Get Your Brains Back! Join a Band!

I keep seeing all these posts and videos about how bands are dying, rock music is dying because none of the top artists are bands anymore. But I'm like, there are hella bands. Bands are out there playing guitar driven rock music, making albums, touring in vans. Punk, metal and everything in between. They just aren't what the masses are listening to. I don't think we have a band problem, I think we have a "masses" problem. It's a stupid people with shitty, lazy taste in music problem. And the record companies know it and capitalize on it. The same reasons people fall for the propaganda and vote for Trump is stupid people. I have been calling it the auto-tuning of society for almost 10 years now but it's been going on for at least 30 years and it's all based around greed. Right wing politics is ruining popular music.

Get your brains back! Listen to more rock music. Get out of your bedroom. Close your laptop. Get your hands dirty. Join a fucking band. Vote Blue.

Here's some old pics of me in my band.

That Thing You Do and Royalties for Drummers

If you haven't seen this movie from 1996 then I'm sorry to spoil it but it's about a small rock & roll band from small-town Pennsylvania called The Wonders who rapidly gain popularity with a hit song who's members' ego and immaturity eventually catch up with them before they know it.

In the movie That Thing You Do it's the drummer that changes the tempo on the spot and makes the lead singer and songwriters new ballad into an upbeat rock song. Instantly the song is a hit with fans and gets the attention of people in the music business.

Here's the part where he changes the song against the singer's wishes. And basically turns them into rock stars.

Here's where I'm reminded of when I was setting up publishing with my own band I played drums in years ago. The publishing company said that only the melody and lyrics were what you could claim for publishing. Basically telling me that I could never see a penny from any success of the band's songs I worked so hard creating and being a part of. Like the drummer in the movie should have felt, I too felt that my contribution as a drummer for our songs impact was just as important as the lyrics and melody. I think a drummer can change the whole genre of a band. Frankly, I listen to music most of the time for the feel of the song, and hardly ever know what the lyrics even are. Thankfully for me our singer and guitarist agreed and we split the publishing 4 ways, as did the Wonders in the movie I think, but that That Thing You Do is a glaring example of why the publishing/royalties should be awarded to more than just lyrics and melody. The "Oneders" would still be playing pizza parlors in Erie Pennsylvania if not for Guy Patterson's update to the song.

This may have changed in the age of producers thinking they're as important as the artist now days but I think the arrangement, vibe, and overall feel of the song can make it or break a song no matter what the lyrics or melody are and that there should be a pathway for recognition for it when paying "songwriters" And a reassessment into what actually makes the song, the song it is. Songwriters get paid a shit-ton for lyrics and melody but how much of those song's success actually from the words and the notes being played? How many disco songs would be top 10 hits in the 70s if they were just acoustic ballads? They were popular because they were dance songs. And apparently you can't claim royalties if you're the one who made it possible for people to dance to it. If you can sue Robin Thicke for his song 'sounding like' your song then why can't you copyright making your song 'sound like' something. Thicke didn't use any melody or lyrics from Marvin Gaye as far as I know.

What do I know? Maybe I'm just a bitter, washed up former drummer for a band who never got a chance.

Drive Thru-itis.

