The tagline for Matthew McConaughey’s latest film is “Love and waves, that’s what we need in these dark days.” Finally, a movie star who isn’t afraid to tackle the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression!  Well, not exactly — Surfer, Dude quietly made its way into theaters in early September, after Hollywood’s tidal wave of summer blockbusters had receded but before the events of September 14 wiped out all hope that the current economic recession would ebb anytime soon. (By the by, how come it’s called a recession if it hits average Americans like a hurricane?) After three weeks in a grand total of 69 theaters, Surfer, Dude’s total box-office gross was $52,132, which probably didn’t leave McConaughey or his filmmaker bros feeling too stoked.

A limited release in 69 theaters for a foreign film or a  documentary is one thing, but a microscopic release like that for a Matthew McConaughey stoner comedy is something else. Speaking of documentaries, Surfer, Dude was directed by S.R. Bindler, who helmed the documentary Hands on a Hard Body in 1997 but has no other directing credits listed on IMDB between then and 2008. McConaughey’s production company, j.k. livin, helped produce Hands on a Hard Body and has its hands all over Surfer, Dude, and according to McConaughey in the behind-the-scenes featurette included on the DVD, he’s known Bindler since they were 15. Bindler, why didn’t you just let Matthew cheat off you in high school? Now you’re going to be under his thumb for the rest of your life.

McConaughey says in the featurette that making Surfer, Dude was “the most fulfilling, creative experience I’ve ever had.” Shooting a movie in Malibu with your friends does sound like a nice way to spend 28 days in the spring, but whatever fulfillment McConaughey got out of the experience doesn’t translate to the screen. Surfer, Dude is a comedy, but it isn’t funny. Unless you’re high, I guess. Since the film was shot for only $6 million, I wouldn’t be surprised if pro-hemp costars Woody Harrelson and Willie Nelson were paid in weed. (In lieu of weed or cash, Scott Glenn accepted teeth. Judging by his smile, you can never have too many.) For the most part Surfer, Dude just sits there on the screen for 85 minutes waiting for a wave of laughter or excitement to arrive, much like its hero, Steve Addington (McConaughey), a superstar “soul surfer” who returns to his Malibu home for the summer only to find that the waves have suddenly disappeared. (To qualify as a soul surfer, you must renounce all cell phones, you can only watch your old surfing highlights on Super-8 film, and your hair-restoration medicine must be totally organic. Oh, and it helps if you have a surfing double for your surfing scenes, of which Surfer, Dude has precious few.) He gives up pot and sex, hoping to appease the gods of surfing, but nothing works. Without waves, Addington is adrift. Meanwhile a former surfer named Eddie Zarno (Jeffrey Nordling), who’s now a reality TV and video game producer, has taken over Addington’s sponsorship contracts and wants him to be part of his Real World-type reality show starring the world’s top surfers. He also wants Addington to lend his longboard skills to a virtual-reality game called Free Surfer. (You know he’s a jerk from the get-go because his name starts with a Z. Kneel before Zarno …) Addington just wants to surf and refuses to be a part of Zarno’s projects, but once the sleazebag cuts off his credit flow, Addington becomes desperate, especially with no waves in sight.

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By “2,” I mean “3,” of course. But if you’re having trouble following my byzantine internal logic, then allow me to explain.

I was going to give you discs 2 and 3 of Patty Griffin’s massive Love From My Lips compilation today so Bootleg City could close out 2008 with a bang, but about half of the MP3s I have for disc 2 are damaged — they start late, they end early, there’s six seconds of silence at the beginning of some songs, Satan’s voice is buried too deep in the mix to even be subconsciously audible, etc. Until I can find complete versions of each track, I’m going to hold off on giving you disc 2 and just offer disc 3 instead. (For information on the songs’ origins, click here.) Look at it this way: You now have the bread for a Patty Griffin bootleg sandwich. In January, with any luck, you’ll get the meat. Or pimento cheese. Or peanut butter and jelly. Or peanut butter and honey, my personal favorite. Look, the point is, it’s your audio sandwich — I’ll provide the music, but you have to provide your own food metaphors.

