Clayton Kershaw

I had a $100 Reward Certificate from Best Buy and I went to my local one yesterday and they didn't have either release, but they had Nickelback out on the shelves, so all is right in the world of butt rock. They couldn't even order it for me as it showed 0 quantity in every story over 2 states. 

Nothing stood in my way. I ran over to Target: same thing. Finally, I went to Newbury Comics and they had both releases much cheaper than the Best Buy online prices. $14.99 for What's Your 20? and $25.99 for Alpha Mike Foxtrot. I may take a ride to Best Buy and see if they have them now. Oh well!

I did notice an error in the What's Your 20? booklet. They mention that Pat Sansone did the string arrangement for Black Moon which isn't even on the collection. I thought that maybe it was a hidden track, but it is not. 

Alpha Mike Foxtrot is an amazing collection. Loving it! That live version of Spiders is killer. I don't think I ever downloaded that when it was made available. You can really hear the remastered quality moreso on Disc 1 of What's Your 20? On my copy of A.M., Box Full Of Letters always sounded shitty in the opening 4 seconds, so it's nice to have it remastered. Is it like this for anyone else? It's like the guitar sound drops out. 

U2 is set to play a "Residency" on The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon next week. 

And the November 22nd on sale date for the 2015 tour seems to be pretty legit too. Word is that the tour is 2-3 days away from being finalized. 

A rumor has been going around that it will be called the Volcano Tour. Meh….

Also, U2 is headlining KROQ's Almost Acoustic Christmas on Saturday December 14th at The Forum in Inglewood, CA. Tickets go on sale this Friday at 12p.m. PST.

I was fortunate enough to see Birdman twice (Friday October 24th & Tuesday November 4th), however both times I've been puzzled by the vague ending. Aside from that, this film looks phenomenal. My jaw was on the floor for the seamless cinematography. I need to see the Making Of Feature to see how they achieved this. 

Michael Keaton was amazing, as was Edward Norton. The jazzy drum score by Antonio Sanchez was a perfect fit for the manic energy of Keaton and the film. It also had great comedic moments and one scene that this film will be remembered for is when Keaton's character goes off on the New York Times critic: legendary.

It will be bizarre if this beat Boyhood, by employing the continuous shot technique that Linklater used in Slacker and Before Midnight. 

If Jeff Tweedy sees this happening tonight, we can all expect some phenomenal banter!! 

Put the phone down, enjoy the show & post in After The Show after the show. 

Kansas City has nothing to be ashamed of at all. I look at it this way: with the team that they had they lasted 7 games with the San Francisco Giants in the World Series. 

Remember the 2010 Texas Rangers? That pitching staff & offense - They only won 1 game & the 2012 Detroit Tigers were swept with Verlander & Scherzer bookending Games 1 & 4. 

I now know every player on the Kansas City Royals & I'm sure I'm not the only one either. They'll be back. 

With that being said….Jake Peavy is a lucky m.f.

Ha. 

Pretty amazing performance by Bumgarner.  I wonder if any other starting pitcher has ever gotten two wins and a save in the World Series.  I know Bob Gibson pitched three complete games and got three wins in the 1967 World Series. 

Well, he would have joined Randy Johnson for having 3 wins, if they didn't change the box score last night.

In the 2001 World Series, Randy Johnson won & started Games 2 & 6 and came on in relief of Curt Schilling in Game 7 and faced 4 Yankees and took them down. He wound up with the win thanks to Luis Gonzalez in the bottom of the 9th. 

I don't recall what stats Fox was throwing out there, but I don't seem to recall them mentioning Randy Johnson's name. I had to look that up, but I do remember how they kept trying to say how we've never seen anything like this in a 100 years. 

Nothing against Bumgarner at all. That was AWESOME! 5 innings vs. 1.1 IP for Randy Johnson is a pretty big difference, but I'm sure there are other such records that they omitted to bump up the moment. 

Edit: Let me elaborate on this…what was the record that dated back to the early 1900s because his low ERA is amazing at 0.25, but Jon Lester has 0.43 and he just pitched in '07 & '13.

