I might start really writing more again if my world will slow down just a little. Here’s hoping…

• November 19 2009 – 9:00 pm – Jerky’s – Providence, Rhode Island – with Backwash, openers Diepods
• December 3 2009 – 9:00 pm – TT the Bears – Cambridge, Massachusetts – opening for Sloan

I’ve been seeing a lot of the photos from the tour thru England and Scotland earlier in the fall and I don’t know what’s in the water those three have been drinking, but they all three look younger in every photo set that comes across my way. Proof that rock & roll keeps you young? Maybe so! Chick is like Mr. Rock & Roll, Joe’s got the wild man thing going on with the hair these days, and Joyce looks like a teenager lately in these pics, I’m sooo jealous. I’m only a few years older than Joyce but I’m gonna look old enough to be her mother in comparison if they keep this up, and she’s a mom of two and I have none! Sheesh, no fair.

The Scarce blog has also been updated recently as well with many heartfelt thanks to the UK fans, check out the latest HERE.

• Scarce on MySpace (check out “Ocean Blue” while there, it’s back to being my fave song on the album again)
• Follow Scarce @scarcerocks (Joyce) on Twitter

Anyway, check out the upcoming shows if you’re able and pick yourself up one of the coolest band t-shirts I have ever owned in my life (the cartoon shirts, at least I hope they still have those available now that I’ve said that, heh). Which reminds me, I should scan that thing and post a pic of it here, but you know I’m lazy about things like that sometimes and the scanner is not hooked up to the computer all the time, so don’t hold your breath waiting but I’ll try to do that soon. It’s so super cool.

So if you’re nearby or have nothing else to do, go check out Scarce at one of those gigs and hey, if it’s your first time, be sure and tell Joyce that Lynnster sent ya – she’ll be the one with the bloody fingers from beating up that bass as she usually does. Since I can’t get them to come play Knoxville or Memphis no matter how much I beg, it’ll be the next best thing to me being there!

I had a tip recently from a music exec about Israel Darling out of Greensboro, North Carolina, who bills themselves on their MySpace profile like so: “We love music. We love being southern. The aftermath is what Israel Darling has become, an observation of the things we either love or hate.”

Oddly (to me), they don’t list Adams as one of their influences (though they do cite Wilco and Elliott Smith).

So I moseyed on over to their profile and listened a bit. As I kind of expected, it kind of missed the mark for me – but remember, I don’t much care for Adams and really the only band of that general genre I ever got into much at all was Son Volt for a spell. But Israel Darling is certainly interesting (I’m a little bit intrigued by the fact there are eight – yes, eight! – members in the band), and actually, I was kinda digging the lyrics a lot of some of the tunes I gave a listen to. So that’s cool and I will continue to investigate this band a bit further, I believe.

So anyway, Israel Darling is playing at The Basement in Nashville on November 17th, and Preservation Pub in Knoxville on November 18th. I think those of you who dig/dug Wilco, Son Volt, Uncle Tupelo, Elliott Smith, Whiskeytown, He Who Shall Not Be Named Again But Whose Initials Are R.A., and the like would probably like this show and you should go (and send me a review and I’ll guest post it here). Or at least check out their music on their page and see what you think! If you like ‘em, send me cookies.

God and everybody knows I don’t really care much for Ryan Adams, personally or professionally. When Whiskeytown came out lo these many years ago, I probably had no less than 100 fellow Replacements fans nudging me on that album and when I finally picked it up, I was not impressed.

I’ll grant, however, that he is musically impressive. He’s just not – for me personally – like Jack White, who I think is a musical freakin’ genius AND I also dig very, very much. Adams is just not for me, and especially not lately when my index finger is more often than not usually hitting “select” along the lines of Slipknot, Godsmack, Korn, etc. Ryan Adams is good, and he’s impressive musically, but I’m sorry, kids – he ain’t no Paul Westerberg, no matter how many critics and others have tried to say it’s so.

One thing Ryan Adams did do that I like very much is his cover of Black Flag’s “Nervous Breakdown” on the West Memphis Three benefit CD that Henry Rollins put out a few years ago, Rise Above: 24 Black Flag Songs to Benefit the West Memphis Three. I like Adams’ version almost as much as I like (original Black Flag vocalist) Keith Morris’ re-cover of it on the same album. (By the way, that whole CD is really cool.)

But really the main reason I don’t care much for Ryan Adams is not just because I’m just not that into him and never have been, but I have had a few violent reactions of revulsion upon hearing of some of his prima donna antics at live shows, particularly at a couple of shows in a couple of towns here in my home state in the past. I’ve said this much in the past – if you can’t act at least somewhat appreciative of the fans that got you where you are, you really don’t deserve any fortune and fame that comes your way.

