It's time once again to review the San Francisco Giants' walkup songs

Just like we did in 2012!  Man, that was two World Serieses ago.  Time flies, etc. I should have been doing this annually but I fell down and couldn't get up.

Let's reprint this Explainer from 2012:

(Walk-up music, if you're not a baseball fan or something, is the music played in the stadium in the time that it takes the player to walk up to the plate - ergo, "walk-up music." For pitchers, it's usually the music that plays when they're warming up. But more than simply that, it is a window into the soul of the player, and should be regarded as such.)

Some players have more than one walkup song.  That's great!  You go, girl.  I, however, am compelled by no law, earthly or spiritual, to discuss every one of your songs.

OK, on to the show.

THE RESPECTABLE

Brandon Belt, "99 Problems" (Beyonce's husband) - Iconic, but I'm not sure it sends the right message when you're coming up to the plate.  What if one of your problems is you let your right shoulder drop?  But you can't argue about the song.

Derek Law, "I Fought the Law" (The Clash) - What you did there, I see it.  But this is such an incredible get-fired-up song that every relief pitcher should use it, whether or not they're named Law or Clash or Joe Fucking Strummer 2.

Brandon Crawford, "Fuck Up Some Commas" (Future) - Finally, a song about the Oxford comma.  I don't know what part of the song they play when Brandon is actually walking to the plate but it is almost guaranteed to have a "fuck" in it and for that it's all worth it.  (Is this the only rap song to mention Groupon by name?  I hope not.)

Sergio Romo, "El Mechon" (Banda MS) - This song is as much Sergio's #brand as facial hair, fist pumping, and striking out Miguel Cabrera.

Javy Lopez, "The Humpty Dance" (Digital Underground) - Javier Lopez is about as old as me so this makes sense.

Joe Panik, "Moment of Clarity" (Beyonce's husband) - It will not surprise you to learn that Jay-Z is heavily represented on every team's walkup music roster.  It's probably because he has a lot of songs that sound like anthems and also sound great in a booming, echoey stadium.

HARD ROCK

Hunter Strickland, "You Shook Me All Night Long" (AC/DC) - I have a fraught relationship with Hunter Strickland. I think he's come into his own as a relief pitcher but he will never know that because he blocked me on Twitter two years ago and APPARENTLY HOLDS A GRUDGE.  Let's be friends, Hunter.  I know I said some very mean things about you but that's back when you were giving away home runs like cops give out badge stickers.  You're better now, and so am I!  We cool?

George Kontos, "Harvester of Sorrow" (Metallica) - Whoever harvests beets, if you ask me!  WACKA WACKA

Will Smith, "Stranglehold" (Ted Nugent) - Oh, too bad we just acquired Will Smith yesterday and now HE HAS TO LEAVE.

NEVER CHANGE, BUSTER

Buster Posey, "Hell on Wheels" (Brantley Gilbert) - Same walkup song he's had since at least 2012, and probably his whole life.  I doubt Buster gives a shit, and some teammate in Salem-Keizer probably picked this for him and he was like "Fine with me, I only care about my family, the Lord, and the Game."

MEANWHILE ON PLANET HUNTER PENCE

Hunter Pence, "My Boo" (Ghost Town DJs) - I don't know why this cracks me up.  Maybe because of this video, using the same music:

this is probably the best thing I have ever done with my life pic.twitter.com/hBy0xkyAqo

— ◢ M I K E D I V A ◣ (@mikediva) May 6, 2016

Life-affirming.

SOUNDS PAINFUL

Kelby Tomlinson, "Christ In Me" (Jeremy Camp)

ADDENDUM

Hope you don't have anything to do this afternoon, because this site compiles walkup music for EVERY PLAYER IN MLB.  Let's see who can find the Worst Walkup Song of All!

(SPOILER: I figured I'd just go straight to Bryce Harper and win AND his are bad but not The Absolute Worst.  He has 5: J. Cole, Sinatra, Bieber, Bassnectar, and Moby.  I am not in the least bit surprised that Bryce Harper finds it necessary to have 5 walkup songs.)

ARTISTS WHO RETURN NO RESULTS WHEN SEARCHING ON THE DATABASE OF ALL WALKUP SONGS IN MLB

Animal Collective
Architecture in Helsinki
Rod Stewart
Elvis Costello
Train
Lionel Richie
Lana Del Rey

PLAYERS WHO USE AT LEAST ONE SONG BY WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART

Prince Fielder

Lyric Deconstruction: "Animal Crackers in my Soup"

Shirley Temple, 1935



Oh, look at the cute little girl singing about animal crackers in her soup!  How sweet!

WRONG.  This shit is fucking DARK.  I didn't really know any of the lyrics until I played it for my kid one day and listened.  It was like a Southern Baptist listening to her kid's Faster Pussycat album for the first time.

Animal crackers in my soup
Monkies and rabbits loop the loop,
Gosh, oh gee, but I have fun,
Swallowin' animals one by one.
In every bowl of soup I see,
Lions and tigers watching me,
I make 'em jump right thru a hoop,
Those animal crackers in my soup

Not too bad so far.  But wait, here comes the second verse:

When I get hold of the big bad wolf
I just push him under to drown
Then I bite him in a million bits
And I gobble him right down!

Holy shit, Shirley.  I'm prettty sure holding an animal underwater to drown it is felony animal cruelty.  Can't you just picture the wolf thrashing violently in the water under Shirley Temple's tiny hands, gasping for breath as the curly-haired monster forces the life from him?

When they're inside me where it's dark

I walk around like Noah's Ark

I stuff my tummy like a goop

With animal crackers in my soup!

The image of a menagerie of animals sloshing around and slowly dissolving in Shirley Temple's stomach acid is too much to bear.  I hope they all died a merciful death before she could sentence to the misery of her portable miniature ark.  Also, "goop" as a term for a kind of person must have gone out of fashion at some point in the last 80 or 90 years.  Maybe it should be "I stuff my tummy like a GOOP," but only if by "stuff my tummy" you mean "browse over a carefully curated selection of hand-grown tropical fruits and high-mountain imported quinoa."

It goes on, but more boringly.  Let's focus on the horror.  No wonder it says "Advisory - the following lyrics contain explicit language" on MetroLyrics.

