'TBH Politoons'
Thanks, again, Tim!
Baron Dave Romm
New Music for '04
By Baron Dave Romm
New CDs (at least, new to me) are piling up in both my "to be listened to" and "songs to be cataloged" bins. I'll try to catch up with recommendations, even if the CDs were mentioned here earlier.
Faster Than A Speeding Mullet by Worm Quartet fits semi-neatly in that space between the obscenity-laced rage-filled punk of the Dead Kennedys and the off-kilter viewpoint in the bouncy pop of They Might Be Giants. This is an album for adolescents, or those of us who remember adolescence with at least a grain of nostalgia. Not for kids, unless kids grow up faster than I remember. Worm Quartet, aka Shoebox, was a presence at Marscon. He performed solo on stage, singing to taped music. The advantage of this high-level karaoke is that you don't have to bring (or pay) musicians, tech set-up is a snap and rehearsals are easy to arrange. A lot of performers are going this route, even in large concert venues. The singer/songwriter has outgrown the guitar-and-harmonica of Bob Dylan. In the 21st Century, we don't have our flying cars but we do have our travelling CD accompaniment. But I digress.
When Great Idea For A Song started, I didn't like it. My initial impression: Another thrash song that gets its charm from a thesaurus and breakneck speed. But the lyrics are clever and the tune infectious. Anyone who's ever lost at love will appreciate Shoebox's sheer hatred of his former girlfriend, the extroverted take of Weird Al Yankovic's disgust in One More Minute. The CD has few songs I can play on the radio with some serious bleeping, but, oddly, one of the cleaner songs is I'm Gonna Procreate. After a couple of listenings, I'd say my second favorite song is Eskimo Pie Is Not Pie and Contains Very Little Eskimo even though those words appear nowhere in the lyrics. Coffee (2003 Blend) is caffeinated and hard to understand what the heck he's talking about until the chorus of "Coffee! Coffee! Coffee!" kicks in. The Short Bus Suite -- 17 songs in 4 1/2 minutes -- is pretty cute, ranging from the Ernie Kovacs-like intrumental Sonata For Piano and Moron in C Major to the brief capitalist exegisis Sorry, We're No Longer Buying Lizard Shit.
Faster Than A Speeding Mullet won't hang out in my car CD player, since I generally like to obey the speed limit. And it's kind of on the icky side. But I'm probably going to take the time to carefully bleep songs that might otherwise not get airplay. Recommended for adults who want to rage at the parts of life they hope they've left behind but probably haven't.
"I'm losing my hearing, I'm going blind in one eye. I'm sorry I can't hear you, did you really say goodbye." Connie Franklin, played by Andrea Martin on SCTV, precisely captured the hurt woman who keeps asking for more, a staple of country singers. This tradtion is upheld by Anne Deming in her soon-to-be-released CD, Mulligan. Heck, even the name of the CD implies you missed hitting me hard, please try again. The lyrics are pure self-pitying country: "Someone should break me, someone should make me apologize. I guess I was lonely when he was out having all the fun. I thought it was over but our love had just begun." and "I can promise you the sun and moon but you'll always have your way. I'm getting used to losing, it happens all the time. Baby you will always win because I want you to be mine." She has a lovely, full-bodied, corn-fed voice that rises above the nasal anorexic whining chicks. The arrangements are more folk than country and hita distinctive sound of bongos, bass and guitar. This isn't really my kind of music, but when her manager/boyfriend/piano player came to the station he said there were some weird songs on it, and I promised a review before the release show on March 27. Anne is a better singer than the Connie Francis/Barbara Mandrell range of ragmop women (and the album photos of her in a negligee make her look better), and I hope she veers toward a more sensible lifestyle choice. If you like this kind of music, the purity of her voice overcomes the one-chord subject matter.
