Music: Easy Street Records Hates Vinyl Buyers

This week I went to Easy Street Records in Seattle in hopes of getting that new Pierre de Reeder album. They did not have it.

I was able to pick up the latest releases from My Morning Jacket and Son Ambulance on vinyl. While checking out I asked if I needed a different frequent buyer card than my CD one. My CD stamp card says, "Buy 15 CDs, GET ONE FREE!" My cashier informed me that there isn't a vinyl frequent buyer card and that she couldn't stamp my CD one for this purchase.

I was dumbfounded, "But, this is more expensive than the CD version....and I would think you have a more difficult time in 2008 moving vinyl, so you should want to encourage it," and finally I just asked, "But, why?"

She said to me, "I have no idea."

Pro Wrestling: WWE Cuts Galore!

First things first, the tag team of The Highlanders(Rory and Robbie McAllister) were released today. Rory McAllister made it almost 5 months beyond when I thought he was going to be fired.

Back in March the WWE was in Orlando for Wrestlemania. This was a HUGE pro wrestling weekend with seven shows from four different wrestling companies in a 4 day period. I was there, but I did not go to any of the three TNA(Total Nonstop Action) shows. On the March 27th live edtion of TNA Impact the cameras panned to Rory McAllister who was in attendance and the announcers pointed him out as pro wrestler Russell Murray(his real name). Within minutes Rory received a text message from someone in WWE management informing him that he was shown on TV and that he had to leave immediately. He complied. The next day he was sent home. Wrestlemania is the biggest show of the year, and with it comes the biggest pay day of the year for the wrestlers. Rory who is not a big name wrestler in any way shape or form, reportedly would have made $5,000 for working that one day. He did not receive a Wrestlemania paycheck, sucks to be him.

The day that he was sent home lots of people were talking about it as I was waiting in line to go to the Friday Ring of Honor show. At that point in time the rumor wasn't that he was sent home, but that he was fired. I guess it finally caught up with him.

Stevie Richards was also released today. He's never done anything to impress me, but there was a period of time in the mid to late 90's where he was an independent wrestling icon. I remember reading about him doing a show stealing ladder match at some random indie show and almost breaking his neck. In that period of time I had never seen him perform, but I wanted to so bad. By the time I finally saw him in his 1997 run in WCW he barely wrestled due to the repeated neck injuries and surgeries. At that time he "retired" for a brief while due to the injuries, but many people around him questioned the legitimacy of that claim and thought that he was just trying to get out of his WCW contract.

A couple of years later he shows up in WWE and had a lame gimmick. WWE eventually brought him back as part of the new ECW branded TV show on the Sci-Fi network, and they had him work almost exclusively with current WWE World Champion CM Punk. There was even a series of vignettes talking about Richards neck injuries, and how he was in the main event of the very first ECW pay per view. It seemed like a slow build to him winning the fairly useless ECW Championship, but within a couple of weeks he was back to losing quickly and decisively on a weekly basis. Then in September he took about 5 months off due to having throat surgery. He will be 37 this fall, and I imagine his televised wrestling career is over. He'll always have a special place in my heart for that period of time where he was an American independent wrestling superstar.

Last but not least, 21 year old Colin Delaney was released today. He's my height, and only weighs about 15 more pounds than me. Suffice to say, he is not your typical sized WWE wrestler.

Delaney was given the underdog gimmick. I mean, he was really an underdog. He did not get any offense in his matches for a couple of months. It's a classic pro wrestling gimmick of building up the geek until the fans love him and really want to see him win. He didn't really get over, and then a month or so ago he turned heel on pay per view, and nobody cared. This release was just a matter of time.

But hey, he's only 21, and he was on WWE television! He should continue to get paid a decent amount to work on indie shows. Maybe he will be coming to your town soon!

Music: This Week's New Releases

Sorry for the delay and short blurb today. I'm still in recovery from yesterday being my birthday.

And on with the new releases:

Dark Romantics: The Good Kind of Sad
The Gutter Twins: "God's Children"/"Spanish Doors" 7"
Original Silence: The Second Original Silence
Pierre de Reeder: The Way That It Was
Willoughby: I Know What You're Up To

Pierre de Reeder is the bassist in Rilo Kiley. I love all of the other Rilo Kiley side projects, so I will probably try to pick this one up as well.

Tomorrow I will hopefully have more energy and by up to writing more.

MMA: UFC 87 Results

Georges St. Pierre absolutely dominated Jon Fitch for 5 rounds to successfully defend the UFC Welterweight Championship by unanimous decision. With the judges scores being 50-43, 50-44, and 50-44 it looks like every judge scored round one 10-8 in favor of GSP as he was on the verge of absolutely destroying Fitch from the get go. This fight was given fight of the night honors and each fighter received a $60,000 bonus for that award.