I rather worship the aforementioned Mr. Westerberg, as everyone knows – but word on the street for years and years has always been that he can be kind of an asshole. That said, there’s also many anecdotes to the contrary out there as well. Point being, however, that there also aren’t a hundred stories flying around about Paul being a jerk on stage.

One day a while back on Twitter, there was some discussion about Adams. Several Tennessee folks were recounting the past bad behavior, and I piped up with something along the lines of all of the above, saying something not terribly complimentary (okay, I pretty much dogged him), and the next thing I knew – about five or ten minutes later – I had a notification that I was being followed by someone who turned out to be his manager, I think. Me being one of those people who everyone always says is too nice to people anyway, I was appropriately mortified and felt bad about it, sorta.

But really I still stand by what I said. It doesn’t take a lot of effort to be halfway decent to people and I don’t think anyone really expects the famous to just be overcome with gratitude and all happy happy joy joy. But if I’m not that crazy about your work in the first place, and then I hear about prima donna little temper tantrums and other such stuff in front of rooms full of thousands of people who DO like and love you – count me out, I’m no longer interested at all.

Plus for goodness sakes, he’s a Southern boy, so even less excuse. Their mamas raise them better than that, and I’m sure his did too.

So, based on a glance at my Tweets on Twitter that night, I noted that I spent approximately nine hours replacing YouTube videos that have been removed since the last time I looked at my (so far) four-part Music Education 101 series of posts. If you missed that before (or just want to check them out again), all the video links except maybe one are working now, although I’ve had to replace several with “alternate” versions (some I’m not too thrilled about), but also added some extras that weren’t there before.

The series lives in my Music Education 101 category on both blogs, or here are the links:

• Lynnster’s Musical Education in Three (Now Four) Posts – The Beginning
• Coming Into My Own – Lynnster’s Musical Education in Three (Now Four) Posts
• No Turning Back Now – Lynnster’s Musical Education in Three (Now Four) Posts
• Postscript – Lynnster’s Musical Education, Now In Four Posts

I can’t even begin to illustrate what a painfully tedious process it was, searching for and updating all those video links – made even worse by the fact this series is on both my blogs, since it was begun before I added the music blog, so that doubled the work. But of all the posts on either of my blogs – spanning back nearly 13 years on the main blog – those four are probably the most important to me, so whatever.

What pains me, really, is the number of them removed because so-and-so company/organization has declared their ownership/copyright. Fine.

Do these people not understand the power of YouTube these days and the potential for financial gain in a YouTube partnership? When there are everyday people uploading their own videos – be it comedy, commentary, their own music, or what amounts to the video version of a traditional blog (i.e., vlogs) – and making better money doing that than they would with the salary of many very good full time jobs – is the potential financial gain of allowing music and video to be heard and seen on YouTube completely beyond the comprehension of the music and visual media companies?

If Joe Blow next door is able to make a living wage off of YouTube these days, just think how much cash these record companies and other media companies could be raking in by putting up their own partnered YouTube channel. Some have, yes (mainly individual artists/bands though) – but not nearly enough.

There’s one case in particular that gripes me the most – some of what are undeniably the most important performances – American debut and otherwise – of many artists’ careers are their first appearances on Saturday Night Live. These are almost impossible to find – if they get uploaded, it doesn’t take long before they get pulled. Replacing some of those (like Elvis Costello’s famous show-stopping appearance from 1977) is what took me so darned long the other night, and it just irritated the crap out of me.

So here’s my open letter to NBC Universal:

Get your heads out of your collective asses and put up your 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 fabulous pieces of music history – instead of repeatedly blocking them and keeping them hidden from public view.

In this day and age when almost anything can be instantly viewed on the Internet in all kinds of different venues, it’s a doggoned shame that some of the finest musical performances in rock & roll history are being withheld like this. You have the potential to make far, far more profit on those clips as a YouTube partner than you likely ever will recoup in DVD or video sales.

I guess there’s a DVD or music video out there on the market already – point being, I don’t care, and they probably don’t contain the clips I want to see most anyway. How many DVDs have I bought in the past three or four years? Less than ten, and virtually all are feature films.

That said, I’m your target audience with those SNL music clips, NBC Universal – listen to me. Do the right thing and get those clips up on YouTube under your own account so those precious pieces of musical performance history are out there for the public to enjoy (and for those young musically-minded kids, like I once was myself, to learn from) – and make money off of me and everyone else who will watch, rate, and favorite those clips time and time again.

You have nothing to lose – except for the profit you’re not making by withholding them for DVD or whatever purposes, in which case you’re never likely going to profit nearly as much as you would have as a YouTube partner – and instead, the whole world is losing out by not being able to easily access and view these like you now can most anything else on YouTube. I know a big music fan – and Elvis Costello fan – in his twenties who has never even seen that priceless infamous clip. It’s a danged shame.

