Tag Archives: music

Denson & Young vs. Egyptian Totalitarianism.

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Black clouds circled above the Great Pyaramid of Giza as president Mohamed Morsi stood on top, clutching a brightly glowing staff. “Now that I have finally found the mystical Staff of Osiris, I can grant myself sweeping new powers and declare myself Pharaoh in this, the new AGE OF MORSI!”



He descended down the pyramid with his Muslim Brotherhood when he was met at the base by a large group of protestors. He waved his wand, bellowed “SILENCE!” and the crowd was instantly transformed into mindless, obedient mummies. Morsi laughed and shouted to the heavens “WHO WILL DARE DEFY ME NOW?”



Just then a flicker of light shone in the distance. A small speck flying through the air that came closer and closer. Eventually everybody could see that speck was Denson and Young flying in on top of a magic carpet. The Pharaoh laughed and said “What can you do to stop me? I have the power of Osiris! The power of MUMMIES!” He lifted Osiris’ staff high above his head and it shot a bolt of lightning at two of the members of his Muslim Brotherhood. They transformed into winged mummies and began to fly up towards Denson and Young.



Denson pulled an oil lamp out of his guitar case and a genie appeared. The genie looked at Denson and Young and said “I wish for you to play the most beautiful song in the world.” They looked back at the genie, said “your wish is our command” and played a song so beautiful that the Great Sphinx shed a tear. The winged mummies ceased their murderous path and simply fell to the ground. All the mummies on the ground looked up as the bandages fell from their skin and color returned to their faces. The staff, once glowing with power had dulled in Pharaoh Morsi’s hand and began to crumble into dust. Morsi looked up at Denson, Young and the genie and pleaded “How? How did you defeat me?” “The genie looked down with pity and explained “the brilliant luminescence of music and truth will always wash out the shadows of evil.” Morsi’s skin began to dry out and bandages wrapped themselves around his skin, starting at his fingertips and working their way in. The bandages crawled up his neck and before they could cover his mouth he pleaded “What’s happening? Please, make this stop!”



Denson explained “the price you pay for toying with the power of the gods. You are now cursed to wander the desert as a mummy. Never knowing true peace.” The bandages enveloped Morsi until he was completely covered. He then stretched his arms out in front of him and slowly lurched into the desert, never to be seen again.



Denson and Young began to set up a celebration show for the protesters and asked the genie if he wanted to stay and watched. The genie smiled and said “thanks, but your song broke my curse. It’s been 3,000 years but now I can finally die. Thank you.” The genie then slowly evaporated in front of their eyes.



Would you like to hear the song that dethroned the evil mummy tyrant and broke the genie’s curse? All you need to do is come to the Comedy Corner Underground tonight for Denson&Young: 1,000 Unicorn Whispers (Redux).



Come experience the music, the laughter, and the free cookies.



[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOqeXe1ms-c&w=420&h=315]



Let us put music in you.

Let us put music in you.

Wading Through the Waist-High Pile of Metaphoric Shit That is Local Radio

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I’ve never liked popular music.



That sentence sounds so goddamn pretentious and hipster but I’m really just trying to set up the fact that local radio isn’t for me. My tastes tend more towards punk/indie rock so local radio doesn’t really have what I need. That’s okay because I have a smartphone that I can hook up to my car and play Pandora, download music or comedy podcasts while I drive. That hasn’t really been available to me for the last week, though.



My sister has been out of town on vacation and I’ve been cat sitting for her while she’s gone. She’s letting me use her car while she’s away and I’ve been taking full advantage of it as her little car get’s a lot better milage than my 1997 Grand Marquis –



Old people like these because it reminds them of the tanks they drove in WWII





but there’s no place to plug in my futurephone to get my pandora, music and podcasts so I’ve been listening to the radio. Here’s the preset stations I’ve been listening to –



The Current (89.3 FM):
Okay. This is my go-to station. It’s run by Minnesota Public Radio and they actually play some good stuff. They don’t always have what I want but back when I listened to radio in my pre-smartphone days they were what I listened to. Okay music, no commercials. I turn the radio on and they’re in the middle of their fucking pledge drive.

