It was only at a rock festival tent in 2011 that I realized that ALL comedy is now the Henny Youngman one-liner. Steven Wright by way of Mitch Hedberg has won the battle: turgid break-up stories and making fun of pop stars are out; surreal two-sentence twists are all the rage. No back-stories, no set-ups, no preaching about how both political parties are in collusion to keep us down—the only set-up we needed was just maybe a persona to keep the quirkiness going.

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I didn’t necessarily expect people to mosh for The Strange Boys, since their music is more dance-inducing than violence-worthy. But they moshed indeed, and my knees are so bruised up from being pushed against the stage that even the touch of my sheets to my skin hurts like hell.

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Day 4 of SXSW was perhaps the most fun of all, and it began with the most delicious vegan peanut butter cup I’ve ever had. I washed it down with an agave wheat beer at the Spider House, where Norwegian noisers the Megaphonic Thrift rocked me back to the early nineties with their can’t-quite-put-my-finger-on-it nostalgic [...]

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Read: THE STRANGE BOYS: AAAAAAGH, LOOK OVER THERE, AAAAAH!

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As the amps were cranked and treble set to ten, a young looking and spastic crowd, including pro-skater Andrew Reynolds shuffled and shimmied around to the delta blues inspired “Who Needs Who More.” As the notes on my sweat soaked notepad started to blur, visions of Bo Diddley fronting the Kinks ran through my head as the twenty somethings played through “Heard You Wanna Beat Me Up.” Guitarist Greg Enlow smoothly ran through riffs, rarely even having to look down at the fret board while staring blankly into the crowd of flannel shirts.

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Fucked Up “No Epiphany” [Audio clip: view full post to listen] WEST COAST BUS TOUR WITH: FUCKED UP, CRYSTAL ANTLERS, STRANGE BOYS Sat-Aug-30 Los Angeles, CA Fuck Yeah Fest Sun-Aug-31 Oakland, CA 924 Gilman Mon-Sep-01 San Francisco, CA Hemlock Tavern Tue-Sep-02 OFF Wed-Sep-03 OFF Thu-Sep-04 Olympia, WA TBD Fri-Sep-05 Seattle, WA Vera Project Sat-Sep-06 Portland, [...]

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