Bob Saget performs at Elliott Hall of Music April 14th

Bob Saget’s stand-up has grown exponentially. While headlining the House of Blues and Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas, theaters, colleges and concert venues, his packed-housed audiences love to see his adult stand-up, which completely blows away his TV image from the past, as well as leaving them rolling in the aisles.

Bob Saget is funny as hell, and it’s just in time for my birthday (16 April, hint hint).

1. Guilty — The Bad Plus
2. Fresh — Kool & The Gang
3. Ronnie and Neil — Drive By Truckers
4. Tell Her Tonight — Franz Ferdinand
5. Just a Test — Beastie Boys
6. The Art of Easing — Digable Planets
7. She’s My Baby — The Spikedrivers
8. Maturity — Endpoint
9. First Comes Sunday Morning — TransChamps
10. Sans Revival — Early Day Miners

Clearly, with two FRTs in a row, I need to blog more. Consider it a New Year’s resolution. I have plenty of stuff waiting in the wings.

1. Little Sound Disko #06 — USK
2. Pick Up the Pieces — Average White Band
3. 5:15 — The Who
4. Shakes — The Jim-Jims
5. Shun the Mask — 108
6. Violently Happy — Björk
7. June — Mike Reeb
8. Six Days The Remix — DJ Shadow featuring Mos Def
9. Heavenly Action — Erasure
10. Björkbergspolskan — Väsen

• Trans Am
• Cake
• No Doubt
• The Promise Ring
• Beastie Boys
• Shelter
• Cornershop
• Cibo Matto
• Björk
• Rachel’s

1987
I got a jambox for my 10th birthday the year prior; the first two albums I owned were Run-DMC’s Raising Hell and Beastie Boys’ License to Ill. Then, the year after 1987 I attended my first two concerts—New Kids on the Block (with Tiffany and Tommy Page) and Debbie Gibson (I think Bros. opened). Make sense? Prolly not…

• Beastie Boys
• Run-DMC
• Debbie Gibson
• Janet Jackson
• Madonna
• U2
• Journey
• Weird Al Yankovic
• Michael Jackson
• Bon Jovi

1977
I listened to whatever my dad was listening to, and I’m pretty sure this covers it. I was one year old.

• Led Zeppelin
• Eagles
• Black Sabbath
• REO Speedwagon
• Creedence Clearwater Revival
• Allman Brothers Band
• Jimy Buffet
• Foghat
• T.Rex
• Boston

(via A Common Language)

On January 27, 2006, our great friends and Channels members J. Robbins (of Government Issue, Jawbox, Burning Airlines, and most recently Channels) and Janet Morgan welcomed their first child, a son named Callum. He was 8-odd pounds and 20-odd inches of wriggling, squirming, screaming joy, and the apple of his parents’ eye.

As Cal grew, though, his parents began to notice that the expected development milestones - biting his toes, squeezing Janet’s finger, even rolling over and sitting up unsupported - weren’t happening. As a parent, you never want to think that something is wrong with your child. You bury your doubts and convince yourself that your baby is just different, that he’s got his own way of doing things, that he’s just “mellow.” You’ve got diapers to change, bottles to warm, baths to give. Life has to go on.

Sometime around Cal’s 8-month birthday in September, J. and Janet took him to his pediatrician for his regular appointment. They knew from the doctor’s grave tone that something was terribly wrong. Any parent – any human – reading this can understand the shock, horror, and pain that J. and Janet felt when they learned through subsequent visits with specialists that Cal was born with a genetic motor neuron disease called Type 1 SMA, or Spinal Muscular Atrophy.

The facts are brutal: SMA kills kids. The disease affects the brain’s ability to communicate with the voluntary muscles that are used for activities such as crawling, walking, head and neck control, breathing, and swallowing. Type 1 SMA is usually fatal; most Type 1 babies will die before their second birthday. Those infants who survive into childhood are in for a long road of occupational therapy, wheelchairs, and assistive devices. Despite years of work on its treatment and “ongoing promising research,” it has no cure.

J., Janet, and Cal live every day with this disease hanging over their heads, and the path before them is extremely expensive and consuming of their former “normal lives.” Cal will never be able to walk. Once he is old enough to require a wheelchair, he will be wheelchair-bound for life, which likely also means at some point he’ll need surgery to correct for scoliosis.

