It’s Friday, Let’s Listen to Some Music
Why not?
It’s been a short week, which is somehow worse than a regular one. I don’t feel like doing $#!+ or thinking about $#!+ or any of that $#!+.1 So let’s kick back and listen to some tunes I’ve been enjoying lately.
When I first heard about Pete & Bas, the elderly Cockney gangster rappers, I figured they would sound like: “Well, I’m the Rappin’ Grandpa and I’m here to say…” You know the sort of thing. Old people trying to do hip-hop is never not funny.
Except for these blokes! Pete & Bas are the real deal. These two old fossils spit bars.
They’re in their seventies. How many other guys in the rap game have ever seen the Beatles play live?
They’re hilarious, but unlike most elderly people trying to rap, I’m laughing with them. All the bluster seems more than a little tongue-in-cheek, but it sure is fun.
That was tasty. How about some Japanese? Check out Sakuran-Zensen.
I like rock music as much as the next guy, but whatever happened to enunciating? I didn’t get a word of that!
That song came up on Spotify’s “Discover Weekly” playlist this week and I really liked it. Reminds me of the Hives: straightforward, hard-driving guitar rock. Except even less decipherable than those Swedes.
At first I assumed this song was from the ‘80s or ‘90s, but the internet tells me it was recorded in 2020! Sometimes it feels like rock is dead in America, so it’s nice that other countries are keeping it alive.
When I Googled their name, I came up with the Wikipedia entry for sakura zensen, or “cherry blossom front.” That’s what the Japanese call the blooming of cherry blossoms across the country every spring. Sort of a peaceful name for such a raucous band.
Apparently they were together from 2017-2022 and then broke up. Too bad. They’re still in their early twenties, so maybe they’ll get back together.
I like all types of garage rock, even if the garage has a name I can’t pronounce. Guitars and drums are like a universal translator.
Here’s some more loud rock music, but we’re back to the Queen’s English. I think?
Royal Blood consist of a drummer and a bassist/singer. That’s it. Just two guys are making all that noise!
I really liked their first record about 10 years ago, but then their most recent one went in disco-punk direction that didn’t do much for me. This is more like it.
Elbow update for fans of my various physical ailments: It’s still sore, but I think I figured out the problem.
There’s a great site called tenniselbowclassroom.com, run by a physical therapist named Alan Willette, and it’s helped me a lot. He has videos showing how to test for both tennis and golfer’s elbow, so now I know I don’t have either of those. Whew!
It’s most likely triceps tendinitis, or weightlifter’s elbow, and now I know exactly how I got it. Last month I tried doing pushups with my hands raised up from the floor on yoga blocks, like the guy in the DDP Yoga video I was using. I tried to “level up” too fast, I didn’t master the regular pushups before trying the harder ones, and I put too much strain on that triceps tendon. It doesn’t show any of the symptoms of a tear, but it’s sore in that very specific area when I move it in that very specific way.
Which is actually good news. It’s not repetitive stress from computer use. So I can still make a living without worrying I’ll be crippled. Again.
The consensus seems to be that the only cure for this is rest. So I guess I won’t do any pushups for a while. Oh well. Darn!
Also, Willette says most of the nutritional supplements and anti-inflammatories I’ve been buying are useless, and healing a tendon mostly requires just three things: vitamin C, vitamin D3, and protein. You gotta build that tissue back up, and those are the building blocks. I’m probably low on the first two because I’ve been doing keto, so now I’m trying to eat more whole fruit and fish. Plus 20-30 minutes of sun exposure a day, for the vitamin D.
Isn’t that fascinating? Hey, you asked. Oh, you didn’t? Well, you looked like you were going to ask.
Speaking of things you didn’t ask about: My other job is going well! I can’t go into specifics, but I’m writing monologues and pitching in jokes and stuff every week. It’s a whole new way of working for me, where a bunch of writers throw stuff in a big pot. Then I just have to wait to see if any of my stuff gets picked for the show that night. It’s a lot different than this one-man operation I’ve been doing here, but it’s fun and it’s honing my writing muscles.
And I’m not just saying that because my boss is reading this!
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Shit.
Loved the footnote
Whenever I watch Gutfeld! these days, I try to figure out which jokes were yours. I bet I am right some of the time.