I downloaded “My favourite headache” last night. Some GREAT basswork. Still getting used to the song itself though - although it certainly isn’t bad, of course.
Victor II is due out in spring, I heard. And Rush are in the studio as we speak - that’s the news I got, anyway.
Although it’s not really a fair comparison, if you like Rush, I’m certain you’ll like the latest Sunny Day Real Estate album, “The Rising Tide”. Highly recommended!
What’s a 5 inch taint?
I think Yes might be feasible.
::d&r::
not to hijack your hijack, guys, but… 
Rush argues with people who disagree with him all the time.
And G. Gordon Liddy is a nutcase.
More than a few prominent liberals have TRIED to become an alternative to Rush Limbaugh. Mario Cuomo and Jim Hightower are among the best known. But all have failed miserably.
Now, MAYBE there just isn’t much of a market for liberal talk radio. But even if there is, liberals are tapping into that market the wrong way.
Whatever you may think of Rush Limbaugh, the guy has been a radio professional for a long time. He’s been everything from a wacky, zany morning DJ to a sports phone-ib show host. The point is, he mastered the art of being a radio entertainer LONG before he took up right-wing politics.
It’s much easier for a skillful broadcaster to become a radio political pundit than for a serious politician to become an entertaining broadcaster. People like Mario Cuomo never seemed to grasp this simple fact. They thought the radio audience listened to Rush Limbaugh because they were brain-dead sheep, and all he had to do was present alternative views, and the sheep would quickly see the error of their ways.
Now, Mario Cuomo is an utterly BRILLIANT orator (one of the very few I’d pay to hear, even when I think his positions are nonsensical), but he NEVER understood that a radio personality has to be funny, charming, engaging and entertaining. NOBODY will tune in a radio station just to hear a staid, stale, monotonous repetition of opinions he already shares.
So… IF there is a market out there for a liberal talk show, the answer is NOT to turn a crashing bore like Noam Chomsky or Ralph Nader into a radio host- it’s to find a successful, skilled, funny, entertaining deejay or radio personality who happens to be a left-winger and steer him toward a political talk show.
Radio is show biz, first and foremost. Rush Limbaugh has always understood that and acknowledged it (Rush has often admitted that, the moment Bose and Snapple decide he’s not selling enough radios or iced tea, his career will be over). WHoever wants to become the Limbaugh of the Left has to understand that, too.
Funny, I always heard Rush say he got into his current gig because talk radio and the media were so overwhelmingly liberal. You mean he lied? Imagine that.
then you havn’t listened, you must be too busy listing to G.G.L’s show
In short no.
since the media is overwhelmingly liberal - there is no demand for it so there can NOT be a liberal ‘counterpart’ to Rush. OTOH People with conservitive values having seen their beliefs ridiculed in the media now has someone inthe media who agrees with them and points out the flaws in liberal doctrine.
I don’t see a contradiction between what I said (that the audience for tal kradio is overwhelmingly conservative and there PROBABLY isn’t a huge demand for a liberal equivalent to Rush Limbaugh) and what Rush has claimed (that he began doing what he’s doing to combat what he perceived as the overwhelmingly liberal nature of the major media).
Now, I grant you that conservatives who complaint about the “liberal media” often seem stuck in a time warp. To them, it’s still 1975, there are STILL only three major networks, there are still only a handful of newspapers and news magazines, and they’re all uniformly liberal.
But here’s an interesting fact: even in 1975, at the height of media liberalism, in New York City (the capital of American liberalism) the medium of talk radio was completely dominated by conservatives! Rush Limbaugh wasn’t really doing anything new. He was merely copying what right-wing radio hosts like Bob Grant and Barry Farber had been doing for years, and presenting it to a nationwide audience.
I think conservative talk radio struck a chord with many people because Grant, Farber and Limbaugh were saying things that millions of people believed, but which nobody seemed to be saying in other media.
Today, the perjorative “liberal media” is a bit of an anachronism. “The media” are much more diverse today. The three major networks no longer dominate political news and discourse, and conservative viewers have a host of alternatives (news coverage on the Fox networks is at least as conservative as the old networks were liberal). Anyone still griping about liberal bias in the news is living in the past.
But back to the medium of radio for a second. EVERY medium has its own appeal, and tends to attract a certain type of consumer. Talk radio seems to have a special appeal to conservatives; the Internet seems to appeal to rabid libertarians; literary magazines seem to appeal to upscale, urban liberals. I’m inclined to believe a publisher who tried to create a “New York Review of Books” for fundamentalist Baptists would fail miserably. The same holds true for most liberals who attempt to break into talk radio. If they’re VERY talented, and very entertaining, they MIGHT succeed. But the odds are against them, because the core audience for that medium doesn’t share their basic views.
Perhaps I should have been a little more specific (the original quote, though uncredited, is from me). Liddy not only takes calls from people who disagree with him (something I still maintain I’ve never heard Rush do) but he also allows them to complete their thoughts without interruption. And when Liddy offers rebuttals, he does so in a logical fashion. Logic and Limbaugh IMHO have yet to be introduced.
I really like “My Favorite Headache.” I’m a Geddy Lee and Rush fan anyway, and the fact that my favorite drummer Matt Cameron plays on the album is a bonus.