a free form jazz odyssey in front of a festival crowd

to: Richard M Shulze (istartedbestbuy@bestbuy.com)
from: Steven Austin Weiss
Subject: Seriosuly dude, WTF

Richie! Can I call you dick? yes? well then, I’m going to….excellent.

Now, we’ve got some things to discuss. First of, I’ve been researching your company on Wikipedia. And I noticed your roots were as a music store? Wonderful! Well, in 1983 after a tornado destroyed your store and you had a big sale, you renamed it Best Buy! I still maintain you should have called it “Tornado of shit”. Well Dick, that tornado was the birth of Steven Austin Weiss, which is about to strike again. (i have been called a world destructor galore according to MagicScallions.com)

I’m also going to come right out and say that Wiki gave me a warning that the Neutrality and Factual Accuracy of that entry was questioned. Have you been sending lackies in to hype up your image on the Wiki? That shit’s not gonna work dick, its user policed! YEAH, How You Like That, Bitch!

I’m also noticing that you have a 69% employee turnover rate, way above an average 44-50% for retail. Well, I’m telling you homes, I can see why. Your store sucks. Besides your shady business practices of not honoring pre-orders for PS3’s and Various unauthorized packages for Xbox360’s, we’re here to talk about something else.

Is it really so hard to put your new releases and music DVD’s in alphabetical order? I know you do not have high standards for your employees, because you probably pay them as little as you can, but the alphabet is a fairly standard system to learn.

Oh, you also sent out fake ass cease and desist letters threatening various blogs which posted your holiday price list. Fuck you for doing that.

All I’m saying is that when I enter your store, holding a fire extinguisher, spraying everything in sight and yelling “Yeah bitch, now I’ll bet you’re happy you paid for the extended service plan!” just dont be upset, because you had it coming to you.

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving and God Bless America
sincerely,
Steven Austin Weiss

Thanksgiving, interesting holiday. There is no real purpose to it that i can immediately think of- to give thanks? thats just silly, lets be honest.

One thing I am not thankful for is Best Buy. With the demise of the legendary Tower, consumers are forced to look elsewhere for their music. In suburban locations, such as where i work, there are no Virgin Megastores, so the only options are the Big Box Retailers. I ran into a problem once before when searching for Jeff Tweedys most recent DVD, and ended up nearly hurling bricks throught the windows of WalMart, Target, and Best Buy. The first 2, i dont expect to have any music, they dont pretend to be media outlets. But fucking BB, come on man.

Today Tom Waits released “Orphans” a boxed set of 3 CD’s, which i am incredibly excited for. So, on my lunch break, I go to Best Buy which is close to work. First of all, the people working there are just plain ridiculous. After a painful 7 minutes of watching the person type “Tom Wakes” into the title area of the screen, i say “umm, mabye you should type that under artist?” Apparently, they show that they have it in stock, but have no idea where it is. Nothing is organized there, its just piles of crap.

The main thing we lose with stores like Tower, is the dedication to one specific thing. If i go to a car dealership, i expect them to know about cars. If i go to a butcher, i want to be told wonderful things about specific cuts of meat and poultry. At tower, they would have immediately identified the product i was looking for, and could have told me where to find it. When you go to best buy or wal mart or some shit like that, do you really expect the people there to know everything about washere/dryers, DVD Players, Computers, Digital Cameras, Office Furniture, Children’s apparell, boxed cereal, and CD’s? Of course not. In the opinion of Steven A Weiss, thats why these fuckers will fail eventually.

Sure, i could order it online, but i dont want to wait a few days and pay shipping. But eventually, that will be the only way to do it. damnit man, i’m so fucking defeated. Where will we go once the stupidity of these big box retailers is just too much to stand? (if its not already…)

I have no point to this rant, i understand you cant afford to pay these people an actual salary so they can learn about shit in the store or care, I also understand that its not financally a good move to open a specialty store.

BUT, the record labels and retailers messed it up for themselves. 18.99 is a RIDICULOUS price to have to pay for a single CD album. They should cost 12-13$. Of course no ones buying actual CD’s anymore, thats rape!

