Alan Scherstuhl

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Blogs
May 23, 2012
McDonald's (Purportedly) Healthy, Sustainable Berkeley Location: Yes, We Went to It
First off, I apologize in advance for the following comparison to anyone struggling with serious addiction. But my two visits to
Blogs
May 4, 2012
The Top 15 Most Cocaine-Influenced Albums of All Time, Nos. 5-1
See also: * The Top 15 Most Cocaine-Influenced Albums of All Time, Nos. 15-11 * The Top 15 Most Cocaine-Influenced Albums of All Time, Nos. 10-6 Here we are, at the end of the blizzard: the final installment of our list of the most coked-out records ever made. Less an endorsement than an assessme ... More >>
Blogs
May 2, 2012
The Top 15 Most Cocaine-Influenced Albums of All Time, Nos. 15-11
"Cocaine," as Rick James famously said, "is a helluva drug." Yup: The white powder's effects have left an influence that's both sublime and downright hideous on decades of pop music. So what happens when you give already-famous musicians a quick burst of energy, ego, paranoia, and euphoria? Most of ... More >>
Blogs
April 30, 2012
Live Review, 4/27/12: Miranda Lambert Is a No-B.S. American Great
Miranda LambertChris YoungJerrod NiemanFriday, April 27, 2012Shoreline AmpitheatreBetter than: Every other currently touring Nashville hitmaker, for reasons gone into below. The short version: Blake Shelton showed up. The Pistol Annies did five songs. Lambert's band actually rocked when it tried to ... More >>
News
April 18, 2012
SF Weekly Letters
Miranda LambertChris YoungJerrod NiemanFriday, April 27, 2012Shoreline AmpitheatreBetter than: Every other currently touring Nashville hitmaker, for reasons gone into below. The short version: Blake Shelton showed up. The Pistol Annies did five songs. Lambert's band actually rocked when it tried to ... More >>
Blogs
April 18, 2012
Live Review, 4/17/12: Pulp Makes the Class War Sexy at the Warfield
Pulp Tuesday, April 17, 2012 The Warfield, San Francisco So, last night, on the 29th anniversary of the release of their first record, svelte glammy/chatty Britpop heroes Pulp stormed the Warfield, where they played the shit out of their best singles and album tracks, stuck around for two encores a ... More >>
Blogs
March 19, 2012
Live Review, 3/16/12: Drive-By Truckers Are Pretty Much Why We Bothered Having Rock 'n' Roll in the First Place
Drive-By TruckersFriday, March 16, 2012The FillmoreSomewhere out there in the multiverse, on Earth 2 or some damn place, opening for what's left of Lynyrd Skynyrd back in '02 brought Drive-By Truckers to the attention of a clutch classic rock and AOR program directors. A little embarrassed&n ... More >>
Blogs
March 17, 2012
So Madonna Is a Satanist, According to This Detailed and Hilarious Christian Post Article
You know everything that's ever been memorable about Madonna? The dunce-cap bustiers, the dry-humping of various taboos, the deeply remunerative pop-sexual controversies? Oh, and all those great songs?Turns out, those aren't just the signal achievements of a woman who has for decades ... More >>
Blogs
March 9, 2012
Harold Camping Apologizes for There Still Being a World
A letter of apology from apocalypse-predicting nonagenarian radio preacher Harold Camping was released yesterday on his Family Radio web-site. "Yes, we humbly acknowledge we were wrong about the timing," Campbell writes, and he even goes so far as to call his prediction "incorrect and sinful ... More >>
Blogs
March 6, 2012
Sandra Fluke's Most Crude and Cowardly Online Attackers: A Literary Analysis
Because she had the temerity to be a woman in America with an opinion about something, Sandra Fluke has spent the last week being both attacked and honored by people who have not read or watched the testimony she gave before congress but still somehow know everything about her. Rush Limbaugh, tha ... More >>
Blogs
March 6, 2012
Netflix Says That Actually it Doesn't Advertise with Rush Limbaugh at All
For the last year or so, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings has been behaving like the hero of Brewster's Millions or some other sad 80s comedy (probably available for streaming!) where the hero has to piss away a fortune or a corporation or something while pretending to be a reasonable person. (This was ... More >>
Blogs
March 2, 2012
"Commie Girl" Rebecca Schoenkopf Promises a "Jollier" Wonkette
Here's another reason Rick Santorum is wrong about college: When you go to school, you meet other people who have gone to school, and then later you can call them and interview them for blogs or whatever's left when they're suddenly in the news for doing something awesome. That's what happened to ... More >>
News
February 29, 2012
SF Weekly Letters
Here's another reason Rick Santorum is wrong about college: When you go to school, you meet other people who have gone to school, and then later you can call them and interview them for blogs or whatever's left when they're suddenly in the news for doing something awesome. That's what happened to ... More >>
