No. 1: We do this to ourselves...

By Bryan Reed

Beginning a thing without a determined endpoint is necessarily uncertain, but I'd argue that's a part of its excitement. This could be a failure. Or it could succeed. Or it could merely be, neither failing nor succeeding for whatever lifespan we deem to grant it.

As I embark on this uncertain and exciting experiment in offering my own excursions into the happenings of popular music's louder, less accessible poles, I find it painfully ironic that one of my favorite metal bands of the past few years - the Durham-based Tooth whose Animality EP features prominently in my memories of my senior year in Chapel Hill - is dead. Tooth is yet another casualty of the Summer-of-Death that so far has claimed a handful of celebrities and, apparently, America's ability to bite its collective tongue.

(Tooth guitarist Rich James leading his band's final show in Durham, N.C. Photo credit: Jordan Lawrence.)

That Tooth disbanded before fulfilling its potential for greatness is perhaps most indicative of the nature of beginning something with no pre-determined endpoint: it will end, eventually, and when it does it'll make an impact.

Fortunately, Tooth's dissolution arrives with a concession, bittersweet though it might be, in the form of a split LP with Philadelphia's The Claw. In a way, the record marks an end for both bands. The A-Side captures Tooth's final recordings. So when Tooth vocalist J-ME Guptill declares "We do this to ourselves," in "Suicide Myth," it's hard not to assume his lyrics are foreshadowing the band's own demise. The B-Side documents the last tapes cut by former vocalist Mikey Brosnan who died in late 2008 at the hand of a drunk driver. And when The Claw launches into its first of three songs, "Grief Is For The Living," it's hard not to let a sense of doom creep into the experience knowing that not long after recording this song, Brosnan would be dead, and his living friends and family would be grieving.

The Claw, though, soldiers on through their three songs - tense, thrashing metal with an ear for Swedish melody and Florida brutality - and into the future. Tooth, though, has made its final statement with three songs that somehow amplify both Rich James' perfect guitar leads and the band's hardcore urgency without sounding contradictory.

My friend Jason Kutchma, of the band Red Collar, wrote a summary of Tooth I really can't beat, so here it is:

"It seems these days that most metal bands have solos that go on forever, jerk-off sessions that I can't stand. In order to make themselves more interesting, they have rhythms that get head-y and too complicated but I think it often has the opposite effect: I think it makes it boring as hell. Tooth however are everything, and I mean absolutely everything, that I ever loved about metal and truthfully about music in the first place. They do everything right. They are perfect. I kept on seeing them live, listening to their two song demo to see if I really mean it when I say I believe they are perfect. If anything, it just strengthened my belief. I believe them when they play. I believe in them when they play. They are a most beautiful Frankenstein, put together with the greatest parts of metal, thrash, and punk. But they don't lumber and thud along with their arms outstretched, motivated by an Abby Normal brain wondering where Master is with their next quick fix of an electrical jolt to get them through the night. They have what Frankenstein and the many, many metaphorical Frankensteins in the music world never could have or never bother to get: heart and soul."

Tooth leaves us this three-song testament to their largely - and criminally - unheralded greatness. But I still believe in them when it plays.

ALSO IN ROTATION: Marduk - Wormwood (Regain); Lowbrow - Broken Speech EP (Self-Aware); Greymachine - Disconnected (Hydra Head); Keelhaul - Keelhaul's Triumphant Return to Obscurity (Hydra Head); Earth - Radio Earth (Southern Lord); Magrudergrind - Magrudergrind (Willowtip); Graf Orlock - Destination Time Today (Vitriol); Pryamids with Nadja - Pyramids with Nadja (Hydra Head)

***

Bryan Reed is from North Carolina and, despite his best efforts, he still hasn't grown out of the racket that irritated his friends and family in high school, and continues to irritate them in the present. Stalker-types should know that they can follow Bryan on Twitter @subparrockstar.

     Capitalism is dying, boy. It's dying of its own internal contradictions.[He was, after all, a Wall Street financier, so I listened carefully.] You think the revolution's gonna take five years. It's gonna take fifty! So keep your head down and hang in for the long haul, because I'll tell you something. The sons of bitches running things don't give a shit about their children or their grandchildren, and they certainly don't give a shit about you! They've paid their dues, and they want to get out with theirs! They're gonna sell off everything that's not nailed down to the highest bidder. Don't get crushed when it topples down. Take care of yourself and your family. If you can make a difference, do it, but there are huge forces at work here, and they have to play themselves out according to their own design, not yours. Watch yourself.     
 
       Wall Street Financier, Morris Cohon, to his son, Peter Coyote---Winter of 1969/1970

     The above passage is from Peter Coyote's excellent memoir, "Sleeping Where I Fall". In the next sentence, Coyote adds,
   
     As far as I can determine, everything he prophesied has come true.

   Sure enough, last year, 2008, balls out free market capitalism stepped on its dick and fell on its ass. We had lived a fantasy for nearly thirty years. In the interest of short term gain, Reagan peeled back New Deal banking regulations designed to avert thirties style crashes, Clinton peeled them back some more. The elder Bush knew Reaganomics was folly, he called it "Voodoo Economics" when he ran against Reagan, but by the time he got in, there was no stopping the allure of the fantasy. To step out in front of it would have been political suicide, so he didn't try. Greed was seen as a good thing, markets were deemed to be infallible. We failed to see Enron's implosion as the  microcosm for the global economy that it proved to be. Suddenly we witnessed an economic crash, the scale of which us forty somethings had been raised to believe we would never see. We had always been told we were safe now, the daddies were in charge, and they had learned from the Great Depression, they had put in safeguards . . .

Oops, they took the safeguards out, too cumbersome and restrictive of the free market.

     Yet we cling to the notion of capitalism as if it were the only thing that keeps us American.  We still demonize any form of Socialism. Long ago, the term Socialism was, in our country, linked to Soviet Communism, which was reciprocally linked to the devil. It's very easy for the right to get their base stirred up, because the buzzwords have been in place for nearly a century. All that mean little parrot, Phil Gramm, ever had to do was start squawking the words "Socialized Medicine! Socialized Medicine!", then throw in a dash of Harry and Louise and the Clinton Health Bill's threat to the private insurer and pharmaceutical corporation dominated status quo was over and done with.

     My paternal grandfather railed against the prospect of Socialized Medicine and always hated Lyndon Johnson, but he took his Medicare just like everybody else. Socialized Medicine is ok as long as we call it something else, like "Medicare". Johnson was for sure a genius, folks. Yes, he was also crooked, but he got some good things done.

