Random Update Edition
I’m on the verge of renting my condo. If all goes as planned I’ll be getting a big fat check early next week. Which I will immediately deposit into my “Buy A Car With Functioning Heat Before Winter Comes For Real” fund.
I’ve had a terrible pain in my right arm for over a week. It feels like an uncomfortable tingling that runs from my shoulder down the back of my arm to my two middle fingers. And my wrist feels stiff and sore to boot (Stop it with your dirty mind!). Here’s the truly strange thing about it: it hurts more when I’m at work than when I’m not. I think my arm might be trying to tell me something…
Lisa and I need a new trashy TV show to watch. Our lives haven’t quite been the same since the season finale of Rock Of Love. We’ve been trying to make do with Kourtney & Khloé Take Miami, but it doesn’t have the same sort of bandana-and-cowboy-hat je ne sais quoi.
Actually, I’ve come up with a killer idea for a TV show. I want to expand on my Jimmy Page reality show concept and do a show that focuses on the lives of musicians. When I was a little kid I always envisioned musicians as inhabiting a particularly rarefied space. I imagined that everyone I heard on the radio lived like a modern-day Louis XIV, untouched by the concerns of regular mortals. One day I was looking at one of my dad’s album covers and saw a picture of the band (I forget which one. No, that’s a lie. It was the Ozark Mountain Daredevils.) sitting around eating. There was a bottle of Heinz ketchup on the table, and that single detail blew my tiny mind. A bottle just like that was sitting in the door of my fridge. How special could these guys be if they used the same ketchup I did? Like I said, I was pretty young, but it made me realize that bands I heard on the radio weren’t necessarily pampered princes.
So my idea for this show (and this whole thing probably should have been a separate post, but, fuck it, I’m on a roll here) would be to follow a musician around for a week just to get an idea of what they’re real life is like. It probably shouldn’t be anyone too famous, and it shouldn’t ever follow a musician when (s)he’s on tour. Do I wanna see Billie Joe from Green Day do a soundcheck in Omaha? No. Do I wanna see Billie Joe from Green Day coach his son’s little-league team? Yes.
I’ve been toying with this idea for a month or so now. Sometimes I think it’s lame, sometimes I think it’s brilliant. Lisa and I have been throwing out names of people we’d want to see on the show. I’d pay to see episodes about Paul Westerberg or Matthew Sweet. However, Lisa named the perfect person for a show like this: Patti Smith. What does Patti Smith do? Does she live off royalties? Does she work the night-shift at 7-11 to make ends meet? I wish someone would hurry up and get this project off the ground already.
Booker T & the MGs = the greatest band in history. Q.E.D.
Oh, am I ever gonna get shit for posting this. Fuck it, this song has great drumming and a really nasty bass sound. That’s two big thumbs up in my book.
The other day Lisa told me a funny Mark Sandman story that I’m not really at liberty to repeat here. This song is all you get. You’re welcome.
Yeah, you’ve always had a unique vision of musicians’ lives. I remember that you thought our local radio stations actually had sound stages where bands performed live whenever their songs came on the radio. Man, that’s a hectic schedule! How Buddy Holly did that, we will never know…
I’ve heard Alice Cooper goes to PTA meetings and was quite active at his kids’ school.
I hereby volunteer to follow Jason Aldean around for the next several weeks, videocamera in hand. Thanks for giving me this “new tv show idea” as a cover for my peeping Thomasina activities!