That is a phrase I’m getting completely fucking sick of. Guess what? I love their old stuff. But guess what!? Just because it’s old, doesn’t mean it’s better or you’re going to be any cooler for listening to it. In case you haven’t figured it out, their newest album, “21st Century Breakdown”, is a masterpiece. Anyone who denies that is just plain ignorant.

Just because your older brother got you listening to Dookie when you were nine years old or whatever doesn’t mean that particular album is the end all be all of all things Green Day. Also, just because young kids are dressing in black and wearing a bunch of eyeliner to Green Day shows does not mean that you can’t appreciate their newer music at your age. Kids are kids and they’re having fun. You should be happy for both them and the band that is doing so well right now because of their popularity that spans so many age groups. If you are bitter about youngsters crowding Green Day gigs and think they don’t know what the hell they’re doing, then maybe you’re just old.

When Dookie came out, there was a similar reaction on a smaller scale. Many of Green Day’s fans who had been with them since their 1st and 2nd albums decided to jump ship. They decided that they weren’t going to support a band that appealed to so many more people. As if the band was their property and they didn’t appreciate newcomers getting into them.

Think about that mentality for a second. If you love that band so much…then why the hell aren’t you doing everything you can to earn them as many new fans as possible? Sure, the new wave of Green Day fans probably don’t know all the words to “2,000 Light Years Away”. At the show at the LA Forum it appeared that only about myself plus four other people knew the words to “Disappearing Boy”. Does that mean everyone else should have got the fuck out? Hardly.

My point is, I don’t believe you. I don’t believe it’s a matter of taste. I think you shunned the more recent Green Day albums because they broke new ground and acquired millions of new fans, many of them very young. You miss your Dookie days and you’re jealous that these kids are having their own version now, so you go around acting like it is somehow watered down or less significant. Get over it. Dookie was a fucking incredible, timeless album. So was American Idiot. So is this new one. As far as I’m concerned, so is just about everything they put out.

Okay, except maybe for that U2 collaboration. I can’t stand U2.

How many other bands are still making incredible music after 20 years and still putting on amazing live shows? How many bands at the caliber of Green Day today bring their fans on stage to sing, dance, and play guitar with them?

The point of this rant is simple: don’t you dare try to hate on Green Day. They are the biggest band in the world right now, whether you like it or not. You might as well do yourself a favor and like it.

I know that most of you reading this are probably Green Day fans, not the bitter Bobbies I’m talking about in this post. Yes I just made up “bitter Bobbies”. For you true Green Day fans, I’m sure you understand what I’m talking about. I don’t mean to be negative, I just get frustrated with the people that have closed their minds and seem hellbent on depriving themselves of some of the best music being produced in the world right now.

Lord help them.

Okay, so here’s the thing…I hate the way my hair looks right after I get a haircut. Not because I’m picky, but because it really does look dumb. No matter what you tell the barber, it’s still nearly impossible to get a haircut and then not look like you just got a haircut. Whenever one of your friends gets a fresh haircut, you notice, right? And to some degree it looks a little silly, right??

Well then why is it every time a band puts out a music video, especially if its their first music video, most of them look like they got a haircut the day before? I’ll tell you why…because they probably did!

Of course you want to look good for your first music video. That’s natural. But for crying out loud, get the haircut like 10 days prior to filming. You owe it to yourself and your fans.

And no, they cannot fix your hair in post-production. Well, they probably could, but they’re not going to. Take heed!

I must admit I was one of the many who really wanted to see Blink 182 reunite. After all, Dude Ranch and Enema of the State were like the soundtrack of my high school days, so it’s only natural I would want to be able to recapture those times via a Blink reunion.

Well, now that it has finally happened, I have to say it hasn’t really lived up to my expectations. I can only hope that the three pop-punk superstars that comprise Blink 182 are just trying to get back into their groove, but from what I’ve seen, the chemistry just isn’t there anymore.

I recently watched the reunited band play live on the Jimmy Kimmel show. To be quite honest, it sounded pretty rough around the edges. However, I’ve seen Blink in the past when their performance sounded awful but they still managed to put on an awesome and entertaining show. This time, it seemed like bassist/vocalist Mark Hoppus and drummer Travis Barker were very much in synch, but guitarist/vocalist Tom DeLonge was somewhere else.

In fact, he doesn’t even look like he belongs in the band. Tom used to wear his Fender Strat real low and dress like…well, the rest of the band. Now he looks like a futuristic fighter jet pilot and has his much more “grown up” Gibson signature hollow body guitar is worn at nearly a Paul McCartney height.

