Show #124 September 20, 2014

Dedicated to Lucy!

Lucy- The Boys The Complete Boys Punk Singles Collection 
The Ballad- Chris Von Sneidern Sight and Sound 
Can't Shake That Girl- The Real Kids Shake...Outta Control 
Fanzine- Holly and the Italians The Right to Be Italian 
Break Down The Walls- Ken Sharp Yellow Pills Vol 1 The Best of American Pop! 
You Don't Need Excuses To Be Good- Sloan Commonwealth 
Carnival of Souls- Wondermints The Wondermints
All I Need Is You- The Click Five Modern Minds And Pastimes 
^The Ballad of Mona Lisa- Panic! At The Disco The Ballad Of Mona Lisa 
Sweety Of The St. Moritz- The 101'ers Elgin Avenue Breakdown Revisited 
Blinded By The Light- This Perfect Day Don't Smile 
*Ballad Of A Love Doll- Redd Kross Neurotica
*The Ballad of Bjorn Borg- Pernice Brothers The World Won't End 
*The Ballad Of Dwight Fry- Alice Cooper Love It To Death
*The Ballad Of Peter Pumpkinhead- XTC Fossil Fuel The XTC Singles 1977-92 
*The Ballad Of El Goodo- Big Star #1 Record 
*Ballad Of A Comeback Kid- The New Pornographers Electric Version 
*Ballad Of Cowboy Mouth- Cowboy Mouth All You Need Is Live 
*The Ballad of the Gravel Pit- The Gravel Pit Mass Avenue Freeze-Out 
*The Ballad of TV Violence (I'm Not the Only Boy)- Cheap Trick Cheap Trick 
*Ballad Of A Lonely Man- Material Issue Destination Universe 
*The Ballad of Ranch Hand Rivera- The Soda Pop Kids Teen Bop Dream 
*Ballad Of The Lower East Side- Michael Monroe Horns And Halos 
*Ballad of Don Crawford- Pills A Fistful of Pills 
>Ballad Of A Useless Man- Paul Revere and The Raiders Midnight Ride 
The Ballad of Harry Noryb- The Verlaines Hallelujah All The Way Home 

^Power Pop Peak:  #89 Billboard Hot 100 2/1/11

*SacroSet:  The Ballad Of....

>Power Pop Prototype:  1966

I'm guessing many of you are surprised to see Marshall and RiRi at the top of an ALL KINDSA GIRLS blog post.  Rest assured I have never played either on the show, nor do I ever intend to.  No, the pictures are here because of a road trip I took my son and his friends on in August.  As soon as they announced the three city/six date Eminem/Rihanna Monster Tour last March Jack started bugging his mom and I to go to one of the Rose Bowl shows.  I didn't say "no" because it was so far in the future I figured he'd never get it together to go.  That was my first mistake.  He got his friend Aidan (and more importantly, Aidan's mom) involved and sure enough they managed to get tickets to the August 8 show.  At that point Jack's other friend named Aydan (I know, it's confusing) said he would drive.  None of the moms liked the idea of three boys who've never driven farther than San Francisco trekking down to Pasadena so they roped me into going for the price of a ticket.  As long as I didn't have to drive, I figured what the hell.


All this Monster business was put in place before we planned

our trip to Michigan and right before we left Aydan tells us he crashed his car and can't drive.  I'm more than ready to throw in the towel but Aidan's mom comes to the rescue and offers her Suburban.  I had one day between Michigan and Monster so of course we just had to get screwed on our return flights:  cancelled out of Grand Rapids, five hour wait for re-routed flight to DFW, two hour delay in Dallas.  I'm committed at this point (or I should have been) so 36 hours later I'm driving a monster Suburban down godforsaken I-5 to the Monster Tour in Pasadena. 

