Posts Tagged ‘Robert Cass’

Popdose Contest: Win Tickets to See Dierks Bentley!

Look at Dierks Bentley, readers. So handsome. And we have it on good authority that he’s sitting on this motorcycle, thinking, “Man, I sure wish I could have some Popdose readers at my concert on August 18th at the Tabernacle in Atlanta, GA. I’d even give ‘em two free PRIORITY ACCESS tickets, courtesy of our friends at Samsung and AT&T.”*

Dierks, we’re here to make your sexy wish come true.

On August 18th, Mr. Bentley will be performing in Atlanta as part of the Samsung AT&T Summer Krush Series, and we do indeed have two totally free PRIORITY ACCESS tickets for you!

To win, all you have to do is connect Dierks Bentley to this dude:

Richard Kind!

That’s TV’s Richard Kind. The two are connected by a certain affiliation, and it’s not their hairdresser. Wikipedia is your friend, people.

Enter the contest by e-mailing Robert Cass with your answer. A correct answer will be chosen at random on Sunday, August 17th. Please don’t enter if you can’t make the concert; it makes us angry, and you wouldn’t like us when we’re angry.

We’ll be offering tickets to future Samsung AT&T Summer Krush shows, including Darius Rucker and Maxwell, so check back soon! And click below to find out more about the Summer Krush series!

*Note: Dierks Bentley may not actually be thinking any of the above. But he sure is handsome.

Bootleg City: Air Supply in Cleveland, October ‘82

A reader named R. Murdoch* sent me the following bootleg by “my best mates,” Graham Russell and Russell Hitchcock, the Australian duo otherwise known as Air Supply, performing in Cleveland, Ohio, on October 22, 1982. I can’t verify that Mr. Murdoch really is friends with “Graham Russell Terrier,” as he collectively calls them, but I do hope for his sake that he’s not just some random fan hoping to make a name for himself by claiming he knows rich, famous people. That would be tacky.

I Can’t Get Excited
Lost in Love
Every Woman in the World
Even the Nights Are Better
Now and Forever
One Step Closer
Late Again
[Graham mistakenly addresses the audience as "Cincinnati" and asks where he can score some H after the show.]
Young Love
Here I Am (Just When I Thought I Was Over You)
Sweet Dreams
All Out of Love
She Never Heard Me Call
[Graham goes bananas, hurling a bottle of Jack at a single mother in the third row after she requests "Who Can It Be Now?"]
I’ve Got Your Love
The One That You Love
[Russell insults the band for blowing "the easiest bloody cue in the entire bloody show" and storms off the stage.]
This Heart Belongs to Me

* Turns out it was Popdose’s old pal Joe Mallon, from whose voluminous archives many of our bootlegs have sprung. Thanks, Joe — for the bootleg and the deceit!

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Bootleg City: The Beatles, “Abbey Road”

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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Bootleg City: AC/DC in Boston, August ‘78

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

Tweener Mixtape Madness!

The Popdose staff was sitting around the other day, doing what we do best — namely, talking about records that most people wish they didn’t remember — when a discussion about the Moody Blues’ “Your Wildest Dreams” somehow led into some heavy-duty reminiscing about the records we all listened to when we were kids — and how those records were more or less culled from the Top 40 hits of the day, hits that our parents, as often as not, listened to along with us.

So, we wondered, who’s making music these days that impressionable preteens and their parents enjoy? Top 40 radio is pretty much dead, and the lines between Radio Disney, MTV, and whatever the hell it is that the over-30 crowd is listening to these days have been drawn depressingly deep. Look, it isn’t just that we think the Jonas Brothers and Lil Wayne aren’t all that great; it’s that some of us can remember enjoying the latest hits from the Spinners, the Bangles, or Cheap Trick right alongside our parents.

