Completely Conspicuous

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 drugs were more prevalent in the '70s and '80s, but the '90s acts paid the price

- Cornell's first solo album Euphoria Morning is really good

- Less impressed with Audioslave

- Soundgarden leaves a terrific body of work

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 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 "Theme to Big F'in Pants" by Jay Breitling. Voiceover work is courtesy of James Gralian.

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 popularity

- Make way for Jacob Sartorius

- 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 Pants" by Jay Breitling. Voiceover work is courtesy of James Gralian.

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 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 more about Senor Breitling at his fine music blog Clicky Clicky. Voiceover work is courtesy of James Gralian.

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 "Theme to Big F'in Pants" by Jay Breitling. Find out more about Senor Breitling at his fine music blog Clicky Clicky. Voiceover work is courtesy of James Gralian.

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 Conspicuous is "Theme to Big F'in Pants" by Jay Breitling. Find out more about Senor Breitling at his fine music blog Clicky Clicky. Voiceover work is courtesy of James Gralian.

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

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 more about Senor Breitling at his fine music blog Clicky Clicky. Voiceover work is courtesy of James Gralian.

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 Pants" by Jay Breitling. Find out more about Senor Breitling at his fine music blog Clicky Clicky. Voiceover work is courtesy of James Gralian.

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 more about Senor Breitling at his fine music blog Clicky Clicky. Voiceover work is courtesy of James Gralian.

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 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 more about Senor Breitling at his fine music blog Clicky Clicky. Voiceover work is courtesy of James Gralian.