Belated Happy Birthday to This Site!

I didn't realize it until, like, yesterday, but as of September 13, 2003, the *XtaticmusiC* weblog is a year old... too cool...

"Happy Birthday to you,
Happy Birthday to you,
Happy Birthday dear weblog,
Happy Birthday to you..."

Listening to: keys click...

Sharemation... What's UP?!?!

I am trying to figure out what is up with one of the sites that hosts some of my graphics, Sharemation. It's kind of starting to piss me off, a little... I don't pay them... umm... well, nothing... to not be up for four days straight... Maybe they didn't pay their electric bill or something... nonetheless, get with it, fellas...

Listening to: still Switchfoot

Could Record Companies Actually Be Listening???

I was literally astounded the other day when I walked into a record store and saw TONS of brand new rock acts selling their CDs for $7.99-$8.99. I thought I had to be dreaming... but I wasn't. Hell, I only paid $12.99 for the new Pantera greatest hits CD... and it has an awesome DVD in it! I have been used to going into the stores and paying, like, almost twenty bucks for CDs with DVDs... What a breath of fresh air...
IF this is a continuing trend for record companies, it has come none too soon. It's about time that they realize that selling a CD for seventeen bucks is a bit ridiculous, if not downright ludicrous... I thank you, and my wallet thanks you...

Listening to: Switchfoot - "The Beautiful Letdown" (2003)

It's On the Way... I Swear...

Like the idiot I am, buying a couple new CDs recently has caused me to postpone the newest installment in the Flavors series just a little longer... because now I have to switch-up my choices and talk about other CDs and stuff... because that's just what I want to do, I guess... because, as I stated above, I'm an idiot...

To all two or three of you that are waiting to see what music I'm gonna talk about, I apologize. To the rest of you that don't really care... you know what you can do with your... um... non-caringness... :)

Listening to: David Bowie - "Reality" (2003)

Oktoberfest... in September...

Having an Oktoberfest celebration in late September is an interesting thought, don't you think?
I went to the one up in "Old Town" (the historic district a few blocks up the road), tonight... Had a good brat, some peaches & cream corn cooked in milk, and some really good micro-beer (I canna think of the name offhand, but it was tay-stee). Saw a pretty okay band called Newcomers Home, too. I mean, they were coming off to me as something sort of like a "Nickel Creek meets the Sundays with a pinch of Edie Brickell" kind of thing, and I like those acts (even though the mandolin player from Nickel Creek totally gets on my nerves in a huge way)... my only sorta complaint would have been when the violin player girl (oh, yeah... I guess even in newgrass-speak it's still a "fiddle") busted a string and the rest of the band tried to do some kind of improv instrumental thing while she fixed it... well, it was so nasty that I was tempted to go up to the stage and take the two mandolins from the guys playing them and beat them about the heads in an effort to get them to (please) never try something like that, again... but other than that, it was pretty good entertainment for the night...

Listening to: the hard drive spin

I'm Broken...

Got the Pantera greatest hits CD today... came with a DVD of all 12 of their videos (including those outrageously incredibly amped versions of "Domination" and "Primal Concrete Sledge" from the Moscow show). I haven't really cared much for them since Official Live (I thought it and Reinventing the Steel were pretty much shit), but there's some cool unreleased stuff on the CD and, throw in the DVD - Score...
NOTE: Rhino Records is now, officially (in my book, anyway), the "Kings of Compilations." Seems like every compilation I've bought in the past couple years is issued by Rhino...

Listening to: Pantera - "Far Beyond the Great Southern Cowboys Vulgar Hits!" (2003)

News Flash: Fred Durst to Form*New* Village People



Fred Durst with his longtime companion, Vanilla Ice...
(Description not necessary... is it?)
:)

Listening to: A Perfect Circle - "Thirteenth Step" (2003)

So, Why DOES Fred Durst Suck?

