Buy. This. Album.

Dammit.

Melinda Doolittle's record has finally "dropped," according to all the "dope" "homeys" who keep me updated with such news. I downloaded mine from Amazon yesterday. Very cool old-school soul/R&B thrown all up in that piece. Worth it for the throwback album cover all by itself, kids.

You can order the real-live physical CD (and other swag) from melindadoolittle.com, or jump straight to the Amazon download page. See how helpful I am?

Do You Really Want To Hurt Him?

What's that you say? Suicide bombers and child-killin' and global warming and Georgia Reublicans not scary enough for you? You need something even SCARIER?

Try this one on for size:

Ah, The Mix Tape.

I was reading an article on the AV Club about making a mix tape with songs from cult movies, and was thinking about High Fidelity (the book, not the movie), and got to thinking about the greatest-ever advance in recording technology:

The fact that cassette tape degrades over time, and will eventually remove all evidence of our humiliating early endeavors in creating the soundtracks of our love.

Oy.

Now we'll just have to see how long CDs actually hold up...

Rick Wright, RIP.

Rick Wright, keyboardist for Pink Floyd, died. That totally blows. He survived the Syd Barret insanity, the commercial highs of Wish You Were Here - Dark Side of the Moon - The Wall, got fired and had to play on contract for The Wall tour, and came back after Roger Waters' ugly split from the band. And in the middle of that, he wrote my single favorite Floyd tune, "The Great Gig in the Sky," from Dark Side. This is the live version from Versailles, 1988.

War Is Not The Answer. Duh.

So Thursday night, Megan and I were listening to some absolutely outstanding music at the Ryman. It was just about perfect, except for the moment of pandering to the audience. A musician told a story about meeting "a young man in uniform" going to his 4th tour of duty and asking him, "Why are you over there?" And the soldier said, "I'm fighting to protect your freedom."

Even ignoring the fact that this is utter and complete nonsense, since that war has absolutely zero to do with us or our freedoms, what was extra mind-boggling was that it seemed to both of them (and to quite a few of the folks in attendance" a perfectly justifiable and reasonable answer. Sometimes, I gotta tell ya, I feel pretty lost.

Two To The One...

... from the one to the three...

Hey, me 'n' Nate Dogg like what we like, know what I'm sayin?

Notes From All Over [UPDATE]

So, for the quick highlights:

The Preds CLINCHED a playoff spot Thursday night with a comeback win over the Blues, accompanied by a late Vancouver loss. Next up? Oy. More Red Wings, probably. But, hey: after not knowing if they still had a team and thus losing pretty much everybody that was making more than minimum wage this past off-season, that's pretty cool.


Jack's new 6-string Banjo arrived this week, which is pretty cool. East Side Fight Night co-founder Dan will have to help with the setup, but then it will look just like this, and maybe sound even that good.

Barcelona won the first leg of their UEFA Champions League quarterfinal against Schalke 04, who are apparently German. Would getting a 2nd Champs League title in 3 years take some of the sting out of a rapidly-crapping Liga season ? Why yes, it would.



Finally, my friend Jessalyn is playing Debbie in a production of "Debbie Does Dallas: The Musical" in Michigan. Here's an awesome publicity poster: