Black Kids-Partie Traumatic, Aersomith-Draw The Line

Well I finally got the new Guitar Hero featuring Aerosmith, so I figured I should listen to some old Aerosmith as a research. I have played my way through most of the game of medium and will try to move up to difficult shortly. Also I have broken my addition to Scramble and replaced it with an addiction to WordTwist.

The Black Kids is described as neo-new wave party pop on Rhapsody. Take that for what you will. They also say "If you dig the Cure and want the good times to never end, then Partie Traumatic will make the perfect fashion accessory." I am not sure if that describes me, but the album wasn't bad to clean to the kitchen to. Aerosmith Rocks Natick!

2.5 and 3 stars.

Back From Vacation

I am back and ready to blog. BUT I don't have my ipod so I don't know what the heck I listened to all last week. I can tell you my daughter caught a fish and that she is really into Rubber Soul by the Beatles, although she says "some of the songs don't sound like the Beatles". I will be back to blogging in full effect tomorrow and will slowly recap what I listened to while I was gone.

Tegan and Sara-This Business of Art, G. Love and Special Sauce-Philadelphonic

I am heading out to Vermont for vacation for the next week so don't expect my usual heavy blogging.

Tegan and Sara was good, G. Love was not. 3 and 1.5 stars out of 4.

Loverboy-Get Lucky, Loggins and Messina-Mother Lode

I haven't seen a little person in weeks.

Loverboy pretty much stinks. One good song on the whole album. Loggins and Messina was kind of good, in a terrible Kenny Loggins sort of way. 1 and 2 stars out of four.

Metro Station-Metro Station, Billy Squier-Don't Say No, Bread-Guitar Man, Ambrosia-Ambrosia

So much has happened since I last blogged! Saturday night there was a going away celebration for my sister and I was challenged to eat 3 and 1/2 pieces of corn in 3 minutes. The corn never had a chance! Oh also on Saturday day we went to the Statue of Liberty. We had gone a couple of years back and didn't know you needed a reservation to go inside the statue, so we made one and went again. Well my advice is to skip going inside. I went when I was a kid and you could walk up a million stairs and go into the crown, which was cool because the inside of the statue is pretty cool and you see it all the way up. Now all they let you do is go inside the base, and you can kind of see up into the statue itself but not really. Plus you have to go through security a twice (once before getting on the boat, and once on the island to go into the statue) and all that waiting gets to be a bit much. Sunday I went for a bike ride with my daughter though prospect park, which was a lot of fun, and then on Sunday night I went to the Mets game in Comcast's luxury box, which was not very luxurious. It was the Motel 6 of Luxury boxes, but still it was fun to go to the game. Then last night the wife and I went to see Rickey Gervais in concert. He was quite funny, although his act was almost identical to the one I saw on tape from England, except much shorter because he cut out a lot of parts about English celebrities. I was kind of hoping he would replace it with parts about American celebrities, but no such luck. Sad news for my loyal readers, I am going on vacation next week and probably will not be able to blog all week!

Of the four albums, the Billy Squier album was the best, with Bread coming in a not so close second. Metro Station followed and Ambrosia brought up the rear. Overall kind of a let down after a nice run of albums. 16, 14 , 12 and 11 on a scale of 1-20.

Willie Nelson and Wynton Marsalis-A Pair of (Broken Hearts), Beck-Modern Guilt

Well I played poker last night and the game did not break up until about 12:40, and then since wifey and daughter were away I had to take the subway home. A couple things happened that I wanted to mention. First, I saw something I had never seen before, which was a subway station cleaning crew. They were spraying the whole station with high powered hoses. It was pretty gross all the dirt coming off the floor, walls, chairs, etc. And what was really gross was that the place still looked totally dirty when they were done. Then there was some kind of work being done on the tracks, so we had to get off the Q at Pacific and walk through the tunnels to Atlantic, which is like a 5 minute walk or something. And probably 20 people ran the whole distance. I don't' really get it. I will admit that we waited for a long time for the train to come, and if we had just missed one it would have really sucked, but still. Using that logic you would have to run everywhere, so you wouldn't miss a light, or an elevator or anything. These people did not know that a train was going to be at the station (it was not) but they ran anyways just in case. Freaking crazy if you ask me.

Two really good albums. Willie and Wynton is a really enjoyable jazz/country mix that I would not have imagined. Beck's new album is produced my favorite...you know who...Danger Mouse! I already was a big Beck fan and this album does not disappoint at all. Both get four stars out of four!

Infesticons-Gun Hill Road, Duffy-Rockferry

The blogging is really slowing down here, and I am not sure who to blame. I am going to see Iron Man tonight, I think. Not sure if it will be any good, but you know I will let you know! Last night I woke up at around 4:30 in the morning and could not fall back asleep. Now I am very, very tired.

Infesticons was a good album, but not nearly as good as the follow up, Majesticons. Duffy was really good, but I am not sure if I will end up really not liking it, kind of like Macy Gray. It is very similar to that first Macy Gray album, in that it feels really retro. I was a big fan of that album when it first came out, but now I can't imagine listening to it. Therefor I think Duffy is on thin ice, but since I don't get to hear albums more than once any more, maybe I will never know.