Blogs
February 26, 2012
Rick Santorum, 1967 Otis Redding Knows More About Education Than You Do
Sunday ad-circular vest model Rick Santorum is going around the country arguing that pretty much every new feature that America has developed since 1950 is in fact a bug that Quality Assurance should have stomped out. This weekend, though, he reached back even further in time to find better days: ... More >>
Blogs
February 16, 2012
Rick Santorum, 1975 Loretta Lynn Has Something to Say to You
This morning, a Wyoming gasbag who backs Rick Santorum puked up some ridiculous words on TV news for all us Internet people to laugh at. (This is what TV news is for.) Big-money Santorum super PAC donor Foster Friess told MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell: Back in my days, [women] used Bayer aspirin for con ... More >>
Blogs
January 26, 2012
Mitt Romney Will Win Republicans Over By Teaming Up With Nancy Pelosi
Mitt Romney is all set to be the Republican nominee for president, except for one stubborn hitch: Republican primary voters -- like most people -- don't like him, perhaps because he's actually an actor playing a presidential candidate on a soap opera in 1986. Instead, lately, lots of Republicans se ... More >>
Blogs
January 19, 2012
John Hodgman Explains the Beauty of the Internet
John Hodgman knows everything but not everybody. He'll make up for that at this week's SF Sketchfest. There, Hodgman -- the celebrated author, expert, Tumblr, fabulist, pretend-judge, deranged millionaire, computer-imitating pitchman, and life-giving fount of nerd resplendence -- will talk up his n ... More >>
Blogs
December 26, 2011
The Dumbest Thing A Professional Critic Wrote in 2011
Like all noble arts, reviewing is at its heart a craft, one in which a uniquely personal impulse is worked over and given shape within the boundaries of formal constraints. Those constraints vary by the critic, of course, but the chief responsibility is a clear constant: to justify his or her subjec ... More >>
Blogs
December 13, 2011
Kids' Letters to Santa Demonstrate Everything Wrong with America Today
Explore The BruceLike prayer, but secularThis Sunday The Oakland Tribune ran a selection of kids' letters to Santa. Some clever editor or layout person made a point about things by placing the following two letters right on top of each other: Dear Santa, I'm so happy I am saying a hello to you. I ... More >>
Blogs
December 2, 2011
Un-Scripted Theater's Improvised Dickens Musical Is Hard Times Indeed
Here's a testament to the make-it-up-as-it-goes ethos of improv. If a show isn't going anywhere, really, the cast might have it in themselves to fix it as they go. Such a phenomenon occurred last weekend at a performance of Un-Scripted Theater's A Tale of Two Genres, and ambitious -- perhaps too m ... More >>
News
November 30, 2011
SF Weekly Letters
Here's a testament to the make-it-up-as-it-goes ethos of improv. If a show isn't going anywhere, really, the cast might have it in themselves to fix it as they go. Such a phenomenon occurred last weekend at a performance of Un-Scripted Theater's A Tale of Two Genres, and ambitious -- perhaps too m ... More >>
Blogs
November 15, 2011
Robyn Hitchcock Talks About 1990's Eye and Returning to San Francisco
In 1989, Robyn Hitchcock, England's esteemed man-of-psych-pop, holed up at Hyde Street Studios here in town and laid down a record touched with greatness. This Thursday he holes up at Slim's to play it straight through. Today, Hitchcock calls his spare, moody Eye "a skeletal predecessor of ... More >>
Blogs
November 14, 2011
Live Review: They Might Be Giants Improve Flood By Playing It Backwards
Matt SmithThey Might Be Giants at the FillmoreThey Might Be GiantsJonathan CoultonNov. 13, 2011The Fillmore"We know you had your choice of ossified alternative rock bands, so thank you for flying with us!" hollered John Flansburgh, the gregarious, guitar-playing half of Brooklyn's They Might ... More >>
Blogs
November 4, 2011
Il Cane Rosso's Rich, Surprising Pancetta
Alan Scherstuhl The current iteration of San Francisco-style pancetta seems at times a cheap ploy by the fancier restaurants in town at making good old American bacon an elegant side dish for the peaking trend of dignified brunches. It's too often straight slabs of seasoned pork that bear a s ... More >>
News
November 2, 2011
SF Weekly Letters
Alan Scherstuhl The current iteration of San Francisco-style pancetta seems at times a cheap ploy by the fancier restaurants in town at making good old American bacon an elegant side dish for the peaking trend of dignified brunches. It's too often straight slabs of seasoned pork that bear a s ... More >>
Blogs
October 21, 2011
"Cookie Monster" Offers Best Explanation Yet for Occupy Wall Street
"C is for Corporate Malfeasance"A guy calling himself Cookie Monster has written what looks to us like the most clear and persuasive explanation for the Occupy movement we've seen anywhere, a copy-and-pastable screed that everyone should send to their crazy aunts and skeptical grandfolks. Admi ... More >>
