Stay Away from Stay of Play

Hey, see what I did there? Eh? Yes, I saw State of Play today even though I knew I wouldn't like it because really what else was I going to see? X-Men 3? Actually, I probably should have seen that. But I do normally like Russell Crowe somewhat and had the unrealistic hope that Rachel McAdams might get naked. She didn't. This is basically standard political thriller bullshit. What made the movie especially annoying was how self-righteous it tried to be-- first about corporations making money off of Iraq and then about the integral part newspapers play in modern life and why we can't let them die, dammit. Just a thought, but it might have been better if the film had stuck to one burning issue or the other and taken out about half of the unneccessarily confusing plot twists.

Instead of seeing SoP, check out War, Inc. which was, in my opinion, the most underrated film of 2008. That movie is absolutely hilarious. Hilary Duff plays a Central Asian pop star and sing a song called "I Want to Blow You...Up." If you are looking for some good commentary on the privatization of war, watch War, Inc. instead. It's a lot funnier too. And the fifth season of The Wire is much preferable to State of Play when it comes to intelligent analysis of the death of journalism. It is the weakest season of the Wire but it beats the hell out of Ben Affleck throwing a hissy fit and Crowe's boss, who for some reason is British and basically playing the same character as Judi Dench does in James Bond.

Blog of the Week: The Vinyl District

Here is a new feature for ACG. I'm going to exhibit a blog that I particularly enjoy, usually music-related. First up: The Vinyl District.

Joe Strummer was buried with a small sticker on his coffin: "VINYL RULES."

So reads The Vinyl District's opening line and it is a good one. If Joe Strummer said it, or at least had it on his grave, I believe it. Let's take a look at some highlights from the MP3s Vinyl District has given away this past week: The Specials, Peter Tosh, Wilco, Jane Birkin/Serge Gainsbourg, Dolly Parton, Wavves, The Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, The Spinto Band, Elvis Costello. That is a great list of old school artists with a few more modern acts mixed in. TVD also does ticket giveaways (one for the Wailers this week) and gets guest articles from people like singer Sarah Borges and guys from other blogs like Any Major Dude. This is a great site for good music, both new and old, coming from people who clearly have a passion for it.

On the Cubs in 2009

Just a month into the season, and already the pessimists (and really who can blame them if they're Cubs fans) among us are calling 2009 a bust. And there are clearly some reasons to worry, the lineup and bullpen need improvement for one. I thought I would offer a cautiously optimistic appraisal of the Cubs situation before anyone starts hangs a dead goat carcass on Harry Caray's statue. Oh wait. That happened already?

Reasons to Panic:
1. Lee, Soto and Bradley
These three should be the heart of a fearsome Chicago lineup, one that, if you recall, led the league in runs last season. Instead, they are hitting respectively .205, .143, and .128 with a combined 15 RBIs. For comparison, Jason Kubel has 16 by himself. You might be asking yourself, who is Jason Kubel? Exactly.
2. The Bullpen
Out of every member of the bullpen, only Angel Guzman has a WHIP under 1.50. Neal Cotts, the supposed LOOGEY, has a monstrous 2.50 WHIP to go with a 4.50 ERA and a 0-1 record. By the way, Cotts has a higher career opponent OPS by 3 points against lefties than against right handers. And he has actually thrown to more RHBs than LHBs, so don't blame the sample size. The two most important members of this bullpen have also struggled mightily. Marmol has a 5.40 ERA and a 1.70 WHIP. Gregg, who only has two saves, has a 5.91 ERA and a putrid 1.97 WHIP. Meanwhile, the Cubs decided to discard Luis Vizcaino who had given up 0 runs in 4 appearances, Chad Gaudin who has thrown five scoreless for San Diego, and Michael Wuertz who has been quite solid with a 2.13 ERA and 0.95 WHIP for the A's.
3. Harden
So far he has thrown three really good games, and two really really bad ones, in which he hasn't lasted four innings. He currently sports a 5.11 ERA and a 1.42 WHIP, both much higher than they should be for the normally dominant right hander.
4. Miles and Gathright
They suck.
5. We're the Cubs

Reasons to Calm Down
1. Soriano, Theriot, and Fukudome
Those three have been awesome so far. Theriot has even turned into a power hitter, wacking two big ones in the last two games, including a possibly season-saving grand slam. If these three continue on this pace, they will all have the best sesasons of their careers
2. The rotation has been solid
If I understand the quality start statistic correctly (?) then the rotation has a combined thirteen quality starts through 23 games.
3. Hoff-power!
Put a bat in that man's hands and watch him hit. And maybe he can even play in right field? He did pretty well there today.
4. It's only May
I recall two years ago, the Cubs had an even more lethargic start and still managed to win the division. Plus, there have been a slew of injuries to the likes of Ramirez, Soto, Bradley, Lee, and Marmol that have quite possibly effected the team's performance.

One Suggestion, Lou:
Why not drop Cotts, put Marshall in the bullpen and make Samardzijia the fifth starter? Sure, Marshall may be no more of a LOOGEY than Cotts, but if you insist on playing the matchups (despite how retarded of an idea that really is), you might as well have the pitcher who doesn't walk every other hitter. Plus, Sharky is going to be in the rotation eventually, and he seems somewhat wasted as a middle reliever. Just my two cents (or is that three?).