Yeah, I have devoted some space on here to this issue before, but it's usually relating to specific bit of "Durstdom" (or "Durstosterone," if you will) With the release of their new CD (I have NO fucking clue what the name is, nor do I care... all I saw was his fat-assed face on some puke-green cover with the word LimpBizkit, and I was onto looking for other stuff), I figured I would get a little more general about why, in fact, Fred Durst sucks the lint from underneath the nutsacks of my dead ancestors (yes, they still have their nutsacks, and they are now clean of all lint)...

1. He has absolutely NO talent - If you call listening to other bands and saying, "Yeah, you're cool... why don't you sign with me," talent, then... well, you're probably as ignorant as Fred... But other than that, zip... nothing... His music (and I use the term loosely) sucks (I've got two words for white guys that think they can rap or whatever - "Vanilla Ice" - the only guys to EVER do it worth a shit are the Beastie Boys, and they did it oh so well...). I used to refer to him as "marginally talented," but I can't even do that, anymore... because he has no idea of what music means, other than to encite angst, anger (and let's not forget rape) out of groups of adolescent testosterone-driven sheep that don't have a clue, either...

2. He thinks the ladies dig him... - the only reason Fred was so angry/masogynistic on his first album is because he had about ten different grudges against girls that wouldn't give him any play in high school... For about a week, Fred was popular with the ladies... and then they saw through his bullshit and sent him packing... Fred still doesn't get any play... because he's a loser...

3. He's a punk - He thinks he can throw his "A&R" muscle around and threaten bands that tell him to go fuck himself backwards... Fact is, if he didn't blow a dozen guys from Interscope in order to get his own little label (responsible for such shitty acts as Puddle of Mudd (NOTE: I dig Cold, and they're on his label... but that has nothing to do with Gay Fred)) in the first place, he's be nowhere in the business... Fact is, he was just lucky... Anyone could do what he does for Interscope... period...

4. There is noooooo "reason 4"

5. He wears a red Yankees hat... - this is pretty self-explanitory, but nonetheless... Only losers like Fred wear hats of baseball teams that are the wrong color... Yeah, I know, it was trendy for about a week, but come on...

6. "Rap-rock" went out in about 1998 - C'mon, Fred... BOOOOOOOOOORRRRING!!!!

7. He thinks he's cooler than he is - pretty cut and dry... He runs around spouting a bunch of shit that he thinks people should listen to... and he thinks that he speaks for some big chunk of the music biz... when in actuality, he only speaks for his own, piece of tick turd self... Gay Fred, no one cares what you think. I'm sorry that you think that they do.
(note: yes... I am aware that no one cares what I think, either... but I am not disillusioned enough to think that any of you do in the first place...)

8. ...did I mention that Gay Fred is a no-talent, loser-fuck, punk bitch???
c'mon, Tony, tell us what you really think
I really wouldn't care if he showed up on my doorstep tomorrow with his posse of bodyguards and they beat the shit out of me for talking all the shit I do about him... or if he (tried) to do it by himself... it would just prove my point further... Fred sucks... LimpBizkit sucks... and I can't wait for the opportunity to talk more shit about him...

I suppose I could go on with all the things that are wrong with the world with a complete douche like Fred raking in zillions of dollars putting out nickle & dime tripe that a ten year-old could write... but I am gonna give it a rest, for now... and hope that some LimpBizkit loser fan does a search on Google or Yahoo or wherever and comes to my page and reads all my Fred Durst articles and starts to cry...

Listening to: doubleDrive - "1000 Yard Stare" (1999)

Steve Free Link is Up

There's now a link to Steve Free's website... I sat in with Steve one late night at the old Murray Street Pub when Scott Shelpman needed a pee break or something and I played a song with him... Don't ask me what it was... I wanna say it was a Petty song, maybe. Something off Wildflowers or Full Moon Fever, I think. It was fun, yet brief...
Steve is pretty big in the European market, and a local favorite to many in the Portsmouth are.

