All About The Voice

For as much as I love music, more and more I find myself becoming annoyed with musicians. A lot of them appear to have a very skewered sense of reality and their place in the world. It is understandable that when you have record executives, groupies and fans falling all over themselves just to get a piece of you and constantly telling you how amazing you are that you may develop an over-grown sense of self-worth - I can totally get that. Where they lose me is when they stop thinking that what they are doing is entertainment and begin to think they are somehow changing the world. Recently, I saw the documentary "From The Sky Down" about U2's recording of that "Achtung Baby" album in Berlin. It was 90 minutes of the band just patting themselves on the back and puffing up the impact of their album. You know, I like "One" as much as the next guy, but can we stop pretending it was anything more than a good song? It didn't change the world. I love U2 and even I found them insufferable in this documentary. Not to mention, of the 12 songs on the album, only 3 (maybe 4) are among the best U2 songs, so how great can this album really be?

Of course as the writer of the lyrics, Bono is even more pleased with himself than the rest of the group, bringing up words like "fate" and "identity" during the recording of the album, as if it was more a religious experience than a musical one. You can't really be surprised at his attitude. Lead singers are always extra proud of what they do. Lead singers typically treat the rest of the band as though they should be grateful the singer even bothered to show up and as if the band couldn't function without them. Lead singers think they can walk on water and should get 100% of the credit if a band is successful and none of the blame should the band fail. Honestly, they hold themselves in pretty high regard. Do you want to know what the worst part about that is? More often then not, they are right.

Musical acts are all about the voice. That is why when bands break up the singer can launch a successful solo career while the rest of the guys wind up behind the glass, producing some other singer who they hopefully can stand a little better. The other day I was mowing the lawn and, as often happens when my iPod is on shuffle because there is so much of their music in my library, the band Oasis kept coming up. Now, it is a well known fact that Liam Gallagher is a giant prick and I'm not surprised that the rest of the band decided they could no longer deal with his attitude. That being said, he has a great voice. He recently came out with an album from his new band and do you know what? It sounds just like Oasis, which means I have liked what I have heard so far. I don't have to deal with him on a personal basis, so why do I care if he is hard to deal with? I just like the music he makes.

I'm sure that it is hard to hear if you are a member of a band, firmly (if inaccurately) believing that everyone in the band is equal. But it just isn't true. With the exception of Van Halen switching from David Lee Roth to Sammy Hagar, most of the attempts by musical acts to switch singers have gone down in flames. At that point you may as well change the name of the act, because it is no longer what people think you should sound like and they aren't going to embrace the new guy anyway. The former members of Creed thought they had a solution when they replaced Scott Stapp with a guy who sounded just like him and changed the band's name, but people realized they were still just Creed trying to pull a fast one and before long the band announced they were reforming with Stapp. It was a valiant effort, but not enough. In a situation like that you either go in a totally different direction or learn to deal with the lead singer being a jerk. Those are kind of your only options.

The bottom line is there is a reason that there are roughly 50 shows on television right now in which a panel of judges try to find the next great voice, but there are zero shows on in which a great band with no lead singer is being offered a record contract. It is all about finding that one distinct voice that stands out in a crowd. That one voice which is instantly recognizable, immediately tells the audience who the band is and let's them know they are in for a good show. Those voices are hard to find, but if you do discover one you should hold on to it because it can take you places as long as you are prepared to deal with the consequences, because often they come attached to a person who is a bit of a jerk.

Four Quick Ones

-The other day I was out having drinks with friends and went to get into my truck at the end of the night. I hit the unlock button on my remote and found that nothing happened. I hit it again and still the doors didn't unlock. I suddenly had visions of not being able to get into my truck and found myself wondering just how the hell was I going to fix this. Would I call a locksmith? It was late, would they still even be around? Would I have to break into my own car? Fortunately the third time was the charm, the doors opens and I proceeded home, feeling very lucky. It was not until several hours later that it dawned on me that during this entire time I had car keys in my hand. You know, the very thing people use when confronted with things like locked doors. I could have very easily opened the door, but I never even thought about using keys. I can't totally be blamed for this, because in the four years of owning my truck I have never once used the key to unlock the door, it has always been the remote. I'm just out of the habit. Still, it is moments like this that make me really worried. If I'm this bad now, it is only going to worse.

