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Is there any more concrete evidence that a band is out of ideas than releasing an album full of new recordings of old songs?
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Believe it.
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OK. I don't have a ton to say about this, really. But I'm not quite sure why former Kiss guitarist Ace Frehley would choose that, of all images for the cover of his latest solo album, Anomaly. Mainly because it makes him look like he has a giant, anomalous (teehee) Jabba the Hutt-chin. Between that, the weird hair and, most of all, the glasses, it looks less like a hard rock icon and more like the way Gary Larson drew fat women in The Far Side. It's actually sort of eerie, isn't it? (Click on the jump and have your mind blown!)

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There's no reason anyone, especially a singer/songwriter type, should come to me for career advice. So please feel free to disregard this post. But given how many famous musicians changed their names becoming famous--think of Declan "Elvis Costello" McManus or Gordon "Sting" Sumner--that if any last name was worth changing, it would be "Hackbarth."

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A lot of times "Free Crap That Came In The Mail" is just taking shots at easy targets. Why not? It's, you know, easy. But this installment is actually something sort of cool, that I probably would have otherwise ignored if not for the fact that it (you guessed it) came in the mail.

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Before you die, you hear the Black Box.

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Oh jeez. Is this "Free Crap That Came In The Mail" or am I starring in my own version of The Ring?

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It's a Goo Goo Dolls tribute album, but it reminds me more of a Metallica song: "The Thing That Should Not Be." Quite certainly the most unnecessary release since "lullaby renditions of Rascal Flatts" and the highest "no, really, this actually exists" quotient since The Essential Stabbing Westward. More thoughts to come, when I get a chance to actually listen to it. Who wouldn't be intrigued? I always thought "Iris" could use some fiddle.

How do you fit all these great hits on just one CD?!

Yeah, there are some pretty cool perks to this job sometimes.

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Mmm, yeah. There are no words. The only Garth Brooks songs I can think of off the top of my head right now seem wholly inappropriate for lullabye material--"Friends In Low Places" (drinking!), "The Thunder Rolls" (domestic abuse!). But you have to admit that the headset microphone on that dog is a nice, and adorable, touch.

Yep, that's a pizza box. And it's on my desk. There's no pizza in it. Normally, that would be pretty disappointing, but I'm OK with it.

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