- No, I’m not being partial to a hometown band when I tell you that you should absolutely pick up Attack & Release, the new album by the Black Keys. The Keys may hail from my hometown of Akron, Ohio, but fans of good blues-twinged garage rock everywhere know and love their music. Their four previous albums have all been awesome, so there’s no reason to be anything but pumped for No. 5. Previous albums have literally been recorded in basement studios set up in houses where drummer Patrick Carney resided, but Attack & Release represents the duo’s first foray into a traditional studio setting. Producer Brian Burton, a.k.a. Danger Mouse of the alt/hip-hop duo Gnarls Barkley, is at the controls for Carney and Dan Auerbach. The disc is only 11 songs long and covers a scant 39 minutes, but nearly all of those tracks and minutes are packed with awesome music. Depending on which track you’re listening to, you might catch a banjo riff, organ keys or any number of unexpected sounds that give the record texture and depth. All I Ever Wanted is one such song, featuring lengthy doses of banjo and a backwoods, bluesy rock feel that the Keys have become known for. One song that Keys fans have already heard from the album is Strange Times, an up-tempo tune that debuted at a show at Akron’s Civic Theatre back in December. It’s a catchy rock song and one that has a good chance of being one of the singles from the album that will get the most airplay. There are plenty of mellow, moody jams on the second half of the album, all of them infused with a uniquely gritty Black Keys feel. There isn’t a bad song on the entire album, not if you love great garage rock music with some depth and thought to it. I should also mention that last Tuesday, another favorite band of mine, Jack White’s secondary project the Raconteurs, released their second album and I’ve had a blast listening to it as well. Consoling the Lonely carries a lot of the unique, off-the-wall feel of Broken Boy Soldiers, the group’s debut album, and also features White’s strong songwriting and penchant for vivid lyrics. Back to back weeks with great albums is rare, so if you haven’t heard either Attack & Release or Consoling the Lonely, these are two of the best of 2008 and albums you need in your collection.
- There are some jobs you just don’t want a white supremacist in. Actually, the ideal solution would be educating all race supremacists to the point that they stop being total ignoramuses and start accepting people of all races and creeds as equal, but barring a miracle on the level of loaves and fishes, that ain’t happening. So a second option is keeping people with these out-of-touch, bigoted beliefs out of certain jobs and roles in society where their perverted views on the world could do serious damage. Police officer would be one occupation that a race supremacist should not be allowed in, what with cops being called upon to fairly and uniformly apply the laws of their city, country or state to everyone in their jurisdiction. So you can see where it’s concerning when two white police officers working in a sensitive field such as narcotics have their lockers decorated with “White Power” bumper stickers. Such is the plight of two members of the Philadelphia police department’s Narcotics Strike Force, both of whom were transferred off the NSF and onto regular patrol and hit with 20-day unpaid suspensions after superiors discovered the racist stickers inside their police department lockers. Either give up the racist world view or leave it at home, fellas, because putting it out in public is going to have nothing but negative ramiprecussions. I’m just guessing, this is just me thinking out loud, but in a city like Philly, with a large police force, there are probably quite a few black, Asian, Hispanic and other minority cops on the force. You put that sticker in your locker, one of them is going to see it and regardless of how seriously you take it, they’re going to be offended. Use your 20 days off to pick up a new world view and see if you can’t manage to join the rest of us in the 21st century.
- China can't keep its head in the sand much longer, right? Their government has to realize that the entire world is watching and that no one is on their side when it comes to how they are handling the growing rebellion in Tibet, right? I’d say that much is obvious, but the Chinese just keep trying to plow ahead with their focus entirely on the Olympics, putting on a happy face as the uprising in the country they so wrongly oppress grows more violent and bloody by the day. Even as the Chinese government continues its attempted roundup of wanted protestors from earlier uprisings, fresh protests broke out over the weekend in the capital city of Lhasa. Even as foreign diplomats wrapped up a tightly guarded, restricted visit to the embattled nation over the weekend, citizens there continued to rally against their oppressors. A protest sprang up outside of Lhasa’s Ramoche monastery, with another major uprising at Jokhang Temple. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, China, but this isn’t going away. Placing your hands over your ears and yelling “LALALALALALALALALA!!!” doesn’t mean it isn’t happening. No one is going to forget that you are brutally repressing the Tibetans just because you also happen to be hosting the Olympics. You’re new to thise whole hosting of major international sporting events scene, but that ain’t the way it works.
