Many Of Donald Trump's 2017 Twitter Attacks/Rants/Spats

Here was Donald Trump's 2017, essentially, considering he and the Republicans passed just one bill of note:

And that's notwithstanding his Twitter was with North Korean President Kim Jong-un.

I'm sure glad he gets along with everybody, 'cause I'd hate to see a world where he doesn't.

Video Of The Week: Temple Of The Dog

In the beginning, there was Malfunkshun. It was Easter Sunday in Seattle, in 1980. They owed a lot to Kiss and T-Rex as far as sound and look goes, perhaps with a bit more distortion in their guitars.

They played for years with such Seattle luminaries The U-Men (est. 1981), Melvins (1983), Green River (1984) and Soundgarden (1984); they were all friends. So much so that Malfunkshun's lead singer, Andrew Wood, started playing with Green River's Jeff Ament and Stone Gossard and formed Mother Love Bone, then moved in and became roommates with Soundgarden's Chris Cornell. The other half of Green River formed Mudhoney, who went on to have some success of their own.

In 1990, Wood died of a heroin overdose, which deeply affected all of his friends - and Cornell in particular; he wrote twelve moving songs in tribute to his best friend, ten of which made it onto Temple Of The Dog's self-titled record, a project he included Wood's Mother Love Bone bandmates in, including a new singer they'd brought in to front their new unit, then-named Mookie Blaylock in honor of the basketball star but would soon be renamed Pearl Jam, a Chicago-via-San Diego surfer/artist called Eddie Vedder;  Soundgarden's Matt Cameron was on drum duty, having done the same on the Gossard's demo that prompted Vedder to move up North to try out for the new band, and PJ's lead guitarist Mike McCready was invited as well.

It was thus no lie when the Temple Of The Dog CD was adorned with a sticker that read "Pearl Jam + Soundgarden = Temple Of The Dog", and the video for Hunger Strike, which remains one of the best songs of the 1990s, made full use of all members sporting plaid shirts and shorts with underalls. It was directed by Paul Rachman and featured such Pacific Northwest staples as a beach, a "forest" and the West Point Lighthouse:

Cornell didn't actually think much of the song originally, until Vedder came along and added his twist to it:

When we started rehearsing the songs, I had pulled out "Hunger Strike" and I had this feeling it was just kind of gonna be filler, it didn't feel like a real song. Eddie was sitting there waiting for a (Mookie Blaylock) rehearsal and I was singing parts, and he kind of humbly - but with some balls - walked up to the mic and started singing the low parts for me because he saw it was kind of hard (and I was struggling). We got through a couple choruses of him doing that and suddenly the light bulb came on in my head, this guy's voice is amazing for these low parts. History wrote itself after that, (and it) became the single.

In music, history is often made accidentally. Lightning in a bottle.

2017 In Unnecessary Censorship

Video Of The Week: Fergie

Unbeknownst to be, I've been following Fergie's career since I was six years old, as she starred in the long-syndicated in the U.S. (but hard to find in Canada beyond 1986) TV show Kids Incorporated as Stacy Ferguson, alongside Jennifer Love Hewitt, Eric Balfour (24), Martika (who sang the theme song, and the mega-hit Toy Soldiers a few years later), Mario Lopez, and Wendy Brainard (who went on to sing with Corey Hart and Donna Summer).

I fucking loved that show so much I'd get up at 5 AM to watch it on Saturday mornings in the second grade; my parents didn't understand what was up with me, but there was something about the five songs per episode (and maybe Hewitt, Ferguson and Martika singing them as well).

Then came the girl-group Wild Orchid, whose records I bought for the album covers (namely the self-titled debut and the Supernatural single) but seldom listened to.

In the mid-1990s (and pretty much my entire life, really), some pop music suited my ears, but rock and rap more so; The Black Eyed Peas' first two records were decent underground fare, but when they hired Fergie and turned pop for Elephunk, their career hit new heights of commercial success... and creative depths that represent pretty much everything that is wrong with modern pop music.

In 2006, she came out with her first solo record, The Dutchess, which was successful, but sounded like it should have been a Gwen Stefani album, what with the reggae-ska numbers, the semi-honest/touchy-feely numbers that hint at deeper turmoil but ultimately fail at being truly poignant. And the insipid pure-pop numbers just didn't make it for me - although they made my then-girlfriend dance and act wild.

Fergie has tremendous skill as a singer, in the upper echelons, but for most of her career, it has felt like she was either holding back or refused to exploit it correctly.

There are two ways to go when you have a voice like that: the Céline Dion/Frank Sinatra/Whitney Houston way, which is to have people write songs for you to belt out like no other, or to bare your fucking soul, which works whether your voice is great or unique (Tori Amos, Charlotte Martin, Joanna Newsom, Björk), "normal" (P.J. Harvey), or awful (Courtney Love, Yoko Ono).

Finally, at age 42, Fergie has chosen the latter, with A Little Work, from the album Double Dutchess, which is a tad cliché'd but still rings true. The long-form video (a.k.a. "short film") by Jonas Åkerlund brings the point home very well:

You may recall Akerlund's work - such as the 2002 indie film Spun, or his videos for Roxette, Prodigy (Smack My Bitch Up), Madonna (Ray of Light), Metallica (Turn The Page, Whiskey In The Jar), The Smashing Pumpkins, Blink-182's I Miss You, and countless others - is among the best in the business.

He was the perfect director to bring to life a story about drug addiction (be it Fergie's documented struggles with crystal meth or the current opioid crisis in America) and mental illness.

Video Of The Week: AC/DC

"In Rock we trust, it's Rock or Bust".

As they've done many times over the course of their careers, when AC/DC opted to have that line open the chorus of the title track to their sixteenth album, they meant it; it was the first record without longtime-riff-writer Malcolm Young manning one of the guitars (nephew Stevie Young filled in), and the video also featured Bob Richards (Asia, Shogun, Man) on drums in lieu of Phil Rudd, who was on trial for murder and drug smuggling in New Zealand (the murder charge was dropped, but the drug-related ones led to his being sentenced to eight months of home detention).

Rock Or Bust was the the 14th of 17 AC/DC songs with the work "Rock" in its title; they also have six with "Balls", so you do with that what you want.

And as he'd done many times for the band before, director David Mallet decided to play to the band's strengths for the video: the raw energy of their live shows, the musicianship, the fun they have playing together, and the riffage, filming at Middlesex, England's Island Studios, on its central stage:

It isn't the best AC/DC record, and thus far from their best song. It's still better than a lot of what's out there, both in rock and beyond.

Hail to Rock! In Rock I trust!

Unnecessary Censorship: Star Wars Edition

Jimmy Kimmel and his staff just keep upping the ante.

This week's Unnecessary Censorship clip is all about the Star Wars saga: