#Chuck left in 2002 and this came out in like 2000

[alvindraperzzz]

This post has been popping up in my notes again lately, and it reminded me of my new favorite writers-making-fun-of-other-writers panel from JLA:

“— and every single person in Wyoming with the last name “Dixon” has contracted typhoid. The statistics are uncanny.”

Just. The SHADE.

[1962dude420-blog]

Today we remember the passing of Billy Joe Shaver who Died: October 28, 2020 in Waco, Texas

Shaver was born in Corsicana, Texas, and raised by his mother, Victory Watson Shaver. Until he was 12, he spent a great deal of time with his grandmother in Corsicana, so his mother could work in Waco. He sometimes accompanied his mother to her job at a local nightclub, where he began to be exposed to country music.

Shaver's mother remarried about the time that his grandmother died, so his older sister Patricia and he moved in with their mother and new stepfather. Shaver left school after the eighth grade to help his uncles pick cotton, but occasionally returned to school to play sports.

Shaver joined the U.S. Navy on his 17th birthday. Upon his discharge, he worked a series of dead-end jobs, including trying to be a rodeo cowboy. About this time, he met and married Brenda Joyce Tindell. They had one son, John Edwin, known as Eddy, who was born in 1962. The two divorced and remarried several times.

Shaver took a job at a lumber mill to make ends meet. One day, his right (dominant) hand became caught in the machinery, and he lost the better part of two fingers and contracted a serious infection. He eventually recovered, and taught himself to play the guitar without those missing fingers.

Shaver set out to hitchhike to Los Angeles, California. He could not get a ride west, so he went to the other side of the highway and headed east, accompanying a man who dropped him off just outside Memphis, Tennessee. The next ride brought him to Nashville, where he found a job as a songwriter for $50 per week. His work came to the attention of Waylon Jennings, who filled most of his album Honky Tonk Heroes with Shaver's songs. Other artists, including Elvis Presley and Kris Kristofferson, began to record Shaver's music. This led to him getting his own record deal.

The first few recording companies he signed with soon folded. He was never able to gain widespread recognition as a singer, although he never stopped recording his own music. On his records, he has been accompanied by other major rock and country music musicians such as Willie Nelson, Nanci Griffith, Chuck Leavell and Dickey Betts (of the Allman Brothers), Charlie Daniels, Flaco Jiménez, and Al Kooper.

After losing his wife, Brenda, and his mother to cancer in 1999, Shaver lost his son and longtime guitarist Eddy, who died at age 38 of a heroin overdose on December 31, 2000. Folk country artist Todd Snider wrote and dedicated his song "Waco Moon" to Eddy. Shaver nearly died himself the following year when he had a heart attack on stage during an Independence Day show at Gruene Hall in New Braunfels, Texas. After successful heart surgery, Shaver came back to release Freedom's Child in 2002.

In 1999, Shaver performed at the Grand Ole Opry. In November 2005, he performed on the CMT Outlaws 2005. In 2006, Shaver was inducted in the Texas Country Music Hall of Fame. He later served as spiritual advisor to Texas independent gubernatorial candidate Kinky Friedman. For his efforts, the Americana Music Convention awarded him their Lifetime Achievement Award in Songwriting. He lived in Waco, Texas.

Shaver's debut album, Old Five and Dimers Like Me (1973), contained many songs noted for being performed by other artists, such as David Allan Coe and Waylon Jennings. When I Get My Wings (1976) included "Ain’t No God In Mexico" (also a hit for Waylon Jennings). Gypsy Boy (1977) included "Honky Tonk Heroes" and "You Asked Me To".

Shaver is also known for his hit "Live Forever", co-written by his son Eddy; Robert Duvall performs it in the movie Crazy Heart, and it is included in the soundtrack. The song was also performed by The Highwaymen and Joe Ely. Shaver also wrote numerous songs for artists such as Patty Loveless and Willie Nelson.

Shaver continued to release records throughout the 1980s and 1990s; the most notable was the critically acclaimed Tramp On Your Street, released in 1993, which prominently featured the guitar playing of Eddy Shaver.

Shaver's 2007 album country gospel style Everybody's Brother was Grammy-nominated. Many of the songs are duets with artists such as Johnny Cash, Kris Kristofferson, and Tanya Tucker. Musicians playing on the album included Randy Scruggs, Laura Cash, John Anderson, and Marty Stuart.

On May 22, 2014, Rolling Stone premiered the single-duet with Willie Nelson "Hard To Be An Outlaw". The album, Long in the Tooth was released on August 5, 2014 by Lightning Rod Records. After a 41-year career, Long in the Tooth became Billy Joe Shaver's first album to chart in Billboard's Top Country Albums, entering the chart at 19. The album also entered the Billboard 200, peaking at 157.

In 2019, Shaver received the Poet's Award from the Academy of Country Music to honor his achievements in songwriting.

Shaver died on October 28, 2020, from a stroke at the age of 81.

[mrscheetos]

【ALL about the mysterious case of Jonathan Brandis】

▒▒▒▒↳I do not intend to offend anyone, just inform, feel free to share this post if you want.

Ｊｏｎａｔｈａｎ Ｂｒａｎｄｉｓ

• Biography;

Jonathan Gregory Brandis was born in Connecticut, in the year 1976, average 1���77, and He was an only child, but soon moved with his parents Greg and Mary to the city of Los Angeles, in California.

Since he was little he already had a very striking natural beauty.

He began his film career at the age of 11 when, after working in advertising, intervening in television commercials from a very young age, he appeared in episodes of well-known series, including "Who's the Boss?" L.A Law”,“ Murder, She Wrote ”or“ The Wonder Years ”. Her film start came with a brief role in the film starring Michael Douglas and Glenn Close "Fatal Attraction" (1987).

He subsequently appeared in Jeff Burr's "The Stepfather 2" (1989); starred in the sequel to "The Never Ending Story" directed by George Miller in 1989; and starred in "Sidekicks" (1992), a martial arts film starring Chuck Norris.

“The role that would bring him to fame would be that of Bill Denbrough in the 90's mini series It, the killer clown, based on the work of Stephen King.”

For seven years he took a film hiatus. He worked extensively on television, in telefilms and series, such as "SeaQuest DSV", a Steven Spielberg production that made him very popular in the United States.

In 1999 he resumed his career on the big screen, working with Michael Corrente and the Farrelly brothers in the comedy "Outside province" (1999), with Ang Lee in the western "Cabalga Con El Diablo ”(1999), or with Bruce Willis and Colin Farrell in“ Hart's War ”(2002), film directed by Gregory Hoblit. Brandis, as well as an actor, also made his first steps as a director, directing an episode of the aforementioned series "SeaQuest".

↳Relationship;

•He was a boyfriend of the actresses Vinessa Shaw, his co-star in the movie "Ladybugs" (1992); Tatyana Ali, with whom she shared credits in the telefilm "Falling To Darkness" (1996), Heather McComb, Tiffani-Amber Thiessen and Monica Keena, co-star of "Bad Girls From Valley High" (2000).

•Death;

If you have already come this far, we start with the causes that led to his death.

As the years passed, it ceased to have a major role in Hollywood. the producers stopped calling him, his beauty and fame were crumbling like the Berlin wall.

So how was the most famous boy actor of the 90's being soll an ordinary man?

Both his family and loved ones admitted that Jonathan had not been feeling well lately, falling into depression with no return. Not a single word of love could comfort the young man's broken heart.

The last film that this actor made Hart's war. However this was very bad for Jonathan, who after finishing his filming, would find out that finally the directors decided to DELETE ALL THEIR SCENES.

«This was the last straw, they finally shot him down. He had removed the little prince from his fantastic world which he always saw as normal»

His friends assure that he did not leave his room even to eat.

At the end of the night of November 11, 2003, around 11:40 pm, a friend of the actor called the police to report that Jonathan Brandis was seriously injured after trying to commit suicide by hanging, which would be the final causes of his death occurred at 2:45 p.m. on November 12, 2003 at the Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles.

↳My opinion

• Jonathan Brandis is the living representation that if you are famous as a child, you will hardly be able to thrive into adulthood.

Too bad several young actors end up like this, one of the cases that I can mention, very similar to this, is the case of Macaulay Culkin, who although he did not commit suicide, if he spent a long time on drugs and depression, although thank God he is rehabilitated today .

Unfortunately for Jonathan, he found himself alone in his own world, he stopped being the perfect son of Hollywood, the loss of fame and money left him so low that his only solution was to hang himself. He belongs to the famous club of 27, since he died at age 27.

Jonathan Brandis Image Gallery

[howaminotinthestrokesyet]

Behind The Album: Chinese Democracy (The History)

There exists only one way to describe the more than 10 year odyssey that was the album, Chinese Democracy, surreal. To put it into the words of a famous Doors song, strange days. Work on the album began in 1997 after a new lineup of the band has been confirmed upon the departure of Duff McKagan. The roster would change substantially throughout the next 10 years sometimes depending on the mood of Axl Rose. Geffen Records had hoped to release the album in 1999, but it was delayed again and again causing the budget to balloon to $13 million when it was all said and done. They pulled any financial backing of the album in 2005. This album became the most expensive one ever produced in the history of rock music. Many people, fans and writers alike, never thought that it would ever see the light of day. Writer Chuck Klosterman even wrote a fake review of it for April Fools’ Day for Spin Magazine calling it the greatest album ever made. Let me now take a look at the surreal odyssey that would probably be really hard to think up, if it had not happened for real.

The inspiration for the album began in 1994 when Axl Rose became quite enamored with electronica and industrial rock with an eye towards the work of Nine Inch Nails at that time. By 1997, lead guitarist Slash had already left the group leading Rose to replace him with Robin Finck. He was the touring guitarist for Nine Inch Nails. That same year Matt Sorum was fired for objecting to the inclusion of Rose’s friend Paul Tobias in the band. He was replaced by Nine Inch Nails drummer, Chris Vrena. Yet, his tenure with the band did not last long, so he was replaced by Josh Freese. Former replacements bassist Tommy Stinson would replace Duff McKagan by 1998. Several producers were approached to help with the album including Steve Lilywhite and Rick Rubin. At one point, they even considered asking Moby to sign on as producer. Surprisingly, he had nothing but good things to say about the possibility of working on the album. “They're writing with a lot of loops, and believe it or not, they're doing it better than anybody I've heard lately." By the middle of 1998, the producer Youth was brought in to work on the album. Previously, he had worked on projects with U2 and the Verve. He immediately felt very pessimistic about any recording sessions that could occur because of Rose’s state of mind. “He kind of pulled out ... He was quite isolated. There weren't very many people I think he could trust. It was very difficult to penetrate the walls he'd built up." Youth quickly left the project after growing increasingly frustrated by the lack of interaction from Axl. For his part, the singer was still reeling from his break up in the mid-1990’s with Stephanie Seymour. He would go on to talk about this in a later interview saying he had stopped writing any music for a couple of years due to it. Rose completely disappeared from anything to do with the album, but he told recording engineers to write down any ideas other band members had for songs. He would receive CDs and data files each week that eventually were combined to make almost 1000 discs.