Current music is still a multigenerational thing, but not the way it used to be — so here, without further ado, is a list (with downloads, natch) of some of the stuff your faithful Popdosers were listening to in their formative preteen years. Pull up a chair and a set of headphones, and give in to Tweener Mixtape Madness! (more…)

Chartburn: 8/01/08

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Mainstream Rock: Mike + the Mechanics, “Silent Running” (1985)

David Medsker: I love Paul Carrack as much as the next guy, but is what I refer to as a non-song. Not a whole lot of meat on these bones.

Jeff Giles: An odd little hit from an odd little record. People remember Paul Carrack and Paul Young (no, the other Paul Young) as Mike +/& the Mechanics’ singers, but this album featured lead vocals from two other guys. I can’t remember either of their names, but I do remember that I like “Taken In” more than “Silent Running” or “All I Need Is a Miracle.”

Jon Cummings: If I remember correctly, M+M albums were packaged with drool cups. Or did I just dream that during the 48-hour nap that was induced by my one and only full hearing of this song? Even 23 years on, it’s extraordinary that a nuclear war/Terminator/whatever prog-rock “epic” could be so abysmally boring. (Compared to this oblique blather, Sting’s contemporaneous “Russians” was a Tolstoy novel.) It’s also extraordinary that Carrack’s voice could be so thoroughly wasted. His M+M work is so pulse-deadening that it calls into question everything he did before. (Was “How Long” really that good? Doesn’t Glenn Tilbrook sing “Tempted” just as well in concert as Carrack did on record?) God, I hated this band.

Dw. Dunphy: Mike + the Mechanics got off to a good start, didn’t they? Big hit, nice synth-y melody, Paul Carrack — but it’s all for naught. I don’t understand a whit of this song. It sounds like the theme to some really bad syndicated sci-fi show. If you don’t pay too much attention to it, perfectly pleasant.

Scott Malchus: I often wonder what songs from the ’80s, with all of the lame electronic drums and synths, would sound like with real instruments. This song holds up okay. I guess I always expected more from Mike Rutherford since he was the lead guitarist from Genesis (and, before that, the bassist). All of the Mike + the Mechanics songs sound very “lite rock” compared to what he did in the ’70s. Then again, look at Phil Collins’s solo output. Worse, look what Genesis had become by the end of the ’80s. How is it that only Peter Gabriel was able to maintain his artistic integrity after he quit the band?

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Song-Off: Describing a Person as a Rolling Stone

Bob Dylan – “Like a Rolling Stone”

Robert: Rolling Stone magazine named Bob Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone” (1965) the greatest song of all time in 2004. It certainly contains the best Rolling Stone product placement of all time — it predates the magazine’s existence, making it a truly impressive example of forward-thinking marketing — but is it really the best song ever? For the purposes of this edition of Song-Off, you bet your ass it is! Some say this immaculate kiss-off to a privileged bohemian girl who wants to be a starving artist (but without all that icky starvation) was blown in the direction of Edie Sedgwick or Joan Baez. But others say it’s Dylan turning his poison pen on himself, that he’s the one “with no direction home” after embracing electric guitars and alienating his folk-music fans. But as he says in the song, “When you got nothing, you got nothing to lose.” Dylan goes for broke in “Like a Rolling Stone” and comes up with a song for the ages.

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Lists You Didn’t Ask For: Consumer Safety Edition

Earlier this month New York attorney general Andrew Cuomo reported that he had sent his staff to 1,000 pharmacies across the state in March, April, and May and found more than 250 that were selling expired milk, eggs, baby formula, and over-the-counter medication. The two biggest culprits were the CVS and Rite Aid chains. So what else have these drugstores not been telling consumers?

1. CVS-brand sparkling water gets its sparkle from Darfurian children’s tears. (White Lion, “When the Children Cry” [download])

2. That lawn chair you bought in the “seasonal” aisle? Someone had sex on it. (The Band, “Rockin’ Chair” [download])

3. Whenever you bought an impulse item at the front counter in 2000 and 2004, your name was added to a GOP database of potential swing voters most likely to vote for George W. Bush. (Everything But the Girl, “Politics Aside” [download])

4. Expired baby formula mixed with expired teeth whitener will totally get you high. (Glen Phillips, “I Want a New Drug” [download])

5. The security camera adds 25 pounds. (Joe Henry, “Fat” [download])

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Lists You Didn’t Ask For: Ben Stein Edition

Happy Monday, faithful readers! Are you ready for a new series? We hope so, because we’ve got one for you. Welcome to the inaugural edition of Lists You Didn’t Ask For!