Of course, this new look was all part of Tom’s post-Blink project, Angels & Airwaves. Although Mark and Travis stuck more to the Blink formula/image, Tom sort of went off in a direction that we can only assume he had wanted to go in for some time but was restricted by the Blink image. Even if you look at Blink when they were promoting their last album, you could tell Tom wanted to appear more serious by the way he changed the way he dressed and the type of guitar he played.

Well, now Blink is supposedly back 100% and about to tour around the world and play for fans that have been waiting for this occasion for years. But even while all this is going on, Tom is still preoccupied with his Angels & Airwaves project.

Tom was the one that wanted to break Blink 182 up in the first place. It seems odd to me that he would be willing to commit to this reunion but then appear so apathetic about it. But don’t get me wrong, I want to see them succeed as much as any other fan does. I just wish it was like it used to be.

…Sort of how I secretly wish I could be back in high school again. Don’t tell anyone that, though.

In 1998, Cher released a solo album entitled “Believe”, which featured a smash hit single of the same name. One thing in particular that stood out about this track was the strange vocal effect on Cher’s voice. At the time, most people (including those in the recording business) weren’t sure what to make of it. It turned out the robotic sounding effect was merely the “autotune” plugin being used deliberately excessively to give Cher’s voice a sort of electronic sound.

A lot of folks don’t fully understand autotune or the extent of its prevalence in the music business today. I’d say roughly 99.9% of commercial music today features vocals that have been processed with autotune or some sort of pitch correction. This is part of the reason why the music of today sounds so polished in comparison with the music of yesterday.

When people hear “autotune”, a lot of times they associate it with “cheating”. However, it is pretty much the industry standard nowadays. Although the use of the effect can greatly enhance a singer’s performance, it cannot work miracles. You can use autotune until you’re blue in the face, but if you’re working with a terrible vocal performance, there is only so much it can do for you.

The way it works is actually pretty neat. Basically, you tell the computer what key the song is in, and then the autotune analyzes the vocal track and pulls every single note into position by using the respective chromatic scale as a guideline. For instance, if the singer is singing in the key of C, and happens to sing a note that was supposed to be a G butt fell a bit flat, the computer will see that G is the closest note in the key of C to what the singer is singing, and adjust the pitch accordingly. If the singer was close, there is usually no audible clue that autotune was used. However, if the program has to make a significant adjustment, then it begins sounding obvious.

Now, the effect can be used to varying degrees. When a singer is singing, there is a natural sort of glide up and down as notes are sang from one to the next. Depending on any given singer’s particular style, this “glide” may be more or less noticeable. When a great degree of autotune is used to process a vocal track, those subtle shifts in between pitches will be noticed by the computer and appear incorrect since they don’t technically fit in the key of the song (even though the human ear doesn’t notice this). The computer will then eliminate the “glide” in between and cause a seamless and immediate shift from one note to the next. In essence, that is what creates the effect that you hear in the Cher song “Believe”…and about a bazillion other songs.

…Which brings me to my point. Seriously, can we chill with the excessive autotune? I’m all for artistic expression and exploring new sounds…but this is getting played out. Just about every track on Kanye West’s new album seemed to use autotune, and he is far from the only one abusing the effect. I don’t think T-Pain has ever had his voice broadcast without a hefty slathering of extreme autotune.

You know how when you hear a song with a hefty amount of cowbell, it sounds so 80s? What about the unmistakable funk of disco music that represents the 70s? Well, whatever you call the era we’re in now (the 00’s?), I fear that the sound of robot-like autotune will be the musical mascot we all poke fun at when we look back on today.

 As someone who has played in my fair share of bands over the years, I’ve had tons of experience with promoters and club owners. “Pay to play” contracts are an epidemic that have been spreading over the past decade or so, and I thought I’d take the time to address them here so that you newer bands know how to avoid/handle them.

If you aren’t already familiar, a “pay to play” agreement is basically when a club owner or promoter tells you that you have to sell x amount of tickets in order to perform at their venue. They’ll rope you in with unreasonable expectations, telling you that you only have to pay them $10 per ticket, so then if you sell 100 tickets at $15 a piece, you’ll make $500!

Even if it sounds easy, selling a 100 tickets on your own is no simple task. It’s also not one you should be expected to take on. More and more promoters are starting to depend on this business model instead of actually putting together and PROMOTING good shows. After all, why do any real work when you can have bands pay you right out of their pocket to play at your empty venue?

Especially in Los Angeles and other big cities, many promoters will tell you that the ONLY way you can get booked is to sign a “pay to play” agreement. Of course, they don’t call it “pay to play”, they call it a “pre-sell”. No matter what you call it, the bottom line is they are holding you accountable for a certain amount of tickets, and that is simply ridiculous.

