Double Order of Government Cheese, Please

Holy cow – I am super mega ultra pleased to report that Nashville-via-Bowling Green legends Government Cheese finally have an official home on the WWW again, now on MySpace.  Now I don’t have to link to all those YouTubes in lieu of a website anymore, rock!  Linkage revisions coming soon.

Also, Good Girls Don’t, But I Do (Not Really)

I just thought I’d issue an apology to all the people who wind up here lately because they’re interested in 25+ year old songs by The Knack, in this case thanks to my previous habit of titling most posts with song lyrics. Oops.

I would extend a similar apology to those who are most probably searching for info on Motley Crue, but it’s just not my fault that it’s not spelled “Crew”. Please take that up with Tommy, Vince, Nikki, and Mick. Thanks!

(Tho I admit I did do the lyrics thing once with them too. Oops again, sorry.)

More Cheese, Please

Lookie what I found… new old Government Cheese videos. I guess I should monitor YouTube a little more closely sometimes since some of these have actually been posted for a few months now. All kinds of chewy extremely Eighties goodness here to be had.

I remember when less than ten bucks (sometimes a lot less) could buy you a pretty good night out in Nashville or Murfreesboro with a Cheese show and a guaranteed hangover the next morning. And if you were lucky, still have enough left over to buy a much-needed 2 liter bottle of Sun-Drop for the hangover cure, too.

“Oh Yeah” (live):

“Mammaw Drives the Bus”:

“Face to Face”:

Downloading Out of My Head

So I just hope I remember to pay that final IRS payment this week (see previous post) since I don’t seem to be doing too good a job of getting things I forgot to load on my MP3 player in the first few runs loaded. (4+ GB still free, woohoo.)

Speaking of which, confidential to Led Zeppelin & AC/DC (among others, of course – thank goodness it’s really a minority rather than a majority): Don’t think the world isn’t taking note of your lack of participation in the downloading scene.**

Man, my list of Napster/iTunes non-participants & those who insist on charging 99 cents per on Napster is growing a mile and a half long. Get with the program, people – the world of music as we know it has changed completely, and your future profits are dependent on you rolling with the changes rather than bucking them.

Now, granted, Plant & Page and the Youngs & Co. aren’t likely to go bankrupt anytime in this millenium, but the number of non-superdupersuperstars who still haven’t gone with the flow is kind of disturbing to me… mainly because I think they are really only just hurting themselves in the long run.

And if I’ve said it before, I’ve said it a thousand times – the ones on Napster (big and small artists) who insist on charging a fee just kill me. If you don’t think you’re being passed over in favor of those who don’t (and I assume are still getting paid by Napster) – I think you’re mistaken and naive.

I still support friends, acquaintances, and colleagues in the music biz by buying their CDs and DVDs (and sometimes multiples of each), but I also usually download their stuff as well, if it’s available that way. Not only because it’s convenient for moi, but I’m good with them getting a percentage of whatever they get from downloading.

The rest of you – meaning most of the music business – you’re out of luck. With one – ONE – exception, it’s been so long since I bought a new, commercial CD that was not by someone I know or am at least acquainted with that I can’t even tell you how many years it’s been. I’ve bought a handful of rare and hard-to-find stuff secondhand, but only a handful.

And now that I’ve discovered that some of my CDs – you know, those things they told us in the Eighties were indestructible and would last forever? – are disintegrating… I’m not really looking to buy very many more.

Sure, people will still buy CDs. I think it’s going to be fewer and fewer, though.

So, again, music biz folks, here’s what I say. If you’re living in the past and won’t make your stuff available for download, you’re going to get left behind… and even those who aren’t likely to be bankrupted, you’re going to see the bite that gets taken out of what you’re used to (if you’re not already seeing it).

And those who still insist on charging a separate fee for their stuff on one-fee-gets-most services – I just don’t need your new album or even a couple of tunes off your album that bad. If I need something and can’t live without it, I was already supporting that artist/band in the first place.

The majority of you out there don’t fall in that category, so the likelihood of me paying extra for your stuff? Nope. This means you, Red Hot Chili Peppers… and countless others. (Yep, I keep a list of both unavailables and extra chargers.) ;)

In short, get with the program, or get passed over. Really, it’s just that simple.

** (I realize some of the above mentioned artists might be in negotiations or whatever to make their product available by download.  Though if they are, they’ve been in negotiations for more than a year so I’m, like, not holding my breath.)

Postscript – Lynnster’s Musical Education, Now in Four Posts

I realized over the weekend that I forgot a couple of very important moments in the third post of the music series I posted Saturday, and these were big MAJOR omissions.

I saw this one live on broadcast TV as well in late 1977, while spending the night over at my friend Katie’s house. Not only an important event musically for me, but a classic moment that went down in rock & roll history (because of the false start on live TV). Elvis Costello, 1977 (UPDATE, 10/2009 – As with most clips on YouTube that get put up of some of the most magnificent performances in artists’ careers – i.e., their debut or early Saturday Night Live appearances – this one has been removed, for now. If the clip gets put up again or if NBC Universal ever gets their head out of their collective ass and puts up their own YouTube partner channel with these fantastic performances so that they’ll be back in public view where they SHOULD be for people to enjoy these pieces of music history, I’ll pop it back in here. For now, here’s the actual video for the song – unusual in itself for that period of time since video wasn’t widely used in the ’70s for promotion) :

And another event that, along the same lines as The B-52s and the Pretenders, was hugely important… unfortunately I can’t find any footage of what was the actual event where I saw them for the first time (which I believe was on Rock Concert in 1978), but this promo video is from the same time. And featuring one of the world’s greatest drummers in Clem Burke – which is not only my opinion, but the opinion of girl drummer extraordinaire Miss Jo Walker, Christopher & Jay W., and every other drummer I have ever knocked around with. Blondie, 1978:

If I get industrious again in the near future, maybe we’ll hit college days and my point-of-no-return assimilation into the indie scene. I’ll probably just skip high school – while I had some cool stuff like the first couple of U2 albums and some other stuff most people didn’t have in West Tennessee at the time (thank goodness for Night Tracks on TBS!), those days included a lot of Loverboy and .38 Special and Night Ranger and etc., and I don’t need to be reminded of that and neither do you. Ciao for now. ;)