10cc (Everything you wanted to know about...)

Highlights of their ridiculously impressive resume are emphasized in red.

         

          Forming in 1973, 10cc’s initial line-up consisted of four ridiculously overqualified guys – each of them a singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, producer, arranger and recording engineer. They were; Graham Gouldman, Eric Stewart, Kevin Godley and Lol Crème.

          In the 1960s, Eric Stewart was the lead guitarist with Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders, on their hit, “The Game of Love”. When Wayne quit, Stewart took over as the group’s lead vocalist and scored with the #1 hit, “A Groovy Kind of Love”. They appeared in the hit movie “To Sir With Love”.

          From 1965 through 1968, Graham Gouldman wrote "For Your Love", "Heart Full of Soul" and "Evil Hearted You" for The Yardbirds, "Look Through Any Window" (with Charles Silverman) and "Bus Stop" for The Hollies, "Listen People", "No Milk Today" and "East West" for Herman's Hermits.

          In the late 60’s, Gouldman came to the attention of bubblegum pop tycoons Jerry Kasenetz and Jeffry Katz of Super K Productions, marketers of countless, faceless teeny bopper records accredited to an endless list of fake band names. He worked for them for months as a production – line songwriter, cranking out a song a day. A minor success  from July of 1969 was "Sausalito", a No. 86 US hit performed by the future members of 10cc and featuring Gouldman on vocals, but credited to the group The Ohio Express.

          Around this time, Gouldman and Stewart were investing in building their fledgling Strawberry Studios.

          Gouldman suggested to Kasenets / Katz that Gouldman and his friends Stewart, Godley and Crème could crank out bubblegum records at Strawberry Studios at a dirt cheap rate, and with a ruthless efficiency.  Always purveyors of cheap quantity over reasonably priced quality, Kasenets / Katz quickly agreed. Our heroes cranked out finished records of original songs, under such sobriquets as The Ohio Express (although they had nothing to do with "Yummy, Yummy I've Got Love in My Tummy"), Silver Fleet, Doctor Father, Tristar Airbus, Crazy Elephant (although they had nothing to do with “Gimme Gimme Good Lovin’”), Peter Cowap, Garden Odyssey, and many, many others. The earnings from their prolific output allowed them to update the studio to a state-of-the-art facility.

          In 1970, Stewart, Godley and Creme scored a worldwide hit with “Neanderthal”, credited to the group name Hotlegs. The song was really just a recording made to test the miking of the drums before a recording session. They recorded a full album “Hotlegs Thinks – School Stinks”. Hotlegs opened for The Moody Blues on tour, adding Gouldman to their live line-up.

          The quartet produced and played the instruments on two commercially successful albums by Neil Sedaka; “Solitaire” and “The Tra-La Days Are Over”. The guys decided they were wasting precious time devoting themselves to the professional presentation of others, and decided to do for themselves what they did for Sedaka.

           They formed 10cc.

          Their manager, Jonathan King, claimed he chose the name after he dreamt he was standing in front of the Hammersmith Odeon in London where the marquee read "10cc The Best Band in the World". Crème and Gouldman claimed that one of them had read that 10ccs would be an inordinate amount for a man to ejaculate, so the name was chosen to connote prowess and potency.

           Their self-titled debut album was released in 1973. It featured three songs that were hits in the UK; ‘Donna’ peaked at number 2, ‘Rubber Bullets’ scored a number 1, and ‘The Dean and I’ made number 30.

          Their second album “Sheet Music” was released in 1974 to critical acclaim. Two of it’s songs, “The Wallstreet Shuffle” and “Silly Love” were #10 and #24 hits respectively, in the UK. The album remained in the UK charts for six months.

          Album #3 was called “The Original Soundtrack”. It featured the huge, worldwide breakthrough hit, “I’m Not In Love”. It hit #1 in the UK and #2 in the US. “Life is a Minestrone” reached #7 in the UK.

           1976 saw the release of the album “How Dare You?” It featured two more UK hits, “Art for Art’s Sake” #5 and “I’m Mandy, Fly Me” #6.

           After it’s release, Godley & Crème left the group.

           Gouldman and Stewart proved they were more than capable of maintaining the brand’s reputation. “Deceptive Bends” was arguably 10cc’s most uniformly excellent and accessible album. Hits were "The Things We Do for Love" (UK No. 6, US No. 5), "Good Morning Judge" (UK No. 5, US No. 69) and "People in Love" (US No. 40). That same year, 1977, saw the release of a live double album, “Live and Let LIVE”.

