Forget about it, George: “What are your favorite sports to watch and play?”
The game: Patriots at Broncos
The beer: Geaghan Brothers Higgins Irish Red Ale
The result: Win, 10–7
The playoffs: 3–0
The headline: “Ask those who have been before you what fate the future holds.” – Thin Lizzy, “Warriors”
The commentary: I’m a few days late with this Day One Incorporated daily prompt but it’s a little on the nose, whereas today’s “Write about your first computer” is Windows 95 boring. What’s me favorite sport, love? Why, beer-and-football, it is! On a computer!
I suppose, though, that beer-and-football is only my favorite sport to watch (and blog-make). My favorite sport to play is challenging copyright limitations for the benefit of zero readers. Hit me!
Why the Patriots have adopted a “Road Warrior” mentality
As the “home” team in their matchup with the Seattle Seahawks in Super Bowl LX, the Patriots had the choice of jersey. Captains and the leadership council…
“The leadership council”? Is this a model UN?
…chose the standard road white jersey with white pants, and it highlights one of the themes of the Patriots’ season—they are “road warriors,” the first team to post a 9–0 record away from home.
OK, which movie’s it gonna be? Whaaaaaaaaat’s it gonna be?
[…] It began with coach Mike Vrabel showing a clip of the 1979 film The Warriors…
Good on Vrabel for knowing that Mad Max 2 was only released as The Road Warrior in the US and, in a gesture of international solidarity belying the political landscape, avoided the obvious pick. I stopped making playoff predictions after one week, for some reason, but the Pats are going to win by fifty, right?
…in an October meeting as the Patriots were embracing a stretch of three straight road games. […] “Here we are at the end of January, and it’s still sticking.” So much so that veteran wide receiver Mack Hollins arrived at the AFC Championship Game in Denver last Sunday dressed as one of the main characters of the film, Luther, and reenacted one of the iconic scenes as he walked from the team bus to the locker room. Hollins had glass bottles clanking in his hand while repeating the line “Warriors, come out to play!”
I guess Hollins missed the subtext that Luther and the Rogues were the bad guys. You only catch that after a second or third viewing.
“Mack studied long and hard,” Vrabel said jokingly. […] “I hadn’t seen the movie,” Drake Maye said, “but I think [Hollins] killed the reference.”
Shit, though, imagine if Hollins dressed up as a smoldering Rembrandt and just started tagging Mile High? Mark this spot! The Warriors isn’t the only movie in town though.
Paris Hilton? What?
A look behind the scenes of the star’s second album turns out to reveal exactly what you’d expect, at arduous length.
Second album? First album??
Paris Hilton here presents us with an unbearable act of docu-self-love, avowedly a behind-the-scenes study of her second studio album, Infinite Icon. […] But this film, for which she is executive producer, is an indiscriminate non-curation of narcissism and torpid self-importance […] finally signing off with a splodge of uninteresting and unedited concert footage.
Concert footage? That reminds me of another Guardian article I’ll rip off later.
Hilton has certainly been the victim of duplicitous and misogynist media coverage. […] But the analytical note is soon abandoned, and the reality of her enormously wealthy family background is coyly omitted. (It was more prominent in her previous film, 2020’s This Is Paris, part of the reality-TV persona that she now considers herself to have outgrown.)
First film? Outgrown??
[…] Then there is her ADHD; in one of the film’s semi-unguarded moments, she yells at someone trying to interrupt her: “I have ADHD, don’t tell me to pause!”
I have blog, don’t tell me to respect fair use doctrines! What’s on screen three? Another pop star documentary?
“If you want to nuke your life, do crack”: raw Courtney Love documentary hits Sundance
Antiheroine, a new documentary about the Gen X icon and “queen of grunge” Courtney Love, caused a stir at the Sundance film festival—without the legendary Hole frontwoman in attendance.
Shocking! I am shocked! Also, Donita Sparks and Kat Bjelland would like a word.