On a personal note, I would like to thank Steve for the kind words he had to say about my dad:

"...Very, Very sorry to hear about your Dad. A fine musicain but more importantly a fine man. I wish you continued success and Peace. In The Spirit, Steve Free"

Listening to: "COPS" on the tv...

Almost

The newest Flavors column is almost done... Well, the problem is that I haven't done one in so long, I have SO many CDs to talk about... it's hard to narrow it down... but on the upside, I will have enough for about three or four more columns in the future without much effort...

In other news... The APC people made me a member of their "team..." They even sent me this graphic-thing...



See? I must be cool... or something... (more likely "or something")
They should've probably found someone different to try to match the fonts, though, because they didn't... :/

Listening to: the tv behind me...

Lookie, Lookie... BUTTONS!

Much thanks to Angel for taking the time to design these cool buttons to help promote the site... while she was sick, even...









NOTE: images on the right are the same as on the left, just on a different server... my main image server is down at the moment, and I am trying to compensate for that fact

So, feel free to take one that you like and use it on your site to link to me, here or here.

Listening to: Chris Whitley - "Rocket House" (2001)

*MORE* New Links Added

Added a link to Billy G's band, Phattsidedown. Billy's a cool cat... True blue... Here's to good things for him and his band in the future...

...and...

It doesn't really have anything to do straight up with music, per se, but she has a really cool eye... and her style is relevant to a lot of the music I like, so... so go look at Angel's Photos... 'cause I said so... and stuff...

She has a regular weblog, too...

Listening to: Switchblade Symphony - "The Three Calamities" (1999)

"I listen to the whisper of your sweet insanity..."

I have been trying to figure out which song on the new A Perfect Circle album is my favorite... and, as was the case with Mer de Noms, I am into the entire album from the get go... Of course the first single, "Weak and Powerless," grabbed my attention at the onset and stuff... but the whole album really is superb (like I expected any different)... Another good song is "A Stranger" - Maynard at his APC-emotional best... "The Package" is another great tune... Then, there's "Pet." "The Outsider" (that was originally intended to be the first single)... aw fuck... the whole thing...

Listening to: Ummm... If you have to ask...

Link Update

Added a link for Deadline 27.
Hopefully, there will be even more bands crawling out of the woodwork, soon.

I think I'm gonna start a Colorado bands link section here soon, as well... because I can, and stuff...

Listening to: Miles Davis - "Birth of the Cool" (1949)

This Was Cool

The guy at the music store gave this to me the day that Thirteenth Step came out... He said since he couldn't sell it to me a day early, he would make it up... He went to the back and came out with this cool backstage pass lookin' thing... It's thick plastic. The back is really cool looking, too (from the inside of the CD cover), but I can't get a good pic of it without getting my reflection caught in it... I will try again, soon....



Listening to: "Frank Zappa Meets the Mothers of Prevention" (1985)

The West Memphis Three

I was checking the links out on Kevin's Voidgazer page and I came across links to issues regarding the West Memphis Three... Having spent a great deal of my college life in the field of psychology and more specifically reasearching and studying forensic psychology, I had an occasion several years ago to see a documentary on HBO regarding the subject (and then a "part two" in 2000)... I believe they shared the title Paradise Lost.

For those of you out of the loop on the matter, about ten years ago, three little boys were murdered in West Memphis, Arkansas. Three then-teenagers went to prison for killing them... The case against the boys had all kinds of Satanic underpinnings and stuff like that thanks to the local press, who were publishing all kinds of outlandish gossip. The murder investigation was botched worse than the O.J. Simpson case, yet the boys were all convicted, based pretty much solely on a coerced "confession" from one of the boys...