    I personally, have no problem with Socialized Medicine, even when called by its proper name. To me, Socialized Medicine means the lady that checks me in at the hospital doesn't first ask me how I intend to pay for services rendered, but rather asks me, "Where does it hurt?" I know people who have had such an experience, people who live in countries that we now call Socialist, places like Britain and France, NATO allied nations who stood with us against the "Evil Empire" during the cold war, nations that were considered to be part of the free world then, Socialist attitudes toward medicine notwithstanding. True, citizens of France do pay high taxes, but they get something in return, universal free health care. Our tax money mostly goes to the military, half of it anyway. We Americans don't want our government all up in our business, so rather than pay for government health care, we prefer to pay private insurers who do everything in their power to keep from honoring claims, to keep from actually providing the care that our insurance dollars are supposed to guarantee to those few of us to whom they actually grant policies.  I don't have insurance. My insurance company was bought out by another. The new parent company staggered the premium schedule and I missed a payment while on the road with my band. I came home to find I was uninsured. That particular insurance company was lame anyway, so I didn't much care, but I dicked around and didn't get aggressive about finding a new insurer until after I was diagnosed with high blood pressure. Sure, you can argue that in this environment, my predicament is my own fault. Fair enough, I did know the rules here. But I have friends who are much worse off than I, friends for whom "this environment" is poisonous. One has a child with a bone disease. He had insurance, but his insurer was allowed to go bankrupt, leaving my friend's child uninsured with a serious pre existing condition. Texas High Risk Pool is his only option, ten thousand dollar deductible, I believe. My friend's experience is just one of many examples that illustrate the pure immorality of our healthcare for profit system.

     Healthcare for profit capitalizes on illness. To profit on drugs and surgeries one must have a steady supply of sick people. We have some very sick people among us and we seem hell bent on keeping them sick. Every time I go to the supermarket, I see fat people, and I don't just mean regular old fat, I mean grossly obese. Many are diabetic amputees in electric wheelchairs. Soft drinks seem to be a popular item with them. I don't remember seeing such people when I was a child, when I pretty much lived on Dr. Peppers, which were then sweetened with cane sugar, rather than the high fructose corn syrup used to sweeten nearly everything today, a sweetener that our bodies just don't know how to handle. I don't know if the corn lobby is in cahoots with the makers of those electric wheelchairs, but I would say the times are good for both. I make my living driving across the country, occasionally stopping at Walmart for fresh socks. I see obese people in the Walmart and miles and miles of nothing but corn from eastern Nebraska to eastern Ohio, one big cornfield. Correlation does not imply cause, but one does notice.

     I don't understand the preoccupation, fanciful or not, of the angry white people at the town hall meetings, with the notion that the government might tell them which doctor they can see. Even if the fear mongers were right this time and the government really was going to dictate to us our choice of doctors, so what? If  I could see a reasonably competent doctor for free, I'd be perfectly glad to see the doctor of my government's choice. Most of us can't really choose our doctors anyway. If we don't want to pay out of pocket, then we must find a doctor who takes our insurance. And as for the  "death panels" hysteria, we already have death panels. We call them private insurers. Insurers decide who gets coverage and who does not, in effect, who lives or dies, and they base their decisions on potential profit.  And in the arena of potential profit, white people still tend to fare better that the rest.

     I believe that our chief objection to any form of socialism is, and has always been, rooted in racism. Thirty years ago, the specter of the Cadillac driving black welfare mother was the A-Number One bogeyman for the angry white man against socialism crowd. The notion that that same Cadillac driving black woman might receive federal dollars to pay for an abortion would really get the bibles thumping(funny how fathers are always left out of the abortion equation. No one blames the irresponsible male who knocked up the Cadillac driving black welfare mother. And the same people who want to ban abortion don't seem to favor open discussion of contraception. weird).

     Now, it seems that the illegal alien has eclipsed the black welfare mom as bogeyman du jour. Our bigots have progressed. Fearing a backlash of political correctness(and subsequent loss of funding), they no longer engage in unabashed racism. Now they cloak their racism in nationalism, the second string motivator of the paranoid moron masses, easily spun as patriotism, a supposedly more noble virtue. But what sort of illegal aliens do they fear?

     I once employed an illegal alien, a tour manager from New Zealand, white fella. Once, while traveling East along interstate 10 back in the pre-Homeland Security days, we came to a U.S. Border Patrol checkpoint. When the man in the green uniform asked if everyone in the van was a U.S. citizen, the tour manager simply answered, "Sure mate". The man in the green uniform was eyeing our San Antonio born and raised Hispanic bass player rather suspiciously and didn't seem to notice the tour manager's Kiwi/Aussie accent. He eyed the bass player for a second or two longer and then waved us on.

     I don't think the town hall hooligans are worried about Kiwi tour managers receiving health care on their dime. When they say "illegal aliens" they mean "brown people".

    Why would it be such a terrible thing for a brown person from another country to receive free healthcare here in the U.S.? My current bass player was recently treated for a bad flu while touring in Germany. I think the doctor visit cost about twenty-five dollars and they didn't mind that he wasn't a German citizen or that he didn't pay German taxes. He was sick, so they tried to help him.
     

We don't seem to have any trouble finding the money to fly planes halfway across the world to drop bombs on brown people. That gets pretty expensive you know. I'd be willing to bet that socialized medicine is cheaper than war. Maybe Iraqi oil revenue could pay for our healthcare, just like it paid for the invasion of Iraq . . .   right, it didn't pay for the invasion, our great grandchildren will have to do that, but when Rumsfeld put forth that wonderful piece of fiction, did any future town hall storming, bible thumping, constitution waving pissed off red faced white guy question Rummy's logic? Nope

     Europeans can be racists too. They don't necessarily like it that the dark skinned natives of their former colonies came home to them when the great colonial empires collapsed, but they grant them citizenship and extend to them the requisite benefits of citizenship while occasionally grousing about the dilution of their national character. They have their extreme nationalist factions and lunatic fringes, but they recognize them as such and for the most part behave sensibly. They're not afraid of big government, because to them, governments are service organizations designed to aid the people. And when they don't like their governments, they throw them out. Remember W's "coalition of the willing"? It consisted  mostly of our troops, a good many British, a few Aussies and Italians, and a hundred or so Spaniards. The Spaniards all went home after their people caught their government in a lie. Bombs had gone off in the Madrid Metro. At the behest of our government, the Spanish government blamed the bombing on ETA, the Basque separatist movement. The Bush administration didn't want anyone to think the bombings could have been done by Al Quaida, so they talked the Spanish government in to blaming ETA. But Spaniards aren't stupid. They're sick of ETA, but they know that ETA does not indiscriminately bomb subway stations. They saw through the lie, tossed their government out on its ass, and brought their troops home from Iraq. Spain, it seems, is an actual democracy. Perhaps we'll be a democracy someday.