On my way to work I saw that there was only one car in the McDonalds drive thru.  I left the house late so I missed breakfast I decided to whip in real quick.  I pull behind this truck with a guy who looked to be in his late 60's driving.  I hear him faintly saying something but I could only make out a bewildered "...breakfast?"  and then I could hear the drive thru speaker reply something with "...10:30" and I was like: for fuck's sake this boomer is trying to order a cheeseburger at 8am?   So then I get the sense that he has no idea what he wants so it takes him forever after sort of arguing with them about the 10:30 thing.  At least he didn't pull an UZI out of a duffel bag.  Kudos if you get that reference.  It's getting into the zone of time where I'm actually going to be really late for work now and this guy is still ordering.  The whole time I'm getting blasted by F350 diesel fumes.  Finally he pulls forward.  I order my basic sausage egg mcmuffin and the speaker voice says "pay at the last window".  Not the first window which I'm used to.  I took note but the dude is sitting at the first window forever.  Then the girl pops out and reminds him to pull up to the next window.  Then once he's there there's way too much chit chat going on.  Just pay and take your shit.  But I'm sure he's complaining or arguing about something. Probably asking something stupid like "so when did you stop serving hamburgers before 10:30?" Here's a hint: Nixon was in the white house- but the correct answer to that is 19 fucking 72 if anyone was curious.  I'm officially super late for work now.   Finally they hand him a bag and I get ready to pull forward and for some reason he's handing the bag back to them.  WHAT DUDE?!  What now?  I don't know what is happening exactly but there's more back and forth and finally he gets his shit and pulls out.   McDonalds is like fucking air in this country.  Fuck- in most developed nations it's been a fabric of the structure of society.  How do you not know what they have and that they only serve breakfast before 10:30?  I mean props for not being a corporate garbage food eating whore like me but damn, figure your shit out grandpa.   I get up there to pay and they're like "I'm sorry for the wait"  like they knew I knew it wasn't their fault but they need to apologize for him anyway.  I hate people. 

ok. rant over. 
I guess at this point all I can say just don't vote for Trump is the best we can ask for.  I feel like anyone the Dems put up will do just fine as long as they're not a megalomaniac hellbent on undoing centuries of accepted law.  I hope I can look back at this in the future from the comfort of my home and not a post-apocalyptic corpo-christo-fascist hellscape. 
 

You Don't Cover a Song by the Band You're Playing a Show With.

Question for all my band/musician friends. If you're in a cover band or a tribute band and the band who you cover is playing the same gig, you don't play any of their songs right? This is like an unwritten rule and should never be violated. What is the proper punishment? Shame? Blacklisting?

I ask because I'm watching this dumb show We Are Lady Parts about an all Muslim girl punk band. It's mostly cheese but besides the problem of being in a punk band and still wear a hijab. I mean, oppressive religion is the machine that punk bands should be raging against but I guess like the DIY punk band aspect of it. I digress. Season 2 just dropped and the band gains some popularity to the point there's fans covering their songs. Cool. But then there's a music event they get booked onto and somehow (this should never happen) the fan cover band is playing. First of all, who's booking this show? and second, the cover band is playing right AFTER the original band. The crowd loves the GenZ bullshit tiktok updates to the songs. The 20+ year veteran band member blood inside me is boiling.

Of course the fans don't even care. They love it and have no idea how disrespectful this is. I dunno what exactly it is, maybe it's generational but why does no one have a problem with shit like this?

Doesn't anyone see how fucked up that is? You can't upstage the headliner. While on tour my band had some really good nights and celebrated a little too hard with the crowd and got some serious shit from the headliner's tour manager for it. You cant even sell merch for less than the headliner. And yes, even tho this cover band is going on after them, Lady Parts IS the headliner in this situation. I wish this didn't bother me so much. I know it's a show and 98% of the time nothing is accurate or realistic in shows like this but god dammit.

It's only like the 2nd episode in so I'm hoping the cover band gets ripped a new one for being so shitty. And what makes it even more shitty is that they haven't been a band long enough to know what they're doing is shitty. The fans don't know shit they're all fucking idiots anyway which is why you need to have respect as a new band. Fuck this pisses me off way more than it should. Get off my lawn. Maybe I should stop watching this crap.

That Time I Thought I Saw an Alien At Gas Station (PYMHM)

PYMHM (Posts You Might Have Missed) Are Noggins from the past I thought were worth reposting because you probably never saw them.  Here's a quickie from 2015.

Illustration By Me

I think I may have just seen an alien. Not a UFO. Not a little gray man with a big head and black eyes or a slimy tentacled mutant. It was the kind of alien like the aliens in disguise you saw in the Men In Black movies. They look just like us but do slightly weird shit that humans don't usually do. Little signs there's something off. 