It Suits Me Well
At Last
Wayfaring Stranger
Catherine’s Magic Stone
People Get Ready
Crazy
Tracks of My Tears
Breaking Up Somebody’s Home
Take It With Me
Never Been to Spain
Half a Person
Nebraska
Ballad of Hollis Brown
Racing in the Streets
Ruby’s Arms
My Baby Needs a Shepherd
Lost and Lookin’
Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground
Dirty Old Town
J’irai la Voir un Jour
Mansion on the Hill
Her Majesty

On November 5, the morning after Senator Barack Obama was elected the 44th president of the United States of America, Oprah Winfrey appeared on her talk show with an American flag in one hand and a copy of the Chicago Sun-Times in the other. In May of last year Winfrey endorsed Obama’s candidacy, disappointing many of her viewers who expected her to endorse Hillary Clinton instead (i.e. gender before race), but by some estimates her thumbs-up gave the Illinois senator a million votes he otherwise wouldn’t have had. (An endorsement from Oprah is pretty much an endorsement from God, which is appropriate since a lot of voters expect Jesus-like miracles from the president-elect.) On November 6’s Oprah Winfrey Show, the talk-show queen said that the Sun-Times’s postelection edition, featuring a black-and-white picture of Obama and the words “Mr. President,” was “the best paper of all the papers in the world.” When Oprah endorses, people listen — though an additional 85,000 copies of the November 5 paper were printed the night before in anticipation of extra demand, raising the total to 335,000, an eventual 700,000 copies were printed in order to stay ahead of requests. Other daily papers like the Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times also saw increased demand, and there was a similar frenzy for commemorative sections included in the Sun-Times and Tribune’s Sunday, November 9, editions.

When I got on the bus to go to work on November 5, I was carrying my copy of the Sun-Times, which I started subscribing to early last month. I noticed more eyes looking at what was in my hands than usual as I made my way to the back of the bus (in case you’re curious, I’m usually holding baby chickens), and as soon as I sat down a woman to my right asked me where I’d gotten my copy of the paper. I told her I subscribe. She said all the newspaper boxes she’d passed were empty, so I gave her my sales pitch for subscribing to the Sun-Times: “It’s only five dollars a month.” But before I could shout “That’s an average of 18 cents a day!” in my best TV-pitchman voice, it finally dawned on me why people were so interested in the newspaper I was carrying: it was an instant collector’s item. If only every issue was considered a must-have keepsake these days.

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If you live in Las Vegas, be sure to catch either of Kathy Griffin’s two shows tonight at Mandalay Bay Casino, where I presume she’ll be talking about her crazy life “on the D-list.” Maybe she’ll even crack wise about how she resembles Andy Dick in drag. ROTFL!

This week’s bootleg is apparently a recording of a stand-up concert from an earlier phase of Griffin’s career, when she went by the name “Patty.” If you ask me, Patty’s a pretty funny name, but I can see why she eventually switched to Kathy — it’s common knowledge that words starting with a k sound are hilarious. For instance, “cancer.” Or “Ku Klux Klan.” Or … well … maybe not every word starting with a k sound is funny. At least not the first time you hear them.

Love From My Lips is the name of the bootleg in question, and according to the MP3 files I haven’t listened to yet, what you see below is just the first disc. Wow! Kathy/Patty must be the Bruce Springsteen of stand-up comics. Look, I like comedy as much as the next guy, but a little goes a long way. Then again, with titles like “Pushing Thirty” (I’ve been there, sister!), “Bubba’s Sulky Lounge” (I love redneck jokes!), and “Breaking Skin” (c’mon, who hasn’t popped a pimple?), I’m laughing already!

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It’s a little disgusting when you think about how much talent these guys had. But I’ve come up with a surefire way to make myself feel less envious: I repeat “Their best work was behind them by the time they reached 30″ over and over again until I fall asleep, or until someone on public transportation tells me to shut up — whichever comes first — and suddenly I’m all better. See if it works for you.

Over the past two weeks Bootleg City has revisited Big Star’s first two albums. In college I had a poster that showed the Big Star “family tree,” listing all the bands they influenced in the ’80s and ’90s (Let’s Active, the Posies, Matthew Sweet, etc.) as well as bands who influenced them, with the Beatles right at the top. But then, who haven’t the Beatles influenced? They changed pop music forever. They were the biggest band that ever was and ever will be. They created all-time classic songs in the time it’s taken me to write this tiny amount of text. They– … deep breath … their best work was behind them by the time they reached 30, your best work is still ahead of you, their best work was behind them by the time they reached 30, you should actually do some work instead of looking for ways to criticize musical legends– hey, subconscious, you’re supposed to be on my side!

