Heartbroken

I love AT&T. After all, they are the network behind my favorite purchase of 2007, my iPhone. (Now cab rides are wasted away online just like my evenings. Whoa, too much honesty.) And I also love Ryan Adams. What I HATE is the two of them together. Ryan, why, oh why, did you lend your music to a freakin' commercial. With red cell phones and cartoon hearts! Uch. You think just because Wilco did it for VW, that makes it okay?

It doesn't make us love you more...

Robert Plant Likes the Knicks

Not sure how I missed this but Robert Plant was at Friday's Knicks game! And he was interviewed at center court by a hot chick who almost seemed like she knew what she what she was talking about. Impressive. And he mentions that damn band wrecker, Yoko Krauss again. Watch it:

Neil Diamond Is Coming to .... Glastonbury

It has been revealed that Neil Diamond will be playing a set on the final night of this year's Glastonbury Festival at Worthy Farms in Pilton in the UK. To be honest, I think Neil, the Jewish Elvis, would be a phenomenal act at Bonnaroo. He may not be the typical festival performer, but I imagine he would draw a large, receptive crowd in an afternoon slot and it would be a big boost to his image with a younger audience. He was out of place at the The Last Waltz, like he might seem at the 'Roo, but his singing was a highlight amongst the best of the best. Between a Rick Rubin produced album and a Glastonbury appearance, Neil's hipster stock is way up.

Source: NME

London Calling

From HardRockCalling.com:

We're delighted to announce headline artists for the concerts in Hyde Park on 28th and 29th June, 2008 - which are presented by Hard Rock Cafe.

The legendary Eric Clapton will headline Saturday 28th June with special guests Sheryl Crow and John Mayer, more acts to be announced shortly.

The Police are to headline on Sunday 29th June with special guests KT Tunstall and Starsailor, again with more acts to be added to the bill.

One From The Queue: The King of Kong

I'm probably a little bit late to jump on the Netflix bandwagon, but I finally got around to joining the Internet movie delivery service last weekend. I hardly ever watch movies at home, as I don't pay for any movie channels and I hardly have any non-music DVDs. But the concept of having access to such a deep selection that can be conveniently delivered to my front door was too good to pass up. At least until I get bored of the novelty.

As my first selection, I chose the newly released DVD about a man's quest to obtain the world's highest score in the vintage arcade game Donkey Kong. The movie is officially titled "King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters." It had a short run in theaters late last summer, and I was interested in seeing it then, but I never got myself to the theater. I was thrilled to find out on Sunday that it was being released a couple days later, also known as yesterday. So thanks to Netflix, I was able to receive it on opening day. I popped it in last night, and before I get into the movie, I will tell you that as soon as it ended I watched it again (with the audio commentary turned on).

The movie centers around an average Joe family man (Steve Wiebe) who has spent his entire life coming in second place. He can never seem to come out on top of anything. He also happens to have a stand-up Donkey Kong arcade game in his garage, which he started playing obsessively after being laid off from his engineering job at Boeing. He spent hours a day documenting the games patterns and learning how to rack up more and more points, all the while neglecting his wife and two children more than he should have. He learns of the Donkey Kong world record having been set in 1985 by Billy Mitchell, a man who in 1999 was declared the Video Game Player of the Century. Billy holds numerous top scores in classic arcade games, and was the first person to ever record a perfect game in Pac-Man, by clearing all 256 boards without losing a single man. Talk about too much time on your hands.

The documentary filmmakers did not set out intending to make a movie of Steve's quest to claim the Donkey Kong high score, but rather a general documentary on the gamers who have become obsessed with achieving world record scores, recognized by the officially renowned Twin Galaxies gaming board. Twin Galaxies was founded and is still run by a kindly older man who both trained with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (of Beatles fame) in transcendental meditation AND loves wearing a referee shirt. In following a few leads during their filming, one involving an 80-year old woman gunning for the Q-bert title, they soon realized that through 350 hours of footage, Steve's story and his quest to claim the title from Billy Mithchell was intriguing enough to be the primary plot line of the movie.

If you enjoyed spending time in arcades back in the 80s and 90s, would be entertained by watching grown men who look like they just walked out of 1983 (think Phish playing at UVM), and can get caught up in the battle of an underdog and outsider challenging a proven champion with a horrible hair cut, you will love this movie. And you will definitely want to watch it twice.

May Your Song Always Be Sung

We here at The Weight pride ourselves on our musical prowess and love sharing that with you. But I also think we share a little piece of our emotional lives as well as we need to. Its cathartic to write, and I know by reading someone like Lefsetz's blog of his own personal thoughts, it feels good sometimes to read what other have to say.

So as I've mentioned, I'm 29 and staring down the barrel of 30. I won't use the cliches of "I don't feel more than 22", but damn, its so relevant...I really don't feel older than 22! There I said it . With the passing of Heath Ledger at 28, its weighs heavy on me to know that the timeline of his life stops at that young age. One year younger than me. His life was half over at 14. Think about that.

