UPDATE: My friend Ian sent me a news story this week with the subject header "Prepare for the Apocalypse." No, it wasn't about a chemical warfare threat, or an asteroid hurtling towards earth. No, it was something much more shocking, disturbing and earth-shattering than those: Snoop Dogg's quit smoking pot and drinking.
How are we going to explain this to our children?
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UPDATE: Remember that whole thing with Rolling Stone obliterating whatever scant credibility they had left when editor Jann Wenner penned an outrageously laudatory review of Mick Jagger's hopelessly mediocre Goddess In the Doorway album? It turned out to be the most controversial record review in RS since Greil Marcus's pan of Dylan's Self-Portrait ("What is this shit?"). Search for "Wenner," "Jagger" and "Goddess" on Google and you'll come up with tons of websites which intone a collective "Huh?" over that whole mess. It may have been the most blatant ass-kiss in editorial history, and very well may have been behind the big editorial re-focus RS has recently engaged upon to compete with Blender (which I've never read).
Well, this isn't a big huge deal, but Wenner's at it again with a big amount of praise for the new Peter Wolf album. Wenner scales back his enthusiasm -- a mere four stars for this effort -- and frankly, I can probably see the Wolf album being better than the Jagger album. But unfortunately what it means for all of us is that, apparently, Wenner has returned to writing. God, he sucks. Hold out for Creem's return. I understand Creem's recruiting the most brilliant, scintillating writers in America.
Oh, as an aside, making a cameo appearance on the Peter Wolf album? Mick Jagger.
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The big news this weekend, of course, was the fact that the Los Angeles Times managed to do what the Las Vegas police force could not: identify the killer of Tupac Shakur, who was gunned down in a car with rap mogul Suge Knight six years ago this week. (Knight survived the attack.)
Reporter Chuck Phillips conducted a one-year investigation and determined that Shakur was shot by a gang of Southside Crips, who were out to avenge Shakur for beating up gang runner Orlando Anderson just hours before the Tupac shooting. Phillips also says Shakur's bitter rival, Christopher Wallace, aka Biggie Smalls, aka The Notorious B.I.G., bankrolled the shooting. In a move I have to admit is somewhat ingenious, the Crips had decided to kill Shakur independently of Smalls' motives, but figured they'd get money from him anyway for the hit. All this is "alleged," by the way. Anderson survived the beating by Shakur -- in fact, Phillips contends, he fired the fatal shots that killed Shakur -- but was killed in a shooting a couple of years later.
The Las Vegas detectives fucked up the investigation, says Phillips, by not focusing their efforts on getting gang members to cooperate. L.A. detectives, being resigned to the fact that gangs would always be around, have a give-and-take relationship with Crips and Bloods -- who don't like to get involved with the police for reasons that should be somewhat obvious. It's a relationship that thrives on concessions and persistence from the cops. Phillips says Vegas cops dismissed the LAPD's tactics for getting information from stonefaced gang members, grinding the search for Tupac's killer to a halt.
The Notorious B.I.G.'s family vehemently denies he had any involvement in the killing. Wallace was shot to death in front of the L.A. Automotive Musuem the year after Shakur.
Gangs are dangerous. Please don't become a gang member. Stay in school too.
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Witness the bizarre tale of Daniel Strouss, who was given a wedgie last year at a Phish concert by friend Eric Kassoway. Strouss didn't retaliate immediately -- he sat in wait, biding his time, until last week, when he tried to kill Kassoway for the prank.
I'm tellin' ya, it's all that dope they smoke at Phish shows.
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Speaking of jam bands -- was Jerry crankier than we thought? An interesting article on Slate, Microsoft's noble attempt to comment on the culture they're raping and pillaging, proffers that the blind devotion of Deadheads artistically killed the Grateful Dead. Freelance writer Marc Weingarten, a fan of the band, says that the caravan of societal dropouts who followed the Dead around produced "a personality cult so toxic it destroyed the very thing it venerated." Weingarten refers to the new authorized biography of the Dead by Dennis McNally, their publicist, and claims that despite its puffery and icon construction, in certain passages it "debunks the few remaining preconceived notions about the band's hippie benevolence that Deadheads have carried around."
