I Smell A Hippie

New Year's Eve is also Paul Westerberg's birthday. This year he's 47. Here's a festive version of They're Blind from 10 years ago.

they're blind

Midnight Madness

Memories (of other New Year's Eves) Chandler Travis

available here

Did You Know ?

Thanks to "America's oldest living teenager," Sweden's the Soundtrack of Our Lives now have one of the longest band names. At the behest of Dick Clark, they will be known in the U.S. as "The Soundtrack of Our Lives (T.S.O.O.L.)," beginning with the release of their fourth album, Origins, in March.
According to a spokesman at the band's Universal Records, the label received a letter from Dick Clark Productions last year asking that the rockers change their name. Clark, the seventy-four-year-old music mogul and longtime American Bandstand, owned the trademark to the phrase "Dick Clark presents the soundtrack of your life." He also trademarked phrases like "New Year's Rockin' Eve" and "I like the beat," as well as his "America's oldest living teenager" nickname.

"We were really upset at first, but we have gotten used to it and now we are OK with the situation," says guitarist Mattias Barjed, who had never heard of Clark until the letter. "I've seen footage [of American Bandstand] now. They might have shown it on Swedish television, but I wasn't born back then, so I don't really know."

According to Barjed, the band's moniker came from nowhere in particular. "It was just a good name," he says. "You have something really big to live up to with a name like that. It's like building an enormous roof -- you can make whatever sort of music under that roof."

The band has been releasing music as the Soundtrack of Our Lives in Europe since 1996, and in the U.S. since 2001. Clark registered his trademark in 2000. However, according to the United States Patent and Trademark office, Clark's patent expired in 2002, and thus the band may have acted unnecessarily. Informed of this, a Universal spokesman said that the change will happen anyway, as Origins and its accompanying promotional materials are already being printed with the elongated name.

courtesy of rollingstone.com

did you care?

room without a view - T.S.O.O.L

Return To Tayter Country

One of the great lost albums of the 90's is Joy Rides For Shut-Ins by The Cavedogs. It's out of print but the entire Six Tender Moments EP and a whole bunch of live songs are available on their website Check 'em out !

Merry Christmas !

Wonderland !

The Greatest Christmas Videos Ever !

careful with that egg nog, Eugene

The Philco Brothers wish all a
Merry Christmas Eve





rum sold seperately

Lou Christmas

Lou Reed & Rufus Wainwright sing White Christmas

That's What Friends Are For

from mtv news:
Guns N' Roses bassist Tommy Stinson has responded to claims made last week by Eagles of Death Metal frontman Jesse Hughes regarding the band's departure from GN'R's current tour. Hughes had said that Stinson tossed his bass down in disgust during a November 24 gig in Cleveland, when frontman Axl Rose called the Eagles the "Pigeons of Sh-- Metal." Hughes also said Rose then picked up the instrument and hurled it at Stinson. "Eagles of Death Metal were a suggestion of mine a while ago," the GN'R bassist wrote. "Turns out they were the wrong band for our crowd. They were booed and did not play for as long as they were scheduled to. As for all of the inaccuracies that have been said since, I would like to say that's all they are — inaccuracies. In the past, I have thrown my bass. I have never thrown it at Axl or anyone else in the band, nor has anyone thrown my bass back at me ... yet. Axl has been a dear friend to me for nine years. We have no problem communicating and wish that people would stay the f--- out of sh-- they don't know anything about." ...

Christmas Time

Here's the original version of Christmas Time (sure don't feel like) by The Dogmatics
Christmas Time

Whisper Him Luck

Seems like Sir Paul hurt his hand badly while messing with a candle.
read more here

A Christmal Carol

here's one for the kids

Do You Hear What I Hear?

The Greatest Christmas Videos Ever Part 2

But did you know there were two versions?

All Is Merry And Bright

Elton at the height of his powers

Great Gift Ideas

The Paul Westerberg model guitar from First Act will make a great stocking stuffer.

Available at TOYS "R" US

For the TV buff in your family you can't go wrong with the 25 -disc Get Smart Collection.