I was in the mini-mart of the gas station near my work. Everything seemed normal and boring.  While I was picking out something to drink I noticed some light commotion coming from the back of the store. There was the sound of crinkling plastic wrappers and sort of grunting like someone was struggling a little bit.  Then a man emerged from the scuffle. He was old, smallish build, visibly unkempt, needed a shave.  His messy, salty hair covered his face only revealing thick rimmed glasses. Kind of like the military issued ones you see in Vietnam movies. So far nothing outright screamed "he's an alien" to me. But what was odd was that he was carrying a stack, both hands holding what was probably every single pre-packaged microwave hamburger in the entire food cooler.  This was weird but still not enough to right away jump to the conclusion that he was from Mars.  What made me certain that he was not of this world was when he started microwaving them all. One-by-one inside the store and proceeded to eat them while standing next to the microwave.  Who the fuck eats eight whole gas station hamburgers at once? Inside the gas station?!  Call the FBI. Ask for Agent Mulder – that motherfucker was an alien. I dunno, fueling up on sodium and cholesterol for world domination.

Succession? Well It Definitely Does Suck.

A couple months ago I watched Succession take all the Emmy's while the other, better shows got to watch them awkwardly juggle their piles of trophies as they walked back to their seats. Everybody wouldn't shut up about this show so obviously I've never watched a single second of it.......... until now.   I'd put a Spoiler warning but A: you've probably seen this show already and B: you can't spoil a pile of shit. 

Recently Meg has given in and has been watching it while I'm at band practice or while I'm cooking dinner and I'll catch an episode here and there.  It is the biggest show on TV so I'm low-key trying to figure out why. 

The first thing I notice is the shakey camera and wonder why its filmed like The Office. I never heard it was in a mockumentary style and to my surprise, it's not. It's just shitty shaking and zooming for no reason.

You suck, Kendal.

I half watched a couple episodes to get the basic premise.  Then I sit down with my full plate of dinner and we watch what I imagine is the season 1 finale.  Everything is leading up to Kendal trying to take over the company because his dad had a stroke.  We finish the Vote of No Confidence episode and I just end up frustrated and pissed off. 

 Everything is all lined up and he's got all the people ready to vote with him and then... he gets stuck in traffic.  lame.   And then, because the dad's a huge dick head and Kendal is not there no one fights him when he want's to be in the room for the vote because it's against board rules.  For a reason.   And since this motherfucker can melt ice just by looking at it,  everyone chickens out (obviously) and fucks over Kendal.  Everyone gets fired - the end. This was just too stupid and artificially stressful.  I didn't need to see any more.  Let me guess 500 episodes later Cousin Greg ends up being CEO because they were all stuck in traffic in the series finale?

Against my better judgement I sat down and watched another episode while we ate dinner. Guess what happens this time? Kendal was trying to take over the company again but instead of getting stuck in traffic he accidentally kills a catering guy trying to score cocaine. Daddy wins and Kendal has to eat shit. Again. Watched a few more parts of episodes here and there the whole time wondering how this situation is going to end with the dad winning and everyone else (probably Kendal) losing. There's a lot of shit going on but at the core it's pretty predictable and formulaic in that it is Logan Roy (the dad) always coming out on top. He could die and there will be some document they find that screws them all.

Am I judging an entire series based on watching just 3 episodes? Yes. Fuck you, yes. Did I already decide from the trailers that I didn't think I'd like this show and then not watch it? Yes. Did the fact that a show I thought was stupid before I watched it get majorly popular make me hate it even more? Yes. Fuck this show and all of the Emmys it stole from more deserving original content.

(cough- Severance -cough)

"Cigarette?"

I just read a social media post that said “Imagine if everyone walking around using their smartphone was instead smoking a cigarette. That is what the 1970s were like”
 Someone replied “And the 30’s, 40’s, 50’s, 60’s, 70’s, 80’s. It wasn’t outlawed in the workplace until ‘95.”

Right now if I walk into a small outdoor space where just one person is smoking a cigarette I'm like WTF?  Then I remember how absolutely bonkers it was that there was a time not long ago in my own lifetime where nearly every person in every indoor and every outdoor space would just be chain smoking.  Bars, restaurants, doctor's office, hotel lobby, hotel room, airplanes, parks, your place of employment... didn't matter. If you could breath free air there were people lighting up.  And the crazy part is that no one fucking cared.  I mean maybe some did but you were the minority. 