   We have recently made bold strides towards democracy. We flipped the majorities in both houses of congress and voted in a President from the previously underdog party because a vast majority of us were sick of the status quo.  And I did say "vast majority".

     Obama won by a fucking landslide, people. Unlike Bush's two elections, Obama's election was nowhere near close enough to steal. We, the vast majority that voted for Obama, knew he would try to reform healthcare. So, why are the town hall mobs getting so much media attention? They can't constitute that much of the electorate. Probably, the media needs a story to sell, and they can sell it more effectively if they add suspense by making the playing field look even. Republicans aren't acting like the field is even. They are snarling like cornered wolves, booing and hissing at the President during his address to the joint session of Congress. People get mean when they feel outnumbered. Joe Wilson and his ilk can still stir up their base, but their base is shrinking.

     Still, they might block healthcare reform one more time. The drug companies and insurers have so much money with which to combat common sense, that we may have to go another round. But universal health coverage will come to the people of the U.S. and its opponents know it. The only question is, how broke will Americans have to be before they no longer care whether or not their health care system would once have been considered Socialist and rise up and demand the reform that should have been theirs long ago? It's true that when it is ultimately implemented, our newly socialized healthcare system will be an unholy mess for a while, because we don't yet know how to do universal healthcare. If we'd let President Truman have his way, and implemented universal health care sixty years ago, when the rest of the free world did it, we'd probably have our system worked out by now.

     I've noticed that some of the people who don't want healthcare reform are also upset by Obama's stimulus package. They were also upset by Bush's stimulus package, and I don't blame them. I'm upset too. I don't like it that we have to bail out the people who ripped us off, but that seems to have been the only viable course of action. Paul Krugman seems to think it worked, at least for now. From my hotel window in downtown Cincinnati, I don't see any bread lines. I'll pose a question to those who's greatest fear is socialism. Those bankers that you hate so much, those bankers whose bailouts your grandchildren will be paying for while they're also paying for the wars and maybe a bit of healthcare, those terrible evil banker people . . . are they socialists?
 

No one's a bigger fan of social media marketing than me. But lord, lord, lord... it is motherfucking exhausting. Imagine running 2 companies (including 21 people working for free, miracle of God, I am beyond thankful every day) and still finding time for newsletters, status updates, and of course, blog posts. Let's just say, more often than not, the basics (eating, cleaning, dressing, exercising, brushing teeth) take a backseat. Oh, priorities.

But the truth is, I count on YOU to help me keep at it. Your feedback (your e-mails, your retweets, your comments, your fandom, your forwards); that's the FUN part. And I can't do it without you. Just plain can't.

So, thank you.

Now on to what's been playing around Outlandos HQ:

1. One eskimO, One eskimO



Wow. Wow. Wow. Smart, clever and remarkably (I hate this word but it's true)... fresh. And it takes a little bit creep up on you, which is my favorite. Seal/FYC meets 70s Stones meets Tom McRae, translation: singer-songwriter-pop-dance-rock. What? Really. Buy it [...]

A Triple-A radio programming veteran, Kate has served as Music Director of the Loft at XM, Midday Host at WYEP, Evening Host at both WNCS and WUIN, as well as Content Supervisor for Pump Audio. Currently, she's the CEO of Outlandos Music, a new-music discovery service for grown-ups. Kate has been nationally recognized for her ardent presentation of music and her ability to champion talented, compelling artists.

                            Osama Dick Dale-Rock & Roll History's Missing link

Excerpt from the upcoming book, "The Porky From New Yorky's Guide to Weight Loss and Positive Mental Health.

THE PORKY STAPLE- THE BOWL OF BEANS

          Ingredients

1          .   One 15.5 oz can of light or dark red kidney beans
2    a teaspoonful or nice dollop of curry powder
3.    4 packets of duck sauce(from a Chinese take out restaurant)
4.    4 packets of spicy mustard(as above from a Chinese takeout)
5.    a healthy dollop of catch-up
6.    a light sprinkling of pepper  
Directions:

1.    Strain a can of beans in a colander and then put it in a microwaveable bowl
2.    ad all of the above ingredients and mix it up
3.    microwave for 2 minutes
4.    take out of microwave
5.    drink two large glasses of water
6.    take bowl and sit down in front of TV watching a moderately interesting thriller or drama


A Porky as I explained earlier in the book is a person who feels a strong sense of entitlement. This entitlement is not one of an arrogant nature-but is the reflection of the internal torture a porky feels as he daily tries to grab his 15 minutes of fame(he wants more) or spends at least 15 hours a day thinking about it. In my particular case I had spent 20 years trying to recapture my radio glory of yesteryear failing miserably but trying at least mentally every day to get back there. It was at this time my dear friend, world-renowned rock critic Mark Jenkins suggested I try to get a job at XM radio.  I talked to the Program director, at the time a fellow named Dave Logan-and in his best am style-he said," show me your stuff. Just the challenge a "Porky wants to hear," the year was 2002-a turbulent time in America with terrorism on everyone's mind. Well to make the long story short-I had by chance known Osama Bin Laden's younger brother(Kamal) who was a fellow student in the Foreign Service School at Georgetown(this was the early 70's). Without going into to much detail I managed to hook him up with this "hot blonde" in exchange for surrendering his apartment on "W Place" in Glover Park. His date was a success--- we remained in touch over the years and I thought-I can get an interview with Osama-this will certainly get me a show on XM Radio!! Dave Logan told me it sucked(typical radio douchebag)-the FBI visited me and I almost spent a few summers at Guantanamo Bay. But this Porky soldiers on-Now for the first time ever-listen to this amazing interview and

(Hear the audio version here)

discover the answer to one of Rock Music's many mysteries!!

Osama:  Hahlo, Hahlo (Middle Eastern accent)

(Engineer) Bruce:  I don't think we can wait.....

Steven: Okay, okay (pause) okay, okay

Osama:  Whom am I speaking? Identify yourself, Infidel.

Steven:  (laughing) Today we have a very exciting show.  After a long and hard negotiation through several third parties, we have lined up an interview with ...

Osama:  Hahlooo?

Bruce:  Here he is Steve, here he is.

Steven:  We have lined up an interview with the FBI's most wanted, Osama bin Laden.  In our pre -negotiations, we were surprised and amazed to find out the real grievances he has with the American people.  Uh...is that you, Mr. bin Laden?  

Osama:  Yes!

Steven:  Mr. bin Laden, I am delighted and a bit stunned...

