Recently in Mike McGuirk Category

First of all, Thriller came out and took over the world, which means almost every Polo-drenched dude at this dance was wearing some sort of leather-flapped space-captain shirt with epaulets — sort of like an intergalactic Captain Crunch. And the lighter-raising anthems from REO Speedwagon, Survivor and Night Ranger are simply unmatched. To be fair, Night Ranger's ode to Catholic girls would have lasted about five seconds before Sister Mary Lou (real person) shut down the whole operation. Forget permitting music by that pervert Prince. So, enjoy the playlist below, and when you're holding your partner during "The Search Is Over," don't forget to leave some space for the Holy Spirit.

Thrash metal came to being in the mid-'80s, typified by breakneck tempos, shouted vocals and a level of hostility that plain scared the pants off parents. In the U.S., Metallica, Anthrax, Slayer and Megadeth became known as The Big Four. Simultaneously, Kreator, Destruction and Sodom formed The Big Three of Germany. Wherever they were, the bands all seemed to have a single aim: to take the hallowed moves of NWOBHM (that's New Wave of British Heavy Metal) and fire them out of a cannon. Scenes sprouted up in San Francisco, SoCal, Jersey and Toronto, to name a few spots, with records coming out throughout the '80s and on into the '90s. Basically, death and black metal came out of thrash. Below, we offer a collection of tunes geared to either introduce folks to the genre, hit on some of the big moments for the acolytes or just provide a playlist that, when suitably cranked, is guaranteed to bum out your neighbors. Unfortunately we don't have the rights to Metallica, so no "Whiplash."

A beginner's guide to the unspeakably heavy music that comes out of New Orleans, and has  for years. Phil Anselmo's Down and Superjoint Ritual, the brainy stomach punch of Soilent Green, scene godfathers Crowbar and Goatwhore, psychedelic metal courtesy of defunct but seminal Acid Bath and the anointed blues of Eyehategod. An excellent place to start, or maybe just go deaf — your choice.

Does anybody really like David Cross' standup work? Best known by the larger public — which he is vocal about hating — as a member of HBO's Mr. Show, a sketch show he was on with Bob Odenkirk between 1995 and 1998, and his character Tobias Fünke on the acclaimed sitcom Arrested Development, which ran for three seasons (2003-2006), Cross is indisputably talented. Mr. Show, while spotty, had some great moments (like this), and Tobias Fünke had too many hilarious moments to list. Cross' portrayal is flat-out amazing. But listening to his albums (2002's Shut Up You F*cking Baby!, '04's It's Not Funny and his just-released Bigger and Blackerer), one can't escape the "hipster" vibe that pervades the proceedings. The thing is, Cross' anticommercial mentality and anti-Hollywood persona, as well as his whole take on things like The Blue Collar Comedy Tour (that it's crapola) and American society (idiotic), are views held by the same people he tends to rub the wrong way. It's a real paradox.

The Rolling Stones' Exile on Main St. is among the most celebrated albums of the past 50 years. It set the standard for boozy, bluesy rock and has been endlessly copied by generations of rockers. If you are new to Exile and have begun to memorize every second of it, like most classic-rock fans, you may want to check out these other records that serve as a foundation for the genre. These are big names and big records that can all hang with Exile on Main St. Basically, if we had the rights to The White Album, it'd go here. And hey, if you're not a Rhapsody member but you want to check out all this music, sign up for a free trial.

You can rock out to The Stones whenever and however you want with your Rhapsody subscription. Click here to sign up for a free trial and see what we’re all about.

Exile on Main St. is often — really almost always — cited as the best rock 'n' roll album ever, of all time. When it appeared in 1972, The Stones were coming off the massive success of Sticky Fingers, which had been released and topped sales in both the U.K. and U.S. the year before. The double album crammed with blues, country, gospel and rock 'n' roll was initially panned by critics for such ridiculous ideas as being "too sprawling" and "lacking focus." Why a rock record is supposed to be focused is beyond us, but in addition to that, to many in 1972, The Stones were perceived as old (!) and past their prime. This is amazing since they are still releasing records and even touring despite being well into their 100s, or at least looking that way.