In Corporate American, nobody takes nothin'. NRun is almost gansta rap about the unfairness of corporate America getting away with massive fraud while minor crimes get major jailtime. The CD came out in December, but they were prescient in going after Jeff Skilling, who faces a 42-count indictment handed down in February. Good political rap, and one of the few songs of any genre to discuss specific pieces of legislation regulating business. Good lyrics sung to a heavy beat. Recommended for liberals who like to play their stereo loud enough for dittoheads to complain.
The CD is nine songs long, but the three most hard-hitting are presented in two forms: Radio Lyrics and Club Lyrics. Thanks! The Club Lyrics are earthier and the bass louder while the Radio Lyrics will get airplay. If you want political folk, stick with George and Julius. If you want some rap that's a bit angrier, Corporate America is for you.
Baron Dave Romm is a conceptual artist and a noble of Ladonia with a radio show, a very weird CD collection and an ever growing list of political links. He reviews things at random for obscure web sites. You can read all his music recommendations from Bartcop-E here.
He's Been Busy!
The Worried Shrimp
Reader Question
Protest Songs
Hi Marty,
I'm hoping someone contacted you with some songs.
Even if there are two, can you list them on your site?
At least its a start. I've got two teenage boys. I don't want them drafted. I'm sure the majority of mothers out there agree.
The only way to give a movement a push is to get behind a song. Inspiration is borne from hope.
At this very bizarre moment in time, hope is all we have.
We've got to create a momentum going into the fall. All hell will break loose politically by Labor Day,
which is the traditional post time for campaigns to catch fire or drown. A song, a good song will lift us up and release us from doubting our ability
to stop this madness.
The radio stations may not play them, because they are controlled by the few. But no one controls my cd player. No one controls the internet.....yet.
To all songwriters, singers, and poets...............bring it on.
Sara
Thanks, Sara!
The new page is up (finally!) - Protest Music for the 21st Century - still looking for more contributions!
from Mark
Another Bumpersticker
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Still springlike.
Tonight, Monday, CBS opens the night with a FRESH 'Yes, Dear', followed by a FRESH 'Still Standing', then a
FRESH 'Raymond', followed by a FRESH '2½ Men', then a FRESH 'CSI: Miami'.
Scheduled on a FRESH Dave are Tom Hanks and N.E.R.D.
Scheduled on a FRESH Craiggers are John Larroquette, Carmen Kass, and Chingy.
NBC starts the night with a FRESH 'Fear Factor', followed by a FRESH 'Las Vegas', then a FRESH
'Average Joe: Adam Returns'.
On a RERUN Leno are Mel Gibson and Prince.
On a RERUN Conan (from 2/13/04), are Jim Carrey, Eric McCormack, and Barenaked Ladies.
On a RERUN Carson Daly are Eve, Jason Bateman, and Jack Johnson with G. Love.
ABC begins the night with a FRESH made-for-TV-movie 'NTSB: The Crash Of Flight 323', followed by a FRESH 'special' - '20/20 Special Edition: Myths, Lies & Downright Stupidity'.
Scheduled on a FRESH Jimmy Kimmel are Tyra Banks, Dave Attell, and Matt Nathanson.
The WB offers a RERUN '7th Heaven', followed by a RERUN 'Everwood'.
Faux has a FRESH 'Bernie Mac', followed by a FRESH 'Cracking Up', then a FRESH 'Forver Eden'.
UPN has a RERUN 'The Parkers', followed by a RERUN 'Eve', then a RERUN 'Girlfriends', followed by a RERUN
'Half & Half'.
A&E has 'American Justice', 'Biography' (Charlie Sheen), 'Investigative Reports: The Secret Life Of A Serial Killer', a FRESH 'Airline', followed by a
RERUN 'Airline'.
AMC offers the movie '9 To 5', followed by the movie 'Thelma & Louise', then the movie 'Inventing The Abbotts'.
