I needed to take a shower. Some things are immutable.  You’ve got to show up for appointments on time.  But I couldn’t get up from the computer, I needed to hear "Fireflies" one more time.  And then again.  And again. That’s the mark of a hit record. Not where it is on the chart, how […]

Meat Loaf never made it in L.A.  Spin "Paradise By The Dashboard Light" and an Angeleno will be flummoxed.  Who’s Phil Rizzuto?  Sure, decades later we’ve heard it, but "Bat Out Of Hell" was in no one’s collection, the record got no airplay.  And Billy Joel got little more. Sure, "Piano Man" was a hit.  […]

If you download the explanatory video, the skinny male in the Trailer Choir says the inspiration was the girls at the fair.  Wearing their bikini tops, sporting their muffintops, their beer guts. I know we’re supposed to never eat.  We’re supposed to be so thin that we look skinny on television, which legendarily adds ten […]

Most of my e-mail is from people hyping shoegazers.  White college graduates with thin voices supported by jangly guitars. And if I don’t like what’s being purveyed, I’m seen as being hopelessly out of touch. I’ve only ever gotten one e-mail about Mika, from an old buddy who told me his kids were gaga over […]