            ‘Bloody Tourists” (1978) contained 10cc’s final hit, but it was a big one –the reggae tinged “Dreadlock Holiday” reached number one in the UK.

           Gouldman and Stewart went on to create several more 10cc albums, some of them quite good, but none especially successful commercially, or even critically.

           In addition to several solo albums, Stewart engineered and/or produced “Blue Jays” by Justin Hayward and John Lodge (of The Moody Blues), Neil Sedaka’s “Sedaka's Back”, “Sad Café”, and “Facades”, by Sad Café, and “Eyes of a Woman” by Agnetha Faltskog (formerly one of the A’s in ABBA). He co-wrote more than half the songs on Paul McCartney's album “Press to Play”.  He also played multiple instruments and performed backing vocals on many of McCartney’s recordings from 1982 through 1986, including the albums; Tug of War, Pipes of Peace, Give My Regards to Broadstreet, Press to Play, and the hits, ‘Say, Say, Say’, ‘Take It Away’, ‘We All Stand Together’ and ‘Spies Like Us’.

          In 1979, Gouldman scored a minor hit, “Sunburn” written for the film of the same name. He produced The Ramone’s “Pleasant Dreams”. He produced, and composed most of the score for the animated film “The Animalympics”.

          Between 1984 and 1990, Gouldman teamed with his friend, American pop singer / songwriter Andrew Gold, forming the group Wax.

          In the late ‘90s, he co-wrote songs with Paul Carrack (of Ace, Roxy Music, and Squeeze) and Kirsty MacColl.

           In 2006, Gouldman and Godley formed a songwriting partnership, resulting in six songs they released as computer downloads from their joint website.

           Of course, Gouldman also recorded several solo albums.

           Gouldman now tours as 10cc, but is the only founding member in its line-up. In 2018, he toured as a member of Ringo’s All-Starr Band.

           In 1985 Godley and Crème scored a #15 hit with “Cry”. Its music video (which melded a series of crying faces) was hugely influential, as witnessed by the fact that Godley and Crème went on to direct, among many other music videos:

·         Visage – "Fade to Grey" / "Mind of a Toy" ·         Duran Duran – "Girls on Film" ·         Status Quo – "Something 'Bout You Baby I Like" ·         Toyah – "I Want to Be Free" 1982: ·         Asia – "Heat of the Moment" / "Only Time Will Tell' ·         Godley & Creme – "Wedding Bells" ·         Graham Parker – "Temporary Beauty" ·         Joan Armatrading – "The Weakness in Me" / "When I Get it Right" ·         Toyah – "Thunder in the Mountains" 1983: ·         10cc – "Feel the Love" ·         Any Trouble – "Touch and Go" ·         Culture Club – "Victims" ·         David Sylvian & Ryuichi Sakamoto – "Forbidden Colours" ·         Elton John – "Kiss the Bride" ·         Godley & Creme – Save a Mountain for Me ·         Herbie Hancock – "Rockit" / "Autodrive" ·         The Police – "Every Breath You Take" / "Wrapped Around Your Finger" / "Synchronicity II" ·         Yes – "Leave It" 1984: ·         Frankie Goes to Hollywood – "Two Tribes" / "Power of Love" ·         Paul Young – "Everything Must Change (US Version)" ·         Godley & Creme – "Golden Boy" 1985: ·         Artists United Against Apartheid – "Sun City" (with Jonathan Demme and Hart Perry) ·         Duran Duran – "A View to a Kill" ·         Eric Clapton – "Forever Man" ·         Go West – "We Close Our Eyes" ·         Godley & Creme – "Cry" / "History Mix 1" ·         Graham Parker – "Wake Up Next to You" ·         Howard Jones – "Life in One Day" ·         Inxs – "This Time" (with Peter Sinclair) ·         Sting – "If You Love Somebody Set Them Free" ·         Thompson Twins – "Don't Mess with Doctor Dream" with Meiert Avis 1986: ·         Huey Lewis and the News – "Hip to Be Square" ·         Jana Pope – "Don't you Hear Me Screaming" ·         Lou Reed – "No Money Down" ·         Patti LaBelle – "Oh, People" ·         Peter Gabriel & Kate Bush – "Don't Give up" ·         Rob Jungklas – "Boystown" ·         The Police – "Don't Stand So Close to Me '86" ·         Ultravox – "All Fall Down" ·         Wang Chung – "Everybody Have Fun Tonight" 1987: ·         George Harrison – "When We Was Fab" ·         Go West – "I Want to Hear It from You" ·         Godley & Creme – "A Little Piece of Heaven" Peter Gabriel – "Biko" Godley directed the music video for “Real Love” by The Beatles in 1996. Crème joined the band The Art of Noise in 1998. WHEW! They actually proved far MORE prolific than 10ccs of you-know-what. More about 10cc next time.

KOZMO'S BACK! Kozmo of the Cosmos

Remember that enigmatic post months ago about something coming back? Well, here 'tis.

This time – special guest blogger Bob Kronlage writes about his long running comic strip “Kozmo of the Cosmos”. Now you can get all the strips in one swell foop – er one fell swoop in “Kozmology; Kozmo of the Cosmos” at Amazon.com !

Here’s Bob;

          “January of 2007, was the first time in my life I wasn’t living with a vague feeling of depression. I’d assumed that that ever present ennui was just the normal way adults felt. All my life, all I’d ever wanted to do was to be a cartoonist. Yet, how does one actually get published? How does one actually make an audience aware of his existence? My humble little goal seemed surprisingly unattainable. It was in that frosty dawn of the year 2007, that the obvious finally occurred to me – there must be some place on the internet where I can publish a comic strip. After about five minutes of internet research, I found a place to publish my (at that time, not – even – conceived) strip.

          I felt emotionally refreshed. I was happy. What had been that ongoing, irrational feeling of vague depression was out of my life forever! Turns out I didn’t even care how big or (more realistically) small my audience might be. I learned from my immediate contentedness that all I needed was to get my stuff out there, in a place where someone (anyone!) could potentially see it.    

          Like all creative people, (especially writers, I think) I’ve got lots and lots of vague concepts circling around in my brain for potential later use. I always liked a very cute Peter Sellers 78 rpm record called ‘Jakka and the Flying Saucers (An Interplanetary Fairy Tale)’, about a little boy astronaut. I thought it would make a great  soundtrack to a charming kids’ cartoon. Also, I always loved the Spaceman Spiff adventures in “Calvin and Hobbes”, but was always disappointed when it returned to humdrum reality. I liked it so much, I didn’t want it contextualized within the strip’s reality. Why couldn’t Spiff always be a spaceman in his own strip – in his own universe?    

          Prior to my little revelation in 2007, I had only done comic book stories. I’d always assumed that creating a comic strip was way too complicated for me to accomplish. How does one create a cast of about seven characters who can all interact, basically playing and replaying endless variations on a handful of jokes that fit their inter-relationships? (ie; Lucy always pulls the football away from Charlie Brown. It perfectly reflects their relationship. Schulz came up with the endless variations of Lucy’s punchlines – frivolous statements  that even she knew didn’t really justify her deceitful behavior.

          I decided to tackle the problem by writing out as many jokes (good, bad, or awful) as I could, solely to come up with enough of a sampling to decipher absolutely the most basic, underlying relationships jokes are built on. Let’s call the straight man ‘A’, let’s call the guy who says the punchline ‘B’. I decided there were two basic types of punch-lines; 1) ‘B’ delivers the punchline, revealing he is stupid, or naïve. 2) ‘A’ delivers the straight line, implying he is confident he is smarter than ‘B’. ‘B’ delivers the punchline, showing his application of common sense has naturally outsmarted ‘A’s’ intellectualism. 

          From that assessment, I conceived three basic characters; 1) the naïve guy, 2) the average guy with common sense, & 3) the intellectual guy. I named the naïve guy Riley Plunkett, and the intellectual guy Fate Morris. (The 1920s hillbilly band Gid Tanner and the Skillet Lickers featured musicians named Riley Puckett and Fate Noris.) I decided the average guy with common sense would have the most appeal, so he would be the lead character. I liked the name Cosmo, and it is almost ‘cosmos’, the word used for all that stuff in space, so it seemed a perfect fit. Also, I liked the respelling ‘Kozmo’, to make it more original, and maybe more unique & therefore more successful in an internet search.

          I had some old comic book characters I’d designed, called ‘Peachy Keene & Boffo Bunny’. I thought Peachy had an appealing design, so I just put him in  a spacesuit and voila! Kozmo had a physiognomy. I quickly designed Riley & Fate in the same style.

