8-Album Mind: Fat Mike is Still Fat

Today, NOTHING but NOFX! Great day for it, I love NOFX! Hands down, one of my favorite bands.

Today's Playlist:

So Long, And Thank For All the Shoes ♠♠♠♠
The Decline ♠♠♠♠♠
Pump Up The Valuum ♠♠♠♠
Bottles To the Ground ♠♠♠
BYO Split Series 3: NOFX/Rancid ♠♠♠♠
45 or 46 Songs That Weren't Good Enough to Go on Our Other Records ♠♠♠♠
The War on Errorism ♠♠♠♠♠
Never Trust A Hippy ♠♠♠
Wolves in Wolves Clothing ♠♠♠
They've Actually Gotten WORST Live! ♠♠♠♠♠

This is a time where going disc by disc is going to just take too damn long! Fuck, 10 discs?! Actually, 11! "So Long" was the first NOFX album I ever bought, and it was after an assistant teacher in my high school played their cover of "Champs Elysee"... and I started headbanging in class. I hated that class, but that moment alone changed my life and made me a fan of NOFX!

"The War on Errorism" and "The Decline" are undisputed classic albums in my eyes!

Favorite tracks today in no order are "The Decline", "Golden Boys", "Separation of Punk and Skate", "Fuck the Kids", "Lori Meyers", "I'm Telling Tim", "All of Me", "USA-holes", "You Will Lose Faith", "The Man That I Killed", "Louise", and "Dinosaurs Will Die". Download, buy, whatever, these songs are great!

The main surprise of the day was "Wolves in Wolves Clothing". I've never been a fan of this album and today was basically judgment day. The first song, "60%", is basically what the album is; 60% good, 40% crap. Really hodgepoge and such, but the track "You Will Lose Faith", touched a nerve with some of the most deadly serious lyrics I've ever heard.

8-Album Mind: Tragic Kingdom

Sometimes a letter in a music collection can actually define it. Sometimes it's a genre, other times a period of time. In this case, the letter "N" has basically defined what music was back in the 90's. In fact, the 90's literally was the "N" decade; Ninety's.

After yesterday and Nine Inch Nails, today it was Nirvana, No Doubt, and NoFX.

The list:

Nirvana - "Nevermind" ♠♠♠♠♠
Nirvana - "Insecticide" ♠♠♠♠♠
Nirvana - "With the Lights Out" Discs 2 and 3 ♠♠♠
No Doubt - "Tragic Kingdom" ♠♠♠
NOFX - "Liberal Animation" ♠♠♠
NOFX - "S&M Airlines" ♠♠♠♠
NOFX - "White Trash, Two Heebs and a Bean" ♠♠♠♠
NOFX - "Punk in Drublic" ♠♠♠♠♠
NOFX - "I Heard They SUCK Live!" ♠♠♠♠

Fuck, too many good albums today! I'm going to keep "With the Lights Out" because it wound up being a decent listen. Not great, but OK. "Liberal Animation" is the most "conservative" NOFX album if only because of Fat Mike saying "Fuck you!" to all the vegetarians (which he later became). "Punk in Drublic" is a masterpiece of NOFX brilliance, and "I Heard They Suck Live!" is a great foray into the world that is a NOFX live show.

"Tragic Kingdom" is, to me, over-rated. When it came out, the average review was C+, 5/10, etc... It's regarded as a "classic" in the sense that it sold 14 million copies worldwide. It's an OK album, but half of it is filler. It mainly rocketed to fame thanks to tracks like "Just a Girl". To me, the title track is the strongest on the album and I might do a cover of it soon...

The Horrible Things Mayor Nutter has Done!

...is actually a really, really, really short list.

Part of the reason for the name change and keeping this blog alive came from the simple fact that I also wanted to keep an eye on the Nutter Administration and, overall, it's been 99% effective from what I can see. But there is, at the very least, one STUPID, IDIOTIC, HORRIBLE thing he wants:

He Wants You To Pay for the City to Pick Up Your Trash

The Nutter administration is researching whether to charge residents for trash collection, according to city officials.

Environmental experts say this would encourage recycling because there is typically no charge for collecting recyclable waste.

And the fees would help pay for trash collection and disposal, which currently costs the city $95 million a year, according to Deputy Streets Commissioner Carlton Williams.

