Play | The Rhapsody Editorial Music Blog

Woodbox Gang, Trailer Choir Laugh It Up Down on the Farm

by Chuck Eddy

The funniest albums of 2008 – Ross Johnson’s Make It Stop!, which I blogged about here, and the Boxmasters’ self-titled record, which I blogged about here – have so far been country albums, or at least albums located somewhere on country’s lunatic fringe. That’s also where you’ll find Woodbox Gang’s Drunk as Dragons and Trailer Choir’s Trailer Choir EP, which are both quite the laugh riots themselves. That the former act is signed to Jello Biafra’s Alternative Tentacles label, and the latter to Toby Keith’s Show Dog Nashville (how’s that for two political extremes?) only adds to the confusion.

Billy Bob's Boxmasters Git-R-Done

by Chuck Eddy

There are great songs about baseball (Warren Zevon’s “Bill Lee,” for instance) and great songs about art (The Modern Lovers’ “Pablo Picasso,” for example), but how often do they end up on the same album – especially an album that also has a Mott the Hoople cover on it? If you’re not already interested, we clearly don’t live on the same planet, but the album in question is The Boxmasters. And the singer, weirdly, is Billy Bob Thornton.

R.I.P. George Carlin (1937-2008)

by Chuck Eddy

It's become this ridiculous cliché in recent years to pretend that "such and such people were the rock stars of their day," whatever that's supposed to mean. Just over the weekend, I saw the claim bestowed upon both early '60s advertising bigwigs (in a New York Times Sunday magazine piece about the TV series Mad Men) and old-time magicians (on Antiques Roadshow). But this morning, when I learned George Carlin had succumbed to heart failure Sunday evening in Santa Monica at the age of 71, the obits reminded me of something -- back in suburban Detroit, in 1974, when I was fresh out of eighth grade at Our Lady of Refuge, this fellow lapsed Catholic seemed to me like a bigger rock star than any rock star I could name, give or take maybe Elton John. And when you think about it, it was guys like Carlin and Cheech and Chong and Richard Pryor whose Watergate-era bullsh*t-detection and post-hippie potty mouths set the stage for what rock music -- or, even more maybe, hip-hop -- would eventually evolve into. So if George Carlin wasn't the rock star of his day, maybe spouting the seven words you can't say on television made him a rap star, at least.

Ross Johnson Stays Drunk

by Chuck Eddy

Ross Johnson, unbeknownst to me before this year, is a Memphis underground legend (he’s worked with everyone from Jon Spencer to Peter Buck, Alex Chilton to Tav Falco) and also a musical laugh riot – at least if you think shuffling up drunken standup routines with crazed '60s soul-garage-punk and rockabilly is a smart mix, which you damn well better. Make It Stop! The Most of Ross Johnson is easily one of the best new albums I’ve heard in 2008.

Best of 2007: Comedy

by Dan Shumate

What a depressing year. The unpopular war in Iraq seems unsalvageable. The U.S. economy is in the crapper. The housing market has fallen into a seemingly bottomless pit. The credit crunch. ... Is this the end of our great empire? Perhaps. But at least there's some comic relief to make your worries subside -- at least for a few moments. Shoo away those feelings of impending doom with our top comedy picks of 2007.