Ted Nugent- Ted Nugent, Joe Walsh-The Smoker you Drink...,James Gang-Rides Again, Montrose-Montrose

Well I am back from the 4th of July. I am guessing I am heading into the half-way mark on this project. I don't mind saying that I am kind of looking forward to it being over. I like hearing all this music, but the pressure to listen to a new album every day is a bit much to take, and it doesn't allow me to re-listen to music I enjoy. But as they say it is what is it is. An interesting story popped up on the Internet last week about how Fox News doctored some photos for a story they "reported". Pretty crazy stuff from the #1 news channel in America.
Of the four classic albums I listened to this weekend I would rate them in this order James Gang, Montrose, Joe Walsh and Ted Nugent (the nuge). All were OK, James Gang and Montrose warrant another listen. That is all you get today.

The Ramones-Pleasant Dreams, Mike Ladd Present-Father Divine

Well we are heading into July 4th weekend, and I am heading to Boston for the weekend. I am looking forward to getting out of the city, but not so much to getting stuck in traffic for several hours. Several blogs reported a pretty funny story. Apparently some right wing religious website (American Family Association's OneNewsNow) posts AP stories to it site, but for some reason it runs a script that automatically replaces the word "gay" with "homosexual". I guess for some reason the religious fanatics don't like the word gay. Anyhow in case you missed it, Tyson Gay a US sprinter broke the 100 meter record. Well this is how the story appeared in that website:

"Homosexual eases into 100 final at Olympic trials."

Tyson Homosexual easily won his semifinal for the 100 meters at the U.S. Olympic track and field trials and seemed to save something for the final later Sunday.
His wind-aided 9.85 seconds was a fairly cut-and-dry performance compared to what happened a day earlier. On Saturday, Homosexual misjudged the finish in his opening heat and had to scramble to finish fourth, then in his quarterfinal a couple of hours later, ran 9.77 to break the American record that had stood since 1999. [...]
Homosexual didn't get off to a particularly strong start in the first semifinal, but by the halfway mark he had established a comfortable lead.... Asked how he felt, Homosexual said: "A little fatigued."

Also of note in the news, the NY Times and other news sources reported that Obama, in an effort to change his image had refused to give a "terrorist fist jab" to a school child who wanted one. Well it turns out you can still get a terrorist fist jab. The boy was asking Obama to sign his hand in pen, and Obama thought the boy's mom would not like it, so he signed a piece of paper instead.

Pleasant Dreams is not the Ramones finest album, but any Ramones album is probably better than most of what I have been listening to. One thing that struck me while listening to this album was how much it sense it made for Phil Spector to produce a Ramones album. Mike Ladd created one of my favorite albums, "The Majesticons-Beauty Party". This album is a lot more mellow than that, but still pretty good. I also downloaded "The Infesticons" which I will be reviewing shortly. Overall I am on a pretty nice run of enjoyable albums. I hope it keeps up! 3 stars for both albums.

Kraftwerk-Radio-Activity, Supergrass-Diamond Hoo Ha, Journey-Journey, Katy Perry-One of the Boys

Well some stuff has happened with Anna (I fear my attempts to get something other than a form letter have forced her to drop me) but today I am going to go back to a ranting about the media and politics. "Why now?" you ask. Because of this whole ridiculous Wesley Clark thing. A typical headline you might see is "Obama disowns critique of McCain's military record". But the thing is Clark did not critique McCain's military service at all. As a matter of fact he said he was a hero to him. "What did Wesley Clark Say?" you ask. He said "I don't think being shot down in a plane qualifies you to be president of the united states". Well DOES IT? and does saying that mean you are questioning McCain's service? NO IT DOES NOT. But the McCain camp thought they could make hay with issue and they are right, because the media doesn't question the assertion that Wesley Clark (A decorated general and war veteran) was calling into question McCain's war record. Unlike the Swift Boaters (who McCain's current campaign has ties to) Clark did not challenge McCain's record, he only questioned whether that war record was sufficient qualification for being president. How could you write an article about this story, and not spend some time on whether the McCain outrage was justified? I don't know, but I do now many, many news outlets have done exactly that.

What can you say about Kraftwerk, the album was pretty great. I had the album for several years but somehow never listened to it, but now I did, and again, pretty great. Supergrass is a kind of 70s rock retro band, or something like that, and I thought they were actually pretty good. I listened to them while I was digging a ditch in my backyard, and they helped power me through. I wondered what an overblown arena rock band like Journey would sound like on their debut album. Well it was surprising. Very little vocals, lots of rocking, and little touch of what might be considered fusion. I thought it was pretty good. Katy Perry is some kind of new pop singer who plays with gender roles with songs like "I kissed a girl". Mostly just pop music, but with a little extra, and believe it or not I like this one too, so that is 4 albums, and they all get two thumbs up!