Just like Jay Z, I have but three simple requests:

Mo' Money


Mo' Cash


Mo' Ho's

Things that will rock your ass.

Flying V? check. Keytar? check. Yep, I think these crazy kids are pretty much ready to rock your ass.


Lemmy Kielmeister is rocking your ass right now. Tell me I'm wrong.


Wayne Cochran's hair will rock your ass. It's like Donald Trump's combover started taking steroids or someting.

Snoop Dogg's lesser-known uncle, Swamp Dogg, will rock your ass. Warning: giant rodents may be involved.

The Fat Boys will rock your ass. Although they might want to stop for a snack at some point.

The United States of America will rock your ass. Duh.

Gettin' Busy with Thin Lizzy

I love Saint Paul, but frankly I'm not a big fan of celebrating St. Pat's in St. Paul because between the Celtic Kitsch overload and the suburban tourists, it tends to turn into amateur hour pretty damn fast - O'Gara's being pretty much ground zero for this particularly noxious muppet show. So my two options are: stay home; or, go across the river. Fortunately, this year E-Funk and G-Funk of the Triple Rock Social Club provided an excellent option - a Thin Lizzy tribute night at their humble establishment. This may come a shock to you, but I loves me some hanging out with cool people, drinking good beer, getting my ass rocked by live bands, and I especially loves me some Thin Lizzy (yep, I've still got Jailbreak on cassette).

In fact, an early victim of my Thin Lizzyphilia was none other than Admiral Nelson, who endured repeat Jailbreak playings at a nearly North Korean brain-washing level upon several road trips to and from Da Yoop. So naturally, when I heard about last night's festivities, I called the Admiral to tell him that not only is there going to be a jailbreak, but in fact, the boys will be back in town.

We got there a little early and got take leisurely stroll down memb'ry lane with Billy Morissette. Naturally, the Brian Boru Pipe Band had to smash through the front door and show us all how to kick really, really old school.

Later, there was rock and roll. And I looked upon it and pronounced it good. To be honest, I didn't even catch the band names, which is a little embarrassing because I met the guys from band #2 a few months ago (sorry, Grumpy Steve). Doesn't matter really, the important thing is that the flame of our memory of Phil Lynott was kindled anew last night by the mighty power of rock and roll.

Special Bonus Video: Thin Lizzy performs "Jailbreak" to Crowd of Tranquilized Romanian Eighth-Graders


Seriously, what the hell is wrong with that audience? I've seen stunned trout with more life.

P.S. the muppets known as "Bono Vox" and "The Edge" ain't worthy of carrying Phil Lynott's sweaty jock. That's right, I said it. Now go find whatever it is you were looking for and quit making such pretentious crap music.

Everyone's a Critic, and Most People are DJs.

So help me out, friends - if I were to start spinnin' like DJs Spock and Sue Teller, what should my DJ name be? "DJ Pirate of Selby Avenue" doesn't exactly roll off the tongue, and rumor has it that "DJ Jazzy Jeff" was already taken some time ago. Here's a few monikers I've thought of:

• Bastards of Fun
• Husker Don't
• The Barrister of Booty
• I Hate Wearing Pants
• The Dingo That Ate Your Baby
  
• Hotdish
  
• Total Bastards, Inc.

So, whatch think?

Attention, Sad Bastards: Denmark is the Happiest Place on Earth and We Now Have Video Evidence

So yer mopin' around because it's been a long, cold winter. Boo effin' hoo. Well, turn that Death Cab Sad Bastard music down for a minute and take a cue from the Danes:

If it is happiness you are seeking a move to Denmark could be in order, according to the first scientist to make a world map of happiness.

Adrian White, from the UK's University of Leicester, used the responses of 80,000 people worldwide to map out subjective wellbeing.

Denmark came top, followed closely by Switzerland and Austria. The UK ranked 41st. Zimbabwe and Burundi came bottom.

