Man-Sports Talk

Tim Thomas is to goal tending and ass kicking what William Shakespeare was to writing plays and making new words: Kinda Good.

In other news, if you are a hockey fan in Philly I have terrible news for you: just because you'd like something to be called a penalty, doesn't mean that it actually was a penalty. The more you scream the less you matter. Seriously, that's basic calculus. Or whatever.

Songs to Blow Your Mind Pt. 2

For the second installment of STBYM I'm going to backtrack a bit and feature a song I was quite taken with about a month ago. I don't listen to it as much now but I play it by myself a great deal because it's pretty simple to play. The song is 'Our Life Is Not A Movie or Maybe' by the band Okkervil River. Lead singer and lyricist Will Sheff is a phenomenal storyteller and this song is an excellent example of his skills on display.



Okkervil River - Our Life Is Not A Movie or Maybe

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Okkervil River

A Bit of Video

I am frequently provided with material for this blog by Punknews.org. I have a feed of all their updates in my blog reader and mostly I look for interesting videos and covers and the occasional news that a band I like has broken up. Sometimes I get Thorns of Life news (one of the few current bands who's happenings I care to actually follow). Because it's just a news site, I don't have that much else to say about it, so I figured that instead I would post a few videos I recently found while traversing the site.

The first video is for a song called We Are Wild Stallions by the band The Riot Before. I was kinda suprised to find that I actually had a couple of songs by this band (including this one). I think I got them off a comp for The Fest. I hadn't given them a lot of thought until I watched this video, but wow. This is a good video for a really solid song. No frills, straight-ahead, Richmond VA, punk rock.


The Riot Before - "We Are Wild Stallions!" from Dave O'Dell on Vimeo.

The second video is for the British hardcore band Gallows. I've always kinda liked these guys from the screaming in a British accent to the diminutive, heavily tattooed lead singer. I guess this song is off their new album, it's called The Vulture (Part II) and I should warn you, the video is a tad graphic in terms of violence and gore. But if you can stand it, I think it's a great song. Compared to their first album, it strikes me as a little bit heavier or at least it hints at more of a Converge-esque edge (especially the intro part) and the breakdown kicks somethin' fierce. (NOTE even more than the gore I apologize for the stupid ad I'm sure Mtv will put at the beginning of this video. I looked everywhere for another version but to no Avail. (Get it? Avail? The Riot Before's from VA? ah nevermind)).

Gallows - Vulture (Dirty Version)

The Riot Before - We Are Wild Stallions

Gallows - In the Belly of a Shark (I don't have a copy of the new album and this is one of the songs off the first album I liked)

Financial Support Goes Here

The Riot Before
Gallows

A Little (Recent) History

This week marks the 4 year anniversary of The Decemberists' decision to bypass the Mtv/Vh1 apparatus and release the video for their single '16 Military Wives' via BitTorrent. The video is downloaded almost 2,000 times in the first week. I should note that it was Musician's Friend's newsletter that brought this factoid to my attention.



The Decemberists - 16 Military Wives

Financial Support Goes Here

KillRockStars

A Taste of My Blog Reader

I've already told you about one of the podcasts I listen to so in the interest of equal time, it is now time for me to promote/recommend/discuss one of the sites I subscribe to via my blog reader. I must confess however, I'm going to cheat a little on this one because I'm not really going to be talking about a blog. Instead I figured the first link I should take from my blog reader should be for Questionable Content. This 'indie web comic' by Jeph Jacques (who I swear to god I saw at a Weakerthans show once) is the only web comic that has held my interest enough for me to keep up with it fairly religiously. NN2S doesn't count because Mitch never updates it (Mitch if you're reading this that was in no way a shot at you, you just keep being awesome at your own pace dude, I understand). But yeah, QC is one of those comics about 20-somethings that makes me think maybe having my life suck as a 20-something won't suck that much, dead end jobs and weekend bands here I come!!!

Anyhoo, try as I might I could find nothing in my music library that could be linked to QC in anyway (searches for "web" and "comic/cartoon" got me weirdness and nothing respectively). Instead I am going to function under the assumption that I did in fact see our illustrious cartoonist at a Weakerthans show and post a Weakerthans song that I've been listening to a lot lately. You should know, dear reader, that I gave a lot of thought to posting 'Anchorless' but to be honest I like the Propagandhi version better (-gasp- I know!!!!).

The Weakerthans - One Great City!