The music of Kris Kristofferson and countless other outlaw country artists is yours to rock out to whenever and however you want with your Rhapsody subscription. Click here to sign up for a free trial and see what we’re all about.

Kris Kristofferson has long represented a convergence of the outlaw country of the early '70s, typified by Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson, and a sort of country-folk he and John Prine (among others) became synonymous with in spite of the fact that their work was almost universally ignored radio-wise during that decade. In light of the veteran singer-songwriter's new release of demos from 1968 to 1972 (Please Don't Tell Me How the Story Ends: The Demos 1968-72 ), we've assembled a small collection of albums that both serve as an introduction to the two genres and well illustrate a handful of spots where they meet. There's even a small playlist for you to listen to while you read. A warning, though: if you've never heard Townes Van Zandt, well, get ready.

The state of Michigan has long been a prime source for rock 'n' roll music and its many offshoots, from seminal pre-punk bands the Stooges and MC5 to the freakout guitar of Ted Nugent's Amboy Dukes; there's Alice Cooper's tough-as-nails radio rock, and then there's The White Stripes and The Gories, and Andrew W.K. and Kid Rock and, well, there's just too much. This doesn't even take into account the fact that Detroit is where Motown music originated, or the whole Detroit blues scene of the '40s and '50s (think John Lee Hooker and Dr. Isaiah Ross). In light of Sony re-issuing one of the defining records of the '70s (and punk rock itself), Iggy and the Stooges' Raw Power, with an entire bonus disc of previously unreleased material, we've compiled a small primer on the music that has emanated from that great state.

The musicians mentioned in this story are yours to enjoy whenever and however you want with your Rhapsody subscription. Click here to sign up for a free trial and see what we're all about.

April 5, 2010, marked the eighth anniversary of Alice in Chains singer Layne Staley's death from a drug overdose. By the time he died in 2002, Staley had been out of the spotlight for years, in a kind of self-imposed exile following the massive success of the band's acoustic appearance on MTV, released as the album Unplugged in 1996. Staley's addiction to drugs had long been the subject of most of his songs, and his ghostly, frail appearance meant that, to many, his death in such a fashion was a foregone conclusion. And today nobody really ever talks about him. It's sad, because there was a time when Alice in Chains were the most influential band of the whole grunge pack, and Staley's vocals were filled with a menace and a palpable loss that no one could touch, although almost everyone adopted his "hey-yeah " yodel-snarl style.

When Alice in Chains first appeared in 1990 and "Man in the Box" hit MTV, they came on like the toughest, scariest band since Guns N' Roses. Guitarist Jerry Cantrell's playing reflected a deep connection with Slash's style, but it was the combination of this post-glam metal/Sunset Boulevard sleaze and the slithery groove of the emerging grunge movement they concoted for second record Dirt that made Alice in Chains the megastars they became. Distinctly heavier than their peers, the band did not fit easily into either metal or grunge categories. The subject matter of such songs as "Junkhead" (a depiction of heroin addiction with lyrics that could only have been written by someone with firsthand knowledge of admission to a detox) and "Rooster," which took a character from John M. Del Vecchio's Vietnam novel The 13th Valley and built a creepy, heavy-as-all-hell dirge around him, set the group apart from the already dark vibes of grunge. For his part, Staley's vocals ranged from broken to ferocious, but it was his bleak honestly that makes hearing some of this music today sound truly chilling, specifically "Dirt": "I want you to kill me/ And dig me under/ I wanna live no more/ One who doesn't care is one who shouldn't be. " Scarifyin'. As if to prove he was not kidding, Staley effectively quit the band at the height of their popularity and essentially disappeared from the landscape, making only occasional appearances in public, each time weighing less and looking worse. He weighed only 80 pounds when he died.