The goal of the album was to create a Guns N’ Roses record with an electronica influence. Mainstream media had described it repeatedly as an industrial rock album, but Rose argued with that assessment saying that many different genres would make up the album. In 1998, the band began working at Rumbo Studios in the San Fernando Valley, which was the same place that parts of Appetite For Destruction were recorded. Geffen Records had offered to pay the band $1 million to finish the album by March 1, 1999. This was on top of the initial payment of $1 million. Of course, the band completely missed that deadline, but by the spring of 1999 they had recorded 30 songs. Brian May had been brought in to play on the song “Catcher in the Rye.” His part was eventually removed, but nobody from the band told him that until the record was released in 2008. The album had been originally titled 2000 Intentions, but Axl changed it to Chinese Democracy in 1999. He would say, “There's a lot of Chinese democracy movements, and it's something that there's a lot of talk about, and it's something that will be nice to see. It could also just be like an ironic statement. I don't know, I just like the sound of it." According to Rose, the band had recorded enough material for two albums by 1999. Singer Sebastian Bach who contributed on the album said that Rose told him the initial plan. They were going to release one album, then tour for a year or two, then release a second album. The hope was to eventually release a trilogy of albums. At the end of 1999, GNR released their first song in several years as part of The End of Days soundtrack entitled, “Oh My God.” Reviews of the song were quite mixed as it did very little to increase the enthusiasm for the new album. The song had been personally selected by Jimmy Iovine, the head of Geffen/Interscope, after listening to all the tracks. At the same time, several members of the band left to join other projects. Robin Finck rejoined Nine Inch Nails, while drummer Josh Freese joined A Perfect Circle. Current producer Sean Beavan, who worked on 35 tracks, also left the project. In 2000, Axel said in a Rolling Stone interview that one big reason for the delays was the fact that he needed to learn the ProTools technology.

In early 2000, manager Doug Goldstein said that the album was 99% finished, which meant most likely a summer release. Yet, Rose hired Roy Thomas Baker as a new producer at that time, who persuaded him to completely re-record the entire album. Around the same time, he also hired a new guitarist by the name of Buckethead, who always wore a white mask and a Kentucky Fried Chicken bucket on his head when playing live. Based on Buckethead’s recommendation, a drummer by the name of Brain was hired to re-record all the previous drum parts from Freese. The issue had been that Axl wanted people currently in the band to be heard on the record, but the problem was Freese had done a very good job on all of the tracks. They essentially asked Brain to literally copy the style of the previous guy rather than use what had been produced in the first place.

In March 2001, Geffen head Jimmy Iovine hired Tom Zataut as a kind of middle man to get the band moving on finishing the album. The irony being that Zataut had been fired two years previously by Geffen. Yet, they brought him in because he had guided GNR successfully through other albums. At first, Rose did not want Zataut’s inclusion on the project. He did begin to change his mind was as he helped to re-create the opening drum sound of Nirvana‘s Never Mind for Rose. He was then welcomed with open arms after the approval by Axl’s personal psychic, who judged his aura based on photographs. The next crisis was that Buckethead decided to quit the band after the apparent lack of progress on the album. Zataut was able to convince him to return by building him a chicken coop within the recording studio, metal wires and all. The building of it was always downplayed as nothing serious, but a bit of a joke for Buckethead’s very unique sense of humor. A problem sprang up when he began to bother Axl in the studio by playing hardcore pornography too loudly in his chicken coop. Zataut also discovered that the band was spending almost $75,000 a day renting equipment that was not being used because Rose never came into the studio half the time. “These fucking people are getting paid shitloads of money and they're sitting on their arse doing nothing because Axl's not coming to the studio and they can't get him on the phone." In 2001, the band had completed 48 songs for the album, while they still had probably 5 to 10 more in development. Before the end of 2001, Rose fired Zataut because he failed to get him a private screening of the movie Blackhawk Down because Ridley Scott had asked if he could use “Welcome to the Jungle” in the film.

The band played the occasional live show as well including a headlining slot at Rock in Rio in 2001. In August 2002, they debuted their first new live song in over a decade playing “Madagascar” at the MTV Video Music Awards. That same month, Rose gave two conflicting statements to MTV about the status of the album. In one, he said they were just wrapping it up, while the other statement said that he would not use the word soon about its release. His reason for the delay now was the fact that the record company was not doing anything to help him as he had taken on many more responsibilities than previously on any other record. In the middle of 2003, they started to re-record the album once again. Tommy Stinson talked about why the album took so long to create. “What really happened was the record company stood back and left Axl to his own devices. He had to basically produce himself, and that's not what he (wanted to do)... the record company really dropped the ball on this one ... everything changed when Geffen merged with Interscope. Axl was told that Jimmy Iovine would play more of a role (than he did).” A sound engineer also had a particular insightful comment about the delays mentioning that Rose was too much of a perfectionist trying to make the greatest album ever made. There are going to be lengthy delays in that kind of attempt. By 2004, Buckethead had officially quit the group, but they were supposedly doing the masters at the end of the year. Another issue emerged at that time when the record company withdrew all funding for the album. They removed it from its release schedule and any future promotional efforts were abandoned. Rose would be required to fund the remainder of the album. Two years would pass before any news of note came from the band until early 2006 when several songs leaked online. Later that year, another song leaked within a Harley Davidson ad causing even more controversy. Leaks continued to come out for the next two years until the album was eventually released in 2008. Yet, the album did finally have a supposed release date of November 21, 2006. In anticipation of this, Rose held 10 listening parties throughout New York City showcasing some of the new tracks. In December, he quickly did a U-turn announcing that he needed more time to work on the album. The release date was pushed back to 2007, and for the first time there was an official date. Of course, the band missed this date as well.

By this time, Buckethead had been replaced by another guitarist with another unique name, Bumblefoot. The final vocals were recorded in January 2007 for the album, with the hope that it could be mixed by the end of the year for a Christmas release date. In January 2008, rumors spread all over the Internet that the album had actually been handed to Geffen Records. Yet, once again arguments between Rose and the record company ensued as they could not agree on any marketing plan for the album. In September 2008, the album had its first track released “Shackler’s Revenge” made available for the game, Rock Band 2. The full album would be released in October 2008. The fight with Geffen continued after the album's release. Rose did not give a full interview about the album until February 2009. There was literally zero promotion of the album except for advertisements for Best Buy, who exclusively sold the album. For his part, Rose refused to answer any phone calls or emails from the record company asking him to do anything related to promotion. Billboard would later report that both sides completely dropped the ball on the most anticipated rock record of the entire decade. In China, the album was banned because of the negative connotation the title had towards their treatment of government. In another development, Dr. Pepper had pledged to give anyone in the country a free Dr Pepper, if the album was released in 2008. Upon his release, they decided to maintain that pledge, but their servers crashed when too many people went on their site for a free coupon. This would end up in court as well as Rose blamed a part of the lack of promotion of the new album on Dr. Pepper’s failure to successfully manage this free giveaway. The group now went on tour for almost 3 years to promote the new album. They also needed to make money as their former manager had sued them for almost $2 million. The lawsuit was settled in 2011 for an undisclosed amount. The question now becomes as to whether the album was any good.

[pluckyredhead]

Hey! No pressure to answer if you don't wanna, but you've mentioned liking comics!Ollie a few times and I mostly know him secondhand through Birds of Prey. So my main impression of him is "cocky asshole serial cheater Dinah is better off without" and I was wondering if you'd be interested in talking about what I'm missing about his character not reading his own comics? Thanks!

Sure! So here’s the thing: Ollie-as-cheater is a retcon. The timeline goes something like this [CW: rape]:

1941-1969: Ollie has no real recurring love interest. (There’s Miss Arrowette, aka Bonnie King, Cissie’s mom, but she’s only portrayed as a potential love interest for Ollie in one of her four Silver Age appearances.)

1969: Ollie develops his leftwing hothead personality and falls head over heels for Dinah (who originally was a good ten years older than him, which is a dynamic I love).

1988: While in a committed relationship with Dinah, Ollie is raped by Shado, who bears a child as a result. He has no knowledge of this happening and doesn’t know the child is his.

1993: Ollie is kissed by a teenage runaway he and Dinah have taken in, and Dinah dumps him for not pushing her away.

1995-2000: Ollie dies. Chuck Dixon relentlessly portrays Ollie as a lovable but incorrigible horndog in both Connor’s Green Arrow and Dinah’s Birds of Prey, largely to contrast virginal, shy (and likely queer, deal with it Homophobic Chuck) Connor with his father and to explain some of Dinah’s issues during this period.

2000: Ollie is resurrected in Quiver, which is my favorite Green Arrow story, but has a few terrible moments in it, including one in which he is depicted as willingly cheating on Dinah with Shado.

2002-2016: Ollie is dragged through a decade and a half of character assassination in which more infidelity is retconned into his backstory, he’s revealed to have knowingly abandoned Connor and his mother after Connor was born, he cheats on Dinah some more, their relationship becomes increasingly toxic and physically violent, and everything is terrible. Honestly, I’m not sure how bad it eventually got, because I jumped ship completely after Lian’s death.

2016: Green Arrow: Rebirth happens and my big dumb romantic hippie rascal came BACK and I love him so much I want to cry about it!

Ollie has definitely never been perfect. The only part of your description I disagree with, actually, is “serial cheater,” because he is cocky (but I like cocky) and he is an asshole (but I like assholes) and he isn’t good enough for Dinah (but no one is). And he and Dinah weren’t perfect during the 25 years or so they were together before his death. She ostensibly dumped him for kissing Marianne, but this was coming on years of being impulsive and irresponsible (one time he went out to run errands and ended up in a dog race in Alaska).

But man, the writing of the two of them after he came back to life and Kevin Smith left the book was just dreadful, and I largely blame Judd Winick for that (although I goddamn hate what Brad Meltzer did, too). Winick turned their banter into toxic fighting - at one point, Ollie calls Dinah a slut and accuses her of sleeping with an entire football team, she hits him, and then they get really turned on by this and do it. No, Judd, hitting is not “sexy” when women do it, especially when they’re one of the top ranked martial artists in the world. Around the same time, Babs is shocked to learn that Dinah is marrying Ollie, “who fathered Connor with that Shado woman” - except Connor’s mother is Moonday and Shado raped Ollie. It’s a combination of comics not accepting that men can be raped (and Grell really didn’t write it as rape, just a ~thing that happened~), and writers basing their characterizations on retcons instead of the original text and that particular aspect of Ollie’s character snowballing.

I’m willing to accept that Ollie’s a tomcat, no problem. The man has two (or three! I personally believe that Cissie is his) illegitimate children with (two (or three) different women, none of whom are The Love Of His Life. I have no problem with a characterization of Ollie as Enthusiastic About Sex. But the cheating retcon really gets my goat. (As does the retcon that he knew about Connor from birth, which I simply refuse to accept. It’s my Green Arrow Rubicon and I won’t cross it.)

As to why I like him: again, he’s not perfect. He’s a mess. (I like messes! Look at Booster Gold. Look at Daredevil.) But he’s a try-hard mess. He’s so passionate and he cares so much. He makes the spiciest chili and yells at people about recycling and spends half an hour waxing his beard into points every morning and accidentally brings a new teenager home every time he goes outside. He is cranked to eleven 100% of the time and even if he sometimes goes too far or gets it wrong, it’s never out of apathy.

Ollie is a showboater and irresponsible and he fucks up all the time - with Roy, with Connor, with Dinah. But he loves with his whole self and he wants the hero community to be better than they are and he has committed to a silly theme to a truly ridiculous degree and I just adore him.