Well, I found this list via John's Rambling Place blog of those celebrities that died too young. And all of them seemed so much older then their actual age truly was. So many of these shocked me beyond belief and I couldn't help but think of my own age:


Aaliyah – 22 years old


Kurt Cobain – 27 years old


James Dean – 24 years old


Jimi Hendrix – 27 years old


Shannon Hoon – 28 years old


Janis Joplin – 27 years old


Jim Morrison – 27 years old


River Phoenix – 23 years old


Tupac Shakur – 25 years old


Biggie Smalls – 24 years old


I was probably between 12 and 21 when a good bit of this happened and had no true perspective as to how truly young these folks were. Tupac was just 25? Biggie 24?!? Fuck. All I can say is remember Warren Zevon's words: "Enjoy Every Sandwich".

Listen: Forever Young, the Dylan version (Sorry Rod Stewart faithful) by Eddie Vedder

May your heart always be joyful,
May your song always be sung,
May you stay forever young...
B.D.

Whatever happened to Baby Jane?

I was born in the wrong generation. If you've seen the movie Dazed and Confused or if you've ever watched That 70's Show, that was my calling. As Carroll O'Connor and Jean Stapleton famously sang, "those were the days." I, on the other hand, was a teenager in the 90's. It wasn't bad enough that my pre-teen days in the 80's were plagued with Billy Ocean and Boy George in heavy rotation. And need I remind you of the great artists who failed miserably in the 80's and 90's for hopelessly trying to embrace the synth and blasphemous electronic percussion -- Bob Dylan and Pete Townshend to name a few. Others, like Peter Gabriel and Don Henley, found their way permanently into our parents' cd collections. But at least the 80's had personality -- rat tails, cocaine, neon clothing and Jheri curls. The 90's consisted of a lost generation recovering from the rebellion and excesses of the Reagan years. We weren't sure if we liked C+C Music Factory or Metallica, Yo! Mtv Raps or Headbanger's Ball, Soundgarden or Savage Garden. It was a hodgepodge of randomness. We truly were the generation of "teen angst" -- and for good reason.

However, as much as I hate to admit it, I occasionally peruse the 90's channel on Music Choice -- for nostalgic purposes, of course. Anyway, this weekend a song came on I hadn't heard since oh, 8th grade? The song was "Don't Want To Fall In Love" by Jane Child. Damn catchy song. You remember her -- crazy spiked hair, nose ring attached to her earring. Coming back now? I distinctly remember an old friend from junior high who was particularly obsessed with her -- so much so, that he decided to grace her portrait on his Bar Mitzvah t-shirt! Yet, all that time, I knew nothing of this mysterious woman (I'm certain I was too consumed with the Use Your Illusion albums at the time, for good reason).

Nonetheless, some 18 years later, and thanks to what else, cable tv and the internet, I learned a little something about the now 40-year old Ms. Child: In her early years, then known as Jane Hyslop, she was taught violin by her parents who were classically-trained musicians. At fifteen, she dropped out of Canada's prestigious Royal Conservatory of Music to join a rock band and move to the States. She was signed for her array of talents, specifically her ability to songwrite and produce, which I gather was quite rare amongst the 90's pop scene (she was probably similar to an Alicia Keys-type for her time). Unfortunately for her, she only had one major hit and after her brief time in the spotlight, Child moved into the world of production and movie soundtracks. Notably, her only real hit, "Don't Want To Fall In Love," was held out of the #1 spot on Billboard's Hot 100 only by Sinead O'Connor's "Nothing Compares 2 U."

So there you have it -- I grew up with Jane Child and my mom grew up with Pink Floyd. Go figure...

Sources: Wikipedia and The Canadian Pop Encyclopedia

You Say It's Our Birthday!

What a long strange year it's been....

It feels like just yesterday...

Webster's dictionary defines "blog" as...

We didn't think anyone would ever read this thing....

This blog started as a way of sharing all things music with a couple friends. It allowed us to provide news, links, and videos for each other in a more fun and creative way than IMs and email. After a post about the reunion of Crowded House, during that first week, a small number of Google Search hits started rolling in. Through that, we quickly realized that some other people could actually be reading what we were writing. And then on February 8th everything changed. On the evening before, we attended an on-stage interview of Phish guitarist Trey Anastasio by rock critic/writer Anthony DeCurtis. Before falling asleep that night, I wrote a quick recap of what transpired at the 92nd Street Y on the Upper West Side. And I awoke to check our blog statistics, finding a flood of hits like we never imagined possible. I was immediately bouncing around the room (forgive me...sometimes you just have to go with what pops into your head first). As it turned out the 92nd St Y's own blog had posted a link to The Weight, sharing my review with anyone who stopped by their site. And quite a few people wanted to know what Trey had to say about his recent arrest and the future of Phish. And the rest, as they say, is [P]history. We were hooked.