"would you believe it's so popular it won't be available until January"

oops?

get it at Time Life

more to come

Yule Love This

This is the best Christmas record ever but since I can't post any tunes you'll have to take my word for it and buy it. Or I could mail you a copy. Or you could buy it!

Beatles Split !

Yes it's true they've finally called it quits
and Blogger is pissing me off !

Don't wanna harp but...

Don't miss the December issue of HARP available on newsstands right now. The letters section is especially good and I think there's some other good stuff too but I'm really enjoying the letters.
No, really check it out.

More Technical Difficulties

I've been locked out of my own fucking blog!

be back soon

Me And The Boys

This is the third NRBQ DVD to be released by MVD in the past couple years. The picture quality on this one is a little suspect but once again the Q shines through. Al Anderson is in top form here.
There are three bonus clips, two of which total about 45 seconds, but the real gem for me is the lip- synch performance of Me And The Boys from The Uncle Floyd Show which I originally saw on TV and was my introduction to the band.
buy it

Technical Difficulties

The audio files on these pages are not working.
In the meantime please visit our sister sites




Philco Brothers Myspace

philcobrothers.com

ANOTHER GIFT FOR YOU

It's never too early for Christmas music.
Especially when it's this good.

christmas in athol

christmas time

buy this now! click here then click the cover.
( this is a great Christmas album!)

twenty or thirty pounds of potatoes or twenty or thirty beers

a turkey on Thanksgiving
like arms for the poor
all we need are
those necessities and more...

the new world
X cover by The Blacks

aquarium drunkard has Alice's Restaurant

Between Us

While watching All You Need Is Cash on VH1- Classic the other night I came to the conclusion that THIS IS MY SPINAL TAP. I even think the Rutles LP is great. I probably listen to it more than I do the Beatles.

teenage fanclub sing between us (rutles cover)

a working man in his prime

For the third time in recent months an episode of Austin City Limits has impressed.
This time it was Van Morrison.
His band, his voice, and his song selection were on top form.
Amazing considering he recorded Gloria over 40 years ago.

brown-eyed girl

Why Ask Why ?

Does it mean I'm a true fan when I buy a remix of an album I'm not even sure I like yet?
Good news. I like it better than the original.


Maybe cause it's shorter.

it's available from smog veil
it's also on itunes.

strawberries yields forever

At one time Strawberries was the only place to buy "records and tapes" in the area. Before that it was department stores where you had to match up the corresponding letter to the price chart. Yeah Strawberries had it all, we thought, till we found Al Bum's and realized there was a whole other world of music out there. Still Strawberries was the main place to go to buy music. In fact I met one of the Philco Bros there. He was a manager working the register and I was buying a Velvet Underground LP. I remember him playing the Dream Syndicate at full volume against strict playlist rules. Well things changed a little when the first CDs started showing up and we realized we could find better music if we drove a few miles down route 9 to Newbury Comics. I would still stop in every now and then to comb the bargain bins and find something amazing that people had passed by for years but for the most part Strawberries was a thing of the past. Now what few stores remained have become FYE (the same company that tried to buy Tower) and Strawberries is no more.

Here are some photos (thanks Bruce) of REM at an in- store appearance at the Cambridge Strawberries. We only got Bryan Adams in Shrewsbury. One more thing I'd like to mention is they hid all the Husker Du albums behind the counter for about a year because they didn't show up for their in-store appearance.
rem at strawberries

hot (love) for teacher

You remember all those Bob Welch classics:

Sentimental Lady
Ebony Eyes
Hypnotized....

and Hot For Teacher?

bob welch-hot for teacher

a man in a purple dress

it's fucking brilliant, isn't it?

Your Favorite T

It never looked as good on you
as it looks on me.

Pink Lemonhead

interview with David Gilmour in Q:
What song do you wish you'd written:
My Drug Buddy by the Lemonheads...But I probably shouldn't say that...
Why?
No, I can't say. I really liked Evan Dando and the Lemonheads. It's A Shame About Ray is a great album.

random notes

It was funny to pick up Rolling Stone yesterday and see the line then there were two before David Fricke's (did I mention I met him?) excellent review of Endless Wire.
read it here
They also used the same picture I did.