It was pretty clear to me that (one of) the actual culprit(s) stood to be one of the boy's stepfather (who is basically a complete and utter jackass)... There were bitemarks on the victims (that did not match any of the three boys), and then for some reason after the murders, the stepfather had all his teeth pulled, and then provided people with not one, not two, but three different stories on why he did it (one involving a medication he was taking that supposedly made your teeth fall out - which it, in fact, does not)... The mother (and wife of the man I believe is more likely responsible) once told school officials that she thought her son (who had begun to develop several behavioral problems) might be being sexually abused (when the body was autopsied, there were several previous wounds "of a possible sexual nature" that had healed)... She later died under suspicious circumstances (the husband claimed she had taken her own life with pills after not being able to "mend her broken heart")... Anyone that has seen the documentaries on HBO and saw this fool's grandstanding for the cameras and stuff (at one point, carrying out some form of ceremonial "burning-thing" where he sets fire to some ground with lighter fluid and stomps on it and stupid shit like that) and still thought that he had no involvement would need to be evaluated... What it boiled down to was that he was all buddy-buddy with the lead investigator and the cop swept all kinds of potentially exhonorating evidence under the rug... and these three guys are all still in jail...

Basically, the only reason I brought it up was because the local press made such a huge deal about how the boys were big Metallica fans at the time of the killings and how rock music played some kind of part in the killings... While Metallica may suck HUGE amounts of floppy donkey dick since after "...and Justice for All," that's no reason to convict some kids who liked to wear black (just like Johnny Cash liked to wear black to portray himself like the old west "outlaws") and listen to music that wasn't all happy and fun to dance to...

I did my best to keep an open mind to the possibility that these kids could have been guilty (I mean, if I had sat around and listened to "The Unforgiven," "Enter Sandman," "Nothing Else Matters," and crap like that all the time, I might be tempted to kill someone, myself), but I couldn't get over how obvious it was that this was a railroding of mass proportions...

Anyhow, if you are interested in doing any research of your own on the matter, I'm sure there's tons of webpages floating around on a Google search to be seen...

Thanks to Gemini's Twin (a.k.a. the Kevinator) for reminding me about it, again... Hopefully, I will be able to find a recent update on the matter...

Listening to: my ears ring...

Links Update

I've added a couple new links...
First, a link to a metal band from Columbus... Voidgazer
Also, I added a link to Hire Media (formerly Heavy Metal Productions)

Listening to: Take a big, fat guess...

I also can't figure out how this stuff got put in the wrong chronological order... :/

Listening to: APC

"Clever Got Me This Far..."

From the moment I popped the new A Perfect Circle CD in the drive... euphoria.
yoo-FOR-ee-uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh...

I can't figure how come this bboard has stayed so quiet... It was one of the first ones that popped up when I searched for one (a couple years ago, I think)... I usually don't like to get involved in the boards on "official" websites, because they are so full of complete douchebag cocksmacks that they are totally no fun, whatsoever...

Listening to: A Perfect Circle - "Thirteenth Step" (2003)

Getting Geeked...

September 16th is finally upon us... I've personally been waiting for it for, oh, about three and a half years, now... and finally... A Perfect Circle has a new album on the shelves... I begged with the man at the record shop in the mall to sell me a copy a day early (I was standing at the counter staring at it)... but no dice... Oh, well. That's okay... the extra 24 hours will only make me drool a little more... Anxiousness only makes me happier (or is that "more likely to have heart problems?").
I'm sure there will be another post all about it coming up in the next day or so... y'think?

Listening to: Switchblade Symphony - "The Three Calamities" (1999)

R.I.P. Warren Zevon

I was never really an incredibly intense Warren Zevon fan in my life. Sure, I've heard "Werewolves of London" a bazillion times just like everyone else... In later years, I was also able to discover some more classic tunes like, "Poor, Poor, Pitiful Me," "Lawyers, Guns and Money," "Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner," "Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead," "Splendid Isolation," and "I Was in the House When the House Burned Down" (as well as some of the stuff he did with the guys from R.E.M. under the name Hindu Love Gods). I never rushed out to see him in concert, or anything like that. I probably should have, but I didn't... because I'm stupid like that, I guess...
No, I was never a great big Warren Zevon fan... but I can say this. I caught the David Letterman Show he did where he was the entire show last year (after he began treatment for mesothelioma) and more recently, I saw a biographical show outlining the making of his farewell album, The Wind, and I found out that he was a really, really, really cool guy. The world could probably stand to have a few more Warren Zevons in it. It definitely stands to learn a thing or two about itself from him...

"Enjoy every sandwich..."

Listening to: "The System" on CourtTV

*NEW* Flavors on the Way... No, really...

Yeah, I know... It's been a long time coming, but some pretty seriously messed up shit has gone on in the past few that has really had my attention focused elsewhere... Things have begun to almost calm down a little, now, and with the calm comes a chance to get another "flavors" column available. It'll be a few more days, but it'll be here. Who knows what's next? Maybe even an opportunity to actually play one of my guitars, instead of just looking at them sitting in their cases.

Listening to: the fan behind me go "whirrrrr"

Heya...
I was just viewing the stat referrals and stuff like that here on http://xtaticmusic.tk and I noticed that in the past few months, I've been averaging about 2,200 hits a month... and I hadn't posted on it since May, basically... Anyhow, after a little more research, I noticed that people are coming to my site from all over (from Belgium to Budhapest to Boston to Bangladesh), using about every search engine imagineable, even from searches for "nude girls" and stuff like that (it seems some search engines are very thorough in their web archiving)...
I have a few bands linked down the left side from around my old stompin' gorund and stuff... but why not let me link your band, too! What in the world could it possibly hurt? I'm also more than willing to write a post about your band (after I have researched and listened to them and all that, of course), as well, which will be archived on all the search engines, which will lead to - you guessed it - more people hearing about your band and stuff... what band in their right mind wouldn't want more hits on their website? It also makes for more content for my page, which I am always searching for...
So send me an email and give me some info about your band (bio, link to webpage, where to get your band's music, all that good stuff) and I will be more than happy to give you a big fat link down the side of my page, which people WILL see and go, "Hmm, I wonder who they are," and click it... which is cool for you, and makes my page look spiffier, too.

Thanks,
-tony-

Listening to: Shinedown - "Leave a Whisper" (2003)

A Perfect Circle Changes Lineup Yet Again

Trippy... I had told people several months ago that Nine Inch Nails member Danny Lohner had joined A Perfect Circle... Well, while he was one of the "founding members" back in 1999, he never actually took on a "full-time" status...
So, after talking to some people who recently saw APC, it seems that Danny Lohner, in fact, did not join the band... but former Smashing Pumpkins guitarist James Iha did...
To be honest, I think that's quite groovy. I was never a gigungous Smashing Pumpkins fan, but I always thought James Iha was a pretty wicked musician... so, to have him join one of my favorite bands in the whole wide world is pretty cool... The album, "The Thirteenth Step," is supposed to be out this Tuesday (the 16th), but I've seen absolutely zero press about it, so I'm not sure if it's still a go or not... I am anxiously awaiting... I heard the single a few times on the radio on my way out here (the soundtrack to "Underworld" features a heavier mix of it), and it sounds like good stuff to me...

Listening to: Black Label Society - "The Blessed Hellride" (2003)

Hello... Hello Again

Greetings... from Fort Collins, Colorado...
"Where?"
That's right... Colorado... I just moved there from Ohio... I really like it here, I must say... It's some pretty territory... there's, like, an assload to do... something different everyday... Anhyow, I have a lot of musical stuff to talk about, but I don't really have the time to do it at this second, because I am still in the process of setting up residency and all that fun stuff... SO, as soon as I get all that garbage straightened away, I will be back in full force, letting you know what's hip musically, and what is sucky (a.k.a. Metallica and Fred Durst)... See ya soon...

Listening to: Soundtrack to the Motion Picture "Underworld" (2003)