I would say have a good weekend but I don't think that's possible now.

Coldplay is a gift

Fey British Mom-rockers Coldplay were announced as the halftme entertainment for Super Bowl L.  Predictably, everyone lost their goddam minds.

Colplay playing the Super Bowl? Will they play that one that sounds exactly like all the other ones and is also terrible?

— Andrew Stoeten (@AndrewStoeten) December 4, 2015

Coldplay? seriously? One more reason Goodell must step down

— Matt Powell (@NPDMattPowell) December 4, 2015

Coldplay for a Silicon Valley Super Bowl sounds about right for some reason.

— Niners Nation (@NinersNation) December 3, 2015

Chin up, footballers! It could be so, so, so much worse. Just check out this list of Super Bowl halftime performers.  It is truly a dark tome.

FOR THE FIRST FEW YEARS, it was mostly marching bands, which is fine because no one cares and you can go get more Jell-O with marshmallows in it and a Hershey bar or whateverTF they ate in the late 60's.  The producer of the Super Bowl IV halftime show, in 1970, no doubt had a headful of the cheap and plentiful blotter acid that flooded the market back then because he booked Carol Channing and the Southern University Marching Band, two entities that had almost certainly never been in the same room together.

Super Bowl V, 1971, featured the first appearance of Up With People, a "musical" sensation so bland and earnest it makes It's a Small World look like Cannibal Corpse.  Up With People would return to darken the Super Bowl stage again and again, in 1976, 1980, 1982, and 1986, before they were blessedly sent to a re-education camp in the North Dakota desert and never heard from again.

UPDATE: Commenter Stoney claims to have no memory of Up With People!  Let's fix that.


Shoulda kept your mouth shut, big man.

What we think of as the Event Halftime didn't really start until Michael Jackson did it in 1993.  (Don't even try to suggest it started in 1991, with "New Kids on the Block (NKOTB), Disney characters, Warren Moon, 2,000 [presumably terrified] local children, and audience card stunt")  Suddenly Carol Channing, the USC Trojans Marching Band, and UWP were shunted to the side to make way for more palatable artists like The Blues Brothers (1997) and Big Bad Voodoo Daddy (1999).

The path to Coldplay was paved by similarly self-important anthemizers U2 in 2002.  Somehow-younger-seeming-than-U2 Paul McCartney was in 2005 and the Stones in 2006 but surprisingly not Elton John or Paul Revere and the Raiders in 2007.

(I started looking into this because Olu texted me about Peter Hartlaub's suggestion that Huey Lewis play the SB and I was honestly shocked Huey has never played a SB.  Is there any more perfect SB artist?  He's as smooth and featureless as a beach pebble, and even has an album called "Sports."  It's amazing the NFL didn't invent him solely for the purpose of playing halftime shows.)

So in closing, stop bitching about Coldplay.  At least it's not Charo with the Southeastern Missouri Marching Beavers or whatever they have.

Here's another Music List that maybe only one person will be interested in

Mostly just because GG asked for it.

But then it turned out to be unexpectedly interesting!  Maybe mildly interesting.  Interesting because my list of my favortie songs of all time had one distinguishing demographic characteristic: ALL WHITE DUDES.  But then  I made this list of my favorite songs from the last 5-6 years and it's at least a little more diverse.  I mean, it's still not a Benetton ad, but it's at least a 5 Fulton.

Does Benetton still make ads?  Is that reference still relevant?

Here are My 20 Favorite Songs, 2009-2015.  As always, in no particular order:

TV on the Radio, "Second Song"
Azealia Banks f/ Lazy Jay, "212"
Vampire Weekend, "Worship You"
Elbow, "Leaders of the Free World"
Mikal Cronin, "Weight"
Kanye West, "Black Skinhead"
Kanye West, "Runaway"
Foxygen, "No Destruction"
Generationals, "TenTwentyTen"
Waxahatchee, "La Loose"
Woods, "Moving to the Left"
Ryan Adams, "Ashes and Fire"
Sturgill Simpson, "Living the Dream"
Sturgill Simpson, "You Can Have the Crown"
Carly Rae Jepsen, "Call Me Maybe"
Haim, "The Wire"
Neko Case, "This Tornado Loves You"
Sleigh Bells, "Crown on the Ground"
Lorde, "400 Lux"
Avett Brothers, "I And Love And You"

WHAT DOES IT MEAN.  I don't know.  You'll see that Sturgill and Yeezy are the only two artists with 2 songs each, and boy what I wouldn't give to see that double bill live.  I bet they'd totally be into it too!  Let's make that happen.

Have fun at Treasure Island, everybody!  The National, ugh.  I know, turn in my Dad Card at the desk.

SONG BATTLE: The Aftermath, plus Complete Lists

A while back, I happened to mention on Twitter that I had done the very Gen X white male semi-music-obsessive task of compiling a list of my 20 favorite songs of all time, a task heretofore reserved for those on the spectrum and guys who identify with John Cusack in "High Fidelity."  One thing led to another and before I knew it I was locked in some Mortal Combat for Music Geeks-type situation with Olu wherein we would both go on Burrito Justice's radio show on BFF.fm, Monarch of the Airwaves, and have some kind of competition, I guess, pitting some of my songs against some of his songs.  Seems fine.

(Apropos of John Cusack, please enjoy this Internet thing "John Cusack's 30-Year-Dating History Is B-A-N-A-N-A-S."  John Cusack had sex with Janice Dickinson on a plane!  Janice Dickinson [who is on this season's Couples Therapy, BTW] is CRAZY but in that really kind of disturbing way and not the fun throws-plates-on-the-floor-at-parties way.)

AAAANYWAY it was lots of fun and we probably only bored about half the people listening, which would be a new personal best for me.  If you were doing literally anything worthwhile yesterday and missed it and now your life is an Empty Void and has No Meaning, you can listen to it here.  NOTE: If your life is an Empty Void, you will especially enjoy the Joy Division vs. Elliott Smith duo about halfway through.

We didn't get to all our songs, so in the interest of completeness, here are our lists.

TK's Top 20 Songs of All Time

in no particular order

(Like I said, I first compiled this list in 2009.  Before the show I went back and made a few changes because I've grown as a person since then and also I fucked up in a few places like putting "Ghosts" by The Jam on the original list instead of "In the City," which is about 1000x better.)