If I have convinced you to give Ollie a shot (ha, arrow pun), here are my recs:

Green Lantern/Green Arrow by Denny O’Neil and Neal Adams, otherwise known as the Hard Traveling Heroes era. Be warned that this is 70s liberalism so there are some well-intentioned but reeeeeeally dated Hot Takes on race and class, and some real opposition to women’s lib. (But oh boy does Adams draw a beautiful Dinah.)

Hunter’s Moon by Mike Grell. The Grell era on GA actually starts with the miniseries The Longbow Hunters, which spun off into Ollie’s first ongoing series; Hunter’s Moon collects the first issues from that run. But The Longbow Hunters, though visually stunning as well as important (it moved Ollie and Dinah to Seattle, introduced Shado, and temporarily removed Dinah’s Canary Cry), has a lot of sexual violence (against Dinah) and Orientalism in it. I’m sick of books with violence against women being the Important Comics so I’d rather boost Hunter’s Moon, which shows Dinah going to therapy and working through what’s happened to her as a person with agency instead of using her trauma as a plot point to motivate Ollie. But I’m including Grell in here because Dinah’s assault aside, he depicts Ollie and Dinah’s relationship as healthy, complex, and joyously sexual, and I love it.

Quiver and Sounds of Violence by Kevin Smith and Phil Hester. Ollie’s resurrection and the sequel. As noted above, Smith hits a couple sour notes for me, but I mostly love his Ollie, plus he introduces Mia here and I would die for her. And Hester’s Ollie has imprinted on my heart forever as my Ollie. (Weirdly, Smith and O’Neil share the odd distinction of writing my favorite Green Arrow and my least favorite Daredevil.)

Green Arrow: Rebirth and the current ongoing series by Benjamin Percy and Otto Schmidt. Can be clunky, but the heart is there, as Ollie tries really really hard to unlearn his privilege, be worthy of Dinah, and repair his relationships with Diggle (!) and Roy. Also features his kid sister Emiko Queen, who was created somewhere during the time that I was ignoring Green Arrow comics but she is PERFECT and I would fight a mountain lion for her. In some beautiful parallel universe Mia and Cissie and Emi all live with Ollie and make fun of him 100% of the time and it’s beautiful.

In conclusion, THANK YOU if you made it through all that nonsense, and please enjoy this ridiculous macro from LJ user parsimonia that I saved a million years ago and which makes me laugh every time I look at it:

[airadam]

Episode 126 : None More Black

"These evil streets don't sleep..."

- Pharoahe

Here's an idea I've been holding for a while - an episode showcasing Hip-Hop tracks that took a rock sample or influence! I thought it'd be an interesting one to select and mix without reaching for the most obvious standby picks, and we've got tracks spanning almost thirty years at the extreme ends. Don't worry, the guitars come along with plenty of bars and beats!

Links for the month... Michelle Grace Hunder - wicked music photographer!

The Flyest Xmas party on Dec 20th, featuring The Soul Twins

Twitter : @airadam13

Playlist/Notes

Ice-T ft. Jello Biafra : Shut Up, Be Happy

One of those tracks that seems more relevant now than ever, this was the opener on Ice-T's underrated 1989 album "The Iceberg". A great marrying of elements, as Jello Biafra of the punk band Dead Kennedys delivers a totalitarian announcement (based on his own "Message From Our Sponsor" over a Black Sabbath loop. I couldn't put this anywhere but as the intro to the episode!

Camp Lo : 82 Afros

Kicking the pace up a touch, we move straight into a killer Camp Lo cut from the "Black Hollywood" LP, with Ski cooking up a banging rock-based beat. The kick and snare are straight boom-bap, but the toms add an unexpected extra element on top of the distorted guitar and vocal sample. Cheeba and Geechi might be known for their smooth styles, but this is just one demonstration of the fact that they can get busy over any kind of beat.

J-Zone : Moonwalk / Gel N' Weave Remix (Instrumental)

I was struggling to find just the right instrumental for this spot, but went back to "The Headband Years" to find this beat from a producer who could make a beat our of almost anything. He's full-time on his funk drumming now, but has a great catalogue of Hip-Hop that can't be fronted on.

Kobaine : Ko.Bain

This is an artist I know very little about, as as far as I'm aware this is his only release to date, a nice little contribution to the 2002 "Subway Series Vol.1" compilation on Major League Entertainment. I got this on digital release which had no credits included, so I'm not sure who produced it - I can imagine it being a Nick Wiz or Tribeca track though.

Agallah : Ag Season

Brownsville's Agallah has often channelled the rockstar vibes in his career, and this woozy-guitared track from "Bo : The Legend of the Water Dragon" sounds entirely natural for him. Self-produced as always, it's short, rock solid, and to the point.

Fabolous : Breathe

Fifteen years old, already? This was a huge single for Fabolous, taken from his "Real Talk" album, and is one of his best-known tracks even after all these years. Just Blaze laced him with a beat based around Supertramp's "Crime of the Century", and got a surprise when Fab told him he'd written his lyrics around the "breathe" vocal sample on the track...because that's not what it said! However, on hearing the bars, Just went back and made some changes to align the audio with what Fab thought he heard!

Ras Kass ft. Killah Priest : Milli Vanilli

Ras Kass' "Quarterly" was collection of tracks he released once a week, finally brought together in late 2009 - and there are some great cuts in there. Here's one, with Veterano's beat sounding like a cybernetic heavy metal group trying to destroy the speaker stack! Ras cuts through it regardless, and special guest Killah Priest (fellow member of THE HRSMN) matches him bar for bar as always. The hook of course channels the then-recent Lil Wayne track "A Milli", which was a heavily-used beat for freestyles around this time.

Body Count : C-Note

This was one of the shorter and gentler tracks on the debut Body Count album, but was always one of my favourites - Ernie C makes that guitar cry for real. Ice-T's metal project was waved off by some doubters in the beginning, but the music was solid from their first appearance on the "OG: Original Gangster" album and they're still killing it to this day.

Bumpy Knuckles : Swazzee

This one is so aggro, you have to love it. Seriously, you'd better. Bumpy Knuckles is in fine form on this guaranteed weight-training motivational track from "Konexion", taking out sucker MCs, snitches, haters, and pretty much everyone else. The hook is reminiscent of an old Sly Stone cut, and Knockout's beat is ferocious - precise, measured drums with the harsh guitar over the top. Bumpy might be the king of the third verse but a track like this lets you know he can handle the first two just fine!

Public Enemy : Go Cat Go

The "He Got Game" soundtrack was unfairly overlooked by too many heads, but is an absolutely worthy entry in Public Enemy's long and storied discography. Chuck D's political awareness and love of sports (he actually wanted to be a sportscaster at one point) combined for a really interesting listen. Jack Dangers of Meat Beat Manifesto and Danny Saber of Black Grape cover this one in heavy guitars which would drown out most MCs, but not Chuck! As the album subtitle says, this one is about the game behind the game...

Boogie Down Productions : Ya Slippin

It's hard to think now of BDP being a crew with a future in doubt, but this is how it was back in 1988 as "By All Means Necessary" was released, not long after the murder of founding DJ Scott La Rock. KRS might be young here but he rhymes with the confidence of someone who left home as a child to become an MC, survived homelessness, and achieved his goal. He scolds weak MCs like "The Teacha" he is, and gets down on the production too - the rock heads will recognise this guitar sample a mile off!

Pharoahe Monch : Got You

Shout out to Vicky T for reminding me of this tune! The lead single from the "Training Day" soundtrack is one where I think the radio version (as heard here) surpasses the original. Monch perfectly encapsulates the essence of Denzel Washington's character, who is one of the classic movie villains of modern times - and strikingly, is based on real police.

[J-Zone] Boss Hog Barbarians : Celph Destruction (Instrumental)

Zone again, and while it one didn't come to mind immediately, the aggressive sonics of this instrumental get it the nod here. The Boss Hog Barbarians (J-Zone and Celph Titled) album is an absolute tribute to ignorance (intentionally), but if you can deal with that then it's an excellent addition to your collection.

LL Cool J : Go Cut Creator Go

Another 80s classic hard rocking track, from LL's "Bigger And Deffer" album. It's the kind of track we don't get now - the MC just bigging up the DJ. DJ Cut Creator was with LL from the very beginning, and was the one who actually helped him to get him name known, so it's nice to hear the appreciation. The scratches still stand up today and cut through even the loudest of the guitar samples on the track!

Sly Boogy : Fatal Mistake

Sly may not have put anything out for a while, but the San Bernadino native did drop a few nice tracks in the early 2000s. This one has him totally disregarding the common standards of Hip-Hop song structure, opening up with a thirty-two bar first verse just to show he's not playing. DJ Revolution provides the cuts, and production is courtesy of a then-emerging Jake One. This actually doesn't have a rock influence, but is here because of how well it goes with the next instrumental...

[Rick Rubin] Jay-Z : 99 Problems (Instrumental)

The combination of this and "Fatal Mistake" is one I discovered while doing a mix years and years ago, and wanted to bring out again when the opportunity arose! You probably all know the vocal version of this track, which appeared on Jay-Z's "The Black Album". While working with the legendary Def Jam co-founder and producer Rubin, Jay said he wanted something like the flavour he used to give to the Beastie Boys and this was the result - a meshing of several ideas that came together perfectly.

Public Enemy : She Watch Channel Zero?!

Let's be real - the sexism is heavy on this track! It'd be entirely reasonable to argue that spending all day watching sports on TV isn't any better than soap operas, but that's just my opinion :) 1988's "...Nation of Millions..." yields this song which had an interesting connection - sampling the group Slayer, who were produced by Def Jam founder and major PE supporter Rick Rubin. 

Lacuna Coil : The Game

Going pure rock on this selection from this veteran Milanese gothic metal band! I actually learned about this group from "Guitar Hero" of all places, and "Our Truth" led me to the 2006 "Karmacode" album that included this track. It always reminded me a little of "Channel Zero", and while the guitar riffs are definitely fire and the drums bang, it's the combined and contrasting vocals of Cristina Scabbia and Andrea Ferro that can't fail to grab your ear.

RJD2 : Exotic Talk

Prog rock meets Hip-Hop sensibilities as RJD2 twists and turns, chilling things out in parts before bringing the thunder crashing back in. Definite standout from 2004's "Since We Last Spoke".

Z-Trip : Rockstar

We close with a standout track from the "Return of the DJ, Volume II" compilation, with Phoenix's Z-Trip putting together a masterpiece of DJ/producer song construction. The sample list is long, and since I don't know what was and wasn't cleared, I won't give anything away here!

Please remember to support the artists you like! The purpose of putting the podcast out and providing the full tracklist is to try and give some light, so do use the songs on each episode as a starting point to search out more material. If you have Spotify in your country it's a great way to explore, but otherwise there's always Youtube and the like. Seeing your favourite artists live is the best way to put money in their pockets, and buy the vinyl/CDs/downloads of the stuff you like the most!

Check out this episode!

[americanahighways]

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photos by Michael Aarons

Chuck Prophet announced that he and his wife and musical partner, Stephanie Finch, were glad to appear at their “favorite venue in a strip mall that used to be a Christian place of worship.” Despite the tongue-in-cheek remark, he later circled back to say how remarkable it is that Jammin’ Java has remained a family business, owned by three brothers, showcasing live music, for 20 years. Chuck has been coming to Jammin’ Java, located in Vienna, Virginia, a suburb of Washington, DC, for about that long.

