized that he should be doing something as powerful and meaningful as those songs. At the time Sam was already breaking new ground. He owned and published his own music, which was extraordinary for a black man in those days, and his cross-over appeal and sales records was unparalleled at the time. But despite all of this, despite the fact that he built an empire, he'd still look around and see that he was treating as less than human. He recorded "A Change Is Gonna Come." Bobby Womack was one of the first people to hear it and he told Sam, "It sounds like death."

Sam Cooke died a year later. The song was released post-humorously, first as a single and then on Sam's final album, Ain't That Good News. Sam never saw the song released and never saw the impact; the song became the soundtrack to the Civil Rights movement.

It's only fitting that President-elect Obama quoted from it last night. It has been a a long time coming, and the past 8 years sometimes made it feel like there was no end in sight, but out of nowhere we have Change. And Change is good.

Finally, I'd like to end this with two pages from my upcoming Sam Cooke graphic novel. I'm cowriting the book with Chris Stevens (he actually wrote this scene) and it's being illustrated by Nate Powell. I really think this scene fits the feel of this election season particularly well. It's about breaking outside of your confines and making your own opportunities. Going against the status quo. Being a Sam Cooke, or a Barack Obama:

Labels: comics, music, politics, sam_cooke

I set the DVR to record the Vice Presidential Debate and the Dodgers/Cubs game. I put on what constitutes “hip clothes” for me these days and smiled as Robin got all dolled up, blasting old New Kids On The Block albums throughout the apartment. We made our way to the metro station, she was giddy and I was apprehensive. I purchased these tickets months ago, before the MLB playoffs were even a consideration and before the importance (or even dates) of the VP debate was known. To put it bluntly, I did not want to go to this concert anymore.

I got them for Robin thinking she’d want to take a friend. I was surprised when she said she wanted to take me. NKOTB was a huge part of her childhood. She had the merch and the albums. She got to see them once, as a kid, and she had nosebleed seats in the upper levels of Foxboro Stadium. NKOTB was to her childhood what G.I.Joe, Transformers, comic books, and the Muppets were to mine – everything. I guess she just wanted me to experience it with her which is fine because I want to know everything about her.

Now let me start by saying that I had an OK time. I got to eat at Fuddruckers before the show and that’s always a treat, I had some beers, and the concert itself was enjoyable. It takes a lot for me to admit that I enjoyed the concert – I was actually the president of my Elementary School’s unofficial chapter of the NKOTB Hate Club. But my enjoyment of the concert came mainly from the spectacle. I have never seen or experienced anything like this in my life. Tens-of-thousands of girls SCREAMING as if God’s angels were coming down from the heavens, kicking-off the rapture. Dancing, singing, CRYING.

This:



In a way, I kind of admire this level of collective memory and devotion. I can’t think of a single thing in this universe that would make me lose my shit the way these girls were losing their shit. A Pavement reunion tour? I’d probably buy out all of their local shows and then sit back and chill. The ghost of John Lennon and George Harrison touring with Paul McCartney and Ringo? I’d tour the world with them if I had the resources. A Mets’ World Series or a Jets’ super bowl? I’d certainly “WOOOOOO” a whole fuck of a lot and I may even tear up a little bit but my excitement level would never come close to what any girl in that audience last night was experiencing.

It was fucking unreal. And like I said, the NKOTB weren’t bad. They were actually kind of entertaining. But I was just standing, watching, and occasionally moving my feet a little bit. Hands crossed or in my pocket for 95% of the show. I didn’t even clap after any of the songs. There was no point – any noise I made would have been lost. I was completely incapable of showing any sort of appreciation or emotional response. Anything I could have done would have paled in comparison to the response the sea of women was giving. I’ve never felt so inadequate and unnecessary in my life.

On the plus side, though, there was never a line at the men’s room.

Debate response is coming this afternoon. I just need to touch it up over lunch.

Labels: music

Push/Pull Product Development and Marketing is one of my favorite subjects, believe it or not. It's a pretty simple concept: some products are generated and marketed as a result of customer demands and some products and generated and marketed that the customer doesn't even know they need yet. The former is a pull strategy and the latter requires a push strategy. I'm a big fan of the push strategy, not because I think I can develop something the public will soon realize they need but because I feel like the public will buy anything you tell them to.

Anyway, now that you're an expert in push/pull strategies I'd like you to ponder a question - are Wedding DJs the result of a push or a pull?

Robin and I are currently looking for a DJ for our wedding. My first choice was djBC but he no longer does weddings. Since I didn't really have a second choice, we decided to scour the World Wide Web for Boston-area wedding DJs. We discovered something pretty early in our research - a Wedding DJ is a guy that wears a vest and a bow tie, is bald or balding, uses tacky inflatable props, and has an extensive playlist that includes Kelly Clarkson, the Electric Slide, and "It's Raining Men." A Wedding DJ is essentially someone who, long ago, decided that they'd never make it in the club scene, on radio, or in the studio and, instead, they'll do the same tired routine day-in-and-day-out at weddings. It seems like a soulless profession, where a script is generated on Day One and forty years later it's being performed for a cool grand. It's not a bad life, don't get me wrong, but if it was my life I'd have killed myself years ago.

But we're not here to shit on the Wedding DJ - we're here to talk about push-pull strategies. So, honestly, looking at the Wedding DJ - is it push or pull? Does the Wedding DJ exist because the customer demands him or does he exist because he feels the customer needs him? I honestly don't know where I stand on this issue - I can't live in a world where a Wedding DJ is needed nor can I live in one where people are convinced they need a Wedding DJ. I'm thinking there's a new paradigm in play here, and that's Lack of Information Strategy. If every advertised Wedding DJ acts, looks, and performs like every other advertised Wedding DJ, how would the customer even know what options are available?

Well, I know what I want in a DJ for my wedding. I want a guy or girl that's young and doesn't own a bow tie. I want someone that's working his or her ass off to break into the club or mix tape or record production scene and doing weddings on the side to pay the bills. I want someone who would REFUSE to play that "Slide to the left now crisscross song" as a matter of artistic integrity. I want someone with Sam Cooke in their library but not just "You Send Me", I want "That's Where It's At" to close the night and some Soul Stirrers "Jesus Gave Me Water" mixed into the cocktail hour. Where is THAT guy (or girl)? Who's marketing that person? There's a pull right here and, I imagine, as my generation marries off that pull will grow - who's meeting us halfway?

I know these people are out there someone and I know they don't even own the Chicken Dance or "I Will Survive."

Labels: editorial, music, wedding

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