So you can't blame people for their lack of surprise when Staley turned up dead in 2002 after checking out on everyone in 1996. It's just too bad people don't seem to talk about him much anymore. Even when he died it was portrayed in the media as more of an inevitability than a tragedy. Listening to the songs Staley wrote today, all these years later, one can't help but notice this sort of brutal honesty is not something you hear on the radio anymore, ever. Maybe that's what killed him, that honesty. Well, no it was the drugs. One listen to "Junkhead" again and we can deduce it was definitely the drugs that killed him. 

The musicians — not the baseball players — mentioned in this story are yours to enjoy whenever and however you want with your Rhapsody subscription. Click here to sign up for a free trial and see what we’re all about.

Over the years, baseball and rock 'n' roll have been occasional bedfellows, with varying degrees of failure and genius. Former Anaheim Angel Scott Spiezio's grunge band Sandfrog (talk about your crappy band names) represents the less-than-successful; Yankee great Phil Rizzuto calling the play-by-play interlude in the Meat Loaf classic "Paradise by the Dashboard Light," remains one of the great moments. Other crossovers are not quite as clear-cut, but what we've done here is offer some examples of the times when the Great American Pastime has risen above the terrible facial hair and interminably long midseason games it is sometimes known for and bristled with the same rebelliousness, majesty, defiance — or flat-out weirdness — that has identified rock 'n' roll itself since Elvis first freaked people out way back in 1956.

We'd be remiss in our blitz of John Mayer coverage if we didn't make some mention of the dude's well-documented but truly astonishing list of ex- and current girlfriends. A quick Goog'  of "john mayer girlfriend" yields a veritable trinity of major league "J" babes: Jennifer Aniston, Jessica Simpson and Jennifer Love Hewitt right off the bat. Those are some high-level exes, both looks- and celebrity-wise, and even folks who are not fans of his music have to marvel at Mayer's exploits. You have to figure he's got something to offer in addition to his prodigious songwriting and subtly excellent guitarwork.

As the story goes, Mayer's first hit single, "Your Body Is a Wonderland" was written for then-girlfriend Hewitt. What we want to know is, what songs did he write for Cameron Diaz, Minka Kelly, Hank Williams, Jr.'s daughter Holly, etc.? Well, months of diligent research have paid off, and here we present Mayer's most memorable mates and his songs that we think sum up those relationships.

Andy Pettitte: The Cher of notable post-season pitchers. Explanation to follow.

The 2009 baseball post-season is well under way, and watching the Yankees, Angels, Phillies and Dodgers duke it out got our gears turning: if Cole Hamels or Andy Pettitte were a band, which band would he be? Said gears continued turning, and now we have this list of past post-season pitching greats and goats along with their counterparts in the music world -- take that, Joe Buck! Don't really understand this premise? Hate baseball? Not to worry, because we've added appropriate (or approximately appropriate, in some cases) playlists to go along with each entry. Enjoy!

Sometime around 8:00 P.M. Eastern...

Rachel: Hey Mike. Are you there?
Mike: hello Rachel, I'm here.
Rachel: How are you?
Mike: Ready to rock.
Rachel: Ha
Mike: I am. Just gotta get my nephew to turn off ESPN.
Rachel: Well, I am quite possibly the only person in Chicago watching this. Everyone else in town is watching the bears game.
Mike: What is this dance thing?
Rachel: America's Best Dance Crew. Anything with Mario Lopez has got to be good. I mean AC Slater. OK, I guess here we go for real.
Mike: I really can't wait to see how many awards eyehategod wins.
Rachel: And here's Green Day. Green Day just got asked what they're wearing. Haha.
Rachel: Oh such a dumb Michael Phelps pot joke. Hi, 5 months ago! Now we're going to some person named Justine. Who just said "tweet it up!" Oh no.
Mike: I wanna play a game where we do a shot every time they mention Twitter
Rachel: Too much twitter makes the baby go blind