C’mon, NBC Universal. The solution’s so simple, and everybody wins. You line your pockets probably a lot more than you would have counting on DVD sales – and that music’s back out there where it belongs, for folks to dig. Simple.

Days Like These is the story of the rise and fall, and rise again of the band Scarce. Admired by musicians and fans alike for their unique brand of rock and roll and blistering live performances, they appeared destined for stardom before tragedy struck and a brain aneurysm left guitarist Chick Graning fighting for his life. Fast forward 10 years and Scarce are back to prove their passion still resonates today.
The biopic contains never seen before footage of Scarce including studio sessions, archive and early footage, interviews with Scarce disciples such as Kristin Hersh (Throwing Muses), Joe Lally (Fugazi), friends and fans new and old, and Industry cohorts that never stopped believing in Scarce.
A celebration of Scarce, past, present and future.

Get your copy right here right now!

UPDATED: Click HERE to see a preview!

I’ve changed the color theme of my blogs and the sidebar of my Twitter profile this week to red in support of the families of Channon Christian and Chris Newsom, who were brutally tortured and murdered in Knoxville in January 2007. The trial of ringleader Lemaricus Davidson is going on this week in Knox County, Tennessee. Davidson was convicted by a jury on Wednesday of 35 of 38 counts, including several counts of felony first degree murder (and convicted guilty of facilitation on the three other counts).

The penalty phase of the trial is ongoing today and I expect sentencing will come tomorrow (on Friday).

Davidson is known to hate the color red, and the families and other supporters in court this week have worn red in the courtroom this week. Hundreds of followers on Twitter following the trial thanks to Tweeting Knoxville media folks have changed their sidebars to red in support; I’ve done this and taken it one step further on both blogs today.

For more information on this terrible case:

Knoxville News-Sentinel’s continuing coverage of the Christian-Newsom murders

WBIR.com – live trial coverage when court is in session

You can also follow the trial goings-on up to the minute on Twitter:

Twitter: #cntrial

I guess I’m as much to blame as anyone if lack of user content contributed to the change. I haven’t had much time for it since they ended the initial charter program, wish I had been able to write more but time just didn’t allow for freebie writing except my blogs, and we all know how well I’ve kept up with those the past year (ha).

I really kinda hate to see the change for a number of reasons, but first and foremost, the changing to the online magazine type format just doesn’t interest me much. There’s fifty billion online music rags, most of which I never read or visit anyway (save for a few that have additional resources for – you guessed it – user-driven content when I’m looking to promote my pet bands).

User-driven content on the Internet interests me much, much more. If you have a music blog (or any blog, for that matter) and I like it, I’m liable to visit it at least fairly regularly, haphazard though I may be about it at times. Same with other types of user-driven content sites. I haven’t much use (or time) for the hundreds or thousands of more traditional online music magazines out there, and if I’m on one of those sites, it’s probably because I was Googling for something specific that the site just happened to have. Chances of me visiting regularly – or again at all – are kinda slim.

Oh well, I guess that’s the way of the Internet these days – more professional content equals more money, I guess? I’m just not so sure it’s necessarily the way to go when it comes to music these days. While I’m sure they’ll draw more interest than they might have otherwise from some, I tend to think there’s probably a lot of diehard music junkies like myself that rather shy away from the overly professional and commercial, and instead seek out what’s different and usually much more interesting – if that makes sense.

Anyway, they’re going to be taking down the old content soon, so if you wanna read stuff I wrote over there as it was meant to be seen before it’s gone, click here. Fortunately I have had copies (as they suggested when they announced the change) of it all from the start – save for one I just noticed when I went over there I obviously forgot to save, but now have rectified that – so I’ll probably tack it up somewhere else later on; if nothing else, in another WordPress blog or whatever.

If you’re in the UK or the upper East Coast, you’ll have an opportunity to see the documentary in full on several occasions in October – see my previous post for dates and locations.

The great news is Scarce has been in the studio much of the summer putting together tracks for an upcoming new CD release that, last I heard, is going to be called I Don’t Like You (brilliant title!). (EDIT: Whoops, in going over some old notes and emails, the CD may actually be called No One Likes You… but that one’s hilariously brilliant too. I love them both! Heh.)

I’ve already had the fabulous opportunity to hear an early cut of the track “Stupid in a Cup” (another brilliant title, god I just love a clever song or CD title and clever band names) and it just totally rocks. It’s kinda something like a cross between the Pixies and AC/DC (that was Joyce’s description) and something else to me that I haven’t quite figured out who yet, but it’s pure Scarce and purely divine. I am soooo looking forward to this CD coming out!

