Hi, I’m Meathead.  Since I could count the number of times I’ve visited the Pitchfork website on one hand even after a hypothetical horrific, bloody woodshop mishap, I’m not really “up” on all the latest “rock and roll” bands that “kids” are “listening to” these days.  Of course, this isn’t much of a problem, seeing as most new music that is created today “blows goats.”  Unfortunately, every now and then I catch wind of one of these god-awful pseudo-bands, despite my best efforts not to.  And more often than not, they end up opening for Nine Inch Nails soon after.  But I guess my ever-growing distaste for contemporary music is just another sign that I’m getting old. I’ve also been watching a lot of Matlock lately.  I can’t believe I’ve never noticed how much this show kicks ass.

Have you ever seen a band name that’s so mind-blowingly retarded that it makes you want to roundhouse kick a nun right in the face?  Like, for example, “As I Lay Dying”, “Panic! At The Disco”, or “Darryl Hall and John Oates”? I recently had the opportunity to experience this tingly sensation, although in this particular case, the word “band” is used in lieu of “whiny putz with a keyboard.”  It’s easier to just type “band.”  Imagine my delight the very moment I became aware of the existence of yet another one of these atrocities.  To my chagrin, there was a noticeable lack of nuns nearby to attack indiscriminately at the time, so I had to settle for local Cub Scout pack #418.  I tell you, it just wasn’t as satisfying.  You’d think it would be, but it wasn’t.  So it goes.  Nevertheless, I was still stuck with the cold, unchanging reality that someone is actually recording and performing music under the moniker Casiotone For The Painfully Alone. Holy Christ.

I wish I could say this was a joke, and that no one could honestly be that lame.  I really, really do.  In a perfect world, this would be the case (and my idea for a Matlock/Robocop crossover movie would finally get the green light).  Alas, this is not a perfect world.  In fact, just between you and me, it kinda sucks.  We all have to wake up every morning (or in Travis’ case, every afternoon) and face ridiculous gas prices, traffic, high fructose corn syrup, Hillary Clinton, and this douchenozzle shown here to your left, who was born Owen Ashworth.  As his idiotic stage name suggests, he likes to fire up his Casio keyboard and play sad, whiny little poor-me songs about how nobody wanted to ride bikes with him when he was eight years old, or some such horseshit.  I mean, just look at him.  He makes Conor Oberst look like Henry Rollins.  And, wouldn’t you know it, there seem to be people out there who actually eat this shit up, because this butthead is actually playing at the Echo on Friday.  Yeah, that’s what I want to do on a Friday night.  To be quite honest, I’d rather save my $8 by staying at home and trying to figure out what they’re saying on the Korean channel.  At least then I wouldn’t be subjected to tripe like “Toby Take A Bow.”  Oh look here’s a music video for “Toby Take A Bow.”  Great.

Wow, what a shitty video.  I actually want to get Rickrolled right now just to get the taste out of my mouth.  Or eyes.  Or ears.  Whatever, fuck you.  If you actually enjoyed it, and you have eight bucks burning a hole in your pocket, then by all means go see this train wreck.  I’ll be waiting for you out in the parking lot with a baseball bat after the show.  In fact, I’m 100% certain that there are some Buddyhead readers who already listen to this jackass on a regular basis.  The really fucked up thing is that this dude probably even has some groupies by now.  Can you imagine that?  “Oh, Owen, you’re so sensitive and misunderstood!  And your Casio is so retro and ironic!  You can scatter your pearls on me anytime!”  You know he’s milking that shit for all it’s worth.

In case you’re still on the fence, here’s a video of him performing live, to give you a clearer idea of how incredible it is that he can get away with charging people to come to his shows.  Check this out.

I think I need to go listen to some Motörhead for a few hours.  Bye.

So I’ve been out of town for a while and haven’t had time to update this page… Hey man, it’s hard to want to be on a computer in Hawaii. BUT… I have some new stuff to post up here and I’m gonna get on that real soon… in the meantime check out this clip from that soap opera "All My Children" where they talk about Mike Patton, Tomahawk and Guns N’ Roses. Can you say POSERS?  I’d love to know which one of their writers included these rock references…

The Cows were by far one of the best bands of the AmRep noise-rock era. Not only were the lyrics of the vocalist with serial killer good looks, Shannon Selberg bitingly direct and wonderfully satirical, but the band’s distorted ruckus made clever use of folk and blues idioms in creating songs that were more "musical" than typical punk rock, but at the same time more utterly primal and intense. After the Minneapolis quartet broke up in 1998, bassist Kevin Rutmanis joined the Melvins and Selberg bailed out of the stifling midwest, bringing his blow-up sex doll mask and battered bugle to NYC. A mere year later, I was living in New York and heard wind of a new band called the Heroine Sheiks — a play on words about the then current (and ever ongoing) heroin chic of that city (which not-so-ironically brought about the death of Selberg’s then girlfriend) — featuring Selberg and founding Swans guitarist Norman Westberg. Yes, my reaction was the same as yours: What? A band with two "bergs" in it, and neither of them are Jewish? … I had to investigate.