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You get what you deserve, Big Star fans, so here are the rest of the tracks from the 2000 bootleg What’s Goin’ Ahn. The “rough mixes” of songs from Radio City (1974), like the ones from #1 Record last week, aren’t lost treasures by any means, but the demos of songs that didn’t make it onto the album are well worth a listen. Fans who own Chris Bell’s posthumous 1992 collection I Am the Cosmos (1992) will recognize “I Got Kinda Lost” and “There Was a Life” (which eventually morphed into “There Was a Light”). Both feature Chilton on lead vocals instead of Bell, who left Big Star after #1 Record but contributed to the writing of Radio City’s “O My Soul” and “Back of a Car” and played guitar on the album. And judging by three of the demo tracks on What’s Goin’ Ahn, he had an even bigger hand in the initial recording process.

What’s Goin’ Ahn is rounded out by two live tracks from Chilton performed at CBGB in New York City in 1978. “Holocaust” is from Third/Sister Lovers, which was released quietly that year after being in limbo since ‘75, giving Chilton plenty of time to rethink its songs and mess around with them in concert; “Holocaust’s” death rattle is missing in the live recording, replaced with a quicker tempo. The other track from ‘78, “A Little Fishy,” was recorded the previous year as part of a demo for Elektra Records. The label decided not to add Chilton to its roster, but the three songs on that demo that I’m offering below — “She Might Look My Way,” “Windows Hotel,” and “Shakin’ the World” — contain some of Chilton’s brightest and best pop, a genre he didn’t visit often as a solo artist once Big Star disbanded. Joining him on the demo session were Chris Stamey on bass, Lloyd Fonoroff on drums, and Fran Kowalski on keyboards.

The Elektra tracks come from 1996’s Beale Street Green bootleg. It also contains the #1 Record outtake “Another Time, Another Place, and You,” an instrumental written by Chris Bell, and a live version of “September Gurls” that Chilton performed in ‘77 with future dB’s Chris Stamey and Will Rigby. If anyone out there has a bootleg of demos or outtakes from Third and is willing to share, let me know. And if you’re not willing to share, I hope you get what you deserve.

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Last week Bootleg City featured a 1978 concert by AC/DC to celebrate the release of their new album, Black Ice, which came out on Tuesday. This week I’m moving down the alphabet to Big Star, to celebrate the release of … oh, right, they don’t have a new album coming out. (They shouldn’t have released a new one in 2005, but that’s another matter entirely.) I actually didn’t know Black Ice was coming out this week, or if I did, I’d forgotten, so “celebrate” is the wrong word, unless it means AC/DC is willing to throw some of their Wal-Mart money in Popdose’s direction.

This week’s featured tracks come from the 2000 bootleg What’s Goin’ Ahn. (Check back next week for the second batch of songs, plus some extras.) These “alternate” and “rough” mixes from Big Star’s first album, #1 Record (1972), don’t sound that much different from the final mixes fans know and love, but since the band doesn’t have a huge catalog, it’s our duty to obsess over whatever we can find. For instance, that seven-inch single of “Mine Exclusively” b/w “Patti Girl” that singer Alex Chilton and drummer Jody Stephens recorded with Teenage Fanclub in 1993 to benefit Bosnia-Herzegovina war victims — those two energetic covers are better than the majority of 2005’s In Space. If you have them, feel free to share in the comments section below.

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It’s not easy being popular. I should know — some popular people told me. I could’ve asked them why it’s not easy, but I was a freshman at the time, and I figured the best strategy was to keep quiet until they were done sitting on me. Recently I’ve been enjoying my own brief Joe-the-Plumber-like moment in the national spotlight taking phone calls from the two presidential candidates: first, Republican senator John McCain called in August, and on Saturday Democratic senator Barack Obama gave me a ring because of “equal time, fairness doctrine, gotta get the message out, you know the drill.” The following is an excerpt from our conversation:

Me: So I’m not the “October surprise”? You’re not calling because you want me to replace Biden on the ticket?

Obama: No. Unless you count this phone call as a surprise. Because it is October.

Me: Alright, I’ll take what I can get. It’s still better than last October, when my girlfriend “surprised” me with a pregnancy scare.

Aimiee: That was in December, jackass!

Me: Aimiee, I told you to hang up as soon as I picked up! I can’t believe this!

Aimiee: Hi, Barack!

Obama: Hello, um … is this Aimiee?

Aimiee: Yep!

Obama: How are you, Aimiee?

Me: I’m sorry about this, Senator.

Obama: Don’t be.

Aimiee: I’m great, Barack! See how easy it was for him to ask that simple, thoughtful question, Robert?

Me: Dag, girl!

Aimiee: Barack, I’m calling you Barack because McCain won’t, even though you called him John in all the debates. What’s with him? I don’t like him. He’s a jerk. Boo!

Obama: Now, we don’t need to resort to name-calling here.

Me: Yeah, Aimiee. And I didn’t see you complaining when he hosted Saturday Night Live or showed up on The Daily Show all those times. You thought he was hilarious. You said he was “the liberal’s conservative” and “the twentysomethings’ cool uncle who’s also a little scary if you bring up those Chuck Norris Missing in Action movies around him.”

Aimiee: He was different then. He was a good mix of blue and red — he was purple. He used to speak out against Jerry Falwell, not speak at his university. And he used to support Roe vs. Wade instead of saying it should be repealed.

Me: Oh my God, are you pregnant?

Aimiee: No!

Me: Then don’t scare me like that!

Aimiee: I’m not! You’re just paranoid!

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Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!!!!!!!!!!!!

Did that sound screamy enough? Be honest. Okay, lemme try it again … Uhh-aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!!!!!!! Yep, that’s the one. I’ll stick with that one.

Bootleg City is back! Or, rather, you’re back in Bootleg City. (You sure did skip town in a hurry last year. Now where’s that $5,000 you still owe us?) So open yer yaps, boyos, and prepare to take in AC/DC’s “Live in Concert” bootleg, taken from an August 21, 1978, performance at Boston’s Paradise Theatre that was broadcast on WBCN. At one point the disc jockey refers to the Australian hard rock band’s lead singer as “Bon Tyler” instead of Bon Scott. Mr. DJ, stop dreaming about Boston’s pride and joy, Aerosmith! But it’s not like he could dream about Steven Tyler’s movie-star daughter Liv instead — in the summer of ‘78 she was only 13 months old.

Live Wire
Problem Child
Sin City
Gone Shootin’/Bad Boy Boogie
The Jack
Whole Lotta Rosie
Rocker
Dog Eat Dog

Semi-expatriate singer-songwriter Josh Rouse, who moved from Nashville to Valencia, Spain, in 2004 but now splits his time between that city and Brooklyn, performed two shows at the Old Town School of Folk Music in Chicago on Friday, October 10. He’s not touring behind a new album, but last month The Best of the Rykodisc Years was released, featuring three or four songs from each of his five albums for the label. Rouse’s three best LPs were recorded during that 1998-2005 period: Under Cold Blue Stars (2002), 1972 (2003), and Nashville (2005).

But Friday night’s show — I caught the 7 PM performance; Rouse performed again at 10:00 — wasn’t exclusively a trek through the back catalog, since Rouse isn’t under contract to his old label anymore. He made mention of The Best of the Rykodisc Years only in passing, as if to acknowledge that he’s been around long enough now to have his own “greatest hits” compilation, though that fact seemed to surprise the low-key but quick-witted artist. (When a fan shouted “Come back soon, Josh” near the end of the show, Rouse replied, “I will. I’ll be back in an hour.” Everyone laughed, but Rouse, being the nice guy that he is, made sure the fan knew he wasn’t making a joke at his expense, and thanked him for the compliment.)

Maybe his ten years as a full-time musician wouldn’t have surprised him so much, though, if he could’ve heard the nearly packed auditorium at the Old Town School singing along to every word of his songs. The acoustics at Old Town are terrific — as Rouse himself said, he barely needed a microphone to be heard — but it’s a sterile environment for a performer who’s put out seven albums since 1998 and has amassed an impressive number of gorgeous, catchy pop songs that his fans know by heart. I wanted to sing along with favorites like “Come Back (Light Therapy),” “It’s the Nighttime,” “Quiet Town,” and “Hollywood Bass Player,” but I didn’t want to be the only one, and I got the feeling everyone else also felt like “the only one.” Nashville’s “Streetlights” was the one song for which spontaneous crowd singing took place, possibly because it was a request from the audience. Rouse encouraged everyone during the encore to join him on the “ba da ba” chorus of “Winter in the Hamptons,” also from Nashville, but otherwise those of us who wanted to be anonymous backup singers remained vocal wallflowers for the duration of the concert.

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