Category: Music Reviews

For this CD review of “Delusions of Grandeur” from Cathy Richardson, it took The Dude on the Right a few listens to remember how much he likes Cathy’s songs, and even though the CD doesn’t rock a lot, he still liked it a lot. It might need a couple of listens to grow on you, but it will grow, if you take the time to listen.

By:

The Dude on the Right
Maybe it’s time I finally just do some investing for our podcasts, and I suppose
even my blogs, and just buy a dozen VCR’s or TIVO’s, so I can start recording
all kinds of the funny/bizarre/inane things people say when they are on TV. 
My latest case for this happened yesterday when, as I was getting ready to get
out of the door, I heard some dude, on the news, proclaim that with the
power-outage they were having in the neighborhood, and it being really hot here
in Chicago, that this was Chicago’s "Katrina."  Hmm?  Let’s see? 
It was around 7 in the morning, the power went out the night before around 7,
and the City of Chicago and ComEd seemed to quickly step-up and start making
sure the elderly were cared for, that people were able to get plenty of free
water, and, well, you could also find locals stores outside the power outage
zone (it’s not like it was the entire city), and buy water, in an
air-conditioned building.  I have a feeling some actual Katrina survivors
would have a few words for this dude, and I wouldn’t even hold it against them
if they took his free water.

But this blog isn’t about my need to invest in
the web site, this blog is really about two words, totaling four syllables, and
those equating to:

Janet Jackson

Why would I even mention her name when I
blame her for the advancement of many of our censorship woes today?  I
mention her name because there was a news segment on our local news, that Janet
Jackson was in Chicago, promoting something I hope no one buys, and the segment
wanted me to just pull out my hair, throw the TV out of the window, and then go
outside, watch out for the broken glass, pick-up my TV, bring it back inside,
and pray it wasn’t broken so I could watch some gratuitous violence, gratuitous
laughs, and gratuitous nudity on one of my cable channels.  Or at least be
able to watch Howard TV.

But getting back to the news’ segment.

So our local station sent a reporter
to this press conference of Janet’s, and the reporter quickly stated that Janet
would answer questions about anything.  Here’s what the segment reporter
found to be "questions about anything:"

• A question about the new CD
• A question about working with Nelly
• A question about gaining 60 pounds for a movie that was never made and
  how that felt.
• A question about how the 40 year old dudette has survived over the
  years.

I will give these admissions, that the reporter they sent to the press
conference isn’t one to usually be confrontational, so I don’t see her ever
asking questions that might be controversial, at least to Janet Jackson. 
I also was not present for the press conference, so if someone was there,
asking the hard-hitting questions, and Janet Jackson was actually answering
"questions about anything," I haven’t heard them yet, but here are some of
the questions I would have like to have asked her, although I probably would
have chickened out in a room full of people and just asked something like
"Who influences you in your music today?"  I guess I would be better
off sending our crack interviewer, Stu Gotz, to ask questions like:

• How do you feel knowing that your actions at the Super Bowl have
  created the excuse the government was looking for to start censoring
  what we hear and see on radio and television?
• Janet, this is a multi-part question:  What’s with the
  "Wardrobe Malfunction?"  Who’s fault was it, really?  Was it
  the seamstress?  Was it Justin Timberlake and his incredibly strong
  forearms?  If you planned it, did you really think that "Star"
  piercing would suppress the masses about nudity?  And couldn’t you
  have ditched the piercing so we would have seen what most of us have
  been dreaming to see since that "Rolling Stone" cover many years back?
• My father always said that women are more sexually mysterious with
  their clothes on because you have to imagine them naked, so why did you
  ruin our imaginations by popping out your boob at the Super Bowl?
• Since the "Wardrobe Malfunction" wasn’t your fault, and if your
  personal seamstress was involved in making your dress at the Super Bowl,
  or even if not, have you either fired them, or made sure whomever it
  was, would never work as a seamstress again, because they have ruined,
  for all of the rest of us, our radio and television viewing pleasure?
• After you gained about 30 pounds, why didn’t you go to these film
  folks and ask them if you really needed to add another 30 pounds for the
  film?  And I read that Mariah Carey has gotten your role. 
  She’s got a concert tour coming up, and I don’t think she will be
  gaining 60 pounds anytime soon.  Did they change the role for her? 
  And why not you?
• What the hell were you thinking letting Justin grab your boob? 
  Do you know where his hands have been?

