My Published Articles...Start Reading

1. Interview with Alt-Rock Pioneer Bob Mould: http://www.stopsmilingonline.com/story_detail.php?id=975

2.Yo La Tengo album/live show: http://www.stopsmilingonline.com/story_detail.php?id=701

3. Interview with hip hop/spoken word icon Mike Ladd: http://www.alarmpress.com/2537/music-interview/mike-ladd-sci-fi-hip-hop-futurist/

4. Heloise and the Savoir Faire album review: http://www.popmatters.com/pm/music/reviews/57285/heloise-and-the-savoir-faire-trash-rats-and-microphones

5. Interview with Amandla frontman and Ween drummer Claude Coleman Jr. http://www.stopsmilingonline.com/story_detail.php?id=757

6. Air album review:http://www.stopsmilingonline.com/story_detail.php?id=747

7. Infernal Affairs film review:
http://www.stopsmilingonline.com/story_detail.php?id=763

8. The Sea and Cake album review: http://www.stopsmilingonline.com/story_detail.php?id=804

9. Steve Earle album review:
http://www.stopsmilingonline.com/story_detail.php?id=893

10. The Bryds Founder Roger McGuinn interview:
http://www.stopsmilingonline.com/story_detail.php?id=923

11. Interview with actor/director Crispin Glover:
http://www.stopsmilingonline.com/story_detail.php?id=931

12. Review of Walk Hard + John C. Reilly live performance:
http://www.alarmpress.com/1865/concert-reviews/john-c-reilly-croons-in-chicago-for-walk-hard-premiere/

The Decline of Western Civilization Pt. 3

So, I am not writing this as a diatribe to rock promoters, venue owners or the like...I'm writing this as a rock fan whose simple freedoms have recently been infringed upon:I do not like the Anti-Smoke law. I've seen some shit that has been passed down on this fair metropolis...We've all seen facsim in the times of our forefathers but it's never been brought to a head so much as in this time of woe O my brothers...I might be sensationalizing...and of course I'm kidding a bit...but what the fuck is going on in this country when I can be served a double Jack and Coke and not be allowed to follow up said drink with a nice corporate rolled ass and tar fuckstick...who should our loud cracks and angry whomps be directed towards? I think that a rock show is about cigs, and drugs, and debouchery, and ugliness, and nihilism, and all the things that we may escape for a moment or two to touch, or grope, but honestly, I don't want my rock experience to be harshed by a George W-esqe kind of right wing footstomp on the last true bastian of public idiocy. Honestly, it's not about stopping the cigarettes...it's about constant tappings on the shoulder of cigarette smokers and rockers that seriously stops the flow of the show. Shows are about the fans,and the music itself is about what the fans get when they listen to the music in the privacy of their homes, and the venue is an outlet for the fans to connect, for a brief moment, to the live experience of music. This tradition carries a long way...from Hendrix burning a guitar...to Keith Ritchards falling out of a tree...don't fuck it up and don't censor the public-A Friendly Consumer's Opinion: This was written about three years ago...and now it's all over for Chicago smokers and I couldn't be happier.

Thoughts on Grey's Anatomy

There is something to say about our generation, but the writer is not in. We are children of technology, and this albatross around our ankles has held us back. We are made up of cable tv, we drift into obscurity, unless someone will pull the reins back and give us a microphone. We have a voice, and it is not something that can be heard through the computer screen, or the cell phone, or whatever receiver we choose to amplify our echoes. The echoes of the Saved by the Bell after-school gen. We all came home and played the games of our fathers...baseball, basketball, and the energy which we expel on the gamefield will be used on the corporate market. Do we have an original voice? I"ll come out and say it to you. Second draft...and the crying women of Grey's Anatomy will come home on Sunday and feel some kind of peace. They will feel secure...while the drinker's pass time in some kind of sundrenched bar on Clark st. Both of their eyes will not be fully dialated to glimpse the passing parade.

A Jaded Libertarian

I admit that I have lost faith in our government, in many ways that range from corporate strong-arms to outright apathy. Maybe one day we will get a candidate that really speaks to me. Maybe someone with strength of character will emerge from the wreckage. Someone who can spit out the social ball-gag that prevents anyone from admitting that they don't have a family, that maybe they don't have a good press shot for the Midwest, who doesn't have a wife with a blank eyed stare hanging from one arm and two kids itching for a drink on the other. I'm just so tired of posturing and democrats who would sooner beg for another ass-paddling than really stand up against the bullshit and tyranny of the Republicans that make me sleepy and turn the channel. All hail Bill Maher and anyone with a free mind.Long live the new flesh, or rather a pale version of a republican party known only as democrats.I Voted Today!!!

