Hey, Joe! Glad to hear you're connected again, although sorry to hear that your back is still wonky. I have the Youngsters track on my Xmas mix.

Tina, glad you liked the moose. Send me your address & I'll send you a copy. The Woodman doesn't need the royalties. Most comedy recordings are only good for a couple listens (even the good ones), but along with Richard Pryor & the Firesign Theater (which admittedly is in a universe of its own) I can listen to Woody time and time again. His imagination was just amazing, and that's probably why it retains its freshness, but the craft is there, too. The routines are beautifully constructed, his timing is impeccable -- perhaps not surprising in a musician, and he has that great mix of tradition (Bosrcht belt/vaudeville/early tv) and innovation (leaving his mark on the tradition.) "We laughed. And Gertrude Stein punched me in the mouth."

Stay tuned for the big Richard & Linda Thompson post. But first I need food. And coffee.

Awww, Joe, sorry about your back. I'm muy simpatico.

Thanks for the Dorough article by Giddins. I've got both the Schoolhouse Rock box, and Dorough's early and 70s albums. Must pick up that pop art item, though.

The Larry King random thoughts post:

Thanks, David. Send me your address again. I finally got a copy of Thomas Berger's Who Is Teddy Villanova? for you. It's his detective fiction spoof. It ranks with Nick Danger in noir take offs. (Even though I just said it "spoof" isn't right nor is parody.) Brilliant use of language. The Ganymede misunderstanding, the Francophone jailbait, jokes arcane enough to make Pynchon blush... just a lot of fun.

She's free! At last! Uh... sorry. For a boy hitting puberty in the late 1970s Valerie Bertinelli was pretty much the pinnacle -- well, maybe along with Kim Richards, but that love entailed watching Hello Larry which was too much to ask -- and her marriage to EVH probably inspired more boys of my generation to pick up a guitar than EVH's shredding ever did. Anyway, she's free! Even if I'm not. And I only had to wait 25 years -- it's clearly meant to be! I love this part: "The couple... have one son, 14-year-old Wolfgang Van Halen." If I didn't already have such a rockin' pseudonym I would definitely be Wolfgang Van Halen. Maybe I'll do it anyway. How do I change my screen name?

Any news on the 33 and 1/3 pitches?

I vaguely remember the call for pitches but didn't give it much thought until being laid up. If I had it to do over again, and I weren't a lazy sack, I'd pick one of Sinatra's Nelson Riddle collaborations: In the Wee Small Hours, Songs for Swingin' Lovers, or Only the Lonely. The middle may be his best, the first has an amazing line up of songs and history on its side -- our very notion of an album can be traced back to it -- but I think I'd opt for Only the Lonely on the strength of Riddle's contributions. Extraordinary stuff. Here's the list of Tom Waits' favorite albums, topped by In the Wee Small Hours. And here's more on the Sinatra/Waits nexus. No, I don't think such a pitch would have had a snowball's chance in the Hellmouth of being selected, but just because others aren't historically minded doesn't mean I shouldn't be. I'll be standing in the corner w/ Tom singing "Dancing on the Ceiling". (Btw, I think I ended up as TW in the who are you quiz. Which was fine, but I took it with a grain of salt since as on almost every multiple choice thing I fill out 90% of the questions left me going, "I don't like any of these answers. I guess I'll go with this one, but I don't like it.")

How do I change my screen name?

Ask a stompy. If you're serious, I can do it in a moment. Etiquette requires that you indicate your previous name in your tagline, at least for a while.

Change it! Change it! You and I could form a virtual band that combines pyrotechnical guitar work with alienating guitar tunings and horribly morbid lyrics.

alienating guitar tunings and horribly morbid lyrics.

Speaking of, I keep meaning to download the Jandek covers off buffistarawk to bring to this.

Any news on the 33 and 1/3 pitches?

Nothing until the end of January.

Address is winging its way along the interpipe even now.

Speaking of, I keep meaning to download the Jandek covers off buffistarawk to bring to this.

I don't get the connection...

The 33 & 1/3 pitches and influential albums of the past 30 years led me to this interview with Chuck D and Hank Shocklee. Remember the VH1 Classic Albums documentaries where they'd interview the bands & producers & engineers (the Electric Ladyland one with Eddie Kramer and the one on the Band's second album were particularly good -- the Jew's harp sounding thing on "Up On Cripple Creek"? Garth Hudson's keyboard)? If I could pick one album for that series it would be It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back without a doubt. I hope that's one of the successful pitches, too, but I want to see and hear Chuck and Hank and Terminator X and Bill Stephney unpacking "Rebel Without a Pause" and Louder Than a Bomb" and everything else on that masterpiece. "We started with this James beat, and then put this on top of it. Then Vernon added some guitar. Then we added this and this and this and this and some of that and then a bit of this. Then Chuck and Flav did their parts. Then we added a bit more of this." It's pretty clear from the interview that that ain't gonna happen. The album might have made it under the copyright crackdown wire, and it may be grandfathered past the restrictions, but it's unlikely that they'd decide to kick the sleeping royalty dogs by naming every sample on that unbelievably dense recording. (Of course Chuck is kinda cranky so you never know.)

Edited for formatting.