Pandemonium Cheesecake

Mickey Lolich never gets enough love Madinson Bumgarner’s   World Series performance was legendary. Five innings of 2-hit relief work on two days rest   after a complete game shutout? Amazing. I may not see a performance like that in the WS again in my life. His overall WS performance is Top 10 ALL time for a pitcher, maybe even top 5, but to call it   the Best WS Pitching performance is absurd. I’m not going to list them all, but was Bumgarner’s WS better than   Christy Mathewson (3 complete game shutouts in 6 days   in 1905),   or Bob Gibson (3 complete games & a home run in game 7   in 1967),   or Mickey Lolich (3 complete games, including a game 7 victory over Gibson in 1968, you know the year he had a 1.12 ERA),   I don’t think so.   Yes, I know the game has changed (lower mound, not competing against the best players, etc), but it doesn’t distract from what those pitchers of the past were able to do. If throwing three complete games in the WS was easy, why wasn’t every d

Let's get one thing straight, football is probably the American pro sports league I care about least. If I had to rank regular season sporting events in order I watch them, it would be: 1. Baseball 2. College Basketball 3. College Football 4. Hockey 5. Basketball 6. Football When the post seasons start, things change, because there is nothing as exciting as playoff hockey. Why? Three words. Sudden. Death. Overtime. Back to football and its espn-driven hype machine. I really do not understand why football receives the love it does. Can someone try to explain it to me? I'm guessing it's partially the violence. Americans love violence. A country gone great because we kicked a whole lot of ass, forcibly seized the best parts of a continent and act as the worlds policeman. Yeah, there's a tad bit of violence associated with our culture and our most popular game. No wonder we love football. ----------------------- So... first pick, I hope its Clowney becaus

In 1982 Rush released Signals , their ninth studio album and a complete reversal in sound from their previous record Moving Pictures . The synthesizers, which had been used for moods and accents on the previous records, came forward to dominate the sound. And I hated it when it came out. I was like 'this is worse than your mom eating a puke sandwich' (hey, I was 12 forgive me). Rush was my first favorite band and this was one of the first albums that I was looking forward to its release. I was hoping for Moving Pictures 2, or something closer to the sound of their previous five studio albums. Something with a thirteen minute song about space, or gods, or trees. What I got was the opposite. Instead of driving arena rock I got fuzzy humming synth/pop. Like their debut, Signals sticks out in their catalog like a cold sore on a prom queen. Have I mentioned that I hated it? My dislike for the record continued for a long time. I was in my mid 30s when I finally redisc

The second ep in a series of three from one of the most influential bands of the 80s. It's hard to listen to this record and not to hold it up against their previous work. It's unfair to the Pixies because most bands would have trouble following up masterpieces like Doolittle or Surfer Rosa , especially after 20+ years. The four songs that make up EP2 aren't anything exciting, there's no "Gigantic" or "Monkey's Gone to Heaven" and its clear that Pixies 2.2 are still trying to find a sound. They shift back and forth from Trompe Le Monde era to early Frank Black solo work, but never stray too far from the guitar driven, quiet-loud-quiet blueprint that made them so important to the growth of countless alternative bands that followed in their wake. The opening track "Blue Eyed Hexe" is their attempt at an AC/DC song, and its a good one at that. The riff is pure Angus and the chorus is lifted from the Highway to Hell album

The Band - Cahoots (1971) The Band's fourth album has more in common with its previous release Stage Fright  (especially lyrically) then its first two albums, but still sounds like the Band. Having departed from the story telling of the first two albums, the themes on Cahoots  are more personal, echoing where the band was at the time. Robbie Robertson was taking over as the main songwriter, taking sole credit on 8 of the 11 songs and co writing two others. The shared lead vocals of Richard Manuel, Levon Helm and Rick Danko are still there, as are the rich textures that Garth Hudson cons from his Lowrey and, as always, Robbie Robertson trying to find a way in with his guitar parts. Cooler than the B-3? Maybe, the beard does help. The lead track "Life Is A Carvinal" is the bands attack on the phony nature of show business. Helm and Danko get their only co-writing credits of the album here along side the Dixieland horn chart from Allen Toussaint. The highlight of

What do you get when you cross Wire-like guitars, Clash-style aggression, Kinks-esque pop sensibility, a pair of heroin addicts and a midwest girl who wants to rock (and fuck) just like the boys? You get the self-titled debut from The Pretenders. Released in 1980, The Pretenders is a mixture of punk, rock and new wave; bridging the past to the future. Distinctly divided into two halves (remnants of the pre-CD days), side one is where Chrissie Hynde and the boys (guitarist James Honeyman-Scott, bassist Pete Farndon and drummer Martin Chambers) rip through the first seven (of 12) tracks. Everyone from The PIxies to Bikini Kill took notes from this album, cribbing Hynde's disjointed/angry young woman lyrics and swiping Honeyman-Scott's sonic play on guitar. "Precious" is a big piss-off to her old hometown Akron, and a brilliant opening song. One that allows her to drop both the S & F-bombs, a rarity for a major label release from the early 80s. LeBron James