Completely Conspicuous

Part 2 of my conversation with guest Jay Breitling about our favorite music of the year so far. Show notes: - Recorded at Clicky Clicky world HQ - JB: The Orb released a remix EP - JK: The prolific Ty Segall does it again - JB: Vagabon brings fresh take to indie rock - JK: Boss Hog's first album in 17 years - JB: The evolving sound of Spoon - JK: The consistently excellent New Pornographers back with another winner - JB: Juana Molina returns with a strong, out there release - JK: Mark Lanegan incorporates electronic music into his sound - JB: Snowball II with a release that recalls The Lilys - JK: Afghan Whigs release their best record since reuniting - JB: Tommy Stinson brings back Bash & Pop with hooks galore - JB: Slowdive's reunion album gives the people what they want Completely Conspicuous is available through the iTunes podcast directory. Subscribe and write a review! The opening and closing theme of Completely Conspicuous is "Theme to Big F'in Pants"

Part 1 of my conversation with guest Jay Breitling about our favorite music of the year so far. Show notes: - Recorded at Clicky Clicky world HQ - Plenty of great rock music, but not on the charts - It's all about playing live; rock radio exposure is nonexistent - Billy Squier still gets the airplay - Nobody's figured out how to make money from streaming music - Get pumped for Husker Du bootleg box set - More rock deaths: Berry, Cornell, Allman, Geils - Rise in musical activism - Albums we want to hear - Breitling: Ride, Palehound, Wet Trident - Kumar: Kurt Vile and Courtney Barnett, Ted Leo, Buffalo Tom, Queens of the Stone Age, Deer Tick, LCD Soundsystem - Bubbling under albums - Breitling: Tara Jane O'Neil, Opin, The xx - Lubec's coming to Boston in August - Kumar: Chastity Belt, Bash and Pop, Cloud Nothings, White Reaper, At the Drive-In, Black Lips - Our favorite albums so far - JB: Spirit of the Beehive combines psych and shoegaze - JK: Run the Jewels keeps o

Part 3 of my conversation with Brian Salvatore about musical blindspots. Brian listens to another Sloan album while I check out a third record from Ween. Show notes: -Win-win situation - Brian had Sloan's "The Double Cross" and Jay had Ween's "Quebec" - Brian: My favorite of the three I listened to - Beatles comparisons - Brian will go back and check out rest of Sloan catalog - No solo albums, but Murphy had TUNS project - Jay: Really enjoyed Quebec - Most cohesive of the three Ween albums Jay heard - Dean and Gene were dealing with some issues - "If You Could Save Yourself (You'd Save Us All)" is an epic album closer - Next up: Jay will listen to Frank Zappa and Brian will check out Iron Maiden   Completely Conspicuous is available through the iTunes podcast directory. Subscribe and write a review! The opening and closing theme of Completely Conspicuous is "Theme to Big F'in Pants" by Jay Breitling. Voiceover work is courtesy of James Gralian

Part 2 of my conversation with Brian Salvatore about musical blindspots. Brian listens to another Sloan album while I check out a second record from Ween. Show notes: - Brian: Impressed with the progression of Sloan's sound - Jay: Hadn't heard anything from The Mollusk previously - Plenty of genre jumping - Nautical theme - Elements of prog, psych - Brian: My favorite Ween record - Ween varies playlists from show to show - Brian: Between the Bridges is steeped in the '70s: Big Star, Sweet, T. Rex, Fleetwood Mac - Interesting sequencing and flow - Confusing the title with Between the Buttons - Last Sloan album gave each band member a side's worth of songs - Brian: Almost exclusively listen to albums in full - Jay: Will listen to albums, but also use shuffle mode on iPod - Brian: Also listen to a lot of music on Spotify - Next up: Quebec for Jay, The Double Cross for Brian Completely Conspicuous is available through the iTunes podcast directory.

This week, Brian Salvatore and I talk about delving into the catalog of bands we don't know much about. Brian will learn about Sloan while I dig into Ween. Show notes: - Each of us picks a favorite artist of the other that we don't know much about - Jay listened to Ween's Chocolate and Cheese, Brian listened to Sloan's Twice Removed - Both 1994 releases - Both of us had heard a few songs before - Jay: First heard Ween on Beavis and Butt-head, wrote them off as novelty act - Brian: Twice Removed starts off strong, flows well - Big power pop vibe - The album that got Sloan dropped by Geffen - Each band member writes and sings - Were signed as part of the alternative explosion of the early '90s - Self-release most of their albums now - No indie rock radio stations anymore - Jay: Chocolate and Cheese is great fun - Wide range of styles, from funk to psychedelic to just weird - Great guitar work from Dean Ween - First Ween album done in a studio - W

