band girls money
tvt records

why is this man smiling?

because this is the tsar record he’s been waiting for for 6 and a half years.

this is the garagey isla vista punk pop that was pretty much missing five years ago when tsar’s self titled debut came out on hollywood records.

on that record you had to wade through miles of gloss to get the the heart of the rock. here its in your face, but clear and as sharp and dangerous as a ripped beer can.

everyones heard the title track from the nestle crunch commersh and from the band’s website and myspace page, so I Wanna Get Dead is the kick to the head that sets the tone for the rest of the record. its gonna be fun its gonna be poppy its gonna be tight and its gonna have lyrics that will have you thinking is he serious cuz i hope hes not serious.

lets hope hes not serious.

The Love Explosion is a song that personally i dont like but thats me. i dont like it because it sounds like the theme to a disney channel tv show. but the good news is we get to hear the tsar horn section for the first time. they’ll be better later on.

Superdeformed is an obvious beatles tip of the hat and if you know me you know theres nothing i like less than an obvious beatles tip of the hat. still, strangely, against my will, the heart has a soulful center thats irresistable.

and even though i dont know where i am
dude, i know where im at

and does he wish us Shalom at the end of the song?

Straight busts in kicking ass and taking names. apparently the narrator wants to establish that he’s “straight”. hes a moustache man. theres a two guitar attack. this was the music from the nissan commercial. it sounds like an off road anthem. hes straight each and every way. he bends like a stick. best riff on the album full of riffs.

straight. its the new style
every dianetic on the miracle mile
knows im straight

he screams he rocks he wails he protests far too much and the drum roll right right before the end is perfect.

what follows is Wrong. my favorite tsar song in a long time.

warriors, i saw them come out to play

i love it because its a perfect jeff whalen recording. theres vocal fun. theres sex drugs rock references. theres those harmonies that are tsar tsar tsar theres great guitar solos weird choruses

turn and run fast boy

theres whalen blaming blaming blaming and then yelling and then some of the most beautiful chord changes that lead into dans best guitar solo that just goes on into the distance and if i die tomorrow and someone has to stand up and say something at my wake say if theres one thing tony hated about the years after grunge died was there have been pussy ass butt smugglers who cant play guitar filling up the airwaves, hes glad hes dead because rocks been dead for the last 10 years, the rare exception being tsar

go glam the conquerer worm
defender of the american way
a friend to the weak the smug the huddled thugs
a waste of money, its sad but true
but in the morning it will feel alright
set a course of magnetic strips for a broken heart
we are screaming toeing the line
and disposable by design

all i know is i could have sworn that its been at least a decade since whalen dropped acid, but these killer lyrics say otherwise.

track 9 is Startime, the best song on the album. i know i said Wrong was but i was wrong

feedback snarling guitar ancy drums a regroup and a wham

and take a sample of these lines

la is the place to be
and if it aint as shocking as it used to be
take the bullet out your head put it back in the gun
put your finger on the trigger

the hey yeah never let me down

and then the horns come in and fight the guitars and drums.

the welch whalen finale You Can’t Always Want What You Get cleanses our palettes and the cd is done at a little over 33 minutes which whalen has always said records should be: quick fast perfect and out.

and this one rocks.

UPDATE: Amazon ranks bgm #967 in music! + Mo + amy

as you know i love to write. and as you know i love the blogosphere and the bloggers and the liveliness and the banter and the good ideas and the creativity and the community and the toplessness and the fact that the world is a much smaller and cozier place due to this great thing that al gore invented.

my problem is that i would like very soon to start writing a book about blogging. not about how to do it, really, but about the people who do it. my problem is some of the book will be about right wing conservative bloggers who account for a good chunk of the influence of the blogosphere.

ok thats not my problem. i like most of them. my problem is i dont believe most of them, at least not what they write. and im torn because when i go to their blogs and i read and i follow the links it feels like im being punk’d and i want to just rage all over my blog at them. but then i keep thinking about this book and i say to myself take it easy you want these people to like you so they’ll cooperate with you and they’ll look at you as a real writer and not their enemy.

but who am i fooling, im their enemy.

