A blast from the past...and the future....of ROCK!

I had promised myself that I would try to keep this blog to the doings and transpirings going on here in beautiful West Chester, but I really wanted to share this little bit of Pop gold, so I thought about it for a while and came up with a tenuous but otherwise legitimate link between this and West Chester, so follow me on this one ok?

I was driving back to West Chester (that's my link) from a weekend in New York City, when I stumbled across a pretty cool radio station, WRXP 101.9 that had a pretty good mix of music.

Now look, just like in Logan's Run, I think I got to a certain point in life where I've kind of gotten myself killed off when it comes to knowing what's cool in music anymore. I'm only tangentially aware of a plethora of shaggy haired and skinny Salvation Army clothing wearing hipsters that are passing for what is Rock and Roll these days, and my assumption is that what Athens, Georgia was to Rock in the 80's and Seattle was to Rock in the 90's, it seems Brooklyn, New York is where this current crop of Rock saviors are coming from.

I had kind of tuned out the DJ and what he saying as he went into his spiel about this next band, but when they started playing, I was shocked! The sound sounds like a mix of Tom Petty, Husker Du, Buffalo Tom and Bruce Springsteen. "This was new Rock music?" I asked myself. "If it is, this was pretty good stuff with great lyrics and hooks."

The song was Sequestered in Memphis, the band was The Hold Steady.

I vowed that when I got back to West Chester I'd check them out. I had assumed that they would look like any of the other legions of Emo shoe gazers I seem to see playing on Saturday Night Live, but they were a bit different, they looked kind of like, I don't know, me! (Here we go again with the projection, read my post about BNL)

I definitely bought a couple of their songs right away from iTunes, and was searching for some videos of them on You Tube when I stumbled across this absolute gem.


Honestly, I'm not sure it gets any better that. I'm a cynical 41 year old curmudgeon these days, and don't impress easily but I have to make a concerted effort to not spill over in hyperbole how great I think this synergy is. The Hold Steady playing their new song, but synced up to the house band of the Muppet Show, Electric Mayhem in the video. And all this was created by some random internet guy with 8 hours on his hands not even like, you know, professional!

Anyway, that's all I wanted to share, I just thought it was pretty cool!

Oh by the way, on a completely unrelated note, if anybody still doesn't think that Oprah is a kingmaker, have her put on Suze Orman and watch our call volume at work go through the roof!

The Evil Midnight Bomber what bombs at Midnight

"So he says to me, you gotta do something smart, baby, something big! He says you want to be a supervillain, right, and I go yeah baby, yeah yeah! What do I gotta do? He says you got bombs, blow up the Comet Club, it's packed with superheroes…you'll go down in supervillain history and I go Yeah baby 'cause I'm the Evil Midnight Bomber what Bombs at Midnight!!! Ah ha ha ha ha ha!!!!!"

Let me start off by saying....I really don't need this. Honestly, lately, my life has been hard enough. The stock market sucks, work is stressing me the hell out, my love life has taken one bizarre turn after the other, a part of one of my back molars broke off, and my back, I don't know what I did to my back, but I must have pulled something or pinched something but I was finding it damn hard to move for about 3 days. I've also done a crappy job staying in touch with friends and family since I've been so bummed lately.

Now this.

Bomb found at parking garage

I'm going to work this morning, and as you know my commute starts off by taking the old school elevator down to the first floor of my building, turning the corner to walk the 20 steps down Prescott Alley, into the parking garage, and then either into my car or on the scooter and off to work. What was I met with when I approached the garage? A cop, and yellow crime scene tape.

My first thought was, "Jumper". I know things are bad, but when I was kid, I passed a similar scene in Winter Park, at the old Langford Hotel, where somebody did a swan dive from the 6th floor. When I asked the cop if I could get my car, he asked me where it was, (in the corner of the second deck) and he said, "Yea you better get it, because that's right above where the suspicious package is, but keep that under your hat."

Oh God.

You know, with Lehman Brothers going belly up, Mother Merrill getting bought by BoA, (as a side note, I got more than a little Schadenfraud going on as a former laid off Merrill Lynch employee) I was more concerned about getting to work knowing it was going to be a rough day, so I was really thinking that was more important to get to work than worry about some stupid hoax. It never occurred to me for a second that it was real.

Turns out, this area has been plagued for a few years by "The Suburban Bomber" who the FBI at one time thought might have been Nick Berg, I mean who knew?

At this point, I can only laugh. Turns out it was the real deal, and we're lucky it was diffused, and who knows what could have happened to my scooter, my car or, um, oh yea, me!

That's why the only way I can deal with it, since I've had a pretty lousy track record of coping lately is make fun of it, and what better way than by associate it with the ridiculously insane, Dennis Hopper-ish sounding mad man than The Evil Midnight Bomber what bombs at Midnight?

Life is ludicrous as it is, so best to take care of yourself, not take life to seriously, and as bad as it is sometimes, it could always be worse. God it could be infinitely better, but best to take what you got and not raise a fuss.

A friend of the devil.....

Just a quick post, I was down in the basement on the treadmill, and of course I got the whole iPod/Nike thing going, you know, the wireless transmitter I put in my Brookes running shoe (I took an Exacto knife to cut the rubber foam to drop it in there as opposed to buying a special Nike shoe with the indentation already built in) that sends a signal to a receiver hooked up to the iPod that tells me my pace and distance covered. I did 2 miles, (I'm not going to say I ran or walked, I'm too embarrassed. Oh damn, I guess that kind of gives it away huh?) and the last song that came up was "Friend of the Devil" by the Grateful Dead. (Q. What did the one Deadhead say to the other Deadhead when they ran out of pot? A. "This music sucks!")

I do like them though, when I was studying at DLI at the Presidio of Monterey, in the beautiful barracks, (I almost hate to call them barracks, they were more like 2 man suites with a great sunset view over Monterey and Pacific Grove) there was only one radio station I could pick up on my clock radio, and that was KPIG 107.5 FM, Freedom California. They played a pretty eclectic mix that included Hank Williams Sr. AND The Grateful Dead among others, so that's what turned me on to them. KPIG streams from the web, you should check it out, the playlist is amazing!

Anyway, sorry for getting off track, but as I'm coming up on the elevator after my work out, the sounds of the Dead are ringing in my ears. Thing of it was though, I had my ear buds out, so was the song literally stuck in my head? Before my workout, I went out onto Gay Street again, and it was another "Swinging Thursday", with the vendors, and the Politicos, and the bands. (Read about it in one of my older posts.) Last month was disco, this month the bands were an Irish Folk Rock band (Think U2 and Dave Matthews) and a Classic Rock outfit. As I walked into my apartment, I turned down the TV, opened a window, and sure enough, the band playing on the street was playing "Friend of the Devil"!

Ok so maybe it wasn't that much of a fluke, after all, on my iPod there are at least 5 Grateful Dead songs, and that band outside of merry old hippies probably have more than a few Grateful Dead and Van Morrison songs in their repertoire, so it was a coincidence that in fact was pretty likely. But, considering there are almost 400 songs on my iPod and I happened to be within earshot of the band playing the song at that moment, it was a kind of a cool thing that happened, no?