The big news coming out of the show tonight was that after the main event UFC Lightweight Champion BJ Penn got in the octagon and challenged St. Pierre to an upcoming fight. This fight will hopefully take place in Honolulu, where Penn is from. GSP and Penn have fought before at UFC 65 in March of 2006. That was an excellent fight which had GSP winning by split decision.

That of course was a different BJ Penn, and if BJ is serious about his training and conditioning going into the rematch then that will be a fight between two of the best fighters in the world at any weight class.

In the heavyweight matchup Brock Lesner knocked Heath Herring rolling backwards with a big right to open the first round. Brock won by unanimous decision 30-26 from all 3 judges. He dominated from start to finish. All in all this was mostly a wrestling match with Lesner getting takedowns and landing some punches and knees as well, but he never appeared to attempt a submission of any sort. Brock is going to need to learn some submissions if he is going to be the top fighter in the division, but this was only his third professional fight and he is a beast! After the match Brock Lesner played the heel standing over Herring and then miming that he was lassoing and reeling in Herring. You can take the fighter out of professional wrestling, but you can't take the professional wrestling out of the fighter.

Roger Huerta did not win by decision. Kenny Florian played to his reach advantage the entire fight. Huerta was seemingly in constant pursuit and Ken Flo backed away and worked his jab to perfection. This was not the most exciting fight, and Ken Flo won by unanimous decision 30-27.

Rob Emerson won the knockout of the night honors and a $60,000 bonus for a 12 second knockout of Manny Gamburyan. That is not a typo. He hit him with a right left combo which put him out, then hit another right on the ground and the ref jumped in for the save.

Overall this was a quality UFC pay per view, and the main event did not disappoint.

MMA: UFC 87 Preview

Tomorrow, August 9, is the (on paper) best MMA pay per view of the year so far.
It is rare that a show has three fights as exciting as the top three featured tomorrow night.

In the main event we have Georges St. Pierre defends his Welterweight Championship against Jon Fitch. Fitch is 8-0 in the UFC and he has won his last 15 professional fights. He has an impressive knockout victory over Thiago Alves in that time.

Georges St. Pierre(GSP) absolutely destroyed Matt Serra in his last fight to reclaim the welterweight title that he had lost to Serra. GSP is one of the best all around fighters in the world, and he never has a boring fight. Jon Fitch is a good fighter, but he has no chance. GSP will be victorious tomorrow. GSP via 2nd round knockout.

The semi-main event is a lightweight battle between The Ultimate Fighter Season 1 alum Kenny Florian and Roger "El Matador" Huerta. Ken Flo has won 4 straight fights since he lost a 5 round decision against Sean Sherk for the vacant lightweight title. He knocked out Joe Lauzon on April 2 which earned fight of the night honors.

Huerta is 6-0 in the UFC and he has a ridiculous professional record of 25-1-1(his only loss came in a tournament where he was fighting in his third bout of the day). He hasn't fought since last December when he choked out Clay Guida in what was one of the best fights of 2007.

Both of these guys have excellent conditioning and they will surely have a very exciting fight. Roger Huerta will win by decision.

The other match to be very excited about tomorrow is a battle of heavyweights as fromer WWE World Champion and NCAA wrestling champion Brock Lesner takes on Heath Herring.

This is Brock's second UFC fight and it's in front of his home crowd in Minnesota. He made his UFC debut in February against former UFC Champion Frank Mir. Lesner was absolutely destroying Mir before the ref docked him a point for a punch to the back of the head and stood them back up. Brock pretty much immediately took Mir down again, but he left his ankle exposed for too long and Mir was able to submit him.

Brock makes $250,000 per fight before any bonuses. If he loses tonight he could be in danger of being cut. That's a lot of guaranteed money for someone who is not a headliner.

Herring is coming off a March split decision victory over Cheick Kongo. Herring immediately knocked Kongo down with a big punch, and Kongo was just lost from that point on. Herring is a good fighter, and this is a good challenge for Brock Lesner, but Brock is just so gigantic that I find it hard to believe that Herring will come out of this one victorious.

Heath Herring has a cool Undertaker like entrance.

This is going to be an amazing show! If you like MMA at all, then get your ass to a bar that is showing this tomorrow. 10pm EST, 7pm PST.

Music: Conor Oberst Was My Gateway Drug

In the fall of 2001 I decided to drop my major, take a semester off from school, and transfer to a different school in a different state. It was probably the boldest decision that I had made up to that point.