First, the ones that made the show:

Rolling Stones, "Monkey Man"
Guided by Voices, "Everywhere with Helicopter"
The Jam, "In the City"
Wolf Parade, "Shine a Light"
The Clash, "Rudie Can't Fail"
Beulah, "Landslide Baby"
The Weakerthans, "Reconstruction Site"
Elvis Costello & The Attractions, "Beyond Belief"
The Shins, "So Says I"
The Libertines, "Can't Stand Me Now"
The Replacements, "Bastards of Young"
The Velvet Underground, "Cool It Down"
Elliott Smith, "Independence Day"

And the ones you didn't hear:

The Wrens, "Ex-Girl Collection"
Trashcan Sinatras, "Circling the Circumference"
R.E.M., "Disturbance at the Heron House"
Modest Mouse, "Gravity Rides Everything"
The Pogues with Kirsty MacColl, "Fairytale of New York"
Pavement, "Spit on a Stranger"
Game Theory, "We Love You Carol and Alison"

And now presenting Olu's Top 20 Songs of All Time

also in no order that I'm aware of


The ones you heard:

Built to Spill, "Else"
DJ Shadow, "The Six Day War"
Blonde Redhead, "I Am Taking Out My Eurotrash" [Ed: This wins for Best Song Title of the Day, if nothing else]
The Roots, "You Got Me"
Fugazi, "Waiting Room"
Cat Power, "Cross Bones Style"
Guided by Voices, "Watch Me Jumpstart"
Joy Division, "Twenty Four Hours"
Brand Nubian, "Slow Down"
The Pharcyde, "Passing Me By"
Galaxie 500, "Ceremony"
Bill Withers, "Who Is He and What Is He To You"
Shannon, "Let the Music Play"

And here's what Olu left on the bench:

GZA, "Duel of the Iron Mic"
Sonic Youth, "Tunic (Song for Karen)"
Gossip, "Heavy Cross"
Souls of Mischief, "93 'til Infinity"
Nas, "New York State of Mind"
Notorious B.I.G. f/ Methid Man, "The What"
Elliott Smith, "2:45 a.m."

Olu also noted that he was "missing" 2 songs which means I guess they'd be on there if he had a redo, The Clash, "Guns of Brixton" and Neutral Milk Hotel, "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea."  You know what?  I might put NMH's "The King of Carrot Flowers" on my list if I did it again.

Who won, you ask?  Who knows?*  It seemed pretty evenly split to me.  And it's really not about the competition.  It's about the spirit of togetherness and enjoying good music.

*I won.

I'm looking forward to the next one!

Today in Our Garbage City: Civic Design by Chuck E. Cheese

If you think the Country Bear Jamboree at Disney World is cultural caviar, I've got some good news, via Willie Brown's weekly column in the Chronicle:

If things go according to plan, Tony Bennett won’t be leaving his heart in San Francisco much longer.

He will be keeping it here as part of bigger-than-life statue atop Nob Hill, in front of the Fairmont Hotel.

The sculpture is being made by local artist Bruce Wolfe. Tony will be posed as if he were singing, and the statue’s base will be rigged with technology that will play his signature “I Left My Heart in San Francisco” whenever someone walks by.

Fundraising for the project is being lead by Charlotte Shultz and Fairmont general manager Tom Klein. The idea is to honor the song, the singer and the Venetian Room, where the singer and song came together to make so much magic.

It’s going to be one heck of a tourist draw. Can you imagine how many people will be hopping on those little cable cars that climb halfway to the stars for a selfie?

The hope is to have it done by August, when Bennett will celebrate his 90th birthday.

Madre de Dios.  A robotic Tony Bennett, doomed for all eternity to sing one song over and over and over again.

At least until the Robot Revolution happens and the Bennettron 3000 is free to exact a horrifying revenge on Charlotte Schultz and Tom Klein.

Seriously though, Jesus fucking Christ, who thinks this is a good idea?  I also have some technical questions about how this is going to work.  If it sings "whenever someone walks by," does it start over again?  Because a lot of people walk by there and I'm imagining the first 2 notes of the song on an endless hiccuping cycle.  Or will the song just be playing all the way through, 24/7?  HOPE YOU LIKE THAT HOTEL GUESTS.  Some VP of sales from Cincinnati, driven mad by sleep deprivation, is going to yank Tony's robotic voicebox and become a civic hero.

This is the kind of cheeseball garbage that fucking Myrtle Beach would turn down for being too tacky.  There are a million ways to honor Tony Bennett but this is the worst anyone could think of.  Why don't you just loose an army of Roombas with speakers taped to the top, circling the city nonstop, each blaring the song on infinite repeat?  Then everyone can enjoy it!  

Seriously, what the fuck.

Your Complete 2015 Guide to Complaining About the Outside Lands Music Festival

1. The Lineup

Wilco?  Mumford & Sons?  The Black Keys?  More like Outside Dads, amirite?  And Elton John, for Chrissake?  That's not dad rock, that's great-grandad rock.  At least there's not a comedy joke band as a headliner, like they had one year.

Did you hear what Wilco did at the Pitchfork festival a couple of weeks ago?  The day before the thing started, they released a new album on iTunes or something and then they started their set at the festival by playing the entire album all the way through.  "Hey, we're Wilco, thanks for coming, here's 12 songs you've never heard before, fuck you."

2. Ticket prices

$135 a day, or $325 for 3 days.  That's expensive!  Mumford doesn't need any more of your money.  He'll probably just give it to Carey Mulligan anyway.

3. They shut down the whole park for weeks

via Twitter celeb Miche:

The damn festival's only for three days!  Why you keeping me out of my park that I pay good tax money to use for 13 days!  Or 12 days.  I don't remember whether you count the start and end days or how that works.  Anyway, they fence off a big section of the park.  It sucks!

4. Muni sucks

I mean, generally, but especially on the festival days, anywhere west of Van Ness or near a BART station.  Imagine trying to get home and waiting for a 5 Fulton only to see it zoom by without stopping, packed Tokyo-subway-like with horrible stoned teens wearing fringe vests and stupid hats.  And forget taking Uber anywhere; usually it's 1700x surge pricing or some shit.