Grace/Wastelands Review

I finally had time recently to get a couple albums I've wanted for a while. And this is one of them. I have always been a big fan of Pete Doherty, or Peter Doherty, as he now prefers. Just check out the man's Wikipedia for god's sake.

Here is a timeline summary:
1979: Born to middle class family, mother is Jewish nurse, father is Irish-Catholic officer in British army
1995: Wins poetry tour and goes on tour of Russia with support from the British Council
1996: Moves to grandmother's flat in London and gets job filling graves at Willesden Cemetery
1997: Attends University of London to study English literature but drops out after a year
1998: Moves in with Carl Barât
2002: He and Barât release debut Libertines' album, Up the Bracket
2003: Jailed for breaking into Barât's apartment, looking for drug money
Attends Wat Tham Krabok rehab facility in Thailand, where he is beaten with bamboo canes and forced to drink horrible herbal remedies that induce vomiting
Leaves after three days
2004: Releases second album The Libertines
Kicked out of band
2005: Releases Down in Albion with the Babyshambles
Meets Kate Moss and begins an on-again off-again romance, culminating in tabloid pictures of Moss doing lines of coke
2007: Models for Roberto Cavalli
2008: Exhibits artwork "Art of Albion," some of which is made with his own blood
Doherty's manager, Andy Boyd tells the Daily Mail, "The only time I can be sure he’s not doing heroin or crack is when he’s in rehab or prison or asleep."

The guy is a mess. I'm just glad he hasn't died yet because somehow he keeps making great music. In fact, I completely disagree with a recent Q Magazine article on Doherty, the gist of which was that Doherty is just using his drug addictions and Moss romance to get famous and doesn't actually make good music. I believe the exact opposite. In my opinion, Doherty is one of the most talented artists of this decade. Clearly, he has some serious problems, but that hasn't stopped him from making five albums in the last seven years, all have which have rated somewhere between good and great. The scary thing to imagine is how good he could be if he kicked his habits.

Grace/Wastelands is a fantastic album. As was mentioned in a review on Allmusic, this is the sound of Doherty maturing. The extra "r" in his name is just one element of this new look for Doherty. Instead of more raucous paeons to being a teenager, the streets of London, and drugs, this album presents a sadder, more mellow Doherty. Many of the songs here are based around simple acoustic guitar riffs and have a folk tinge to them, rather than the punk/garage sound he is known for.

The album begins with "Arcady." This is a frequent requiem for Doherty, an imaginary utopia that he longs to someday reach (which might explain some of his over-the-top drug abuse). The songs starts very upbeat, with the line "In Arcady life trips along..." but then it leads to a refrain,

So you see how twisted it becomes
See how quickly twisted it becomes
When the cat gut binds my ankles to your bedstead
That ain't love, no that ain't love

Doherty is examining his life here and seems almost apologetic. Next is one of the best songs on the album, a classic Doherty ballad called "Last of the English Roses," with a very distinct electronic/acoustic sound. You have to believe this is about Kate Moss, who Doherty has described as his one true love. The last two songs on the album are fucking great too. "New Love Grows on Trees" is a pained, emotional and yet quite beautiful song. "You said die/You said new love grows on trees..." The music and the lyrics here are both near-perfect. And Doherty sounds pretty good for a heroin addict. Then there is the slightly more upbeat, "Lady Don't Fall Backwards," which describes an encounter with perhaps the same girl from "Last of the English Roses," who he meets in "Chinatown for opium and tea." This might be the best love song Doherty has ever written. Oh my god. It's fucking good. Please don't die, Peter.

Glorious Return/Explanation

Greetings minions,

It has been two weeks since my last post. Basically what happened is that I was away from a computer for a few days, got wrapped up in real life (I know, hard to believe, right) and basically felt that nobody really cared anyway. How wrong I was. My mailbox has overflowed with passionate requests for a return to this blog that can only be described as "life-altering." Well, maybe that's not really true either, but I do enjoy this site and have like a million things I hope to put up here in the next day or two. So stay tuned.

The Unicorns- "Tuff Ghost" (Who Will Cut Our Hair When We're Gone?)

Let's Find Out About! pow wow!...

pow wow!
This group comes from Brooklyn. They are led by two brothers, Edward and Jeff Nazareno. The hype for this group has slowly been building around the blogosphere and they have earned comparisons to Velvet Underground and The Kinks, two of my favorite groups. The band calls itself "The lovechild of Burt Bacharach, The Smiths and Diana Ross. From the Future. In outer space." And Earfarm says they sound like "The Modern Lovers if they replaced their pre-punk edge with a dose of sunny day Belle and Sebastian ennui." For my part, I would compare the group to Dirty on Purpose without quite as much fuzzy distortion, but a bit more poppy hooks.


