Practice makes perfect. The All-Star Jam is a place to practice your thing! Tell us what’s on your mind.
May 232014
May 222014
Was Fear‘s 1981 performance on Saturday Night Live the first example of the Made for TV Pit Audience phenomenon, which has become de rigueur for VH1 spectacles, the Super Bowl halftime show, and the like? You know what I mean by Made for TV Pit Audience, right? It’s the elite group of “insiders” of an artist’s fanbase who are strategically encouraged to rush the otherwise guarded pit area so they can show the rest of us how the featured artist truly deserves to be admired and adored.
I suspect something’s missing in the story of this “anarchic” Fear performance on SNL. The hardcore kids slam dancing and stage diving didn’t just happen to get tickets to that night’s performance, did they? They didn’t just happen to be standing at a cleared-out spot at the foot of the stage. They were audience props. They were actually the reason for booking Fear, despite whatever story has long been told about Belushi wanting them on, which may in itself have been true. Fear’s appearance on SNL would have added up to nothing without those hardcore kids placed in the pit to show the rest of America how it was done.
May 222014
Nixon’s Head: $25-$200, depending on night of the week, position on the bill, and delusion that festival appearance would actually lead to any meaningful exposure.
Congratulations! Your long lost Auntie Selma just sent you a check for $150,000. Sure, you could invest it, perhaps buy a house or make some charitable donations. But forget all that stuff, you should blow it all booking bands for your very own music festival. Luckily, the internet has just provided us with a list of acts and their prices.
http://priceonomics.com/how-much-does-it-cost-to-book-your-favorite-band/
Your simple challenge: From the provided list, choose the bands you want and whatever you do, don’t go over budget.
I look forward to your show, Dave Matthews tribute band notwithstanding.
May 222014
I will forever associate this song with a few days I spent sick as a dog in a little house in the mountain town of my Italian relatives. On my cousins’ boom box I was able to pick up some station that played a loop of a the same dozen songs, including this, PiL’s “Poptones,” and the New York Dolls’ “Personality Crisis.” Not a bad soundtrack to my fever dreams. I even taped those dozen songs to bring home with me. That loop inspired what I feel was one of the first really good songs I ever wrote. I wrote the lyrics in that little bedroom and actually remembered enough of the tune to figure out the chords when I got back home.
Have you ever experienced an especially memorable loop of songs?
May 202014
Are you kidding me, the estate for Spirit guitarist Randy California is considering bringing suit against Led Zeppelin for allegedly ripping off 2 measures of the interminable instrumental album filler “Taurus” for the intro to Led Zep’s “Stairway to Heaven”? It takes 45 boring seconds to even get to the allegedly ripped off 2 measure. I doubt Jimmy Page could have lasted that long. For all the blatant heists Page has masterminded, this is like charging Willie Sutton for taking a magazine home with him from a doctor’s office. Dismissed!
In related news, the state of California is considering bringing suit against the estate of Randy Craig Wolfe for ripping off its name.
May 152014
I am hoping that this will become a recurring feature here, in which I summon the collected wisdom of the Hall to help me understand what certain songs are actually about. Mostly these will be very familiar songs, some of them songs I like very much; but songs which, if push comes to shove, I actually have no idea what they are about. This isn’t to say that a song actually has to be about anything, or maybe better to say that it doesn’t have to be about any one thing. Anyway, you probably get the idea.
I want to start with “Happy Jack” by the Who. A good song, short and to the point. Can someone tell me what this song is about?
May 122014
Sounds of the hall in roughly 33 1/3 minutes!
[Note: You can add Saturday Night Shut-In episodes to your iTunes by clicking here. The Rock Town Hall feed will enable you to easily download Saturday Night Shut-In episodes to your digital music player.]
Playlist after jump