Financial Support Goes Here

The Weakerthans

Some movies and the end of an era

Greg over at Confounded Fret Buzz has a penchant for writing the occasional Boston Red Sox post, so I thought I'd sneak one in before him about this. Curt Schilling, blogger, conservative wind-bag and post-season pitcher extraordinaire has decided to hang up the old cleats once and for all. Though, given his admiration for Roger Clemens, it could be argued that we have another 3 or 4 partial seasons of Schil to look forward to. I don't actually think that will happen because Curt a. loves his own reputation too much to tarnish it, and b. won't do the steroids and human growth hormone required to make such a comeback. We Boston fans will always have the bloody sock to remember him by and Phillies and D-Backs fans will always have memories of him when he was young and good. Orioles fans will always be able to say "We had Curt Schilling? When was this?" Well actually if the Orioles had fans, then that's what they would say. But they don't so they stay quiet (Yeah I said it, come get some).

Anyhoo... I had a marathon weekend of watching movies. I watched Run, Fat Boy, Run with Simon Pegg; Room Service with The Marx Brothers and all but the last 12 minutes of The Great Escape starring none other but Steve McQueen. Let me tell you, The Great Escape is one long-ass movie, weighing in at a whopping 172 minutes (that's 8 minutes short of 3 hours for those of you dodgy on the whole math thing). Then, with less than 15 minutes to go in the movie, everything over but the crying, the dvd freezes and refuses to play any more. I try everything I can but to no avail. So now I have to wait like 3 days to see the last 12 minutes of this stupid movie. Other than that it was really good movie. Steve is kind of the typical American surrounded by Brits. He's a baseball loving cowboy type who doesn't want to plan ahead, he's just working on a wing an a prayer. Charles Bronson plays an RAF officer who's thick Polish accent was never fully explained to me (a quick wikipedia scan tells me he defected).

The other two movies were pretty much exactly what I would have expected, great comedic actors being brought down a little bit by their circumstances. In Run,Fat Boy, Run Simon Pegg and Dylan Moran are held back a bit by the more bankable romantic comedy genre and, I like to think, by having that ass-clown David Schwimmer directing. Room Service is kinda on the low end in terms of Marx Brother's movies, probably because it wasn't written for them. Also I thought that they didn't really get a whole lot of use out of Lucille Ball. Her character could have easily been played by anyone else and I also missed Margaret Dumont the usual female lead in Marx Brothers films.

I leave you now with a song for each news item:

Curt - Neil Diamond - Sweet Caroline
Great Escape - Underoath - Some Will Seek Forgiveness, Others Escape
Run, Fat Boy, Run - The Falcon - When I Give the Signal, Run!
Room Service - Death Cab For Cutie - Brothers on a Hotel Bed

Financial Support Goes Here
Neil Diamond
Underoath
The Falcon
Death Cab For Cutie

A little tidbit

Musician's Friend's 'Week in Review' article reports that this week in 2007
"Elsrock, an outdoor heavy-metal rock festival, is given conditional approval to put on its show outside the town of Rijssen, located in the Netherlands’ Bible Belt … the proviso is that there can be no cursing or blasphemy … the 2006 version of the festival had outraged residents … in explaining why the permit was granted, Mayor Bort Koelewijn cites 'the stated readiness of the organizers to make sure that no blasphemous words are used, and that the honor of God's name is not besmirched.'"
First of all, the Netherlands has a 'Bible Belt?' When did this happen and how do they have room? Second, I'm very impressed that the organizers of this event were able to agree to this with a straight face. "Yeah sure, no one playing our Metal Festival will use foul language and blaspheme" that's going to happen. And yes, this post was just an excuse to post some metal.

Slayer - South of Heaven

Pantera - Fucking Hostile

Gwar - Sexicutioner

Blades Jackalfiend - Jerk Friends

Amon Amarth - Vahalla Awaits Me

Financial Support Goes Here
Slayer
Pantera
Gwar
Blades Jackalfiend
Amon Amarth

Songs to Blow Your Mind Pt. 1

Now that I'm posting mp3s here at The Chesterfield King, I think I'm going to start a little feature which I will call "Songs to Blow Your Mind" (You'd figured that out already hadn't you?). Every so often I will get really into a song for a while and I listen to it a bunch, look up the lyrics, try to play it, whole deal. Now, in addition to all that nonsense, I will post the song of my fancy here, often along with a video. I'm not going to justify it though. So suck it.

The inaugural song to blow your mind is I'll Make You Mine by Rainer Maria (possibly the coolest band to be named after a German poet-philosopher narrowly edging out The Schlegels).

Rainer Maria - I'll Make You Mine

Financial support goes here.