This week, I talk to guest Brian Salvatore about the legacy of the late Chris Cornell. Show notes: - Brian: Was never a huge fan of Cornell's early singing style - Rediscovered his love for Soundgarden in recent years - Jay: First heard him when Temple of the Dog came out in '91, then got  Badmotorfinger - The greatness of Mother Love Bone - Soundgarden was perfect bridge between '80s hard rock and the new sounds of the '90s - Jay: Saw Soundgarden in small club in early '92 and then again a few months later at Lollapalooza - Kim Thayil's guitar playing complemented Cornell's voice well - Jason Everman, the Zelig of grunge - The diverse nature of the Seattle acts of the '90s - The pressure of being the "responsible one" - Cornell's final tweets were upbeat - Hard to read into his lyrics - Most of Cornell's songs were dark - His death hit hard because he was ours - Feels like more '70s touring acts have more living members than '90s bands - The dr

Part 2 of my conversation with guest Jay Breitling about the evolution of the music blog. Show notes: - Breitling recently shut down his fine music blog Clicky Clicky - Some band reunions shouldn't happen - A whole new target audience for newer live acts - The kids wanna snap - Some bands can make a living selling merch and playing small live gigs - No time for comics anymore - The inflated price of vinyl - Zines were the music blogs of the '80s and '90s - Kumar: A buddy in Washington state got into punk, started a zine - The convenience of blog software - The blog as reference tool - Our work at Webnoize is mostly gone now - Clicky Clicky lives on via Facebook page - The blog had a hardcore audience - Not in it for the numbers - Cutting through the crap on Twitter - Quality, not quantity of posts   Completely Conspicuous is available through the iTunes podcast directory. Subscribe and write a review! The opening and closing theme of Completely Conspicuous is "The

Part 1 of my conversation with guest Jay Breitling about the evolution of the music blog. Show notes: - Breitling recently shut down his fine music blog Clicky Clicky - MP3 blogs soon evolved into something less legally risky - Wrote about music for other online pubs: Splendid EZine, Junkmedia - Had a personal page and then launched Clicky Clicky in 2006 - Contributors had other commitments, life got busy - Breitling now writes for Vanyaland - In their heyday, music blogs presented artists who weren't pushed by major labels or corporate radio - The "Celestial Jukebox" is here - Breitling: Listening habits have changed - Used to frantically search for new music; now digging into albums - Peak music blog year was 2007 - Blog bands: Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Bloc Party, Arcade Fire, Franz Ferdinand - Many people started music blogs to get free stuff - Some bloggers have moved on to mainstream gigs - Podcasting has become commonplace - YouTube stars are now gaining popul

This week, it's my conversation with guest Christian Douglass as we discuss what life would be like without the Internet. Show notes: -  Recorded on the road in a snowstorm - What if the Internet went away? - Back to mid-'90s technology - We'd have to talk to each other - Generational dip - The Lou Grant Revolt - We'd lost a lot of conveniences - The kids and the promposals - People are constantly glued to their phones - #oldmanrant - We need the Internet - Social media has replaced a lot of actual human interaction - Phantom thumb - TV and radio would be more important - Making conclusions based on just the headline - Library book etiquette - The drive home - Things could get bad - Economy would tank - Overcoming the dependency - Not necessarily life or death - Instant info gratification - Are we ready to get primal? - Taking a timeout - Addictive by design - Kids would have a tough time Completely Conspicuous is available through the iTunes p

Part 3 of my conversation with guest Brian Salvatore as we look back at the music of 1991. Show notes: - Check out Brian's podcast Input/Output - Brian's #3 - The final Pixies album with original lineup - Jay's #2 - Do we need to hear Nevermind again? - Symbolically historic - Raw vs. polished - Brian's #2 - Tribe Called Quest brought a serious jazz feel to their sound - Focused on the groove, not samples - Jay's #1 - Matthew Sweet swings for the fences - Sick guitar work from Lloyd and Quine - Susanna Hoffs doesn't age - Brian's #1 - Mike Mills gets his due - Peter Buck's mandolin phase - Still plenty of great records we didn't discuss - The Costello-McCartney experiment - School of Fish had the song of the summer of '91 - What's next? - The early '90s were chock full of good stuff   Completely Conspicuous is available through the iTunes podcast directory. Subscribe and write a review! The opening and closing theme of Completely Conspicuous is "