Ever since the San Francisco-based guitarist joined Green On Red in 1985, he’s mixed rock and Americana in his music. Prophet co-wrote all the songs on Americana icon Alejandro Escovedo’s album Real Animal, and he played guitar in his backing band. Chuck and Alejandro wrote “Sister Lost Soul,” about “friends gone who bought into the myth too much,” at Chuck’s hotel the morning of an ice storm. After they wrote it, they immediately recorded the song at a “studio” that was simply the first place they found in the phone book, starting a tradition of recording their songs at random places.

Many of Chuck’s songs tell stories about the characters who populate his home city of San Francisco. In “The Left Hand and the Right Hand,” Chuck sings about Jim and Artie Mitchell, owners of the O’Farrell Theater, an infamous strip club. Chuck told the audience that Hunter S. Thompson, who once worked at the O’Farrell for research on a book, called it the “Carnegie Hall of strip joints.” The first pornographic movie, Behind the Green Door, was shot there; Chuck said he’s met a dozen people who claim to have worked on it. The Mitchells engaged a bitter feud with Mayor Dianne Feinstein, retaliating for raids of their establishment by posting “For a good time to call (Dianne Feinstein’s home phone number)” on their marquee. Eventually, one night, Jim shot and killed Artie, and spent the rest of his life in jail.

Chuck played several covers that covered an expansive territory. The late soul singer Howard Tate popularized “Shoot ‘Em All Down,” while “If I Was A Baby” was written by Ezra Furman, the 32-year-old lead singer of the indie rock band The Visions. Chuck covered “Sorrow,” made famous by David Bowie. Chuck and Stephanie played one of the first songs they sang together, Dylan’s “Abandoned Love.”

Stephanie, who joined Chuck after the first few songs, most played keyboards, with a few songs on her Martin acoustic guitar. A few songs into the second set, Chuck turned things over to her to sing one of her one numbers, a “post-apocalyptic love story” entitled “Let’s Stay Here.” Stephanie noted that she had a cold, dropping her voice to a lower register, which she described as like her fantasy of being Marianne Faithfull.

Chuck just kept the zingers coming when he introduced “Would You Love Me?” He said the had three influences: first, a documentary about Elvis. Second, The Passion of the Christ, which he called “a snuff film.” And third, the last days of Anna Nicole Smith. He said that, while people to tried to smear Anna Nicole for using a fake name to get methadone, “everyone uses a fake name to get methadone.”

Chuck recalled making an over-the-top video for “Turn To Gold.” The video included, as he put it, “both types” of nudity and gratuitous violence. Chuck discovered that appearing to be shot and bleeding profusely on a busy street drew no attention whatsoever from passersby. He encouraged the audience to watch the video, although not at work, and said “there’s probably a good reason why there isn’t more male nudity in videos.”

Chuck also played a tribute to that old standby of bands, the “Ford Econoline,” written after he read in the newspaper that Ford was discontinuing production. He closed out his set with “You Did (Bop Shooby Dooby Bop),” and returned for an encore with the crowd-pleasing “Summertime Thing.”

Chuck Prophet first came on the scene in 1985 when he joined Green on Red. In his memoir, Let’s Go, Jeff Tweedy cites Green on Red as one of his influences. Chuck recorded his first solo album, Brother Aldo, in 1990, though it wouldn’t be released until 1997. In 1992, following the breakup of Green on Red, Chuck embarked on a full-time solo career. He released several critically acclaimed albums; AllMusic rated 1993’s Balinese Dancer and 2000’s The Hurting Business four stars, and gave 1997’s Homemade Blood 4.5 stars.

In 2002, Chuck released No Other Love, and experienced success with the single “Summertime Thing.” He opened for Lucinda Williams on her summer tour. In 2004, Chuck released a well-received studio album, The Age of Miracles (4.5 stars, AllMusic), as well as a live album, Turn the Pigeons Loose (4 stars).

In 2007, Chuck released the excellent Soap and Water, and he earned a slot on Letterman. He played “You Can Make a Doubter Out of Jesus.” Humorously, he recalled, his mother called him a couple days after the show and told him that it’s not her favorite of his songs.

In addition to cowriting Alejandro Escovedo’s 2008 album Real Animal, Chuck has worked on several country/Americana project. He frequently collaborates with Kelly Willis, having produced and co-written six of the tracks on 2007’s Translated From Love. He also released a limited edition (1000 copies) pressing of Dreaming Waylon’s Dreams, a track-for-track remake of Waylon Jennings’s Dreaming My Dreams.

In recent years, Chuck has stayed busy, releasing yet more critically acclaimed albums on Yep Roc, with 2012’s Temple Beautiful and 2017’s Bobby Fuller Died For Your Sins earning a 4-star rating from AllMusic.

  Show Review: Chuck Prophet Entertains Sold-out House at Jammin' Java @jamminjava @chuckprophet #stephaniefinch @markjengleson @lelliecapwell @yeproc photos by Michael Aarons Chuck Prophet announced that he and his wife and musical partner, Stephanie Finch, were glad to appear at their “favorite venue in a strip mall that used to be a Christian place of worship.” Despite the tongue-in-cheek remark, he later circled back to say how remarkable it is that Jammin’ Java has remained a family business, owned by three brothers, showcasing live music, for 20 years.

[jazfood]

The inglorious rise of Two Buck Chuck

The tale of two men, one wine brand, and the economic revolution of an entire industry.

BY ZACHARY CROCKETT

Walk into almost any Trader Joe’s store and the first thing you’ll see is an enormous display of Charles Shaw wine — or, as it’s more affectionately known, “Two Buck Chuck.”

At $2.99 per bottle, Two Buck Chuck is one of TJ’s all-time best-selling products. Since debuting in 2003, it has won the hearts of critics and customers alike and has sold over 1B bottles.

“I’ve tried a lot of cheap wine,” a young Trader Joe’s-goer in Austin, Texas assures me. “Charles Shaw is the crème de la crème.” Clutching two bottles of 2017 vintage Chardonnay, a shopper in Palo Alto, California adds that it “goes down smooth and [is] cheaper than water.”

How is a supposedly decent wine sold at such a low price-point? And where did it come from? This is the tale of one wine brand, two men, and the economic revolution of an entire industry.

Will the real Charles Shaw please stand up?

Charles Shaw embodied the elitist aura of the wine industry.

He obtained degrees from West Point and Stanford Business School. He worked as an investment banker in France and spent his summers wearing polo shirts in Nantucket. He could sniff a glass of Gamay Nouveau and pick out the “notes of banana.”

In the early ‘70s, while banking in Paris, Shaw fell deeply in love with the craft of winemaking.

So he quit his banking gig, bought 20 acres of land in Napa, California with his wife’s inheritance, and launched Charles F. Shaw Winery.

Shaw’s wines were not crafted for the plebes. Debuted in 1978, his flagship bottle, a Beaujolais, retailed for $13.50 ($35 today), and won international acclaim. “It had an amazing garnet color and was really quite striking, he later told Thrillist. “I liked to drink it with a Tiffany's all-purpose glass.”

TOP: Charles Shaw (left) samples a glass of his 1986 Gamay Nouveau (The Tennessean, April 23, 1987); BOTTOM: An advertisement for one of Shaw’s “fine boutique wines” (San Francisco Examiner, 1990)

Charles Shaw Winery soon expanded to 115 acres, 60 employees, and 15k cases per year. Business was booming. Shaw and his wife, Lucy, epitomized the Haute couture of Napa Valley: Tall, elegant, and beautiful, they turned heads at fancy galas and industry events.

Then, in the late ‘80s, things began to fall apart.

Shaw lost “hundreds of thousands of dollars” after a supplier error tainted 1.4k barrels of wine. He dealt with a devastating root louse infestation that claimed 50 acres of his vines. He over-anticipated the demand for Burgundies. He went through a nasty divorce that took a toll on his management. Then, a recession hit.

By 1992, Shaw was $3m in debt and filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. He “stashed the last of his cash under the floor of his car,” took a final glance over his trellised hills, and left town.

The box wine baron

Fred Franzia did not share Shaw’s air d'élégance.

He was unrefined and heavyset, with a body shape the New Yorker likened to a “gourmet marshmallow” (Business 2.0 Magazine called him “a cross between John Madden and Shrek”).

Reclusive and gruff, he shied away from public appearances and scoffed at Napa Valley’s wine snobbery. He referred to winemakers as “bozos.” He didn’t care for France.

Franzia came from a long lineage of winemakers. His great-grandfather, Giuseppe, had immigrated to California’s Central Valley in 1893 and set up Franzia Brothers Winery (later sold to Coca-Cola); his uncle, Ernest Gallo, had built the largest wine exporter in California.

In 1973, Franzia launched his own wine company, Bronco Wine Co. In a rickety wood-paneled trailer held together with duct tape, he set out to produce extremely cheap, high-quality “super-value” wines — wines that rejected the pretentiousness of Napa Valley.

TOP: Fred Franzia (right) breaks ground on Bronco Wine Co. with his brothers (via Bronco); BOTTOM: Franzia inhales grapes (via Michael Kelley, Business 2.0 Magazine)

Initially, Bronco operated as a wholesaler, buying bulk wine and selling it to larger wineries at a profit. But soon Franzia saw an opportunity to produce his own cheap wines — wines, as he later put it, that “yuppies would feel comfortable drinking.”

He developed a strategy of buying out distressed wineries with distinguished-sounding names — Napa Ridge, Napa Creek, Domaine Napa — and using them to sell his stock of less-desirable Central Valley wines. Through a legal loophole, he could say the wines were “Cellared and Bottled in Napa,” so long as the brand was founded prior to 1986.

On a summer day in 1995, a few years after Charles Shaw Winery went bust, Franzia purchased the winery’s brand, label, and name for a mere $27k.

"We buy wineries from guys from Stanford who go bankrupt,” he later boasted. “Some real dumb-asses from there."

Unbeknownst to the real Charles Shaw, Franzia was about to transform his once-fancy wine brand into an impossibly cheap “everyman’s juice” — and change the wine industry forever.

How Franzia “shorted” the wine business

In the late 1990s, there was a wine boom: Vineyard acreage grew by 24% and suddenly everyone from car mechanics to plumbers was putting up vines on spare California land.

Soon, there were rumblings that the industry was over-producing grapes and could face a crash. While most dismissed the warning, Franzia hedged a bet on it.

He constructed a faux-Tuscan, 92k-square-foot bottling plant with high-speed lines that were capable of producing 18m cases per year — 2x the amount of wine in the entire Napa Valley. He also stopped producing wine altogether, and his 452 stainless steel storage tanks sat empty, waiting for the market to go belly-up.

A small portion of the vineyards at Bronco’s San Joaquin Valley vineyard in Central California (Bronco)

Franzia’s intuition paid off. The industry soon faced a massive glut, and while other vintners suffered surpluses, he bought up as much cheap wine as he could get his hands on.

Wineries were forced to “purge” massive quantities of their high-quality wine, or risk oversaturating their own market. Franzia was able to suck it up for as little as 50 cents/gallon — an astonishingly low price compared with the going rate of $10/gallon just a few years earlier.

Franzia had let the Charles Shaw Winery brand sit dormant since purchasing it years before. Now, he was ready to bring it back to life.

Using the exact same name and label (which pictures Shaw’s old tennis court pagoda), he launched a large-scale production effort. His facilities ran 24 hours a day, 7 days per week — and in a short time, he’d churned out a two-story-tall stack of Charles Shaw cases ready for distribution.

The inglorious rise of Two Buck Chuck

Trader Joe’s already carried several other wine brands operated by Franzia, and they were willing to give Charles Shaw a whirl.

In the Spring of 2002, the label made its retail debut at the shockingly low price of $1.99 per bottle. Early on, in an internet chat room, a Trader Joe’s employee dubbed it “Two Buck Chuck” — a moniker that caught the eyes of budget-conscious shoppers. 

These were the days following the Dot-Com bubble and the early 2000s recession: There was a demand for cheap wine. But nobody — not even Franzia — could’ve anticipated the wine’s success.

Come Fall, certain locations were selling up to 6k bottles per day. People would come to Trader Joe’s and fill up their SUVs with dozens of cases; some days, customers would line up outside the stores before they opened, and an entire supply would sell out in minutes.

Charles Shaw wines were met with surprisingly good reviews (via assorted newspapers 2003-4)

“People went apeshit,” Keith Wallace, a wine expert, told Thrillist. “It was the ‘Macarena’ of wine… And it was this blue-collar pride thing. People thought, ‘This bottle is just as good as one that's $20. Screw those snobs.’"

By early 2003, Charles Shaw had already sold 60m bottles, accounting for 12% of all of California’s wine shipments within the state. It was, by wine experts’ estimation, the fastest-growing wine in US history. When Franzia sold his 400-millionth bottle of Charles Shaw in 2009, he had only one thing to say: “Take that and shove it, Napa.”

For a $2 bottle, it performed astonishingly well in competitions. The Chardonnay won a double-gold at the 2007 California State Fair, and Wines & Vines Magazine rated it higher than a $67 bottle in a blind tasting.

Two Buck Chuck, declared one critic, had “revolutionized wine drinking” forever.

How to make money on a $2 bottle on wine

Franzia pulled off something wine experts never thought possible: He managed to produce a rock-bottom-priced wine that people actually like to drink — and make money on it. How on Earth is that possible?

For starters, though the Charles Shaw label boasts “Cellared and Bottled in Napa,” most of the wines’ grapes come from the Central Valley, where Franzia owns 35k+ acres of vineyards. Though he capitalizes on the Napa name, his operation is rooted in an area with dramatically cheaper land and operation costs.

Franzia’s enormous holdings have allowed him to produce Charles Shaw wines at an extremely low price point (The Hustle)

These days, most Charles Shaw bottles contain a blend of bulk-purchased grapes and grapes grown by Franzia on his own land. Using a suite of 700k-gallon tanks (most small wineries use 700-gallon tanks), he is able to pump out 90m gallons of wine every year.

Franzia also has a hand in nearly every part of the supply chain: He maintains his own bottling plant (which produces 250 bottles per minute), a 62m-gallon storage facility, and a distribution network that includes a fleet of steel tanker trucks.

Lastly, every corner is cut: He uses oak chips to ferment his wine rather than barrels; he swaps real corks for composites; he subs traditional wares for lightweight bottles and crates.

Franzia has stated that his tactics would make the average farmer “shit in his pants.” But his robust empire, tremendous output, and ruthless bulk-buying tactics have allowed him to keep prices down and earn reported revenues of ~$500m per year.

Just business

Today, Charles Shaw lives in Chicago and works at the Chicago Board of Trade, a futures and options exchange.

At 74 years old, he has mostly moved on from wine — though he once referred to the continued use of his name as “embarrassing and demeaning.” He has never seen a penny from Two Buck Chuck.

"It's not a Napa wine, and not of the quality of the Charles Shaw brand [that was] estate grown with layers of complexity,” he told the Napa Valley Register, during the height of the Two Buck Chuck boom in 2003. "To take [my name] and come out and have a lesser wine from another appellation — that isn't what I started out to do, was it?”

Charles Shaw and Fred Franzia today (The Hustle)

Franzia, on the other hand, continues to rake in the big bucks from his Charles Shaw and his other 150 labels.

On his compound in the sparse agricultural town of Ceres, California, he works 100-hour weeks. As his friend, Michael Mondavi, once said: “He sleeps, drinks, eats the wine business... He doesn’t worry about yachting or golf. Just business.”

His role in changing the wine industry has earned him near universal hated by “true wine people”  — mainly vintners who claim he’s “cheapened” the good Napa name. But this doesn’t bother him much.

“You tell me why someone’s bottle is worth eighty dollars and mine’s worth two dollars,” he retorted. “Do you get forty times the pleasure from it?”

- thehustle.co

[musicdish]

Twice The Holiday Feel-Good Vibe From NYC Indie Rockers

For 25 years The Baghdaddios have churned along, trolling the seedier dive bars of New York City that were fortunate enough to have a sound system and a cabaret license. Occasionally they graced the spotlight of some higher profile venues (including their third-ever show at iconic punk birthplace CBGB). Somewhere along the way, between the indie CD releases, music videos, trips to other countries and criss-crossing various part of the U.S., they got a bright idea in their 5th year that resulted in the proverbial 'gift that keeps on giving'. They founded a musically-themed benefit for their home City's homeless......... Blank-Fest. "We were a lot younger and naive back then", remembers front-man and Benefit founder Kenn Rowell. "We didn't even have plans for a second-year show until the very last moments of the first one, when I just looked at the few people who were left in the club and said 'See you all next year'. I remember walking off the stage and thinking to myself 'Uh-oh, what did I just promise'?" But here we all are, 2 decades later and the little-Benefit-that-could is still rolling along, spawning satellite shows and still marshalling the best of the City's indie and unsigned talent to bring a diverse audience together at The Hudson House, a friendly little club in the New York City suburb of Nyack on Sunday, December 17 for what will be the twenty-first consecutive year for a worthwhile cause. When Rowell booked the first 5 acts back in 1997 there was no real blueprint, no primer - Hell, there was barely an internet - to lead the way. It started as a late-night post-gig barroom convo between he and fellow Blank-Fest founder (and fellow performer) Chuck DeBruyn where they hit upon the idea of mini-set performances by themselves, along with some of their friends. The price of admission? Just a blanket, any condition. These blankets, in turn, would be handed out directly to the City's less fortunate, spending Christmas Eve on the cold, dark streets. No middle-man, no huge organization (or red tape) to slow down their efforts and (here's the cool part) NO money involved. "We reasoned that if we made dime one, then we had failed", explains Rowell. "It was kind of a real hippie-type thing; we felt money corrupts - so let's dispense with that. Just give us the blankets and we'll get 'em to the people". Growth was near-exponential in the early days. Blank-Fest's inaugural show netted 40 contributions - 20 of which came from DeBruyn's mother's home. Blank-Fest II in '98 yielded 70 donations. By the early 2000's the Benefit was pulling in over 600 donations for what was by now the flagship show. Early attempts at City-based shows, while well-intentioned didn't come close to matching the main event. That all changed after a full-page feature in the New York Daily News in 2006. New Jersey rocker Rich Kubicz approached Kenn about developing a Garden State-based Blank-Fest and within a few years was outperforming the original venue. A tour of England for The Baghdaddios the following summer inspired a few enterprising rockers in Nottingham to organize the first Blank-Fest UK, soon to be followed by shows in Canada, Virginia and Florida. Today Canada boasts Blank-Fest shows in multiple major markets and there are talks of pushing the show onto the mainland in Europe (Germany is one such-rumored locale). All-in-all the organizers have estimated that Blank-Fest has been responsible for raising over 15,000 total donations, the vast majority being blankets, since it's inception, 20 years ago. As always, Blank-Fest XXI will be featuring the best of NYC and the surrounding area's indie talent including ex-Misfit and current Undead frontman Bobby Steele along with EMI-alumna, singer-songwriter Patti Rothberg. The rest of the lineup is rounded out by some great local and regional acts - including a few surprise entries. For Rowell, it's been a fun - if sometimes crazy - journey. But he's used to the up-and-down micro-dramas that come with the turf considering that The Baghdaddios - his band, the band that's hosted this show every year since its founding - has had an even crazier up-and-down history. Despite only releasing two full-length albums and a handful of EPs, music videos and online-only efforts, the group continues to record new material and play shows, albeit not as many shows as they were accustomed to 'back in the day'. "We're all older now and a lot of the places we used to practically live at are gone", says Rowell. "CB's, Kenny's Castaways, Wetlands, Continental - now even Hank's Saloon in Brooklyn is closing. It's just not the same anymore - and even if it were, the crowd we grew up with got older too. They've all moved on, gotten married, raised kids, moved away.........or died. It's sad but it's the circle of life. That's why we love it when we can bring our show to a new audience. We sometimes wonder if they're going to be able to relate to what we're playing up there but in the end it's just three chords, a lot of feedback and some good ol' sweaty rock 'n roll - and that never goes out of style!" Which brings us to their latest release: a punked-up Holiday bauble called "Let It Be Happy". Written on Christmas Day, 2015, the song started as an acoustic encouragement for Kenn's partner, celebrated Lower East Side bilingual poet Yvonne Sotomayor. "She had just reached out to an old grade school friend on Facebook who didn't remember her and then blocked her. She was a bit bummed out like 'what did I do to her to deserve that?' so I said to her 'FORGET her - it's Christmas, let's just be happy for what we've got and to Hell with her - if she doesn't want to be your friend, screw her!' and I started playing the chords and singing "Let it be happy - let it be merry - let it be happy, it's a Merry Christmas" and it all grew from there!" In fact, they even recorded a homemade iPhone video of him singing the tune in front of their Christmas tree, the next day. With encouragement from bandmates and friends the group decided to electrify the arrangement and see how the recording would go. "It went a lot better than anyone expected. We were in-between drummers at the time so Count of Nine's drummer, good friend Joe Dugan sat in for the session." The rest of the band gelled behind him quite convincingly and Alice Donut guitarist Michael Jung lent his touch as co-producer/mixer to push the two minute and eleven second gem's final mix to release-worthy status. So buoyed by the final product, Rowell pulled together what was left of the band, along with some good rock 'n roll friends to produce a fun, festive music video. That video - shot mid-January of this year - is finally seeing the light of day with it's recent Holiday Season release. The timing of the release is two-fold in it's intention. "We've been dying to drop this on an unsuspecting public for almost a year, now", relates Rowell, "but we also figured that with Blank-Fest coming up this gave us an extra incentive. Any buzz we could get from the video - which is pretty damned catchy, don't you think? - we could use to hype our latest edition of our homeless Benefit. We saw it as a win-win!" Available as a YouTube-only release, the music vid is the latest of similarly-themed Holiday fare that the band is known for. Starting with the underground classic, "Christmas At C.B.G.B.'s" - complete with cool cartoon music video - in 2002, The Baghdaddios have not been shy about shamelessly combining their flare for punk rock bombast with Yuletide imagery. Their 2008 "Season's Beatings" Holiday EP featured such hummable staples like "Christmas Ain't For Lonely People", their high octane take on Feliz Navidad and their mosh-pit ready version of the Robert Burns New Year's traditional, "Auld Land Syne". Their 9-second oft-bootlegged outtake, "I Want To Kill Paris Hilton's Dog And Eat It For Christmas Dinner" found it's way to YouTube where it actually garnered 700-plus views despite no official release, promotion or even mention in band circles. Meanwhile, Kenn and the rest of The Baghdaddios hope "Let It Be Happy" will exceed all past efforts: https://youtu.be/aTkGquFwgWQ When pressed for a preference as to which vehicle he had higher hopes for, Rowell merely shrugged. "Look, in a perfect world I'd like to see both get the monster hype, but if you're going to ask me to choose then I'd say 'show up for Blank-Fest and help the homeless - we've got the rest of our lives to promote a Christmas song'. Bottom line: it's there when you're ready for it - IF you're ever ready for it?" And if they're never ready for it? His answer pretty much summed up his punk rock philosophy on life: "F it, man - at least we had fun!". Website: http://www.baghdaddios.com Source: http://www.mi2n.com/press.php3?press_nb=200937

[junker-town]

How Mike Gundy came home and built Oklahoma State football

(with a little help from T. Boone Pickens)

STILLWATER, Okla. — “Sorry I’m late. We’re trying to figure out why we got our asses kicked on Saturday.”

