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So does Jay-Z then pay for the three $80 candles when he checks out, or are they covered by the hotel? Does Kanye pay for the speaker?

(just realized this could be construed as a statement of me not caring about Phil Collins reissues, but it's not at all... it's just a total jam.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C6PNc9KN50M

I tried so hard to be funny. I should just quit.

I have jokes about this: • If one of the hotel employees sees Lenny Kravitz wandering the halls alone do you think he or she asks other hotel employees "Are you gonna go his way?" • If one of the hotel employees sees Lenny Kravitz wandering the halls alone do you think they ask him why and he replies "I want to get away. I want to fly away. Yeah yeah yeah." • If Lenny Kravitz sees one of the female hotel employees while he is wandering the halls alone do you think he says "American Woman stay away from me." Plz rate my jokes.

goddammit. That wasn't a complete thought. I hit submit by mistake. ** I was under the impression the aspect ratio was weird because it was made to premiere on a square Beats by Dre billboard. But yeah, I was expecting it to open up to widescreen at some appropriate point in the song like by the time we hear the next pop or 'you goat mouth mammy fucker'

I was under the impression the aspect ratio was weird because it was made to

Mike Wallace is a deeply kind soul! After their show in San Francisco a coupla weeks ago, I intoxicatedly started yammering at him about how rad their set was when I saw him in line to take a leak. I just kept going and going and going and going and I probably even did a drunken shoulder grab (in hindsight, I fear that could be what broke his arm) but this majestic, kind man didn't treat me like the obnoxious dweeb I was being. Instead, he invited me to continue our discussion in the stall while he peed -- and he even said we could 'cross streams' if the conversation necessitated such a measure. I declined that offer because, despite being horrendously overserved, I wanted to respect the dude's privacy at least a little bit. So I stood at the stall door and continued blasting the poor guy with belligerent praise that may or may not have involved air drums. I think the last thing I said to him was "I got an office job, man, I work in an office every day... but when I listen to the ending of 'Death' on my headphones at my desk it reminds me that it's everything's going to be alright" and he just smiled and thanked me in a (seemingly) very genuine way. That's as far as I remember. I may have barfed out the window of an Uber later but one cannot be sure.

I see what you're saying and I've been asking myself the same thing (even as a big Dead and Phish fan). I came to the conclusion that while it would be sweet to see this, it probably isn't worth the trillions of dollars a scalped ticket would cost or the blood/sweat/tears of actually landing a ticket when they went on sale. It will still be plenty cool to watch the live video stream they'll set up. I get why it sold out and is now being scalped for exorbitant prices. It's a momentous occasion. It's the official last set of Dead shows, so people are crawling out of the woodwork. All the people who used to follow the Dead want to go, all the people who got into the Dead after 1995 want to go, anybody who kinda likes the Dead but really likes Phish wants to go (keep in mind there's also no Phish summer tour dates announced yet), and so on. I would bet there's a lot of people who are going that haven't even thought twice about what the music will sound like, but tried to buy tickets anyway because of the epic 'last hurrah' nature of it all. BTW, I've got no doubt that it's going to sound great. They'll have state-of-the-art, expensive-as-a-motherfucker equipment. Bobby and Phil and Bill still play great -- and Bobby's still got vocal chops despite sounding a bit more haggard than he used to. Trey is a good frontman, an outlandishly good guitarist and improviser, and (I think) he'll do a bang-up job of filling in for Jerry. AND AND AND they've got Jeff Chimenti and Bruce Hornsby! Both of those guys A) know their way around keyed instruments, and B) have proven they know how to play with the Dead. There's really no weak link there besides the whole age thing, and I'm confident that they're going to defy that for the whole run. I'm optimistic!

I love Stereogum because they don't shy away from non-cynical, non-ironic, thoughtful and appreciative write-ups about not only bands like The Shins and REM and Tribe, but also about bands like The Black Crowes and Live and Stone Temple Pilots. Now if only they'd make a "The 10 Best Barenaked Ladies Songs" list.

It bumps!

THAT THUNDERCAT INTRO. Wouldn't it be amazing if this album dropped out of the sky this month? Also: 3:47>4:00 is basically cut out of The Dark Knight. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ug8_DNjgfME

A killer album, too.

The entirety of 'Benji,' an album that initially captivated me with its candidness and sensitivity and wit, just has this penetrating smell of bullshit now. Viva 'Lost In The Dream', Viva 'RTJ2', Viva 'Home Like Noplace Is There', Viva pretty much any other good album of the year. But fuck 'Benji'. It's tainted and Mark Kozelek tainted it. Get out.

"Though I kept to myself, and for the most part was pretty coy I once got baited into clocking some undeserving boy Out on the elementary school playground I threw a punch that caught him off-guard and knocked him down And when I walked away, the kids were cheering And though I grinned, deep inside I was hurting But not nearly as much as I'd hurt him He stood up, his glasses broken and his face was red And I was never a schoolyard bully It was only one incident and it has always eaten at me I was never a young schoolyard bully And wherever you are, that poor kid, I'm so sorry"

So, reading this made me go listen to "Get What You Give" because I still think it's awesome. No rapture here. But as I listened, I realized that song sounds pretty much exactly the same as the goddamned Michelle Branch/Carlos Santana stinker "Game of Love" from the year 2002. Like, eerily similar. So I checked... WRITTEN BY GREGG ALEXANDER. WHAM BLAM THANK YOU MA'AM. CASE CRACKED.

I was there. Hilarious and legitimately great song. It should also be mentioned that the balloons were mentioned earlier in the set at Hardly Strictly, when Ryan said "No more of this nostalgic bullshit. It's time to play a dumb song. I see those fucking balloons back there! It's time to get dumb!" and then the band broke into 'Easy Plateau' off of Cold Roses. Hahaha.

It makes me so happy that this album is even halfway decent, let alone actually pretty good. And it heartens me to see that the majority of this site agrees. I think we all, somewhere deep down inside, root for Weezer and Rivers. Weezer's career seems to be following a U-curve trajectory. Amazing album, amazing album, good album, good album, BAD ALBUM, BAD ALBUM, BAD ALBUM, OK album, Good album. I see a promising future. Their worst stuff is past. Also, does anybody else maybe think the 3 or 4 bad records they put out might have just been an elaborate plan by Rivers Cuomo to create a birth of the hero>fall of the hero>rise of the hero narrative with his musical career? Because he's crazy? And that explains all the meta lyricism about making crappy music on this album and the last one? Nobody else thinks that? Okay. Bye.

Just have to say that this list has provided a solid foundation for me to discover and get "into" XTC over the past few days. Thanks for making it!

I love this dude. He seems less grumpy than he used to be (Mark Kozelek is much more intolerable nowadays) and he makes everything interesting. This site posted an interview a couple weeks ago where he mostly just talked about baseball and poker and cats -- yet it was still engaging as fuck. (Link: http://www.stereogum.com/1695871/hear-steve-albini-talk-baseball-poker-and-shellacs-dude-incredible-on-the-kreative-kontrol-podcast/news/ )