A Perfect Movie

I've mentioned my favorite band (Ween) and if you're interested I thought I'd mention my favorite movie: Goodfellas. In a word...perfect. For my money it is far superior to The Godfather, which follows all the tiresome rules and styles of Old Hollywood. Goodfellas broke new ground, with regards to editing and storytelling, yet the essential element of classic narrative remains the same. We meet Henry Hill, and the film follows him as a teen into his downfall. Shakespeare, O'Hara, Hemingway and everyone in between have written about greatness that gets corrupted, and Hollywood loves the story. In 1990, with nine decades of movies telling this story, Scorese came out with pathos and handguns blazing, and it was completely fucking fresh. As I watch the DVD right now, the same film I've seen almost a hundred times, I'm still completely enthralled and moved to tears. The film never drags, and at 145 mins. that certainly says something. The music, which ranges from Muddy Waters to the Sex Pistols, serves as a background score to murder, drugs, and drinking, and the scope of America throughout four decades. The music never calls attention to itself, but functions as a pulse while the hoods small-step their way through their own sense of greatness. In the denouement, which is simply the greatest twenty minutes ever committed to celluloid, we roll with Henry through the ugly first days of 1980. The Stones "Monkey Man" and Mott the Hoople narrate, along with Henry, the hyper-tweaked day of coke dealing and gun smuggling (complete with hour-by-hour) time-frame of a man trying to swim and drown at the same time. We witness Henry careen between friend and foe, coke line and F.B.I helicopter, and the audience is taken on a visceral joyride as the system breaks down. With the shattering outbreaks of violence, never exploitive, the viewer witnesses brutality as if it were an act of neccessity. For Henry and his crew, along with their inflated egos, it was. These were real people, as Nicolas Pileggi's book details, and they lived like Hollywood gangsters: Marquee icons who had the gaul and the power to whack anyone who got out of line. Scorsese nails the idiosyncratic routines and the minutaie of white-trash boys who reached for the golden ring, and got slammed in the process. It is a perfect film, the reason cinema was created, and when you see Morie and his wife dead in a Cadillac, with the piano coda to "Layla" playing, you know you are alive.

Favorites of 2007

Music:

5. Air: Pocket Symphony (A solid, if not stellar album, but still my fav "chill" album of the year)
4. The National: Boxer (Just got into these guys this year. It's big and not terribly poppy, but some of the best songwriting of 2007)
3. Ted Leo and The Pharmacists: Living with the Living (By far the best and most enjoyable rock record of the year)
2. Kevin Drew: Spirit If...(Broken Social Scene has been my favorite working band for the past few years and this effort, with a few misses, would still rank as a very good BSS effort. Seeing him live proabably bumped this up a few notches since it kicked so much ass and he seems like an incredibly down-to-earth genius)
1. Dinosaur Jr: Beyond (Damnned if I didn't really get into these guys with this release. For some reason I always sort of liked their earlier stuff...I guess it always seemed a bit too noisy and aggro for me. But boy was I wrong. The four tracks that I really like on this album (out of 11) are so fucking good that the strength of those four tracks alone make this my fav of the year.Notable Omissions: Wilco: Sky Blue Sky (maybe I'm just a little burned out, it's a good album, but the overuse in commercials and my IPOD shuffle mode makes it difficult for me to constantly sit with an album unless it really grabs my attention.Ween: La Cucaracha: Sorry Guys...still love ya

Movies:
5. Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story (A late entry, but I laughed harder at the good parts of this than anything else this year)
4. Control: A very somber and non-flashy look at Ian Curtis of Joy Division's brief but excellent run of creativity before suicide.
3. The Diving Bell and The Butterfly (It may seem pretentious of me to put this here, but it's completely beautiful to look at and really makes you value the simple acts of sight and speech, at least for about a few hours after you leave the theatre.)
2. Bug (I don't think anyone saw this, but I've never had such a physical reaction to watching a movie. I actually felt claustrophobic and was actually sweating...I remember needing a drink of water immediately after exiting theatre. It's a really fucked up look at schizophrenia, sadness and drugs. If that doesn't grab you...stay far away.)
This is kind of cheating but I have two very different films sharing
Number 1:
Juno (A very late entry but this is one of those movies that gives you a pleasant tug of recognition in nearly every scene. The whip-smart dialogue by newcomer and former stripper Diablo Cody is so in love with itself that she reminds you of a younger, female Tarantino. But, if you listen to good friends and family talk (try this) think about how your casual conversation would sound to a stranger, especially if you're a teenager. It's better to see a movie in love with dialogue than one that simply serves the plot. Ellen Page is so beautiful and touching in this and Jason Bateman and Jennifer Garner give the most realistic depiction of a young couple in a sham marriage that I have ever seen (he watches Herschell Gordon Lewis movies all day!) You'll leave with a smile on your face...rare that a movie can be so simultaneously self concious yet unpretentious.)
Zodiac (This is by far the best directed film of the year. American Gangster left me cold, but this police procedural is so well crafted with brilliant little details that it feels like a gigantic puzzle piece come together on screen. I can't believe this is the best (came out last Jan. I think) but it's stuck with me all year so Kudos David Fincher on another masterpiece)Notable Omissions:No Country for Old Men: My fav directors left me somewhere in that desolate Texas landscape and I never caught upAmerican Gangster: I think Ridley Scott is pretty hit or miss (Gladiator is so fucking bad) but I thought I would really like this. It just reinforced my belief that Goodfellas is the best gangster movie ever made and...The biggest disappointment in recent memory...The Simpsons Movie: Is it better to burn out or fade away?