Why is this such a stupid and horrible idea? Aside from the obvious fact that we already pay sanitation fees to have our trashed picked up, there's also the fact that his recycling program, which I think is great, isn't being pushed hard enough. First off, there actually is a law in place stating that, yes, you must recycle in the City of Philadelphia or pay a fine. Not only that, but there are a lot of things the CITY needs to do in order to get us to recycle more:

• Aside from the TV ads and billboards, simply either mail the information about the single-stream recycling program to everyone or put little door-hangers on all the homes. This has worked in the past when it came to changes, this should be implemented now.
• Recycling Bins in Center City. Think about it; we already have trash cans, why not have a blue can for recycling? Information on the sides state it's for recycling, and you can only put in metal, paper, and plastic. That creates awareness of the program and gets more people recycling.
• Following through with the law and actually having sanitation workers give houses warning tickets that they need to start recycling. If the house fails to after 2 weeks, they get fined.
• Give all citizens new recycling bins with a nice and simple reminder; "Recycle or get fined."

While some of these methods may be a little costly at first, the long term savings from these initiatives would more than make up for it. The recyclcing cans in Center City alone will do more to show the world that Philadelphia is cleaning its act, allow citizens to do more to clean up and, if it works there, should be spread throughout other sections of Philadelphia.

Unforgiven III? Why, god, Why?!

Today, Metallica officially released the track listing of they're new album, "Death Magnetic". I'm still am psyched about this album, and now... man, that.... UNFORGIVEN III?! WHY?! NO! FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, METALLICA, NO! DON'T! Honestly, after the mediocre attempt that was "Unforgiven II", why?

8-Album Mind: Slit My Wrists and serve me some Pennyroyal Tea!

Pretty damn interesting mix today! And it's the last real mix one for a day or two. Today I got to listen to one of my favorite albums, test out one that I think should go, and actually wound up enjoying an album I never thought I would.






Today's playlist IN ORDER:

• Murderdolls - "Beyond the Valley of the Murderdolls" ♠♠♠♠♠
• Nailbomb - "Point Blank" ♠♠♠
• Nine Inch Nails - "Pretty Hate Machine" ♠♠♠
• Nirvana - "Bleach" ♠♠♠♠
• Nirvana - "With the Lights Out - Disc 1" ♠♠♠
• Nine Inch Nails - "The Downward Spiral" ♠♠♠♠
• Nirvana - "Nirvana" ♠♠♠

I LOVE the Murderdolls, one of my favorite groups! They were formed when Wednesday 13 hooked up with Joey Jordisan of Slipknot to basically re-write and re-record some of Wednesday 13's material with The Frankenstein Drag Queens of Planet 13. It is a great album and, to me, a realization of the greatness of the former band done by the later. This band is basically responsible for ever

Nailbomb is another side-project band I listened today, with members from Sepultura and Fear Factory, as well as a few others, basically kicking ass and taking names on a industrial-meets-thrash and punk disc. Heavy and thrashy, but not great. After that was Nine Inch Nails "Pretty Hate Machine." Personally, I think it's a little over-rated. It sounds like a mix of early Ministry and early KMFDM.

After that, knowing I had the entire Nirvana box set with me, I decided to split it up. I hated the box set when I first listened to the entire thing, so doing this allows me to judge it better. The disc is more solid then I remember, but still is plagued by filler, like the rest of the set.

NIN's "The Downward Spiral" was actually the surprise of the day. I've never been that into this album, nor Trent Reznor, but this album finally connected today. Not like the heaven's alligning, but I did really enjoy it this time. Nirvana's greatest hits disc, "Nirvana", was just OK. I skipped the "Nevermind" material since I'm listening to that stuff tomorrow, and the rest was good.

Shadows Fall, PLEASE Make Sure this New Album Kicks ass!

Admittedly, this little blog of mine is teetering somewhere in between metal news and commentary spliced with Philadelphia spliced with Politics. Then again, that was the point of me renaming this blog after the election.

Shadows Fall is now in "Writing Mode" and I must admit, I'm a little worried. The last album, Threads of Life, was basically an unmitigated disaster in every sense of the word. The album was panned by fans, the critics of the major metal outlets all hailed it (sadly), basically doing so to save face in the metal community, a costly gamble like praising St. Anger and then saying, a year later, it was crap. We laready heard the line "Atlantic let us write what we want to write," but in the end, the album came out being more of a selling out, a call for acceptance by the main-mainstream and grasphing for commercial success. It isn't bad to try, unless you get caught and it doesn't work.