In this case, I just want to hear some Tom Waits, in the highest quality possible, without any DRM mojo lurking in my files, and i’d like the special 96 page booklet that comes with it. Is that too much to ask? Apparently, it is. I feel another email coming on….

I’ll tell you this much blogosphere, I miss Phish at times. I have previously written on this here blog-0-thing about my contempt for Trey anastasio’s current work, and I stick by that. But i was just looking at the Phish Live Downloads site, and it brought on a wave of nostalgia.

I miss the music for one, thats a given. I had my moments where i could talk to you for an hour about how great “You Enjoy Myself” was and that a-capella jam at the end? Duuuuude!! YEAH! But that was only one part of it. Above all, I miss the food. There has not, nor will there ever be a better veggie burrito than the ones in the parking lot beforehand. You could get 2 for 5$ and it was delicious. The 1$ grilled cheese could not be topped. There would always be a dude putting garlic on that shit, OOOH. While other were looking for “doses” “Mollies” “Nugs” “Rolls” and other misc controlled substances, i’d be roaming the parking lot isles yelling “Whose got my veggie burrito!” There were also these things called “Goo Balls” which were a mash of usually peanut butter some form of sweet cereal and chocolate chips…Delish. It was very hard to find the ones Without weed in them, but it was worth the search.

In fact, at the first phish show I ever attended, with my dad, his advice to me was “Steve, don’t eat the brownies” One time i did eat a weed brownie several years later, and it just pissed me off that there were these little bits of crap in it, and the dude who made it wwas obviously not a professional baker, because it was about 78% butter. Anyhoo…

What happened to all these people? There were literally thousands of slackers who would follow this band around from city to city selling various food and goods in the parking lots. Do they just dissappear? Did they all get real jobs? My advice? Open up a fucking restaurant! One time, I believe it might have been somewhere in PA, I had some delicious rissoto on the walk back to the car that i have never quite topped. One time a dude cooked french bread pizza in an oven that was built into his truck. You could get a quesadilla with various ingredients for 2$. Man, it was wonderful. One time i bought an excess of burritos after a show, hoping to figure out the secret ingredients and have a supply for the off season, but those things done last more than a day. CRAP.

But in the later years, i must say. the quality of parking lot food definitely declined. I was not in the game for incredibly long, but i did see about 22 shows. My first show was in 97, and by my last in 2004, there was not a single burrito to be found in all of the Coney Island Parking Lot. It was a sad day, which for me, signaled the end even more than the half assed half hour jams coming from an aging band of innovators most likely strung out on coke.

There were about 4 months in 1998-9 though….Oh man did i eat so much wonderful food. At the encore, I would already be thinking- Should i have a grilled cheese? Or go for the standard Veggie? It was always a tough choice, but there was never a wrong answer.

And for that dearest Mike, Trey, Page, and John, I miss you dearly.

PS- also, i gave up an offer for like $2600 for my fucking new years eve comeback show tickets (web master T Bone will attest to this) and you guys fucking sucked. Not like “eh, they were ok” no, it was like “Holy Shit, i wouldnt pay 5$ at a bar to see those guys cover Creed and Whitesnake songs”. Really dudes, what the hell?

well, my associate…lets just call her Sharon-Torum recently said to me “If you weren’t a jew, I’d read your blog much more”

Thats one of those instances where you kind of just go “…” ya know? exactly. Well blogosphere, today I became an official hipster, like it or not:

http://www.stereogum.com/archives/003930.html#more

There it is, I’ve made 2 of my top 3 blogs, which started when I wrote a letter to Jason Mulgrew about being stuck in an Ohio Hell Hole Airport. They even threw in a little comment about my Ryan Adams note, how lovely. Really, I’m very happy about it. I’m an idiot though, because i did not link them to this blog. Well, there goes a possible few hundred billion hits for the ols S.A.W.C (stevenaustinweiss.com- the last dot is implied)

For those of you who do not follow the internet link rule, which I wrote extensively about in my last post, here is a synopsis. Last night, I went to a benefit Bob Dylan tribute show at Lincoln Center. It was truly an amazing night, 21 serious musicians on a bill, plus Clap Your Hands Say Yeah (really, who let those half ass hipster fucks in anyway?) I took my dad, as his birthday present.
So, we meet on the upper west side for dinner, because thats how we roll, yo. So, as fate would have it, i waited on a center island by Lincoln Center at 64th street waiting for the Senior Weiss to show up, and looked down, only to find a 100$ bill folded on the ground! I paused for about a minute, thinking if i was on hidden camera or something- who carries a 100$ bill? So i looked around, no one there, so i picked it up. I justified it this way- If you carry that large of a bill, you probably have several of them, and there is a 55% chance youre a douchebag, so its ok that you dropped it- it won’t hurt you too much.