Part 2 of my conversation with guest Brian Salvatore as we look back at the music of 1991. Show notes: - Check out Brian's podcast Input/Output - Albums that didn't make our top 5 of '91 - Brian: Feelies, Slint, Prince - Skipping a Prince show - Jay: Mudhoney, Pearl Jam, Screaming Trees, Temple of the Dog - Brian: Firehose, De La Soul, Cohen tribute, Jonathan Richman - No more "Hallelujah" covers, please - Tribute albums were big in the '90s - Jay: Tragically Hip, Dinosaur Jr., Fishbone, Nation of Ulysses, Swervedriver - Jay's #5 - Soundgarden's game-changer - Brian's #5 - Primus makes its mark - Jay's #4 - The best Smashing Pumpkins album - Corgan's off the rails now - Brian's #4 - Ween's weirdest record - Jay's #3 - Teenage Fanclub went from unknowns in the U.S. to indie darlings - To be continued   Completely Conspicuous is available through the iTunes podcast directory. Subscribe and write a review! The opening and closing theme of Completely

Part 1 of my conversation with guest Brian Salvatore as we look back at the music of 1991. Show notes: - Check out Brian's podcast Input/Output - Wrapping up our look at the music of the years 1980-1999 - 1991 really kicked off the '90s musically - Brian was 9, Jay was 23 - Alt-rock took off in '91 - Big year for Metallica - Plenty of pop and one-hit wonders - Bryan Adams and Color Me Badd had strong years - Big efforts from A Tribe Called Quest, De La Soul, NWA and Public Enemy - Styx had a song land in the top 100 singles - Rock radio was still rooted in classic rock - Billboard switched to Soundscan charts - Freddie Mercury died on same day as Eric Carr of KISS - Van Halen's slide into irrelevancy - Since '91, VH has released three albums with three different singers - Red Hot Chili Peppers hit their peak - Albums Jay liked in '91: RHCP, Live, Spin Doctors - Quintessential '90s tunes - Talking Heads officially split - To be continued   Completel

This week, I've got an installment of Driving With Kumar, in which I discuss the endless amount of entertainment content available to consume. Show notes: - Driving to work - The joys of binge-watching TV - So much to watch, so little time - Book reading has suffered - No time for comics - Tons of music available to listen to whenever you want - More music released now than ever before - Listen to podcasts throughout the day - Again, a ton of podcast content to choose from - Recently cranked through 22 episodes of U Talkin' U2 to Me - Rarely watch shows live - Went to all-streaming setup for TV - Never go to the movies anymore - Glut of content calls for better time management - It's an on-demand world - Plenty of shows I've never seen - It's all about portion control   Completely Conspicuous is available through the iTunes podcast directory. Subscribe and write a review! The opening and closing theme of Completely Conspicuous is "Theme to Big F'in P

Part 2 of my conversation with guest Matt Phillion as we discuss Hollywood's love of reboots. Show notes: - Check out Matt's book Like a Comet: The Indestructibles Book 4 - Docudramas like The People Vs. OJ Simpson are doing well - Reboot of 24 sans Jack Bauer - Why would you remake a perfect movie? - Flip the concept - Matt's book idea - Need to reward original stories - Pixar's doing great work - The Marvel series on Netflix have been good - Experimental episodes can be fun - So much TV to watch now - Luke Cage broke new ground - Watching foreign shows and running out of episodes - Remaking European shows for American TV - Matt needs to watch Terriers and Justified - The greatness of Walton Goggins - Shows that are difficult to watch   Completely Conspicuous is available through the iTunes podcast directory. Subscribe and write a review! The opening and closing theme of Completely Conspicuous is "Theme to Big F'in Pants" by Jay Breitling. Find out

Part 2 of my conversation with guest Matt Phillion as we discuss Hollywood's love of reboots. Show notes: - Check out Matt's book Like a Comet: The Indestructibles Book 4 - Unnecessary reboots - The Ghostbusters remake was controversial - Westworld was a hit, but most viewers probably didn't see the original movies - Michael Crichton's trial by fire as a director - Channing Tatum is the mermaid in the new version of Splash - The Rock's in everything - DC's TV shows are good - Matt Fraction's comics reimagining of Hawkeye is excellent - Deadpool is a cavalcade of dick jokes - Penny Dreadfal mashes up classic horror characters - Beauty and the Beast live-action remake - Rebooting in advertising: the Most Interesting Man in the World, Col. Sanders - Reboot vs. continuation - The Muppet Babies effect - The many Punishers - Taken, the TV show - Getting manipulated by This Is Us - To be continued   Completely Conspicuous is available through the iTunes podc