The next highlight for us came three months later when we decided to publish a live song-by-song setlist from inside an intimate Phil Lesh and Friends show at SOBs in New York City. With one of the WeightStaff embedded inside the show, and myself behind the keyboard, we posted each song as it happened to both our site and PhilZone. I never thought that waiting by my cell phone for sporadic text messages over three hours could be so exhausting. All the effort paid off though and it resulted in what's been the highest one day volume of traffic to this site over the course of this first year.

I've obsessively tracked our traffic, initially getting excited over first time visits from new states and new countries and later keeping an eye on our most read content and tracing back to random links from other sites to us (I'm looking at you 'republicans.independent2008.net'.) We've reached all 50 States (thank you 2 visitors from Sioux Falls, SD) and 98 countries (we're HUGE in Slovakia!). We've had over 10,000 unique visitors, some of whom actually came back more than once! We've been amazed at how many people were interested in the Verve reunion and Richard Manuel and how few have been interested in Hair Band Trivia and Brooks and Dunn.

It's been a great deal of fun keeping this site going with my friends. And we look forward to continuing to provide you a glimpse into what keeps us so interested in music. As Robbie Robertson said, "It's a goddamn impossible way of life," but we will continue to keep on doing what we're doing and hopefully we can bring a few companions on this ride.

::wipes away single tear::


A few thanks:

The WeightStaff, official first commenter and self-confessed heroin addict/Brit/blogger Gledwood, official first fan Partyin' Peeps, staff photographer Charles Ton, Hits From The Blog, Hidden Track / Scotty B, 92nd St Y, Bob Lefsetz, The Band, Phish, Wikipedia, my Dad, and Eggo waffles.

I will leave you tonight with the final cover in the first annual Birthday Countdown. It is The Weight performed by Smith.

Listen here: Smith - The Weight

Page wants Led Zeppelin World Tour...After September

It appears as though Allison Krauss is temporarily in Yoko territory as it seems her tour with Robert Plant is keeping Led Zeppelin from going on the road until their joint tour is over around September. Does this mean no Led Zep at Bonnaroo? Or will they just show up as the surprise guests at SuperJam!?!?

Led Zeppelin Guitarist Wants World Tour

Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page said Monday he was ready to take the iconic band on a world tour after burning up the stage at last month's reunion concert in London. But it probably won't be before September.

Page, who was in Japan to promote the new Zeppelin release, "Mothership," said the two-hour-plus concert was proof that Led Zeppelin can still perform at its best.

He said the band, which formed in 1968, was ready musically to get back together and take it out on a wider run, but it was not clear when it would go on tour as the singer had other plans.

"Robert Plant has a parallel project and he is busy with that until September," Page said.

Source: Associated Press

It was [one] year ago today...

January 28th. Henry the VIII dies. Louis Brandeis is appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court. Alan Alda and Nick Carter are born -- yes, the Nick Carter. As notable as these events may be, one other monumental happening occurred on this date as well. Unless you've overlooked the subject headings of our posts for the last several weeks or this is your first visit here, then you guessed correctly. Today commemorates the one-year anniversary of an "all-purpose" music blog called, The Weight.

Let me take you back a year into time. It was a cold weekend evening, last January 28, 2007. Two (and one day later, three) guys in a small Manhattan studio apartment decided it would be "cool" to share their tastes in music and pop culture with their friends [each other] and who knows, maybe some random blog-surfer in Australia. So, thanks to a pair of two unknown websites called YouTube and Google, the project was underway. Finally, after 12 minutes of toying with the Blogger software, learning how to "embed" a video clip, and spending a paltry $36.00 for the domain name, The Weight was born. And I officially became a "blogger." [at the time, I was reminded of the famous line from the 1932 classic Freaks: "we accept you, one of us! Gooble Gobble!" A Blogger?? There goes my social life...] But today, with over several thousand hits from all over the world (yes, even Australia), I'm damn proud to say that The Weight is alive and kicking, and I'm especially glad that we could assist those guys at YouTube and Google in becoming multi-billion dollar enterprises. It's all about teamwork. Nor can we leave out our friends at Hidden Track and Hits from The Blog for their constant shout-outs and support.

That's not to say there weren't tough times. Take for example the 2-month hiatus that occurred back in late summer. Although this had more to do with international travel than it did with a lack of material [laziness], we nonetheless kept truckin' and were able to revive the site back to old form. All I can say is, if one more person in the world is more enlightened regarding the fate of 90's jambands, the influence of Richard Ashcroft, the intricacies of Led Zeppelin's songwriting or the whereabouts of Jason Hervey, then we've done our job.

So, although I'm certain there will be more posts today from the other members of the Weightstaff, in the meantime, I'll leave you with a clip. Despite the fact that it has nothing to do with birthdays or anniversaries, it is nevertheless meaningful to me and is the fundamental reason why this blog exists -- to share good music with those who know good music, or at least, those who wanna start learning...

DS, Weightstaff