Rip City Rising!

This is wicked AWESOME
skateboards + explosions + M83 = Sweet!

Pitchfork hates it, must be good! mmm! mmm!

Noticed this little gem on Pitchfork this morning, apparently they don't like it. I guess they don't understand it, that's too bad for them. I suppose thats because Does It Offend You, Yeah? have a sense of humor and like to have fun. Not nearly enough angst and self pity for Pitchfork. Do check DIOY,Y? out. Fun, indie style techno bashing. Definitely a good rollick, some good craic! Recommended if you like: Vive La Fete, Kasabian, upbeat MGMT and Pony Pony Run Run. disclaimer: not that I've heard the whole thing, it's not even out in the States, just checked out what's on their myspace page.

Power Ballad Killed the Metal Star

Something very important and very serious has been bothering me for quite some time. This has been nagging me and eating at my very existence. That it was allowed to continue altered the very course of my being. I am of course talking about the metal power ballad. A musical genre that rallied around high energy chord changes, screaming fast guitar solos, and wailing vocals, reduced to dust by sappy feelings. This comes up now, having grown up in the early Eighties listening to Twisted Sister, Kix, Ratt, Def Leppard, since I decided to dig out some of the golden oldies: Out of the Cellar, Shout at the Devil, L.A. Guns, Long Cold Winter, Pyromania. But as I listened along, and really dug some tunes that I had forgotten about over the last decade (crikey I'm gettin old), every so often, some insipid fluff would spew forth from the speakers, ackk, what the hell was that. Damnit, I wanna rock out, and some jackass is crying about how he lost the girl or is a long way from home... fuggetaboutit, I want my ass kicked! Now in the digital age its easy enough to go through and delete all the ballads, which is exactly what I did, but back in the day, it always seemed that the monster hit was the stupid ballad, at least 1 on every album. So a genre that is 90% wall to wall obnoxiously loud noise got best known by the most mellow, most vapid garbage ever laid to tape? This killed, yes, killed, hard rock or hair metal or glam rock, whatever you wanna call it. Some mellow folks bought rockin albums cuz they heard a ballad they liked but couldn't stand the rest of the beautiful, glorious noise, then folks like myself got tired of fast forwarding past the damn ballad, wouldn't have been so bad if they had just always put them at the end of the record. Like, hey, we know this song sucks but its gonna make us a ton of money, so we'll put it on at the end, and you can pretend that the album finishes one song earlier. Somehow, Ratt got away without having a ballad, and on each of their first 3 albums they got harder and louder, sweet! I'm not sure who to blame for this, now this is America so someone must be at fault. Possibly Zeppelin with Stairway, was that the first power ballad? Motley Crue surely hit the big time with Home Sweet Home in 85, and GnR struck platinum with Sweet Child O' Mine, so I suppose at lot of folks were trying to emulate those bands. So there you have it... Led Zeppelin, Motley Crue and Guns and Roses shall stand guilty for Metal's sins against Rock and paving the way for a buncha whiney babies filled with angst post Nirvana.

March Madness

Go Vikings
Go Ducks
Go Hoyas

Its that time of the decade again! Time to check in on the kids at Punk Voter and see whats up!

Pazz & Jop 2007

Portland
Italy
France
Netherlands
Germany
Switzerland
Belgium

If there was any doubt about the Blazers' legitimacy in the Western Conference - or their newfound superiority over the Warriors - it all dissolved in an opening blur of dunks and three-pointers.

