The New Suburbans

I don’t want to come off as a curmudgeonly bitter former rock star (although in my mind this is true!), and I give big up’s to anyone willing to subject themselves to the scrutiny of the great unwashed American public and play music on the street, HOWEVER… there are clearly some people that should remove any thoughts from their feeble brains that they are 1) an entertainer, 2) a musician. There are several “street entertainers” in Boston that deserve the John Belushi Smash the Guitar Against the Wall Award. One guy, who I have dubbed “Horny”, shows up periodically in front of South Station with his saxophone and plays non-stop as loud as he can for hours at a time. He is a veritable musical schlock machine who plays every song in the same key and seemingly everything you never wanted to hear again in this lifetime. Ever heard “Star Wars Theme” in a medley with “You Are the Sunshine of My Life” and “Tequila”? Well now you can if you’re within hailing distance of South Station Boston. I’d definitely give him money to stop. But I will say this, for a reformed alchoholic crackhead, he’s really got the circular breathing thing down..

Another so-called “street musician” that afflicts many urban environments is the tweaker nee crackhead “Trash Can Drummer”. These dudes think beating a repetitive go-go beat on plastic tubs, with cymbal crashs simulated by the trash can tops, and again for hours on end, is a pleasant and entertaining experience for spectators and people trapped in traffic in nearby cars. Just Stop Already!! I’d pay these guys to go away, but I’d be afraid of pulling out my wallet. There are likely to be semi-automatic weapons under those plastic tubs….

And because South Station is a major commuting terminus, there are always guys badly playing $1.98 out of tune, stolen 5 string guitars, mumbling some lyrics noone can understand next to a cardboard sign that says something like “Need money to get back to my fiance..” The best street musician I ever saw was playing an electric guitar upside down at a Red Line stop, with the neck of the guitar pointed at his feet and the body resting on his shoulder. He sounded like Bach on acid, two-handed tapping counterpoint melodies and bending strings like Jimi. I missed three subway trains in a row to listen to this guy. Wherever you are now, please come back and displace “Horny” and “crackhead plastic tub drummer boy”, I beg you! Save us all from more urban noise pollution!!

Check it out!
Blue_Cheer_demo – ‘Doctor Please’

Fight!     Brand New      Take You to the Country

Here’s some “new” music from our upcoming CD:

Fight!–> featuring Dan Ash beaucoup guitar solos, and “out” sax by Crazy Jim (uh… what key were you playing in, Jim?)

Take You To the Country–> a touching lyrical reminiscence about love, obsession, and cannabalism

Brand New–> If ever a New Sub’s song deserved to be a hit, this is it!!

At a family gathering I tried to demo some of the New Sub’s new songs, and discovered to my horror that nothing in the way of MP3’s were posted on this site. This is obviously unacceptable and will need to be corrected ASAP!! As I have expressed on many occasions, The New Sub’s career goal is to be famous after we die, and this can only be accomplished through devious subliminal advertising and relentless self-promotion.

To our many, many fans (especially young Swedish blonde women who desire to become our “Personal Assistants” ), and on behalf of all New Suburbans everywhere, I offer my sincerest apologizes for the absence of new musical product on this site.

Visit CDBaby to hear sound clips from the old New Suburbans. And get ready for new New Suburbans’ tunes in the days ahead!!

Wow – another cool item – this is a flash image that shows darkness falling on the city of Hong Kong as you move the curser from top to bottom….

Wow – this is a cool animation – no one can explain exactly why the weather pattern has sharp ‘corners’ or why it has persisted since the 1980’s.

this from the article on Wired.com:

The Cassini spacecraft has returned the best images yet of the strange hexagonal jet stream that flows around the northern pole of Saturn.

First discovered by the Voyager spacecraft in the early 1980s, the hexagon remains a beautiful mystery to astronomers, and one they’ve been waiting for another shot to see for almost three decades.

“The longevity of the hexagon makes this something special, given that weather on Earth lasts on the order of weeks,” said Kunio Sayanagi, a Cassini project researcher at the California Institute of Technology, in a NASA release. “It’s a mystery on par with the strange weather conditions that give rise to the long-lived Great Red Spot of Jupiter.”

OK we’re able to share MP3s from the site now – the size restriction on uploads was re-set to a reasonable value.  To publish an MP3, you log in, go to ‘Posts’, ‘Add New’ and use the ‘Visual’ input area to present some descriptive text and a clickable link to the uploaded media file…

After adding some text, click on the button ‘Add Audio’ next to the words ‘Upload/Insert’.

Locate the file on your local computer, upload it using one of the two upload options (Flash or ‘Browser Upload’).  Fill in the descriptive fields and you’re done…

The end result is a link like this:

Binge Drinking on Friday Night

NOTE: There are several other ways to add media to the site; there’s an area called the ‘Media Library’ which is where they are stored…

Al Yankovic explains ‘Auto-Tune’…