[…] Thirty years later, Love still appears emotional over her bond with Kurt Cobain, even singing some Nirvana karaoke.
End of snark—I kind of love this. Let’s stick with music and resolve my earlier tease.
From Dylan to disco, Beyoncé to Bob Marley: the thirty best live albums ever—ranked!
I’ll admit, I was ready to skim this for five seconds—the headline scored no credibility points—and then it held its grip with something that might be twenty-nine spots too low but, nonetheless, is ranked here:
29. Hawkwind – Space Ritual (1973)
Live albums can often seem like an afterthought, a nice addendum rather than a pivotal part of a band’s career. But Space Ritual is the best way to experience Hawkwind’s unique melding of psych, proto-punk, electronics, motorik krautrock-like repetition: advertised with the fabulous line “eighty-eight minutes of brain damage,” it’s immersive, hypnotic and awesome.
If you think I regret our decision to switch from the New York Times to the Guardian then you care too much about both sides of single-sided decency. Other notables:
28. Portishead – Roseland NYC Live (1998)
Capturing a one-off gig featuring Portishead’s standard decks/synth/guitar lineup supported by strings, woodwind and brass, Roseland NYC Live is magical. Rather than clutter their eerie sound, the orchestra augments it, the perfect setting for Beth Gibbons’s voice: the dramatic climax of “Mysterons” is worth the price of entry alone.
Much like the contemporary Pulp Fiction, I was into these dudes before anybody. “It was fun watching ‘Sour Times’ evolve from a WZBC hit (that magical summer of 1994) to a WFNX hit.” I went from early Dummy adopter to belated Portishead preferer to surprised Third appreciator and somehow skipped the live album altogether. Hell, if it’s better than Space Ritual?? (Right.)
24. Stooges – Metallic KO (1976)
Metallic KO is a mess: a low-quality recording of the Stooges on their last legs—frequently out of tune and time—before a crowd so hostile you can literally hear hurled bottles smashing on stage. But as a piece of rock mythology, an account of screw-you defiance in the face of disaster, it’s utterly gripping.
“For this evening’s next selection, I would be proud to present a song, was cowritten by my mother, entitled ‘I Got My Cock in My Pocket.’ Ah-one… two… fuck you, pricks!”
21. Iron Maiden – Live After Death (1985)
Hailed in some quarters as the greatest live metal album full stop, Live After Death offers the sound of Maiden cresting their mid-eighties imperial phase: everything you might conceivably want from a Maiden set of the era performed by a band firing on all cylinders, with Bruce Dickinson in full-on ringmaster mode.
These guitars are white hot but, I’m sorry, Bruce just isn’t hitting the high notes. I’ll take the studio albums. (Aside: I never tire of references to a metal or hard rock band’s “imperial phase.”)
17. Curtis Mayfield – Curtis/Live! (1971)
Mayfield was at a peak when he taped Curtis/Live! in New York. You can tell: it flits effortlessly between Impressions classics and fresh solo material, the gentle optimism of “People Get Ready “and the tough fatalism of “If There’s a Hell Below, We’re All Going to Go,” the aching “I Plan to Stay a Believer” and the supremely funky “Check Out Your Mind.”
This is so friggin great, maybe a top-three live album, with the misfortune of being overshadowed by other friggin great Mayfield albums. It, Metallic KO, the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion’s Controversial Negro and the Make-Up’s After Dark might be the only ones where I feel like I’m in the room.
16. Johnny Cash – At San Quentin (1969)
It could easily have been 1968’s At Folsom Prison, but San Quentin has, well, “San Quentin,” which the inmates compel Cash to play twice. The tumult the second performance occasions should be impossible to top, but Cash does it, thanks to another ace in his pocket, the live debut of “A Boy Named Sue.”
