The Entroporium

What do Metallica, The Kinks, Dead Kennedys, Tammy Wynette and Bob Dylan have in common? They all made The National Review’s Top 100 Conservative Rock Songs! “What makes a great conservative rock song? The lyrics must convey a conservative idea or sentiment, such as skepticism of government or support for traditional values. And, to be [...]

Yesterday Susie and I took a very unsuccessful trip into the maw of San Francisco’s consumer hellmouth, Union Square. Somehow I came away with two pairs of shoes — and three pairs in total for the long weekend. This is some kind of crazy record, hopefully not to be repeated. And what did I do [...]

The Entroporium go roped into attending an American Idol finale party. Elliot Yamin is warbling U2′s “One,” when Mary J Blige appears from the back and sings histrionic circles around the nice-boy karaoke singer… Shawn: Oh my god, that was a horrible unfair beating. How could they do that to him? Nicole: Are you kidding? [...]

Only a week after David Byrne lamented the end of packaging — oh, and let us know that record packaging was all just record company artifice to begin with — The Residents released their plan to Take Back Your Shelf Space. Their new album will be sold as a presumably amazing-looking 2-CD set at the [...]

Bono guest-edited The Independent UK today. If you’ve been hoping for a newspaper in which rock stars write about politics and politicians write about music, today is a great day for you. Condoleezza stands in from the political side with the dreaded “Ten Best” list. Ms. Rice has mostly classical music on her ipod, but [...]

As usual, Marc at The Sunday Morning Hangover leads the way on the classic art rock tip. Today is the 40th anniversary of the release of Pet Sounds, a weird and wonderful record that still stands virtually alone in its sound and scope. David Leaf’s liner notes for the 1997 edition of Pet Sounds are [...]

While Pitchfork thinks Art Brut’s live show is like “Hives crossed with Monty Python,” I’m going to dissent and go with Steve Coogan fronting The Damned, because they were funnier and had better songs than that (or perhaps more succinctly, had songs).

Combine my high school musical theater years with my experience working in the punk rock record store, add 25 years and some business acumen. Shake, stir, pour… MercuryNews.com | 04/26/2006 | `Fidelity’ bound for Broadway