Osama:  To whom am I speaking? (suspicious)

Steven:  My name is Steven, Mr. bin Laden.  I am a friend of uh Mr. Farley who is a friend of the uh grandson of the uh Saudi Arabian Prime Minister. (fumbling to make something up.)  But let me say, Mr. bin Laden.  I am delighted and a bit stunned.  The whole world thought that the Middle Eastern radio and television station Al Jazerra would be the one to get to interview you.  Instead you have given this worldwide exclusive to us.  Can you tell me why?  Why are we so lucky?

Steven:  Are you there? Are you there?

Osama:  Hahlo?  

Steven: (laughing) Are you there Mr. bin Laden?

Osama: One moment please. (talking to someone in the background) Kamal!

Steven: Okay.  (talking to audience) Apparently it sounds like we are in touch with a cave in Afghanistan.  We are making landmark history here.  

Osama: (heard talking to his brother Kamal in background.)  Listen carefully. I want the following doughnuts.  (with an urgent tone in his voice giving a command) I want to get a dozen.  I want two jelly. I want to get two chocolate iced.  Some of the  Bavarian cream, and I want another one....I think they are maple flavored, and the others are iced all over with the things on top. (thinking for the English word.)  

Osama:  "Sprinkles."  Lots of sprinkles.  Please.

Steven:  It sounds like we do have a transmission.  It sounds like we've made a connection, based on this recording; it's got to be in a cave somewhere.  It's just got to be in a cave.

Osama:  (drawling his voice in politeness)  You have to excuse me.  I am under a lot of stress.  It gives me an appetite.

Steven: But again, Mr. bin Laden. Sahib.  Tell us why you chose to come to our network here, at the XM Network, when you could have gone anywhere else?  Why did you come to us instead of Al Jazerra?  That is the big question?

Osama: Well.  There are several reasons.  My relationship with Al Jazerra , like everyone else, soured because at the last interview I did for them, they did not live up to their commitment to provide me with:  three cases of Perrier, 15 bowls of M&M's, (red and yellow only,) 2,000 pounds of Bulgarian caviar and enough shish kabob to feed the 200 men, and you ask for five white women dressed as American police women for the entertainment.

Steven:  (stunned) Excuse me?  White women dressed up as police women?

Osama:  (solemn)  As Muslims we must be fully covered.  However, my men need some entertainment, and the decadent entertainment is what you in the West specialize in.

Steven:  Okay.  Okay.  I can understand that.  I see.  Why did you consent to be interviewed by the XM Network when you were being seriously pursued by ABC, CNN, MSNBC and CBS?

Osama:  I wonder if you have any idea, how hard it is to get fair representation in your Western media.  This is a serious choice I must make to get my word out.  I was slightly partial to CNN as I have great admiration for Paula Zahn, but the Infidels who run CNN would not give to my demands.  I was hoping she would interview me in a swimsuit.  However, I did choose XM because it has some admirable qualities.  First up, I am aware that your show has played music from all over the world, and you have played the songs I have written.  Many times.  Particularly, my world wide smash "Miserlou."  Secondly, your station has the greatest representation of all kinds of music with a good selection of world beat sounds, and what the world does not know is that I am first a musician and great songwriter, not a freedom fighter or a terrorist.  I am misunderstood.  I am misrepresented in your media.

Steven:  Yes.  Hello.  We are still here with you.  Please go ahead.  I  (sound of machine gun fire.)  We can still hear you. (more gunfire)  Sahib Osama.  Mr. bin Laden. Okay.  

Bruce: We've got him back.

Osama:  After a long, long negotiations with your crafty CEO there,  Hugh Panero, we worked out a deal in which I give him a new round of financing, (to the tune of 30 million I might add,)  for which I have promised my own station called bin Laden Network.  24-hours of Koran readings, belly dance music, Turkish bouzouki music, Arabic music and environmental sounds.   (gunfire in the background.)  You know I just love the sound of cows mooing in the morning.  Of course, the many tunes I have written, especially my greatest hit "Miserlou," stolen by that Infidel,  second rate bouzouki player, third rate surf guitar player, Dick Dale.  

Steven:  Dick Dale?  Can you tell me about Dick Dale?  Tell me about your relationship with Dick Dale.

Osama: (laughing) Oh don't worry.  I can tell you about Dick Dale. Listen.  Well get to that story in a minute.  Ah.  Further.  My poor friend, my good friend, Hugh, also promised me five female interns of my choice and remote broadcasting.  I can't very well come to the United States, now can I?  (gunfire and beeping.)

Steven:  Are you there? (beeping)  Engineer?  How are we doing there?  By the way, this show is being orchestrated by Bruce, the engineer here, well known in music circ....

Bruce:  The transmission seems to be getting faulty...Uh...

Steven:  See if you can bring him in.

Bruce:  There's some interference from some "a" wire stuff.

Osama:  Who is this Bruce person?  

Steven:  He is just the engineer Osama.  He's an engineer.  That's all.

Osama:  Is he CIA operative?  

Steven:  No.  No.  He's a technician.  He's here to...

Osama:  He's clean-shaven, I'll bet.  

Steven: (laughing) He's here to see this interview goes well.  Please move on.  Talk.  Tell us what your thoughts are.

Osama:  I don't want you to forget that you promised me 1,000 pounds of Ben & Jerry's ice cream, flown to my hide out in Hindu Kush Mountains every three...uh...did I say Hindu Kush Mountains?  I meant to say Kandahar (drawling word out.  Kandoooohaaar.)  

Steven:  Kandahar. Okay.  So.  Osama.  You don't mind if I call you Osama, do you?  Is that all right?  

Osama:  That's all right, under the circumstances.  

Steven:  (more gunfire in the background)   So what's the story with Dick Dale?

Osama:  You don't know our customs and our way of addressing,  so it's all right.  I will bear with it to get my story out.  

Steven:  Tell me your relationship, or the story with Dick Dale.

Osama:  (gunfire)  Well you're not going to leave it alone, are you?  But in the mid-sixties, Dick Dale and the Del Tones were on a Mid-East tour of the Hilton and Intercontinental Hotels and my band, bin Laden's Lamb were the house band in the Phoenica Hotel in Beirut where, when this American Infidel, Dick Dale,  got the gig and there we were, promptly told that we would be the opening act and lost our status.  You can imagine that a Muslim man, like myself, with loss of pride. This was a hard pill to swallow.  In any case, I befriended Dick and showed him around the red light district and turned him on to the Turkish delights, chars or, as you say in America, "hashish."  It was on a night with the full moon.  We took our camels and we went to the desert.  We imbibed some chars, and I played him a beautiful song I had written about my camel, "Serti."  Dick told me that night (gunfire in background) it was the most beautiful song he had ever heard (gunfire)  He was like a brother.  Then he left and went back to the States and betrayed me.  The rest is history.  "Miserlou" is my song.  The West must know.  It's not a question of money.  It's a question of pride!

