leftovers

My first favorite band was The Thompson Twins. I don't know how or why. When I was at the age where someone decides that they have a favorite band, something about the Twins spoke to me and I just became obsessed. While many people quickly move on from the bands and artists they liked as a child, I am not one of those people. Thompson Twins are still a favorite of mine, but over the years, other bands have replaced them in the top spot. One such band, The Human League, has been with me for almost as long. They had been one of my favorite bands since I was about 12 or so, but they moved in to first place probably around the summer after my senior year in high school, when they released "Octopus." Here are all their studio albums ranked from least favorite, to favorite! 10.  HYSTERIA 1984 The dreaded follow up Considering they are my favorite band, I obviously wouldn't say Human League have ever made a totally awful album, but this one is definitely the closest t...

A couple of weekends ago, I had a true '80s flashback, with the release of the new Duran Duran album, the Belinda Carlisle show at the Fonda Theatre, and ending the weekend with the Fireworks Finale at the Hollywood Bowl with the B-52's! I discovered the B's the summer before my 8th grade year, when the video for "Channel Z" was getting airplay on MTV. I thought they were a new band (I've told this whole story before here ) and they quickly became my favorite band for a few years! I loved going record shopping and finding their older albums and singles. For a band that has been around for so long, they really haven't made any bad albums (of course, they have not been all that prolific), so this list was very hard to rank. I do love every album of theirs, but for the sake of this blog I am going to have to make some tough decisions to rank them from least favorite to favorite, so here we go! 8. GOOD STUFF 1992 Let me be clear: I love ALL of the B-52...

Duran Duran's 14th album came out last Friday, so in honor of their amazing career I thought I'd rank all of their studio albums! Duran Duran has been one of my favorite bands since I can remember. They were at the height of their popularity just as I was starting to become aware of pop culture and listening to the radio. Their songs were played on the radio all the time when I was around 8 years old, and they were the favorite band of my cousin, Travis, who I idolized. So naturally I became interested in them and followed their career through the highs and the lows. I remember being in my cousin Scott's wedding when I was a junior in high school, and on the drive there, the DJ announced that "Ordinary World" was #1, and that song was from what has become known as "The Wedding Album" which was very fitting and special for me on that day. Several years later, in college, is when I went from being more of a superficial fan (I really only had known their si...

Shortly after our performance at the 2015 LA Marathon, we were asked by the same person if we would perform at the Sunset Strip Half Marathon on April 19th. I wasn't sure if the band would be up for another early morning gig, so I ran it by everyone, and the verdict came in as yes!     Fairly quickly into the process, some issues started popping up that made me slightly worried about this event. I hadn't heard about this race before, and it turned out that it was the first time they were attempting it. But know that some of the same people behind the LA Marathon were behind this race eased my mind somewhat.   We were told early on that we would be playing roughly from 8:00 a.m. - 9:30 a.m. somewhere along the race route, which was centered in West Hollywood, very near to my home, so that sounded great! However, the race day was growing nearer and nearer, and we still hadn't been told what our location would be. The only reason I even really cared was bec...

Dylan and I recently attended an event at the Theatre at the Ace Hotel downtown on Broadway, which was the launch party for a new video platform called Oz ( www.oz.com ). I only knew about the event, because I follow the Icelandic band GusGus , who I've been a fan of for many years, and I had gotten a notification that they would be playing there that night. I wasn't completely sure what exactly Oz was, until that night. From some of the previous communications with them, I gathered it was some sort of website for creative people to be able to showcase themselves, and contrary to what I usually do, I actually read the fine print on their communications including the legal and privacy policies, since initially they were asking me to open my own "account" with them (by starting a "channel"). In the legal disclaimer, it mentioned that it was subject to Icelandic law. Well, I am a Icelandophile so this really intrigued me! Before we had even walked in, we...