Friday Random Ten: Sympathy for The Sheehans

Cindy Sheehan has leeft her camp near Bush's Brush Farm; Not forced out by the vile things said about her in recent weeks, but by family emergency. Her mother has had a stroke, and Ms. Sheehan went to the hospital.

How much grief does she have to endure?



so anyway, out of respect, I dedicate this FRT, and heck, the whole dang weekend, to her. And as an extra token, I'm gonna Audit.


1. The Figgs - Stood Up! One of the best live bands I've ever seen. Little bit of the Who, the Kinks, Elvis Costello, and maybe a bit of the Buzzcocks. Go see em and buy some music, damn it. They deserve to be wildly successful. 9/10, you only get to argue with it after you've seen them.

2. REM- Turn You Inside-Out. From the middle period; not commercial but popular. 6/10.

3. U2- Beautiful Day. They figured pop music out. But still pretty commercial, you wankers. 4/10 because they had integrity once.

4. Rush - Red Tide. ouch. Rush was the first concert I took my wife to when we were dating. But not cool, eh? Well, at least it's not Deep Purple. 3/10

5. Blue Oyster Cult - Heavy Metal- Black and Silver. Another of my favorites from pubescence. a failed attempt at mainstream cred on the 'Heavy Metal' soundtrack. Good feedback though. 3/10.

6. Robbie Fulks- South Richmond Girl. Robbie is a Chicago Bloodshot artist who is part of the Insurgent Country movement- country music like Nashville turned its back on. He flirted with mainstream success a few years back with Let's Kill Saturday Night (an excellent song and album) but the bleak character of many of the songs, as well as one titled “God Isn't Real” apparently soured the label. I saw him a couple of weekends ago at Sprecherfest. His bass player had equipment problems, so they started without him while he went to pickup a spare. Then the fest was rained out, so he finished his set solo, with just a guitar and some guest singers. And had a tremendous time. He performs like we're his best friends. 8/10.

7. Supertramp- Babaji. Jeez. How'd that get on there? Must have been downloading music drunk again. Nearly as uncool as Deep Purple. 1/10.

8. Oingo Boingo- Burn Me Up. Another great live band, very Loud. Danny Elfman's job before he started scoring every fricking movie you see. Never got mainstream success, but the shows were 2 1/2 hours of sweaty fun. 8/10.

9. Sally Timms and Jon Langford. Blue eyes Crying IN The Rain. Two of the Mekons, doing country music on the side. Timms has one of the sweetest voices you'll ever hear, especially in a punk band. And she plays a shruti box. solid 10/10.

10. The Mekons- Sympathy for the Mekons. Score! here's my weekly Mekes. From the epochal Honky Tonkin' album, a little slab of bouncy punky country, 'Woo! Woo!' 's and all. “History/ has a stutter/ It says/ w-w-w-w-watch out!” Another topper. 10/10.

11. Robyn Hitchcock- The Speed Of Things. sweet little bit of incomprehensible folk-rock from one of the greatest latter-day practitioners of psychedelic rock. 7/10.

12. The Field Mice - September's Not So Far Away. Tragically short lived alt-pop band from England; reminiscent of the Smiths in some ways. They were starting to see some success when intramural relationships crashed the band. 10/10.

Not a bad set, all told. Let's see how much the Supertramp hurt us: 6.6.





Best thoughts to Cindy Sheehan and family.