Dig this, hackey-sackers: "In the early '90s, according to McNally, Jerry Garcia became annoyed with the fact that the line 'when it seems like the night will last forever' from his bleak ballad 'Black Muddy River' invariably was greeted with lusty cheering." No doubt Bruce Springsteen -- who wrote a bleak portrait of Vietnam vets who've been let down by their country after the war, in a song you might've heard called "Born in the U.S.A." -- and Neil Young -- who opened his album Freedom with a live rendition of "Rockin' in the Free World," just to show that some idiots will clap and cheer a song that depicts a crackhead mother who dumps her kid in a garbage can as long as there's a rousing chorus -- have felt Jerry's pain.
This article is sure to piss off those Deadheads who read, keep up with current events, and live in the present. But I'm sure they'll both get over it.
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Iron Maiden frontman Bruce Dickinson has begun a second career as a charter airline pilot.
"In a few moments, Eddie will be passing throughout the cabin with honey-roasted peanuts and a scythe... take my word for it, you really want those peanuts..."
"You can rent headphones for five bucks, or a set of manacles for ten..."
"Our in-flight feature today is The Number of the Beast DVD..."
Okay, I'll stop. It's not going to get any funnier.
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A posthumous solo release from our beloved George Harrison is coming in November, featuring stuff he was working on up until October of last year.
There are no tour plans.
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Gordon Lightfoot, one of the more tolerable by-products of the early 70's soft-rock explosion, was hospitalized over the weekend with stomach pains. Doctors who operated on Lightfoot say a weak blood vessel caused the condition, and that if he hadn't have been as healthy as he was, he might not have survived. Prognosis is, in fact, still unclear.
Lightfoot's big hits included "Sundown," "If You Could Read My Mind," and the actually pretty good "Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald." He also has a star on the Canadian Walk of Fame.
"The Canadian Walk of Fame."
Oh, dear sweet Jesus.
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Steven Tyler's ex-wife, Cyrinda Foxe-Tyler, died this weekend. She'd written a tell-all book about Aerosmith which begins with a rampaging sexual romp between Cyrinda and The Lip. The 1999 printing was supposed to have nude pictures of Steven Tyler, but he managed to stop their publication. For which, Mr. Tyler, we are endlessly thankful.
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Today's Wilco moment: I saw the documentary I Am Trying to Break Your Heart over the weekend in Seattle, and can recommend it highly to those interested in the process of artistry and the ridiculousness of the record business. Having already been familiar with the whole story, it wasn't terribly revealing to me, and I seriously question why they spent so much time talking to journalist David Fricke and less time with Jeff Tweedy. But that's a minor quibble. I'm sure the story would be more startling and revelatory to new recruits in the Wilco Army. Plus, the shots of Tweedy with his wife and children in a Wendy's are absolutely priceless to me, although I can't explain why.
More about Wilco in the upcoming edition of Footsteps On the Roof. It will be terribly long.
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I almost forgot! This edition's album recommendation comes from an old friend of ours, who's penned a bunch of songs for one of his principal muses to showcase her talents. I speak of the poet laureate of Satanosphere, Stephin Merritt, his manager and vocalist, Claudia Gonson, and their new album recorded under the name Future Bible Heroes -- Eternal Youth.
Merritt, as you must know if you don't want the indie police to take away your credibility license, is the architect of Magnetic Fields' 69 Love Songs, one of the most influential and beloved indie albums of all time, memorized by many Satanosphere users, a very potent self-help device, and this writer's third favorite album ever. Future Bible Heroes are essentially the electronic/dance vehicle for Merritt's brilliant songs, and caught a big college radio buzz awhile back with their EP I'm Lonely (And I Love It). Merritt sang on that EP's title track, but on Eternal Youth he cedes all singing duties to Claudia.
This is how dance music sounds in a perfect world, or at least Merritt's. It revisits a lot of Merritt's themes: love forlorn and hopeful, the idiosyncracies of people marginalized by the commercial flow of The World, and wry cracks of self-deprecating -- but it really isn't -- humor. It also proves Claudia's a great singer. She knows exactly how to provide an icy surface to her vocals without sounding any less sincere than Merritt, leaving it up to you to fill the holes her plainspoken delivery provides.
Song-wise -- well, it's Stephin Merritt. He's the most perfect and well-read American songwriter out there. "I'm a Vampire" deserves to be a huge hit for mocking and celebrating the goth culture at the same time. It's one of his most wonderful and amusing moments as a songwriter, and betrays the compassion he secretly wishes he didn't have. It's too late, though, Stephin. You're a nice guy.
So go buy it and stuff.
Todd Rundgren's Something/Anything? and Elvis Costello's Get Happy!! are Nos. 1 and 2, in case you were wondering. And we'll see you next time.
