Everybody's talkin' bout
the inevitable U2 and One Bank merger.

Nothing makes you feel homesick like "Reign in Blood"
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE


SLAYER TO VISIT U.S. TROOPS WHILE ON "UNHOLY ALLIANCE" EUROPEAN TOUR
U.S. Headlining Trek to Kick off in January

Los Angeles, CA - (November 1, 2006) -- The members of the thrash/punk band SLAYER - Kerry King/guitars, Tom Araya/bass, vocals, Jeff Hanneman/guitars, and Dave Lombardo/drums - will take a few hours off from their current European "Unholy Alliance Tour" schedule to pay a visit to the 52nd Services Squadron located on the Spangdahlem U.S. Air Force Base in Germany on Wednesday, November 8. With a sizeable chunk of Slayer's core audience being enlisted men and women, this will be the band's first-ever visit to a military base.

The band, whose latest release, "Christ Illusion," deals with the brutality of war and religions fanaticism, scrutinizing America's role in Iraq and Afghanistan, will spend a couple of hours meeting and chatting with the soldiers, signing autographs, and possibly viewing a fighter aircraft or two.

Upon returning home just before Thanksgiving, Slayer will take the holidays off and then launch a headlining tour of the U.S. Dates are still being confirmed and will be announced shortly, but the intended cities for the tour include:

Tucson, AZ
Las Vegas, NV
Los Angeles, CA
Sacramento, CA
Reno, NV
Salt Lake City, UT
Fargo, ND
Sioux Falls, SD
Kansas City, MO
Atlantic City, NJ
Providence, RI
New York, NY
Ottawa, ONT CANADA
London, ONT CANADA
Hamilton, ONT CANADA
Rochester, NY
Youngstown, OH
Columbus, OH
Indianapolis, IN
Myrtle Beach, SC
Orlando, FL
Ft. Lauderdale, FL
Washington, D.C.

Impossible is Nothing
Okay, last thing tonight... This Aleksey Vayner stuff is addictive. Any bets on who picks up the reality show?

And, like ouch dude.

Two items regarding Notre Dame.
The last five minutes of the game against UCLA = just mindblowing... For someone who basically ignored football for a good chunk of my life, it was terrifically exciting. Quinn to Samardzija was a beautiful thing considering the announcers had convinced me to give up on the game, but not turn it off. The Irish scored with 27 seconds on the clock which is usually when I have started my channel surfing.

The second item is almost too absurd to be believed but can be summarized this way: an immediate family member is (reportedly) currently the subject (a very small subject) of a desperate Republican attack ad! The best part... IN INDIANA! Yes, the Dugan family is a powerful clan with deep ties to the venerable Democratic party, but did you know that our power has the GOP twittering in its Men's Wearhouse specials all the way in the midwest? We do, yes, we do. I'm looking for the ad online right now!

bad Brains
Looks like there is a new video compilation of the OG Bad Brains which is about time. I'm feeling kinda lucky that I managed to see them a few times (okay, twice) at the old 9:30 Club in the late 80s. I beg to differ with some bloggers who have discounted the Brains reggae tunes, which are pretty solid. Moreover, HR's reggae band "HR" was amazing live the few times I saw them.

Studio 60
I'm not ready to pass judgement on the new Aaron Sorkin vehicle. I eventually succumbed to the West Wing because my Washington Metro area based parents basically fell for it hook line and sinker, and you can't beat the Martin Sheen as the liberal Notre Dame sweatshirt wearing President for wish fulfillment. An odd effect of watching Studio 60 is that a look behind the scenes of SNL ends up revealing a serious problem with the actual SNL, as in not so funny, soft politics. Years ago I noticed that SNL had become quicker to mock poor people or people with accents and less adept at skewering those in power. There's a parallel with West Wing in that Sorkin's faux SNL is being rescued by quick witted though emotionally damaged writers in the way the country was being run by someone more sympathetic on WW. Right? Anyway, all this is beside the critique which I intended to make of the Studio 60's godawful theme song. W.G. Snuffy Walden wrote everything from the Mary Tyler Moore, thirtysomething to My So Called Life and obviously West Wing. What happened bro? Not so oddly, when you watch the episodes online they don't use the theme song as far as I can tell, anywhere.

Rite to your YouTube
I knew this guy in VA who probably had 100 hours of Rites of Spring videos. Finally a few surfaced last month. This tune they play at the old 9:30 Club was new to me, I don't think it was every released. The 9:30 Club very wisely videotaped every show at the club for years on end, so I'd expect that a lot of that footage will find its way to the video Tube.

Catalonia capsule
A few days in Barcelona really just isn't enough. I feel slightly tortured that my trip was cut short at both ends (a sad story I'll spare you). Next time, I'm going to see FC Barcelona no matter what. But I did luck into hitting Barcelona during La Merce 2006, an annual cultural festival which involved lots of live music on multiple stages in downtown Barcelona which also brings out just about all the children in the city during the day and allows for drinking beer in public squares at night. I mostly stuck to Catalan folk bands or folky-rocky-ska bands, but also caught some Afrobeat on the main stage. Somewhere in the city, Neko Case was playing but she bored me to tears last time I saw her in Chicago. Dirty Pretty Things were playing a free show the afternoon I arrived. There were loads of gigs in the city on the 28th (the Rapture), but I was up in the Pyrenees pretending to be the Duke of Cardona for a night. Two shows I would have like to have seen were Digitalism and the Divine Comedy, but I'm sure they'll come around here. The drive from the Costa Brava into the Pyrenees itself proved to be one of the trips highlights. Next time, I'm putting the pedal down. No sleep til Andorra. The other revelation was this... Spanish food totally rocks (Cal Pep was everything it was promised to be and more) and Spanish wine... good God! I ended up drinking wines from the Ribera del Deuro region but Baldoma Seleccio, Lealtanza Magnum, Alidis tinto were some of my favorite reds. I got in the habit of drinking a glass of cava before dinner and took it easy on the Estrellas (which are in fact, just a type of beer made by Damm, I had no idea). Some of my favorite places were small, restored medieval towns that are pretty unknown. During the driving portion of the adventure, iCat was my companion, a Catalan station that plays the likes of Beth Orton, Cat Power, new Paul Weller alongside regional folky singer-songwriter rock. There are also a few stations kicking out the Ibiza anthems non-stop. The big revelation being that Catalan radio kicks ass over what you get in the States but that's Barcelona for you, really stylish but never, in my experience, annoying.