    The Heroine Sheiks’ Y2K debut album Rape On the Installment Plan on  Reptilian Records hit the scene like a stock market crash (i.e. no one was buying.) Nonetheless, Selberg’s smarmy word-play and clever story-telling was perfectly suited to Westberg’s modal-tuned guitar noise and the rest of the band’s murky keyboards, bass and drums. Songs like "Let’s Fight", "Effity Eff" (with the sing-along woe-is-we of “Fuckity, fuckity, fuckity, fuck!”) and the anti-racist "OK-K-K" ("I’d like to bend you over and educate you/ Is that O-K-K-K?") The songs often tend toward a sort of funk-fused Beefheart that’s perfectly suited to Selberg’s newfound actual near-crooning voice. The second Heroine Sheiks album, Siamese Pipe followed with the same black humor on “Grab the Wheel” ; our protagonist catches his girlfriend cheating on him: “Again, I’m peeking in my room/ But I can’t leave, I love her still/ I’m wondering which one of us I’m supposed to kill/ Grab the wheel, somebody…” Live, Selberg delivers his lyrics with theatrical grace and gesticulations — and I was duly surprised to see far more girls at their shows than guys (no matter how surprising it was to see so many good-looking ladies going ga-ga over the lead singer.) Since then, the lineup has been entirely revamped for the latest Reptilian release Out of Aferica, the title of which is, I assume, a satire of the Xian-zealot "new science" that’s recently tied up our tax dollars by defending the decision to teach evolution in schools instead of giving "equal time" to every form of pseudo-science (hello, "intelligent design") that Jesusland America deems an acceptable smokescreen over fundamentalist rhetoric. The new five-piece lineup sounds similar to the original band, but the instruments seem to function together more, rather than constantly and confusingly at odds. Yes, it’s a much mellower sound than the Cows, but it’s also one that’s more suited to Selberg’s creepy charisma and wicked black humor. Check out the album’s lead single and hot TRL Live download "Cock Asia" — which, if I must spell it out for you, is a play on the word "caucasian." The Cows classic "Hitting the Wall" is from their amazing third album Peacetika on Amphetamine Reptile. Pay particular attention to the words on the Heroine Sheiks songs "OK-K-K" and "Effity Eff" — they’re not earth-shattering, but they’re definitely funny and evocative.

The Heroine Sheiks are touring the U.S. this fall in support of their new album. Go see them:
10/16  Cleveland, OH — Grog Shop
10/18 Detroit, MI — Lager House
10/19 Lansing, MI — Macs
10/20 Madison, WI — Club Inferno
10/21 Minneapolis — 7th St. Entry
10/25 Seattle — Funhouse
10/26 Portland — Sabalas Mt Tabor
10/30 San Francisco  — Hemlock
10/31 Los Angeles  — King King
11/1 Mesa, AZ — Hollywood Alley
11/2 Albuquerque, NM — Atomic Cantina
11/3 Denver,CO — Larimer Lounge
11/5 San Antonio,TX — Sanctuary
11/6 Austin, TX — Emo’s
11/7 New Orleans — One Eyed Jacks (this is ON)
11/10 Charleston/Mt. Pleasant, SC — The Village Tavern
11/11 Arlington, VA — IOTA
11/13 Baltimore, MD — Mojo Room

(Download - "Cock Asia")

(Download - "Hitting The Wall")

(Download - "Okkk?")

(Download - "Effity Eff")

It’s time to blow the lid off of the conspiracy: JACK WHITE IS MICHAEL JACKSON!

The evidence:

* Michael is commonly known in tabloids as "Jacko"; John Gillis is commonly known as Jack White.

* Jack sings in a high-pitched emotive tenor; Jacko sings in a high-pitched emotive tenor.

* Michael has been slowly bleaching his skin white; Jack White is white…and has long attempted to sing like an old black man.

* The new White Stripes album is called Get Behind Me Satan, Jacko would probably tell Satan the same thing, if he were a naked young boy.

* Michael attempted to buy the bones of the Elephant Man for millions of dollars; the previous White Stripes album was called Elephant and the duo signed to V2 for millions of dollars.

* Jacko’s trademark clothing colors are a red shirt and black pants; Jack’s trademark clothing colors are a red shirt and black pants.

* On the cover of Elephant, Jack — looking ghostly pale and heavily made-up — is wearing an ornate red cowboy shirt and black pants…strangely reminiscent of one of Elvis Presley’s outfits, whose daughter Lisa Marie Presley married and divorced Jacko. Michael Jackson is also known to wear ornate red and black outfits as well as too much makeup and once married Lisa Marie Presley, whom he probably thought was his younger sister. Jack still pretends that his ex-wife Meg White is his younger sister.

* Jacko got his start singing in the Jackson 5 a Motown (Detroit) act; Jack got his start playing in the Go, a Detroit band who wanted to be the MC5.

* Jacko is fascinated with little boys and childhood innocence; Jack is fascinated with childhood innocence.

* Jacko dangled his baby over the balcony of a hotel; Jack sang "The Big Three Killed My Baby"…Jack’s own record label is called Third Man. Did he, then, kill his baby?

Songs about sex, drugs, alcohol, the FBI… what more do you need?  This album is great to drive around in your ’73 faded green Chevy Nova to and yell “Slayer” at unexpected pedestrians.  When I was sixteen this was always the best thing I could come up with to stay entertained.  And now that I am 25 I still sounds like a plan.

So how could you go wrong with four Texans on an insane amount of drugs making a record with John Paul Jones (Led Zeppelin)?  The Butthole Surfers – Independent Worm Saloon is a bad trip from start to finish.  This album is THICK with heavy fuzzed out psychedelic skate riffs. YEAH!

Get on LimeWire and check out the video for "Who Was In My Room Last Night?", it pretty much sums them all up.  Don’t miss the cameo by the star of The Big Lebowski… FLEA in the flesh (literally).

So remember kids… drop some acid, throw this disc on full blast and enjoy.

(Download - "Who Was In My Room Last Night?")