As recent as 2003 when my band was on tour we went to a restaurant for breakfast in Bumfuck Kansas somewhere. They asked "smoking or non" the non smoking section was just the back portion of the room. We walked past people with ash trays full of smoldering butts next to their food. They'll tell you it makes the food taste better.  How? Is there any science to this?   A guy I was in a band with smoked and he used to be like "hold this I gotta go inside for a min" and afterward my whole hand would just reek like a Kuwaiti tire fire even after washing it 5 times.   I dated a girl who smoked and her whole insides emitted cigarette when we kissed.  I liked her but that was just too gross.  It was like her lungs were made out of ash tray.  

I remember a time when I was in like 9th or 10th grade when my parents both smoked like a train going up hill inside the house. My friend had spent the day and stayed the night at my house and then I went to his house. We were chilling in his room and his mom was yelling from the living room  "ARE YOU GUYS SMOKING IN THERE" no.  We just stunk like it was fucking 1979.  Thankfully my dad has quit since then and my mom has cut down and only smokes outside.  

All of this makes me wonder why everyone was just OK with this.  

How did an entire civilized advanced society live like this?

A new experience for me was in Chicago around the same time I was in Kansas.  We would stay out until 4am at the bars that still allowed smoking. This was during peak humidity season and when you got home your clothes were completely soaked through and smelled like you swam in cigarette water. It was so fucking gross.   I wonder if this is why fog machines were invented because music venues outlawed smoking and they needed to fill the room back up with smoke for the lighting effects.  Holy shit there was enough fucking carcinogen in the air to have a light show back in the day.    It was around this same time I remember they outlawed smoking in bars in New York City and it was hilarious to see women in scantly clad club dresses and dudes in douchey silk shirts standing in the middle of the street in the freezing cold so they could smoke, cursing "FUCKIN' MAYOR BLOOMBERG" between drags of their cigs. 

I can't see 5 feet in front of me but it's no big deal.  I'll have a Gin & Tonic for the road!

Again for those who were there...
How did an entire society live this way?!! 

Oh my god airplanes.  I didn't fly when smoking was allowed but I've been in planes that still have ash trays.  I can't even imagine.  You get one person with strong perfume or someone has some stinky food and it's all you can smell for the whole flight.  Did everyone just stink like cigarette smoke all the time?  What about like clothing stores?  Did you buy a new shirt and get it home and it just stunk?  People folding laundry while smoking? Why did you even wash it? 

And it wasn't even that long ago.  You see it in old movies.  I saw a flick from the 30's where a woman felt slighted if a man didn't offer her a cigarette.  Like what?  They were so engrained into every facet of life.   Cigarettes dangling out of mouths.  Between everyone's fingers like an extension of their hands.  As pointed out by the inspiration of this post, not much different than cellphones now.  I wonder if people in the future will look back at photos and movies of the last couple decades and think it looked strange and gross that everyone had a device in their hands.  I mean it kind of does now.  

Anyway, smoke em if you got em.  Or not. Actually. Please. Not.  

I know some people that still smoke but they are respectful.  Thanks.  I wish you didn't but thanks for keeping it to yourself. 

Oscar Night Gets Noggin'd! 2024

Time to roll up that red carpet.  After a year of movies that almost didn't happen I take my hat off to the union workers.  Here's my completely uneducated review of what I guess were the top movies of the year.  

Oppenheimer was a textbook Oscar movie and I'm bored with how predictable it was that it would win. I was confused as to why I needed to see a bunch of people talking in IMAX. The explosion FX were lame. Also I'm just sick of loaded casts in movies. When every person in the movie is a huge recognizable star it takes me out of the story. Really, dude...Gary fucking Oldman?

Holdovers was a much superior movie to Oppenheimer in so many ways.  The story had heart and was original.  Also the production on this one was sneaky but so unique and cool.  I didn't notice while watching but the whole thing is filmed and edited as if it was made in the time it was set.  A nice call back to a golden age of American cinema. 