-Driving down the road yesterday a woman sped up to get in front of me, pulled into my lane and promptly slowed down. Fantastic. Loyal readers know this is a particular pet peeve of mine, as if you feel like you have to be in my lane you could just as easily wait until I've passed you to pull in. But, I was willing to let it go, right up until I saw the woman's licence plate: SUZYQ. For some reason, that just made her more annoying to me. I think it was because it made her annoying me more personal. If it was all the same to you, drivers of Massachusetts, I think I prefer to keep our road rage incidents anonymous.

-In a restaurant I saw an item which advertised "Irish Bacon" on the burgers. Full of wonder I ordered the sandwich, wondering just what made this bacon so Irish. Did they feed the pigs Guinness? Did they have a brogue? Were they wearing knit wool sweaters when the farmers took them down? Well, unfortunately, I don't have any answers for you because not only did I not taste any difference in the bacon, I could barely taste it at all. Then again, maybe that was what made it Irish - any and all taste had been boiled out of it. If anyone knows the answer to this I would greatly appreciate the knowledge.

-I'm gonna weigh in on the Joe Paterno stuff a little bit more on Saturday, but can I just say again how much I hate it when non-sports columnists write about sports? Most of them are not sports fans and are writing about a culture and mentality they know little about. Because of this, most of them keep going back to the same point that sports aren't really important in the grand scheme of things. Yeah, well, to some people they are. Those same people might find some of the stuff you normally write and care about really irrelevant, but at least they have the common courtesy to leave you alone and not point out to you how stupid we think your stuff might be. Just because a sports story has turned into a national story, that doesn't mean every columnist in the op-ed section with a deadline is required to write about it. Believe me, the sports department has plenty of opinions of their own and most of them will come from a much more well-informed position. You wouldn't allow the jocks to weigh in on the political debates or the Occupy Wall Street movement, so how about you leave the sports talk to the professionals.

Pardon The Interruption

Back in my disc jockey days, the Emergency Alert System was a pain in the ass. It was this black box in the corner of the room that taunted you like a time bomb. Even though we ran scheduled alerts every couple of weeks, occasionally it would come on without warning and spit a piece of paper at you, demanding you run an alert in the next few minutes. You would then have to stop whatever you were doing to take care of it as soon as the next song ended and that was a whole other process. It was a series of buttons to press, things to sign and papers to staple, all of which proved that just because some people can make it into college, they aren't smart enough to handle following five steps worth of directions. It had gotten to the point that we had to make sure the people working when they were scheduled were not complete morons. Still, there was nothing we could do about the unscheduled one - those were simply a crapshoot. All we could hope for was it happened during the day and that a director was nearby.

I was thinking about that this afternoon as the first nation-wide emergency alert was issued. After years of sending out tests at various times to test the readiness of locations individually and without warning, the people in charge decided it was time to go full-scale. This test was designed to truly test the system across the country, both TV and radio, all at once. But, at least the let us know it was coming and the stations went the next step of telling us it was coming. In fact, the build-up to the test was a little silly, as I repeatedly saw reminders every time I turned on the on-Demand section of my TV. Considering that the majority of people try and ignore these things when the come on and the test was happening at 2 in the afternoon, it felt as though everyone was trying just a little too hard to prove this was important. (This is the part where I should point out that I never heard a single EAS on the morning of September 11th, where one might have come in handy.)

Now, I was in my truck when the clock hit 2 and here's what really drove me crazy: stations cut into the middle of songs to play the alert message. I hate it when radio stations cut into songs as it is, but I really hate it when they do it unnecessarily. They knew this alert was coming, so why not plan the playlist accordingly? Have a break in there which allows the DJ to prattle on for a minute and then go to the alert when it is issued, rather than stopping a popular song in the middle for an interruption you knew was on the way. I've done that job before and it is not very hard to plan it out so that the music stops at very specific times. I'm terrible at math and I would do it all the time; these guys use computers and they still couldn't figure it out so that music wasn't cut off mid-chorus. It's just another way that things like iPods and other personal music players are beating up on radio - they never have to break in for stuff like this.

That, of course, leads to the larger issue of just why they bother to send out emergency alerts on radio anymore. TV I can understand, but radio continues to slide down the ladder of media in this country. As the alert was going on I was at a red light with a bunch of kids at a bus stop right next to me and not a single one of them appeared to be listening to the radio on their headphones. If this had been an actual emergency they would have had no idea. As people keep moving away from radio I wouldn't be surprised if in the future people try and figure out a way to send out emergency alerts to smart phones and other personal media devices. It would certainly make sure that whatever message they need to get out reaches everyone. Then again, they would probably still send the alerts out right in the middle of my favorite song.

