You forget about the Cailfornia Institute for Men, in which I once dropped off a television picture tube on a delivery route. Although having a prison in a city doesn't really make it badass.

Just Because by Lloyd Price is the perfect example. For Brown, Please Please Please and I Love you yes I do, and prisoner of love, and its a man's man's man's world.

Agree with you there too. And, weirdly enough, Phil Ochs is one of my favorite musicians of the '60s, and he pretty much violates all my rules. It's good to keep an open mind. To paraphrase Kurt Vonnegut, music should not crawl up its own ass.

I will posit that, overall, people imitating Bob Dylan caused more long-term damage to rock music. The Beatles could write songs, with verses and a bridge. You learned good songwriting craft by listening to them. Whereas, only Dylan can really write 10-minute songs about boxers accused of murder and make them work. It…

I love Louis Armstrong but you, my friend, have your feet firmly planted in midair. A lot of people say that Buddy Bolden was more influential than Armstrong, Ken Burns notwithstanding. I'd say that, hell yeah, Brown has WAY MORE LONG-LASTING INFLUENCE on popular music. How many people sound like Dylan now? How many…

Which was a cleaned-up version of Junker's blues: They call me, they call me a junker, cause I'm loaded all the time… I could get up and get down with Bad Man Brown all day though. My favorite song is probably Cold Sweat, the extended version. The first single I heard was Lickin Stick on King Records - part 1 on one…

No kidding, looking back at myself as a 21-year old I think they should raise the drinking age to 45. Rather than jealous, I think this would be my No Exit scenario, to be with these two.

As David Letterman said about Madonna: I have a theory - she loves to shock us.

My favorite alcoholism line in all of media was from a Barney Miller ep, where they bring in a homeless guy with a B and E beef ("…so I tried the door. It was open." "Church?" "Liquor store."). His well-dressed, respectable mentor from AA meets him at the precinct. The dialogue between them goes like this:

That's an actual thing
…or so I have heard. From a friend.

In California at least, smoking was allowed only in the lobby because of fire laws. This has been true since at least the '30s. Fire was a big worry in the 1900s. Which explained the big curtain that said ASBESTOS on many theatre stages - a fire backstage wouldn't go into the auditorium. Even in those days, that…

No, it just makes it hard to follow the plot.

Branded: Even better theme song. "And they say he ran away". The start of the show stuck with me for many years - the ripping off of the insignia while standing at attention, then breaking the sword and throwing it in the dirt of the fort. Really powerful. I thank the Internet for verifying that I actually saw this -…

Wasn't much of a writer? Johnny Cash wrote Big River, Folsom Prison Blues, and Don't Take your Guns to Town. One of my favorites So Doggone Lonesome. He was a great interpreter of other people's stuff too.

Have we heard from comedian Larry Miller lately? Connect the dots, sheeple!

A Reliant with a slant six was very, very dependable. Edit: Sorry I was thinking about Plymouth Valiants, which were the car de jour for my poor friends back in the day - super cheap, easy to get parts, pretty economical with the six, reliable with the three on the tree manual. The K cars, like the Reliant, were…

Still, you've gotta have a serious pair (I mean this for female surgeons too) to go into somebody's body and do the stuff they need to do. I've dealt with orthopedic surgeons before, and the stuff they do is downright medieval, including the use of saws and drills. When I worked at a gas station there was a show on at…

Turkish Thriller is way better. Gosh my old calculator ain't got no boat!

Just had to give a like to this - introducing somebody to the Meters is like recommending a good restaurant, love, or any other naturally good thing. They were also the backing band for the Wild Tchoupitoulas, one of the best albums ever made. George Porter Jr. is still touring, he's playing in Brooklyn in a couple of…

Gilbert Gottfried would be perfect for this one.