Cue to song "Miserlou" sung in Arabic.

Steven:  ....and of course, when Pulp Fiction came out....(cue to Dick Dale's intro of "Miserlou.")

Osama:  Very funny. (angry)  I am not amused.  You're laughing, but to me it is like a spear through my heart.  I remember when that film came out.  A prime example of your Western decadence.  I had to see it three times just to make sure my eyes were not deceiving me.  And when I left the theatre....I was so angry.  I was boiling.  You dissed me.  And when I saw your battleship in the harbor?  I commanded that one of my boat's ram into it.  ("Miserlou" still playing.)

Steven:  Let me ask  you another question, Osama.  Since I see that it's a particularly sore point for you...

Osama:  It's more than a sore point.

Steven:  I realize that, so I was thinking we'd move on to another question.  Tell me. The Jews.  Why do you hate the Jews, Osama?

Osama:  I don't hate the Jews.  Some of my best friends are Jews.  There are a very funny people.  They keep a little humor.  They..uh...we need that here in the desert wasteland of the Middle East.  As a matter of fact, at my wedding, to my sixteenth wife, Henny Youngman was the entertainment.  I loved that guy.  We spent many hours laughing.  He almost convinced me to have a circumcision.  Can you believe that?  (incredulously)  

Steven:  Quite something.

Osama:  In fact.  His big joke.  His main line, "Take my wife," is now part of the Muslim dialect.  It's a great joke we have together when rich Muslims with many wives get together, over some chars, and drink a little too much Turkish coffee, we say to each "Take my wives...PLEASE."  

Steven:  You claim in this Al Qaeda press release that we received,  that many of your other musical ideas were stolen, Osama.  Can you give me a further example?

Osama:  I can tell you more stories of injustice than the 1,001 Nights.  But there was a time in the early eighties when your superstar, Prince, or whatever that Infidel calls himself now, looked me up.  Of course he came to Osama.  I am known as royalty in the pop world of the Middle East.  I offered him a cultural tour of the Pyramids and the many mosques we have.  But all this man wanted was to hunt for women.  He said to me, "How can you tell what they look like, all covered up?"  I told him, "We go by the ankles. We "read" the ankles. And.  By the "walk."  I told him the most sensual women of the Middle East are the Egyptian women.  Whenever we see a hot babe walking by in a burka, we say, "She walks like an Egyptian."  So what does he do?  He writes a hit song, and he gives me no credit.  I call for a fatwa on him.  

Steven:  I can see, Osama, that there is definitely  a lot of bitterness you have, and that apparently if what you say is true, you deserve a certain amount of retribution.  

Osama:  I wonder if you have any idea?  But listen, I've got to get going here.  The old clock on the wall says "it's time to go."  

Steven:  Osama, I'd like to thank you for (gunfire) spending this time with the XM Network and giving this exclusive interview and uh letting us know (gunfire) exactly what does fuel the fires.  I can hear some gunfire in the background.  What is that, Osama?

Osama:  That's the cue to get out of town.  They hunt me like an animal (gunfire)  But never will they catch me.  I've got to go now, but I'll tell you, (yelling) I NEED MORE BEN & JERRYS.  AND THE COMPLETE THIRD SEASON OF THE SOPRANOS.  (gunfire followed by loud explosion)

Cue to Who singing "I Can See For Miles."

Half the battle of achieving anything is knowing when you need help (and let me save you a couple of hundred bucks in therapy here, you ALWAYS need help... think public radio model: "we're all in this together/I can't do it without you"). The hard part for some, then, is asking for it.

Obviously, shamelessness = a plus, i.e., just the simple act of asking is not for the tame-at-heart. SOL if that isn't your bag; you're going to need to acquire some assertive chops pronto. Because (say it together with me people) when you don't ask, the answer is always no.

But asking isn't even the hard part. First, you have to have people to ask. You have to have fans.

Whether it's your mom (or mine), your friends, your coworkers --- I don't care --- everyone has fans [...]

A Triple-A radio programming veteran, Kate has served as Music Director of the Loft at XM, Midday Host at WYEP, Evening Host at both WNCS and WUIN, as well as Content Supervisor for Pump Audio. Currently, she's the CEO of Outlandos Music, a new-music discovery service for grown-ups. Kate has been nationally recognized for her ardent presentation of music and her ability to champion talented, compelling artists.

Kings Of Pain: Running afoul of der Golem and der Kings of Leon's psycho handlers, with your friendly, neighborhood Ettes. Whose frontwoman, of course, is actually... SATAN!

By Coco Hames

I have never had much luck with authority figures.  Anyone can tell you.  Whether it's my first grade teacher or the man checking my passport at the Swiss border: they just don't like my face.  I'm aware of it going in, and I try to compose myself, but it's very frustrating, and sometimes I blow my stack.  Once, at an airport in Berlin, the ticket agent didn't like my face.  He looked at our previously-approved gear and said, casually, just because he felt like it, "That will be 300 Euros."  It was really early in the morning and I was hungover, which works to my advantage sometimes, because I'm too tired and nauseous to fight.  But it didn't cost 300 Euros and anyway, I didn't have 300 Euros.  And I informed him of as much.  Well, one thing led to another, which led to me kneeling on the concrete floor, tearing apart all of our luggage, screaming about fascism as police officers closed in on me.

 
The point is, I have a real, visceral problem with people who abuse their authority.  I understand the need for order, I sympathize with the necessity of certain social constructs, I respect the people who help maintain the structure of our seemingly functional matrix, I wave at crossing guards, I do.  What I cannot accept is the wicked impulse that invariably takes hold of a person in a position of authority.  Whether it is a temporary glitch, corrected as soon as the person realizes their folly (like Boromir handing it over in Lord of the Rings) or a cognizant, ongoing, coked out desire to gain and abuse power... either way, it's bad news. 

And I'm not sure which form took hold of the manager of the Kings of Leon while the Ettes were on tour with the band earlier this year in Copenhagen, but it Really.  Was.  Something.

 
Backstage at our first show together, everyone was very nice and spirits were high: the King boys had just won a Grammy, and were soon to attend the Brit Awards, for which they all (correctly) had great expectations.  Everyone was in a good mood, everyone was nice.  I'd noticed the red plastic football helmet fastened to the drummer's kit and asked, "Who's the Sooner?"  They said they all were.  Gulp, right?  (I'm a Gator, the Florida Gators beat the Oklahoma Sooners last year in the National Championship, and the band had even attended the game, owitch!)  But no, everyone was friendly and we got off to a great start.  The show was sold out and we had a blast, and afterward, the boys invited us out for drinks.

