What it is, Fiddle Faddle:
This was cute. My friend Mark Baumgarten, who knows nothing about girls but plenty about music, is the new music editor at Willamette Week in Portland (congrats Mark!) and he won the gig in a drinking contest.
Mark may be skinny but he does know how to drink. He also has Elton John on vinyl, with pride, and that's OK with me.
I don't really expect any of you to care about Minnesota insiderism, but my other friend Pete Scholtes wrote something funny on his blog about the latest shakeups among the Minnesota Mafia.
The Minnesota Mafia is kind of like the Gay Mafia or the Jewish Mafia, but with different interests: It secretly controls about 75 percent of "serious" music criticism in the U.S. and a high percentage of other arts writing as well. It controlled the LA Times calendar section during the Seventies and Eighties, it controlled the Spin for a while (I'm going to start calling it the Spin), it has a lockdown on many major alt-weeklies, with moles at all the rest. It has been the engine behind my so-called career every step of the way and I'm not ashamed to say so. In fact, it is the ONLY reason i am working on a top secret project--and a secret weather machine.
What i want to know is: how can so many good music writers come from a place with such bad music?
And don't even start with me about the Prince, Bob Dylan, Husker Du and the Replacements. I'm over it.
Nobody ever wants to say it, but Bob Dylan is really not a "Minnesota" artist. Prince, OK. Westerberg, for sure. But Dylan just isn't. He's just Dylan. Jim, I know you're smiling and cringing and you've got some ammo to fire at me, so fire away. You can't win.
I know "Blood On The Tracks" was secretly recorded in Minneapolis and everything, but it isn't a Minnesota album, I'm sorry.
It's a homeless album.
It couldn't be any other way.
I sooooo have to go finish up this article I've been writing for ten years. I have to finish because I am going to Minneapolis in two days, OMG, and I need a clear mind and body for all the mojitos I plan to ingest immediately upon landing.
It's not that I hate Minneapolis. I love it like nothing else. For all its rotten music, Minneapolis is the most rock 'n' roll place I've known. Lot of smokers and people who know about Colin Blunstone's first solo album, One Year, which my Favorite Person just taped for me (with the Idle Race on the other side). Lot of Kiss and Van Halen fans, lot of people who get GBV all the way, lot of people who have the coolest new shit even though they can't hear it on the radio. I get all my cool new shit from my friends in minneapolis, and when I come back to L.A., arms full of cds, my record collection gets instantly hip and ever so elegantly wasted.
I am going to be on Cosmic Slop: Forgotten Pop of the Seventies (and '60s and '80s) again, which is so thrilling I might just barf all over my Donny Osmond record right now. I am in the process of composing my "set," and this time I won't let them strong-arm me into any Paul Williams-making-fun-of-Nilssen-and-Newman bollocks.
You can listen to it live this Sunday--noon-2 p.m. PST. Click on the link above.
some ideas:
Rock N Roll Girl (the beat)
Ooo You (Paul McCartney)
Down On me (Jackal)
Tomorrow (we all together)
Ariel (dean freidman)
(i know there's some repeats from last time, so what)
i'm alive (elo)
it's hard to say goodbye (donny osmond)
magic (pilot)
hurdy gurdy man (donovan)
Lucy (mark antonides--the lost '70s genius from the '90s)
God gave Rock 'N Roll To you (Argent)
beechwood Park (zombies)
let me come closer to you (blunstone)
goody gum drops (1911 fruitgum)
skooby doo (archies)
i think i love you (partridge family)
something faces
what do all the people know (monroes)
switchin to glide (kings)
so it goes (nick lowe)
precious to me (?)
you were so warm (dwight twilley)
still working...
This was cute. My friend Mark Baumgarten, who knows nothing about girls but plenty about music, is the new music editor at Willamette Week in Portland (congrats Mark!) and he won the gig in a drinking contest.
Mark may be skinny but he does know how to drink. He also has Elton John on vinyl, with pride, and that's OK with me.
I don't really expect any of you to care about Minnesota insiderism, but my other friend Pete Scholtes wrote something funny on his blog about the latest shakeups among the Minnesota Mafia.
The Minnesota Mafia is kind of like the Gay Mafia or the Jewish Mafia, but with different interests: It secretly controls about 75 percent of "serious" music criticism in the U.S. and a high percentage of other arts writing as well. It controlled the LA Times calendar section during the Seventies and Eighties, it controlled the Spin for a while (I'm going to start calling it the Spin), it has a lockdown on many major alt-weeklies, with moles at all the rest. It has been the engine behind my so-called career every step of the way and I'm not ashamed to say so. In fact, it is the ONLY reason i am working on a top secret project--and a secret weather machine.
What i want to know is: how can so many good music writers come from a place with such bad music?
And don't even start with me about the Prince, Bob Dylan, Husker Du and the Replacements. I'm over it.
Nobody ever wants to say it, but Bob Dylan is really not a "Minnesota" artist. Prince, OK. Westerberg, for sure. But Dylan just isn't. He's just Dylan. Jim, I know you're smiling and cringing and you've got some ammo to fire at me, so fire away. You can't win.
I know "Blood On The Tracks" was secretly recorded in Minneapolis and everything, but it isn't a Minnesota album, I'm sorry.
It's a homeless album.
It couldn't be any other way.
I sooooo have to go finish up this article I've been writing for ten years. I have to finish because I am going to Minneapolis in two days, OMG, and I need a clear mind and body for all the mojitos I plan to ingest immediately upon landing.
It's not that I hate Minneapolis. I love it like nothing else. For all its rotten music, Minneapolis is the most rock 'n' roll place I've known. Lot of smokers and people who know about Colin Blunstone's first solo album, One Year, which my Favorite Person just taped for me (with the Idle Race on the other side). Lot of Kiss and Van Halen fans, lot of people who get GBV all the way, lot of people who have the coolest new shit even though they can't hear it on the radio. I get all my cool new shit from my friends in minneapolis, and when I come back to L.A., arms full of cds, my record collection gets instantly hip and ever so elegantly wasted.
I am going to be on Cosmic Slop: Forgotten Pop of the Seventies (and '60s and '80s) again, which is so thrilling I might just barf all over my Donny Osmond record right now. I am in the process of composing my "set," and this time I won't let them strong-arm me into any Paul Williams-making-fun-of-Nilssen-and-Newman bollocks.
You can listen to it live this Sunday--noon-2 p.m. PST. Click on the link above.
some ideas:
Rock N Roll Girl (the beat)
Ooo You (Paul McCartney)
Down On me (Jackal)
Tomorrow (we all together)
Ariel (dean freidman)
(i know there's some repeats from last time, so what)
i'm alive (elo)
it's hard to say goodbye (donny osmond)
magic (pilot)
hurdy gurdy man (donovan)
Lucy (mark antonides--the lost '70s genius from the '90s)
God gave Rock 'N Roll To you (Argent)
beechwood Park (zombies)
let me come closer to you (blunstone)
goody gum drops (1911 fruitgum)
skooby doo (archies)
i think i love you (partridge family)
something faces
what do all the people know (monroes)
switchin to glide (kings)
so it goes (nick lowe)
precious to me (?)
you were so warm (dwight twilley)
still working...
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