Neil Young is Fucking Hard

According to this CNN.com article, Neil Young rocked so hard at a Rock & Roll Hall of Fame ceremony that he gave himself a brain aneurysm. After it was diagnosed, he and his aneurysm went to Nashville and recorded some music. Then he got it treated.

Now whether you love or hate Neil Young (I’m in the first category, thank you), you’ve got to respect a motherfucker who won’t let a little thing like a brain aneurysm get in the way of recording.

OLGA

OK, I think I just found my favorite file on OLGA, the On-Line Guitar Archive (or as us old-timers like to remember it, ftp.uwp.edu).

Fucking Blasphemy

A few nights back I watching a rerun of Conan O’Brien. One of his guests was Hilary Duff. Apparently on her new CD she does a cover of The Who classic “My Generation”. Now while just the mere thought of Hilary Duff singing The Who is bad enough, Conan mentioned that she changed the line “hope I die before I get old” to “hope I don’t die before I get old”.

What the fuck kind of bullshit is this?

Now, I’m not about to enumerate every reason why Hilary Duff should be painfully killed (the list would surely push me over my monthly bandwidth limits), but this has got to be pretty fucking near the top. I’m sorry, but you simply can’t do that. Many would say that rock and roll is all about being a pissed-off, angst-ridden, rebellious teenager, and “My Generation” is probably the single purest example of that concept. You can not take it and sanitize it like that. That’s a fucking crime against music.

Conan gave her some shit about it, but he kept it light. That’s why he’s a talk show host and I’m not. I may have snapped, yelled “Well too fucking bad!” and bludgeoned her to death with a microphone.

Holy Shit, it’s Rage Kage!

So I finally got around to seeing Jacob’s Ladder a few nights back. I saw the tail end of it in the early 90’s on HBO and thought it looked pretty freakin’ cool but it was never on again. I’ve wanted to see it for a few years now, but it’s kind of hard to find. None of my local video stores had it despite there being a new special edition DVD, and I didn’t really want to buy it without seeing it first.

Anyway, in order to help my friend Larry get a free iPod, I signed up for a trial of Blockbuster Online, and it was the first movie I picked.

Great movie if you like psychological horror what-the-fuck-is-real movies. Highly recommended.

Watching the credits (which I do because I’m a film snob), I recognized a familiar name. A couple actually, but the big one for me was Kyle Gass. If that name means nothing to you, you may as well stop reading now. You won’t give a fuck. But the enlightened among you will recognize that as the full name of KG, 50% of Tenacious D. He was listed as Tony. Thing is I didn’t remember a Tony in the movie.

Anyway, I scanned through the movie again looking for Kage. There’s a scene where Jacob Singer (played by Tim Robbins) has a fever of 106 degrees. His girlfriend rounds up all the neighbors to help her throw him in a bathtub filled with ice. One of those neighbors, apparently named Tony, is KG. He had no lines and is onscreen for maybe 5 seconds total. It’s strange that he was credited, considering that Macaulay Culkin had a bigger part, multiple scenes with actual lines and shit, and was never credited.

After the whole ice-bath scene plays out, Jacob awakes to a doctor looking down on him. His doctor is Lewis Black, then unknown but now semi-famous for his stand-up and his appearances on The Daily Show. He actually had a line: “You’re a lucky guy Jake. You must have friends in high places.” This line is ironic, but you’d have to see the movie to understand.

Also in the movie are a pre-Pulp Fiction Ving Rhames, a pre-Seinfeld Jason Alexander and a pre-ER Eriq Lasalle. But who gives a shit about them, that was totally fucking KG helping with the ice!!!

Anyway, now if I ever have the good fortune to meet the underrated half of the D, I know exactly what I’ll say: “I loved you in Jacob’s Ladder!”

KG and another guy

KG, Tim Robbins and that other guy

KG looks worried

Lewis Black

Some credits

They’ve Officially Run Out of Rock Stars

The 2005 inductees to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame were announced today. They seem to be scraping the bottom of the barrel. I have to wonder if maybe somebody in Cleveland’s going “Hmmm, maybe we shoul have limited ourselves to one a year….”