For those in the UK, Scarce is about to hit your shores with a quick tour and you really really really must go see ‘em. Not only that, but the new Scarce documentary is going to be shown several places while they’re over yonder, and there’s also a couple of East Coast dates scheduled for late October. Here’s some dates for shows and documentary showings:

• October 13 2009 – 07:30 PM – Bodega Social – 23 Pelham Street, Nottingham, NG1 2ED – 8.50
• October 14 2009 – 07:30 PM – Night and Day Cafe – 26 Oldham Street/Northern Quarter, Manchester, M1 1JN – 8.50
• October 25 2009 – 09:00 PM – Cat’s @ Kc’s Tap – 530 Broadway, Pawtucket, Rhode Island 02860

Scarce Documentary Showings + Gigs:

• October 15 2009 – 08:00 PM – Stereo – 20-28 Renfield Lane, Glasgow, Scotland – 8.50
• October 17 2009 – 07:30 PM – The Luminaire – London, London and South East – 10 pounds
• October 21 2009 – 11:00 PM – Joe’s Pub at the Public Theater – 425 Lafayette Street, New York, New York – $10

Go, go, go if you can! These are going to be great shows and I’m dying to see the documentary myself so if you have a chance to go, don’t miss out.

No, I don’t suppose I expected he’d live forever, or even to necessarily be really old at 70 or 80 or 90 or anything… but 50, that’s kind of a shock. Especially when one (me) pretty much grew up my whole life keenly aware of Michael Jackson being out there in the entertainment world and not all that much older than me. You just don’t really expect someone like that to go that early unless it’s a suicide (Kurt Cobain), drug overdose (Brad Nowell of Sublime, Shannon Hoon of Blind Melon), or some horrible tragic accident like a drowning (Jeff Buckley). (Although as we all know, rumors of chronic morphine use in Jackson’s case are starting to swirl and whether that’s true or not, who knows yet.)

Granted, I’m at an age where it’s become disturbing to see how many people I went to school with are passing away at ages much younger than 50, even though in my case and my graduating class’ case, it’s something we’ve been dealing with since we were all 17 years old. Still, in the last couple of years there have been a disturbing and growing number of cancer deaths and other deaths, as well as former classmates winding up with severe and terminal illnesses of all kinds.

But none of us are the biggest pop stars in the world, and you probably noticed those I namechecked a couple of paragraphs above are from a completely different sphere of the music world than Jackson’s pop-kingness was. Those and others were losses that affected me more, whether a little or a lot, because that realm is where I have been rooted for most of my adult life musically, and was starting to seed even before.

And, too, those losses in the music world were a little different from me – in a way, losing some of those people was like losing “one of us” in a way where Michael Jackson could never be compared to the average person. I personally know many from that scene who were never as big as, say, Cobain, but close. My longtime boyfriend went to school with and grew up with a couple of the most influential people in all of “alternative” music, including a Grammy winner. I am thankful that pretty much everyone we are acquainted with pretty much made it through the Eighties, Nineties, and Aughts (for lack of a better word), but any of those passed above could have been almost anyone we know, at one time or another.

So now, Michael Jackson. An unexpected death, and as Kat Coble stated earlier today on Twitter, all deaths are “sudden”; his was “unexpected”. Ten years from now when I’m 53 instead of 43, and if Michael Jackson had died at 60, it just wouldn’t have been as shocking as it was to me yesterday. It’s all relative but I think a lot of the difference is in how old you are yourself, and which era(s) you grew up in.

Sure, people much younger than me knew who Michael Jackson was and experienced him being out there as the “King of Pop” for many years muscially, as well as his ongoing legal and financial troubles the last almost-couple of decades. But most of them weren’t even born when Michael Jackson wasn’t really MICHAEL JACKSON yet. He was always there, almost as long as I’ve been alive, but first he was just Michael Jackson of The Jackson 5, and pretty much almost ever since I’ve been alive, either The Jackson 5, The Jacksons, or Michael solo have all been on the radio, somewhere, sometime, all the time. I have very clear memories of several Jacksons-related episodes, probably the earliest being when I couldn’t have been more than three or four, accompanying my grandparents on the trip to Memphis either to pick my eldest aunt up at nursing school or bring her back home, being in the car with “ABC” playing on the radio.

The Jackson 5 or, later, The Jacksons’ singles were always being spun on Fridays during recess at my elementary school, Friday being the day they brought the record player out and everyone was allowed to bring the 45 RPM singles they wanted to hear be played over the schoolyard PA system at recess – and dance, if you so desired to. Countless of their singles being played on those Fridays - “Dancing Machine”, “Enjoy Yourself”, and Michael’s early solo, “Ben”.

And Michael, and usually with his brothers, was always on TV – awards shows, all the millions of variety shows there were on television during the Seventies, music shows like American Bandstand and Soul Train. I can’t imagine there were many weeks from 1969-1979 that there was not a Jackson-related single on the charts, or many weeks that Michael or all of the Jacksons were on TV somewhere, sometime.