5. Literally get off my lawn

If you need a bottle of Fireball during OL for a practical joke or to clean engione parts, good luck finding one because all the neighborhood liquor stores are sold out because all the execrable teens who were recently jamming up the Muni are now kneewalking drunk and peeing on your stoop.  That's right, if you live anywhere near GG Park this weekend, get ready for the Drunk Teen equivalent of the Mariel boatlift, as wave after wave of them crash upon your shore.  You can't even turn the hose on them because you might accidentally get some Drunk Teen runoff on your property.  Gross.

6. The Noise

Outside Lands features heavily amplified music that, depending on the weather conditions, is often audible well outside the park.  I made this map to help you evaluate your personal risk.

The best thing you can do is FLEE THE AREA.

Things that used to be cool or at least tolerable and are now almost certain dbag markers

Audis

Mohawks

Superpremium vodka

Coachella

Private planes

Cologne

MDMA

Working in the technology industry

Burning Man

Being a DJ

SOMA

As predicted, most other State Songs are pretty lame

STATE SONGS 2: THIS TIME IT'S PERSONAL

Remember a couple of days ago when we talked about how California needs a new State Song and then Burrito Justice went on his radio show and talked about it some more?  That was fun.  I said in that last post that we would look at other state's State Songs.  This is me delivering on that admittedly boring promise.

Here's the list.  Of note is the fact that only New Jersey has not seen fit to name a state song, which is cool because everyone knows the Sopranos theme is the New Jersey State Song.

Let's get the winners out of the way first.  #1 is Georgia, whose state song is "Georgia on My Mind," predictably enough, as sung by Ray Charles.




Give you chills.  OK, that's it.  The others are all pretty much crap, except maybe "Tennessee Waltz," which is a pretty great song, and "Do You Realize??" by the Flaming Lips, the Official Rock Song of Oklahoma.  What the fuck Oklahoma.  Oklahoma is so conservative they think Copernicus was a dangerous radical and running away is the only acceptable form of birth control and they let a bunch of acid gobbling freaks write the State Rock Song.  Yes I know the Flaming Lips are from Oklahoma thank you.

Tennessee, not content with just one Official Song, had to go and get fucking 10 Official Songs, including "A Tennessee Bicentennial Rap: 1796-1996," which is performed by an elderly white woman and is not something you would want to listen to willingly.

Most of them are just "State Name" or "My State Name" or "Oh State Name," but once in a while you get an outlier like "Here We Have Idaho," which sounds like someone is going over a map with a customer in a cartography store, trying to convince them to make a purchase by pointing out the completeness of the store's Official USA Map.

During our State Songs discussions yesterday, I learned about the doomed attempt to make "Roadrunner" by the Modern Lovers the Official State Rock Song of Massachusetts.  Massacusetts has taken the, to my mind, fun and inclusive approach of having a variety of State Songs in different genres, such as a State Folk Song ("Massachusetts," by Arlo Guthrie) and, charmingly, a State Polka ("Say Hello to Someone From Massachusetts," Lenny Gomulka virtually commands).

New York has "I Love New York" which has not aged well and sounds like a shampoo commercial from 1978.  Obviously they need to replace it with "Empire State of Mind" like yesterday.

And a final shoutout to Washington state, which has seen fit to have an "Unofficial Rock Song," namely "Louie Louie."  We gotta go.

Let's get a new State Song, California

If you watch as much TV as I do, you've almost certainly been bombarded with those Jeep ads featuring what sounds like a scratchy 78 of a guy singling/warbling an old timey song.




At first I figured it was just some old song that happened to be about California and the commercial people used it because it's a targeted ad or whatever.

But no, when I bitched about it this weekend on Twitter it led me to do some research and by research I mean using Google on my phone and what do you know, it's the fucking Official State Song of California.  The cover for the sheet music is pretty terrific.

And has since been repurposed by other artists:

From 3 Fish Studios. This is beautiful and you should order a print.

I'm getting sidetracked here.  I don't come to praise "I Love You, California," but to bury it.  It's got a nice heart but it's a little outdated.  Let's trash it just like we do with everything else in the world and get a hip new Official State Song.

Look, here's a handy list of like 5000 songs about California.  Who's got time to listen to all those?  More importantly, why would you willingly listen to a Red Hot Chili Peppers song?  ("Parallel Universe," apparently, is a Song About California.)  No, let's just get to the finalists.

Our first finalist is "Estimated Prophet," by the Grateful Dead.




Hey, nobody said it had to have "California" in the title. Here's the chorus:

California, preaching on the burning shore
California, I'll be knocking on the golden door
Like an angel, standing in a shaft of light
Rising up to paradise, I know, I'm gonna shine

Nice, huh?  Plus it's the fucking Grateful Dead.  Can't get much more California than that.

When this came up on Twitter, several people naturally went to "California Über Alles" by the Dead Kennedys.




Little did the DKs know that when they wrote this in 1979, Jerry Brown would still be governor in 2015. Just not all in a row. Anyway, I'm not sure it'll work because it has a lot of dated references.  The song should be timeless.  Still a fucking kickass song.  Uber should use it in their ads!  Ho ho ho, that would be a quite a scene.

Probably any song by Best Coast, like "The Only Place," for example.




The only problem is that they don't say the word "California" anywhere in the song so fucking Oregon or something could scoop it up.  Oh right, there's no sun in Oregon.  But you get the point.  Can't have a state song without "California" in it.

Our final finalist needs no introduction.



Hard to argue with that. And kids, that's how "California Love" became our new Official State Song.  If you have other/better ideas, do share.

P.S. Next time we'll look at other state's State Songs, which I am tentatively forecasting will be lame as fuck.

UPDATE: I almost forgot about "California" by Quasi, which is as wry and sharp as a Dorothy Parker bon mot:



There, that should about do it.

Show Report: The Replacements, Nob Hill Masonic Center

The Replacements are a group of older gentlemen who play music.  I think I was 15 or 16 when I bought my first Replacements album.  From a record store.  With cash, because credit cards hadn't been invented yet.  They had a moment in the 80's and then a couple of them died and one of them played in Guns N Roses for a while, surprisingly.  Now they're touring again!  Good for them.

