Tomorrow night, Old Cabell Hall will welcome stand-up comedians Greg Giraldo and Mike Birbiglia to its stage for what is promised to be an evening of maniacal laughter. Okay, maybe not maniacal, as those seats can cramp your style and your legs.
Perhaps the public's perception of Fiona Apple can be summed up by the unplanned poll I conducted among my friends, with myriad and respectable music tastes, when I told them I was reviewing her new CD.
The Rolling Stones' new album A Bigger Bang begins with the lyrics "One time you were my baby chicken/Now you've grown into a fox/Once upon a time/I was your little rooster/But now I'm just one of your cocks." The image of a wrinkled Jagger-phallus notwithstanding, "Rough Justice" is the disc's first and best track.
Chuck Klosterman's latest book purports to be a cross-country journey to the sites where rock stars died -- in Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story, he promises to investigate how "the greatest career move any musician can make is to stop breathing." It sounds like a simple concept, but Klosterman makes an obscene amount of pop culture references, including a short play that summarizes every conversation he's had in Los Angeles (a city he loathes), a track-by-track explanation of why Radiohead's Kid A prophesizes September 11, 2001 and a comparison between the girls he has loved and the members of KISS. Long before he deems Thomas Jefferson "hands down, the coolest president in American history," you'll wonder if this is the same book that promised to teach you about dead rock stars.