The Pum-King of Beers

When I was growing up, cranberry was the mixable fruit of choice. You couldn't turn your head in the grocery store without seeing some new product that was half-cranberry/half another fruit which would never be near a cranberry in nature. It was in our cereal, it was in our drinks and it was in our bread. This saturation during my formative years is probably the main reason the only time I want cranberry now is when it is in canned, jelly form and under a nice layer of my mom's gravy. And I gotta tell you, I'm starting to feel that same way about pumpkins. I don't know when or why it happened, but suddenly everything around here has to be pumpkin-flavored. You see it in all sorts of pastries and breads, but it is especially prevalent in liquids. If you don't want to have pumpkin-flavored beer or coffee people look at you like your head is on backwards.

Craft beers are the worst - everyone has a pumpkin brew and the servers at the bar can't wait to tell you how delicious it is. First off, it's beer - it's not supposed to be delicious. If beer was delicious then everyone would drink it all the time and we would be a nation of alcoholics who never got anything done. Beer being a little bitter is the main reason why people stop drinking it after a while. That lack of bitterness is what makes those fruity concoctions you get on vacation so dangerous: you can't taste the liquor over the fruit juice cocktail and before you know it you've had three without being able to tell how much alcohol is in it and you are hammered. We should all thank God those things are hard to make. (The fact that it takes a lot of energy to pull out the blender versus the bottle opener is the only reason some of my former co-workers ever made it in on time.)

Anyway, everywhere I go people tell me I have to try the pumpkin beer. So, because of this peer pressure I decided to try one the other night when I went out for beers with friends. I went with the Pumking beer, as it was the most highly recommended. I should have known I was in trouble when it was $8. Any time a beer costs more at your local pub than it would in Gillette Stadium, you should be punching out almost immediately. Secondly, the waitress told me it would be a couple minutes because they had to go and get the special glasses. Oh joy. Because we all know how much I enjoy it when a beer has to come in a special glass. Turns out this special glass was essentially a giant brandy snifter. Besides just adding to the spill factor every time someone bumped my arm, I'm not really sure how my drinking experience was enhanced. I guess it was meant to help me smell the pumpkin flavoring, but I couldn't smell anything. I mean, I could barely taste it. But, I'll admit that I did feel kind of cool holding this thing. All that was missing was a monocle and someone to discuss our latest shipping agreements with India.

I have to say, when the best thing about your beer was the glass it was in and I didn't want to use that glass to begin with, that probably isn't a ringing endorsement. I feel like I gave this beer a legitimate shot, but at the end of the day I really didn't see what the big deal was. I didn't even taste pumpkin at all. I believe the best kind of flavored beers are the subtle ones, which give you a hint of flavor but don't get over-powering. But this was so subtle that if you hadn't told me what flavor I was supposed to be tasting I probably wouldn't have been able to guess it. So, I think that will be my first and last try with pumpkin beer. But, the good news is that in a few years I'm sure some new fruit or vegetable will come along and be the hip flavoring of the moment, becoming part of every other food in its sight. I'm sure there are already people working on it. (I vote we go with carrots. Think of how great everybody's night vision would be!)

Nowhere To Go

I feel like every town has a stretch of road that is always under construction. You know what I'm talking about: a construction crew has been working on the same three hundred feet for the last eight months, leaves it looking essentially the same, then takes time off to tease you with two weeks of traffic-free driving, only to show back up unannounced to begin fixing the next three hundred feet at the same break-neck pace, all of which puts the project on schedule to be complete around the time my nieces are learning to drive. This has been going on so long that you almost forget what it was like to pass through that area without seeing traffic cones and a cop on detail. I'm sure you all have your own stretch of road in mind. However, that issue is not the point of this post.

I have no problems driving through normal construction zones. I can slow down and merge from two lanes down to one with the best of them. The only thing I really hate driving through are the stretches of road where they have put up dueling jersey barriers on each side of a suddenly one-lane road. In the blink of an eye you go from driving on a normal road to being in the middle of the world's widest luge course. I think what I don't like is the fact that should something happen with the car in front of me I can't turn away from it, unless I feel like putting some serious dents into the side of my truck. This is why I could be driving a school bus and I still wouldn't use the HOV lane. It makes me very uncomfortable to know that I have no where to go. It puts a tremendous amount of trust in my fellow drivers and I hate to be the one to have to tell you this, but most of you suck at driving.