Poor Things was very original but suffered from too much sexual content. When it was over I felt like I had just watched a very weird porno.  In a theater.  With strangers.   Also Mark Ruffalo's accent was horrible but his character was good.

Anatomy of a Fall was a 2 hr episode of Law & Order.  That's all I'm gonna say. 

 

I originally left the theater not liking Zone of Interest but the more I tell people "it sucked" then go on to describe it I end up appreciating it more and more. I'm glad it won best sound design. That whole movie is long still shot after long still shot with all the action happening off camera. Brutal honesty in that one.

Past Lives felt like a dram-rom-com. I agreed to go see it because I like the ginger snaps they have at our theater. I had no idea it was a best pic nominee.

American Fiction was entertaining and had an almost too in-your-face message but it needed to be said. It didn't feel like an Oscar movie to me. 

Killers of the Flower Moon, while having an important subject matter was way too long. Again with the loaded casts. Especially Scorsese casts. Ugg. I think any good that should have come out of that was overshadowed by the "please nominate me" -ness of that film. Like Oppenheimer It just tried to hard.

Barbie was way more than people expected. I don't think Hollywood knew what was coming and wasn't ready for what hit them. Fucking adapted Screenplay tho? If you're going to have an award for that and not give it to the screenplay that wasn't based on an extensive piece of writing that already existed, but created out of thin air around a toy, then fuck you Academy.

The only one I didn't see was Maestro.  That's my review.  

Ok we need to talk about the new 2024 MLB uniforms.

You're ... probably gonna get sick.

Let me start this baseball uniform noggin by telling you a little story. Let's go back to the mid 1800s right around the time the great American pastime was starting to get going. A time well before food regulations were established on a federal level. While some of the first baseball games were being played, babies started dying. It was an epidemic but no one knew why. Thousands and thousands were taking their last breath all over the newly formed cities all over the country. If that city had a baseball team you can almost guarantee babies and people were getting sick and dying from consuming store-bought milk. See, one of the many horrible things food producers did back then to cut corners was water down the cow's milk they bottled and sold. And since no one was looking, and they were so greedy they just used the crusty unfiltered pond water from their farm. But they had created another problem. It was too thin from the water so they then would add chalk or plaster to whiten it up. Oops, they added too much water so now there was no more cream in that fresh milk so they added something they had around the farm already. You guessed it, calf brains. You know, to give it that creamy milk texture. Ah darn, now that rotten, pond water, brain infested milk keeps going bad in the store. While pasteurization was a thing, they didn't bother and they did the next best thing to ensure a fresh tasty product would last.... they added formaldehyde. YUM! Which was the main culprit in all those 400,000 dead babies every year. What's this have to do with baseball uniforms you ask?

For the same reasons the commercial dairies were putting chalk and formaldehyde in the milk in the 1800s the MLB and Nike teamed up with the company known more for replica merchandise to produce an all new high tech uniform. Greed.

As soon as I saw that the backs of the new jerseys were all going to have the same font for the names and the numbers all had to fit in the same designated size I knew. I knew it was the MLB wanting to be able to mass produce shitty cheap jerseys to save on costs. It all has to fit into a t-shirt press template so they can crank them out. Now I'm seeing that patches and lettering isn't embroidered or stitched anymore. I saw literal fucking iron-on patches for the team logo. The jerseys are thinner and being touted as some new hi-tech cool material. That's bullshit. I bet it's some garbage cloth that they used to use on the K-Mart jerseys. And then they go and use this same paper-thin material on the pants. The first photos of the teams at Spring Training are coming out with the new uniforms and you can see their shirts tucked in under them. Their underwear and in some cases their balls. My team, the Giants just released a promo with Casey Schmidt with his balls showing. It's fucking embarrassing.

third pic from left you can see the nike logo from his boxer shorts. 