Mike Gundy is only 10 minutes late for our scheduled chat, but considering this is game week, anything short of cancellation feels early.

Gundy’s Oklahoma State Cowboys just lost their first game of the year, a glitchy, unlucky 44-31 defeat to TCU. But there’s no time for wallowing: they have to get ready for a Saturday night track meet in Lubbock.

It wasn’t that long ago that a 13-point home loss to a top-15 team would be considered a sign of progress for an aggressively directionless Oklahoma State program. From the time the Cowboys joined the Big 8 in 1960 to when Gundy was hired as head coach in 2005, OSU finished the season ranked in the AP poll just five times.

Two of those finishes came with Gundy behind center.

Since Gundy’s hire, the Cowboys have risen to an entirely different level of sustainable success. They won their first Big 12 title in 2011, destroying OU and coming within an eyelash of the BCS Championship game. They have won at least nine games in seven of their last nine seasons and will probably do so again this fall.

They have found this level of success under an unrepentant Okie. And the sneaky brilliance of Gundy the Okie, along with Oklahoma State’s cultivation of another famous alum — the billionaire T. Boone Pickens — is at the heart of how the coach has led the program to new heights.

Yes, you know about the hair. You know about “I’m a man.” But focusing on one story and a hairstyle obscures the essence; Gundy is Okie to the core. That means wood grain in his office. It means hunting on the weekends. And it might mean coyote traps, too.

“He had this coyote trap,” Oklahoma State offensive coordinator Mike Yurcich says of his boss. “It was a thing that had like a squirrel’s tail on it, and it would whip around like this [makes fast, circling motion] and made this crazy noise. It made the sound of a bunny dying. It’s the worst sound you could ever hear. And he turned it on, and this thing would go crazy. He’d get a kick out of that.”

Or there was the stray dog Gundy once found. “He had him trained in a day, I think,” Yurcich says. “The dog did everything he told him to do — I’m like, ‘This guy is the head coach ... he’s a dog whisperer...’”

Gundy’s success is undeniable. So is the fact that he is always 100 percent himself.

“We have created a monster that now you have to feed.”

Oklahoma State athletics

Before.

Google Earth

After.

This is a new OSU. I grew up in Oklahoma (my parents graduated from Midwest City High School 15 years before Gundy), and I attended high school and college games at what was then Lewis Field from 1993 through the mid-2000s. I visited again recently, and it took a long time to get my bearings. This place has changed.

The harder it is to get somewhere, the harder it is to work up the motivation to leave.

Granted, the small-town vibe has not. Stillwater is still a town of under 50,000 people. It’s still structured so that virtually everything OSU-related that you need is within about two minutes of two streets — the east-west Hall of Fame Ave. and the north-south Main St. The athletic facilities are still but a short walk from the vaunted Eskimo Joe’s and the downtown area.

It’s also still a chore to get to town, about an hour’s drive north and east of Oklahoma City. The harder it is to get somewhere, the harder it is to work up the motivation to leave.

The small city means the new facilities carry even more gravitas. What is now Boone Pickens Stadium now holds close to 60,000. The football offices, housed on the west side of the stadium where only bleachers used to stand, are immense.

“It’s an unbelievable transformation,” says Dave Hunziker, the voice of Oklahoma State football and basketball. “Back when I arrived here [in 2001], a crowd of 36,000 or 37,000 was considered a nice crowd. Now it’s 56, 57,000 on a weekly basis.”

“For a long time here, we would have 32,000 faithful that would come to the games,” Gundy says. “Well, now we have 35,000 people that tailgate. This place is full. The RV lot is full. The RV parking lot used to be a gravel parking lot. There was two people in there.”

These fans certainly don’t expect to lose to TCU at home anymore.

“We have essentially created a monster that now you have to feed,” Gundy says.

“You can go just about anywhere, and it's going to be about the same.”

Gundy could have easily ended up about an hour and a half south in Norman. That was the original idea as he was wrapping up his senior year at Midwest City High in 1985.

“I eventually committed to OU,” he says, “but Jamelle Holieway was starting there and won the [1985] national championship. He had three years left, so I was smart enough to say, look, their defense is always gonna be awesome, and he just won a national championship. They only play Texas and Nebraska every year, that have the same level of talent as them. How am I ever going to break in and be the starter?

“Because of my ties to my family and not wanting to be too far away, I started looking real seriously at Oklahoma State.” It worked out pretty well for everyone involved.

Despite head coach Pat Jones’ run-heavy tendencies, and despite the presence of incredible backs like Barry Sanders and Thurman Thomas, Gundy still finished his career as the conference’s all-time leading passer. But OSU’s star power inadvertently revealed its limitations.

Photo by Stacy Revere/Getty Images

In the 1980s, the school employed Jimmy Johnson (who left in 1984 to take over at Miami) and Jones, fielded offenses with Gundy, Thomas, Sanders, and Hart Lee Dykes, and fielded defenses with Leslie O’Neal and Dexter Manley. Stars, all of them. But between 1977 and 1994, the Cowboys went 0-17-1 against Oklahoma, and between 1962 and 2002, they went 0-35-1 against Nebraska. Those brilliant teams of ‘87 and ‘88 went 0-4 against the Sooners and Huskers and 20-0 against everybody else. And after flying close to the sun in the late-1980s, they ended up getting burned by the NCAA and dealing with years of sanctions.

Things change. OSU won three of its last five against Nebraska before the Huskers left for the Big Ten. And while the Cowboys still lose more than they win against OU, they’ve beaten the Sooners four times since 2001.

Gundy’s return has a lot to do with it. And it was a winding road for him to come back home. He joined Jones’ staff directly out of college and was named offensive coordinator before he turned 27. But thanks in part to NCAA sanctions, Jones’ tenure ended poorly in the mid-1990s. Gundy set off on his own.

He spent one year as Baylor’s receivers coach under Chuck Reedy before a 4-7 season left everybody unemployed; he then spent four years under Ron Vanderlinden at Maryland before suffering the same fate.

“Being fired twice taught me a lot. It made me realize that having a job in coaching, it's not greener everywhere else. All the issues I thought Oklahoma State had, well, Baylor's got problems and Maryland's got problems. I realized that you can go just about anywhere, and it's going to be about the same.”

In 2001, Miles brought him back to Stillwater as offensive coordinator. And when Miles took the LSU job after four seasons, Gundy replaced him as head coach.

“Slow blinkers, hard to play the game.”

To John Smith, maybe the greatest amateur wrestler of all time, there is value in playing other sports and failing at them. “It’s humbling. You can be great at wrestling, but you can’t hit a baseball. That’s how it was for me.” He thinks it can lead to you appreciating your own gifts, and your best sport, a bit more.

That’s not necessarily something Mike Gundy would know about. “You know, Mike was good at everything,” Smith says. “I think he went with the sport he was best in, but Mike was a good basketball player, good baseball player, he won junior high state [in wrestling] when he was in junior high. Just an all-around good athlete.”

Smith is a former national champion and Olympic gold medalist. Just two years after his second Olympic gold in 1992, he was leading the OSU wrestling program to a national title as head coach. His Cowboys won four in a row from 2003 to 2006. He is the most accomplished Oklahoma State athlete of all time.

Smith was two grades ahead of Gundy and ended up attending Del City High, Midwest City’s chief rival. But the Gundy and Smith kids grew up around each other and birthed one hell of a Mid-Del dynasty.

OSU Athletics

Gundy and Hart Lee Dykes

Two of John’s brothers (Leroy and Pat) and two of his nephews (Mark and Chris Perry) all won national titles on the mat. Meanwhile, Cale Gundy succeeded Mike as quarterback at Midwest City, attended Oklahoma, and now serves as OU’s offensive co-coordinator. Every coach says he builds a family environment. Thanks to two coaches in particular, “family environment” is almost literal in Stillwater.

“The best thing my dad ever did was force me into wrestling,” Gundy says. “I’m not a very big person, but it changed my strength, changed my balance, changed my work ethic. And I was good at it. John and I grew up together and traveled around the country wrestling in difference places. That did a lot for me.”

Depending on who you ask, though, Gundy ended up sticking with either his best sport ... or his second-best sport. His first love was baseball, and he played for Gary Ward’s Cowboys as a freshman, but this was a tricky time to distinguish yourself in Stillwater on the diamond. Ward’s team was in the middle of an astounding 16-year Big 8 title run, and his primary positions, shortstop and third base, were filled by studs: Robin Ventura and Monty Fariss. “So when they started, I came back to spring [football] and never went back.”

He wishes he hadn’t. “Biggest mistake I have ever made. I finished at 6'0, 190, and I was probably big enough to play and get drafted and go take a chance if that was what I wanted to do. I wasn't big enough for football.”

And yet, football has paid off pretty well. Gundy believes, like many other coaches, that experience in many sports, instead of single-sport specialization, is a good indicator of future football success. Versatility in athleticism can be important, but versatility of the mind matters, too. “The guys who play multiple sports are almost always your best athletes,” he says.

“Besides, the game's changed so much that you're gonna need guys that are cerebral players. You've gotta think so much now, and you've gotta think fast. Slow blinkers, hard to play the game.”

“He wants you to think he’s just some country hick.”

Playing multiple sports certainly helped, but Gundy’s athletic success also came between the ears. Don’t let the hair fool you. Even if you’re smaller than everybody else on the field, you can make a lot of ground by out-thinking everybody.

“He’s unbelievably smart,” Hunziker says, “and one of the ways he’s smart is, he’s got a lot of people fooled. They just think he’s this Okie — and I say ‘Okie’ in a stereotypical way. He’s one of the most intelligent people I’ve ever met. Every decision he makes, every day, is calculated.

‘Oh, it’s all about the mullet. It’s all about rattlesnake hunting.’ In the meantime, he’s figured out four new ways to do things a lot of people haven’t even thought about yet.

“He thinks through everything he does, and he’s so innovative here. Offensively, the things they did back in 2010-11, the start of the diamond formation, that spread like wildfire. What he decided to do in terms of conditioning and deciding that hitting during the season, having full-bore scrimmages and tackling a lot, was counter-productive. People thought that was nuts! Now everybody does it.”

