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Category: News

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  • The Rock Hall Class of 2009: Part One: Ready for War?

    It’s always interesting to see who the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame nominating committee chooses each year for potential entrants into the next year’s class of inductees. This year’s 9-artist selection (of which 5 will be chosen) offers some surprises.

    Metallica and Run-DMC were widely considered shoo-ins. Metallica basically popularized metal (as in the all-black, cut off T-shirts and dirty tight jeans with mullets kind of metal) for a mainstream audience and have remained relevant through their entire quarter-century in existence. Run-DMC, are, well, Run-DMC. They revolutionized hip-hop, took it from a fad into an art form. There’s no doubt that these guys, however little time their star burned, deserve a place here. I’d say those are the only two acts whose inductions are assured.

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  • The Block is Back! New Kids Light Up New Jersey!

    New Kids on the Block. Photo by socialitelife.com
    New Kids on the Block. Photo by socialitelife.com

    Last night, I found myself some place I never thought I’d be…at a New Kids on the Block concert. Not because I’m ashamed to be a NKOTB fan, mind you, but because I thought the boy band would never get back together. 20 years after the success of their breakthrough album, “Hangin’ Tough”, the still (relatively) young New Kids have reunited and I was fortunate enough to see their first show on American soil in fourteen years.

    The crowd was, as expected, about 90% women.  Somewhat surprisingly, the cavernous Izod Center (formerly Continental Airlines Arena, capacity 20K) was about 90% full. While I overheard a bunch of guys in the men’s room complaining about their wives or girlfriends forcing them to come to the show (one guy said that he said he’d come to this show if his wife went to Cruefest), there were also a handful of dudes sporting NKOTB tees, coming out of the closet, so to speak, after (like me) being embarrassed to be a New Kids fan during their high school (or younger) years. Hell, I even spotted one creepy Deadhead guy in the audience. Either he was looking to score some from one of the many single ladies in the audience, or he was mighty disappointed when he realized that the NKOTB aren’t little boys anymore.

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  • Infatueighties: #85: “Paradise City”

    The cover of Guns 'n Roses' "Paradise City" single
    The cover of Guns

    It’s hard to believe that anyone listened to “Appetite for Destruction” without coming away with the thought that Axl Rose was riding the crazy train jusssst a little bit. Hell, check out “Paradise City”, released as the album’s third single and hitting the Top Ten nearly two years after the album’s release. It starts off with chiming guitars and an almost country feel, with the memorable and easygoing chorus and the deep-voiced “oh, won’t you please take me home”s before the music revs up, Axl sets the vocals on to screech and starts singing at about 5 times the speed. It’s a little disturbing, but it’s a lot of fun, and it helps make “Paradise City” one of the most singable hard rock songs of the entire decade, with only “Livin’ on a Prayer” and “Pour Some Sugar on Me” registering in my head as more singable.

    I’m not gonna go through the history of G’N R here-I’m sure the majority of you reading (all ten of you) are well aware of Guns ‘n Roses. Hell, most of you are going to piss and/or jizz on yourselves when “Chinese Democracy” finally comes out. So I leave you with this scene from one of my all time favorite movies: