News: Justin Bieber Retires?, Kill Your TV, 4000 Views

Good morning.

I am having a hard time trying to figure out this Justin Bieber retirement ploy.  The skeptical in me refuses to believe that Mr. Beaver Biscuits is saying good bye, even with his tweet about it smells of desperation and maybe he's going by the way of Garth Brooks, retire and then come back with a big 10 CD box set.  Mr. Brooks has done that time and time again, retire and come back, retire and do a Las Vegas residency retire and then come back with a 5 CD and 1 DVD box set sold at Wal Mart.  Thankfully the world isn't ready for a big box set of Beaver Feaver, or not yet anyway.  Justin Bieber remains the most oddball act ever signed to Island Records which is Chris Blackwell was running that label, Bieber would be booted out of the office.  But the media isn't to be trusted anyway.  Especially FOX news and Andsome Coulter the right wing mophordyke, or ditz with a dick.  But on the Bieber retiring tweet, I call bullshit.

This amazes me.  There's never nothing on cable tv anymore.  We have 100 channels of basically the same thing, the fun quiz of guess where Shawshank Redemption will be showing on what channel, five channels of Bonnie And Clyde, the 24 hour marathon of Christmas Story on TBS and of course the millions upon millions of unreality reality shows on each and every channel and now Dish and DirecTV, monopolizers of the satellite TV of endless five minute commercials breaks have decided to hike prices for next year, just like they did last year and of course the big reason is that the continue to maximize their profits and laughable BS excuse of rising TV content (say that with a straight face I dare you). I never have seen such limited programming with what we have for channels in all my years and it's getting worse.  Kill your TV and get it over with.

Link of the week: Archeophone Records, a label that specializes in the real old music of the late 1890s and 1900's.  I've seen some of their CDs have made it into the bins of Half Priced Books and bought one Stomp And Swerve (American Music Gets Hot) and has some of the earliest music ever put on wax cylinder.  The multitude of derogatory racial  language and music is very evident.  But you can also trace the start of ragtime music which wore out its welcome in 1908 but this gives us the early start of blues, jazz and country.  It's not rock and roll but was radical back in the turn of the century.  Archeophone  is based out of Champaign    Illinois and really has gone out of its way to preserve the history of music that your great grandparents may have listened to back then.  www.archeophone.com

Chris Sevier sues A&E and the President over the suspension of Phil Robertson of Duck Dynasty. This comes from a guy that been stalking John Rich and a 17 year old girl. http://wonkette.com/537453/nashville-church-member-sues-ae-and-barack-obama-for-being-so-mean-to-duck-dynasty-star


This month I have done the unthinkable,  gone over 4,000 views (a first time) and with five more days left adding more to the best ever month.  I didn't intend to flood the blog this month but I had to tie up loose ends and getting my commitments before the year was over.  And every day will add more views and thanks every each one of you and of course the ghost viewers that up the ratings.  Plus the illegal drug site from Russia (xolodremont), and bogus counters like Vampirestat and Secret Search which always adds 10 views whenever they show up.  I don't dare click on xolodremont in any way, they might be the pain in the ass Hunter Warfield collections agency incognito and would take over my site with plenty of Russian spam and the ED drugs spam that floods my inbox.  The Hunter Warfield thing this month has been a head shaking and scratching circumference of Barney Fife ism of bothering the wrong person.  Where's the A Team when you need them to go kick their ass, or at least try to find the wrong person owning money.  Bills are paid up here.

So, with next week coming, I will conclude 10 years of top ten lists and a constant presence on the internet although the fame and fortune has been fleeting and can't quit my job even after it's eliminated.  Too bad that the early years have disappeared, some of the best and most radical of lists got erased after MSN Groups and My Space decided to banish them forever into the great unknown but I managed to save a select few.  But instead of taking about music, I didn't know that I was writing about the end of some of the things I grew up and hung out.  The demise of Wherehouse Music, Tower Records, Relics and the jettisoning of some of my favorite FYE stores to hang out was broadcasted over to deaf ears, and the constant passings of musicians that were a part of my music reviewing process over the years.  Funny how 12 years ago, I can find the best Seattle and Phoenix music stores back then but nowadays it's not what it used to be. Cellophane Square, perhaps my favorite Seattle hangout, now a distant memory like the memory of Isabella of endless blue skies and perfect weather in July, only to come back to cold and gray and rain and snow and a week of Hell in October and never did return back up there.  And now watching record and bookstore still closing, since everybody has smart phones and can access just about everything from the great jukebox and bookstore in cyberland.  Oh yeh, the net has been a great place to discover what is missing in life and get your love life going as well but again nothing compares of having book or record at hand and peering over the notes and words.  Certainly the record collector has paid the price big time, having to go from the local hangout, to places that still have record stores. And thus BIG OIL reaped the benefits of that with their high price gas of 3 to 5 dollars a gallon throughout this greedful decade of record profits and the tidal wave of Made In China shit.