So let’s go down the list, shall we?

U2

This is the choice I have the least trouble with. If we were talking about FatDave’s Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, U2 would never even be considered, but we’re talking about the real Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and apparently U2 had some kind of impact. I guess they may have even been cool for about 10 minutes in 1983. So anyway, I’ll reluctantly give you U2. If they ever open the Overrated Self-Important Rock Star Hall of Fame, I expect Bono to be near the top of list (just above Sting).

The Pretenders

The Pretenders were far from horrible, but hall of fame material? Not in my book. They had a couple hits but so did Adam Ant. Shall we put him in the Hall of Fame? There’s always 2006….

The O’ Jays

Personally, I’d consider them more soul than anything else. And I don’t think they ever did much besides Love Train. But Love Train made it onto Freedom Rock, and there’s gotta be a Freedom Rock clause somewhere in the Hall of Fame by-laws.

Percy Sledge

See above, but substitute “When a Man Loves a Woman” for “Love Train” and take out the whole Freedom Rock thing. Nothing against Percy Sledge mind you, but to paraphrase Dire Straits, it ain’t what I call rock & roll. Come to think of it, Dire Straits hasn’t been inducted to the Hall of Fame. Yeah, I mean it’s not like they’re the Beatles or something, but c’mon, they’re more rock & roll than Percy Sledge.

Buddy Guy

OK, you know what? Buddy Guy fucking rules. But you know what else? That’s blues, not rock & roll. Was the blues a huge influence on rock music? Well duh. Was Buddy Guy specifically a huge influence on rock and roll? Why don’t you ask Eric Clapton. But the blues is still not rock, at least not until you speed it up and play in straight-8ths instead of triplets. Now, there is an “early influences” category which contains the likes of Woodie Guthrie, T-Bone Walker and Les Paul. If that’s where they’re putting Buddy, then what took them so fucking long?

Interestingly, these artists’ competition was Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five (not rock), the J. Geils Band (not legends) and Conway Twitty (you gotta be fucking kidding me).

Now obviously the term rock and roll is somewhat amorphous. What is and isn’t rock is open to debate, especially when you consider genres like funk that are direct offshoots of rock. This is why I don’t bitch about Curtis Mayfield and Parliament/Funkadelic being in the Hall of Fame. That and I like their music much more. Some would say soul is also an offshoot of rock, though I’m not convinced. I think it has an independent bloodline. But if you think Percy Sledge belongs in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame by all means write your own rant and send me an email telling me I’m an asshole.

And it should go without saying that the worth of one artist over another is largely a matter of opinion. I mean, there’s maybe ten acts in the history of rock that everyone can point to as legendary. But this is a Hall of Fame we’re talking about. Can we really let in any band that had a couple minor singles in the 80’s?

Paul McCartney Superbowl Half-Time

OK, so I heard today that Sir Paul McCartney’s going to be this year’s halftime entertainment at the Superbowl. I always liked John better, but he hasn’t performed live since 1980.

But you know what I’d do if I was Paul McCartney? Yes, of course I’d smoke a lot of weed, but you know what I’d do if I was Paul McCartney at the Superbowl? I’d whip my cock out. I’d sing “Hi, Hi, Hi” and right at the part that goes “like a rabbit, gonna grab it, gonna do it ’til the night is done” I’d whip my cock right out, wag it around and keep right on singing. I mean, so many uptight Americans were traumatized by the sight of Janet Jackson’s crusty shriveled-up nipple last year, imagine their shock at the sight of McCartney’s veiny fuckhammer.

I would really love to see this happen. Not because of some long-standing desire to see McCartney’s tool, but because if so many Americans are so offended by nudity they should have it rubbed in their faces. Well, not literally. Unless they’re into that.

And it would be particularly sweet because McCartney was an obvious “safe” choice for entertainment. He should be offended. Rock & roll should never be deemed safe by the powers that be. Rock and roll is about rebellion, and what could be more rebellious than showing your cock on American TV? He can surely afford the fines, and what, he’d be banned from football? I’m sure he gives two fucks about American football.

So come on Paul, show some of that old rock & roll spirit and whip out your cock during the Superbowl.