The list of innovative ideas is long, and Hunziker knows them all. “But again, people think, ‘Oh, it’s all about the mullet. It’s all about rattlesnake hunting.’ In the meantime, he’s figured out four new ways to do things a lot of people haven’t even thought about yet.”

Every Okie man and woman thinks they have wit and common sense just because Will Rogers lived there. Most of them are painfully incorrect. Most think only others need to heed “If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging,” or “Never let yesterday use up too much of today,” or “I never met a man I didn't like.”

That said, the OSU program was built by not one or two, but three straight-forward, common-sense Okies. And Gundy might have actually been the least important of the three.

“Man, I'm glad I wasn't very smart.”

Before this run could begin, the school first needed to make the perfect athletic director hire. It didn’t have to look very far. Mike Holder was hired to replace Harry Birdwell in September 2005, just two games into the Gundy era. Holder led the OSU men’s golf team to eight national titles in over three decades as head coach, and he showed similar prowess in a much larger role.

“I think Coach Holder’s done a great job of hiring coaches,” Smith says. “There’s been some of these sports that historically we’ve never been competitive in” — cross country, tennis — “all of a sudden, we’re competitive. I think that’s a big difference in the overall performance of our athletic program.”

Indeed, OSU has finished in the top 30 of the Learfield Cup standings for five straight years, peaking at 13th in 2016. “Those things don’t happen with 17 programs,” Smith says. “It’s gonna be hard to fall in there unless you’re running 20 or 30 programs. It’s effort on his part to ensure to some of our coaches, ‘We’re behind you, and we care as much about your sport as any sport.’

“A lot of things seemed to come together [on his watch], and that wasn’t an accident.”

Holder, a native of Ardmore, Okla., has been around Stillwater even longer than either Smith or Gundy. Nobody could have known what the OSU program needs better than him.

Photo by Tom Pennington/Getty Images

“When I took this thing over,” Gundy says, “I was 37, and I was just so stubborn and had so much energy and was so confident that I wasn't smart enough to know this was a damn hard job. I loved OSU, I believed in myself, and I said we could do this.

“Now, once we kind of accomplished it and I got my second contract, I started to look back and think, ‘Man, I'm glad I wasn't very smart.’ This is really hard. What I had the first three years here was, our athletic director, Mike Holder, he never wavered for one second. Any time something got brought up, he said ‘He's the right guy, he's our coach, end of story.’”

Holder is what you might call a coach’s AD. That makes sense considering he was a coach to begin with. Giving his charges room to breathe and running cover for them has paid off more often than not.

Long-term comfort allowed Gundy to avoid short-term patches. “That propelled me into not trying to cut corners and bring a bunch of JUCO kids in and get the quick fix,” he says. “There are no quick fixes at Oklahoma State. Everything that we do has to be well-thought through, the planning has to take place. We can't burn a couple of years — we'll struggle for five more. He allowed me to do that. And then we started winning, and after that there weren't any issues.”

Holder’s biggest accomplishment, however, didn’t have anything to do with his coaches. It was in turning a certain mega-booster into a master-booster.

In December 2005, he convinced alum T. Boone Pickens, who had already earned naming rights to the stadium for previous contributions — among other things, he had donated $70 million in 2003 — to drop an extra $165 million on athletic upgrades. The next year, Pickens contributed another $100 million the academic arm of the school. At this point, he’s contributed over $500 million to his alma mater.

And to think, Pickens would have been a Texas A&M alum if he hadn’t lost his basketball scholarship.

“You're not gonna get results if you don't shoot the gun.”

In the personality department, it takes quite a bit to outshine Gundy. Pickens might the only guy who can do it. A native of Holdenville, Okla., Pickens conquered the corporate world in the 1980s, perfecting the art of the hostile takeover while wearing plaid shirts on book covers and sporting a thick accent.

Pickens holed up in his Texas offices, combined the wisdom gleaned from analytics, research, patience — “Don’t rush the monkey, and you’ll see a better show,” he says in The First Billion Is the Hardest, a book in which he also says “The higher a monkey climbs a tree, the more people can see his ass.” — and decades of experience to pick his targets, then showed up on Wall Street to buy all the shares of your company. He combined an even temperament with common sense and made a metric ton of money, for both himself and shareholders, in the process.

In a way, Pickens and Gundy have gone about their business in similar ways. Neither has worried himself with conventional wisdom, and both have tried to stay a step ahead. As Pickens says in The First Billion, “My strategy [in the 1970s] was the same as today: staying current on every possible source of information, investing on the fundamentals of supply and demand, and sticking with my conviction over the long haul.” Thanks in part to Pickens’ investment and Holder’s resolve, Gundy had the time and space to do the same.

Photo by Bryan Bedder/Getty Images for Concordia Summit

T. Boone Pickens, 2016

“Mike Holder essentially got me this job,” Gundy says. “Boone essentially financed the product. And then I ran the organization. Boone is the main force — if he wouldn't have said, ‘I'm gonna build 'em a new stadium, build 'em a new facility,’ I don't think we could have attracted enough kids here to have the success that we've had.

“Holder was essentially like water dripping on a rock, year after year after year, he finally got him to say okay, here's your $300 million. That's what Holder does. He wore the guy out.”

Gundy’s favorite Booneism has quite the Will Rogers vibe: “A fool with a plan can outsmart a genius with no plan any day.”

“I use that all the time with our team, with my kids at home — and it is true,” says Gundy. “When you're in charge, when you're parenting or coaching or running an organization, if you don't have direction, nobody has direction.

“...He'll also say this: You have to aim and fire. You can just aim and aim and aim and never pull the trigger. He said you're not gonna get results if you don't shoot the gun. There's too many leaders, people in charge, that cannot make a decision based on what will happen from that decision. He said, if it's wrong, just fix it.”

Just fix it. From Pickens’ first autobiography, Boone: “There’s usually more than one way to solve a problem. When you’re in trouble, you look at your pluses, stay cool, and ask yourself how you can get your cart out of the ditch.”

Gundy might have become known for a 2007 outburst and a magical 2011 run, but his greatest ability is getting his cart out of the proverbial ditch.

In 2009, when his Cowboys finished a disappointing 9-4 after reaching as high as fifth in the country, he hired offensive coordinator Dana Holgorsen and revamped his offense. Two years later, they nearly won the national title.

In 2014, in the middle of a treacherous five-game losing streak, he went with a youth movement, basically handing the offense over to two freshmen, quarterback Mason Rudolph and receiver James Washington.

And in a Saturday night track meet in Lubbock late this September, following a disappointing loss, Washington, now the second-leading receiver in school history. caught nine passes for 127 yards. Rudolph, the all-time leading passer, scored the game-winning touchdown with a minute left. Getting the cart out of a ditch in 2014 helped the Pokes to avoid one in 2017.

John David Mercer-USA TODAY Sports

Read more of the interview between Connelly and Gundy.

[musicdish]

Twice The Holiday Feel-Good Vibe From NYC Indie Rockers

For 25 years The Baghdaddios have churned along, trolling the seedier dive bars of New York City that were fortunate enough to have a sound system and a cabaret license. Occasionally they graced the spotlight of some higher profile venues (including their third-ever show at iconic punk birthplace CBGB). Somewhere along the way, between the indie CD releases, music videos, trips to other countries and criss-crossing various part of the U.S., they got a bright idea in their 5th year that resulted in the proverbial 'gift that keeps on giving'. They founded a musically-themed benefit for their home City's homeless......... Blank-Fest. "We were a lot younger and naive back then", remembers front-man and Benefit founder Kenn Rowell. "We didn't even have plans for a second-year show until the very last moments of the first one, when I just looked at the few people who were left in the club and said 'See you all next year'. I remember walking off the stage and thinking to myself 'Uh-oh, what did I just promise'?" But here we all are, 2 decades later and the little-Benefit-that-could is still rolling along, spawning satellite shows and still marshalling the best of the City's indie and unsigned talent to bring a diverse audience together at The Hudson House, a friendly little club in the New York City suburb of Nyack on Sunday, December 17 for what will be the twenty-first consecutive year for a worthwhile cause. When Rowell booked the first 5 acts back in 1997 there was no real blueprint, no primer - Hell, there was barely an internet - to lead the way. It started as a late-night post-gig barroom convo between he and fellow Blank-Fest founder (and fellow performer) Chuck DeBruyn where they hit upon the idea of mini-set performances by themselves, along with some of their friends. The price of admission? Just a blanket, any condition. These blankets, in turn, would be handed out directly to the City's less fortunate, spending Christmas Eve on the cold, dark streets. No middle-man, no huge organization (or red tape) to slow down their efforts and (here's the cool part) NO money involved. "We reasoned that if we made dime one, then we had failed", explains Rowell. "It was kind of a real hippie-type thing; we felt money corrupts - so let's dispense with that. Just give us the blankets and we'll get 'em to the people". Growth was near-exponential in the early days. Blank-Fest's inaugural show netted 40 contributions - 20 of which came from DeBruyn's mother's home. Blank-Fest II in '98 yielded 70 donations. By the early 2000's the Benefit was pulling in over 600 donations for what was by now the flagship show. Early attempts at City-based shows, while well-intentioned didn't come close to matching the main event. That all changed after a full-page feature in the New York Daily News in 2006. New Jersey rocker Rich Kubicz approached Kenn about developing a Garden State-based Blank-Fest and within a few years was outperforming the original venue. A tour of England for The Baghdaddios the following summer inspired a few enterprising rockers in Nottingham to organize the first Blank-Fest UK, soon to be followed by shows in Canada, Virginia and Florida. Today Canada boasts Blank-Fest shows in multiple major markets and there are talks of pushing the show onto the mainland in Europe (Germany is one such-rumored locale). All-in-all the organizers have estimated that Blank-Fest has been responsible for raising over 15,000 total donations, the vast majority being blankets, since it's inception, 20 years ago. As always, Blank-Fest XXI will be featuring the best of NYC and the surrounding area's indie talent including ex-Misfit and current Undead frontman Bobby Steele along with EMI-alumna, singer-songwriter Patti Rothberg. The rest of the lineup is rounded out by some great local and regional acts - including a few surprise entries. For Rowell, it's been a fun - if sometimes crazy - journey. But he's used to the up-and-down micro-dramas that come with the turf considering that The Baghdaddios - his band, the band that's hosted this show every year since its founding - has had an even crazier up-and-down history. Despite only releasing two full-length albums and a handful of EPs, music videos and online-only efforts, the group continues to record new material and play shows, albeit not as many shows as they were accustomed to 'back in the day'. "We're all older now and a lot of the places we used to practically live at are gone", says Rowell. "CB's, Kenny's Castaways, Wetlands, Continental - now even Hank's Saloon in Brooklyn is closing. It's just not the same anymore - and even if it were, the crowd we grew up with got older too. They've all moved on, gotten married, raised kids, moved away.........or died. It's sad but it's the circle of life. That's why we love it when we can bring our show to a new audience. We sometimes wonder if they're going to be able to relate to what we're playing up there but in the end it's just three chords, a lot of feedback and some good ol' sweaty rock 'n roll - and that never goes out of style!" Which brings us to their latest release: a punked-up Holiday bauble called "Let It Be Happy". Written on Christmas Day, 2015, the song started as an acoustic encouragement for Kenn's partner, celebrated Lower East Side bilingual poet Yvonne Sotomayor. "She had just reached out to an old grade school friend on Facebook who didn't remember her and then blocked her. She was a bit bummed out like 'what did I do to her to deserve that?' so I said to her 'FORGET her - it's Christmas, let's just be happy for what we've got and to Hell with her - if she doesn't want to be your friend, screw her!' and I started playing the chords and singing "Let it be happy - let it be merry - let it be happy, it's a Merry Christmas" and it all grew from there!" In fact, they even recorded a homemade iPhone video of him singing the tune in front of their Christmas tree, the next day. With encouragement from bandmates and friends the group decided to electrify the arrangement and see how the recording would go. "It went a lot better than anyone expected. We were in-between drummers at the time so Count of Nine's drummer, good friend Joe Dugan sat in for the session." The rest of the band gelled behind him quite convincingly and Alice Donut guitarist Michael Jung lent his touch as co-producer/mixer to push the two minute and eleven second gem's final mix to release-worthy status. So buoyed by the final product, Rowell pulled together what was left of the band, along with some good rock 'n roll friends to produce a fun, festive music video. That video - shot mid-January of this year - is finally seeing the light of day with it's recent Holiday Season release. The timing of the release is two-fold in it's intention. "We've been dying to drop this on an unsuspecting public for almost a year, now", relates Rowell, "but we also figured that with Blank-Fest coming up this gave us an extra incentive. Any buzz we could get from the video - which is pretty damned catchy, don't you think? - we could use to hype our latest edition of our homeless Benefit. We saw it as a win-win!" Available as a YouTube-only release, the music vid is the latest of similarly-themed Holiday fare that the band is known for. Starting with the underground classic, "Christmas At C.B.G.B.'s" - complete with cool cartoon music video - in 2002, The Baghdaddios have not been shy about shamelessly combining their flare for punk rock bombast with Yuletide imagery. Their 2008 "Season's Beatings" Holiday EP featured such hummable staples like "Christmas Ain't For Lonely People", their high octane take on Feliz Navidad and their mosh-pit ready version of the Robert Burns New Year's traditional, "Auld Land Syne". Their 9-second oft-bootlegged outtake, "I Want To Kill Paris Hilton's Dog And Eat It For Christmas Dinner" found it's way to YouTube where it actually garnered 700-plus views despite no official release, promotion or even mention in band circles. Meanwhile, Kenn and the rest of The Baghdaddios hope "Let It Be Happy" will exceed all past efforts: https://youtu.be/aTkGquFwgWQ When pressed for a preference as to which vehicle he had higher hopes for, Rowell merely shrugged. "Look, in a perfect world I'd like to see both get the monster hype, but if you're going to ask me to choose then I'd say 'show up for Blank-Fest and help the homeless - we've got the rest of our lives to promote a Christmas song'. Bottom line: it's there when you're ready for it - IF you're ever ready for it?" And if they're never ready for it? His answer pretty much summed up his punk rock philosophy on life: "F it, man - at least we had fun!". Website: http://www.baghdaddios.com Source: http://www.mi2n.com/press.php3?press_nb=200937

