Life happens...

And sometimes it's not always fun. I won't bore you with details but the events over the last year and how many ever months have made me abandon this blog for awhile. Well, that and not having a computer. That said, I'm up and running again and should have my opinionated ass showing up around here a little more often than once a year.

Pride Parade - Dose

First off let me give credit where credit is due. Shiny Grey Monotone turned me on to these guys awhile back and have just posted the same album I'm about to a week ago. If you haven't checked out that blog yet, do so as they are my favorite blog of that style on the net.

On to Pride Parade... as I said, I downloaded this last week over at SGM and love it. Pride Parade is a band from Athens, GA and from my best descriptive assessment have a Mule meets Red Red Meat by way of Young Widows sound. In other words, Mule's country noise rock vibe mixed with Young Widows modern take on noise rock. The Red Red Meat comes in via the vocals and more of the indie rock/Sub Pop moments. Over all, a good, well rounded rocking band with some earnest, well written songs.

As a bonus, this is also a "guilt free" download and by that I mean the link I'm providing will take you to the bands website where they themselves are offering this album up for free download. They also have a "Donate" button as well as a vinyl pressing available to those that can spare a dime.

So go on... take a chance and download it. The band want you to. If you don't like it, nothing lost but who knows, you may just discover your favorite new band.

Enjoy!

Stupid shit I've heard since moving to the south: Vol. 1

So, I was in a discount book store a couple of months ago, right after I moved down here. You know, one of those last ditch effort places that attempt to sell currently irrelevant, formerly "relevant" auto biographies on some jack-off in the senate or I dunno, some super sweet, ultra-conservative  religious books on tape. Anyway, as in the south, this establishment had the local country station on the radio just cranking out what I assume to be the "hits". I assume this because my knowledge on the genre is, we'll say, limited at best. That and the cashier was "going for it" by audibly singing along.

The announcer came on in all his cheese ball, radio voice splendor and gave his spiel, "If you have any drive time requests...". Usually the banter would've just blended into the back ground but since Dolly Parton Jr. over there made me notice, I was listening. 

Announcer: "Let's go to the phones and get another request. Hi there caller, you have a request you'd like to share with us?"

Caller: "Yeah, I sure doo!" All excitedly twanged out, of course.

Announcer:"Great! What can we get on for ya then?

Caller: "I don't know...anythang!" Once again, very enthusiastically twangy.

Announcer: Understandable confused, "Anything?!"

Caller: As blissfully ignorant as ever, "Yeah, I don't care, anythaang!" 

I didn't listen to what was said after this as it was one of the dumber exchanges I've ever been subject to hearing. I was in "idiot shock". If I had to guess, I'm pretty sure it was stupid. 

Now, I and the rest of the United States of America could be confused about this; I always thought the point of going through the motion of physically making the effort of dialing the number of a radio station on the telephone DURING a request hour AND waiting for what could be upwards of ten minutes on hold was to have a song to tell the station to play!?! Who fucking calls a radio station without one idea what they'd like to hear?! Better yet, who couldn't just pull a song out of their ass on the spot even if they only listen to the radio gingerly puttering around on a daily basis?! I mean shit, she listened closely enough to catch the stations phone number to call, right? Really? Not one song idea? Really?! 

REALLY?!?