Night Terrors

I'm sure many a rock hit was penned bedside by an insomniac, frustrated at his inability to sleep with or without the usual battery of drugs or alcohol. No time better than the middle of the night to write down that weird shit that's keeping you up. Here are two songs that incorporate the lyricist's late-night tape recordings into the song:

My Chemical Romance - Sleep
MCR's Black Parade was produced at a mansion in Burbank, CA. Each member recounts a creepy, haunted experience during their stay. Gerard Way recorded his first thoughts about experiencing night terrors and incorporated it into a few parts in this song, including the intro.

"There are these terrors. And it's like, it feels like as if somebody was gripping my...Like last night, they are not like tremors, they are worse than tremors
Like last night, they are not like tremors, they are worse than tremors, there are these terrors. And it's like, it feels like as if somebody was gripping my throat and squeezing.....
"...Sometimes I see flames.
And sometimes I see people that I love dying and... it's always...""

Alkaline Trio - Warbrain
Matt Skiba's late night, insomnia fueled Nietsche reading led him to tape a certain passage he liked at 4am. It later ended up as the intro for this track which was recorded specifically for the first volume of the Rock Against Bush compilation.

Thoughts are the shadows of feelings, always darker, emptier, and simpler. I don't care if they're fake or real. I just thank them for showing up at all. I have black periods. Who does not? But they do not have me, they are not a part of illness, but a part of my being. One might say I have the courage to have them. It's four o clock in the morning. This sucks.

By the way..

Doesn't Johnny Depp's Mad Hatter look just like Elijah Wood?

Almost Alice

Saw Alice in Wonderland over the weekend. It was okay, not great. I think it helped that I had completely erased from my mind any preemptive notion of the story left behind from childhood. No expectations for a Tim Burton movie might be the best way to attack one. Visuals are fantastic, though I think I'm completely done with this 3D novelty at this point. It's just not a great value for the money.

Anyway, though the film is worth seeing, when it's all said and done the real triumph for me is the soundtrack. Not the Danny Elfman one (though I'm sure that's great too), but the "alternative music" accompanying soundtrack called Almost Alice, which has some surprisingly great tracks from Robert Smith (the Cure), Wolfmother, Franz Ferdinand, Mark Hoppus (blink 182), Motion City Soundtrack, Shinedown, and most suprisingly Avril Lavigne whose "Alice" I think I might like best of all.

The Stomp

March Madness is here, and to celebrate let's take a look at my second favorite NCAA tournament moment of all time, HERE. To say this this kind of cheap play didn't inform my own basketball game in the years after this would be a flat out lie.

Rod Argent

My favorite song of the last 3 years has finally shown up on grooveshark for everyone's free listening pleasure. If I could put together a backyard concert and re-unite one band that might actually show up, it would definitely be the Ergs!

Agent M

Introducing my favorite female punk vocalist of all time, Emily Whitehurst of Tsunami Bomb. Considering she was the first one I'd really heard and my music collection really doesn't consist of a whole lot of lady vocalists, I'd say I'm still pretty open for a new "favorite," but she's a fine placeholder atop the list for now as someone who sang her ass off and paved the way for the Paramore's and the Eisley's of the world today.

Emily went by "Agent M" in the mid to late 90s when it was fashionable to have some sort of punk rock nickname (was that ever fashionable?).Not sure if she still prefers that name today with her new band The Action Design, but here's the song that won me over in 10th grade.


And last year, Whitehurst provided vocals on MxPx's cover album for "Heaven is a Place on Earth:"

Ruth HBP

Just in time for spring training, we have an interesting video of Babe Ruth getting hit by a pitch. His reaction is priceless.

The Progressive Girl

I choose to believe that Stephanie Courtney, the star of those Progressive Insurance commercials, tried really hard not to sell out to corporate America. But in the end, the comedy career just wasn't going anywhere.

Olympics

Is it only the American "medal trackers" like this one that seemingly base Olympic success on total medals won?

I guess it's a logical way of reporting the scores, but I think I'd rather see reported in a way that gives less credit to the 2nd and 3rd place athletes. In my system, I'd show most gold medals won and only that, because after all, it's about winning, right? "Wrong," you say? It's about competing? Fine. Let's assign a point score to the medals. 1 for bronze, 2 for silver, 3 for gold. See who comes out on top. Using that method it seems the standings stay largely the same, but at least the "total medals" nonsense is taken out of the equation.

USA - 70 pts
GER - 63
CAN - 61
NOR - 49
AUS - 30 (that's AustRIA)
S.K - 32
RUS - 26
CHN - 23
SWE - 23
SWZ - 21

Not much movement, but with this scoring South Korea jumps Russia for 6 (shameful) and the Swiss jump over France for 10th. Regardless, blasphemy or not I think Canada won the Olympics.

Scholastic Book Fairs

There were two major book events that we looked forward to in elementary school. One we simply called RIF, named after the organization Reading is Fundamental, who would deliver free books of all kinds to the school for us to keep. Usually these were thin books with a lot of pictures, so everyone won. Those of us wanting to learn could learn and everyone else had something shiny and new to look at.

The other event was the school sponsored Scholastic Book Fair fund raising event, during which kid-book giant Scholastic would essentially bring all of their new books and their shiny, illustrated covers and put them up for sale in an attempt to have kids persuade their parents to give them book money. Of course, NOBODY bought books. Not the students, anyway. It may have been that they and their blue collar families couldn't afford the outrageous prices, but it was much more likely that they would have just blown the money on the TOYS, neon bookmarks, and pencils Scholastic always added to their shop each year and that the few who remembered money during their library classes where the fairs were held would buy. I highly doubt I was as cynical about corporate interests and greed infiltrating the youth reading movement as a 4h grader, but just know it's Scholastic I say "for shame" to, not the students buying the shiny pencils. They're kids.

So to conclude, RIF > Scholastic Book Fair

Gorlliaz - Stylo

Gorillaz have a new album coming out soon (I'm sure the kind Sheriff will let us know the details), and with it comes this outstanding new video for "Stylo."

If, like me, you wonder for a moment about half way through, "is that Bruce Willis?" Why yes, yes it is.

Am told you can preview the entire album for free and with a clear conscience here.

Ghoti Hook - My Bike

Movie Samples as Song Intros 6

And lastly, my favorite. I'm not sure what kind of marketing Tooth & Nail were doing in the mid 1990s, but Ghoti Hook was another Christian Punk band I found myself listening to back then, discovered entirely via the internet. It's possible that it wasn't the marketing at all, but the film samples like the one in "My Bike" in which we're greeted by one of the hero's famous lines from Pee Wee's Big Adventure. Ghoti Hook was the one Tooth & Nail band using humor along with the punk and christian themes.

Ghoti Hook - My Bike (1997)
Film - Pee Wee's Big Adventure (1985)

Slick Shoes - Another Day

Movie Samples as Song Intros 5

Slick Shoes rounded out an impressive lineup of Christian-inspired punk bands that seemed to find themselves on the Tooth & Nail Label in the mid to late 90s. It wasn't that the label was trying to portray themselves that way, it's just there were a lot of bands like that in the northwest back then. Most of Slick Shoes' songs about Jesus could just as easily have been about a girl. Take for example today's song, "Another Day," with lyrics like In all the time that has gone by,Only you have stayed the same. Could be an ode to a loyal girlfriend. Nope. About Jesus. Fair enough. The song also has a 14 second intro from Young Frankenstein.

Slick Shoes - Another Day (2000)
Film - Young Frankenstein (1974)