BBC -
[6pm] 'BBC World News';
[6:30pm] 'Cash in the Attic' - Hinton;
[7pm] 'House Invaders' - Birstall, Yorkshire;
[7:30pm] 'Changing Rooms' - Putney;
[8pm] 'Red Cap' - Betrayed;
[9pm] 'McCallum' - Sacrifice;
[11pm] 'Red Cap' - Betrayed;
[12am] 'McCallum' - Sacrifice;
[2am] 'House Invaders' - Birstall, Yorkshire;
[2:30am] 'Changing Rooms' - Putney;
[3am] 'McCallum' - Sacrifice;
[5am] 'Red Cap' - Betrayed; and
[6am] 'BBC World News'. (ALL TIMES EST)
Bravo has 'West Wing', followed by the movie 'The Last Temptation Of Christ', then another 'West Wing'.
Comedy Central has 'Reno 911!', another 'Reno 911!', still another 'Reno 911!', yet another 'Reno 911!', 'South Park', and a
FRESH 'Race from the White House'.
Scheduled on a FRESH Jon Stewart is Wynton Marsalis.
History has 'Tales Of The Gun', 'Band Of Brothers', 'Mail Call', another 'Mail Call', a FRESH
'Reliving History: Fantasy Camps', and a FRESH 'Guy Food'.
IFC - [3PM] 'IFC Short Film Showcase';
[4PM] 'Amarcord' (1974);
[6:15PM] 'Johnny Stecchino' (1991);
[8PM] 'Dinner For Five 11';
[8:30PM] 'Short: Frank'S Book' (2001);
[9PM] 'Bread And Roses' (2001);
[11PM] 'Dinner For Five 11';
[11:30PM] 'In The Company Of Women' (2003);
[1AM] 'Babymother' (1999);
[2:30AM] 'Bread And Roses' (2001); and
[4:30AM] 'In The Company Of Women' (2003). (ALL TIMES EST)
SciFi is all 'Stargate SG-1' all night.
Sundance -
[4:40PM] 'Missing Allen' (Documentary);
[6:15PM] 'Cinema Verite: Defining The Moment' (Documentary);
[8PM] '156 Rivington' (Feature);
[9PM] 'Gotham Fish Tales' (Documentary);
[10:15PM] 'Off the Record' (Documentary);
[11:30PM] 'Whipped' (Feature);
[12:35AM] 'Ridicule' (Feature);
[2:20AM] 'No Man's Land' (Feature);
[4AM] 'Shorts Program 111' (Short); and
[4:55AM] 'Mostly Martha' (Feature). (ALL TIMES EST)
TCM pays tribute to the fabulously husky-voiced actress,
Margaret Sullavan most of the night.
[6am] 'The Happy Years' (1950);
[8am] 'Teresa' (1951);
[10am] 'Talk About A Stranger' (1952) [WARNING: stars Nancy Davis] ;
[11:15am] 'Count The Hours' (1953);
[12:30pm] 'Suddenly' (1954);
[2pm] 'The Cobweb' (1955);
[4:15pm] 'Nightmare' (1956);
[6pm] 'The Seventh Sin' (1957);
[8pm] 'Three Comrades' (1938);
[10pm] 'Cry Havoc' (1943);
[12am] 'The Shopworn Angel' (1938);
[1:30am] 'The Shining Hour' (1938);
[3am] 'The Mortal Storm' (1940);
[5am] 'Hollywood Without Make-Up' (1966). (ALL TIMES EST)
Firefighters from Gorham, Maine compete in the 14th annual Eat The Heat Firefighters Race at Sunday River Ski Area in Newry, Maine March 21, 2004. The charity race raises money for Maine Handicapped Skiing.
Photo by Herb Swanson
The Information One-Stop
Moose & Squirrel
Helps Dad at Fund-Raiser
George Clooney
Actor George Clooney helped raise about $140,000 at private fund-raisers for his father's congressional campaign.
Nick Clooney, a longtime Cincinnati television personality, is the lone Democratic candidate for the 4th District seat of retiring U.S. Rep. Ken Lucas.
George Clooney spoke briefly Saturday at two events in northern Kentucky, but stayed away from making political statements. Instead, he talked about his father and how he wanted to help him with the election.