I’m pretty sure, with any of those questions, "Questions about
anything" wouldn’t really hold up for me, or even Stu, at that press
conference.  But for all of these years, and I’m sorry, but unless
some person stitching her outfit had it in for everyone, someone really
knows why Janet Jackson really had her "Wardrobe Malfunction," and go
ahead, call me an idiot, but I still think Janet really knows.  The
thing is, that if she really was involved, and she just stepped up and
said "I planned it, the TV folks had no idea, because I wanted to make a
statement about…" whatever, government censorship might have a few
more troubles getting things as laws, and she probably could have
spinned the entire incident as a cheerleader for being a daring dudette. 
Her actions, for whatever reason, and whomever let/made it happen, our
world has changed where people are clamoring for the government to
protect our children.  Our government should be there to protect
our children in times of war.  Our government should be there to
protect our children from criminals.  But it should always be the
role of the parent to protect our children from radio and TV by doing
one of two things – turning it off or changing the channel.  Sure,
the Janet Jackson boob thing happened so fast, so maybe those options
don’t totally apply, but my parents would have at least had the balls to
say something like, if we had even noticed her boob, "grabbing a girls
bra isn’t appropriate like he did, so don’t do that."  Sometimes
lessons need to be learned by watching TV, and most of the times, it
should be our parents teaching those lessons.

Parents have a job to do, and for the sake of our country, they had
better stop trying to make the government do their job.

And Janet Jackson I’m sorry, but until you come totally clean on this
issue, I can’t support you, or your music projects.

That’s it for this one! I’m The Dude on the Right!! L8R!!!

The Dude on the Right is still trying to review all of the CD’s he has, and here are a few more. He’s got a great CD of Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana, done by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, his secretary was mostly worried that GWAR’s CD had giraffes in the lyrics, and he’s sort of sorry for giving the John Scofield CD a lower rating. The Dude on the Right still really doesn’t get jazz.

The Dude on the Right is trying to get back to reviewing all of the CD’s in his CD collection. He has many CDs, but a few reviews already “in the can” as it would be, so he’ll be trying to get them out as quickly as possible. In any case, this time he’s got a review of something from “The Who” and another from “Corrosion of Conformity.”

For this podcast, Stu & The Dude give their weekend wrap-up. It’s an action-packed episode with talks about “Cars,” “A Prairie Home Companion,” rude movie-goers, kids at inappropriate movies, and new Chicago champions.

By:

The Dude on the Right
I was faced with my first ever CD purchasing dilemma today.  I had heard of
the dilemma before, the fact that Sony music has been putting

copy protection on some of their CD’s, but today it stared me right in the
face, at the f.y.e. store in my local mall, as I contemplated purchasing the
latest CD from Neil Diamond called "12 Songs."

It seems, unbeknownst to most
of the music purchasing public, you know, those who actually go to a store and
buy the CD with the sole intent of just listening to it on their CD player,
computer, or maybe iPod or other portable device, Sony has been encoding some
releases with a form of copy protection.  Pretty much if you put the CD in
your computer to play, the Sony player opens up, you accept their agreement
without reading it because that’s what you do, and in the background the CD
installs a copy-protection scheme on your computer so you can only rip the music
to the Windows protection scheme (sorry, no iPod installing for you), but even
worse, installs this copy protection scheme in what is known in the hacking
world as a
rootkit on your computer.  Suddenly your computer is actually more
prone to getting a trojan horse virus, and you didn’t even plan on it. 
That’s the easiest way I can explain this issue, but for more, head to your
favorite search engine and type in the phrase "Sony rootkit" and you can
research it to your hearts content.

