Aug 052008
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The last All-Star Jam actually got used. So, for your pleasure, here’s a fresh Jam for you to comment on anything you like. Keep it clean.
Jan 262007
All-Star Jam is an open thread for discussing whatever you want. Don’t stand there with your hands in your pockets! This weekend, we encourage you to bring it. You do that, and we’ll do our best to bring your thoughts front and center.
One Response to “All-Star Jam: Weekend Edition”
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One thing I didn’t remind Fritz of regarding the ability to start threads: if you can’t get into The Back Office for whatever reason, we encourage you to use the All-Star Jam section. We’ll have this up everyday to encourage new ideas, off-topic threads, complete nonsense. Try it. When the occasion strikes, we’ll be able to move especially scintillating threads that develop here up to main thread posts of their own. Try it. Enjoy it. Do your own thing. All-Star Jam.
Is that David St. Hubbins’ woman?
I’m still rummaging through the RTH archives & I found the Devo thread from March 2007 to be pretty interesting since Devo was the 1st & 2nd rock concerts I went to in 1979 & 1980 @ the Orpheum Theater in Boston. I remember the ’79 show had those videos as the “opening act”. I did had the first 3 albums, but lost interest by ’81. I only heard bits ‘n pieces of the pre-WB output & from what I heard it seems more edgy than the later stuff, so I understood the premise that Eno “ruined” their music.
I know there was a poll a bit ago on duos and how they can go wrong, but I’ve been listening to The Dodos a lot recently and I think they pull it off pretty well.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7uZHK8-E90I&feature=related
and a studio version of one of their songs:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YhLRxui7vXU&feature=related
I would also like to suggest a thread (if it hasn’t been done already): Creepiest lyric ever. This came to me while listening to “Blood and Chocolate,” an album by a man who has written many a creepy lyric. The persona (or self portrait) Costello creates is one of the creepiest ever. I would save my favorite creepy lyric from that album for the thread, but as an example: E from Eels sings on the song Going Fetal (which is done in the tradition of 50’s dance crazes):
“Everyone is going fetal.
It’s the dance the kids all feel.
Just get done under your desk.
Feels like your momma’s nest, alright.”
Which is hi-larious, but downright creepy.
I wonder in a head to head who the creepiest lyricist would be: Costello or Waits.
Great stuff, Townsmen Diskojoe and Mac! Mac, that thread you suggest has never been done to my memory. I’m going to post it on The Main Stage in a few minutes! Hold tight.
It’s good to see that newer participants on the list like Diskojoe are digging back into the archives and commenting after the fact. If anyone ever goes back and has a thought to share, posting it in an All-Star Jam is a good idea, or you can add to the initial post and hope that one of our Townspeople who use the Latest comments tab see it. This all reminds me of an idea The Back Office and I have discussed in the past, that is, an occasional Rock Town Hall Flashback post, in which I pull a post from our Archives back to The Main Stage. Thanks.
I love the new Dodos album — “Red and Purple” is possibly my favorite song of 2008 so far, and I’m looking forward to their gig at the MFA this fall.
However, they’re a trio now. Singer/guitarist, drummer, and a new guy who mostly plays a toy piano.
For all you Randy Newman fans, I just saw where he’s a guest on Letterman tonight.
I’m not MAD at you guys…but I am disappointed. What can I say…My wife looked at the video and read Gerry’s post and immediately got it.
So you’re saying there’s some Roxy Music connection? Don’t compare us to your wife – she’s buds with Don Felder. Of course she would get your high-brow humor.
C’mon man!
Some say she’s a man, man.
I thought some people might be interested to hear the latest developments in the Westerberg 49:00 saga. You can no longer get that “album” anywhere online. Instead, you can buy from tunecore.com something called “5:05,” which is mostly a single song. It appears that PW got into hot water legally with the snippets of covers at the end. Details here: http://members.aol.com/paulspage/4949.htm
Also, here’s an article about Peter Gabriel’s online pursuits. I found this interesting not because I’m a big fan, but because I think like a lot of people, I assumed he took so long to make album because he spent all his time laboring over the music, overthinking everything. But maybe it’s just because he’s found interesting projects in other areas, rather than trying to recapture the pop zeitgeist. Another reason perhaps why he’s not gotten too big a backlash.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/10/business/media/10peter.html
What’s the Olympic sport that interests you least? For me, it’s the incredibly retarded, manufactured sport of “beach volleyball.” I like looking at chicks in bathing suits as much as the next guy, but, really — why no baseball, but we have *two* kinds of volleyball?
Sheesh!
I have trouble with the subjectively-scored events. It bugs me to see these incredibly talented, athletic people who have dedicated the majority of their young lives to get to this point go out there and perform, and they may never know why they lost because of the vague, seemingly arbitrary way winners are decided.
I saw some of the Chinese gymnastics team yesterday. When the first girl from their team went out to perform, they had to spend most of the time talking about the controversy of whether she was 12 or 16, and the rest was about how she wasn’t really expected to win anyway, she just gets sent out there first to get a lower score that will be dropped from their rankings. I don’t know, I find the events where there’s an objective outcome much less depressing to watch, since there’s no shame in legitimately losing to another world-class athlete.
I can’t watch “women’s” gymnastics anymore. The way they make those young girls paint up like cheap tarts, then prance about in a kind of cartoon-y, exaggeratedly sexual fashion, just gives me the creeps. I appreciate the spinning and twirling, the leaping and jumping, but — please — get that ass-thrusting, hip-twitching dancing shit out of it. It demeans the girls, and makes me feel like a perv when I watch it.
And don’t get me started on the color commentators they hire to explain what we’re watching during gymnastics events. Last night, the shrew who doles out judgment on the “women’s” event was lamenting the fact that the Romanian team takes the time to relax, joke and talk with each other on the floor — like normal girls are supposed to — because this “lack of focus and drive” is what’s keeping them back from medal contention. By her estimation, Romania’s “glory days” of team indentured servitude were preferable to the way the team is run today. *Then* I watched an interview segment with an American precision diver who proudly told the camera that she had forsaken her friends, and that she thought having no friends and no personal life — for the previous four years — was a completely fair trade for the possibility of getting an Olympic medal. Yuck.
I heard an announcer last night say, about one of the Chinese girls (I think), that this is her second Olympics and she begged her parents to not make her go. She wanted out but they wouldn’t let her. “And it’s a good thing for us they didn’t.”
Regarding volleyball: I loved watching first-time-qualifying LATVIA kick the US teams ass in beach volleyball. The US guys wearing all their sponsored hats (backwards) and sunglasses and shit…Go Latvia!
Much rather watch that than a little girl missing the beam and crying.