Dan Seals (right) and John Ford Coley

For anyone who's ever been dumped, then drunkenly cranked England Dan and John Ford Coley at a party or on a jukebox, thereby inspiring roughly 90% of the people within earshot to say, "Hey I know this song ... is somebody playing this on purpose?" it may come as a surprise to learn that Dan Seals ("England Dan") had a second, longer-lasting and higher-charting career as a country pop star. First of all, the songs England Dan and John Ford Coley are best known for -- the Chevy van-ready "I'd Really Love to See You Tonight" and "Nights Are Forever Without You" -- are archetypal '70s masterpieces. Acoustic guitars are closely tracked by electric ones, with earnestly romantic lyrics about moonlight through the raindrops and that gently swinging, open-chested velour-shirt bongo rhythm Rupert Holmes perfected with "Escape (The Pina Colada Song)." Early track "It's Sad to Belong" is another lite-rock nugget, amid a handful of charting singles the duo had between 1976 and 1979. To think the man behind such musical time capsules could end up anything besides one of those guys you see performing in a beach resort TGI Friday's lounge with "Please kill me" written all over his face is a testament to Seals' talents.

England Dan and John Ford Coley disintegrated in 1980, and Seals threw himself into country music, perhaps as a result of his Texas upbringing. He scored 11 No. 1 hits over the course of 16 albums before succumbing to lymphoma on March 25 of this year. For the most part, Seals' solo output follows the countrypolitan blueprint of fellow '80s and '90s Nashville artists and eschews the wimpiness of his past almost entirely. But several songs -- "Addicted" most obviously, as well as "My Old Yellow Car" -- feature the acoustic pickings, mellow distortion and distinctly lite-rock vocal stylings that, if you're anything like me, bring you back to Seals' '70s output every now and then -- preferably alone, sure, but with true delight. Seals' passing is a sad one, for the rock community as much as the country scene he was clearly more drawn to.

Progressive metal badasses Mastodon have put out concept albums before. Leviathan is dedicated to and about Melville's Moby-Dick; and Blood Mountain is about man's struggle with nature, specifically getting lost in the woods at night and facing all the things that could happen, like getting attacked by a one-eyed sasquatch that can see the future ("Circle of Cysquatch").

This latest album, their fourth, follows several seemingly disparate ideas and ties them all together with the band's now-accepted talent for linking song parts to one another, their particularly onomatopoeic use of rhythm (Leviathan actually rolls like the ocean), and, for those of us who care about such things, awesome, awesome guitars. The songs on Crack the Skye are concerned with the loneliness of death, astral travel, a spirit that enters a wormhole and ends up inhabiting Rasputin's body and ... um ... stuff like that. The attendant jams are built around bass lines and guitar parts that groove like the good parts of "Starship Trooper" (do not miss the 8:20 mark in "The Last Baron"), sketching a sort of spirit ride through space. Nods to classic rock pepper the album, from Animals-era Floyd ("Oblivion") to the life-death-rebirth-but-really-just-death cycle it shares with the Pretty Things' S.F. Sorrow and the melodic vocal parts learned directly from Peter Gabriel-era Genesis that emerge in just about every song at some point.

This is not your run-of-the-mill major label rock music (even in an era when metal is getting so much attention in the mainstream). Mastodon has turned a pretty cool trick, selling their music on a massive scale while retaining the characteristics that have marked them as one of outsider metal's most interesting acts (read: the weirdness) since they first turned up in the early '00s confusing people (read: me) with their Thin Lizzy-gone-death-metal guitars. Crack the Skye is simply where they're at right now -- astral travel and Rasputin and such, with less death metal thud and more vectoring jammery -- and it works. The best thing about Mastodon is that, with each record, they don't evolve so much as they just get more to the core of their potential.

Here is a playlist designed to act as an overview of a positively enchanting genre of rock music: Floridian death metal. We've compiled key tracks from some of the key players in this seminal metal scene, which emerged in the early '80s and went on to dominate the underground metal landscape through that decade and well into the '90s. Death metal's effects can be felt today anytime one person punches another or cannibalism is practiced, and also in the music of Lamb of God, Mastodon, Avenged Sevenfold and the Dillinger Escape Plan, among many others.