We met up at the Summer Place, a divey bar a couple of blocks from the Nob Hill Masonic Center, which hosts music shows when the #Illuminati aren't in there doing up the New World Order.  The Summer Place looked like a Halloween party where a bunch of middle aged people were dressed up as record store clerks in 1988.  Someone put some Replacements songs on the jukebox which felt a little too much like wearing a band's t-shirt to that band's show to me but hey it's a free country.

It was my first time at the NHMC.  Nice room, good sound, all that stuff.  John Doe was opening and I know he's a legendary figure in punk history and blah blah blah but all his songs sounded like a truck commercial.

The crowd was so fucking great because I finally WASN'T THE OLDEST PERSON AT THE SHOW.  It was so dadcore that it made other shows look like day care.  A sea of salt and pepper bobbing along to songs that were fleetingly popular when cigarettes cost 99 cents and Barack Obama was bogarting joints at Harvard Law.  My people had been summoned home.  Look, everybody, I can still fit into my Descendents shirt!

The band was great, of course.  I'm 6'4" and am used to having no trouble seeing at shows.  Hilariously, just as they started, a guy even taller than me came and stood right in front of me.

The Replacements used to be famous for their shambling, insanely drunk shows.  At their advanced age, they can't really drink three 40's of Mickey's and then play anything resembling a coherent show, so instead they just pretended to be drunk.  At least that's what Stephen thought.  Who knows?

Here's the setlist, or at least the closest approximation that Setlist.fm users have cobbled together.  They played pretty much everything you wanted to hear.  "I Will Dare" was messy and fun.  Paul Westerberg forgot most of the words to "Bastards of Young."  I loved the cover of "20th Century Boy" because it's objectively one of the best rock songs of all time so how could you not.  I left shortly before the end so I missed the last 2 or 3 songs but I have to get up at 5:40 in the morning so give me a break.

It was a fucking blast.  Now that the Pixies, Pavement, and The Replacements have all played reunion shows, all I need is for the Smiths and Jason & the Scorchers to get back together and my whole record collection from high school will be complete.  OLD N PROUD.

(Oh, one note - they close the bar apparently at 10:15 or so.  Why you gotta do that to me, NHMC?  There was a lot more music left!)

Look upon the face of evil

Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez wrote the songs for "Frozen." If you have a child[*], these are who you can blame for having "Do You Want to Build a Snowman" stuck in your head for the last year.

[*] I don't have a male child, so I don't know if Frozmania is gender-nonspecific, but as far as I've heard, it seems to be at least a girl-centric phenomenon.  The protagonists are both girls, then young women, and the men in the film tend to be either lovable goofs or duplicitous schemers.  Maybe that's why.

You may not probably don't know this, but Robert Lopez also co-wrote The Book of Mormon, a fairly overrated but somewhat enjoyable musical better known as a creation of the South Park dudes.  The only thing Frozen and The Book of Mormon have in common are the fact that they both involve musical notes.

It is also claimed that Robert is an EGOT winner (i.e., Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony), but he won a Daytime Emmy, which I think you can win just by wathcing enough episodes of Judge Judy.  I might have won a Daytime Emmy and the notification is stuck in my spam folder.  Until he wins a Real Emmy, his EGOT comes with an asetrisk.

Anyway, those of you without kids may be wondering what I'm going on about because you don't have to listen to the Frozen soundtrack - or, indeed, watch the Disney film of the same name - over and over and over and over.  I don't know what it is about that movie but our 2-year-old is absolutely entranced.  It's basically the only thing she will sit still and watch all the way through which is actually kind of nice when you're home and need to unload the dishwasher.  What's not so great is how we have to listen to "Do You Want to Build a Snowman" and "Let It Go" EVERY SINGLE MORNING in the car on the way to day care.

I guess I'm kind of glad she isn't that crazy about Olaf's song any more, because I actually kind of like it and it hasn't been ruined by being forced to hear it 250 times.




Not bad, huh? If that really is Josh Gad singing, he's pretty good at singing!

There's no real point to this post.  I'm just sick of the Frozen soundtrack and needed to let it out.  The other day I had this realization, and the actual words as they formed in my head were "Blogging is just about seeking and sometimes obtaining validation."  This is so blindingly self-evident that I felt bad for even thinking it.  So this post, I guess, like every other post, is a naked attempt to get validation, in this case for the relatively uncontroversial position that kids like Frozen and the soundtrack is wearing me down.

Here's what I have to look forward to, I guess.  These are movies I have never seen but expect to see a lot of, soon:

The Lion King
The Little Mermaid
Beauty and the Beast
Any of the Cars movies
Aladdin
Pocahontas
That one that looks like it's set in New Orleans that I can't remember the name of

I hope I never have to watch Up again.  That was a total snooze.

Can you eat at the Rainforest Cafe and live to tell about it? Possibly!

Last Wednesday was my daughter's second birthday.  Happy Birthday Beyonce!  We took the day off work and went to Fisherman's Wharf to see the sea lions and ride the carousel and that kind of shit.  A couple of observations: (1) if you have to go to Fisherman's Wharf, it is much, much better to go on a Wednesday in March than, say, a Saturday in August; and (2) Pier 39 is still as terrifying and touristy as ever.  A shop that just sells puppets!  A man wearing a Bikini Inspector t-shirt!  Italians!

Then we went to eat at the Rainforest Cafe, which is what would happen if the Jungle Cruise at Disneyland opened a restaurant.  Lots of animatronic animals that go off every few minutes and a very loud soundtrack of Reggae for White People.  You enter, of course, through the Gift Shop, where one might purchase such items as a "Bag of Rocks" for $6 I swear to God I am not making this up.  I was hoping it would just be a random bag of gravel and sand but it's those polished rocks but still.

The actual restaurant is upstairs.  The best way I can describe the odor is that it smells like a wet dog.  I guess after years and years of dampness (and it is really humid or something in there) you just can't get the smell out of the carpet any more.

GODDAMIT this picture turns sideways when I post. Fucking Blogger.  Seriously I should have broken up with you a long time ago. Is it impossible to edit pictures in WordPress?  Because in Blogger you have to fucking join Google+ or some shit just to edit pictures.  Fuck that.

That was the view from our table.  The tiger would go off with a loud recorded roar every five minutes or so.  The elephant in the background flaps its ears back and forth.  The kid, of course, found this all delightful.