Bumgarner: 0.25 36 IP vs Lester: 0.43 21 IP. 

OR….Orel Hershiser started Games 1 & 3 of the 1988 NLCS, but didn't get the wins. However, he got the save for Game 4 after starting Game 3 and eventually got the CG shutout for Game 7. 

Madison Bumgarner wins the games that matter.

Clayton Kershaw does not.

The Holiday Inn conveniently located across the street is already off limits because spoiler text.

But there are plenty places to hide at Mass MoCa. Be discreet and you'll be fine. 

In all honesty, I stayed at the Pittsfield Crowne Plaza. A bit of a drive (30 minutes), but worth checking into if there's nothing left in North Adams. 

Yep I was there seated a few rows ahead of them same side She wore a dress and boots.

But I did not even notice her ...

I sat (more like stood) directly behind her. I'm pretty sure she had some hipster glasses on, but I do know that she wore a gold lame dress with fancy boots. 

I seem to recall late November for on sale and early in the year for a lineup. I'd love to see the format from this small fall run at Solid Sound. 

I walked into a Coach store & immediately the store clerk asked me, "Can I help you find anything?"

I quickly replied, "Craig T. Nelson." 

The band is quite infamous for making claims about tours & albums and having things change last minute. When U2 did the Apple release, Bono mentioned that they'd like to release Songs Of Experience in about 18 months. Adam Clayton made a remark about playing 2 shows in cities and doing a greatest hits setlist & a rarities setlist for night 2. There are a lot of promo videos from the past few weeks where they've done Graham Norton, Jools Holland, The Late Late Show (Ireland), etc. On a German radio show, Larry Mullen talked about the band picking 7 cities to play next May/June and doing residencies, until they could not sell any more tickets. Toronto was mentioned as an example. I'm assuming Boston would be included. And tour dates & ticket sales will be on Sat November 22. I'd like to see U2 do some U.S. promo in November. Oh! And in 2015, stadium tour for Songs Of Experience which makes sense considering they're planning a March 2015 release. 

We'll see.

[Larry]: It’s going to be difficult to put the new setlist together, that’s for sure. I think on this record there are a lot of good songs, and selfishly I’d like to think that a lot of the new songs will replace a lot of the older songs because they can’t be there all the time, so what I’d like to think is if we do three or four shows in the same place that we would change the set for every night completely.

Also, it's interesting that on a lot of these quick promo stops it was just Bono & The Edge which made me think of someone mentioning that that's how the song credit is on this album. Hmm. 

Correction: U2 fan forum Interference broke the news about the residencies and Larry's response seems to coincide with that mentality. Interference was right about most 360 & Vertigo tour logistics. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XApNTimO57E

Invisible will be somehow included on Songs Of Innocence according to Bono on recent radio interviews. I'm not sure how I feel about that. I hope that it finds itself as a hidden track on disc 2 and not disc 1.

Bono also went on to explain how some of the acoustic arrangements will be for the new tunes. I like how he describes California and Raised By Wolves, but it worries me that already they're hinting on planning on doing some of these acoustic on the next tour, as if it's too hard to present these as close to possible as they are on the record. Maybe it will be nice to give Stay (Faraway, So Close) and Stuck In A Moment a break from the acoustic presentation on the next tour. Those are amazing live, but a bit too predictable. I liked it when they tried Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses and The First Time acoustic on the Vertigo Tour. 

He also dropped some information about the bonus tracks on the deluxe version of Songs of Innocence. "Lucifer's Hands" and "The Crystal Ballroom" are, in Bono's words, a couple of "important songs". He then went on to describe three of the acoustic versions: "Every Breaking Waves" will "really kill ya"; "California" has a "big brass, big soul section like a Van Morrison song"; and there is a version of "Raised By Wolves" that "sounds like African music, Fela Kuti or something".