          This is a comic strip, so it has to have a dog. My pragmatic view of animals dictated that he would NOT be a fantasy character a la Snoopy, but a relatively realistic, peeing, pooping, shedding, mindlessly destructive, barking all night, fixed-at-the-vet, dog. Due to this lack of outstanding attributes, he is facetiously named Gid the Wonder Dog. Yet, attributing fantasy qualities to cartoon characters is ultimately unavoidable. Gid and his canine friends walk around on their two hind legs. Fantastically, he and his dog friends are actually capable of speech. Subtly, they never speak in the presence of humans.

          Through the years, I’ve learned from my mother that if you want something to be popular with women, you have to have a female character. In my experience, if a little boy and girl are arguing, and the girl can’t win the argument intellectually, (although girls usually can) she can still make the little boy feel he has failed, owing to her superior attitude alone. Of course, the boys and girls who act like they hate each other most, really like each other most. Thanks to these truisms, the strips between Kozmo and Peg practically wrote themselves.

          It’s surprising how the conscious mind can be utterly ignorant of what the creative mind is doing. I had a mental block about designing Peg. At the time, I was dating a cute woman from Ecuador. For fun, I decided I would try to draw a picture of her in the style of my Kozmo characters. I drew her with an appropriately sexy, adult woman’s body. Finally, my conscious mind stopped being utterly clueless. I retraced her head on another sheet of paper, drew a scrawny little-girl body under it, and I had the perfect design for Peg. I had designed a little girl who obviously looks like she will grow up to be a great looking woman. Her looks seemed to at least be one factor to justify her sense of superiority. Of course, when no one else is present, she still shows she ultimately feels rejected anyway – human spirit being the fragile thing that it is.

          Of course, a strip set in outer space requires space aliens. The personalities of my space aliens are pretty much stolen from The Simpsons great aliens Kang and Kodos – a perfect pair of pompous buffoons. Applied to my aliens, that pompous buffoonery makes them the perfect targets for Kozmos’ devastating wise cracks.

          I think the smartest thing I did when creating Kozmo, was that I gave myself an entire year to work on it before I published the first strip. For the next five years or so, I wrote down every remotely amusing thing I could think of, all translated into joke form. It was surprising how easily the jokes could be made to apply to the characters. Soon, I had hundreds of jokes to choose from. For purposes of the strip’s longevity, I tried to reject as few jokes as possible. I would usually draw five strips in a day. I would normally go through the joke list, picking two I thought were excellent, two I thought were good and one a thought was poor, but probably had some redeeming value that made it too good to throw out.

          I started publishing the strips on the internet January 1^st, 2008. In June, a horrible flood partially destroyed my home. My joke list and my Kozmo comic strips were all OK. All the other art I’d created in my life was destroyed. (No big loss, believe me.) Yet, my general sense of depression never came back. My comics were on the internet, being viewed by dozens of people. I was happy.”                      

If you’d like to sample some more ‘Kozmo’ strips, they will start appearing once again on the U-Click website in the Comics Sherpa section.

More importantly, all 660 (or so) Kozmo strips are now available in a lavish 228 page book, “KOZMOLOGY; The Complete Kozmo of the Cosmos” available for a paltry 15 bucks (for now) at AMAZON.com. YIPPEE!

OMG! Ariana Grande ditches signature ponytail - see her new look!*

Almost no one remembers her this way! Shocking -- isn't it?

Here is today’s original article:

OMG! Ariana Grande ditches signature ponytail - see her new look!*

It might be the end of an era… or rather, the end of a hair-a.

Ariana Grande has seemingly ditched her signature ponytail, something she has had for about as long as anyone can remember.

The singer posted a seflie to Instagram on Nov. 15. In the snap, her hair falls just past her shoulders, and her ponytail is nowhere to be found.

"This filter took my eyebrows away but i promise they're there," she captioned the image, making no reference to the new look. 

Her fans, though, were quick to notice, and they were quick to applaud.

"UM EXCUSE ME HI NEW HAIR I LOVE ITTT," one person said. Another said, "Loving the new hair my queen."

"Omg omg omg omg it looks so perfect on you," another fan said.

In 2014, she told fans why she continued to wear a ponytail.

"I wear it in a pony tail because my actual hair is so broken that it looks absolutely ratchet and absurd when I let it down," she said on Facebook. "It's all that works for now (AND I'm comfortable for the first time in years)."

