Good morning! It's Black Friday, a term some wanker marketing genius coined for the day after Thanksgiving when, ideally, retailers all across this mass-consumer-crazed nation of ours will be (the theory goes) left "in the black." Though in these recessionary times, I'm not even expecting Christmas cards this year.

 

Before Black Friday was a co-opted media catch phrase (tonight would be a good night to invite some friends over and play the Black Friday drinking game -- flip on CNN, and down a shot each time you hear the term), it was a song by snark-rockers Steely Dan, a track from their 1975 album Katy Lied.

 

Of course, Black Friday has also been a term used to describe a day of horrible wildfires in Australia, the day when four Chicago anarchists were hanged following the Haymarket Square riots, and, for some reason, Game 3 of the 1977 National League Championship Series, as well as a slew of other events that don't involve credit cards.

 

Have you heard that today is also North American Buy Nothing Day?

 

Here's a more recent version of Steely Dan -- with Donald Fagen appearing even more lethargic than usual -- playing the tune during the band's Two Against Nature tour. What's the Dan's "Black Friday" about? Appropriately, some have interpreted it as being about a stock market crash . . .

 

 

Surely one of the weirdest/most awesome moments in Thanksgiving Day Parade history this morning, where Rick Astley himself comes out to perform "Never Gonna Give You Up" on the "Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends" float. Next up: Tay Zonday on the Super Bowl halftime show, I guess.

The Time: Thanksgiving, 1976.

  The Place: Winterland Ballroom, San Francisco.

  The Occasion: The final concert by the original lineup of the Band, with a jaw-dropping number of guests (Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, Muddy Waters, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Van Morrison, Ringo Starr, Dr. John, etc.), all of it preserved forever by Martin Scorsese's cameras in the greatest rock-doc of all time, The Last Waltz.

  Ticket Price: A then-scandalous $25, but everybody got a free turkey dinner with that, too. Here's the Band performing "Don't Do It" as the film's opening credits roll (though it's actually the last song they played that evening):

 

As Rick Danko says in the beginning: Happy Thanksgiving!

 

 

New alt-country at its finest? Howzabout New Mexico singer/songwriter (and former bull rider) Ryan Bingham and his band, the Dead Horses, playing this Saturday night at the fabulous Gypsy Lounge in Lake Forest?

Dude's been on Leno and Conan, and got a nice, long profile in March from the LA Times (seems he spends a lot of time recording at the Compound in Long Beach, where LBC band Shave usually cut all their music).

Really, if you need a damn good reason to escape the Turkey Day Weekend relatives, this is it . . .here's Ryan and his band performing "Hard Times" from his 2007 album Mescalito (and here's the Gypsy Lounge site, if you don't yet know about this excellent live music room).

 

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Photo by Christopher Victorio
Last Night: Coldplay at the Honda Center, Anaheim, Nov. 25, 2008.

Better than: Staying home to watch the six-hour long "Dancing with the Stars" season finale.

Most mixed message: Booths in the lobby promoting anti-poverty organization Oxfam, just mere feet away from merch tables selling $35 t-shirts and $20 "tour programs."

Let's face it--it's really not "cool" to like Coldplay. They're just too popular, too earnest, too derivative of The Bends-era Radiohead and too married to Gwyenth Paltrow to be taken seriously. It's like that troubling line from The 40-Year-Old Virgin: "How do I know you're gay? Because you like Coldplay."

But dismissing the band for any or all of those reasons means missing out on things like Tuesday night's concert at the Honda Center, where their numerous anthemic numbers met perfectly with enjoyably overblown stage production, creating a nearly two hour rock spectacle strongly reminiscent of some Irish band Coldplay's been compared to a few times before.
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The day before Thanksgiving (Thanksgiving Eve, as I oh-so-cleverly like to call it), is typically one of the busiest bar nights of the year. It makes sense: No one has to work the next day, people are in town, wanna get away from their families and turn to the sweet, sweet solace of the bottle.

So it's only reasonable that Detroit Bar is having a celebration to honor the almost-holiday, a "Thanksgiving Banger," if you will. (Sure, I will.) They've got a full slate of DJs, including Dan Sena (he of regular Wednesday night Detroit Bar affair Busy Work), "Them Jeans," Clifford Liddell and more. Dance the night away as you prepare to celebrate the succulent spoils of American colonialisism.

Tickets are $10, and if their MySpace bulletins are to be believed, going fast.