The food was not as bad as I thought, somewhere between airport and hotel banquet.  It was expensive as fuck, though.  Lunch was $64 after tip for 3 of us and we didn't even have booze, although RC is not shy about pushing fruity tropical drinks on you like you're on spring break.

But fuck it, the kid had a blast and it wasn't anywhere close to as bad as I imagined it would be.  Plus our server, Oscar, was incredibly friendly and nice and he must get stiffed by Europeans all day and to stay that nice must really take it out of you so I tipped him like 25% and should have gone higher but by that point I was starting to feel dizzy and overwhelmed and that tiger kept yelling at me.

There's also a downstairs bar that wasn't in use when we went.  On the way out there was a guy using a selfie stick (ugh) to take a picture of himself in the empty bar.  Where are you in your life when you're using a phone on a stick to take a picture of yourself alone in an empty Rainforest Cafe bar.  Are you shooting an ad for Despair?

Anyway, if I had an extra $100 burning a hole in my pocket and was at Fisherman's Wharf around lunchtime, I might go back.  Not alone, though.

We Were Promised Better Band Names

IN THE BEGINNING it was easy.  If you had a band, you picked an object, put a "The" in front of it, recorded a three-chord song, and died penniless and broken.  The Platters, The Shirelles, The Temptations, The Beatles, The Doors, The Rolling Stones, The Animals.  Even Bill Haley and the Comets, still one of the best band names of all time.

That got boring.  We had to branch out.  But with greater choice comes greater opportunity for error.  And lo, upon these lands was sown much error.

I'm not even going to get into the obscure bands who will never get a chance to have their terrible name widely known.  If you want to find your own obscure horrible band name, feel free to peruse the master list of SXSW bands and discover your own Rangleklods or Guantanamo Baywatch there.

No, these are just my Least Favorite Band Names.

First of all, we have the leftovers: Leftover Salmon and Leftover Crack.  One reminds us of rotting fish and one sounds like something an 8th grader trying to sound edgy would think of.

!!! is annoying just for the sake of being annoying.

The Morning Benders had a perfectly good name and then blew it by changing it to POP ETC, a truly horrible name.  (They changed the name because "bender" is apparently a derogatory British term for gay.)

Jam bands have a long and storied history of choosing terrible names, like The String Cheese Incident and Umphrey's McGee, and fuck it, for that matter, Phish.

Hoobastank and Kajagoogoo and Slightly Stoopid and basically anything with two O's in a row.

Panic! at the Disco is a Terrible! Band Name.

I started thinking about this because I was recently introduced to Australian band Dick Diver.  It makes no difference that this is a character in a Fitzgerald novel.

(There are some band names that are obviously intended just to be outrageous and taboo, like Anal Cunt, but that doesn't bother me nearly as much as Perfect Pussy, which is just horrible.)

There is one that stands above all others, though.  This "Israeli psytrance/ electronica/psychedelic/indie duo" (thanks Wiki) have a name befitting such a terrifying-sounding description.  Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Worst Band Name of All Time:

HEADLINES ARE ALWAYS MISLEADING!!!! I mean, don't believe everything you read.

Have you heard about MEASLES PARTIES!!!??!!  It's all the rage in clueless Marin County, where Uber-privileged parents who refuse to vaccinate their children are INTENTIONALLY exposing them to measles so they'll get the disease and be done with it!

It made for a great story because it played on a current fear (measles spreading as a result of non-vaccinated kids) and allowed us to look down on a privileged group (dopey Marin parents who don't vaccinate).

It smelled like bullshit from the beginning to me.  Here's the Ur-story where it all started, "Health Officials Discourage ‘Measles Parties’."  And here's our key section:

She was approached recently by a friend who knew her kids were unvaccinated. The friend offered to help set up a play date with another child who was sick.

“She said, ‘I know someone who has the measles, would you like to be connected with them?’” Schiffman said.

That's it.  The "reporter" made no effort to contact this mysterious "friend" or otherwise verify this story.  Instead, she just ran with it.  Measles parties!  Makes for a great story.  Of course it all turned out to be BS.

In other PANIC!!!!! news, there was this tweet from SF Weekly:

Yikes! Hemlock Tavern's days may be numbered http://t.co/JKo3b5EX83
— SF Weekly (@SFWeekly) February 10, 2015

I guess all our days are numbered, so it's not really news.  Eventually the Sun will expand to envelop our planet and the Hemlock and every other venue will host its last show.  But for a music scene reeling from the loss of venue after venue, this seemed like terrible news!  Unless you read the article.

Anthony Bedard, the Hemlock's longtime booker (not to mention a staple of the city's punk scene and the man behind the genius Twitter account Folder Rock) echoed that statement in an email to SF Weekly. "The Hemlock has an ironclad lease that runs through the summer of 2021," he wrote. "After that, it's within the realm of possibility that the building owner may opt to not renew our lease." 

So the Hemlock itself foresees ongoing live music into 2021.  But I guess "Yikes! Hemlock Tavern may only have live music for the next 6 years" isn't as catchy a headline.

On a lighter note, and not to mercilessly rag on SF Weekly, but this:

Only in San Francisco: A doggie fashion show http://t.co/6GRdu9i0Hr
— SF Weekly (@SFWeekly) February 9, 2015

"Only in San Francisco" used to mean something. Like when you saw something so outrageous or unconventional you couldn't imagine it existing in any other city.  Like, "Oh, I'm off to my Vegan Polyamorous Texas Hold 'Em Meditation Group." "Only in San Francisco!"

A doggie fashion show is the opposite of "Only in San Francisco."  Not because it's so normie it makes clip-on earrings look like scarrification, but because they have doggie fashion shows in Pittsburgh, PA, Scottsdale, AZ, Providence RI, Somerville, Massacusetts, and probably any other city with at least two Pomeranians and two crazy people who like to dress them up.  A tech douche fashion show might be "Only in San Francisco," but a doggie fashion show most certainly is not.

The Bachelor: Badlands, or Worst Lands?

Was it just me, or was this episode boring as fuck?  I mean, we all put up with a lot to watch this shit, but this one really seemed to drag for some reason.  Anyway, we pick up in media res with The Widow Kelsey collapsed on the floor, suffering from a seemingly fatal case of crazy bitch.  Medics (Australian, I think - is there some reason why every reality show is contractually obligated to use Australian medics?) huddle around, trying to pump sane juice into her.  Sadly, she lives and returns to the Girl Cave cackling madly and talking about brownies.