the right wingers shouldnt fear the big libs like kos or atrios or odub – they should expect to get healthy volleys of incoming from those gentlemen,

the conservative bloggers should worry about the independents like myself whod rather be fishing than talking about politics but the thing that makes guys like me talk politics are when the big time righties are so full of shit that it seeps from the monitors.

professor reynolds, we are in a quagmire costing us billions, allegedly started over the pussy ass fear of wmds that never turned up, we raped little boys in abu ghraib and now we admit to torture at gitmo too and instead of fucking sucking it up and actally telling it like it is you fucking link rogerlsimon who talks about how great the menu is there.

if it werent for your hits what would qualify you for entry in my book with that shit?

im sure simon would say oh but the 20th hijacker is at gitmo, oh there are admited al-qaida members there… fine, try them. these flag waving fingerpointers are so eager to call people unpatriotic for daring to call bs on bs but have yet to enunciate a reason why we have to break every rule we’ve agreed to in order to hold these allegedly dangerous people without giving them their day in court and without giving them the ability to have a lawyer.

oh but the food is sooooooo good.

fuck you.

and they say the media is liberal without a sliver of sarcasm. in what country are they talking about? i have seen some liberals in my days at uc santa barbara and i dont see very many liberals at all in the media. not that i give a shit im still waiting for the network thats neither left nor right and once a day they say throw all the bums out. and go down a list of 50 dems and 50 repubs and flashes their fat fucking faces on the screen and reads out their sins of the week

for example:

Rove
dissing the people of new york, being fat, being a fucker, being a literal cocksucker and ashamed, and for using something as horrifying as 9/11 in an attempt to paint rightwingers as brave and lefties as cowards

ABC News
upon seeing Rove act so outrageously didnt have the balls to demand a drug test immediately on the bloated wonderboy, didnt create Asshole of the Week feature in its national newscast, bored us

but then i tell myself that these people might not know how theyre being perceived, they see all the hits they get all the ads, theyre able to vacation wherever and buy whatever and they think that thats what its all about

their job is to paint the fence white. period. you can tell them all day long that a clear glaze would better show the full grain of the marvelously rich wood but they say look at that car look at that tv look at that tv in the car, bossman tells me to paint it white so i paints it white.

except for one thing

i met tim blair last summer and that motherfucker actually believed the !@#!@$ things that he typed. smart funny personable intelligent nice fun all the things you ever think of when you think of goodhearted aussies. everything. but i swear to you that if BushCo decided that the world was flat good ole tim blair and all his ilk would be banging the drum that the world is flat and if you showed them an article that the world wasnt theyd say oh fuck man Popular Science is so leftleaning or theyd say thats the writer who said blah blah blah

its ponderous.

and i think one reason you dont hear a lot of banter from the lefty intellectuals is most of them figure why bother? let o’reilly rant for 22 minutes while america pretends that he isnt just doing a slightly different version of a current affair. all 22 minutes can be refuted by one godthatwasutterbullshit and the slate should be clean.

our country admits that we have tortured detainees and the biggest political bloggers not only say move along nothing to see here, but they link other bloggers who say you cant be tortured at a country club.

and if these people had the guts to really talk about blogging and really talk about the thinking that goes behind their blogs theyd be able to answer loud and clear if i asked questions like how can your party talk about morals on one hand and support gitmo on the other? and how can you as a blogger and a commentor completely ignore huge parts of the story and pretend like a child that they never happened?

im not trying to fight anyone, im just trying to figure all of this out because i can see why a newspaper columnist or a politician would spew bullshit all day long but a blogger? and a smart one? i always thought that one of the perks of being smart was you didnt have to resort to lies and smokescreens and deception.

but alas im idealistic and foolishly believe that a blogger can speak his mind and in speaking his mind be respected and therefore should be so chickenshit about analyzing the entire picture, but thats just not the case in this blogosphere. not yet, at least. maybe the second generation of bloggers will right these wrongs.

and like most dilemas that begin at the top of the post, theyre solved at the bottom. there are plenty of fish in the sea, theres no need to pander to the few currently getting attention who might say no for the wrong reasons when there are so many about to get attention who will say yes for the right ones.

cuz the last thing id want is my non fiction book to be full of fict.

gmask + golden fiddle + kitty bukkake + ed adkins