I was in the seventh grade when “Shake Your Body (Down to the Ground)” came out, and had been spending much of my time long before I got into a double digit age listening to stuff like The Beatles, the Stones, The Who – a lot of even then-classic rock but also more “out there” stuff for a young kid like the Jefferson Airplane and T. Rex, and was just starting on my lifelong Cheap Trick fetish and interestedly watching bands like the Ramones and The Clash on TV by the time I was a seventh grader, but still – Michael Jackson was there, though in Jackson 5/The Jacksons form before he really went from being Michael Jackson to MICHAEL JACKSON – and all my rock & roll and punk rock seeds being planted and tended to aside, I still listened to a lot of AM radio and pop radio at that point – mainly because if you were going to listen to the radio in Northwest Tennessee, rather than playing your own records, you really didn’t have a whole lot of choice most of the time. It was pop or nothing, for the most part. But even then, I still was buying things that were mainstream and popular at the time – The Jacksons’ Destiny album from 1978 is the only Jackson-related album I ever owned. I never even, later, bought Thriller - probably because I didn’t feel like I needed to. It was everywhere and all over ANYWAY.

All those songs and videos were everywhere all the time anyway. I was in the eighth grade when Michael Jackson became MICHAEL JACKSON, when the Off the Wall album was released. In fact, the record was released the week before my eighth grade year started. I kind of think if you were not around and old enough and alive back then, it’s probably a little impossible to get a grip on what I just said in that sentence: when Michael Jackson became MICHAEL JACKSON. If you were alive at the time, and old enough – you already know. I can’t really explain it other than to say it just happened, the minute that first single hit the radio airwaves.

I never was a huge fan so I didn’t pay all that much attention to him, but still, Michael Jackson was a HUGE part of the background soundtrack to most of my junior high and all of my high school years. School dances – Michael Jackson tunes. I (and everyone else trying out) tried out for cheerleading with a routine to Jackson’s “Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough”. And then Thriller came out and it was the biggest thing ever.

Granted, the stuff we as a collective group were listening to mostly throughout high school was very much NOT Michael Jackson, though probably almost everyone (but me) had a copy of Thriller anyway – but if you pooled everyone’s 8-tracks and cassette tapes together to see what the youth of Northwest Tennessee was listening to in 1982 and 1983, Jackson (or much of any R&B for that matter) was far outweighed by artists like John Cougar Mellencamp, Van Halen, Loverboy, .38 Special, Journey, Bryan Adams, Joan Jett and many more of all different kinds of styles, ranging from old Foghat to New Wavers like Adam Ant. I took a lot of crap back then for my major Duran Duran fandom, and was likely the only person in the county (maybe two) also spending my money on new bands and artists that intrigued me late weekend TV nights on Night Tracks out of Atlanta – bands like U2, General Public, The Cramps, and a host of others nobody much down where I was was ever listening to.

But Michael Jackson – or by then, MICHAEL JACKSON – was just always there, especially after Thriller hit. “Beat It” was cool because Eddie Van Halen played on it. There was a cheerleading routine at Homecoming that year, in 1982, that incorporated “Beat It”, “Billie Jean”, and “Thriller”. I remember summer evenings in 1983, riding around back roads and down to the river beach in a friend’s MG convertible with the top down, three of us squeezed into it with a huge thermos full of pink lemonade and vodka with “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’” just blaring, all of us singing at the top of our lungs. There were several songs on that album I don’t care for at all, but the ones I’ve mentioned I’ve probably heard a million times, as well as the others – and I never even owned the album.

By the time Bad came out, I was away at college and off on musical journeys and adventures where few even my age dared to tread, until Nirvana hit and made weird off-the-wall music cool and trendy, so I don’t really have any memories of Bad-era Jackson. I was never in places that his music would get played, and although Julie and I watched prodigious amounts of MTV then in the mid-Eighties, if I saw a Jackson video, it was usually something from Thriller.

So at that point in my life, Jackson wasn’t part of the ongoing soundtrack playing behind my life like he had so often been until then. But until then – he was just always there. And even as an adult – as I’ve become an adult – he’s always been there, albeit mostly newsy bits in articles of magazines and newspapers I’d pick up here and there. I remember seeing him walk out with Lisa Marie Presley shortly after they married, on some awards show on MTV, and thinking as much ridicule as there’d been, he was acting pretty cool in the face of all that. I remember sometime around the same time seeing a video he and sister Janet did that looked pretty cool, and kind of liking the song at the time. Musically, that was really my only Jackson moment as an adult.

But still, Michael Jackson was always out there. Somewhere. And now he’s not, and I think that’s what’s weird for many of us of this age, even those like me who really weren’t big fans at all. When I was young, he was really one of the few “big music stars” and “big pop stars” that, while older than me, was really pretty close to my age – him, Donny Osmond, and a handful of others. Most of the rest were lots older.