So Brian Flair and the rest of the band are writing a follow-up to that disc and, frankly, they can do better than that last album. Shadows Fall doesn't have to look far at what will happen if they fail again; The end of the Metalcore movement is coming closer and closer and its hard to tell who's going to make it after the doors close. Lamb of God is a complete lock, no questions asked. Killswitch Engaged has a chance, but so does Chimera. A bad album here will mean the band will be relegated to the same type of commercial and reputation hell as countless other groups, including Metallica, Megadeth during that "commercial" period, Motorhead during the 90's... pretty much what all metal bands went through in the 90's, and sadly, they would be first on the chopping block.

That's all I have to say. Brian, if your reading this, sorry if I bummed you out and made you stay up a little more each night. I love this group and I honestly can't wait for the new one! "Redemption" was incredible! Just write about 20 tracks like that with a touch of "Another Hero Lost" and BAM! Great album! Wait....

8-Album Mind: Where I Post the 10 Albums I Listend to Today

Basically, I'm ripping off a few blogs around Philly that do a feature called "10-Track Mind" where they list 10 local bands they like and the songs that make them happy. Instead, I'll post the albums I listened to in a day. Why? Because frankly, music in Philly sucks as it is, I don't need blogs dedicated to promoting some lame indie-rock band that sounds like every other single friggin indie rock band and telling me that they're "good".

So, here are the albums I heard today:

• Municipal Waste - "Hazardous Mutations" ♠♠♠
• Municipal Waste - "The Art of Partying" ♠♠♠
• Napalm Death - "Scum" ♠♠♠
• Napalm Death - "Enemy of the Music Business" ♠♠♠♠
• Napalm Death - "The Code Is Red... Long Live the Code" ♠♠♠♠
• Neurosis - "Times of Grace" ♠♠ SOLD
• Nevermore - "This Godless Endeavor" ♠♠♠♠
• Nile - "Legacy Of The Catacombs" ♠♠♠
• Nile - "Ithyphallic" ♠♠♠

As you can see, there are little symbols next to each album. Each ♠ means a star, so say an album has ♠♠♠♠. That means it's 4/5 Stars. I'll also have little notes to some albums as well. For example, one of the albums has the word SOLD next to it. Well, that means I didn't like it so much that I sold it. Some may have a little * next to it, so that means there's a review of it. I'll post a review next to it that will link to my "album of the day" blog.

You'll also notice that... well, I like to listen to my CD collection in alphabetical and chronological order. It's a good system since it offers a lot of variety most of the time and allows me to weed out albums I don't like as much and can sell for food money.

Intro's aside, let's get to it!

Municipal Waste's "Hazardous Mutations" was as good as when I first got it in 2005, while "The Art of Partying" was just "meh". I always thought it was an OK album, way too over-hyped in my opinion. Listening to those Napalm Death albums again was actually a thrill; couldn't believe how little I actually listen to these guys! I was a little excited about the Neurosis album since I hadn't heard it in so long.... don't get me wrong, it's a good album, but it just isn't for me. Too mellow for a guy like me.

On the flip side, Nevermore's "This Godless Endeavor" was just incredbile! Great progressive riffs and some of the greatest guitar playing I've heard since Devin Townsend! This album bleeds with a heavy Strapping Young Lad/Devin Townsend Influence, and tossing in the progressive tendencies of Queensryche. Meanwhile, Nile is just... Nile. Heavy as hell and incredibly brutal, but not much to write about.

MOTÖRHEAD To Tour U.S. With MISFITS, Play Philadelphia; Larry Faints

Unless you've been deaf or dead since 1975 when Lemmy and Motorhead first took the stage, a hipster, or someone who shouldn't be reading this blog, the fact that I'm excited to the point of fainting over this shouldn't be a shock. Simply put, this is EXACTLY the type of music-related news blogs like Philadelphia Will Do, The Clog, and Philebrity should cover but don't.

Fuck it, THIS IS MOTORHEAD AND THE MISFITS!

