Good take.  I'm waiting to find out that the only reason Drew stole all that coke was not to make money but to spite Theo Tonin, and then ended up handing it over to the Crowders and Arlo because he desperately needed to stay alive.

He's very good at his craft.  The majority of people around here are far less interested in (or even aware of) that than they are in what liking his comedy might possibly say about their own self-identity.  Therefore, if there's even a whiff of frattishness in his persona or his following, on to the Dane Cook pile he…

Yes, this certainly represents the actual opinions held by lots of actual people.

You Farrar uber-fans are kind of creepy.  And I say this as a guy who thought "Trace" crushed "A.M." and that Son Volt was going to far outsell and outlast Wilco (what did I know).

Tweedy has done his best work since moving mostly away from Americana and toward Brit rock, folk-pop, and all that other stuff that has been mixed into every Wilco album post-"Being There."  He does come off a little goofy in the context of Uncle Tupelo, but I think Wilco won the post-Tupelo war pretty decisively,…

First three Son Volt albums are good but only "Trace" is really essential; if you like "Trace" the other two are worthy follow-ups.  If you're like basically everybody else, you'll be kinda tired of Farrar after that and not need all the subsequent Son Volt and Farrar solo albums, which are by turns redundant or…

When Ponce looked in that mirror and saw that he hadn't changed, and that tear started to roll down his cheek? … I lost it.

I don't normally bother to do this, but, holy hell: "Somebody up there here’s Jesse’s shouts"

No, there's also luck in your own mistakes paying off in unexpected ways.  Of course at the highest skill levels of playing those guys practically don't make mistakes, so I suspect that this idea of the game being determined partly by luck comes from someone who is thinking more of the pool he's played himself in…

Speakerboxxx is far and away the better and more consistent record, and Love Below can't even claim to have better highlights seeing as "GhettoMusick," "Way You Move," and "Unhappy" are on SB.  3000 is probably the better MC to this day but since he chose to 1) not rap and 2) be ersatz Prince on that whole CD, it's…

D+

GODDAMMIT

So he has a bunch of tattoos now?

Ice Cube.  He's an audio blowtorch on those first few albums.

Whitney could actually sing her ass off, and exhibited great taste at times (e.g. Saving All My Love).  But it's certainly true that many of the singers she influenced, along with a few of her big showstopping numbers, are kind of intolerable.

Their debut is actually quite good proggish, jazzish rock, like a more pop-minded Mahavishnu Orchestra or Weather Report.  It's a really good listen.

Yeah, all that sex and killing and magic and beautiful people.  Boring ass shit.

You stopped being a fan of someone because he's a low-key member of a weirdo religion?  Maybe you missed the news, but "being born a Scientologist" is pretty far from "transforming into a neo-Nazi during a length prison stint for murdering a lesbian couple."

I think we're going to find out that he was never that much of a badass, just a guy doing something for his conscience or honor or something, and then subsequently doing what he had to do to stay alive.  Both seem very much in keeping with the Shelby we already know.

No, I really can't stand that expression.  Maybe if a movie starring Jim Belushi and Britney Spears as a May-December romantic pairing turns out to be great, the phrase will be applied perfectly.  Otherwise, it comes off as snotty, judgmental, and not that clever.