But, at the very least I understand they are a necessary evil. The other night I was driving through one of these mini-luge courses when I saw a sign just about at the halfway point, sitting on top of the wall. It simply read, "No U-Turn". Oh, you think so, doctor? A motorcycle couldn't u-turn in the middle of one of these stretches of road. (I guess you could do it on a unicycle, but I wouldn't recommend it.) Once you have entered there is no going back - you are locked in and no amount of kicking and screaming is going to get you out early. It's the roadway equivalent of a gym membership.

Now, normally I am against unnecessary signage, but in this case I found it very amusing. I have to guess that the road crew had a good laugh putting that up. Do you think they waited and put that up so far into the barriers to point out the ridiculousness of the sign? It's nice to imagine that they have a sense of humor. Of course, the scary thought is that it may not be unnecessary. There are enough dings and paint scrapes on the sides of some of these barriers to make you think someone tried to bash their way through it. And you wonder why I don't want to be locked in behind some of the cars on the road.

It's That Time Again

So, we've reached the end of Daylight Savings Time. That means last night you turned your clocks back an hour before you went to bed and earned yourself an extra hour of sleep. Now, despite the obvious drawback of the sun going down at 3 in the afternoon, I think this is clearly the better time-shift. Not just for the extra sleep, but because when you roll the clocks back there is not nearly as much complaining about how tired or thrown off everyone is by the hour of sleep that they lose when the clocks spring forward. However, this day does also lead to a lot more people lying to themselves.

If you're anything like me, every time daylight savings ends, you wake up at roughly the same time the next morning on your internal clock. After all, your internal clock is fine, it's the outside clock that changed. But you forget about that and focus on how nice it is to wake up feeling refreshed and with an extra hour of the day ahead of you. So you make a vow right then and there to start going to bed earlier and waking up early every weekend. You'll get so much more done and be so much more productive, you tell yourself. Yeah, well, this lasts for about two days. Then some horrible movie on Showtime gets you in its grips, you stay up way too late, press the snooze button a couple extra times and you're back to your old ways. I'm very familiar with this, as I do it every year about this time. But, at least that first morning feels really good.

Weekly Sporties

-Last Friday there was a mini-mutiny on the Notre Dame football team as Coach Brian Kelly gave an interview and basically said that the problems against USC could be traced back to the players he inherited, not the ones he recruited. That raised quite a few eyebrows as roughly 90% of the starters are upperclassmen. Linebacker Manti Te'o, also known as the best player on the football team, Tweeted out, "I'm just going to play for my boys." This lead to the unusual situation of a head coach having to call a meeting to apologize to his own players. Now, I'm not going to use this space to criticize Coach Kelly, as his record against quality opponents will do that work for me. Instead, I want us to use this incident to officially bury the cliche that gets trotted out whenever there is a coaching change in college and the team starts off well, which is that the other guy is only winning because the he's using the last guy's players. First off, if the last guy's players were so great then the last guy wouldn't have gotten fired. Secondly, it's actually harder to win with the last guy's players as they are often used to playing in a different system. They are also used to playing for a coach with a different personality. And if you think that second part doesn't matter, ask Brian Kelly how it's working out for him so far.

-I admit, I am a sucker for any show that has miked-up athletes. I love to hear the trash-talk, probably because I was so very bad at it myself. Plus you get to see what people are really like, as they often forget they are miked. Anyway, this love of inside access is the main reason that while I'm not a huge NASCAR fan, I am a huge fan of "Inside NASCAR" on Showtime. Last week's episode had an all-time great moment. One of the drivers, Brian Vickers, was having an especially bad day at the office as he was involved in an unofficial tally of 8 cautions. One of the guys he wrecked out the race was limping off the track, but waited until Vickers came back around on the caution lap and promptly gave him a hard tap as he was passing by. Over the radio, Kurt Busch was heard to say, "Jees, no one has any sportsmanship out here." This from the same Kurt Busch who pushed the rules to the point he was close to failing pre-race inspection for so many consecutive weeks that NASCAR basically gave him a time-out before a race, just to piss him off? The same Kurt Busch that threw such a hissy fit at this penalty that every other driver on the track wanted to know where he was so they could avoid being near him, for fear he was about to do something stupid? The same Kurt Busch whose brother just got suspended for this weekend's race after running a a guy into the wall after the caution flag was out? That's the guy complaining about sportsmanship? That clinches it: race car drivers are the most hypocritical people on the planet.