And when it comes down to it, I just never would have guessed that a time when I’m older, but still relatively young, and certainly not what one would call “really old”… I never would have guessed that Michael Jackson, who was once Michael Jackson but then became MICHAEL JACKSON – the biggest pop star and maybe even arguably the biggest celebrity in the world ever other than Elvis and The Beatles – would be gone this early in the game. It’s just weird.

Had it happened ten more years down the road, I probably wouldn’t have raised an eyebrow at the news. Today, it’s just a little disturbing, and yet another reminder to me that life is short. I may be 43 and some days I may feel 83, but in a lot of ways I don’t feel that much different than I did ten, twenty years ago, and people are still arguing with me sometimes that I can’t be over 30.

But I can guarantee you twenty years will pass in the blink of an eye, and you’ll wonder where the time went so fast, and how it can be that someone you just always figured it would be there – whether it’s the most famous pop star in the world like Michael Jackson, or a dear friend you loved – is just suddenly not. It’s weird, and life is short.

In the meantime, I recommend you go read this absolutely wonderful post my friend John H. wrote last month. It’s one of the most spot-on personal blog posts about music I’ve read, when it comes to trying to put in words what music means to those of us who are more or less addicted.  It’s lovely, and it touched me truly. I think it will you, too.

And did you know that “Alex Chilton” is in the new Rock Band 2?  Here’s a really cool interview about it I listened to this morning (HT: PaulWesterberg.com) – click here for the interview.  Besides talking about how the song came to be in Rock Band 2, Paul also basically confirmed that 49:00 was pulled due to copyright complaints on the medley song snippets and he lost a fair amount of money due to that, but loved doing it anyway.

Hope everyone that celebrates it is having a Merry Christmas, and for those who don’t, have a great weekend!

Not really that big a deal in the case of the Gurus since I already own everything that was “extra” on the new CDs on various anthologies and other import CDs – been there, done that, heard them.  Although I was looking forward to hearing the newly remastered tracks because anyone who has been a fan for a long time knows the really early original CDs (and tapes and records) – particularly the first two Gurus albums – kind of had a low volume level problem that was a little annoying whenever you listened to your entire Hoodoo Gurus collection on shuffle.

In the case of The Replacements, however, there’s a veritable motherlode of previously unreleased demos and outtakes – some of which I may actually have on various traded CDs and tapes I have collected over the years, there’s just too many of them and I don’t know.  In any case, I tried not to think about that motherlode too much as the new versions started coming out because, well, I’ve been so broke.

Then I remembered just the other day that I don’t buy CDs anymore anyway.  Ever since I discovered that some of my older ones (you know, that previously absolutely amazing new technology of compact discs that were supposed to be practically indestructible, or so they said in 1986 or so) are disintegrating/have disintegrated – and even though I know the ones made after 1991 or 1992 are supposed to be “different” and “better” – I just pretty much said to heck with it, I’m “renting” most of my music from now on.  My mom and I share a Napster to Go account (which is a whole ‘nother interesting blog post in itself), and I just don’t buy anything on CD anymore unless that’s the only way I can get it.  Although I would still like to acquire the Gurus set someday ‘cos they came with extra non-recorded stuffies I kinda want.

So anyway, I remembered that, which kicked off practically an entire day of listening to ‘Mats tracks I’d never heard before and enjoying them immensely.  And downloading pretty much the entire new expanded version catalog, which took forever, and then trying to decide what to do about my MP3 player and how to reorganize all my new Replacements acquisitions.  Which eventually led to me deleting every ‘Mats track off my player and starting all over from scratch with transferring and blah, blah, blah… which just took even more forever.

Random thoughts I had during all this Westerberg-induced trial and tribulation:

It was really nice to hear such a blissfully clear and clean “If Only You Were Lonely”, which for many years was like the ‘Mats Holy Grail – something so many had heard about, but never seen or heard.  Much better than my poor scratchy old 45.  I remember when my special order arrived in the record store in 1986; before handing that precious little piece of vinyl to me, the clerk at the register held it in his hands and stared at it like it was made of gold for a minute.

It was super disappointing to me that the new and supposedly improved Pleased to Meet Me, which was recorded here in Midtown Memphis, still sounds like the microphones were set up miles away across the river in Arkansas.  (See comment about the first two Hoodoo Gurus albums above.)  It appears I will still be having to fool with the volume button when I’m listening to all my ‘Mats on shuffle.

I’m about to try and turn my mother into at least a borderline medium Westerberg fan.  I’ve been selective about which ones – no way she can handle the entire oeuvre - but judging by what she’s been streaming in our shared Napster account lately, I think it’s time.  I think she might be able to handle my carefully selected introductory package.