George Clooney
U.S. Navy veteran Bruce Macdonald, right, a member of Veterans for Peace, holds one of the signs with names of American servicemen and women who have died in Iraq, in front of the union hall where the annual St. Patrick's Day breakfast was held, Sunday, March 21, 2004, in Boston. About a dozen members of the group protested outside the hall.
Photo by Chitose Suzuki
Funds Extraterrestrial Search
Paul Allen
Microsoft Corp. co-founder Paul Allen has donated $13.5 million to help fund the search for extraterrestrial life.
The California-based SETI Institute, which is dedicated to the search for life beyond Earth, said the donation from Allen, who co-founded Microsoft with Bill Gates, would be used to create a radio telescope array of more than 200 satellite dishes that will measure signals from space.
SETI, which stands for Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, plans ultimately to increase the array to a total of 350 satellite dishes.
Paul Allen
Campaign Takes Flight
Save 'Angel'
Fans of Joss Whedon's soon-to-be-canceled WB Network drama series sprung into action last month once it became official that the spawn of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" would get the big spike in May. The Save Angel postcards and full-page ads have been flowing into The Hollywood Reporter and other publications for weeks, but "Angel" fans distinguished themselves from past fan-fueled salvage initiatives last week by hiring (at $700 a day) a billboard truck to drive around Los Angeles and park at strategic locations (including THR's Wilshire Boulevard offices, Warner Bros. and the WB, Paramount, UPN, HBO and 20th Century Fox) for maximum impact and, of course, free media exposure. ("We will follow 'Angel' to hell . . . or another network," the billboard promises.)
Theresa Fortier, one of the instigators of the www.SavingAngel.org Web site, said the group has raised some $22,000 from several hundred donors in just a few weeks. The truck will cruise around for at least another week, and more print ads are likely to be placed.
Save 'Angel'
In The Kitchen With BartCop & Friends
Joining 'Nip/Tuck'
Famke Janssen
Former Bond girl Famke Janssen has signed to appear in a dozen episodes of the FX plastic-surgery drama "Nip/Tuck," which will return for its second season in June.
Janssen will play a woman who becomes a "life coach," or counselor of sorts, to Joely Richardson's character, Julia McNamara, the wife of one of the two plastic surgeons who are the focal point of the series. Janssen will appear in the bulk of "Nip/Tuck's" upcoming 16-episode season, set to begin June 22. She is set to make her debut in episode three.
Famke Janssen
A Filipino baker inspects a giant strawberry-shaped cake at a bakery in the mountain town of La Trinidad, Benguet, north of Manila March 20, 2004. Three tons of strawberries, a ton of flour and a thousand eggs were used to create the cake, which has a base measuring 16 feet by 24 feet (4.9 by 7.3 meters) and a strawberry-shaped top towering eight feet (2.4 meters). La Trinidad, the Philippine's strawberry capital, was attempting to enter the Guinness Book of World Records by creating the world's largest strawberry-shaped butter cake.
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Ambassador For British Music Festival
Russell Simmons
Rap mogul Russell Simmons will act as the ambassador for a hip hop and R&B festival being held in London to raise funds for a youth charity, event organizers said.
Simmons will help raise awareness of the May 8-9 Urban Music Festival organized by The Prince's Trust, a charity founded by Prince Charles to aid disadvantaged young people.
Artists scheduled to appear at the Earls Court indoor venue in London include Jay-Z, Alicia Keys, Lemar, Dizzee Rascal and Jamelia, said a statement released Tuesday by The Prince's Trust.
Russell Simmons
www.umf.org.uk
Formerly 'The Vidiot'
Reissues A Retail Hit
Rock T's
They say everything old is new again. That is certainly true for Trunk Ltd. The Santa Monica, Calif.-based fashion company is making a name for itself by reissuing vintage rock T-shirts.
Launched in December, Trunk is projected to do more than $5 million in sales this year, according to parent company Cinq Group.
Because Trunk T-shirts are considered collector's items, they carry high-end price tags to match. Most Trunk T-shirts have retail prices of $75 to $200. Some retailers sell the most in-demand Trunk items for up to $300.
