Monday, December 21, 2009

The Music Has Aged Gracefully, Even If The Band Has Not


About a thousand years ago, I made mention of a Dinosaur Jr. concert I attended back in the '90s. About a hundred years ago (or, last month, in non-hyperbole time), I attended another one. My thoughts on the show:

How does a band resolve the Bob Mould/Grant Hart problem of someone other than the lead singer/songwriter/guitarist having a whole catalog of songs they want to play? Why, you put them on as the opening act, that's how. So, the show opened with bassist Lou Barlow playing a handful of songs that, well, J Mascis didn't write.

Up next was MV & EE, who, based upon their appearance and music, probably smoke about eight bongs a day, followed by a ream of 8½ x 11 sheets worth of blotter acid. The most notable thing about their show was that the woman in the group was playing a Gibson Thunderbird that would have looked small in the hands of a five-year old. Their set ended with amp feedback from a banjo. (That's just too stupid to make up.)

Then it was Dinosaur Jr.'s turn. For a band that been together, on and off, for 25 years, they still know how to rock. Even though J got grey and fat, his music and playing is no less vibrant than it was the last time I saw them, 15 years ago. The one thing about the show I will comment on was the volume. Maybe I'm getting old, but J's big Marshall stacks (like the ones he's standing in front of in the masthead pic) were so loud that they drowned out the house speakers. Even standing 10 feet away, I couldn't hear the drums over J's amps. Consequently, I was effectively deaf for two days afterward.

But, was it worth losing my hearing to see the original lineup of one of the greatest rockbands ever? You better believe it was. And, after the show, I went to a bar and watched those scumbags from Girls Gone Wild try to get girls to show their tits.

A good time was had by all.

Oh, and not that it was anything to do with anything, but, standing outside, waiting for the show to start, I watched a guy get in a car carrying a handful of fencing épées.

Really, you don't see that every day.

Tuesday, December 08, 2009

T-Minus Six Months Until The Hustler Spread

Almost two years ago, I mentioned a New York magazine photoshoot in which Lindsay Lohan was, according to her, tricked into posing nude. (I don't see how you can get tricked into that, as, if your clothes are off and someone takes pictures of it, the results will be nude pictures. But, this is Lindsay we're talking about, and she's repeatedly proven herself to be one of the stupidest vertebrates currently residing on this planet.) This seemed, at least to me, to be her career nadir and that she would probably use this to jumpstart her career, and that would be the last time Lindsay got her tits out. But no sooner had Lindsay's bronzer dried that oops, she did it again (to steal a phrase from a similar trainwreck).

In the newest issue of Muse, whose very non-functional website can be found here, Lindsay has posed for yet another nudity-laden photoshoot, this one inspired by a Kate Moss/Johnny Depp shoot in Vanity Fair about a hundred years ago.

Now, mind you, I'm all for female nudity, but, if all female nudity turns out looking like this, well then, I guess I never need to see any woman naked ever again. Lindsay, at age 23, looks worse than that hag from Drag Me to Hell. She has reached that point where doing porn is not so much an option as it is an inevitability. I foresee her getting DP'd in the pages of Hustler any time now. That is, if Larry Flynt would have such a hideous wretch in his magazine.

Even a complete scumbag has standards.