Closed for Monkey Business

CD Baby just sent me a fifty dollar royalty check for combined sales of The Floor Models CDs and the Fire Lane reissue.

Gonna spend today partying like it's 1999 -- regular sober and well-groomed postings resume on the morrow.

Pete "Overend" Watts 1947-2017

RIP Mott the Hoople's bassist.

I was lucky enough to see the pre-David Bowie Mott on a couple of occasions, and all the glam-era incarnations (save for the one minus Ian Hunter) several times. Watts was a fixture in all of them, and they were all just great.

Have I ever mentioned that this may be the greatest rock-and-roll song under one minute and twenty seconds in history?



God, I'm getting sick of posting obituaries around here. Especially since I have the awful feeling that sometime soon I'm going to be posting one for the United States of America.

Have a Great Weekend!

And people say we Monkee around!

Seriously -- real world concerns have impinged today. Actual power pop stuff resumes on Monday.

Mary Tyler Moore 1936-2017

God, she was wonderful.

And how cool is it that the theme to her sitcom was written by one of Buddy Holly's Crickets?



You had spunk, Mary. Like Lou Grant, I hate spunk as a rule, but you made me like it.

UPDATE: This one is just fucking awesome.



[h/t Matt Mitchell]

In the Immortal Words of Country Joe McDonald -- This Song Offends Even Me

From sometime in the 90s, please enjoy my old garage band chums The Weasels and their canine masterpiece -- "Alpha Dog."

Vocal and bass by the great Allan Weissman; the splendidly lyrical piano stuff is by the song's composer Glenn Leeds.

I'm not playing on this one, so I can't be held responsible. That said, the first time I heard it, I laughed so hard I almost broke a rib.

French Cookin' Has Got the Blues (And I Don't Feel So Good Myself)

From their swell new album If You Wanna, please enjoy the blues stylings of French Cookin' (featuring former Floor Model Glen Robert Allen on those pagan skins) and their insinuating "Don't Leave Me Hangin'.



If you're in the NYC/Jersey area and want to check these guys out live, you can find their gig schedule over HERE.

I should add that the aLbum is available for download at Amazon, iTunes, Spotify and all the other usual suspects; actual CDs can be purchased from Target.

Annals of Alternative Facts

Okay, the events of the last three or four days have pretty much tuckered me out.

Two brief observations come to mind, however.

First of all, Propaganda Barbie White House spokes-liar Kellyanne Conway -- who coined the now immortal phrase "alternative facts" on Sunday -- apparently got her inaugural outfit from the only heterosexual designer in America.

I mean seriously -- she looks like the lead singer of a Paul Revere and the Raiders tribute band.

Secondly, long-time readers may recall I had a bug up my ass for several years over Kelefa Sanneh, the then scribe for the New York Times who I dubbed "The World's Most Irksome Rock Critic" for his fealty to the "Everything's Great Including the Obvious Shit" school of pop music journalism. In any case, Sanneh abandoned rock criticism for a more lucrative gig at the New Yorker as a political pundit of sorts, and I figured good riddance to bad rubbish (at least at the New Yorker, he's a mediocrity surrounded by people far more talented than he, and I could thus safely ignore his inanities).

Until this month, however, when he published this appalling apologia for an anonymous pro-Trump blogger. And thus was able to weasel-word an on-the-one-hand-but-on-the-other-hand endorsement for Trumpsputin and all his evil works.

To which I can only add -- fuck you, Kelefa Sanneh. Where you breathe.

Regular less partisan and despairing music postings resume on the morrow.

Radio Killed the Radio Star (Part Deux)

And for those of you who missed it -- and shame on you, obviously -- here's last Tuesday's episode of friend of PowerPop Capt. Al's intertube radio show Lost at Sea.

Featuring your humble scribe and his garage band chums The Weasels in a two-hour extravaganza of self-indulgence, vaguely smutty jokes, and a musical hall of shame retrospective spanning our several decades of low-fi recording.

Have a great weekend, everybody!

Total Victory is Ours, Comrades!

So here I am on this week's episode of 70s80s90sNOW, for those of you who don't have SiriusXM radio.



Pretty amusing, I think, and I crushed the opposition and won valuable prizes. (I gave the Rush box set to one of the losers, which shows a nice spirit, I'm sure you'll agree).

Spoiler alert: Although I did win the episode, I blew the concluding bonus question. Which, given the subject, is beyond embarrassing.

Closed for Monkey Business

Yesterday's radio broadcast tuckered me out. Regular posting -- including an audio link to the show -- resumes on the morrow.