For more, Rock T's
Scottish artist and former coal miner Jack Vettriano painting 'An Imperfect Past' is seen in this undated file photo. Prints of Vettriano's story telling pictures, which he confesses are an adoration of women and partly biographical, outsell those of master impressionist Claude Monet and his original works now hang in the homes of celebrities like Jack Nicholson and regularly fetch upwards of $70,000.
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Feud Sites Draw Tourists
Hatfield & McCoy
A wooded hillside overlooking the Tug Valley has gone from being a gruesome murder scene to a tourist attraction that draws people from around the world.
This tiny spot in the Appalachians would have been forgotten long ago had the combatants not been named Hatfield and McCoy. But because these are the nation's most notorious feuding families, the scattered places where they fought and died are being preserved in the interest of history — and commerce.
The feud between the McCoys of Kentucky and the Hatfields of West Virginia — believed to have stemmed from a dispute over a pig — brought national attention to the region. A court battle over timber rights escalated the tension in the early 1870s. By 1888, at least 12 lives were lost as a result of the feud that received widespread publicity in national newspapers and magazines at the time.
For the rest, Hatfield & McCoy
Pikeville-Pike County Tourism
Marking The Equinox
Pyramids of the Sun and Moon
Decked out in eagle feathers, amulets and lucky charms, hundreds of thousands of Mexicans converged on the ancient pyramids of Teotihuacan, near Mexico City, on Sunday to tap into what they believe is the site's energy on the spring equinox.
Arriving before dawn, visitors queued in snaking lines to climb the steeply raked steps of the Pyramids of the Sun and Moon, in an annual rite marking the first day of spring which is thought to date back to pre-Hispanic times.
Teotihuacan, which lies in a highland valley 30 miles northeast of the capital, was built some 2,000 years ago by a nameless civilization that worshiped a pantheon of deities including a snake god and a thunder god.
For more, Pyramids of the Sun and Moon
In Memory
Robert Snyder
Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker Robert Snyder, whose subjects included Michelangelo and his own father-in-law, futurist R. Buckminster Fuller, died Sunday. He was 88.
Snyder died at his home in the Pacific Palisades section of Los Angeles, family friend and business associate John Ferry said.
The cause of death was not immediately clear, although Snyder had been hospitalized multiple times for pneumonia over the past year, Ferry said.
Snyder won an Academy Award in 1950 as producer of "The Titan: Story of Michelangelo," which traced the life of the Renaissance artist. He was nominated again in 1958 for the insect documentary "The Hidden World."
Snyder produced or directed more than a half-dozen biographical documentaries over his career, tackling subjects as varied as author Henry Miller and cellist Pablo Casals.
His father-in-law, Fuller, was the subject of two of his works, 1968's "Buckminster Fuller on Spaceship Earth" and, three years later, "The World of Buckminster Fuller."
Last year, Snyder completed a feature-length documentary on the life of cellist Pablo Casals, "Pablo Casals: A Cry For Peace."
In addition to his film production credits, Snyder authored three books: "This is Henry, Henry Miller from Brooklyn"; "Anais Nin Observed: Portrait of the Woman as an Artist"; and "Buckminster Fuller, An Autobiographical Scenario."
Snyder is survived by his wife, Allegra Fuller Snyder; son Jaime Snyder; daughter Alexandra May; two grandchildren, Olivia and Rowan May; two step-grandchildren, Mira Speare and Elizabeth Demaray; and two sisters, Judah Shapiro and Roslyn Katz.
Funeral arrangements were pending.
Robert Snyder
A piglet runs during the pig races in Moscow, March 21, 2004. Moscow held its first pig races in over 100 years as Russian pig farmers try to revive a little known racing tradition. For the pigs, this is a chance not only to win a pail of carrots with whipped cream dressing, but also to escape the slaughterhouse and capture porcine glory.
Photo by Grigory Dukor
'The Osbournes'
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