Tuesday, January 14, 2014

Music World Week In Review 1/14/14

January is a very slow month for music and I have no use or intend to buy High Hopes from Bruce Springsteen although I have heard tracks off it from the XM stations of Underground Garage and Deep Tracks.  Springsteen hasn't wowed me since The Rising and doing a covers album will suit his fans and buddies on the pay radio circuit.  Here we are halfway through in the new year and I have yet to buy anything new or used.  So this might be a CD free month after all, or record free month. First time that's happened since March of 2008 I think.

The big news is Christine McVie rejoining her bandmates in Fleetwood Mac and good for her.  While the haters over the net howl over this I always liked her smokey tinged vocals and this will be great for business for The Mac as well.  I also noticed a lotta hate for Stevie Nicks and I don't think that's justified either. While Crystal Visions (Reprise) is the best overview of Stevie, it also reveals the faults of her, especially on the over the top endings of her live version of Edge Of Seventeen too. But in another way, she never did top her best song ever written which is included on this CD, the B side Silver Springs which is better than Dreams or Rhiannon or Edge Of Seventeen.

Tim McGraw.... http://www.savingcountrymusic.com/tim-mcgraws-lookin-for-that-girl-a-rant

Cable TV and satellite for that matter has been a total ripoff the past 15/20 years and continues to get worse and worse with daily rate increases with the laughable cost of programming and content BS line.  You want to confront these overpaid CEOs with "what programming and content".  Shitty reality shows of asshole dumpster diving or greedy pricks buying abandoned storage spaces and seeing how much they can make? More reality shit crap about Mob Wives, Basketball Wives, Real Wives of LA, people you just want to run over when they crossed the streets.  Pregnant and 16?  Are kids today that gung ho of being grow up and living in poverty after they lose their favor with MTV when they turn 18?  I don't need to watch that shit and I don't.  But what really annoys the hell out of me is the continuing commercial interruption every five minutes and we have nothing more than 5 minutes of that.  You can't watch Spike TV without that, you can probaly go take a dump, wash dishes, play a few hands of solitaire on the computer and mow the yard and come back and you haven't missed a thing.  WGN and USA showing Law And Order reruns at the same time, guessing what station will show The Shawnshrink Redemption again (yes I know I misspelled it).  And the propaganda news channel FOX and the even more worthless FOX business (the only new channel our shitty cable company added on that nobody here watches).  We don't even get Tru TV or the fucked up ESPNU which has the basketball games we would like to watch but can't since ESPN or ESPN2 is showing World Series of Poker.  Never have we had so many channels and have nothing to watch.

But a crisis is at hand, DirecTV, the other worthless satellite provider has dropped the Weather Channel and everybody seems to be up in arms with that.  It's like Panic time once again, what are we going to do in case of bad weather and won't be able to pick it up on DirecTV since Weather Channel's price is too high?  If you have a computer, you have many different options to choose from.  With Intellicast or Accuweather. you can catch up with the latest in weather happenings or in Tornado outbreaks, Google name the place and time and they will have a TV feed to keep you up to date, just like the Moore Tornado outbreak of last May.  Or get a weather radio.  The Weather Channel has been quite laughable the past few years by going to original programming (reality shows)  that gets repeated 100 times afterwards so yo basically don't know if a tornado or hurricane is coming if they're rehashing When Weather Attacks or Full Force Nature.  Plus TWC has plenty of commercial breaks as well.    The Weather Channel does not have a monopoly on the weather. Try Weather Nation.  At least they're not hitting you with 40 percent of reality crap shows.

This season's Family Guy has continued the downward spiral of being around past the expiration date and like the rest of you I fell for the Brian gets killed off episode but he would return due to the magic of animation domination and cartoons.  The earlier years of Family Guy were cutting edge and once in a while will strike up a zinger or two but when the jokes fall flat, it brings a awkwardness that borderlines on creepy. The skit of Peter Griffin doing Book Talk on Public Radio may have been the worst thing Seth McFarlane ever thought up and I get tired of seeing blood and guts that is a part of Family Guy.  But I continue to watch for sometime something might come up and make me laugh.  It's usually when somebody farts on the show.

Not a lot here for future projects although I do show up from time to time to focus on issues that caught my attention.  For sure the ratings will be half of what they were last month.  The top tens of note are the Circumstances Beyond Control, Tunes From The Tornado and Hairball with a few more inquiries about Morgan Reese  and Ivy Doomkitty.   But throw a suggestion and I may consider it.




2 comments:

TAD said...

Woof! Crabby, I'm enjoying your new format very much, and not just because you're still printing pics of Ivy Doomkitty. But of course that HELPS. Keep rockin!

R S Crabb said...

Glad you're still around Tad. It just been a very dull year musicwise, still haven't bought anything new and too cold to go anywhere.

But I'm sure Ivy thanks you for checking her pics out too. I'm still around ;-)