The Parody: Reggie Watts Doing "Sorry, Thom Yorke"

Just like black poverty "is not white poverty,” white angst can look pretty damned shallow, too,...

Radiohead's "Lotus Flower": Faggy NewAge Shit

Radiohead's got a new album out. We're not the biggest fans, but we do admire how they're staying true to themselves - committed to their art - because we're sick of the crass commercialization, and the lowest-common-denominator American Idol-ization, of everything. Thank goodness there's no girl in the group, either, just dying to show us her tits or whatnot.

This track ain't bad, but it reminds us why we're not crazy about the band - they're elitists who won't deign to make music for the rest of us - and that can fuck up the iPod flow.

As a matter of fact, it does every time.

UPDATE: You can listen to the whole thing, but pay special attention to track number six, because KROQ reinforces our assessment of the band in their album review by saying:

A modern, sophisticated piano-based track, “Codex” is full of glistening echos and groans, stunning silences that give way to sonic epiphanies, almost New Age-y traces of culminating violin and the brassy swoon of a meditation bowl. Yorke indulges a naturalistic spirituality, asking you to “jump off the end into a clear lake/no one around.”

Folks, we know Faggy NewAge Shit when we hear it - enjoy:

Pyramids, Pyramids - Always With The Pyramids

"I stupidly had this jazz band advertised on my Web site."

-- James Trabulse - a Frenchman running a Bernie Madoff-type Pyramid scheme in the San Francisco Bay Area - explaining why he was being investigated by the SEC, in an article for The San Francisco Chronicle.

Arrested Development

"Cops, Residents Puzzled By Bizarre Lights Over Morris Co."

-- John Slattery, doing another silly U.F.O. story - with cops - on WCBSTV.

"A&E reality show has cops chasing ghosts."

-- James Hibberd, showing that television executives are intent on embarrassing law enforcement - and humanity - with cops searching for the dead, on The Live Feed.

"Psychic leads no help in Grozelle case: Cops."

-- Ottawa Sun

The Frogs Don't Hop For Green (Sweet)

RADIOHEAD were left with a raft of empty seats at a recent French gig after a ticket giveaway proved a dismal failure.

The egghead rockers, known for their right-on eco credentials, came up with a potty ploy to test our Continental cousins’ commitment to green issues.

And they were roundly ignored for their troubles.

Singer THOM YORKE and his gang announced that 50 passes were up for grabs for their show at Paris’s 17,000-capacity Bercy Arena and would be available on a first-come, first-served basis.

The only snag was that punters would have to collect them by BICYCLE from record label XL’s Paris office.

But, in the land of the 2CV, our French friends were less than keen on the eco-friendly stunt and XL were left with an ecologically unsound 35 unclaimed tickets on their hands.

That’s the branch of one tree wasted.

A source said: “Radiohead are using their current world tour to highlight their commitment to green issues.

“They advise all gig-goers to use public transport and are doing all they can to make their carbon footprint as small as possible.

“Unfortunately the French didn’t appear to share their noble intentions and roundly ignored the free ticket tactic.”

-- Gordon Smart, on the best news from France in a while, for the Sun.com

For the record: Radiohead sucks. I'd love to go head-to-head with those posers. I'd kill their career in three songs.

O.K., Once More,...With Feeling

"Beyonce is the poster girl for what is wrong with the music business and the Grammys. If she is the reason you are tuning in, you need to get out more."

- John B, writing for the L.A. Times' Extended Play Music News.

Or if you're like me, you prefer to stay in to avoid it all. Honestly, I don't own any Beyonce songs, except for "Crazy In Love", and that's just because they flipped the sample - not because of her.

Really. I don't think Beyonce's a compelling artist; I don't find her the least bit attractive and, frankly, women like her bore me.

A lot of music - or today's popular music - bores me. (I was one of those who turned down the sound when Alicia Keys played the Super Bowl.) Like the Self-Help con artists, these "tastemakers" need to look somewhere else if they need a tool for this.

I heard part of the Foo Fighters Grammy-nominated album - and wondered how it's been tolerated, much less "nominated" for something. The last Radiohead album? Good thing they gave it away because I never would have paid for it.

I think the last song I found worthy of running out and paying for was T.V. On The Radio's "mystical" single, "Wolf Like Me", but all I bought was the single - the album was as bad as the video:



I don't know which is worst today: The artists - or the public's taste. I think it's the artists because the public always moves when I perform so there's only so much blame to go around. The public isn't being offered enough good material - but they're also guilty of only searching through a limited self-selection when digging is called for.

Check out Yundi Li (above) playing the 2nd movement of Chopin's Piano Concerto No. 1, and see if that *certain something* isn't in there for you because, I swear, it is for me:



I ain't gone all hioty-toity with that, but I just like music and don't care what segment of the spectrum it comes from. The way Li's fingers glide across the keyboard; the joy he's getting from what he's doing - plus it's grandeur - all come through, in an almost "personal" sound, and that's what's important to me.

I can just as easily hear it in Punk, too, but for different (more aggressive) reasons. For instance, here's The Jam doing "A-Bomb On Waldorf Street":



That shit floored me the first time I heard it. (Full disclosure: None of these videos do justice to the studio recordings.)

And I haven't heard a great Rap album in so long I'm starting to wonder if it's truly over. But only a fool would count Rap out because - like Jazz - it's still the life blood of the party.

I'll just keep playing my old Run DMC albums until somebody figures something out,....