So as everybody knows that cares by now...
Eddie Van Halen has joined
Britney Spears and SF mayor
Gavin Newsom and
Lindsay Lohan in announcing his rehab.
Only thing is he's got a least two decades of boozing experience on all of 'em...
jeez dude... took ya minute to figure that shit out eh?
I thought
Michael Anthony was the whiskey sodded troublemaker... you know with the Jack Daniels shaped bass guitar. But apparently he's been booted in favor of Eddie's kid...
Sad...
So, whatever... we get no classic VH reunion tour ,or even mini performance at the lame Rock n Roll Hall of Fame ceremony. Nope... nothing, just my luck...
Instead, I hear
Genesis are regrouping for a summer shed tour...
Sadly I bet that
Phil Collins dude is more fun to hang around than Eddie anyway...he's at least got more common sense...
Genesis - Turn It On Again live
With that scariness out of the way...
I suppose my best bet for live music satisfaction for the foreseeable future will be the Legendary Stardust Cowboy and Hank IV down at "your dive", El Rio in San Francisco on Saturday night. 
It'll be my second weekend in a row catching the endearingly monikered Klaus Flouride ripping it up on stage, this time with the Legendary Stardust Cowboy... aka The Ledge.
Norman Carl Odam is a bit of a character apparently, a sci-fi rockabilly cowboy kingpin that has to be seen to be believed i suppose. The Wild West version of
Wesley Willis...or something like that.
Legendary Stardust Cowboy - ParalyzedLegendary Stardust Cowboy - My Underwear Froze to The Clotheslinebonus
New York Night Train's Oral History Project: Kid Congo Powers Remembers The End of The Gun Club, and working with the total kook known as The Legendary Stardust Cowboy
Kid Congo - Oral History
Another legend of sorts on the bill is Bob McDonald... kind of our own local lush version of David Yow...
All you SXSW attendees can catch Bob with his band Hank IV at a couple opportunities in the coming week...
Mar 14 2007 midnight
SXSW! Showcase at Lava Lounge in Austin. Hank IV plays at midnight.
Mar 17 2007 3:30PM
Trophy's (Austin) for the WHOOPSY MAGAZINE PARTY. Hank IV plays at 3:30pm.
Here's a couple tracks from Hank IV's debut CD/LP that recently came forth via Hook Or Crook Records... I met one of the proprietors the other night, and he seemed like a swell fella, who has big plans for his little label, or at least for his bar tab. Look for these folks in Austin...
Hank IV - Tonight We Ride
hank IV -
Got GotIn other music industry twitchings...
A settlement, or as the Hollywood Reporter called it "consent decree" has been reached with the FCC & corporate chain broadcasters over the investigation into corporate radio playlist payola. Looks like Clear Channel & pals are agreeing to pay $12.5 million to make the Federal Communications Commission's investigators to sort of just go away. The "pay for play" probe involved transactions between major labels & Clear Channel Communications Inc., CBS Radio Inc., Entercom Communications Corp. and Citadel Broadcasting Corp. Of course none of these large broadcasters will admit "wrongdoing", but as a group have simply agreed to pay a collective fine and dedicate a total of 8,400 half-hour segments to "independent music" over the next three years. The indie quota agreement is through some sort of mysterious private 2nd agreement made with the
American Association of Independent Music.
The organization has about a 100 or so labels involved including Epitaph, Koch, Hopeless, Matador, Ninja Tune, Relapse and Putamayo...
Here's their board of directors who represent a bunch of labels, many I notice who've had distribution deals via majors. One board member is from Lookout Records, the label that stopped paying royalties to most of their bands awhile back including cash cow Green Day, and lost control of the Berkeley based band's lucrative back catalog a year ago.
Mmmm, that's leadership...
Read an LA Times' story on the FCC probe by
Jim Puzzanghera here. Of course known music biz ranter
Bob Lefsetz has an opinion too...
Speaking of settlements & leadership...
Commander in chief wannabee
Barack Obama finally paid his parking tickets... ones he got while attending Harvard Law School -- 17 years ago. He had racked up $140 in fines and Obama's decade+ worth of late fees tallied another $260. The
Somerville (Mass.) News published the story Wednesday.
So now we know how quickly the man can get things done, and that he truly respects & believes in the rule of law. Like, Totally Presidential Dude...
or at least like every other broke ass dude driving a bucket around here...
I know that Hollywood likes to tell us their industry is a gamble, and downloading & home copying and bootlegger's etc are all hurting bottomlines...but somehow the Motion Picture Association of America released figures showing Americans spent $9.49 billion on movies. That's about 1.45 billion tickets sold, 63 films grossing more than $50 million and Disney's
Johnny Depp franchise sequel "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest" -- made $400 million.