Blogs
October 19, 2011
Eric Church's Front Porch Breakbeats: Nashville at Last Fully Integrates Hip Hop
"Dig my beats, but pull your pants up."Eric Church is the first country star to fully incorporate hip hop into country hits. He's not the first to incorporate it, of course. "Honky Tonk Badonkadonk," "Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy," and "Stuck Like Glue" -- that glitterbomb Sugarland single wit ... More >>
Blogs
October 10, 2011
Occupy SF ... San Francisco-Style
In New York City, they Occupy Wall Street movement has drawn thousands of people to the lower Manhattan area to protest "corporate greed." On one occasion, more than 700 protesters were arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge, sparking what some are calling a new era of dissenters. Meanwhile, in San Francis ... More >>
News
October 5, 2011
SF Weekly Letters
In New York City, they Occupy Wall Street movement has drawn thousands of people to the lower Manhattan area to protest "corporate greed." On one occasion, more than 700 protesters were arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge, sparking what some are calling a new era of dissenters. Meanwhile, in San Francis ... More >>
Blogs
October 4, 2011
Hank Williams, Jr., Dares to State Outright What Fox News Only Implies
So, it seems some suits someplace are all worked up at the political opinions of Mr. Hank Williams, Jr. Good for him. Moments like this are why we need a Hank Williams, Jr. Just to be clear, he's the middle (and middle-aged) Hank Williams, the one with the Muppet beard, the one who has never cro ... More >>
Blogs
September 30, 2011
The Golden Gate Meat Company's Breakfast Sandwich Can Get You Through a Morning
Om nom nom Look, I understand that the very existence of breakfast sandwiches is evidence that something is deeply wrong with our society: They're scarfables not meant to be tasted, cheesebombs we galumph down as we dash through a world that affords us not just no time to cook but not even ti ... More >>
Blogs
September 28, 2011
Robyn Hitchcock Looks Back on Looking Back on San Francisco
Nathan Gallagher This Saturday, Robyn Hitchcock plays a solo acoustic set at Hardly Strictly Bluegrass. (Look for him at 12:25 p.m. on the Rooster Stage.) Since 1976, Hitchcock has been writing and performing top-flight psychedelic pop, first with the Soft Boys and then as a solo artist of ... More >>
Blogs
September 27, 2011
What's Your Death Row Last Meal?
James Reynolds/Last SuppersRecreations of condemned inmates' actual last meal requestsI got to thinking about death-row last meal requests last week, which naturally made me think of mine. I don't want to speculate about why I'd be executed. Naturally, I would be being framed. I also asked ... More >>
Blogs
September 16, 2011
Rascal Flatts Is the Worst Hugely Popular Music Act in America
Executive Visions, Inc.Rascal Flatts or a heartland radio station's morning zoo?Rascal Flatts will be performing tonight at the Shoreline Ampitheatre in San Jose. We won't be there. Rascal Flatts is produced by the guy who played guitar on "Straight Up" by Paula Abdul. That's not reason en ... More >>
Blogs
September 14, 2011
Toby Keith and Kenny Chesney: Bullshit & Transcendence in This Week's Top Country Singles
Thing Toby Keith has never said: "Nah, man, that might be a little much."On occasion, All Shook Down gives a listen to the music that is to real America what brine is to a cucumber. This is one of those occasions. Toby Keith, "Made in America" Chart Position: No. 5 Verdict: Fantastic, but ... More >>
Blogs
September 9, 2011
Billy Ray Cyrus' 9/11 Album: The Tragedy America Forgot
Unlike his rash colleagues Alan Jackson and Toby Keith, Billy Ray Cyrus passed a full decade in contemplation before sharing with the world art wrung from his feelings about life in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001. Unleashed this June, the resulting disc, I'm American, should clear ... More >>
Blogs
August 11, 2011
Merle Haggard vs. San Francisco: Five Songs in Which Country's Best Works Through His Issues With the Bay
The Hag will make you eat that gee-tar, hippiesMerle Haggard may contain multitudes, but he tends to feel just one of those multitudinous things at a time - and to feel it so hard and pure that he seems to have forgotten all the previous things he's felt that might not square with it. Perha ... More >>
Blogs
July 29, 2011
Nine They Might Be Giants Songs That Should Be Heard by People Who Think They Don't Like They Might Be Giants
With the release last week of Join Us, their first album for grown-ups in four years, They Might Be Giants has managed something that few pop musicians ever pull off: still creating music of the type and caliber of what made them famous full decades after their start. The record has been hera ... More >>
Blogs
July 18, 2011
Exclusive: Rebecca Black's Secret Debut CD Tracklist!