 
This was all very pleasant; it was really fun to be at a posh hotel bar in Denmark chatting about pleasant things like where we go to drink in Nashville, where we all live.  The juxtaposition of a 6,000 capacity sold out show and chit-chat about local traffic amuses me to no end, truly.  It's what I love most about what I do, the absurdity, I just love the absurd.  Roald Dahl, Hunter S. Thompson, Dali, politics, names of crayon colors, you name it.

 
Now, either we got too close too fast and their manager didn't like it, or they actually did think we stole that bottle of champagne, but something happened.  Everything was fine, everyone was drinking and talking and having a nice time.  Caleb asked if I wanted any champagne, since the label had sent over four bottles in congratulations to the four boys for their Grammy.  I demurred, since I actually don't care for champagne, but he left the bottle all the same.

 
Presently, the boys departed, and by the time we were heading out of the bar, a British friend asked about the bottle.  Oh, I said.  That was theirs, from the label.  I waved my hand dismissively, as if to say, take it if you want.  Poni went to the restroom, I stepped outside with a couple friends to get them a taxi, and as I was headed back to the bar, I saw Poni in full run with fury on her face.  I looked to where she was going, and there were Jem, our British friend, and a couple of guys I didn't know, in full brawl.  One of the strangers threw my British friend up against the wall.  Not okay.

 
I remember yelling, "Whoa, whoa, whoa!" as I ran into the melee, prising bodies apart alongside Poni.  The strangers were yelling, howling, at Jem, "You know what you did!  Now you're going to get a kicking!"  Jem looked bewildered, and Poni and I were foaming mad; as Poe says, no one insults me [or my band] with impunity.  I can imagine, it must be really annoying to have two tiny girls fly up into your face, spitting and cursing, and this is in public, mind you, so I'm sure we weren't afraid of much.  These guys looked at us imperious, slackjawed, like they could not believe we had the audacity to yell what we were yelling (which was remarkably colorful, to say the very least).  One of them sneered derisively, "First night of tour, good job."  Poni tossed them a final comment (she can be so inspired sometimes) and we gathered our friends and left the bar.

 
Once outside, we got the lowdown:  Our British friend had taken the forsaken bottle of champagne and was walking out with it, when two guys blew raging into his face.  Our friend said, oh, I didn't think it was a big deal, and put the bottle down.  But these men said, no, he'd already taken it, the damage was already done.  Our friend, being British (and did I mention, a rocker?) said with charm, "Okay, fuck off then."  And I believe that began the rustle Poni and I fell upon a few minutes later.

 
"Who the hell were they, though?  What did they care?" I asked, totally hassled.  We were standing outside the hotel, smoking and waiting for a taxi.  Jem said, "They said they were the Kings of Leon's management."  I widened my eyes and laughed, "Yeah, right!  What a bunch of psychos, no manager would behave like that, you'd get arrested with shit like that in the States, what a bunch of lying weirdos, God!"  This incredulous laughter and bashing of the pugalistic lunatics we'd left upstairs continued until our taxi arrived and took us to our hotel.

 
The next day in the van, we had chalked it up as just another night and forgotten about it, when we got a phone call from our booking agent.  He asked to speak to me.  I said, oh hello!  He said, "What is this about a bottle of champagne?"  My jaw dropped.  I started laughing, and asked "Why?"  Our booker then proceeded to read me an e-mail the Kings of Leon's manager and tour manager had written to him, evidently just after the incident, which had occurred around 4am.  The post-incident ranting (chock full of insults and interesting theories) against the dubious character of these strange men?  Oh, that took place conveniently right under their hotel room window.  Sound travels so clearly in the cold Copenhagen night air... Certainly I won't make any criminal accusations, but gosh, I wish I was able to stay up all night after an international flight and a very busy concert, you know, starting fistfights, spying on people and furiously typing scathing (and untrue) tattletales, you know, without having employed any egomaniacally rage-inducing powdery chemical enhancement...

(pictured above: Kings of Leon w/tour crew and management, circa 2009)

 
So.  We were in big trouble.  It is indeed a marvel that we weren't kicked off the tour right then and there, I suppose.  It seems someone stood up for us, though I still don't know the magnanimous who.  But as the wheel turns, neither were these men to be insulted with impunity, and it was time to take our medicine. 

 
They took away our rider.  They took away our guest list.  They took away our sound check.  No one was allowed to speak to us, and no one did.  Gone was the cajoling, open and energetic atmosphere of the first night, replaced by drone-solemn performance of duties and many tightly closed doors.  It was of course a bit embarrassing, and a bit of a hassle, but what could we do?  We stood by what we did, and we'd do it again.  All Poni and I saw were guys going after our friend and bass player.  Any such action would spur us to the same equal and opposite reaction, anytime, anywhere, no matter who you think you are, or who you work for.

 
If they didn't know then, they know now, that we are a punk band; as used to smuggling booze as a bootlegger; as accustomed to solitude as monks; as comfortable as, well, a punk band, to not having sound check.  Infuriatingly to the management, of course, their punishments made no impact.  And it was of course only our pleasure to display it.  We played by all the rules, kicked ass at every show, and got the crowds crazy amped.  The management avoided us like the plague, and we saw neither hide nor hair of them for most of the tour.  Our punishment was finally lifted in Paris, where it was clearly in the air what had happened, but everyone was kind of over it.  We played ping pong with the boys (don't let Jem's long pants fool you, bit of trivia: he went to the Junior Olympics for table tennis) and talked about Michael Pollan, dismemberment, the Beatles.  We walked into the tour manager's office and he so generously welcomed us: "Hello, sober people!" and we hugged and laughed.  Oh you silly, we are never sober...

  
Thus far, nothing has been mentioned of this incident, and I've wondered whether I should put it out there.  Should it just go undocumented?  Should I just keep quiet and resume lurking in the shadows, pretending it didn't happen?  Should I keep my head down, yes sir, no sir, what do I do, sir, where do I go sir, what do I say?  It would be par for the course with my polite southern upbringing, not wanting to cause a fuss.  It is expected that I would keep quiet. 

Because, you know, the greatest trick I ever pulled was convincing the world I didn't exist.

***

Blurt "co-co-editor" Coco Hames fronts The Ettes - Hames on guitar, Jem Cohen on bass and Poni Silver on drums - whose album Look At Life Again Soon and EP, Danger Is, were released by Take Root. Their new Greg Cartwright-produced album Do You Want Power hits stores Sept. 29, and you bet we're gonna have a big feature on the band in our next issue. Check out the band's MySpace page for music and tour dates.