Portland Trail Blazers Playlist

This includes stuff they play at The Rose Garden and some of my own pump ya up style tunes

Young Jeezy - Standing Ovation (The first 3 picked by players during warm-ups)
Birdman - Pop Bottles
Jibbs - King Kong
The Who - Who Are You (who is the visiting team???)
Daft Punk - Harder Faster Better (Deadmau5 Edit) (Pre-intro warming up)
Carl Orff - Carmina Burana - O Fortuna (One of the intros, the other is GNR... boring)
Run DMC - Walk This Way (Def Beats)
Jim Noir - Eanie Meany (Fat Boy Slim Mix) (The World Cup 2006 Adidas Comercial song)
The Game - Compton (Def Beats)
Spoon - I Turn My Camera On (the Blazers cuz they is rollin)
DJ Food - Dark Lady (Def Beats)
Timo Maas - To Get Down (One of my favs)
Ramones - Blitzkrieg Bop (Ay Oh, Let's Go)
Junkie XL - A Little Less Conversation (Def Beats)
Republica - Ready To Go (The Blazers are always ready to go)
Randy Newman - I Love LA (When Lamarcus Aldridge scores)
Outkast - Hey Ya (What's cooler than cool??? The Blazers!)
Dubfire - Rib Cage (Def Beats)
Groove Armada - I See you Baby (shaking your a... watch your mouth, I'm just talking bout Blazers)
Modest Mouse - We've Got Everything (NW represent)
Nelly - Hot In Here (Def Beats)
Finger Eleven - Paralyzer (Heard this at an Auburn game)
Basement Jaxx - Where's Your Head At (I didn't know Kevin Pritchard could get down)
LCD Soundsystem - Daft Punk Is Playing At My House (How come they don't play MY house?)
Black Box - Strike It Up (Dumb early techno/house, but it gets people going)
Dusty Kid - The Cat/The Kitten (Def Beats)
Ennio Morricone - The Good The Bad & The Ugly (When Travis Outlaw scores... The Good!!!)
Gary Glitter - Rock n Roll Part 2 (Necessary at sporting events)
Gorillaz - Re-Hash (Def Beats)
Blur - Song 2 (Loud)
THX (Lets grill, lets grill, lets grill 'em!!!)
Lyrics Born - I Changed My Mind (Def Beats)
Ole Ole Ole (When Sergio Rodriguez scores - He's Spanish, he must like soccer)
Hives - Hate To Say I Told You So (Also loud!)
Marilyn Manson - The Beautiful People (Def Beats)
The Isley Brothers - Shout (A little LOUDER now!!!)
2 Unlimited - Get Ready (dumb lyrics, but not bad if you edit them out)
2 Unlimited - Twilight Zone (see above, plus good riot inducing early techno/house)
AC/DC - Hells Bells (Rock the bells, geetar pumpin)
BTO - Taking Care of Business (The Blazers have done just this 11 out the last 11 games!!!)

NYTimes Baked Eggs

GO BLAZERS!!! 9 in a row!!!

Orange Confit from the NYTimes

I love this quote from Tyson Chandler about the Rose Garden after an ugly Blazer's win, "(The Blazers) are playing great at home. They definitely have home-court advantage because you couldn't hear anything out there."

NYTimes on carving a turkey

The Portland Timbers will host their first-round, home playoff match on Sunday, Sept. 16, at PGE Park at 5 p.m. A first-round opponent will be determined by the United Soccer Leagues at a later date.

USL Division 1 Playoffs 1st round
Portland Timbers vs ???
Sunday Sept 16 5pm @ PGE Park
Timbers Army Chants with video
Timbers Chants with audio
Talk Timbers message board
PortlandTimbers.com

Great Portland rock I'm just getting around to checking out...
Menomena
Boy Eats Drum Machine
The Shaky Hands
Blitzen Trapper

RIYL: Super Furry Animals, Radiohead & The Flaming Lips
ok, the Radiohead part is a bit of a cop out, I don't mean folks like near twins the Muse, but more like like minded, artists who aren't afraid to push boundaries a little. Also, you could say TV On The Radio and maybe (I can't even believe my fingers can type these words) the grateful dead (just a bit on a couple Shaky Hands and Blitzen Trapper songs). Somebody else said acoustic Neil Young, that's much better, but not what came to my mind. Nevertheless, these bands are all quite good and deserve you attention.