And meanwhile life goes on here in Cowpie Iowa.  The deadbeat truckdriver who my brother lend him 100 dollars for beer and never paid back moved and took the Cowpie Iowa Historian with him to North Carolina.  The neighbor's daughter two doors down got knocked up by some dude who left the state, gotta watch for those 90 second encounters leaving a lifetime fucked up and a new baby for a reward.  A fact of life we try to tell our children to have protection and say no, but through life every generation's teens think they know it all and think they won't get knocked up.  And get proven wrong again.  And again.  And again.
I don't think we never make an difference in life whatever we do.  I was like that when I was 16, knew it all and needed nobody till the money ran out.  But I thank my lucky stars that I never knocked anybody up, nor took K2 and snorted gasoline to be a stark looney to run away and live on the street and breaking into houses at night.  And some of my friends got a raw deal on that.

Things change and from what I have seen in the past 10 years not for the better.  A do nothing congress, a President who promised change and did some but not enough and the left and right continue to bicker and bitch about who does less and the split becomes wider and wider.  We can't cure cancer but we have the drugs to take care of your limp dick when you can't get it up anymore on your own.  And the big music revolution that everybody talks about continues to be postponed since the playlist on FM hasn't changed since 1985 and you're stuck with the same overplayed classics over and over.  But then again whoever SPIN or NME tauts as the next big thing blows away the rest of the bands but when I hear the next big thing I just hear noise and half assed tossed out cliche words.  And the feeling that I get out of this, is like being at Blockbuster in their final days.  A  sense of hopelessness, a sense of dread but trying to find something left to hang on to, or least go home and watch or listen to.

In doing the top ten the past decade, I have noticed that the majority of songs do come from the golden age of rock and roll or the album track years and even though the songs of the 2000's have made the list, many of them when I revisited the past and see some of what I posted, wondered how the hell they sound since a lot of them got donated back to Goodwill. And I forgot all about them.  I really didn't use a lot of the stuff from 2000 onward it seems.  And that's the problem of music today, no melody or no sense of belonging.  The Strokes had the most perfect title that basically describes the music of the past 14 years. Is that it?   Even up after being that album when it was on sale at Tower records me and the drugged out date just looked at each other when it was over and asked Is that it?  Not everything in the past 10 years was bad, most of it didn't get radio airplay.  The Randy Cliffs, Len Price 3, The Stabilizers and Green Day made classic albums to these ears but to the rest of the Cumulus Controlled Corporate Radio World, only Green Day got radio airplay, the rest highly mentioned and thought of here in a blog a few folks read.  But then there's plenty more blogs about music out there worth a read and like the world turns, some will cease but some new ones will pop up.  And if all else fails, you got Bob Lefsetz but his gospel is also tarnished with old coot talk.  The double standard of seek out the great but don't bother me hearing your stuff cause it's not great.  In other words, get off my lawn and out of my yard.

The problem with the old guard, they will not get out of their comfort zone.  And for a time I was like that, not giving up my classic rock favorites.  Till CDs got real cheap to the point that I could check out what was missing and come to find out while searching for the river of tunes, wound up in a ocean of endless music that a lot will not be heard even for me.  But you know I think I have given it a honest effort for what I have seen and continue to see in the dollar section of Half Priced Books or Stuff Etc or the Salvation Army.  In this day and age, I don't pay 20 dollars for cds anymore, there's no shortage of cheap used CDs if you know where to look for them.  Which comes in handy if Pawn America is clearing them out for a quarter and there's a chance somebody might drop a Beatles or Grateful Dead or something other that's not scratched up to holy hell.  I'd offer Bob Lefsetz a change to come with me on a bargain hunt or two but I doubt he'd take me up on that since he doesn't like CDs.

For somebody who retired from bargain hunting in 2009, I have continued to discover things left and right and still do to this day.  I guess it's force of habit or a hard habit to break.  So maybe it's all bullshit on my retirement.

The last bargain hunt in Iowa City for the year.  Nothing substantial and we leave Record Collector for the last time by finding Gary Numan's Tubeaway Army Replicas and a Goo Goo Dolls that I originally had but wanted to hear again and he had a 3 dollar copy down there.  He's doing quite well with the vinyl but everything seemed to be picked apart.  I don't know what it is with guys growing goatees or beards trying to look cool after hitting age 55 but I want no part of it.  It doesn't make you look good, it makes you look like an old grumpy record store owner. Right Kurt?

Parking in downtown Iowa City is a rip off. 25 cents buys you only 10 minutes at the parking meter and put in a nickel and you don't have to fart either.  The days of hippie lifestyle in the college town are over.  It's all about the money.  But looking at the Record Collector inventory and his records, I may have decided that I had enough tunes up here to last me the rest of my years.  The rest of the thrift stores and pawnshops had nothing although I thought about picking Throbbing Gristle's Greatest Hits for 2 dollars but decided against that.  

Had a great turnout in Moline, IL last night. It was so good to see our Quad City people again-From Samantha Fish when she played Rascals Live there.  Sorry Sam I didn't make it, maybe next time. But in the meantime you have something coming up behind you and ready to take over your spot on the Crabb Top Ten most searched keywords.  Ivy Doomkitty is coming up strong.  Better beware. ;-)

And a PS to the 2013 Year In Review, I forgot a highlight, My best friend's son Matt proposing to his long time girlfriend at the chilly Cowboys/Bears game in Chicago a few weeks ago.  Of course she said yes. Of course the Bears won.  Congrats again Matt!