Speaking of reviews, I like Robert Christgau's review of Willie Nelson's Songbird but he's wrong about the title track.
hear a sample
He's entitled to his opinion but he's still wrong.

It sounds like the band is playing the wrong Fleetwood Mac song (Dreams maybe?) and Willie might be singing the song for the first time but somehow it works. Like Christgau I wanted to rip this album and fault "the producer" Ryan Adams but I can't. It's Willie and as always he's good.

then there were who

Watching The Who steal the show at The Concert For New York City a few years back confirmed what I had been reading in English magazines. The Who, with Zak (son of Ringo) Starkey in the drummer's chair, were once again a powerful live act. I finally gave in and bought The Royal Albert Hall dvd and was floored. They sounded as good as ever. They continued to tour after losing John Entwistle but Pete still promised a new album and I was gonna buy it no matter how bad the advance tracks sounded. Well it's finally here (take that Chinese Democracy!) and after the opening sounds (some variation on the Baba O' Reily synth) nearly scared me away, I have to say...
It's good.
Not Who Sell Out good.
but good.
Some nice acoustic guitar songs with Roger singing
with Pete singing
a couple mid tempo rockers
and a mini-opera to boot.
I'm glad they're back.
preview Endless Wire
buy Royal Albert Hall dvd

Andrea Lou Connection

Sally can't dance no more, more, more.
How do you like it?

sally can't dance

It's Halloween

almost. here's a nice live version of the Dream Syndicate classic from Steve Wynn and the Miracle 3
halloween

Am I You (66% of a true story)

I was looking at my copy Deliverance by You Am I and someone said "is that the new Jet?" and I said "no that's the old Jet". Yeah, that's what I said.
some You Am I

Super Sessions

I just found a new re-issue of
Mark Lewisohn's great 1988 book
The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions
at Borders for $5.99.
I just found out
they recorded Birthday
on my birthday.

Bard On The Wire

David Thomas of Pere Ubu is the cover boy for the October issue of THE WIRE. Hopefully the lengthy article will help me understand the new album.

download stolen cadillac from the wire

The Lost McCartney Tapes

A new stash of rare Beatle tapes have been uncovered by Heather Mills and they reportedly contain Paul's version of Help!
read more

bonus: Heather explains the name "Beatles"
read more

Reflections

A mere nine months after the October 20 1977 (29 years ago yesterday) Lynyrd Skynyrd plane crash, surviving members Gary Rossington, Allen Collins, Billy Powell and Artimus Pyle made the trek to Doraville Georgia's Studio One to join a who's who of southern rock all-stars and record Super Jam 1.
Narrated by Rossington (strange hearing his voice for the first time but great to have him back), the program was a loose jam featuring covers of some rock, blues, country, and gospel tunes. This song, Reflections, was an original Charlie Daniels composition paying tribute to his late friend Ronnie Van Zant. A studio version was later released on his smash album Million Mile Reflections (yeah the one with Devil Went Down To Georgia) but this version featuring Skynyrd members has a different feel musically and had a bigger emotional impact coming so soon after the crash.
reflections

This version comes from a low quality bootleg CD. I have a cassette from the original broadcast and will eventually transfer it to digital.

Hear N' Aid

We are having trouble posting Philco Brothers songs at the Myspace site. A couple of songs can be found at philcobrothers.com including a remix of general plastering.

Sea Oddity

from cbc.ca
Calling it "the Holy Grail of animation gigs," rock icon David Bowie has completed a voice acting session for cult cartoon hit SpongeBob SquarePants.
The 59-year-old performer voiced a character named Lord Royal Highness for an upcoming episode of the under-sea children's series, which originates on U.S. network Nickelodeon but is also broadcast around the world.
"It happened. At last, I've hit the Holy Grail of animation gigs," Bowie wrote in an online journal entry on his website last week.
The singer said his six-year-old daughter, Alexandria Zahra, is a huge SpongeBob fan.
"Oh yeah! We, the family, are thrilled. Nothing else need happen this year, well, this week anyway."
"It won't air unfortunately for another eight or nine months but then, watch out. Or at least watch."