Two days after Christmas I left Missouri for Colorado. I knew that I had a place to stay my first night there, and I just figured beyond that I would play it by ear. Several people had offered the prospects of a couch or a floor to sleep on, so I figured at the very least I had a rotation of floors in my future.

Jon and Heidi were leaving for China early on January 1. They needed someone to look after their cat for 13 days. They had met me once before, and they knew that I needed a place to stay so I was suddenly cat sitting in a really sweet one bedroom apartment that was above an empty restaurant location which was a few doors down from an independent record store which was across the street from another independent record store.

Late one night I was sitting at the computer in the apartment searching for jobs and the like. I had put the entire music folder in a play list on winamp and set it to shuffle. At some point "Kathy With a K's Song" came on. From the opening line of, "Love is real," I leaned back in the chair and closed my eyes. I was completely floored.

I searched the hard drive, but I only found one other Bright Eyes song. I started to search for more information on Bright Eyes online, and I was shocked to learn that Conor Oberst was only a year older than me(which seemed even more incredible since I was only 20 at the time).

The next day I headed down to the those record stores on the search for Bright Eyes. The first store did not have any. The one across the street provided me with A Collection of Songs and the Desaparecidos album.

I devoured these albums. A Collection of Songs is mostly composed of songs that Conor wrote and recorded in the basement of th house he grew up in. His song, "Solid Jackson" is about falling in love with the music of a local band, house shows, the scene, and getting lost in a great song, "And I stopped going to church a year ago, and my teachers think that my faith is gone, well I can do without the eucharist, because I found god in a solid jackson song!" This was an early example of why I love Bright Eyes, a few perfect lyrics, themes of feeling alone but wanting to belong, and the transformative power of music. All of this in one neat package with Conor's heartfelt vocals delivering the lines like he has something to say, and goddamnit he will scream them out if that's what it takes to get us to listen.

Desaparecidos is the rock band that Conor Oberst was in that released one excellent concept album about urban sprawl. The one time in my life that I was trying to obtain a fake ID was when they were touring for this album and the local show was 21+. Unfortunately, or fortunately, that show was canceled so I did not need to acquire a fake ID.

Over the next few months I would always check the Bright Eyes section when I was in a record store. I slowly acquired the Everyday and Everynight EP and the split EP with Son, Ambulance which includes the first Bright Eyes song that I ever heard.

Later that year I placed an order with Saddle Creek Records in order to get all of the Bright Eyes releases that I did now have yet. I also ordered The Faint's Danse Mababre based on a recommendation from a friend.

I saw Rilo Kiley live because they had released an album on Saddle Creek. I started listening to M. Ward and My Morning Jacket because they were musicians that Conor Oberst was playing with on a small east coast tour. I started listening to lots of other bands who were recording for Saddle Creek, bands like Cursive, The Good Life, Two Gallants, Now It's Overhead, Maria Taylor, Art in Manilla, Neva Dinova, and this year Tokyo Police Club.

Then Conor went and started his own record label, Team Love. Which is a label that has put out the last three Tilly and the Wall releases as well as the Jenny Lewis and the Watson Twins album, and the soundtrack to the movie Shortbus. Those are all albums that I love and still listen to today.

In the liner notes of Noise Floor Conor writes that they use a "cumbersome" opener on the Bright Eyes albums as a way to scare off casual listeners. That practice is obviously missing from this week's self titled solo album put out by MERGE.

The album Conor Oberst opens with arguably the best song on the record, "Cape Canaveral". It has the introspective lyrics and themes of loss and the search for personal destiny that are trademarks of the greatest Bright Eyes songs.

Someone recently asked me what if the new Conor Oberst album was good. "It's great," I said, "But I don't know if you should take my word for it. Conor Oberst was my gateway drug."

MMA News: More on Rampage

Holli Griggs was driving in her car when she was sideswiped by Quinton Jackson's escalade on the day of the rampage. She was pregnant. The day after the chase she said that she and possibly her unborn child were injured in the incident. She had a miscarriage this weekend.

The vehicular manslaughter law in the state of California does not cover a fetus. Regardless of the effects of the criminal investigation this certainly does not bode well for Jackson in a possible civil case- I say possible only because it hasn't been filed yet. I would be willing to bet that we will see one in this instance.

The Newport Beach Daily Pilot quoted the District Attorney spokesperson as saying,
"Our office will make sure we take as much time as necessary to make a proper filing decision and including all evidence and medical information to make sure any charges that are filed are fair and accurate,"

There are currently no negotiations or plans for Quinton "Rampage" Jackson's next fight.