Part 1 of my conversation with guest Matt Phillion as we discuss Hollywood's love of reboots. Show notes: - Check out Matt's book Like a Comet: The Indestructibles Book 4 - All about recycling ideas - Some reboots are self-referential - The Brady Bunch Movie kicked off the reboot as parody - Johnny Depp: Master of the Reboot - Nic Cage's recent career choices - Some improve on the original or have a different take - Westworld, Bates Motel - New TV shows based on Lethal Weapon and Training Day - The industry's too risk-averse - Comic book movie franchises reboot constantly - So many different Batmen - How long will Batfleck last? - Daredevil: Netflix show is much better than the movie - Stephen King's cocaine years - "The hamster just fell off the wheel" - To be continued   Completely Conspicuous is available through the iTunes podcast directory. Subscribe and write a review! The opening and closing theme of Completely Conspicuous is "Theme to Big F'in

Part 3 of my conversation with guest Jay Breitling about our favorite indie rock of 2016. Show notes: - Breitling's #4 - Frankie Cosmos is fronted by Kevin Kline's daughter - Engaging pop record - Kumar's #4 - Very political album from Drive-By Truckers - Breitling's #3 - Classic C86-style guitar pop - Good advice: Don't pay the ferryman - Kumar's #3 - Another outstanding release from Jeff Rosenstock - Digs into Millennial angst - Breitling's #2 - Lambchop's new album isn't about the First Lady - First single is 18minutes long - Kumar's #2 - Iggy's last hurrah? - Josh Homme and friends provide backup - Breitling's #1 - Johnny Foreigner explore life's beauty and disappointments - Album came with a script - Kumar's #1 and Breitling's #6 - Bowie goes out on a high note - Put a lot of effort into the packaging - Explorations of mortality from a man who knew he was about to die - Looking forward to new albums in 2017: Cloud Nothings, Los Campesinos, Feelies, LCD Soundsyste

Part 2 of my conversation with guest Jay Breitling about our favorite indie rock of 2016. Show notes: - Kumar's #9 - PUP comes into its own on second album - Breitling's #8 - A more experimental release from Hallelujah the Hills - Kumar's #8 - Car Seat Headrest's album had to be recalled thanks to Ric Ocasek - Breitling's #7 - Preoccupations expanded the sound of their debut (as Viet Cong) - Dumb band name controversy - Kumar's #7 - Continuing a triumphant stretch of rock records from Bob Mould - Defying the effects of age, unlike other aging rockers - "More barn!" - The Feelies can't stop/won't stop - Breitling's #6 will be discussed later - Kumar's #6 - Parquet Courts is an interesting act that has evolved quickly - Breitling's #5 - Straight outta Portland, OR - Lubec adds layers to its sound - Kumar's #5 - Heavy space rock from Vancouver - To be continued Completely Conspicuous is available through the iTunes podcast directory. Subscribe and write a review! The ope

Part 1 of my conversation with guest Jay Breitling about our favorite indie rock of 2016. Show notes: - We are not Moviefone - Rough year for musician deaths - Trump's top 3 albums - A return to protest music? - Clicky Clicky HQ is fully Alexa-ized - The kids love the vinyl (well, the hipsters do, anyway) - Albums are back, sort of - Crowdfunding albums is becoming more prevalent - Breitling's bubbling under albums: A Giant Dog, Thin Lips, Bent Shapes, Yr Poetry, Pinegrove, Horse Jumper of Love, Guillermo Sexo, California Snow Story - Kumar's: Used Cassettes, Savages, Dino Jr., Radiohead, Split Single, Preoccupations, Descendents, Johnny Foreigner, Terry Malts, Hallelujah the Hills, Kristin Hersh, I Don't Cares, Nick Cave, Gord Downie, PJ Harvey - Downie teamed with comics artist Jeff Lemire on combo album/graphic novel - Breitling's #10 - Cold Pumas back with a hot new release - Kumar's #10 - Possibly the last Tragically Hip album - Different sound courtesy of producer

Part 3 of my conversation with guest Brian Salvatore as we look back at the music of 1990. Show notes: - Check out Brian's podcast Input/Output - Jay's #3 album of 1990 - Public Enemy was controversial - Homophobia was pervasive back then, especially in hip hop - PE scared white America - Brian's #3 - They Might Be Giants was in the middle of a classic run of albums - Song-a-Day Hotline - Jay's #2 - After a decade of weirdness, Neil Young re-established himself as a rock icon - Took Sonic Youth and Social D on the road - Brian's #1 and Jay's #5 - Kim Deal and Tanya Donelly teamed up - Deal stepped out of Black Francis' shadow - Brian's #2 - Pixies release their surfiest album - When 3/4 of Pixies crossed paths with some interesting neighbors - Jay's #1 - Jane's Addiction's tour de force - Scored an accidental video and radio hit with "Been Caught Stealing" - Starts out fast and punchy, ends with side 2 of long, epic songs - Perry Farrell's transitio