50 Ways to Cleave Your Brother

I am fascinated with numbers. I'm never happier than making a little list. So here's 10 reasons to celebrate my little brother's 50th birthday. And you know you're getting old when your younger brother turns 50.

9. We are all born with a gift. It's up to each of us to cultivate it. Scott's gift is the deceptively difficult art of being able to create well crafted pop songs. Whether the masses have found them or not, they're out there (see the end of this post for a few examples). I once asked Scott why the creative well seems to run dry for so many talented bands and artists. His answer was direct and succinct - "It's hard to write a good song".

8. A Dark Rage, Burn This, Redemption, Blue Moon Revisited - a string of four excellent albums full of asphalt rock, each one better than the last. Here's to # 5.

7. Back hair, shoulder hair, bottom of foot hair. Woof.

6. Scott lives his life in exclamation points and all caps. He grabs each experience and savors it... or wallows in it. And if that exuberance means no watching hockey in my living room, then it's upstairs or to the basement you go. Sean gets enough of that colorful language during Eagles and St. Joe's games. Plus... it's hockey.

5. My youngest brother Kevin was a college basketball player, as tenacious a gym rat as you are likely to find. I have spent my life trying in vain to perfect the pump fake, and fear no shot. Yet the last time we played Utah (that's three man roughhouse), Scott won. On a free throw. In the rain. In the dark. Talk about A Dark Rage.

4. Laura. Who knew Scott would make a great husband?

3. 577 concerts - that's how many shows we've seen together. Now there's a book. And in the book, and later on the movie and even later in the fictionalized TV series, guess who's buying the first round?

2. Turtle Dove - my mom's nickname for Scott. God bless the internet.

1. Ian - Scott's greatest hit. Father turns out to be the gig of a lifetime.

0. Zero. As in PSA score. Hell yes. F cancer.

Happy 50th, dude!

Scott McClatchy - Call Out My Name (from Blue Moon Revisited)
Scott McClatchy - Margaret Ruth (from Blue Moon Revisited)

Scott McClatchy - Late Night Rodeo (from Redemption)
Scott McClatchy - I'll Follow You (from Redemption)

Scott McClatchy - Just One Kiss (from Burn This)
Scott McClatchy - Come Across The River (from Burn This)

Scott McClatchy - A Dark Rage (from A Dark Rage)
Scott McClatchy - Forever With You (from A Dark Rage)

New Fiction

A couple of months back, we brought you the lovely first single from Summer Fiction. It turns out there are more lovely singles from Summer Fiction, including this one,"Throw Your Arms Around Me."

Middle Brother

Trip has heard the whole album and loves it. I've heard a couple of tracks and concur. Middle Brother is a summit meeting between members of Dawes, Deer Tick and Delta Spirt (members of Devo, Decemberists and Dire Straits: unavailable), and they play a loose-limbed Cosmic American Music that would make Gram Parsons proud. But unlike Gram, they have their own free iPhone app for news and streaming. Middle Brother hits the road in a couple of weeks, including a stop at Philly's TLA on March 9. Here's the song that gave the band its name (or vice versa):

Middle Brother, "Middle Brother"

Flight Brigade

I don't know this band, but they make a pleasant noise. They also made the video for "A Girl Who Loves Her Smoke and Wine" for 53 pounds (someone else will have to do to the exchange calculation. Check them out here.

Flight Brigade // "A Girl Who Loves Her Smoke & Wine" (The £53 Official Music Video) from Flight Brigade on Vimeo.

Rave On

The Ravonettes return on April 5 with the album Raven in the Grave, and they're hitting the road to support it. They'll be at the TLA in Philly on March 30, and at Record Bar in Kansas City on my birthday (for those not keeping track, April 9). While you wait, enjoy the icy cool first single, "Forget That You're Young."

The Raveonettes, "Forget That You're Young"

Bands That Broke Up At EXACTLY The Right Time

As a follow-up to yesterday's news that The White Stripes now belong to you and me, here is a list of bands that timed their break up to the exact moment when they should break up (and death was not a factor) - and stayed broken up.

1. The Beatles
2. The White Stripes (TBD)
3. The Jam
4. Husker Du

And I wonder if The White Stripes planned yesterday's announcement to coincide with the 52nd anniversary of "the day the music died".

God bless Jack White.

The White Stripes have broken up

Long live the White Stripes.