Want proof? Denmark's current top musical export is a song called "Fascination" by some overly-cheerful young Dane-things called Alphabeat. Imagine if "Walking on Sunshine" by Katrina and the Waves, "Modern Love" by David Bowie, and "Tenderness" by General Public got together to have intimate relations that are illegal in 35 states - the resulting love-bastard would probably sound like this song. Here's the video, try not to go into a diabetic coma watching it:

Naturally, some brilliant DJ named Dunproofin' bootlegged a mashup of this song with The Futureheads' mighty-clever "Hounds of Love" cover. How ya like them apples, Kate Bush? Check it out here.

Special bonus confirmation evidence that Danes are the goofiest goons on Odin's green earth, "Rhythm Bandits" by Junior Senior:

This post is strictly 4 the gangstaz

Before reading any further, stop and ask yourself if your gangsta quotient is equal to or higher than that of this OG:

I don't really have any deep thoughts to share with all y'all today, so I think the best I can give you is a random jumble of things I'm digging on right:

• Friday Night Fish Fry at The Groveland Tap. One of my many weaknesses is for batter-fried sea critters - and the Tap does it just right. Ten bucks gets you a pint of Summit and endless baskets of cod. Just kill me now.
• Guided By Voices - "I am a Tree."
• Hockey. Goddamn am I loving hockey right now. I don't care if it's NHL, college, high school, men, women, or a couple of kids on a frozen pond. If it involves a puck and ice, I wanna see it.
• Husker Du - "Celebrated Summer." I saw Bob Mould play this one live on Wednesday and it was definitely one of the highlights of the show. The Husker Du albums New Day Rising and Flip Your Wig were pretty the soundtrack to my summer in 1988 - and ya know what, they both still sound pretty damn good today - which is better than I can say for Join the Army by Suicidal Tendencies. The funny thing is that Husker Du actually broke up over the '87-'88 winter, so I was in this weird position of becoming smitten with a band that had fallen apart just before I had a chance to see them. I ran into bassist Greg Norton that summer at the Wabasha Street Northern Lights (that's right folks, we actually used to have record store downtown). The conversation, to my eternal embarassment, went a little bit like this:
• Young Pirate: Hey, you're Greg Norton!
• Greg: yep.
• Young Pirate: You were in Husker Du!
• Greg: yep.
• Young Pirate: You guys broke up!
• Greg: yep.
• Young Pirate: That sucks!
• Greg: yep.
  

Sorry, Greg.

• Minnesota Kitsch. If you know me, you know I'm a huge Minnesota "statriot" (y'know, kinda being a patriot, but for a state). My recent voyage to an undisclosed location only confirmed my love for the land of sky blue waters. Lately, I've taken great satisfaction in seeing images like these:
  

• The city of Butte, Montana really doesn't have a whole lot going for it, but at least they picked an awesome name for their football team:

The Most Awesomest Album is the One You Make Yourself

Friends, take a gander at the cover art for the upcoming album "Savage Wields His Club" by Lyons Northern Territory



Wuzzat? Never heard of 'em? To be honest, I hadn't either - at least not until I played the Make Your Own Awesome Album Game. The rules are pretty simple:

1. The first article title on this page is the name of your band. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random

2. The last four words of the very last quote on this page is the title of your album (Hit the "New Random quotations" button at the bottom). http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3

3. Finally, the third picture here, no matter what it is, will be your album cover. http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days /

4. (Optional) Using the rule from #2 above, create a track list of 12 songs.

Have at it, friends -- and report back with your own Awesome Album!