So now we have a Rose Ceremony up top!  It's like going through a car wash backwards.  Teen Mom and Who The Fuck Is Samantha are out.  Samantha, we hardly knew ye.  Good luck in your new location.

We have unquestionably run out of locations to visit because we're going to Deadwood, South Dakota.  Oh, for a Deadwood/Bachelor crossover so I can hear Al Swearingen telling Kaitlyn that the only motherfucking reason to live is to make sure that other fucking cocksucker dies.  ABC has also run out of hotel budget because the girls are staying in a Holiday Inn with a corrugated steel exterior that looks like it was just flown in from Guantanamo.

What a fucking dump.  Anyway, one on one date with Becca, who looks like she played softball in college and orders her lingerie from J. Crew.  Unbelievably, she says she's never ridden a horse.  That is a bunch of bullshit, Becca.  There's some outdoor shit and horseback riding and a campfire and I don't know how she's going to eat that kebab because she never fully opens her mouth.  Farmer hits her with his usual "Where do you see yourself in 5 years" question and she says "Heading up the entire East Coast region!"  Not really.  I don't know what she said but I'm sure it was boring.  They have a long sleep-inducing conversation about feelings and I can tell she's a virgin because she wants 4-6 kids.

Group date!  These fillies are going to write some country music, aided by a park bench hobo and a carpet salesman wearing a cowboy hat.

Oh, it's famous country music people Big & Rich.  I like the bum looking one, he seems like he's drunk the whole time.  There's a lot of nothing and then Farmer gets up to sing.  He sounds like a Downs kid doing karaoke.  Of course Cruise Ship Carly sees this as her *BIG* *MOMENT* and does a full single spotlight ballad.  Then her eyebrows leap off and perform "La Cucaracha" to a mostly disinterested room.

Day turns to night and we're still hanging around this bar.  Just between you and me, Deadwood appears to be such a fucking tourist hole it makes Myrtle Beach look like Brussels.  Jade says she can see herself being in Iowa but she's from LA and she's thinking Field of Dreams instead of existential boredom and corn.  Farmer grabs SparklyBritt and they run off to a Big & Rich show, which is Britt's "virgin country music experience" like she's just desperate to have something virgin about her.  There's some rose thing and B&R play their carefully calibrated corporate rock/country.  They're like Kid Rock without the edge.  When they go back to the rest of the chix, everyone is SO MAD.  At least Baby Voice manages to squeak out that she's "here for the right reasons," so it's not a total loss.

Let's get to tonight's Main Event, the Widow Kelsey vs. Virgin I Cage Match of Death!!!!!!!  Everyone hops into a helicopter and flies over Mount Rushmore.  Virgin "literally with this can't even" and that might be the most coherent thing she's said so far.  Anyway, they land in some Badlands where there just happens to be a canopy bed and the whole thing looks like a Pink Floyd album cover.  Virgin puts Kels on blast and tells Farmer how everyone just hates her so much.  Natch Farmer immediately snitches her out to Kels, who sadly doesn't kill the Virgin.  Everyone cries.  Virgin would be a good match for anyone looking for an emotional Costa Concordia who needs psychiatric treatment if she gets a raspberry filling chocolate from the See's candy mix.  In the smartest move of the season, Farmer kicks them both off and that's it for this week.

Next week we're probably going to Bloomington Indiana, the way things are going so far.

What are we all doing for New Year's Eve 20 Years Ago?

Welcome to another installment of It Was 20 Years Ago Today, in which we bore readers in a very specific way: by looking at old newspapers and finding out what was going on 20 years ago.

HEY HOW ABOUT NEW YEAR'S EVE 1994???!!??

I know it's not today, but close enough.  I have here ads I carefully copied from the December 28, 1994 SF Weekly.  We're all 20 years younger!  Let's go do something tonight, for Chrissakes.  The Internet hasn't really taken off yet so we can't stay home and post cat pictures on the Tumbeler.  Let's go have some FUN.

What's going on at Paradise Lounge?

The Loved Ones was local fave Bart Davenport's old band.  I don't think I ever saw them.  The Broun Fellinis might even still be around.

Over at Great American, we've got a "Cajun New Years Eve" f/ Beausoleil.  I don't know what the draw of a Cajun NYE in SF is but whatever.  Also look at the night before, with Cake last on the bill in tiny print. Sadly, they would go on to much bigger type.

The Cramps at the Fillmore.  I think the Public Enemy show a few nights earlier would be about 1000 times more interesting.

Finally, we have something called "Mr. Jenkins' Big Block Party" at Embarcadero Center.  I have no idea who Mr. Jenkins is, but the lineup is kind of incredible.

The Brothers Doobie and Neville on the main stage.  And look at the "Big Bang Alternative Stage," with Cracker and the Meat Puppets!  (Also Engine, who later became Engine 88 and put out a great album called "Clean Your Room."  Here's a video of them performing the song "Pelican" at the 1995 Haight Street Fair.  I was actually in the audience at this very performance, back when the idea of going to a street fair didn't give me full body wretching.  Plus I lived right off Haight at the time.  Here's a studio version of another song, "Des Moines," with much better sound.  Now I have gone down the Engine 88 rabbit hole.  Anyway.)

$65 for Mr. Jenkins' Big Block Party.  That seems a bit steep, Doobie Brothers or not.

When it's all said and done, I think I would have been just fine going to the late, great 20 Tank Brewery's NYE party, where $15 includes a reserved table and a round of beer & pizza.  20 Tank was great.

TK's Albums of the Year

I'm not a Professional Music Critic, so nobody really cares, but I was going to write about Debra J. Saunders latest stupid, dumb column because it made me so mad but then I went "You know what?  It's Christmas.  Let's just be happy and not mad."  There were so many good albums this year.

I was gonna do a video for each one but fucking Blogger keeps deleting the videos so fuck it. Whoops, there goes my Xmas Spirit.

1. Sturgill Simpson, Metamodern Sounds in Country Music

You haven't lived until you've heard a guy who sounds like Waylon Jennings sing about "reptile aliens made of light" and name-drop psilocybin and DMT.  I listened to this album so many times this year.