I wasn’t jumping up and down all psyched, i just kind of pondered the situation. Then I took the two of us out to dinner, because i’m a badass playa like that. Exactly. I still had 30$ left after dinner and beverages (it was a nice meal) so I figure this- I’m going to drop 2 singles on the ground, and make someones day a little better. Why not a 20? Because I can’t afford to just drop a 20, idiot! The DB that dropped this Hundo treated it like i treat 1$ so thats how this will work. Got it? ok, on we go.

We saw Dustin Hoffman in a restaurant on the walk to the show, that is neither here nor there, my dad was incredibly excited about it. Now, onto the show. It blew my damn mind for 80% of the night. It was just hit after hit. Full of unexpected highlights. Namely Allan Toussant. Have you heard him? I only vaugely know his work, but really, it almost brought tears to my eyes- a solo New Orleans style “Mama You Been On My Mind”. Jill sobule was wonderful doing “ring them bells” with cyndi lauper on backup vocals. MMW Tore it up acoustic style, with billy martin just playing a shaker, medeski on Melodica doing “Buckets of Rain” badass. Patti Smith might have been my favorite, a very minimal performance, but she put this “i’ll rip your damn head off” soul into it. Wonderful.

So altogether a wonderful night. I bought a Ryan Adams ticket for his NY shows in December, he impressed me. November/december will be the live music time of year, thats always how it works. MMW are doing some touring with John Scofield, and i’ll be a monkey’s uncle if i miss that shit (what does that even mean?)

Also, the First Annual Challah Back Channuka is happening, dont miss it man, big stuff. BIG.

ok internet, here’s a new rule. Lets start with a story.

Last night I return from much halloween debauchery, dressed as Prince with a line moustache and soul patch. T Bone was a Douchebag. No, not an insult, that was his costume, 3 popped collars, spikey hair, sunglasses, job in finance, and a sign on his collar that said “douchebag”, but thats another post. So I get back home and sign onto the old inernet. Upon sign on, I recieve an IM from an old friend who I have not spoken to in a long time. Its like “hey whats up” I’m all like “nuttin yo” but I’m skeptical, because these out of the woodwork contacts rarely come without a catch. I need to borrow money, I need a kidney, marry me so I can get citizenship, you know, the usual. We chat for a line, then I recieve a link to a youtube clip. Like a good citizen of the internet, I click it. Its meatloaf, I get a mild chuckle. I’m all like “haha, meatloaf?” and I recieve some ironic mild comedy about why he listens to meat loaf.

So, again like a good citizen of the internet, I’m all like, I can top this. “have you heard live to win?” And I send a youtube link of southpark which included the song. Ready for a “wow, thats the best song i have ever heard”…i await response. But instead i get “I’m busy at work right now, I’ll watch it later” and IT WAS ON. On like Lil Jon, On Like Ghengis Kahn, on like Valdez comma Juan. Notice I didnt say donkey kong, I dont play video games. Who the fuck does this dumbass egomaniac think he is to send me a link, epect me to watch, then not accept one in return???

First of all shithead, I know you’re not busy at work, because you’re sending me Meatloaf Youtube videos and chatting online. Second of all, you’re an asshole. Third of all, the internet is not safe from the principles of the golden rule. You treat others the way you want to be treated. If you want me to watch your lame ass attempt at humor you piece of shit, be prepared to accept that my Paul Stanley video is far better. Here it is, for the books:

Thou Shalt not link, if thou is not prepared to be linked.

Those who link in glass houses…..you know the rest. So to anyone, if isend you a link, that means I am completely prepared to accept, view, and comment on your link in return. Its just common courtesy, bitches. Thats it. Enough gossip, peace out.