The ponytail was fairly iconic, considering how long Ariana kept the look. In 2016, she told Byrdie, "I had no idea that it was going to become, like, a thing."

Here is my response; A plea for sanity during this culturally turbulent, and potentially traumatic epoch in pop culture history!

I am a rarity. I am an old timer who remembers our Ari BP (before the poni-tail) all the way back when she acted in the kids’ sit-coms Victorious and Sam and Cat, eons ago in the era that time has forgotten -- 2010 through 2014. If you get Teen-Nick, they show episodes from these series several times nearly every day. Calm down everyone! We loved Ari before the pony tail, and we will – eventually – learn to love her AFTER the pony tail as well.

I extend my deepest appreciation to those hearty and hale individuals quoted above for daring to be in the van garde of pop culture hair do critics! Four – count ‘em FOUR OMGs is indeed boldly supportive. Has the art of Jackson Pollock ever warranted four OMGs? Certainly not. It would not have deserved it. Another commenter appears to be extending salutations to the now non-existent pony tail – apparently saying ‘Hi’ to it. Has anyone ever felt sufficiently moved to feel compelled to address a Picasso, a Brancusi, or a Cezanne with a greeting as if it were a human being? No, and none of them would have deserved it! All their art actually exists, yet Ari’s non-pony tail is such an abstract artistic statement as to actually evoke comment owing to it’s very non-existence!   

*Sorry, I am NOT SHOWING Ari’s new look, for fear that the very non-sight of the non-existent pony tail may lead to mass rioting in the streets among our society’s less – enlightened types.

By the way -- It’s been a couple years, but Katy Perry’s ‘new’ hairdo still really sucks!  

Remembering the brilliant and original Hardy Fox

Obituaries

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My apologies for stealing the following article verbatim from the New York Times -- time is of the essence, the article is perfect & I'm too super swamped to write anything original right now. Back in the early 90's we were privileged to meet Hardy and Homer at The Residents' recording studio. They were both extremely nice and normal. During our visit, we mainly spoke with Hardy, as Homer was busy creating the cover objet d'art for the upcoming 'Our Finest Flowers' album.  

Hardy and Homer, earlier this year

Hardy Fox, of the Avant-Garde Band the Residents (Maybe), Dies at 73

    By Daniel E. Slotnik

           Nov. 3, 2018

Hardy Fox, a driving force behind the Residents, an avant-garde band that playfully subverted the conventions of rock music for decades while insisting on anonymity, which the group maintained by performing in outlandish costumes, died on Oct. 30 at his home in San Anselmo, Calif. He was 73.

His husband, Steven Kloman, said the cause was glioblastoma.

The Residents were more than a band: They were performance and visual artists, critics and deconstructors of pop culture, and pioneers of music videos. Aspects of their cacophonous, gleefully absurdist music presaged forms of punk, new wave and industrial music.

The band found a following even though its work could be difficult, if not outright annoying.

“Strangled-sounding vocals have long been characteristic of their recordings, along with crunching electronic drones that retain a homemade, low-tech quality,” the New York Times pop music critic Robert Palmer wrote in 1986.

Mr. Fox said the group’s sound was rooted in traditional rock ’n’ roll and meant to challenge what the music had become.

Though the Residents admired “bubble-gum music” for its “simplicity, its directness and its ability to affect the public,” he told The San Francisco Chronicle in 1997, the Residents wanted to make something different: “Grating. Raw. Basically everything that rock ’n’ roll should be — and pop had ceased to be — with people banging on things and creating a tribal attack on these bubble-gum songs.”

Residents shows were phantasmagoric affairs, often incorporating video art, psychedelic sets and bizarre costumes. Band members covered their heads with masks that looked like enormous bloodshot eyeballs wearing top hats. The number of musicians onstage ranged from three to nine.

Heavy metal bands like Kiss and Gwar, electronica D.J.s like Deadmau5 and rappers like MF Doom have all performed in makeup, masks or costumes, but they came along well after the Residents, and the public knows their identities. That was never the case with the Residents.

Indeed, Mr. Fox always denied that he was in the group, though journalists and fans suspected otherwise. But even if he was not onstage, he was critical to the band’s success as a composer, producer and engineer.

In 1976, he and three friends created what they called the Cryptic Corporation to handle business, booking, distribution and public relations for the Residents. Mr. Fox and Homer Flynn became the company’s leaders after the two other founders departed in the early 1980s.

Both denied being members of the band.