While many Cali- fornians crap on the Central Valley, I've only seen it at 75mph from I-5.  I can attest to the fact that it is an incredibly boring ride.  I've done it so many times that to amuse myself I mark the distance with a couple of jokes.  The first is "Ladies Love.... Coalinga!"  (I didn't say it was "A" material, it is brain dead car ride material.)  Further south you come to the town of Shafter, CA:  "Shafter... I hardly even KNOW her! (rimshot!) I'll be here all week!"  While both are clearly off-color, neither of these jokes comes close to the level of offensiveness of a third I-5 joke that my wife of all people once tossed out.  To set the stage, depending on which way the wind is blowing, you start to smell Harris Ranch a few miles before you see it.  Just when you think the stink can't get any worse this is what you come upon:

Harris Ranch

I'm a lifelong meat-eater, but this place makes you think.  Anyway, driving by one time when it was 100 degrees outside and we could see the waves of rising stank trying to permeate our sealed car Jaime called the place "Cowschwitz."  Offensive, no doubt but looking at the picture above... like I said it makes you think.  After Harris you hit the engine-punishing Grapevine Highway before dropping down into Magic Mountain territory.  Whenever I see Magic Mountain I always think "What- were you too tired to drive to Disney?" but I'm sure it's a lovely place.

We got into Pasadena about 2:30- just in time for some record shopping!  I'm happy to report that there are a few fine record stores in Pasadena.  The first one the boys and I went to was Canterbury Records.  The store looks like it has been

there forever, which it pretty much has since I later learned it opened in 1956.  I could easily picture a Don Draper type going in and buying an Esquivel record a few years later.   Heading out of

Old Town Pasadena on East Colorado you come to Poo Bah records.  This store is more what I'm used to- loud, chaotic sensory overload with music blaring, records and posters covering every inch of wall space- yep, I was home.  I could have spent a couple of hours in Poo Bah but unfortunately we had to get to the Rose Bowl.

I'm not an arena concert guy, my favorite shows are usually me and 199 other people packed into a sweaty basement club.  I wasn't dreading the Monster show but even as an Eminem fan I was dreading the hassle.  We took a ride share van to skip the parking nightmare.  It was pretty cool to come around the corner and see the iconic Rose Bowl sign.

Aydan, Jack, Aidan, me

We got there early and had a long wait for the show to start so it was mostly people watching, which got boring pretty quickly because 99% of the crowd was just like us- white people from the suburbs.

Our seats were pretty high up but the sound was fantastic.  The challenge for me with a show like this is to focus on the performers themselves and not their images up on the video screens.  I always feel like I'm not getting my money's worth if I'm just watching screens the whole time.  BTW- the huge half circle in the image above is the head of the dude in front of us.

Eminem and Rihanna started the show together and the first

Rose Bowl, August 8

thing I noticed is that she's wearing a Judas Priest shirt (admittedly I was only able to see this on the video screens).  It's hard for me to imagine that RiRi has EVER listened to Rob Halford and company so I figured her stylist put it together as some kind of homage to arena rock shows.  The rest of her outfits that night were standard pop fashion fare but that Judas Priest shirt really stuck in my mind.  When I Googled the Monster Tour I saw that the previous night she had chosen to honor:  

Rose Bowl, August 7

Krokus!  If you thought her being a Judas Priest fan was a stretch, how about the Swiss hair metal douche bags named after a flower that gave us "Midnight Maniac," a song I had to look up on youtube and don't remember ever hearing before.  Did Rihanna's stylist think the blue in the shirt made her eyes "pop" or something?  Further research shows that Rihanna kicked off each Monster tour show in a rock t-shirt:

New Jersey, August 16 Motley Crue

New Jersey, August 17 Jim Morrison

Detroit, August 22 Alice Cooper

 (Nice touch paying tribute to Alice in his home town.)

Detroit, August 23 Bon Jovi

I have to admit the red leather bondage pants are quite fetching- no doubt Rihanna is a beautiful woman.  Yet, with rock and roll in its current doldrums I find her (or more likely, her stylist's) appropriation of rock inconography deeply troubling.  Or maybe I have my head up my butt and like me she is a huge rock and roll fan, because in my search I also found this picture of her just walking down the street:

Sex Pistols!?!

You decide- my head hurts.  As for the rest of the Eminem/Rihanna show, there's not much to say.  She did her thing, he did his (including a Slim Shady medley... no lie, a medley) and they both hit all their marks.  My son and his friends loved it, especially the Slim Shady medley, though none of them blinked an eye at the Judas Priest t-shirt (sigh).

Download links for this show have expired- I'll be sure to re-post if they become available.