It is an understatement to call this a heartbreaking situation. It also stands to be an unbelievably expensive one, especially for a household where the only wage-earner is a self-employed indie recording engineer. It remains unclear just how helpful J.’s single-payer insurance will be.

Allopathic (”conventional”) doctors, while energetically engaged in research into this condition, can offer no cure for Callum. There may be some hope – even if only for a better quality of life – in alternative routes and therapies. These, of course, are not covered by health insurance.

We at DeSoto feel that we owe it to J., Janet, and Callum to explore any and every avenue that might help their little boy. Pursuing alternative treatments will very plausibly bankrupt them.

Our hope is that people whose lives J., Janet, and Cal have touched – with their music, their friendship, their work in the independent music community – can help. Every dollar you give will provide Cal support to pursue treatment for this terrible disease. Perhaps more important, it will provide J., Janet, and Cal some of the hope they need to play out this horribly unfair hand life has dealt them.

Best,
—Kim, Bill, and Nick

donate here:
http://www.desotorecords.com/cal/index.shtml

1. Act Of The Apostle — Belle & Sebastian
2. Move Over Jordan — Meaghan Owens
3. Burn — Rainer Maria
4. Big Morning — Aloha
5. Take On Me (a-ha cover) — Trash Pour 4
6. The Clock And The Storm — The Appleseed Cast
7. Dorothy Dreams Of Tornados — Cursive
8. Depleated Uranium Is A War Crime — Anti-Flag
9. Life On Mars? (live) — Arcade Fire & David Bowie
10. Calm — Maritime

Bonus guilty pleasure:

Oneida’s newest album, Happy New Year, is just plain weird. When I have seen the band live, they are certainly weird, but for the most part they totally rock. Unfortunately, I can’t say the same for their latest effort.

There are some rockin’ moments though. Most notably on the Trans Am-like track “Up With People,” no doubt due to Phil Manley’s guest appearance. At almost eight minutes of 16ths on the high hats and trippy, effects-laden guitar, this is without doubt my favorite track on the album. “History’s Great Navigators,” with hints of Stereolab, is an interesting experiment in minimalist repetition. The Doors/Strawberry Alarm Clock mashup of “The Misfit” even manages to pique my interested and hold it long enough to last three minutes.

Most of the record plods along with heavily psychedelic mood-rock. While not bad in and of itself, it just doesn’t get me very excited. The album is well made, and well mixed, but so far I like it best as eclectic background music. Curious, even entertaining, but I don’t really see it going on any “Top 10 Album of the Year” lists.

[T]his is also Oneida’s most fully-realized personal statement—the document where they proclaim themselves the finest band recording and playing today.

That bit of marketing hyperbole is going to be damn difficult to live up to.

1. Only In My Dreams — Debbie Gibson
2. Retarded Cowboy Run Country Now — Hello Lobster
3. Nothing Better — Postal Service
4. Here (In Your Arms) — Hellogoodbye
5. Wheels of Steel — Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five
6. You Give Me Problems About My Business — The Mercury Program
7. Leave The City — Magnolia Electric Co.
8. The Awful Truth Of Loving — Rainer Maria
9. Sem Contenção — Bebel Gilberto
10. 4’s, 5’s and the Piano That Never Sleeps — By The End Of Tonight

Check this new video for “Fidelity” for her new album Begin To Hope.

Hott.

So’s this:

On the radio
We heard November Rain
That solo’s really long
But it’s a pretty song
We listened to it twice
‘Cause the DJ was asleep

P.s. MC Chris and Frida Hyvönen pics soon. I promise.

1. Bananeria (Rae & Christian Mix) — Bebel Gilberto
2. Stop! — Erasure
3. Egypt — The Mercury Program
4. James Brown Is Dead — L.A. Style
5. The Maestro — The Beastie Boys
6. Get Me Away from Here, I’m Dying (Live) — Belle & Sebastian
7. Mothers Talk — Tears For Fears
8. One Small Day — Ultravox
9. Pourin’ Rain — BR5-49
10. Valerie — Frida Hyvönen

Bonus guilty pleasure:

Anyone want to come with to see Frida in Chicago on Sunday?