R.E.M. is set to release a 6 DVD set in partnership with Viacom's MTV & VH1 which will feature pretty much every U.S. & European broadcast: 1991 & 2001's MTV Unplugged including Outtakes, VH1's 1998 Storytellers, 1984's The Cutting Edge, 1983's Live Wire, 1991's MTV 10th Anniversary Special, all of their MTV Music Award appearances including MTV Europe Music Awards and the 2007 Rock N Roll Hall Of Hame Induction. 

That's just the 1st 2 discs. WOW!

http://www.stereogum.com/1707807/r-e-m-announce-6-dvd-remtv-culled-from-mtv-networks-archives/news/

I decided to visit my local independent record store tonight just a hair before midnight, even though I already bought this on iTunes to get the 8 tracks as they came in. Let me explain to you what happened. 

I see the latest issue of Magnet with Jeff & Spencer and decide to pick that up. I found the double disc set and head to the register to get on the road to hear this. The polite young woman told me that the issue of Magnet is free at the store. OK. Cool. 

She hands me a poster which is really cool, as you can see. I thank her for this and I'm on my way out. Her coworker runs behind the counter and tells me not to leave. She pulls out what appears to be 2 albums and she reads the handwritten note on it that says to give these out to the first 2 customers to buy the album. She flips it over and the album on the bottom is signed by both Jeff & Spencer, so she hands me the autographed one and I was in shock. $12.97 for the double disc and everything else was free. 

Around 4p.m. EST as part of Apple's iTunes Festival you can watch Ryan Adams live from London's Roundhouse. 

I have Robert Plant's show playing off of my Apple TV in the background. I'm not sure how the streaming quality will be, but this looks and sounds amazing. It really sucked for the iPhone 6 Launch on September 9th. 

http://www.setlist.fm/venue/roundhouse-london-england-2bd6d0d2.html?page=4

These are the setlists for these iTunes Festival shows including opening acts which can be accessed at any time now. 

Ryan Adams is Rick Moranis' alter ego. 

No, sir NoJ. It will be on my Top Movies of the year though which I'm working on.

My favorite movies films this year (as of right now)

1. Boyhood/The Grand Budapest Hotel

2. Locke

3. Grand Piano

4. Obvious Child

5. Fading Gigolo

6. The Signal

7.  Adult World

8. The Rover

9. Under The Skin

10. Alan Partridge

I'll give writeups on those soon and I'll list my favorite movies later. Oh, man! I forgot all about Snowpiercer. I apologize. Maybe a Top Twelve will be proper. 

This was a pleasant surprise. For me the weakest track is The Miracle of Joey Ramone. Do you folks hear R.E.M.'s Driver 8 in Volcano around the minute mark? My favorite song about a volcano is Crowded House's When You Come. Cedarwood Road sounds like it will be a beast live. Iris is slowly growing on me, however when I was told that Chris Martin provides backing vocals for this track I began to lose some sleep. It's ok though. Every Breaking Wave is a classic U2 song. At times, it does remind me of something off of The Killers' last record. California sounds like being on a rollercoaster of pop bliss. I can't say enough about The Troubles because I just started talking about it right now. Lyykke Li adds so much to the song that I hope they bring her out to tour with them. Raised By Wolves sounds like a War outtake and I mean that in a positive way. Sleep Like A Baby Tonight is rather interesting, but I prefer the groove on This Is Where You Can Reach Me Now. 

If this helps people out there now know who The Ramones and The Clash are then they've done their job. I just don't see any Bob Dylan influence on this one. He is name dropped in the liner notes. 

I have mixed feelings about this man's self titled record. Some of it is really good and other parts of it is really forgettable. I really dig Gimme Something Good, Shadows, Kim, Trouble and Stay With Me. Wilco's I Might is much better than Ryan Adams' I Just Might. 

Some days I hate and some days I love My Wrecking Ball. 

I'm listening to this via NPR's stream and loving it all. How majestic does Slow Love sound? New Moon has guitar explosions that seem to come out of nowhere. Diamond Light is amazing. And I really dig all of the tunes with Lucius. Fake Fur Coat is a masterpiece.