So, there I was, seeing that there were
actually two versions of the CD, one with 12 songs, and another with two bonus
songs, and just as I was ready to shell out the extra bucks for the two bonus
songs, I turned the CD over, and low and behold, in what really just looks like
your standard "To run the extra features on your computer you need" box, it
vaguely referenced the fact it would load this crap on my computer.  I knew
some work-arounds to this issue, but really, is it worth my time and frustration
to get Neil’s new music on my iPod?  And yes, I know I could actually save
money by just downloading it from the iTunes store, even with the two bonus
tracks, but  for me, there is something permanent about actually owning the
physical CD, a fact I realized after downloading the latest Bon Jovi CD from
iTunes rather than buying it.  I was torn, because I really wanted the CD,
but it really pissed me off with the Sony folks trying to force copy protection
on me, and not even in what was really a secure way.

So I didn’t buy the new
Neil Diamond CD.  I took a stand, and Neil, as much as I love ya, until
Sony gets rid of this copy protection crap (and supposedly from the latest news
the Sony folks are pulling the CD’s from the stores and re-issuing them without
the protection, but we’ll see), and will let me put it on my iPod, I’ve got to
take that stand, although it probably won’t matter much, and in the end, I’ll
probably just download the songs from iTunes and save a few bucks.

The record
companies, still, just don’t seem to get it.  They didn’t get it when file
sharing started, they didn’t get it when Napster exploded, and they sure as hell
don’t seem to be getting it now, especially by installing hidden software on
your computer that can actually make it more vulnerable to getting a Trojan
virus, or if you try to get rid of it, you actually f-up your computer. 
Maybe instead of just someone who is a great business person, the record folks
might actually try to put someone in authority who has a clue to the buying
public, and how technology is affecting them.  "Don’t steal our music," and
"Dammit, we want more money from Apple" seem to be the music company’s current
mantras, and all those mantras do is make the music buying public seek out the
same ways to get music they have been continually been fighting, by downloading
it free from someone who has figured out how to get around the copy protection
scheme, or at least from their friend next door.  Really, until the record
company folks actually figure out a way to stop someone, in the most simplest
terms of copying songs, from A:  Purchasing a legal version of a CD. 
2:  Playing that CD on their stereo.  III:  Having microphones in
front of their speakers, plugged into the "Mic In" on their computer sound card
and using any generic sound recording software to record each track. 
Quatro:  Making sure that the individual songs are in an mp3 format. 
5:  Sending those songs to two of their friends, who then send them to two
of their friends, who then send them to two of their friends, and so on, and so
on, and so on, the record companies have no shot at really controlling music
piracy.  But if they want my ten to twenty dollars to buy it, and I will,
all I really ask is that they don’t fuck up my computer, and they let me put it,
easily, on my iPod.

I’m stepping off of my soapbox now.  My next Blog
will be about the proposed size of Garth Brooks’ unit, not by my recollection,
but by something our crack reporter Trash witnessed at a press conference, and
our dudette, Whammy, who really loves Prince, especially since he’s back to
using his real name, that being, of course, Prince, and her scientific study on
how to figure out the size of a dude’s unit.  I’ll bet you will all be
waiting for that.

That’s it for this one!  I’m The Dude on the Right!!  L8R!!!

By:

The Dude on the Right

A review of Bon Jovi’s latest CD, "Have A Nice Day," is
my
latest podcast, and it’s probably a train-wreck, so, I hope, like most
disasters, you can’t help but listen to the entire thing.  My talking, I
believe, is over-modulated (meaning slightly distorted), but I think the music
sounds alright.  I’ve got to work on that a bit.  I also talked some
about the World Series and some of the celebrities that showed up at

The Joan, since I’m pretty sure I figured a decent way to get audio from my
TIVO to be able to be included in a podcast.  The questions are still out
there, though, like
is Bernie Mac
really a huge White Sox fan, and how do you really pronounce Dan
Castellaneta?

As always, I welcome your comments.

That’s it for this one!  I’m The Dude on the Right!!  L8R!!!