MGF Presents The Saturday Swindle Sheet #127

Columns

Welcome back to The Saturday Swindle Sheet.

Lots of news this week. First off, The Saturday Swindle Sheet would like to extend its condolences out to the family and fans of country-western singer Freddy Fender, who died Saturday afternoon at his home in Corpus Christi, Texas, after having battled lung cancer over the past year. He made it cool to be Mexican. Wait a minute… no, that was La Parka. Fender was 69.

BLURBS OF THE WEEK

After nearly 33 years of being a subculture staple in New York’s Bowery neighborhood, CBGB will permanently close this Sunday, and punk rock’s poet laureate, Patti Smith, will be performing on the club’s final night, and Bad Brains and The Dictators both played earlier in the week. Owner Hilly Kristal will be stripping the club down to its bare walls, even taking the urinals and toilets, and moving everything to a new location in Las Vegas. “I always said Hilly should go to Vegas,” Legs McNeil, longtime friend and patron, told reporters. “Girls with augmented breasts playing Joey Ramone slot machines. It would become an institution.”

Brandon Flowers, lead singer of The Killers, recently told reporters that he was incredibly irritated by Green Day‘s Bullet in a Bible DVD—in particular, the fact that they filmed the performance of “American Idiot” in England rather than the U.S. He said that the lyrics “don’t want to be an American Idiot” carry a different meaning when chanted at a concert full of foreigners than when chanted at an American concert. “It really lit a fire inside of me,” he said. Although I think The Killers are incredibly overrated and Brandon Flowers is a pompous douche, he actually has a point here. I’m going to channel my inner Mathan Erhardt here, and ask you all to imagine if a black (I know that Mathan would capitalize that, but I’m going with AP Style here, even though I like my serial commas) musician recorded a song saying that he/she doesn’t want to be a “black idiot.” Then, all of a sudden a bunch of white kids starting singing the same thing at a concert by said musician. While the musician may not necessarily have a problem with that, there are bound to be quite a few angry people who feel that outsiders are not entitled to demean a demographic of which they are not a part. However, after making a valid point in that, Flowers canceled it out with a shameless plug, adding that his band’s new album, Sam’s Town is a much representation of America. Taking into account whether or not you’re a fan of America, that could actually be a shoot comment that’s not supposed to be a shoot comment.


Brandon Flowers needs to stop getting pissed off about Green Day and do what I do… and have been doing since 1994… ignore them. After he’s done that, he needs to concentrate on ditching the matador thing.

In other music-related-feud news, Kasabian singer Tom Meighan recently described My Chemical Romance‘s music as “ventriloquists’ music,” adding that “the only good news [about this band] is that it won’t last. These clowns won’t be around for much longer. … Their make-up will flake off and the scene will die out. And it can’t happen soon enough.” Cheers to that, but I don’t see it happening. Just like I don’t see Widro ever coming to the realization that Breaking Benjamin sucks.

Atlanta-based rapper T.I. has received eight nominations for the BET Hip-Hop Awards. Other artists raking in multiple nominations—when they were announced on Thursday—include Busta Rhymes (6), Chamillionaire (5), Yung Joc (4) and Lupe Fiasco (4). The awards ceremony will be broadcast from Atlanta on Nov. 15, so expect all of the shitty dURRRtum-dirty South rappers involved to get way too much applause for their own good.

VH1 will air its third annual Hip-Hop Honors awards ceremony on Oct. 17. The special, which was taped last Saturday in New York, will honor Afrika Bambaataa, Rakim, Ice Cube, Eazy-E, Beastie Boys, Wu-Tang Clan, MC Lyte, and Russell Simmons. Featured performers will include Q-Tip, The Ad Hoc Award-Demanding Trouser Stain From Harlem, Lil’ Kim, Da Brat, Fabolous, Wu-Tang Clan, Lil’ Eazy-E, Young Jeezy, and Bone Thugs -N-Harmony. Ice-T, who was honored last year and will host this year’s ceremony, opined on possible future honorees, saying that “Too Short broke the Bay[-area scene] … You gotta go there before you go down South. Then after that, you’ve gotta go to Master P. While you’re down there, you should find Lil Jon and break a cinder block over his head.” While I’m not sure I agree with Master P getting any recognition for anything except his incredibly charitable business contract with the Pen & Pixel design company, I think he may have something there with the whole breaking-a-cinder block-over-Lil Jon’s head idea.

The Game recently told reporters about a track from his upcoming album, The Doctor’s Advocate… “[I]t’s like ‘Straight Outta Compton.’ If ‘Straight Outta Compton’ never hit, this record would’ve been ‘Straight Outta Compton.’ But the crazy part about it is it’s all me, you know what I’m sayin’? It’s not Cube, Eazy, Ren and Dre, it’s just me: the one-man N.W.A.” Just shut the f*ck up right now.

Four of the five members of The Ad Hoc Award-Demanding Trouser Stain From Harlem’s Making the Band 3 group, Danity Kane, were involved in a car accident on Thursday, in Toledo, Ohio. The group has traveling in a limousine from a downtown Toledo radio station to a local nightclub Headliners, where they were scheduled to perform that night, when the limo was broad-sided by another car at an intersection. According to authorities, the band members were taken to nearby St. Vincent’s Mercy Medical Center, where they were “treated and released.” Although they didn’t sustain any major injuries, the Danity Kane show at Headliners was canceled—along with another show on Friday in Rochester, Mich.—much to the chagrin of exactly three people… combined from both towns.

Shawn Colvin is back with a new CD after overcoming depression. Well whooptee-f*ckin’-doo. I’ve overcome depression twice and I didn’t get to release a f*cking CD either time.

Headline: Free from Peas, Fergie gets personal
Unless “gets personal” means beating the piss out of the Black Eyed Peas with a wide array of large metal objects for bringing her into the group and subsequently selling out, and then stripping naked and making out with and groping an also naked Jessica Simpson before having an also naked Anastacia with a strap-on dildo f*ck each of them while they perform oral sex on each other, and taping the entire thing, I really don’t give a shit.

THE MOST RIDICULOUS ITEM OF THE WEEK

Barbra Streisand told a fan to “shut the f*ck up” during a concert at Madison Square Garden on Monday. About thirty minutes into the three-hour show, which was the third scheduled date on her comeback tour, Streisand performed a political skit with a Bush impersonator. The skit apparently lasted a little too long, and after trying to politely quell a group of hecklers, Streisand finally dropped the f-bomb, adding, “Shut up if you can’t take a joke!” She later apologized; not for swearing, but for the ignorance of everyone who buys gasoline and eats shellfish, because it’s all their fault that baby seals get clubbed.

Cheers
-JF2k6!