On September 19th, Motorhead and The Misfits will grace Philadelphia with a concert at The Electric Factory. Yes, the Electric Factory, where every idiotic college jock goes to a show on the concept that "I'm going to see a legendary metal band. Aren't I cool?" These same people have no idea how to behave at a show, and they tend to ruin an otherwise kick-ass show. This time, by the hand of Lemmy, AKA GOD, they are banned.

That's the 3rd Friday of September, so if you can get your Bones or Blood shaken (get it? "Boneshaker"? "Shake your Blood"?) at the kick-ass once-in-a-lifetime-kill-all-posers show on August 6th at the Tweeter Center, and don't worry, your not alone, then this is just as good, if not better! Motorhead doing a headlining set? SIGN ME UP! DEAF FOREVER!

Motorhead and The Misfits will also be playing with VALIENT THORR, AIRBOURNE and YEAR LONG DISASTER... but honestly, so what? Airbourne? Cool, but otherwise, Motorhead slays them all!

Jesse Jackson: Hypocrite, Bastard, and Needs To RESIGN! NOW!

Anyone who knows me, anyone who has met me, knows I believe the following: Jesse Jackson is an outdated self-righteous asshole who thinks he is the "king of all black people". He is not. In fact, he is so removed from modern black thinking, he's the same type of racist asshole who he rallied against even up to when he ran for president. He's pushed his own biased, narrow-minded agenda non-stop and down the throats of America for years. He is, in short, why blacks have such a bad name in America.

And now, the man who has rallied and condemned many a white public figure, from Don Imus to my hero Michael Richards, has just used the word Nigger to describe... wait for it... Barack Obama!

CHICAGO - Fox News says the Rev. Jesse Jackson used the N-word during a break in a TV interview where he criticized presidential candidate Barack Obama.

The longtime civil rights leader already came under fire this month for crude off-air comments he made against Obama in what he thought was a private conversation during a taping of a "Fox & Friends" news show.

Now a Fox spokesman says Jackson used the N-word to refer to black people during that taping as he said Obama was talking down to them. Those comments were not aired.

Jackson — who is traveling in Spain — apologized in a statement Wednesday for "hurtful words" but didn't offer specifics.

The N-word comment was first reported by blog TVNewser. Fox declined to release the transcript.

SOURCE: Yahoo! News

Well, well, well... I'm not sure if this is irony or poetic justice, but whatever it is, I want this little nightmare for him to go on and on until he's destroyed. So let's get started, shall we!

Jesse Jackson should now do the following:

• 1. Apologize to Obama again.
• 2. Apologize to the NAACP.
• 3. Resign from the Rainbow/PUSH coalition.
• 4. Admit he has been self-owned and had this coming for being a non-stop asshole.
• 5. Never speak in public again.

IN THAT ORDER.

In fact, Number 3 is the most important. For someone so passionate about helping black people and not tearing them down, for someone who has had countless times gone after public faces, groups, or individuals for whatever small thing he finds offensive and called for them to resign, Jesse Jackson, IT'S YOUR TURN!

I think everyone should contact the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition and ask them to either make Jesse Jackson to resign or that he is fired:



Rainbow/PUSH Coalition
930 East 50th Street
Chicago, IL 60615-2702

ph: 773-373-3366
fx: 773-373-3571
info@rainbowpush.org

Stupid Rules: Coming to a Stadium Near You...

The Kansas City Chiefs are instituting a "No Standing" rule at Arrowhead Stadium. All I want to say before I post the article is this: If this was ever introduced at Lincoln Financial Field here in Philly where The Philadelphia Eagles play, riots would erupt. Seriously, they would.

The Kansas City Chiefs have a "Fan Code of Conduct," which is essentially a list of rules that fans have to follow when they're attending a game at Arrowhead. In theory, it's not a bad idea, as you'd like your stadium to provide a friendly atmosphere for families and people who aren't drunken hooligans.

In practice, though, it might not be such a great idea, especially if the person responsible for coming up with the rules is an 85-year-old woman who teaches the 2nd grade and regards standing up as one of the evil things that young whippersnappers often do. Seriously, standing erect is the No. 2 item on the list of things that are prohibited:

• Standing and/or obstructing the view of other fans

Not only that, Pro Football Talk points out how seated fans can anonymously tattle on their upright counterparts:

The Chiefs also have set up a text-messaging system that allows fans who might be offended by behaviors like standing to report the situation to the powers-that-be.

Fans are asked to treat Chiefs games like bowling matches