[junker-town]

For better and worse, Bob Stoops was new-school on the field and old-school off it

The OU coach constantly evolved his team, but didn’t show that level of careful thinking when it came to discipline.

When Stoops came to Norman, OU hadn’t finished above .500 in five years. Nick Saban was entering his fifth year at Michigan State and had just a series of six-win or six-loss seasons to show for it. Urban Meyer was receivers coach at Notre Dame; Dabo Swinney receivers coach at Alabama. Tulane was coming off of an unbeaten season.

Things change, even in a college football universe that sometimes moves with glacial speed. The names changed, and the sport changed, but there OU was, winning every other Big 12 title for what seemed like eternity. He was as constant a figure as the unrealistic fans he served.

I was driving through Oklahoma City back from Texas on January 1, 2000, the day after Oklahoma had lost to Ole Miss in the Independence Bowl. In front of a crowd of nearly 50,000 in Shreveport, in their first bowl since a 1994 Copper Bowl pasting, OU had trailed 21-3 at halftime, stormed back to take a 25-24 lead with two minutes left, then fallen via 39-yard field goal at the buzzer. I have no idea why I was listening to sports talk radio, but a man called in to rail on the Sooners, their rinky-dink offense, and their gutless defense.

I like to imagine that this guy calls the same station to deliver the same rant after each OU loss. He finished the call with the three magic words every fanbase recognizes from local sports radio and message boards. If the Sooners were going to keep this know-it-all coach around, with these know-nothing assistants, then they were settling for mediocrity.

Coaching is the ultimate thankless profession, particularly in the Internet era. But you're paid handsomely for the derision. Stoops, in particular, is paid really well. He has won 160 games in 15 seasons, nine top-10 finishes, and four BCS bowls, and he begins Year 16 predicted to make the first College Football Playoff, land top-10 finish number 10, and win conference title number eight.

Somebody, somewhere, will call that mediocrity. Oklahoma seems okay with it.

From a national title win in his second year to a Playoff bid in his second-to-last, Stoops’ 18-year Oklahoma career was defined by on-field renewal.

Their down periods were down months, and no matter the state of the Big 12, Stoops’ Sooners were the face of the conference.

When you stick around for 18 years, a lot is going to change. Stoops entered a Big 12 that had in its inaugural years been dominated by Big 12 North teams. South teams had won two of the first three titles, sure, but both came via upset wins.

Nebraska had won three national titles between 1994-97 and was about to generate three more top-10 finishes under Frank Solich.

Colorado had hit a bump but was just two years removed from three straight top-10 finishes and five in eight years. The Buffaloes would nearly make the BCS title game in 2001.

Kansas State nearly made the national title game in 1998, falling short only due to a conference title game upset. The Wildcats had won 59 games in six years and had three top-10 finishes in the last four years. They would have three more such finishes in the next four years.

With help from recent Texas hire Mack Brown, Stoops transformed the conference and reversed the geographic balance. When the Big 12 led the spread offense train, Stoops’ Sooners were the front car. When the Big 12 nearly fell apart in the early-2010s, OU was still the most likely title-caliber squad.

Stoops hired young coaches, identified early trends — from the air raid to the mid-2000s spread to the nickel defense — and won as consistently as any coach not named Saban or Meyer.

Lincoln Riley broke down at last week’s press conference. The new OU head coach was a quarterback at Texas Tech in 2002 and spent his entire career under either Stoops (2015-present), Stoops disciple Mike Leach (2003-09), or Leach disciple Ruffin McNeill (2010-14).

Oklahoma is no stranger to hiring an exciting head coach; Bud Wilkinson was just 30 when he took over in 1946, Barry Switzer was 35 in 1973, and Stoops was 38 in 1999. Riley was just the latest young assistant to get early breaks on the Stoops tree.

Brent Venables was 28 when Stoops made him his defensive co-coordinator in 1999. Leach, Mike Stoops, Bo Pelini, Josh Heupel, and Chuck Long were under 40 when given primary roles. Stoops’ first staff featured six assistants under 40 and three under 30. In a way, this was paying it forward; he had been 30 when Kansas State’s Bill Snyder made him defensive co-coordinator in 1991.

Stoops valued quality of experience over quantity. He valued hunger, confidence, and new ideas — "I want guys that I feel will be head coaches, that kind of ability, that kind of attitude,” he once told me — and he made sure that assistants didn’t work to burnout stage. He was conscious of wanting to remain healthy and have a life to live after coaching. That made him an assistant coach’s dream boss.

He lived the sleep-in-the-office lifestyle as an assistant for Bill Snyder at Kansas State, and then he learned in his three years working for Steve Spurrier at Florida that it was possible to win and spend time with your family. ... When assistants came from other programs to work for Stoops at Oklahoma and he encouraged them to get out of the office and see their families, their reaction was almost universal. I didn’t know it could be like this.

The tradeoff was that if a hire wasn’t working, he reserved the right to a new hire. In 2015, he replaced Heupel, his title-winning quarterback who was fielding good but not great offenses, with Riley. In 2012, he let Venables leave for Clemson after what was perceived as a defensive funk. (Not every move was a good move, but he was unafraid of change.)

Stoops was a great mentor for new-school coaches, but make no mistake: he was old school. And that was a problem sometimes.

First, he expressed the oldest of old-school views on matters like player compensation.

"I tell my guys all the time," Stoops says, "you're not the first one to spend a hungry Sunday without any money." [...]

"You know what school would cost here for non-state guy? Over $200,000 for room, board and everything else," Stoops said. "That's a lot of money. Ask the kids who have to pay it back over 10-15 years with student loans. You get room and board, and we'll give you the best nutritionist, the best strength coach to develop you, the best tutors to help you academically, and coaches to teach you and help you develop. How much do you think it would cost to hire a personal trainer and tutor for 4-5 years?"

When it came to disciplinary issues, he was thoughtful enough to treat every incident as its own unique case. Whatever nuance he showed, however, went out the window when it came time to explain his decisions. He grew testy and impatient when challenged, and didn’t care much about PR battles.

He proved willing to grant second chances and sacrifice short-term win totals. He dismissed All-American defensive tackle Dusty Dvoracek for the 2004 season — one that began with massive national title hype — following a nasty assault incident, then brought him back in 2005. He dismissed starters Bomar and J.D. Quinn in 2006 following NCAA allegations of improper benefits. He suspended all-conference tackle DeMarcus Granger before the 2008 Fiesta Bowl after an alleged shoplifting incident.

However, he publicly appeared unwise when it came to violence against women.

After an apparent blessing from Missouri coach Gary Pinkel, he took on Dorial Green-Beckham in 2014 following the star receiver’s dismissal from Mizzou. (Green-Beckham went pro after a mandatory redshirt season and never suited up for the Sooners.)

He suspended five-star running back Joe Mixon for a season, instead of dismissing the eventual star outright, following a well-publicized assault of a woman in Norman.

He recruited another eventual star, Dede Westbrook, despite previous domestic arrests.

Linebacker Frank Shannon was suspended — not by Stoops, but by the school itself — for alleged sexual misconduct. When his suspension was up, he was welcomed back to the team.

That at least three of these players had All-American potential probably helped their cases, but in a vacuum, the decisions could be defended as opportunities to help the players grow as people. In Dvoracek, he had the perfect example of what a second chance can do for somebody.

Stoops didn’t hurry to defend these moves, however, and the resulting perception was one of a program that didn’t treat issues with the gravity they deserved.

And in Mixon’s case, even if the intent was to give him a second chance, shielding him from media for over a year only made things worse.

Since he punched a woman in the face so hard that she had to have eight hours’ worth of reconstructive surgery, he hasn’t had any incidents worse than yelling at a parking attendant. But he punched a woman in the face so hard that she had to have eight hours’ worth of reconstructive surgery.

And it was caught on camera. And he was shielded from media for almost two years afterward, which had the effect of reviving the incident over and over with no resolution.

(Stoops appeared to acknowledge late in 2016 that dismissal of Mixon would have been the right course, though it’s fair to note that this is a lot easier to say after a player’s career is over and after he has helped you win games.)

In recent months, Mixon has set out to become the type of rehabilitation case we say we want to see. He served his suspension without incident, and he and his victim made public peace with each other.

The best-case scenario is that Mixon, Green-Beckham, etc., become Dvoraceks: examples of people who made extreme mistakes but became role models for others.

But Stoops’ reputation needs repair. It will be further sculpted by how these former players develop (or don’t) off the field.