More than a guest post this week... it's a guest Mad Libs. All their idea. In case you needed another reason to fall in love with these guys :-):



Photo by Anthony Byrd

Dear (name of person) Jeffrey,

Before leaving on tour, we made sure to pack the (noun) banana in preparation for two-weeks on the road in (name of country) Kazakhstan. At our first show, we were fortunate to have (name of famous person) Andy Warhol as a support act. By the time we went on stage, the audience, at first, was (adjective) outrageous but by the end of the show they warmed up to us and became (adjective) sugary [...]

A Triple-A radio programming veteran, Kate has served as Music Director of the Loft at XM, Midday Host at WYEP, Evening Host at both WNCS and WUIN, as well as Content Supervisor for Pump Audio. Currently, she's the CEO of Outlandos Music, a new-music discovery service for grown-ups. Kate has been nationally recognized for her ardent presentation of music and her ability to champion talented, compelling artists.

Would you like to know how John, Paul, George, and Ringo destroyed
rock'n'roll? Me too, which is why I read all the way to the end of Elijah
Wald's How the Beatles Destroyed Rock'n'Roll, even as I became
increasingly doubtful that the book would justify its title.

It sure doesn't. In fact, the Beatles feature only in the introduction,
epilogue, and final chapter (out of 17). The narrative runs from around 1890
to 1970, and spends relatively little time with the Fab Four. Paul Whiteman,
an early-20th-century big-band leader, gets much more ink than Paul
McCartney.

In many ways, How the Beatles Destroyed Rock'n'Roll is not a bad book. But
it doesn't deliver on its title, which is a bait-and-switch tease, or even
its subtitle: An Alternative History of American Popular History.

Alternative to what? To rock cultists who celebrate only the most obscure,
least commercial examples of the genre, apparently. But such people aren't
all that common -- they couldn't be, or the music they prize wouldn't be
obscure. And most of us cultists don't deny the appeal of mainstream pop. I
like Future of the Left, but am aware that Taylor Swift sells significantly
better.

While surveying pre-Let It Be pop in some detail, Wald advances two
theses, which are not entirely compatible. The first is that all (or nearly
all) innovation in American popular music comes from African-Americans. The
second is that white and black U.S. musicians were influencing each other
long before the 1950s.

Anyone who's been paying attention already knows the latter. It's convenient
to suppose that 1954, the year of Elvis Presley's debut and Brown vs. the
Board of Education, was a bolt of lightning that demolished cultural
barriers and freed white teenagers to dance to "That's All Right, Mama." But
the endless argument over the "first rock'n'roll record" keeps pushing the
genre's origins back to performers, both black and white, who significantly
predate Elvis.

Wald is aware of that. In his research, he found that Ella Fitzgerald was
singing about "rock and roll" with a ballroom orchestra in 1937. And she
surely wasn't the first person to use the phrase.

If such revelations are less than startling, Wald's book does offer some
entertaining minutiae. I was charmed to learn, for example, about DJ shows
in the early days of TV that illustrated the music with abstract or random
imagery: Detroit's Pat'n'Johnny Show displayed "parakeets, canaries,
hamsters, rabbits, guinea pigs, tropical fish and other animals while
records spin."

I have some quibbles, a few of them related to my hometown, Washington, D.C. To illustrate the importance of brass bands in the earliest days of the
recording industry, Wald notes that Columbia Records's first catalogue,
published in 1890, listed 50 cylinders by the U.S. Marine Band, then under
the direction of popular march composer John Philip Sousa. But he doesn't
mention that Columbia, Sousa, and the Marine Band were all based in D.C. If
Columbia had been founded in New Orleans or Kansas City, its repertoire
would have been rather different. (He also misses the importance to Al
Jolson of a childhood spent in ethnically and racially mixed southwest D.C.,
and Washington's role in "hillbilly" music after World War II.)

To Wald's credit, much of the material to rebut his arguments is right there
in his own book. He charts an 80-year process in which "hot"
African-American rhythms gradually overwhelmed "sweet" Euro-American
melodies and arrangements. Yet he concedes that plenty of black musicians
emulated white ones, and not just during the big-band era. In the 1950s,
when Presley and other rockabilly types were getting raucous, the
top-selling black performers included Nat King Cole and Johnny Mathis.

#How the Beatles Destroyed Rock'n'Roll# seeks to elevate commercial
judgments over artistic ones. It wants to know which performers innovated,
but is more interested in which ones attracted a crowd. Yet these two things
can't be balanced exactly -- as every rock writer knows. While Wald travels
further back in time than many rock chroniclers, the art-versus-commerce
contradictions he encounters won't surprise thoughtful observers.

The book starts to get in real trouble around 1959, when Joan Baez signs to
the liberal-minded folk label Vanguard, rather than Columbia, the domain of
eclectic (and omnivorous) producer Mitch Miller. The new generation of "pop"
musicians who cared more about their idea of authenticity than about
pop-chart success challenges the author's simplistic analysis. Something
happened in the 1960s, and Wald doesn't know what it was.

He continues to assume that pop music is validated foremost by commercial
triumph. So he shortchanges Bob Dylan and the Rolling Stones, despite their
enormous influence, because their records didn't sell all that well. And he
treats the free agents of the rock era like the journeymen of an earlier
age: He writes that "Atlantic used Eric Clapton and Duane Allman on
recordings by [Aretha] Franklin and [Wilson] Pickett," as if 1970s
rock-guitar gods were 1930s session players dependent on producers for a
gig.

Wald's essential gripe is that art-rock separated white music from its black
cousin, and he thinks rock has suffered from that breach. Despite its title,
however, the book spends very little time explaining how everything went
wrong.

It seems to all come down to Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band,
certainly not one of funkiest records of its time. Wald even credits the
Beatles's psychedelic-music-hall period for "opening the way for the Velvet
Underground." Yet the bulk of Velvets's first album was recorded in April
1966, when the Beatles's latest single was "Nowhere Man." #Sgt. Pepper's#
was only 14 months away, but those 14 months would be very eventful.

And the Beatles's acid-washed experiments didn't last long. By 1968, Lennon
would be writing blues-based stompers; in 1969, McCartney would instruct his
own band to "get back to where you once belonged." If the Beatles destroyed
rock'n'roll, they quickly turned to reviving it.

Wald's book reads like a very long introduction to a history that's yet to
be written. He discusses only a few of the myriad influences that led to
psychedelic rock and its various successors, and ends a tale that chronicles
immense diversity and complex interaction by trying to pin late-'60s rock
entirely on a single band. Also, because he's so laden with pop history,
Wald can't hear what's new in post-Beatles music that recasts '50s and '60s
rock.

If the Beatles forever separated white artiness from black earthiness, what
explains the Pop Group's punk-jazz, Talking Heads's Afro-punk, Prince's
new-waved soul, DJ Spooky's art-school hip-hop, or the Dirty Projectors's
high-life guitars? Or the rappers who sampled Kraftwerk, Led Zeppelin, and
the Police?