Middle Distance Runner
The group originally started as a Led Zeppelin cover band in DC, but according to their website they have always been the second best band in the world, only beaten by Oasis. They are also huge fans of Blur. The band describes their sound: "Middle Distance Runner is what you would be left with if you took every nu-metal, frat-rock, and emo band, put them into a poorly insulated spaceship, and then drove it into the sun" or, alternately: "Indie-pop with a dick and a brain." According to Paste Magazine, "Before every show, band members huddle up, put their hands together and yell “1-2-3 Professionalism!”" That's fucking hilarious.


Antipop Consortium
Formed in 1997 by Priest, Beans and M. Sayyid in New York City. The band is hip-hop with an IDM ("intelligent dance music") influence. They disbanded in 2002. During its heyday, the group earned comparisons to MF Doom, Kool Keith and Aesop Rock. They opened for Radiohead and toured with DJ Shadow. Sayyid said in an interview with Index Magazine that he grew up listening to Dead Kennedys, The Specials and Black Flag along with Kurtis Blow and Run-D.M.C. And Beans describes their style: "It's a mix of Suicide, Sun Ra, and Afrika Bambaataa, with lyrics by Richard Wright." He also claims he grew up as a Kiss fan before he discovered hip-hop. This is a hip-hop band that is influenced by everything from Prince to Pavement. Really!

Bonus! Download "Rinseflow" (Tragic Epilogue)

People Under the Stairs
Formed out of the late-90s LA underground hip-hop scene by Double K and Thes One, who comes from Lima, Peru. After releasing the well-received Question in the Form of an Answer in 2000, PUTS toured with De La Soul. The band is still recording, most recently releasing Fun DMC last year. For that album, the group actually recorded dialogue off the streets of South Central, LA to recreate the sound of their hometown. This is a hip-hop band that's all about having fun, which is really quite refreshing.


Gentleman Auction House
This is a seven-piece indie group from Missouri. And they are Cardinals fans. So fuck 'em. Unfortunately, I do like their music though. Crashin' In writes, "They have no tricks or frills to grab your attention, they simply just have good catchy indie pop songs that will stick in your head all day long." They definitely have a sort of Arcade Fire/Thermals sound, which is fun to listen to.


Dandelions
I learned about this band from Swan Fungus in one of the most excellent blog-articles I have seen. Really this is what the internet was made for, right? Swan Fungus gives us four downloads [EDIT: you can click MegaUpload DL to download the whole thing] off of an incredibly rare and actually excellent album by a little known band called the Dandelions. And who are the Dandelions? Two girls, ages ten and eleven named Kitsy and Tres, who recorded this folk album in 1971. And it's shockingly good stuff, much better than a lot of the folk-pop of the '60s. I'd certainly rather listen to the Dandelions than Peter Paul & Mary. The blog post also gives us the notes from the record's back cover. Here's an excerpt:

In a few weeks we were together at Kitsy’s home for the weekend and Uncle Scott and Aunt Judy were there when we started to make up some songs. Uncle Scott said, “Why don’t you two make an album since you’re so good?” We said, “O.K.!”

How wonderful is that. There's no video of their music on Youtube as far as I know, but here is something about dandelions anyway:

On Rolling Stone & Mastodon

I was a subscriber of Rolling Stone magazine for five years, but this year when it came time to renew the subscription I just couldn't face another year of cover stories on the Jonas Brothers and Zac Effron or whatever shit goes on there these days. Seriously, Rolling Stone has sold its soul to the devil, and not in a cool way like Robert Johnson or Mick Jagger. No, a music magazine that used to have the Fucking Beatles or the Rolling Stones or Jimi Hendrix on their covers now panders to the preteen Disney crowd. It is sickening.

Here is the May 15, '08 edition for example. On the cover are the girls of the Hills. Sure, they are dressed in skimpy outfits and are "hot" I guess, but they are also braindead stars of a reality show with no talent whatsoever. Rolling Stone, music still exists. Would it kill you to put My Morning Jacket or Vampire Weekend or MGMT on the cover? Or really anything that does actually count as music?!

So that's why I was quite pleasantly surprised to see the newest Rolling Stone. I had an hour to kill so I took it off the shelf and there was Lil' Wayne, an actual artist, who is a hell of a lot more interesting than U2. And that wasn't the only good article in there. There is a three-page spread on Mastodon, a band that I have heard a lot about over the last few years. They are the best metal group in the world, one of the few groups from that genre that also gets its share of critical acclaim. I'm not much of a metal fan, though, so I had never checked out their music or really read too much about them. And the article really made me fascinated with the group. It was one of the few times that I have started reading an article about a band I had no interest in up to that point and could not pull myself away. And the reason for that is that Mastodon is an incredibly interesting group, one of the few real fucking rock & roll bands left. And this is presented brilliantly by Brian Hiatt. Here is how he opens the article: "Brent Hinds, frontman and lead guitarist for Mastodon, has reached the inevitable point in the evening when his speech starts to slur." After reading that sentence, there was no way I wasn't going to read the whole article. That article was what Rolling Stone should be all about, presenting genuinely exciting bands to a larger audience. For that, I am glad I picked up the newest edition. Still, I think I'll check in next time to see if Miley Cyrus is on the cover before I resubscribe.