The Sh*t Hits the Fans.  That’s probably the only wish I have left, a nice new pristine set of SHTF tracks.  Yes, I know that recording itself is a mess.  I still want it.  In the meantime, they will pry my original cassette (also bought in 1986 from the same record store mentioned above) out of my cold, dead hands only.

Speaking of SHTF - even though there’s countless versions of it floating around (including the four on the new releases), that version of “Can’t Hardly Wait” is still my favorite of them all.

And last but not least – I miss Bob.  Sometimes, I hear that guitar and I’m just immobilized.  Paralyzed.  Awed.

I wish I’d met him.  I met Tommy a little over a decade ago, when he was down here with Perfect cutting that album, and he was such a genuinely nice guy.  I wish I’d met Bob too, though.

Anyway, now I feel sorta caught up.  I’ve stayed so behind everyone and everything else the last year or two, by the time I get around to writing about some things, everyone else is waaaaaaay on past whatever.

But it was new to me this week, and that was kinda nice.  Anything new ‘Mats-wise these days is just a great big bonus, even when it’s old.

So not a “real” new release, but still new to me.  Thankfully, I didn’t have my head under a rock and did manage to grab 49:00, 5:05, and the other one while they were still available – I guess they are not available anywhere now?  Dunno, I’m a little behind on Paul news right now (should go remedy that).

Speaking of 49:00, my pal Joyce Raskin of Scarce managed to grab it too when I gave her the heads up on it before it disappeared from the market, and recently informed me that it’s still the top played track at her house for her AND her kids – her kids love it.  That’s so awesome.

God knows if I had kids, I would be heartbroken if they didn’t love the ‘Mats and the Hoodoo Gurus… though that would be my usual luck if they turned out to be rap/hip-hop lovers or Britney fans.  Eek.

Some of my friends and acquaintances have moved on to using other services more actively but I still like Last.fm the best.  I had to make an emergency move to another computer yesterday (something I’d been planning for a while but wasn’t quite prepared to do it yet, unfortunately it became a necessity in a hurry), and in the process of installing Last.fm on the new one noticed a lot of cool plug-ins I hadn’t added before.

Now I’ve got virtually all my online music listening synced up together, got my playlist running in my Messenger for the first time ever now, and I also discovered the plug-ins for Napster and my MP3 player (it’s a Trekstor Vibez) – if I can ever figure out how exactly to get ‘em working, my listening history will be a lot more correct for the first time ever.  I have been put out for a while that all of these services have had iPod plug-ins forever but nothing for anything else, so this will be really cool if I can get my MP3 player listening list in here too.

Anyway, just some coolness there.  I know Last.fm has become old hat for many, but I still love the extras and the ability to publish my playlist most anywhere, plus a lot of bands these days are using it as another place to touch base with their fans and listeners.  You also can’t beat their subscription for the price – I’m not currently subscribing (but will be again eventually), but it’s dead cheap.

Sign up if you never have, it’s totally worthwhile if you’re into music at all.

This comes as no real surprise, since I’ve been expecting them to disappear for months and kept being shocked over and over again that they were still there, as I quit AOL for good months ago after having spent years on the “cheap” plan just to keep those pages up and hold onto the voluminous FTP space they (used to) give you.

So no shocker there.  What did come as a surprise, though, was discovering that not only were my old pages gone but apparently AOL cut off EVERYBODY’S web space without notice in early November – poof, all gone.  I found an announcement that they were ceasing operation of AOL Hometown, and about a thousand outraged comments in response from AOL users incensed that they couldn’t retrieve not only their pages, but their FTP files.  Since I was a “minimal” user and still had about 7 screen names’ worth of FTP space 100% full of files (pretty much all of which I have stored elsewhere), I can only imagine how much active users lost, and probably didn’t have stuff stored somewhere else.  But that’s a whole other post in itself, and if you had stuff stored and on the Web from AOL and haven’t checked it in a while – well, I hate to be the bearer of bad tidings, but there ya go.

But the reason I’m really posting about it is because I do indeed have the most recent versions of all those music pages on my hard drive, so I will toss them up somewhere else when I have time to do so – the Gurus page, the Replacements page, the Persian Rugs page, the old Monarchs site, and my Paul Westerberg quotes page.

They’re really nothing all that special, especially in this present Internet day and age – I mean, come on, they’re all over ten years old now for the most part – but a lot of other music sites on the ‘Net have been linking to them for years, so I want to put them back up somewhere and maybe some of them will find them again.

As for AOL, seems like they’re shooting themselves in the foot killing thousands of people’s web pages and regressing and going backwards instead of progressing, as far as Internet technology goes, but whatever.  It lost its charm for me about 15 years ago and I’m always surprised when I run across people that still use it.