So, what was the deal with bands in the 90's having male cheerleaders/dancers

So, I've been thinking about music in the 90's lately (I blame VH1). I firmly stand by my judgment made during that decade that about 75% of all music produced between 1992-2000 pretty well sucked. However, there were some interesting micro-tends. For instance, what was the deal with bands that had a member who did nothing but dance around on stage? I present the following case studies:

1) Ben Carr of the Mighty Mighty Bosstones:

What you're seeing is pretty much all Ben does. Skank-a-dank. Wikipedia describes him as "an ubiquitous, but non-musician onstage presence, later credited as 'Bosstone.'" Now, this isn't such a big deal when your seven-piece band is playing monster venues on the Vans/Warped Tour. But, AC and my second date was seeing this guys in the 7th Street Entry back in early '92. There was no room on stage, no room on the floor - but somehow they pulled it off. AC got a contact knocked out when she got kicked in the face by a stage-diver. Miraculously, she actually found the contact on the floor. Later, I interviewed Joe Gittleman for my awesome 'zine, Blaaarg! and AC got kissed by several band members.

Special Bonus Video: Devil's Night Out


vainglorious tangent: the barkeep at Tin Cups keeps telling me that I remind him of Dicky Barrett. Apparently, Dicky is now Jimmy Kimmel's announcer. Who knew?

2) Beau Beau of Avail


I will submit that Avail might end up being one of the best Punk Rawk bands of the 90's. They broke the mold of a genre that was getting stale and formulaic in a lot of ways (their covers of "Pink Houses," "Suspicious Minds," and "You May be Right" while blow your free-gone mind, man). So why not have live show that includes a guy with a beard that'd do Odin proud and an incisor deficiency as your all-purpose cheerleader? Tip o' the eyepatch to you, Beau Beau.


3) Bez of Happy Mondays


I'm going to admit that I was a pretty serious hater of Acid House back inna day. Granted, I put my 40 of Haterade down long enough to head over to Sunday Night Dance Party in the Mainroom after the all-ages hardcore matinee was over in the Entry. That was where the girls were. Duh.
At any rate, no band exemplified Acid like Happy Mondays. Check out the film '24 Hour Party People' for a very entertaining glimpse into this particular chapter in music/drug/youth culture history. One of the Mondays' trademarks was having this geezer named Bez (who was X'd out of his gourd) dance like a jackrabbit with a thyroid condition in all their shows. Later, the maracas came out. For those of you who were rocking out to Richard Marx back then, Bez was basically the Flavor Flav of Acid House.

Here's a video of these freaks at the height of their evil powers:



Still not my cup of tea. You're twistin' my melon, man.

Thought I was out of Awesome Album Covers? Think again, suckas!

Funny. My "Tijuana Picnics" usually involve a few gallons of Sauza, a donkey, and some ping-pong balls, but you just do whatever makes you happy, Colonel Sanders.

We're awesome, we're Norwegian, and we've got a phone that matches our suits. Deal with it, byotch.

We've got one turntable and no microphones...

No matter where you go, his eyes will follow you, silently commanding you... "Boogie!"


Yeah, yeah. You got the dove and all I got was the #$@!! clap. Thanks fer nuthin', Mike Adkins. I'm never going to give you a ride to Psycho Suzi's again.

Awesome Album Covers: Those Silly Foreigners Edition

Apparently, somebody thought it would be a good idead to clone Jay Manuel and have his doppelgangers (how ya like that use of foreign vocabulary?) start a band that wore matching shiny pink suits. And you know what? That somebody was right!


Friends, I'm not going to lie to you - Heino pretty much scares the living shit out of me.


To this day, the debate rages between Zamfir fans: Which Zamfir do they like better - the yound, skinny rebellious Zamfir or the older, fatter sequined jumpsuit-wearing Zamfir?


I had no idea Jackie Torture could play the xylophone. (That's a little inside-baseball for the the Lex-Ham folks.)


Hey Guadalajara Brass, I don't quite know how to break this to you, but Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass have been there, done that, bought the t-shirt, and used a functional vehicle.

Dammit! All those years I spent playing guitar, and now I find out that what French whores truly love is a man who can play the accordian. You've got a mighty sweet life, Jo Basile.

Mi nombre es Barretto. Ray Barretto.