So how do you get around it? The best way to avoid these ludicrous agreements is to have professional representation. The pay to play scam is one they are most comfortable attempting with young bands or inexperienced bands that don’t know any better. Most promoters don’t have the nerve to try and pull something like that with a professional talent representative. If you can’t find professional representation, the next best thing is to fake it. Whether it be your uncle the lawyer or your cousin the school teacher, find someone that can make phone calls and do business on behalf of your band. It makes all the difference in the world.

This is especially important for bands that are planning on touring. Could you imagine booking 40 shows across the country, all with respective pre-sale agreements? That would be insane. But believe it or not, there are promoters and club owners that will try to rope out of town bands into such an agreement if they think they can get away with it.

The best way to fight back against this shady way of doing business is to simply refuse to take part in it. Without bands like yours, these clubs would have an empty stage and a boring venue. Never forget that they need you just as much if not more than you need them.

That’s my rant for the day!

 Okay, almost dead. They are most certainly on life support. Now it is just a matter of convincing the emotionally distraught family (the record labels) to pull the plug.

Don’t get me wrong, I love CDs. In my childhood we had to deal with incredibly inconvenient cassette tapes, so as soon as CD technology made its way into the mainstream, it was very exciting. The ability to be able to skip between tracks nearly instantly seemed like the most important technological advancement of all time. Having a CD player quickly went from being prestigious to being mandatory.

Then of course CD burners came along, and the record labels along with the RIAA bitched and moaned about how the ability to copy and share music would destroy the music industry, not unlike how they once bitched and moaned about cassettes. Obviously, CDs didn’t cripple the industry. In fact, the music industry instead saw a golden age of obscene CD sales that it is missing very badly today.

According to modern day record labels, all was fine with the world until that blasted Internet came along. A wild, chaotic, and dangerous place where information was transferred at lightning speeds in an unstable, uncontrolled environment.

In reality, it is just a natural progression of technology, and it is only logical that hard media such as CDs will quickly become obsolete. Instead of shedding tears over the loss of our old friend the CD, why not look at some of the reasons we should be glad to see them go:

• A whole wall of CDs can easily fit onto an electronic device the size of your hand with tons of room to spare.
•  MP3s are a hell of a lot cheaper to send over the internet (free, in most cases) than the cost of shipping a CD.
• CDs are manufactured using a highly toxic and controversial chemical known as Bisphenol A. They also create tons of waste every year.
• Digital audio files cannot be scratched. Cats are also unable to urinate on them.

Instead of grieving over the end of CDs, try to look at the brighter side of things. Digital audio technology is making listening to our favorite music so much more convenient. I think if CDs were here with us right now, they would tell us to be strong and embrace this new era of music.

If you’re still not convinced that the end of the CD is not a positive thing, just think of all the coffee coasters you’ve just acquired.

Cracked.com posted a great article today on the craziest rockstar behavior you’ve ever seen.

Rapper Nas isn’t happy with the media giant Fox, and that hasn’t been a secret for a very long time. He objects to their conservative leanings and what he sees as racism in their news reports. Now he’s taking his opinion one step further.

He already penned a song that protests against the company, and he’s joining both MoveOn.org and ColorOfChange.org in the delivery of a petition to Fox’s Manhattan studios. The petition contains 600,000 signatures, and states that Fox must “end its pattern of racist attacks against Black Americans including presidential candidate Barack Obama and his wife Michelle.”

Nas is protesting what he feels is a pattern of racist language against the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee and his family, and said that Fox “poisons the country with racist propaganda and tries to call it news,” which was a very diplomatic way to put his true feelings into words.

The concerns that Nas has range along most of the news programs that Fox has to offer but the point of the petition was to address the issues regarding Obama and his wife. The confusion of his name with Osama was thought to be deliberate and the fist-bump with his wife when he reached enough delegates to secure the nomination was labeled as a “terrorist” activity.

Here’s a clip.

Its inevitable that eventually your band will worry about its stage presence. If choreography and dance becomes the decision perhaps I can offer a bit of advice.

The past always becomes cool again. Hair band shit will never die and to be perfectly honest I would never want it to. Hips will always be swinging Elvis style and the same dance moves that were cool ten or fifteen years ago will be cool again today. So what was cool dance-wise ten or fifteen years ago? hmm.. Pulling up the good ol’ way back machine I can predict belly dancing…Shit Shakira. Nevermind. How about MC Hammer and Michael Jackson? Perfect. Now if we can just combine the two in a poppy way we may just have ourselves a crowd pleasing winner. Lucky for us the Indians (People from India not Native Americans) are already about that far behind us in style. They’re sick of the beach boys and moving on to the hardcore pop and you bet your ass Indian gangster rap will be next.

Observe and learn you trendy wanna be’s