What really happened to rock in the '60s and '70s was not that it split in
two, but that it splintered into thousands of pieces. A history that
stitched together those fragments would be more useful than How the Beatles Destroyed Rock'n'Roll, which simply hangs new details on a long-established historical framework.

The gap between black and white American music from 1890-1970 isn't that
hard to explain: The country was racially segregated. That a sort of musical
segregation continues -- although it's not so straightforward as Wald
imagines -- is a much more interesting topic. It calls for someone to write
a history, but not an "alternative" one, and not one that attempts to fit
the sprawling jumble that is popular culture into rigid ideological
template.

I hate Led Zeppelin. That's not true. I don't hate them; I just don't buy into all the hype.
I've tried to fit in... especially in high school. I had a couple tapes though never really listened to them. Just kept them around for appearances. I even drew the ZOSO symbols from their fourth album on the white rubber part of my Chuck Taylors in 9th grade. I chalk that one up to peer pressure.
Robert Plant has a cool voice; Agreed. Jimmy Page is a great guitar player; No argument here. John Bonham kicked ass on the drums; No doubt. Individually they are brilliant. But put them all together and you've got a rock decent band, with a jones for old blues songs, but not THE defining moment in rock. They are pretty much the Blue Oyster Cult with better PR.
What most Zeppelin fans won't ever admit (regardless of how often these deep dark thoughts creep into their sweaty little heads) is that the idea of Led Zeppelin, the legend behind the band - everything from the wild groupie sex stories to the rumors of Satan worship - is far, far greater than the band's actually musical contribution.  
Name a song that you can't possible live without. "Stairway to Heaven"?  "Whole Lotta Love"?  "Rock and Roll"?  I'll take a Replacement's song any day of the week.

This is your brain on compassion. Any questions? (PS - support your local animal shelter.)

By Coco Hames

Since I spend a great deal of time out on the road, I am able to report with some accuracy the general and nebulous state of the nation.  I see it in the daylight, the nighttime, uptown, downtown, outskirts, above ground, underground, the denial, fury and/or apathy in hoity toity wine bars and the denial, fury and/or apathy of the griping dives.  And right now, what I can definitely say, is something most people already know: it's pretty rough out there.  Jobs are really hard to come by and, if you're fortunate enough to have one, your money is tight tight tight.  The need to save (instead of spend) shows up in lots of ways, and it doesn't just affect us human people.  In the past six months, I've seen an absolutely unprecedented amount of stray animals on the roads, and I don't just mean back alleys and city streets.  I mean packs of emaciated, mangy dogs trotting aimlessly and insanely through the medians of highways.  And I'm pretty sure we all know what the odds are for those dogs.

My mom said she read an article recently that the financial crunch is just so strong that, among other things, people are having to get rid of their dogs.  And while I am not in the mood to preach the "if you can't afford/take care of a dog, don't effing get one" sermon, I am in the mood to remind you -- if you are so inclined -- to visit your local shelter.

When I was in college my roommate Kiki and I used to foster dogs from the local kill shelter until we could find them a home.  We were the pain-in-the-ass bleeding heart dog savers, and yes, we were very annoying.  Especially to our other four roommates.  But I am glad for what we did, because when a dog has been at a kill shelter for too long, they euthanize them.  That's the way it is.  And while no-kill shelters are a nice idea, the fact is many of the dogs they get are sick, infirm, badly behaved and extremely unlikely to find what we in the biz cloyingly call "a forever home". 

Once, I made the mistake of visiting the Gainesville shelter without intent (you need to have a plan or you WILL go home either extremely upset or with a dog, and FYI the two states of mind are not mutually exclusive) and saw a little crazy guy (he looked like part terrier/part-squirrel) and noticed his euthanization date was the next day.  I didn't really have a choice.  So I took Jarvis home, and while he got along with my other dog, he was totally crazy.  I won't go into details.  He was just crazy.  But I cared for him and he even moved with me to New York.  That pushed him over the edge, all of the people and smells and sounds.  Jarvis was very unhappy and I didn't know what to do; I just knew I couldn't take him back to a shelter.

So I did some research and found petfinder.org.  If you are ever in search of a furry friend, I recommend it highly.  It's a free service that helps list the available rescue animals in your area.  I wrote a clear little bio of Jarvis and put up some pictures, and within a week, a nice lady called me from Maryland explaining her situation.  That their family dog had just passed away, their children were grown, and it was just her, her husband and some horses on a farm outside of DC.  We arranged for Jarvis to have a "visit" for a weekend, and he was so happy.  I still get e-mails from this lady, about every year, updating me on what a blessing Jarvis is and how happy they all are together.  Sometimes she sends me pictures.  Sometimes he's wearing a sweater.

The point is, I had shown petfinder.org to a friend here in Nashville who is beginning her search for a dog.  And I was looking at the available rescue dogs at our local shelters, when I came across a picture.  And yes, I am a sucker, okay?  Just put it out there, yes, Coco is a sucker and a major sucker for matted, emaciated, forgotten bag-o'-bones dogs, okay??  I drove down there and said, you, sad matted stray, you're coming with me.  She was all bones and butchered hair, what was left of her hair was matted and she had a sinus infection.  I'm happy to report that a week later, she's all juiced up on her shots, the sinus infection is nearly gone, and she is as sweet as can be.  She's really funny, really smart, and that is that.  Here's a picture of Lenore.

But Coco, you say, I have allergies/spacial issues/a really nice couch/a cat; I need a special kind of dog, I can't just go to a SHELTER.  To you I say, I am a major snob and have a purebred dog because I had excuses too (lifelong major allergies, fo realz) but if you do your research and know what you are looking for, you WILL find an animal in your area that meets your needs.  I gots needs!  There are of course a lot of things to consider, but if you make a checklist and give it time, you will find a friend you can rescue from a sad fate or situation, while filling your pet needs and enriching your life (BOTH of your lives) immensely.  You can have your cake and eat it too, I promise.

That's all.  Just a reminder.  If you like animals, and you figure you might want one in your life, don't forget your local kill shelter, or your local fostering and adopting facilities.  Petfinder.org, y'all.

***

Blurt "co-co-editor" Coco Hames fronts The Ettes - Hames on guitar, Jem Cohen on bass and Poni Silver on drums - whose album Look At Life Again Soon and EP, Danger Is, were released by Take Root. Their new Greg Cartwright-produced album Do You Want Power hits stores Sept. 29, and you bet we're gonna have a big feature on the band in our next issue. Check out the band's MySpace page for music and tour dates.