I get it. They need the pledge drive. They rely on listener support to be commercial free and play what they want blah blah. I get that it’s necessary but I haven’t listened to them in a year. I’m not going to sit around and listen to them blather about how the pledge drive is needed to have me enjoy the station if I haven’t been enjoying the station for a year. Not to mention the couple of songs I did hear just sounded like I got hit in the neck with a tranquilizer dart while a guy with a beard whispers in my ear about swamps or something.



Radio K (770 AM):
This station isn’t on my sister’s presets but I switched to here after getting fed up with the panhandling and narcoleptic indie-folk whatever they were playing on The Current. Radio K is the U of M college station and was the first radio station I’ve ever liked. Why did I ever stop listening to it?

Turning the station on I remembered why. It’s a college AM radio station. The songs all sound like an angry teenager screaming at you through a tin can and string telephone.



Kool 108 (107.9 FM):
Maybe I’m just too old for college radio (I am). I’m getting old. I’ll check out the oldie’s station. I’m not a big oldies fan but maybe they’ll have some CCR or something.

I turn it to Kool 108 and they’re playing Michael Jackson. Not the Jackson Five. Michael Jackson. Beat it. He’s on the oldies station. That can’t be right. He was popular when I was a kid. Oldies are stuff my dad listens to. Oh God, I’m getting “oldies” old.

“Beat It” is 29 years old. If “Beat It” got a girl pregnant right out of high school “Beat It”‘s kid would be going into middle school next year.





KS95 (94.5 FM), KTwin (96.3 FM), KDWB (101.3 FM) and Jack 104 (104.1 FM)
These all get lumped into the same category because as far as I can tell, they’re the same station. I’ve flipped back and forth between them and I think they only play Gotye’s “Somebody That I Used to Know”, Carly Rae Jespen’s “Call Me Maybe” and a third song that’s different for each station so you can tell them apart. At one point I flipped from one station playing “Somebody That I Used to Know” to another station playing a remix of the same song.

At one point Jack 104 threw to a bumper that said “LISTEN TO JACK AT WORK (beeping noise, car tires screeching, space laser sound effects)! (sarcastically) It’s either that or a podcast of ‘All Things Considered'”.



I’ve never listened to “All Things Considered”, I’m not even sure of what they talk about but I would fucking kill for some “All Things Considered” right about now.

Ugh. Country Music: The Craigslist Job Postings Continue!

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In my ongoing quest to take my writing skills and translate them into jobs I find on craigslist, I came across this one looking for bloggers! I’m technically a blogger (don’t tell anybody but I’m unlicensed) so let’s see what we can do!



Country Music Blog Writer (Stillwater, MN)

Do you like country music? Do you find yourself following the news and social media of people involved in country music? We are looking for someone to hunt down and scoop all things country music. Must have good writing/blogging skills and must be extremely reliable, professional and able to work on a deadline. Please respond with a writing sample, resume and a little bit about yourself. Part time 2-3 hours a day.

Location: Stillwater, MN
it’s NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests
Compensation: per diem
PostingID: 3018956683


Oh, man. This one’s going to be hard for me. It’s common knowledge that I’m an awesome writer but this subject will be challenging because I don’t listen to country music because I hate country music. I can’t stand it. I think it’s terrible.



Shit. I need the money so let’s do this. Since I don’t listen to country music I’ll have to see what’s popular. Upon googling “new country music” I went to CMT’s website and saw all the “hot new artists”. One of which was Kip Moore who has the new hit single… Oh Jesus Christ… “Somethin’ Bout a Truck”.



[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3YfNFR6gh2E&w=560&h=315]



Reading the comments on the CMT website people are generally pleased with the video. Almost all the comments talk about how trucks are awesome (one lamented that the truck should have been a Ford) and to quote one comment “Glad to see this song doing so well on the charts! If you’ve never had fun in a truck in a cornfield, then you ain’t living, there’s somethin’ bout a truck!”.



Reading the comments on the youtube video (had to go to youtube for the embedable vid) and everybody’s just commenting about how race mixing is destroying the white race but those comments are pretty much on every youtube video so we’ll just ignore that.



Alright. Time to write a review of this video.