Psychologist's say that owning a piece of a $400 million film might not make ya happy. Actually psychologists don't even call it happiness, they call it "subjective well-being" and a new study says it's all relative. Long term studies captured levels of life satisfaction both prior to and after major life events like marriage, divorce, unemployment and illness or disability. What they found was that basically some people get bummed out easier than others...
No shit sherlocks...
Source:newsroom.msu.edu/site/indexer/3014/content.htmBusdriver - Happiness ('s Unit of Measurement)
Just saw that an old friend of mine is currently on tour on the East Coast, so if yer nearby you might wanna check out
Mat Callahan w/Yvonne Moore. Callahan was a regular rabble rouser of sorts out here in the Bay Area for many years.
In the 70's he had a political folk group called Prairie Fire, and after that an innovative world beat band called The Looters. They were the first US group invited to perform by new Sandinista President
Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua. They recorded discs for Alternative Tentacles, Island records and even Monster Cable's label Monster Music.
Mat helped start a musical collective in the Mission called Komotion International, that held benefit shows, and then permutated into a record label and a magazine we all ran together for about ten years.
He eventually split for Switzerland but I see is going to be back with his new musical partner Yvonne Moore and are doing dates with political folkie
David Rovics. He has an album out currently called Wild Bouquet, that features some of his talented pals backing him up including
Brain (Tom Waits, Guns & Roses) on drums,
Joe Gore (P.J. Harvey) on guitar,
Les Claypool (Primus) on bass and singer
Zoe Ellis. It was recorded partly in San Francisco, and his new home near Lake Geneva in Mauer, Switzerland.
Here's some Mat Callahan tracks & tourdates
Mat Callahan - Jonny RefusedMat Callahan - Deep DownMarch 10 • Brooklyn, NY
Vox Pop
March 11 • Willimantic, CT
Wrench in the Works • 7 pm
March 12 • Boston, MA
Berklee College of Music
March 15 • New Haven, CT
March 16 • Dunkirk, MD
March 17 • Washington, DC
Fleming Center • 7 pm
March 18 • Norfolk, VA
40th Street Stage
March 20 • New York
Googie's Lounge above The Living Room •
March 23 • Hartford, CT
La Paloma Sabanera
Indy Media Group Show
March 24 • New York
Banjo Jim's • 8:00 pm
Currently Mat's label
Broken Arrow are offering a free 4 song EP of Mat & Yvonne with each order while supplies last...hey it's deal !
Speaking of deals... and guys who refuse to cut one with the Feds...
The Feds
are still keeping harmless blogger Josh Wolf languishing in prison...
While SF violent crimes spin out of control, and even more real criminals are in Washington, Wolf has done 6 months hard time. I bet
Scooter Libby gets way less than that.
Josh Wolf offered to show the video tapes to the judge in chambers, without the prosecutors present. Judge & system though really just want to send a message and hope the kid rots. The Feds routinely spit on all our freedoms, look at the beady eyes on that pudgy smug Attorney General
Alberto Gonzales and you learn everything you'd ever need to know about American Justice.
Nothing new here... Ironically despite Wolf's incarceration, this kid will do well once he is finally released... He's a Gen Y kid who now has more credibility going for him than the entire system run by suck up Baby Boomer generation reps that are coming down on him like a ton of worthless bricks.
Wolf didn't burn the mattress, break the tail light, organize the demonstration or smack the cop...and says he doesn't have any footage of the cop getting hit. But he is paying the price for all of that, and most importantly, for sticking up for his right not to be an informant. On the streets they call informants a "snitch"...
In real street crime cases, its a known fact that if you snitch ... then you die...
That's just a fact of life, on SF streets or any urban area.
It's why
Lil Kim did time last year...because she wasn't a snitch.
Lil' Kim - Bad GirlWould the SFPD offer to protect such a kid like Wolf if he did snitch out, or reveal who did what? That's a big rhetorical no.
The cops have no credibility for helping out their informants. Many are hung out to dry, get no protection and too many have died here in SF...
Even if he wasn't making a point as some sort of political martyr, he'd be wiser not to help the SFPD. Many of those who offered are dead...
In interest of justice & restoring order, Ive tried to help SFPD on occasions and have been regretful of it everytime. Those piglets won't appreciate you trying to help them, and they'll turn on you, leaving nothing but grief in return for your assistance. The cops total lack of professionalism amazes me. No wonder SF streets are sinking into a sea of swill...
Peter Plate - Snitch Factoryand that's all I got for now...
Shotwell - San Francisco's Withering
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