This is her moment, we just live in it.In her brand-new single "This is My Moment," YouTube superstar Rebecca Black continues her great artistic project: applying the stream-of-consciousness narrative mode to pop-songs built for kickin' it in the bouncy castle.
Blogs
June 27, 2011
The Absolute, No-Debate Worst Song Any Beatle Ever Recorded
Young McCartney always dreamed of the day he would become a real boy. Last week, our colleagues in Broward County and Los Angeles shared their lists of the five worst-ever Beatles songs. While amusing, both omitted what objective science tells us are, in fact, the honest-to-God stinkiest fab flop ... More >>
Blogs
June 20, 2011
Wynton Marsalis at SF Jazz Reminds Us Why We Need Wynton Marsalis
Jazz at Lincoln Center OrchestraDavies Symphony HallSunday, June 19, 2011Look, Wynton. You've taken a lot of shit over the years for rankling the people who -- like you -- worry over ideas of authenticity in music almost as much as they worry over music itself. They carp at your insistence that E ... More >>
Blogs
May 23, 2011
Prince at HP Pavilion in San Jose: Still Something We Will Never Understand
Prince didn't let us bring in a decent camera. Even 27 years on from his magic 1984, there's still something grand and peculiar about Prince inspiring an arena to shout, "I'm not your woman/ I'm not your man/ I am something you will never understand." At Saturday's hit-packed, blissed-out, ... More >>
Blogs
May 19, 2011
The Nine Best Revelations From the New Prince Biography
Let me preface this by saying that the new Prince biography isn't especially good, insightful or interesting. Jason Draper pretty much digs through the same scant published interviews that fuel all bios of our Purple Sex Dwarf. Draper appears not to have interviewed anyone himself, and every thir ... More >>
Blogs
May 12, 2011
Common: Five More Reasons for Talk Radio Conservatives to Hate Him
This man is dangerous!Turns out, we were wrong. For all these years, we considered Chicago rapper/romantic comedy star Common just a hair more hardcore than Jamiroquai. We thought of him as a somewhat conscious MC boasting a warm baritone, some strong tracks, and the allegiance of white guys who ... More >>
News
May 11, 2011
SF Weekly Letters
This man is dangerous!Turns out, we were wrong. For all these years, we considered Chicago rapper/romantic comedy star Common just a hair more hardcore than Jamiroquai. We thought of him as a somewhat conscious MC boasting a warm baritone, some strong tracks, and the allegiance of white guys who ... More >>
Blogs
May 10, 2011
Country Star Eric Church Hates Your Hip-Hop Hat and Sagging Jeans
On occasion, All Shook Down gives a listen to the music that is to real America what brine is to a cucumber. This is one of those occasions. Eric Church, "Homeboy" There's a fine bit of bullshit in Jay-Z's Decoded, that tony slab of image-sprucing book art in which the man who once bragg ... More >>
Blogs
May 5, 2011
'Rapture Party' Planned for May 21
Time to party with the Whore of BablyonOn May 21, fans of American hip hop music will have a chance to celebrate the birthday of the late Christopher George Latore Wallace, popularly known as Biggie Smalls. But those who don't like rap need not feel left out, because we all have a reason almost a ... More >>
Blogs
May 4, 2011
Gay Pride Movement Is Cited as "Proof" That the World Will End on May 21
It's hard not to pass judgement on thisSome SF Weekly readers had a hearty chuckle when we showed them a pie chart illustrating exactly what would happen if gays were allowed to tie the knot: No, the terrorists would not win and schools would not start teaching gay sex. But apparently, Family Rad ... More >>
Blogs
April 28, 2011
The Band Perry and Ashton Shepherd: In Today's Country, Women Roar While the Menfolk Whimper
The Band Perry, apparently on the set of the "Losing My Religion" video. You don't have to see the numbers to get that country radio skews female these days. The hatted hunks who a generation back might have had ramblin' fever now sing of sunny-forever fidelity that would be right at home o ... More >>
Blogs
April 19, 2011
Reba McEntire & Ronnie Dunn: Today's Country Is Yesterday's Coldplay
On occasion, All Shook Down gives a listen to the music that is to real America what brine is to a cucumber. This is one of those occasions. Reba McEntire, "If I Were a Boy" Since Americans only got around to segregating their mongrel pop music into discrete categories like "Race" and "H ... More >>
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