Kip Moore scores a home run (or touchdown. Whichever sport country fans like more) with his new video “Somethin’ Bout a Truck”. This song has it all! Trucks, attractive women, beer, cornfields and creeks! While this song certainly could have benefited from having a faithful dog and a show of appreciation to the troops fighting for us overseas, Kip Moore really captures the fun of drinking beer with an attractive woman while sitting in the back of a truck in a rural setting.

My favorite part about the song is it’s timelessness. You could literally have written this song 90 years ago and not have to change a single lyric! That quality is perfect for country music. Showing through song a portrait of an America that has never changed and never will.


Yee haw!

There’s something about that… A certain “je ne sais quoi”

Let’s Watch Some Shitty ’90s Music Videos!

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If you’re anything like me you’re probably tired as shit right now because you drove your sister to the airport at 4-in-the-fucking-A-M and you don’t want to write a blog. You don’t want to do anything but watch some awful music videos that were somehow popular 11-15 years ago. Let’s do that together.


[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mbBbFH9fAg?rel=0&w=420&h=315]

This whole obsession with awful music videos started with Brody showing me this one. This video is like a five minute argument against everything “Gen-X”. The band rolling their eyes through the performance like they’d rather be somewhere else. The stupid imagery of how suburban life is all fake and hollow. There’s seriously a Barbie burning on a grill. The awful stretchy-face computer graphics. Speaking of awful computer graphics-



[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSCfIVa9Shs?rel=0&w=420&h=315]

This is just lazy writing and directing. If the director had listened to the entire song and wanted to do a faithful adaptation, the video would have been about the singer of Del Amitri spending all night trying to convince some girl to cheat on her boyfriend. Instead, the director heard the first line of the song and noted that it contained the words “pretty” and “baby”. This visionary director then decided the video should be pretty women pushing around the band as babies around in strollers. I had to learn this song for a monthly comedy show I did for a few years ago and watched the video multiple times to memorize the song. Too many times. I still have the occasional nightmare of a Del Amitri headed baby trying to seduce me.



[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hG9C0VwruXE?rel=0&w=420&h=315]

The video for this isn’t particularly awful, it’s just the douchiest fucking song on the planet. The way Shawn Mullins breathes the verses into the mic you can almost feel him uncomfortably close behind you, whispering into your ear as hot gin vapors hit the back of your neck. He grabs your shoulders tight as he grunts out shit that must sound so poetic in his mind like “She’s seen her share of devils in this… ANGEL town” and “Everybody’s got a plan. It’s kind of like Nashville… with a tan.” As a joke I spent a week answering the phone by singing the chorous of this song. That was two years ago and nobody has called me since.


What’s your (least)favorite shitty ’90s music video? Leave a comment and let’s all share the shame that was Alternative music a decade ago!

Why Does My Dick Shine?

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(originally posted on facebook in 2008.)

My dick is a mass of incandescent gas
A gigantic nuclear furnace
Where hydrogen is built into helium
At a temperature of millions of degrees
My dick, it’s hot
My dick is not
A place where we could live
But here on Earth there’d be no life
Without the light it gives

We need its light
We need its heat
We need its energy
Without my dick,
Without a doubt,
There’d be no you and me

My dick is a mass of incandescent gas
A gigantic nuclear furnace
Where hydrogen is built into helium
At a temperature of millions of degrees

My dick is hot
My dick is so hot that everything on it is a gas.
Iron, copper, aluminium, and many others.
My dick is large.
If my dick were hollow, a million Earths could fit inside,
and yet, my dick is only a middle-sized dick.
My dick is far away
About ninety-three million miles away! And that’s why it looks so small.
And even when it’s out of sight, my dick shines night and day.

My dick gives heat
My dick gives light
The dicklight that we see
The dicklight comes from my own dick’s atomic energy

Scientists have found that my dick is a huge atom-smashing machine.
The heat and light of my dick come from the nuclear reactions of
hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, and helium.

My dick is a mass of incandescent gas
A gigantic nuclear furnace
Where hydrogen is built into helium
At a temperature of millions of degrees

I don’t know how Brody and I stumbled onto this in conversation but we’ve been laughing hysterically ever since.

With sincere apologies to They Might Be Giants