Megan uploaded more pics from San Diego Street Scene on her site. Check out Tool, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, New York Dolls, Bloc Party, Editors, The Futureheads and Bedouin Soundclash.

After looking at Technorati to see if people actually link to the wisdom featured herein (the answer is very, very few), I learned that our favorite twins Pop Noir have a blog now. Go read it.

Carry on.

Megan posted a small sampling her Street Scene shots on her website. You can check out photos of Social Distortion, AFI, Queens of the Stone Age, Bad Religion, Wolfmother, Rock Kills Kid, She Wants Revenge and Nine Black Alps by clicking on the aforereferenced link.

A smorgasbord of live delights courtesy of KCRW in Santa Monica:

• Tues, Sep 5 * KINKY at the AVALON
• Fri, Sep 8 * COCOROSIE at the AVALON
• Fri, Sep 8 * NOUVELLE VAGUE at THE MUSIC BOX AT THE FONDA
• Sun, Sep 10 * THE POLYPHONIC SPREE plus Nobody & Mystic Chords Of Memory at the MUSIC BOX AT THE HENRY FONDA THEATRE
• Sun, Sep 24 * DJ SHADOW at the AVALON
• Sun, Sept 24 * KCRW is media sponsor for MASSIVE ATTACK at the Hollywood Bowl
• Mon, Sep 25 * JUNIOR BOYS at the TROUBADOUR
• Tues, Sep 26 * TV ON THE RADIO at THE GLASSHOUSE in Pomona
• Thur, Sep 28 * SISSOR SISTERS at THE SHRINE EXPO CENTER

KXLU's Blues Hotel aired for the last time on Wednesday August 30. I had planned to listen and to call in to wish Papa John, Morris Beef and Ian well. Alas, I fell asleep during the 10 pm non-news.
I don't really know why Blues Hotel has ceased to exist after something close to twenty years. Even if I did, I probably wouldn't tell anyone. But it just saddens me to know that Papa John's musings will never ring through the night frequency of 88.9 F.M.
When I started working at KXLU, the guys from Blues Hotel were amongst the first people to accept me, even though I was the freaky goth chick. Beef took my friend Amy and I to see Guided By Voices one night. He made us stay through all 62 encores (why does the number of encores increase every time I mention this?). We still had fun. At Blues Hotel, I also learned one of the most important lessons of my college years. Bud Ice is evil. Then, there was the time when they brought up Wayne Kramer during a fundraiser week. We ended up hanging out in the AM booth smoking cigarettes because it was before anybody really cared too deeply about enforcing smoking rules. Somewhere, there is a picture of the lot of us posed with smokes and Wayne Kramer, Mr. MC5, standing between us.
There were times when we butted heads, mostly when I was program director and had to say program director sort of things like, "If I let you have 15 minute air breaks, then I have to let everyone have 15 minute airbreaks and do you really want to listen to that all day?" In the end, though, we always respected each other. These are some great guys, low on pretension and high on a commitment to radio.
So, for the guys at Blues Hotel, so long and good luck.

Nothing to report of late. My computer is down indefinitely, so there won't be any new/old music until I get it back. Can't go out because time and money aren't on my side these days. Everything is just so boring.
In tribute to boredome, I leave you with this You Tube clip of Madness playing on The Young Ones, which you might recognize as being one of the best TV shows of all time. It's from an episode called, you guessed it, "Boring."

As a means of taking a break from editing today, I sat down with Carlos to watch TV. We sort of stumbled across one of the countdown shows on Fuse and just sort of sat there for about an hour wondering why we were glued to a show saturated with crap. Out of the ten videos we saw, we only liked two: Christina Aguilera "Ain't No Other Man" and Gnarls Barkley "Crazy" (Cabaret outfits and Rorschach tests alwasy make for good music television). Here is my assessment of some of the other videos viewed (in no particular order):

Fergie "London Bridge"

The fact that Fergie has a career making music and not, say, working coatcheck at Ibiza is a symbol of the truly sad state of American pop culture at present. However, the knowledge that "London Bridge" currently sits on top of the Billboard singles chart is just plain ol' embarrassing. It seems like Fergie is going for some sort of Missy Elliott style of delivery, but, instead, she sounds like some suburban high school twerp looking for street cred. Considering the amount of suburban teens grasping for gritty urban realism, this fact might be lost on the masses. However, only those who have spent the past two years stationed on Antarctica could remain ignorant of the fact that the song's hook is "Hollaback Girl." How people could buy a cheap imitation of something that was done only two years ago is beyond me.