World Inferno!
Jack's an old chum of mine, who I highly regard simply for the reason that the I last time I saw him he told me a priceless, revealing but very embarrassing story about a mutual friend. The new WIFS hit is "The Velocity of Love" but it is the slightly inferior "Only Anarchists are Pretty" that is the free download on their Myspace page. Oh well.

Does anyone have any chain mail I can borrow? Just for a week. I'm going on vacation and I'M STAYING IN A CASTLE ON MY BIRTHDAY. So the hell with y'all!

Maybe when you return to Cookie Mountain, you can see if they have some graphic designers there. What the hell happened with TV on the Radio's album cover? This looks like the cover for an early ’90s third-rate grunge metal act. At best, it's a lousy version of a Vaugh Oliver style 4AD package. The booklet is a bit better, but still. This band can self-produce its records, but it opts for slick, soulless design? It doesn't add up. Don't judge a book by its cover, Cookie Mountain is pretty decent.

Olbermann!
I kinda like this guy.

Peter, Bjorn and John
Who else is hip to these Swedes? Just heard 'em. The "Young Folks" remix is ace.

You may have noticed...
a break in the blogging. It's been a busy month but also I'm supposed to be blogging at work, which really takes the fun out of blogging from home. That said, the Spike Lee Katrina "doc" running on HBO this week will make you sad, angry and nauseous all at once.

Lollapalooza as it really happened.
I actually had a great time and that wasn't entirely due to my mixing of Sophia Coppola's new champagne with Vitamin Water, but it definitely had something to do with it. I'm not a huge RHCP fan, but Frusciante is just awesome to watch, even from 30,000 people away. {my lousy photos will not upload for some reason... just picture Perry Farrell in a white suit with a pink shirt with the Chicago skyline behind him.}

The Power of Nightmares
I highly suggest you check out this BBC doc series (from 2004) if you are interested in the history of the Neo-Con and radical Islamist movements. The first episode of the doc traces the birth and rise to power of both Straussians and Islamic Brotherhood leading up to Afghanistan which found the Neo-Con and Jihadist revolutionaries teaming up against the Soviets. The big shocker for me was about the Team B, the NeoCon group which built up the myth of the Soviet threat in order to derail dentente. Also interesting is that the CIA and the NeoCons have been battling since the ’70s. A warning: this doc makes the pragmatist Kissinger look very very good compared to the nuts we have in power right now. I'm not sure if BBC AM is broadcasting this, if not, they should be.

You can screen the entire doc here:
Part 1

Time Out Beirut
Everyone I know who's read these letters has found them pretty affecting. I actually have the complete text but I'm not really cleared to publish it. My thoughts are with my colleagues Ramsay and Amir Ben-David.

Pitchfork, in brief
I had to split the scene a few times but I don't think I missed anything amazing. Word is that Spank Rock were killing everyone who hadn't heard them before, which doesn't surprise me. Os Mutantes videos I shot came out like abstract modernist paintings, must have something to do with the zoom button.

Pre-Pitchfork Party
I'm spinning some records downstairs.

What's the matter with North Dakota?

Nothing this weekend, really... crystal blue skies, waves of bright yellow canola and blue-lavendar flax. I met some really interesting people from different walks of life that are now connected to me. These nice folks had the displeasure of seeing me with a swollen mouth and I had the joy of coming home to a two-hour date with the dentist chair. Hopefully, I'll be back to normal someday.

On the way home, I borrowed What's the Matter with Kansas? (which I had bought my Dad for Christmas when it came out) and plowed through it like a 20-ton threshing machine running on high-test ethanol. It's a great airport book for travelling lapsed-leftists. It'll get your blood boiling, make you feel sorrow for the working religious right and also scare the crap out of you... in a good way. I know this falls into my book reviews of books that are easily available on the used shelf, but my stack of new books is just too intimidating. Tom Frank's book does a lot of repeating itself, but that keeps it focused. His periodic mentions of punk rock bands, the Embarassment and his chapter on his personal political journey via college at first irked me, but end up being quite memorable. He has great knowledge of his home state and for that alone, he holds attention. While we are on the topic, I guess there is a historically inspired indie music fest coming up in Lawrence. What's up with all these music fests?

In other news, my World Cup pool standings took some serious damage because I forgot to make my second round picks in time. How do I feel about the way things have gone? Remarkably good. France has been stunning in the last couple games. The talent-heavy Brazil never found its groove and neither did England really. Portugal seemed to have some heat, but it faded and they seem to play dirtier than anyone else. Italy began as a bit of an opportunistic, dare I say, lazy team, but really hit its stride later. I love the idea of Zidane winning the world cup in his last appearance. Right now, I'm pulling for France.