Not only are the players worried about the peek-a-boo pants but they say there's no more custom tailoring. The MLB is the big time for these guys which should come with perks. One of which is custom tailored uniforms. You know so they can play at top-level performance. Apparently the MLB is turning down players who want their pants to fit them properly. So, now you've got cheap assembly line jerseys, cheap logo patches, and shitty material but now they have to get their uniforms off the rack like a pleb. Every change I see just screams "cheaper to manufacture" to me. Team logos are iron-ons.  Trash.  And you have to make due with M, L, XL, XXL like a fucking store. These are fucking retail uniforms. Now I'm also seeing that they're not even consistent from jersey to jersey. Oh and the white isn't white any more, it's like a yellowish cream color. White must be too expensive. Welcome to "The Big Show" Rookie.

L: Old Gilbert jersey on the left, new Kirby on the right. Differences are subtle but all the little differences are a clear sign they're saving a ton of money on the manufacturing.  R:  shows two teammates with completely different cuffs on their jerseys. 

But it gets worse. If you're a fan and wan't a fan version, of which many say these on-field player worn jerseys feel like, you now have to pay up to $100 more than the old ones. And if you actually want a real MLB player quality (quality LOL) jersey they're around $400. An iron-on, assembly line piece of shit jersey for $400.

After all the new stupid rules last year the MLB, in trying to appeal to the luddite morons of the country are ruining the last sacred pastime we have left. Let baseball be uncool. Leave it alone. Money ruins everything. Some of this is probably me exaggerating and wrong but I don't care. I have a disclaimer in the sidebar.

What If...? – We Did Slip Into a New Timeline and This Was The Better Option

The Watcher from Marvel's 'What If...?'

I often joke and wonder if we slipped into an alternate timeline around the time Trump got elected because everything has just felt wrong ever since then.  Trump has gone on to become a messiah for the stupid and angry.  It’s polluted the entire Republican party.   But like, the Cubs finally won the World Series.  That’s not supposed to happen.  Hadn’t happened in over 100 years.  But in this timeline it does.  There’s other things I remember hearing about and I'm sure there's tons of write-ups on why people think this to the point that it’s kind of been a running joke to shitty things that seem to keep happening.  “well, in the Trumpverse it happens”    My sci-fi brain started wondering what would have caused the universe to shift in the first place. 

A lot of people like to say that it was David Bowie dying or the crazy theory about a weasel and the Hadron Collider that caused the ripple in the fabric of reality.  While funny and interesting I don't think that's it.   I got to thinking, did someone go back in time and change something that led us to this shitty future?  Was it the Butterfly Effect or something more deliberate and sinister? or what if...?   

But then I thought, holy shit maybe this is the better future.  Perhaps in the original timeline, Bernie Sanders or Hilary Clinton became president and caused something that spun us into disaster.  Right wing backlash could have spawned a civil war or a great depression and disrupted the entire world economy launching us into global unrest or a nuclear world war.  Maybe there was immediately an assassination and replaced by someone way worse.   How bad did it have to be that the reality we are in now was the better option? All of the bullshit we've gone through because of Trump.  I picture some scientists and historians in the future running calculations on advanced quantum AI computers in a bunker deep underground searching for the best option.  After evaluating all the results finally seeing this version of reality and going “fuck, Trump has to win” 

12 Monkeys(1995)

Maybe we needed to come to a breaking point in order to reset somehow.  As if it’s a ‘gotta get worse before it gets better’ kind of situation.   Similar to the movie 12 Monkeys could there have been one guy that’s sent back in time and has to convince some important people pulling the strings that Trump has to win for the sake of humanity.   Poor fucker.  “Trust me, I’m from the future”  Since he keeps failing, obviously, and getting sent back to try again.  Every time trying different points in time trying different ways to convince people.   Finally going back to the late 1970’s to help influence the modern republican party.  Get Reagan elected and over decades create an electorate of right wing conservatives, racists, evangelicals and every day idiots who are radicalized by talk radio and Fox news that ultimately gets Trump elected…. (barfing in my mouth a little as I type this) to save the future of humanity.  Saving it by creating the worst outcome that we could feasibly come back from. An outcome that doesn't end in near extinction of the human race.   So yea, it sucks but I guess it could be worse and maybe it was. Time travel was somehow invented and this is the fix. 
   
Sorry for all the doom and gloom on a stormy Tuesday morning. Sometimes I just think of shit like this.