The Pussycat Dolls featuring Snoop Dogg "Buttons"

Obviously, the goal of The Pussycat Dolls is to recreate 1980s-style freestyle by picking a group of generic, er, "hotties" out of line at Avalon and sticking them in a burlesque troupe/pop group. The only problem is that I forgot the melody of this song the minute the video ended and I can still sing Klymaxx every time I have a meeting in the ladies room.

Justin Timbaland, um, I mean, Timberlake "SexyBack"

You know, if it weren't for Timbaland, this fool would be a footnote in an E! special on boy bands. Like Justin's other solo work, the production is dancefloor perfection, but then the singer has to ruin it with his neutered vocals. If you're going to try and work the sex symbol angle, you better be singing like you might just die from a case of blue balls (see Prince). This guy just sounds like a eunuch. Justin just doesn't know what he wants. He would like to be taken seriously as a vocalist but, at the same time, he's still reliant on sales to 10-year-olds. He's the aural equivalent of junior high girls trying to rebel by wearing too much eyeliner and midriff tops and looking ridiculous in the process.

The Fray

This might have been the song "Over My Head (Cable Car)," but I can't remember. It was that boring. I heard from my little cousin that The Fray is all the rage with the high school kids. It must really suck to be a teenager right now.

Stefy "Chelsea"

First of all, if you are going to obviously rip off the hook from "Sweet Dreams," you might as well just sample the song. Second, "Sweet Dreams" is a classic. In the 20+ years since its release, it never left the dancefloor nor did it ever disappear from the radio dial. You probably shouldn't mess with it in the first place. However, if you are going to mess with it, you certainly shouldn't appropriate it for an Avril Lavigne-light teen pop song accompanied by a video that looks like it came straight off the Disney Channel. Who the hell thought this was a good idea?

I ended up playing at Bang! tonight. I found out about the gig yesterday, but didn't post about it mostly because I figured that hardly anyone is online after work on Fridays or on Saturday afternoons and, besides, I had work. Lots of work. In fact, Carlos and I spent the bulk of the day editing and attempting to caption Street Scene pictures for the next issue of The Rockit (so much more exciting that sweating it out at that overrated Sunset Junction thing). I have to tell, the next Rockit has the best line-up of bands yet, at least in my personal opinion. You'll find out about it in a few weeks.

So, we go to the club and saw our old friends, like Frankie (who was in the '80s room) and Artastique of Mantastique, who was spinning with me in the main room. I don't have the playlist because it will be posted on the Bang! page on My Space soon. I can tell you, though, that "Cobrastyle" from Teddybears is the hit-of-the-moment. In fact, it seems to be surpassing "Le Disko" from Shiny Toy Guns in popularity. Also gaining momentum is Delays "Valentine." You should also know that She Wants Revenge and AFI are just about as massive as it gets in Los Angeles this summer and that Panic! At the Disco, which I played by request, is one of those bands that people either love or hate.

I played a lot of requests tonight. Most of the time, I don't play requests because, honestly, it's pretty difficult to hear what people are screaming from below the window of the DJ booth when the monitor is on. However, when ten kids are screaming "DAFT PUNK!" in unison, you notice. Other times, people just passed napkins, which was actually okay because I did a CDJ set, so there was no chance of knocking a needle.

The moment that I must share, though, is seeing Mary's Favorite Dancer. When Mary and I were hanging out in L.A. together a few years ago, she came with me to a bunch of my gigs. While at Beat It, she spied upon the guy she felt was the best dancer in the whole darn club. (She's totally right too.) "He's like Iggy Pop!" she exclaimed. Kind of. Except, this dude is roughly 6'3", black and looks like he could be a model. Totally chisled. But, yeah, the guy dances like Iggy Pop and I saw him out on the dancefloor all night tonight. I would say that I think someone needs to visit L.A. again, but since I have yet to visit Mary in New York...

Anyhow, I'll be playing Bang! again soon. Very soon. I'll give you the details as soon as I have them. (P.S., Ivan, great to run into you tonight!)