“We are not the Residents,” Mr. Fox told the Times music critic Jon Pareles in 1988. “But if we weren’t here to market them, they’d just be lone avant-gardists making music for themselves.”

The group chose its name after sending a demo tape, anonymously but with a return address, to Warner Bros. Records. It was rejected and returned, addressed to “Residents.”

Their first recording, released in 1972, was a Christmas record, of sorts, called “Santa Dog.” (Its title track featured the incantatory chorus “Santa dog’s a Jesus fetus.”)

Their first complete album, released in 1974, was “Meet the Residents,” its cover a parody of that of the early Beatles album “Meet the Beatles.” It opened with a quick, strange take on the Nancy Sinatra hit “These Boots Were Made for Walkin’ ” and, according to the band’s website, sold 40 copies its first year.

The Residents pressed on nonetheless, building a cult following and selling albums through the mail. Mr. Flynn, in a telephone interview, said the band released more than 40 studio albums over the years. “By the time you figure in compilations and weird EPs and live albums, it’s probably 60 to 70,” he said.

They include “The Commercial Album” (1980), a collection of miniaturized pop songs, and “God in Three Persons” (1988), a rock opera about a man who becomes romantically obsessed with a conjoined twin, who, like the other twin, is a faith healer.

Mr. Flynn said the closest things the group had to crossover hits were a 1986 version of Hank Williams’s “Kaw-Liga,” which sampled Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean” and which he said sold more than 100,000 copies, and a distorted, very loose interpretation of the Rolling Stones’ “Satisfaction,” which sold around 70,000 copies at the height of the punk era, in the late 1970s.

The Residents toured the United States, South America, Russia, Japan and Europe, and their music and videos became the basis for art shows, including one at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 2006.

The Residents recently released another album, “Intruders,” and are planning a European tour for early next year.

Mr. Fox summed up the Residents’ philosophy in an interview with the online magazine The Quietus in 2011.

“There is no necessity to take music terribly seriously while you are being totally serious about it,” he said.

Hardy Winfred Fox Jr. was born on March 29, 1945, in Longview, Tex. His father managed oil well leases, and his mother, Lillian (Armer) Fox, was a nurse.

After a peripatetic childhood, he graduated from Rayville High School in Rayville, La., in 1963. Mr. Flynn was his roommate at Louisiana Tech University, from which he graduated in 1967 with a major in art and a minor in business.

In addition to Mr. Kloman, whom he married in 2008 and with whom he had homes in San Anselmo and Forestville, Calif., Mr. Fox is survived by two sisters, Diane Pasel and Linda Perez.

Mr. Flynn said that Mr. Fox retired as president of the Cryptic Corporation in 2016.

Mr. Fox had said that the main reason the Residents insisted on remaining incognito was that they did not want celebrity to impede their creativity.

He said of the group: “They claim they bare themselves completely on records, that to try to talk about their music would only detract from it. And they like for people to draw their own conclusions.”

He added, “I’ve always felt part of the reason, too, is that the Residents’ music tends to attract some weirdos.”

Alain Delaquérière contributed research.

Follow Daniel E. Slotnik on Twitter: @dslotnik

SAX & VIOLINS

Has it really been over 6 years?

After years of neglecting this ‘blog, we are finally returning for more reporting on quirky historical anecdotes and world of pop culture, particularly cartoonist and record collector geek stuff. As you can see, we’ve returned to our old, much cooler mast head with the dinosaurs and Tastee Freeze lettering.  

Well, everything old is new again. Hopefully I will have some news for you soon about the return of an old internet favorite. I say 'hopefully' because we hear the people involved are  currently attempting to work out some technical crap. Hopefully I'll let you know about what the heck I'm even talking about soon. 

Your Tattoo Sucks.com

Check out www.yourtattoosucks.com it's HILARIOUS! Here are some of my favorites. What the hell were they thinking?

... and my personal favorite -- Cpt. Kirk gets spanked...

KOZMO! KOZMO! KOZMO!

www.kozmoofthecosmos.com

Goodbye Doc Watson, 89

Doc Watson was probably the best acoustic guitarist I've ever heard. He also had one of the most beautiful singing voices I've ever heard. I HIGHLY RECOMMEND you download the great double album "The Essential Doc Watson" from itunes. It's been a favorite of my family ever since we bought it on vinyl back in the early 1970's. At the very least, check out his beautiful vocal on "Alberta" on that album.