When death metal bands were spreading like a plague on the country in the early '80s, Florida was a definite epicenter of the scene, with pioneers Death brutalizing almost beyond recognition what Slayer had started a couple years before. Tampa Bay-based Obituary, Deicide and Morbid Angel followed, each with their own distinctive take on what was -- with its blastbeat drums, grunted vocals and overload of violence in both lyrics and imagery -- initially thought of as a tasteless offshoot of thrash metal. Malevolent Creation, who moved to Tampa from Buffalo, N.Y., to be a part of the movement, and Obituary represented a form of death metal with strong ties to the midtempo doom of Black Sabbath. Deicide and Acheron incorporated their beliefs in Satanism into the traditionally nonreligious form (their music was later termed “blackened death metal”), and Morbid Angel played a technically complex style that not only outsold all their peers but also arguably had the largest effect on death metal becoming a formidable subgenre in its own right. From there, bands such as Cynic, Atheist and Massacre took death metal in an extremely technical and progressive direction, Six Feet Under moved toward sludginess and St. Petersburg’s Hate Eternal gave rise to the “brutal death metal” subgenre, typified by even more blastbeat drums, Cookie Monster vocals and breakneck tempos than the music of their peers. In short, a sunburst of blaring, putridly awesome music flowered.

As Lamb of God’s new album, Wrath, sells into the millions and the once-despised death metal subgenre gains mainstream acceptance, the intensity and innovation of the songs below only grow in importance. Maybe not so good for your next picnic with Grandma; however, you gotta at least listen to “Til Death” by Obituary.

It�s been a rough week for me. I�ve had to accept a couple harsh realities of this life. Let go of some dreams. First of all, I finally had to give up on the idea that anyone -- anyone -- in Thailand was ever going to get it when I referred to Jimmy Buffett as Jimmy Buffet, which I did at every opportunity in the past few months, believe me. No laughs though. Just blank stares, more loneliness. I was also forced to abandon my letter-writing campaign to punk-pop upstarts New Found Glory and the surviving members of Hole urging the two bands to unite and form a single supergroup called �

I woke up today and went downstairs to get breakfast from one of the vendors on my street. A table with an array of hotel pans and stock pots all with fresh, colorfully blazing curries and murky stew-type things for sale. This is real cheap food but delicious, in fact way better than what you are served in practically any restaurant with a door here. I had spicy pork with unknown fruits and vegetables in it � off-green melon (?) and this strange giant caper type thing I have only ever seen since coming to Thailand. I don�t know what it is but it�s good and, unlike some street food, isn't flavored with anything that smells alarmingly like sewage canal fish so I don�t ask any questions. Thai food is really tasty but it can be like a minefield with the fish-stank if you�re not careful. Sometimes they just toss the aforementioned fat capers in without taking them off the vine they grow on and that�s kind of not so cool unless you are a deer or perhaps a deer-monster, and into eating branches, but like I said, non-fishy so okay...

They walk these elephants around at night in the tourist areas. Sometimes little baby elephants and sometimes big guys. You give the dude 20 baht and he hands you a bag of fruit and you feed the elephant. The first time I had to make room on the sidewalk for an elephant I gotta admit my thought was �Wow. This place is insane and I am never leaving.� So I fed them whenever I saw them.

These blog posts (which are regularly required of me or I get beaten by Garrett) are taking shape as weekly missives from the Far East with some links to songs thrown in. Sorry if it�s obnoxious but I really don�t have anything else to talk about here without getting fired. This week I am gonna talk about shooting pool, an activity that takes up much of my time here in sweaty, smelly Bangkok. I shoot pool a lot because I love it. I love the game. Love it. Also, I hate it. Why? Because shooting pool invariably means I have to interact with other expats. If you care to continue reading, kindly click the link below.