Hair = Short

If this were a decent mp3 blog, I would post that Pavement song about cutting my hair. But it's not, so I won't. As you've probably guessed by now, I cut all my hair off as part of a crazy weekend of traveling about the Commonwealth. I also grew a pretty bitchin' mustache in case I decide to begin a career in Highway Patrolling (Cue Bruce Springsteen mp3 link). I should probably clarify that I didn't grow the mustache this weekend, I just shaved off the rest of my facial hair leaving said mustache. I should also note that this mustaching was originally the idea of my guitar playing counterpart Greg (blog link go here). I mention him because I feel bad for busting his balls about it earlier and I wish to make recompense for this.

You may be thinking one of two things at this point. Either you are thinking "Recompense, huh? That's an impressively large word. This Keegan must be a man of masterful vocabulary" or you are thinking "Recompense, huh? I don't think he used that word correctly. This Keegan must be a pompous ass and a foul-mouthed one at that." Well, you could be right on both counts (he said, being both coy and self deprecating) but it leads me perfectly to the other two things I have to blog about (Told you I was going to work on my transitions).

First of these two, a little less than a month ago I said in a post that I was going to start talking about the podcasts I listen to and the blogs I read. Today feels like as good a time as any to start. The first podcast I'm going to discuss is a fairly simple one. It's the Miriam-Webster's Word of the Day podcast (now you see why 'recompense' was a lead in). You can find it here. It's pretty self explanatory. Every day, even weekends, they send me a word along with its pronunciation and definition as well as its etymology and an example of how to use it in a sentence. As an added bonus, the guy who does the podcast has a truly calming voice. If for some reason you have been horribly traumatized and need to be calmed, this is the podcast for you.

The final thing I wanted to talk about in conjunction to this podcast, is that I want to start posting new words I've learned on this blog. This may be opening myself up to some indie-snob-styled ridicule (You don't know that word? How do you not know that word?) but I feel like it could also be delightfully informative for all of us. That's all for now, but be on the look out for more blog/podcast recommendations as well some serious vocabulary boosting in the days and weeks to come!!

*Edit* I have, with a great deal of help and coaching from Greg, taken the big step toward being an actual mp3 blog. Which means that I will now be posting the two songs I said I would post earlier. Happy Happy.

Pavement - Cut Your Hair

Bruce Springsteen - Highway Patrolman

These songs can be bought and the artists who recorded them properly compensated financially here and here respectively

The Andes Mountains run from the Bolivian border to Tierra del Fuego

spread the word

Slow News Day

The World Baseball Classic can really eat up your day. In other news, I finally have a car here in Worcester, so I can start looking for a job like it's, well, my job. I feel like "In other news" is my most used phrase on this blog (note to self: work on transitions). Also, my miniature golf game is currently the best it has ever been. I say this with no official criteria for deciding that it's true. You'll just have to take my word for it. Both of you.

My girlfriend just told me "I love you" in Klingon

First off, in reference to the Neko Case debate from yesterday, I have just been informed by my remarkably hip and indie-informed parents that she is moving to Vermont, so I will be awarding her extra points for accessibility. Jenny Lewis however remains in the lead owing primarily to Michelle Nolan's dropping off my radar in a big way.

In other news, IGN (dunno what that stands for) have released a list of "10 Must Hear Hardcore Bands." I quite liked their list of top 10 punk drummers but I was less impressed by this one. I would have appreciated a little more warning that it was in fact a list of up-and-coming hardcore bands, because when I think 'must hear' I think, well, 'must hear' not 'could someday be 'must hear.'' But other than that I enjoyed it (enough even to repost it here!!!). Good to see some smaller hardcore bands getting solid exposure.

Finally, in more cringe-worthy news: A cd of anime actresses singing punk classics is being released and PunkNews hooked its readers up with a link to a preveiw of it and it is just as awful as you would assume. Somehow it's like Alvin and the Chipmunks after being force fed gallon after gallon of high fructose corn syrup (WHICH IS NOT FINE IN MODERATION GOD DAMNIT I HATE THOSE ADS). So for those of you who haven't ground a millimeter or so off your teeth today here's the preveiw:


Final note: I am without a positive or negative opinion regarding the statement which constitutes the title of this post.

A Quick One (While He's Away)

I can't tell if Neko Case is pretty or not and since she has a new album coming out that everyone and their brother is plugging, this is a quandary that comes up relatively frequently for me.

Also, how is it that the Adicts are playing two shows each in Sao Paulo and Bielefeld - Germany, but only three shows total in the U.S. and all of those are in California? I am irked. Cali punks getting all the old schoolie goodness.

And finally for everyone that the recession has a little down, the boys over at Gizmo Groove have the perfect pick-me-up for you.

Oh yes, that is gold and those are diamonds. Especially the 6.6 carat sucker in the middle. I can't wait for someone to leave this in a taxi.