2. Cocktails, Adult Life

One of the two local bands on the list, which is crazy unusual for me.  But this album, a totally fun power pop gem, would make the list either way.

3. Cloud Nothings, Here and Nowhere Else

Am I crazy if I say this is what the Replacements might have sounded like if they practiced more and drank less?

4. Woods, With Light and With Love

I love these crazy hippies.

5. Young Fathers, Dead

It's not really going out on a limb to pick an album that won the Mercury Prize (which is a big deal in Britain, let me assure you) but it doesn't change how great this album is.  Mercury Prize =/= Grammy.


6. TV on the Radio, Seeds

I haven't had that much time with this album yet (by which I mean I've only listened to it 7 or 8 times) but I already love it.  I love everything TVOTR does.  I think 2 of my favorite 10 albums of the '00s were by TVOTR.

7. Generationals, Alix

I suggested "Black Lemon" to my friend Stephen and he said that I like that "post-MGMT stuff" more than he does.  HRMPH.


8. Painted Palms, Forever

The other local band.  Every city gets the Miike Snow it deserves.

Being a contrarian, I didn't like a lot of stuff that everyone else fell all over themselves about.  I thought the new Spoon album sounded exactly like a Spoon album.  Jenny Lewis's Voyager was whatever.  You have to be kidding me with that Leonard Cohen thing.  Be honest, you don't like Leonard Cohen.

Merry Christmas!  See you again one more time before New Years, for my annual Top Tweets of the Year post.  THE EXCITEMENT IS PALPABLE.

Watch me go full Comic Book Guy on this clip from Parenthood

Parenthood is a soap opera for grownups about members of an extended family that supposedly live in the Bay Area.  It's also pretty clearly shot in LA, and because The Wife is now extraordinarily tired of me shouting at the TV "THAT'S NOT SAN FRANCISCO!!!  THOSE PEOPLE JUST PARKED IN FRONT OF THEIR HOUSE LIKE IT WAS NO BIG THING!!! THEY'RE OUTSIDE AT NIGHT IN T-SHIRTS!!!!," I'll have to take it to the Internet again.  *shakes fist*

In the last episode, two of the characters supposedly are going to see a band at the Elbo Room, which is an actual real place in SF (for a little while longer, anyway).  (You can watch the scene here; fast forward to about 27:20.) This is what the actual Elbo Room, which is on Valencia, looks like:

Photo via Pinballnews.com, which is a real thing and had the best picture of the Elbo Rom I could find after looking for 35 seconds

And in the Make Believe Fantasy World of Parenthood, this is what the Elbo Room looks like:

Huh.  Not bad, actually!  They sorta got the sign font right and even included the corner doorway.

But look at this, down the side of the club:

Can you see the Transamerica Pyramid from Sycamore and Valencia?  I don't think you can.  Also, guess what, Sycamore Street?  You are now served by a cable car!  (It's slightly visible lower left, and you can see the tracks there.)  DING DING!  As all establishing shots in San Francisco must begin, a cable car passes through at the beginning of the scene.

Then it goes from merely inaccurate to absurd.  As one of the characters, Crosby, approaches the door, he is searched by a bouncer wearing a headset.

A bouncer wearing a headset.  At Elbo Room.

The bouncer reaches into his jacket and pulls out Crosby's "weed."

The idea that the doorman at Elbo Room would (1) search someone's jacket pockets, (2) pull out a baggie of marijuana, and (3) not let the person enter Elbo Room carrying said marijuana is about as likely as the Elbo Room having a VIP lounge where professional athletes order bottles of Ace of Spades and make it rain.  Any two-bit stoner who can roll a joint has a medical marijuana card.  Plus is weed even illegal any more?

Crosby protests that all he wants to do is "burn a little leaf in the toilet."  We're done here.

World Series Game 2: This Pitcher Is a Pipe Bomb

When Gregor Blanco hit his leadoff home run to begin this little shitshow, I was on the bus, listening to the MLB app, which cuts in and out, at least on the 5L, but was on when Blanco hit the opening HR.  Me and one other guy wearing headphones both fist pumped and said "YES" at the same time.  It was a great beer commercial moment.  We should probably be friends now, Guy On The Bus Who Also Fist Pumped.

That was pretty much the last good thing that happened.  Also, I got some feedback from the public after that about how I had questioned Blanco's leadoff skills, but leadoff guys are supposed to get on base, not hit home runs, so I stand by it.

The game goes on.  It's 2-2 when Peavy leaves.  Machi comes in and promptly gives up a run-scoring single to Billy Butler, who looks exactly like what you'd expect someone named Billy Butler to look like.  Then Javi Lopez gets an out.

Then shit went seriously south.

Hunter Strickland is a conundrum, a pitcher who can throw 100 miles per hour, which is good, but who also has a demonstrated propensity for giving up home runs in the postseason, which is very, very bad.  He gives up a 2-run double, then the expected home run.  Let's see what happens next.




Oh my.  That's doesn't look good at all.

Here's a closeup of Strickland yelling:




(Clip via Vine user or Viner or whatever they call themselves Ryan Pizzuto)

As you can see, some believe that Strickland said "Get in the dugout boy," which would be a very bad thing to say.  But my team of forensic lip readers have determined that what he ACTUALLY said was "THAT'S NOT SK8ER BOI," a reference to April Lavigne's 2002 hit, because Strickland heard Omar Infante's traditional home run chant, which is to sing "Sk8er Boi" as he rounds the bases, and recognized immediately that instead of "He was a skater boy, she said see ya later, boy," Infante was singing "He was a skater boy, she said he's a hater, boy," which is completely wrong.

Despite this lyrical brouhaha, one fact remains: if we see Hunter Strickland anywhere near the field of play for even 3 seconds at any point during the rest of this World Series UNLESS the Giants are up by 15+ runs, Bruce Bochy should be institutionalized and/or fired.  Hunter Strickland should be a hazy memory from here on out.  By the end of this thing, we should be scrunching up our faces and saying "Strick...Strickman? Strickfan? I don't remember."  The FBI should be looking for him before this is done.

That's all.  The Giant don't have the capacity to come back from 5 runs down so it was over. It was never going to be a sweep.