When I was syncing up my MP3 player with Napster while getting ready to split town for a day last weekend, I noticed Chinese Democracy was the #1 pick, or #1 review, or some such like that.

And my immediate thought was, “Someone still cares?”

The album may be “all right”.  I’ve already heard it’s okay, mediocre, nothing to write home about.

I’m also not sure that releasing it at a time when artists are now getting their work in stores within a month or two of recording – and even within a WEEK of recording – well, it just might have seemed a little less of a not-so-good idea two years ago, or the year before that, I’m just saying.

Somehow I think it might have been more interesting to just continue carrying on the ruse and perpetuating the myth that yeah, it would get released someday.

Because the fact that it’s out there now just doesn’t seem brilliant or genius or anything.  Just kind of sad.  Overhyped.

And entirely too late in the way that showing up to your senior prom twenty years after the fact, only to find that the Elks Lodge where it was held has been turned into a Wendy’s or McDonald’s, would.

It’s awesome.  Get it.

As mentioned previously, you have two choices with this release.  You can get the full-length CD here at Kunaki and get not only the five brand new tracks, but ten more re-released older tracks (all fantastic picks for this CD).

Or you can just download the five-song EP Tattoos and Parades from iTunes, Amazon, etc., and just get the new tracks.  Either way, you win, ‘cos this is a fine, fine release in either format.

A few words about the new tracks -

The opening cut, “Imagining It”, is a slow ballad that is just so Scarce-like and is wonderful.  I actually have (what I think is) an alternate early take Joyce sent me a while back so it wasn’t new to me, but it’s lovely, as is track 2, “The Long Goodbye”.

Also not new to me, but may be to others, were “Dead Bleaux” and “Dust” – I’ve had these as solo versions of Chick’s on my MP3 player for quite a long time now – these are two really great, fabulous songs.

But here’s the surprise – not so much so with “Dead Bleaux” because I’d heard the Scarce version on their MySpace profile, though it is way different than Chick’s solo-ish version he did with Rodney Cash as The Skinwalkers – the BIG and very pleasant surprise on this CD, if you’ve followed Chick’s career the last few years, is “Dust”.  What was a slow ballad in its earlier version has now turned into almost a whole different tune as the Scarce version – some whopping thumping bass and guitar licks that weren’t there before and it just turned into a rocker.  This was a big thrill and surprise and one of those things that just tickles me.  I love both these songs in all their versions, but for these two to be SO different than previously – ah, it was just like Christmas playing the CD for the first time.

I’ve saved the best for last, though.  This was another pleasant surprise to me, but my absolute favorite track on the CD is Joyce’s fabulously bluesy and sexy “Ocean Blue” – I’m just crazy about it.  It was again, a surprise to me that it was my favorite – not because I don’t like Joyce (I love Joyce and she knows it, ha!) but if something new was going to just blow me away and slay me, I expected it to be something more like “All Sideways” or “Freakshadow”, with Chick on lead vocals.  Then again, one of my favorite old Scarce tracks of all time is “Dozen” (another Joyce vocal), so I guess that shouldn’t have been much of a surprise.

So “Dust” blew me away because it’s just such a vastly different take on the tune than its previous incarnation (again, like opening a present on Christmas!) – but “Ocean Blue”, that’s the big keeper on this new release to me and the one absolute, definitely must-hear.

If you are not an “old” Scarce fan and already have all or most of the old tracks, I’d really recommend going ahead and springing for the new CD instead of the EP.  The picks of old stuff put on this CD were excellent: “Hope”, “Days Like This”, “Scorpion Tray”, “It Was Dry”, “All Sideways”, “Crimea River”, the aforementioned “Dozen”, “Sudden Downtown Polo Club”, “Race Car Gasoline”, and “Wide” – just great choices and several of my very very favorites.  I think the only one missing that I might like to have seen on it and would have fit in as well, I think, would be “Bottomfeeder” – but I was super pleased with the selections that were chosen.  (And I need to verify this with Joyce but I think some may have been re-recorded anew – though it may just be the difference in quality between this CD and my MP3 player and the MP3s I have – I may just be hearing things!)

In any case, gosh – it’s just great, and I am just recommending it to every music fan I know.  You should have this in your collection.

And if you’re interested in seeing them live and are in or around New England, don’t forget the upcoming CD release party, and there’s also another live date coming up -

Friday, November 14th, Scarce plays the Weathervane Music Hall in Brattleboro, Vermont.

And Saturday, November 15th is the Scarce CD release party at T.T. the Bear’s in Boston.  Also playing will be Triple Thick (featuring Jim Seery from the Plough and Stars, Joyce says they rock) and Wheat (reunion gig, and they rock too says Joyce).

So go!  I wish I could, but I’m unfortunately stuck in Memphis with the Boston blues again… heh.  As usual, just my luck.