It’s Halloween! Well, almost. Okay, Halloween is a full two months away but what else is there to look forward to right now? Besides Labor Day weekend and year end model clearance insanity on the Auto Mile. Whatever, Halloween’s coming and you know what that means, right? Kids will dress up in costumes, bob for apples and guzzle hot cider. You will pass candy out to the four little bastards that show up at your door. There will be bad, mis-informed decisions made at parties. And best of all, the dead will rise from their graves and feed upon the living. That’s actually what Halloween is all about really – dead people. Not parties and costumes but people who died. In light of this we’d like to remind you of some dead people that it seems like no one ever talks about anymore. Music types.

I was shooting pool in a bar yesterday. Nice day. Very relaxed afternoon. It was one of those afternoons in Bangkok where it�s too hot to be outside, I have a little money and a wide open agenda and the bar I am in has a laid back vibe. I love days like this. Bars in Thailand aren�t always so sedate. Usually there is at least one group of dudes living out some debauched mid life crisis fantasy at top volume. But yesterday, this bar had a few people quietly clicking pool balls around, the (awful) music played over the sound system was at a bearable level and the chilled white hand-towel a waitress gave me felt absolutely wonderful as I buried my face in it and wiped the back of my neck. Also I didn�t have the experience where I look up and accidentally witness some fat bald old creepo from Bristol making out with a 22 yr old Thai girl. So I was having a good day.

I am really into Quint, the shark hunter character from the movie Jaws, lately. I don't know why. He was definitely one of my all-time favorite movie characters when I was a kid. I regularly re-enacted his scenes and dialogue from the movie in my back yard, or any time I was near a pool. I'm just not sure why he's crept back into my consciousness of late. And with a vengeance -- Quint-themed emails, out-of-place Quint quotes thrown into conversations, dressing almost entirely in Army surplus olive drabs. I bought a fishing rod and reel even though I haven't been on a boat or near water even for almost 2 years.

Holy crap! I just realized that last week marked my eight year anniversary here at Rhapsody. I think that means I've worked in the San Francisco building longer than anyone. Back in the day we were called listen.com and what the hell were we listening to in 1999

Here is something interesting that happened today:

I was walking into my apartment building and suddenly this guy on one of the floors up above started screaming really loud. The landlady and security guard immediately went into emergency mode and started running through the building knocking on doors and trying to find where the screams were coming from. First I realized they were coming from my floor ...

I have nothing to say about music this week, sorry. How about a story then? With links to awesome songs? Excellent.

I live in Bangkok, Thailand. Of the many reasons I love it here, besides the round the clock open vice and downward spiral of personal annihilation I am free to engage in on a nightly basis, high on the list is the fact that they sell these amazing metal t-shirts everywhere for cheap. And because I am emaciated, Thai sizes, which are too small for the average American lard ass, fit me perfectly. The t-shirts themselves are always of really good cotton and are often double sided. As a result, my wardrobe consists almost entirely of awesome metal shirts (and the two pairs of fake Levi�s I bought for $20).  

By Tim Quirk

For reasons that elude me, I am in Salzburg. It's where Julie Andrews danced around in the hills singing about the Sound of Music, but if you mention that to locals, they claim never to have seen the movie (most of them, anyway; if you find one who admits to having seen the thing, he will make a point of telling you that the hill on the left the pretend Von Trapps climbed to escape the Nazis actually leads straight into Germany, which is a lot like stuck up San Franciscans moaning that Dustin Hoffman is actually driving west, not east, at the end of The Graduate).

by Mike McGuirk

My name is Mike McGuirk, I am a freelance writer for Rhapsody. I used to run the rock/pop section but last year I went part time and moved out of the US. With very little in the way of a plan I ended up in Southeast Asia. Bangkok, Thailand specifically. Initially, I intended to make Thailand the first stop before moving on to Vietnam where, with a ragtag gang of mercenaries like myself, I would free P.O.W.s, jam out to Hendrix during a firefight in the jungle, jump out of a Huey with nothing but an M-16 and a sheet of acid, wear a headband, etc. Anyway, I got hung up in Bangkok and have yet to make it out of the country. Life is kind of easy here. It's like a giant Red Light district where cigarettes cost a dollar and every girl is an awesome pool shot. Also there are amazing cover bands. And I love cover bands.