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!