-Speaking of hypocrisy: when the Big East started losing members such as Boston College and Miami to the ACC a few years ago, they imposed stiffer penalties for anyone who wanted to leave the conference in an effort to curb a mass exodus. Among them were huge cash buy-outs and clauses which said you had to remain in the conference for several years even after you announced your intention to switch. When Syracuse and Pittsburgh announced they were planning to leave earlier this year, the cash penalties were increased. Now West Virginia wants to leave and while they have no problems paying the larger fees to leave, they want to be able to do it before next season. As you would expect, this has lead to lawsuits between the school and the conference. Personally, I find this very amusing. Not that the Big East is in all this trouble because, at this point, I've given up caring about college conferences. I just find it really amusing the West Virginia agreed to all these clauses when they didn't apply to them, but now that they want to leave they find them ridiculous and illegal. It reminds me of an episode of a teen-drama where all the goth kids make a pact not to go to prom, only then the attractive goth gets asked to go and turns her back on the group. I told you, this conference re-alignment issue has more twists, turns and hurt feelings than your average episode of "90210".

-Count me among those really surprised that Cardinals Manager Tony La Russa retired on Monday, following the Cardinals World Series victory over the Texas Rangers. I know that La Russa is 67, he's probably getting to the point where he feels that if he doesn't get out now he's never getting out and you really can't leave the stage in a better fashion, but I just wonder what the heck he's going to do. He always struck me as a baseball lifer. I fully expect him to take a couple years off, discover that he's pretty bored with retirement and return to the bench. I just hope that if/when that happens he holds out for a good job, because there is nothing worse than seeing a once-great coach slumming it simply because he doesn't know what else to do with his life and the ownership is paying him a lot of money due to his past accomplishments. You won't ever see Phil Jackson coming back to coach a 15-win Kings team and I hope you never see Tony La Russa wearing a Marlins jersey.

- Speaking of baseball, Dodgers owner Frank McCourt finally gave up the fight this week, agreeing to sell the Dodgers. Personally, I'm actually annoyed that McCourt is going to run this once-proud franchise into the ground and still make a few hundred million dollars profit from his initial investment thanks to inflation and sports teams being the only thing around here increasing in value. Anyway, one of the first names on everybody's lips for new ownership was that of Maverick's owner Mark Cuban. Cuban has tried to buy the Cubs and the Rangers in the past and met with resistance from other baseball owners who see him as difficult to deal with, but you have to think this time would be different. He has no cash flow problems, his Mavericks just won an NBA title last year and he's exactly the kind of big personality that the Los Angeles crowd would love, immediately putting some juice back into the franchise. I know he can be a bit of a pain in the neck, but he would be great for baseball. As long as he makes the best offer, they should let him in.

-Cuban currently has the kind of time on his hands to run a professional baseball team, as the NBA lockout drags on. After looking so promising last week, all talks have been on hold for the last couple of days. In fact, things may be getting a little worse, as it appears there are cracks forming on both fronts. There are rumors that half the players want to settle and that half the owners agree, but some harder-line owners want to hold out for more and really crush the players union. Meanwhile there is talk of decertifying the players' union, which could very well undo any progress that has been made and really put the season in jeopardy. So, here's my solution: those that are ready for a deal should splinter off and make it happen on their own. Sure there won't be as many big-name players or as many teams, but that could actually be for the best. If there were no superstars then all teams would be closer in terms of competition and with fewer teams the regular season wouldn't be so long, which we all agree would be a good thing. Make it happen, boys.

-One of those hard-line NBA owners is ironically Michael Jordan, who was firmly on the other side of the aisle the last time the NBA had labor negotiations. This gives him unique knowledge of just how desperate the average players are to start getting paychecks again, so he's leading the charge to really swing the deal in ownership's favor. Anyway, because Jordan is currently dealing with his obligations as owner of the NBA's Charlotte Bobcats this week he had to give up his post as one of the assistant captains in golf's President's Cup, scheduled to start in a couple weeks in Australia. This leads to a fairly obvious question to me: why the hell was he an assistant captain to start with? Jordan is a pretty good golfer with a moderately-low handicap, but not to the point he was going to be giving any of these players golf advice. He was an assistant captain two years ago and while he didn't embarrass himself, I never heard anyone talk glowingly about him making the team better or coming up with some amazing strategy - it was pretty much seen as a way for Captain Fred Couples to get some sweet memorabilia. So, I doubt Jordan's absence should be seen a windfall for the International squad. If anything, at least now the American team's clothes won't all reek of cigar smoke the entire week.