- In a week when it was the only freaking show I watch that aired a new episode, last night’s Greek was really good, almost good enough to make up for the fact that all of my other fave shows are either done for the season already or on breaks because of the lingering effects of the damn writers’ strike. The black cloud hanging over the Greek system at Cyprus Rhodes University remains the theme for the season, with the kibosh supposedly being put on any good parties and other general hijinks the CRU Greek system has become known for. At the heart of it all, who would it be other than Kappa Tau and Zeta Beta (they are the frat and sorority housing the show’s protagonists, people)? With Lizzie, the Zeta Beta national rep, still living in the ZBZ house and making life miserable for everyone, Casey Cartwright is losing members left and right. She needs to boost morale, but with wet blanket Lizzie on hand, the usual morale boosters (booze and boys) aren’t an option - or are they? When Lizzie wants to boost morale with lame ideas like a book club and a no-alcohol party, Casey sees a chance to spice things up. She reaches out to her old flame Cappie at Kappa Tau to host a party, a secret gathering taking place in the KT basement while Lizzie’s lame “Great Gatsby” party goes on upstairs. Of course, Cappie has to find a way to work in his sex-capades with new girl Rebecca Logan, Casey’s rival at ZBZ, along with the party, but who better to juggle the two? Also in the mix is Rusty, who is trying to convince his pal Calvin to jump from the stuffy, pretentious Omega Chi fraternity to Kappa Tau because the Omegas continue to be slow in accepting a gay guy into their midst. Rusty presses Calvin to join Kappa Tau, but even after witnessing a raging KT party firsthand, Calvin decides to accept Omega Chi president Evan’s offer to come back. That doesn’t stop Evan from accusing Cappie of trying to steal his pledge away and subsequently turning in Cappie and his frat for having an illegal party. Of course, experience party throwers like the boys of Kappa Tau have contingency plans. Even after soundproofing their basement so they could throw the party in the first place without anyone knowing, they had a backup plan that allowed them to deal with the fact that Lizzie invited the devil himself, Dean Bowman, to the party so he could see the good, clean fun for himself. With Lizzie and the dean on hand, things became dicey. occupying the dean and keeping him from going down to the basement to see the real party become top priority. When the dean finally did poke around and got close, only a phone call diverted him in time. Of course, that phone call was from the campus police, letting him know about the tip that came in from an anonymous source about alcohol at the party. Plan B went into effect for the Kappa Taus when the campus pigs, er, police showed up. Cappie hijacked their golf cart and led a few off on a chase while his brothers hid the booze and turned the basement into an impromptu reading group meeting. The girls of ZBZ pretended to be helping some of the less intelligent Kappa Tau brothers with their reading troubles, which narrowly averted disaster. Casey had promised to resign as ZBZ president if the party went astray, but that was averted. Cappie spent the night in CRU jail, got 100 hours of community service and had a showdown with Evan outside the police station after being released. Threats were made, ultimatums thrown down, so be ware….also woven throughout the episode were close encounters of the Cappie-Casey kind, enough to remind us that it’s still a Rebecca-Cappie-Casey love triangle. Cappie claimed to want to have a real, official relationship with Rebecca instead of just a fling, but she doesn’t seem to buy into what he’s selling. AWOL from this episode was Rusty’s former flame, Jen K. Not AWOL was his prudish roomie Dale, who continues to push his Purity Pledge group on Rusty and anyone whole will listen. I said this last season and I’ll say it now: Dale is such a one-dimensional, clichéd character that he’s extremely annoying any doesn’t add much to the show. At the end of last season, he started to get some depth, but this year it’s back to the same old, same old. Well, that pretty much wraps this episode, so until next week, kiddos….
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