Miraculous Discography

Most fans of The Dream Syndicate's fantastic Velvets-inspired debut The Days Of Wine And Roses have long since forgotten Steve Wynn. Follow-ups and early solo albums had a hard time living up to the expectations set by the debut. This 2001 album changed all that and he's been on a roll (Static Transmission, tick,tick,tick...) ever since. Recorded in the Arizona desert with his band the Miracle 3 and help from Come guitarist Chris Brokaw and Green On Red key man Chris Cacavas this 2 CD set alternates between garage rock rave-ups and moody velvet-like ballads. So why does it keep showing up in the used bins? I don't know. Why do the Goo Goo Dolls sell millions of albums?

sustain
there will come a day

Kinda Kinks

Just saw an another amazing episode of Austin City Limits on PBS HD. This time it was Ray Davies performing songs from his excellent solo album Other People's Lives with a couple of Kinks classics thrown in for good measure.
next door neighbour

Friday On My Mind

I still think Bash & Pop's Friday Night Is Killing Me is one of the best solo-Replacements albums. This is the b-side of the Fast 'n Hard 45:
Situation

Happy 40th birthday to Tommy who was only thirteen when it began.

A Reminder

reception Friday October 6 5:30-8:00 PM

a bottle of rum

from MiamiHerald.com
Keith Richards' appearance in the second Pirates of the Caribbean sequel descended into chaos after he apparently got so drunk on the movie set, the film's director had to prop him up, IMDB.com reports.
The hell-raising Rolling Stones guitarist finally shot his long-awaited cameo as Johnny Depp's father in Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End earlier this summer, but he is perhaps unlikely to remember the occasion.
Bill Nighy, who plays Davy Jones in the film, told Empire Online that Richards was inebriated by the time the production team retrieved him from his trailer to shoot his scene, and he required a little support from director Gore Verbinski.
The 62-year-old rocker is reported to have remarked, ``If you wanted straight, then you got the wrong man.''

Odds and Ends

The Odd And The Wonderful
paintings by Don Hartmann

October 6-28
MPG Contemporary
450 Harrison Avenue
Boston, Massachusetts

reception:
Friday, October 6, 5:30 to 8:00 pm

mpg gallery

Demons, Tramps, and Thieves

Cher covers Kiss' World Without Heroes, a song co-written by Lou Reed!
world without heroes






buy The Elder it features two songs co-written by Lou !

Someone Find Tommy

It's open season for Replacements reunion rumors.
Paul Westerberg, Tommy Stinson, and drummer Josh Freese played a three song set at the premiere of the animated film Open Season. They performed two songs from the Westerberg-penned soundtrack, Right To Arm Bears and Love You In The Fall, and finished with the Replacements classic IOU.

ROCK STAR: Paul Stanley?

Paul Stanley will be releasing Live To Win, his first solo album in 28 years, on October 24. Has it really been that long?
Paul Announces Tour Lineup

Georgia Rhythm

a photo from the Allman/REM
performance at the Georgia Music Hall Of Fame Awards

Elvis Delivers!

I just had the pleasure of watching Elvis Costello's 2004 Austin City Limits performance on PBS HD. EC and the Imposters ripped through some songs from The Delivery Man and then played the best version of Pump It Up I've ever seen.
Check your local listings and borrow a high-def television.

local listings

Evan Can Wait

from Q Magazine:
Distracted by hard drugs and leggy models, by the time of The Lemonheads' 1996 release Car Button Cloth, Evan Dando was best known as the bloke who hung around with Oasis. One solo album later (2003's Baby I'm Bored) and he's sensibly trading under his band name again, with the rhythm section from '80s US punkers The Descendents. The result is a tougher-sounding, pacier outfit who wisely don't try to embellish the simple-strummed approach. Dando sounds like a man resigned ("We can never do anything about anything anyway," he states in Let's Just Laugh) and if the songwriting isn't quite up to the standard of 1992's high-water mark It's A Shame About Ray, The Lemonheads marks a welcome return.

update 9/29 you can download No Backbone at
lemonheads myspace
listen to the full album

Crack That Whip

The Devo Radiation Suit is a hot Halloween item so order yours today!
iparty