meow meow meow meow

Well first thing’s first, I just discovered that Maestro Alex Gregory has a website now.   He also has a new album Bach on Steroids with a great cover though it doesn’t compare with Paganini’s Last Stand.  I also saw that you can purchase MP3s of his four albums on Amazon.  I would love to get all of them but for not I’ll pick up the new one and Paganini’s Last Stand.

I really love this song - it’s one you don’t hear much about any more.  It was such an odd selection as a single and the video’s pretty bizarre, although it has the same vibe as “Undercover of the Night”.  Undercover isn’t one of my favorite Stones albums, but I really like this as a departure from their usual stuff.

“This speech is my recital, I think it’s very vital”

Two thirds of the way into Jackyl’s set at the Midland theatre, DMC (of Run-DMC fame) launched into a version of “It’s Tricky” and received the loudest reaction of the night.  For me this was completely unexpected - this was a crowd of die-hard rock fans although the vast majority were around for Run-DMC’s rise in popularity.  The fact that he received such an incredible response shows what an impact Run-DMC made in the music world.  The songs DMC performed with Jackyl (”It’s Tricky”, “Just Like a Negro”, and “Walk This Way”) were the highlight of Wednesday night’s sold-out Jackyl concert at the Midland Theatre.

The rest of Jackyl’s set was solid.  They mixed songs off their new album, such as “My Moonshine Kicks Your Cocaine’s Ass” and “When Moonshine and Dynamite Collide”, with old favorites like “Down on Me” and “I Stand Alone”.  This is a band that has spent a lot of time honing their live show on the road and it shows.  The crowd was completely into it from beginning to end.   

Opening the show was the Nigel Dupree Band featuring the son of Jackyl singer Jessie James Dupree.   They put on a good show back when I saw them open for Cinderalla back in July and the delivered another good set on Wednesday.  The major difference between the two performances was that Nigel Dupree now sounds more like his father than before.  I don’t know if that’s a bad thing or not, just something I noticed.

I seriously don’t get what the big deal is. Sure it’s nice that you can buy digital copies of the songs but it’s not like you couldn’t buy a physical copy and rip it to your iPod. NPR’s story about this (and really NPR I expect better out of you) said this was more a symbolic victory for Steve Jobs and that’s fine, but why is Apple treating this like some kind of huge event?

The iTunes page for this is big and if you didn’t know better you would think that the Beatles’ songs were completely unavailable up until this point.  I guess Apple feels the need to play this up but it just seems a bit silly.  Buy the physical album or just swipe them online if you just want a single song,

Just like every other year Kansas City has two radio stations playing continuous Christmas music.  Unlike every other year I don’t find myself as irritated with it.    Two possible reasons:

• My oldest is four years old now and really likes Christmas music, specifically the older stuff like “Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer” and “Here Comes Santa Claus”
• It may be my imagination but the playlists seems to focus less on the usual limp-dick lite rock stuff and more on standards or at least stuff with some energy behind it.  That being said, I’m hearing Neil Diamond’s “Merry Cherry Christmas” (or something like that) a lot and I would probably rather listen to his covers album than hear that song again.

But I got to thinking about this - Christmas is the only time you hear people like Perry Como, Dean Martin, and Gene Autry on terrestrial/commercial radio.  Obviously these aren’t the only good songs that these people have but you never hear them the rest of the year.  I wonder if eventually some artists’ only legacy will be their holiday music (although Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra’s songs will always be around as long as there are Italian restaurants).

One other thing too…this could be my imagination also, but terrestrial radio stations play a shitload of commercials.  I had XM several years back and listen to NPR a lot since I canceled my service so that my impact my view of this.  I just find these stations unlistenable due to the frequency and length of their commercial break.  Kansas city has a great local political talk show but it seems like between the commercials, traffic, news, and weather you only get about 20 minutes of actual show per hour.  Of course I’m too lazy to actually time it so that’s just a baseless guess.