Things I hear that scare me-Volume I

I am, of course, a guy who gravitates towards bluesy rock-that mainly means hard rock, or near-hard rock. I am a firm believer that the words "country" and "music" should never be used in the same sentence. I have nothing, I suppose, against the guy who is lying drunk in a pool of his own piss because his wife is down at the honky-tonk chatting up guys for a night of illicit passion, but I really don't want to hear about it, especially if the guy has a whiny voice.

So I freely admit, I haven't a clue about the world of country "music." Don't know the names, don't know the faces, have trouble telling one song from any other song (is there a difference?) So I was shocked to find out today that there is a genre known as "country rap." So much so I had to go fire up Yahoo! and see for myself-holy shit, it exists! I can hear it now....

I said yo yo, my gal she be a ho
The homies all be hanging round her front door
Now my ass is all drunk, and I don't know what to do
All I got is my JD to get me on through


Frightening, really scary stuff to contemplate :(

Big Eddie's coming to Columbus on Friday

I am a huge fan.

http://www.wegoted.com

If you have a little time, catch him between 3 and 6 on the radio, or at his site. The guy is a voice of Progressive common sense.

He's going to be in Columbus on Friday, and as a dedicated Ed Head, I plan on being there.

Of toddlers and Keith Relf

I collect old music clips in video format.

I have discovered that my 2 year old likes Yardbirds videos-she sits in especially rapt attention when Keith Relf is the subject of the camera.

Tonight, my wife (who works nights) put up a webcam just so little Ree could watch her mommy. However, little Ree mumbled and pointed at the screen until.....

I pulled up a Yardbirds clip :)

I informed my wife that she had lost a popularity contest to Keith Relf. She was surprised, but I wasn't. The guy kicked ass, and had people like Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck behind him-my daughter obviously has superior musical tastes. That's not so hard to understand, is it?

Telecommuting

I got lucky.

Just when the energy thing started to get seriuos, I landed a job which I can do quite well from my living room.

I think I'd probably go nuts if I tried to do it all the time, but I am most certainly willing to spend a few days a week doing it. If I really start to miss the traffic and the stink of real commuting, I still have a cube in a cube farm I can go off to. I'll try to make that a rare occurrence as I get trained up in my new position.

Life has been worse than this.

I was forced to find a new job after I had to have a laparoscopy that knocked me out of work for a month. The HR managing bitch from Hell of my former corp had me fill out some FMLA paperwork to cover my absence, then decided that I wasn't eligible for FMLA after all because my worksite didn't have the minimum number of people at it. The cunt sent me a certified letter informing me that if I was so much as late again, it was my ass.

I resigned that very day. And the very next day I got a call from a headhunter looking to fill...... a position I held 5 years ago. Although I had given the shitbag company I was working for at the time 3 weeks notice, I was anxious to get restarted somewhere else, and the firm I used to work at was anxious to have me return. So I did. Such a shame for my old employer, who intended to keep me around long enough to properly outsource me. Unless I was 5 minutes late or something.

I understand the management of my former employer is all pissed off because of how I blew them off. And there's some proof of that, since they have yet to give me a final paycheck. But you know? It's been worth it.

Mellowing, with Zeppelin

When I was a teenager, I was very much inclined to hard rock-AC/DC, Rainbow, Black Sabbath, UFO, Scorpions.... you get the picture.

And of course, Led Zeppelin. I just loved songs like "Black Dog," "Stairway to Heaven,".... you get the idea.

And these days, I find myself listening again to Zeppelin-but I find it's the folk-tale stuff they did that I find especially to my liking. "Battle of Evermore," "Gallows Pole," it's like there was this whole Zeppelin I knew nothing about as a stupid stoner teenager.

Ultimately, this catalog of Zeppelin will likely be the one that stands the test of time and becomes part of the folk history it celebrates. Plant and Page are the traveling storytellers of our era.

Ah, the things I've seen

Bon Scott. The Police (with Joan Jett and Cheap Trick as openers.) The Who. Triumph with Malmsteen. The Go-Gos. The Fixx. Billy Idol (pre-hideous era.) Hell, even Charlie Daniels and Jay Ferguson (who remembers him now?)

And so many others I lost count.

The thing about the shows I've seen in days gone by is that the bands could not have walked onstage with a karaoke machine and done their acts-there was real musicianship. Guitars, drums, keyboards. Today it seems increasingly like the musicianship doesn't matter anymore-the visual seems to be the biggest sell. I lived in an era when Britney wouldn't have made it, and I sometimes miss that era.

Rick James thought the cuts to school music programs was the reason for the loss of musicianship. He may well have been right.