Here’s the deal: Since we know everyone out in Webland is a sucker for lists — and since we’re unapologetic whores for traffic — every other Monday we’ll be bringing you a new list based on a theme you never knew you cared about. Case in point: this week’s List of Other Things Ben Stein Defends.

As you may know, Mr. Stein has a terrible new movie out titled Exposed: No Intelligence Allowed. In what is being charitably called a documentary, Stein tries to make a case for the “intelligent design” theory by claiming a vast anti-ID conspiracy (and making thinly veiled comparisons between Darwinists and Nazis). Currently, Expelled is sitting at a richly deserved 9 percent on Rotten Tomatoes’ Tomatometer, thanks to reviews from critics like the Chicago Reader’s Reece Pendleton, who calls it “ludicrous propaganda,” and the Onion AV Club’s Steven Hyden, who dismisses it as “grossly unfair, contradictory, and ultimately repugnant.”

So we know Ben Stein defends the idea that “intelligent design” should be taught in schools. What else does he defend? We convened a panel consisting of Jason Hare, Robert Cass, yours truly, and our friends at the Hilton Head Island Packet, Jeff Vrabel and Tim Donnelly, to put together a list. Read on to find out what made the cut: (more…)

The Popdose Interview: Jack McBrayer

Actor Jack McBrayer (Kenneth on NBC’s 30 Rock) e-mailed me recently, panic-stricken and possibly sweaty. He was convinced that the recent writers’ strike had made people forget who he was. “But Jack,” I said, “the last new episode of 30 Rock aired in January, and the next new episode airs Thursday, April 10, 8:30 Eastern, 7:30 Central. Don’t you think you’re overreacting?”

“The public is fickle, Robert — I have to get my face back out there.”

“But you’re in Mariah Carey’s new video for ‘Touch My Body,’” I reminded him. “I saw it advertised on VH1 at the end of February, and I watched it on YouTube just the other day. Don’t worry. Everything’ll be alright.”

Unfortunately, nothing I said could calm him down. But four hours and a couple hundred e-mails later, Jack and I came up with a solution that would please everyone — a Popdose e-mail interview. Hooray! My work here is done. Well, except for the actual interview.

Jack and I grew up in the same town — Macon, Georgia — but when he was 15, his family moved to Conyers, Georgia, the home of Holly Hunter and a scorching outbreak of syphilis back in the ’90s. After graduating from the University of Evansville in Indiana in 1995, Jack moved to Chicago and studied improv and sketch comedy at the Second City and ImprovOlympic Theater (now known as iO). He was hired for the Second City Touring Company in ‘97, and two years later he was a writer-performer on the Second City e.t.c. stage. In 2002 he moved to New York City and began making regular appearances on Late Night With Conan O’Brien in various roles.

Jack’s next move was to Los Angeles in 2004, where he played a waiter on two episodes of the late, great sitcom Arrested Development, continued improvising at iO West, and in 2006 costarred in Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, followed closely by his breakout role as Kenneth the NBC page on the 2007 Emmy winner for best comedy series, 30 Rock. On April 18 he stars in the latest Judd Apatow-produced comedy, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, in which he plays the newlywed husband of Maria Thayer (Strangers With Candy).

Before Jack and his family moved to Conyers, he and I shared good times and youthful lung capacity in the Macon Boys’ Choir during the 1984-’85 school year. Unfortunately, I don’t think we talked to each other that much, seeing as how he was a sixth grader and I was a third grader. Nevertheless, my first question for the southern scene stealer was …

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