“A Boy Named Sue” is my favorite Cash song in a blowout but the rest of San Quentin is by the numbers, with listless “jokes” and downright radical production decisions about when and how to fade the audience in and out of the mix. Plus two takes of “San Quentin”? Plus two takes of “San Quentin”! “Big River” was right there! The whole thing feels like an afterthought. “According to biographer Robert Hilburn, Cash spontaneously decided to perform ‘A Boy Named Sue’ during the show and neither the TV crew nor his band knew about it. He used a lyric sheet on stage while the band improvised the backing.” Afterthought.
13. Thin Lizzy – Live and Dangerous (1978)
You could argue that Live and Dangerous isn’t really a live album—producer Tony Visconti claimed that seventy-five percent of it was re-recorded—but you’d have a far harder time arguing against its quality: it captures Thin Lizzy at their pre-heroin peak, far punchier and more potent than even their best studio album.
“The album had a working title of Thin Lizzy Live but Phil Lynott decided that Live and Dangerous was better.” Indeed! Its version of “Warriors,” though, isn’t better than Jailbreak’s studio effort—overdubs be damned—so our beer-and-football week’s “headline track” sticks. Drag. As mentioned above, the phrase “imperial phase” really gets me off, but “pre-heroin peak” is number two with a bullet.
12. Motörhead – No Sleep ’Til Hammersmith (1981)
The suggestion Motörhead achieved everything they were put on Earth to achieve with No Sleep ’Til Hammersmith irked Lemmy deeply, but it’s understandable: it’s nasty, speedy, brutish, gruff and utterly relentless, grabbing the listener by the neck from the moment “Ace of Spades” kicks into life and declining to let go for the next forty minutes.
This is a great album that almost serves as a retrospective compilation—songs are true to the original album versions even down to durations. But to say Hammersmith is a better Lemmy live document than Space Ritual—seventeen tiers better—is bananas.
10. Bill Withers – Live at Carnegie Hall (1973)
For a man who was still working in a factory eighteen months before this album was recorded, Bill Withers sounds fabulously relaxed and loquacious on stage at New York’s Carnegie Hall: that he’d amassed a set of songs as incredible as the fourteen here doubtless helped. It’s all wonderful, but the climax of “Harlem/Cold Baloney” is something else.
Oh Bill. What the fuck happened.
8. Nina Simone – ’Nuff Said! (1968)
Nina Simone’s discography is packed with incredible live albums—from 1959’s At Town Hall to 1976’s fraught Live at Montreux—but none have quite the emotional charge of ’Nuff Said’s recordings from Westbury Music Fair, three days after Martin Luther King’s assassination: a performance that alternately mourns and blazes with fury.
“We can’t afford anymore losses! They’re shooting us down one by one—don’t forget that.” 1968’s ’Nuff Said!… 1970’s Black Gold… 1972’s Live in Europe (a.k.a. The Great Show of Nina Simone)… there’s a case for including all three among a list of thirty. What a marvel.
7. The Who – Live at Leeds (1970)
Tommy had sent their career stratospheric but—as ever with the Who—caused turmoil: the album was treated like high art, a reception that ignored the band’s brutal, incendiary side. Live at Leeds was the solution, offering raw live recordings with no songs from Tommy. This was rock music as visceral and explosive as you could wish.
The New York Times hailed this as “the definitive hard-rock holocaust,” which is really saying something so soon after the actual Holocaust. Like At San Quentin, though, Live at Leeds was hugely improved upon its expanded rerelease, which makes you question the original document’s “full force” reputation.
4. The Jimi Hendrix Experience – Live at Monterey (2007)
There’s stiff competition for the title of best live Jimi Hendrix album—not least from 1970’s Band of Gypsys—but Monterey just squeaks it, thanks to the almost tangible crackle of excitement about the show that introduced Hendrix to America, not to mention the chaos about the band’s feedback-laden performance.
Live at Monterey (originally released in 1986 as Jimi Plays Monterey) is the lone album on the list—or at least in the subset I’m reacting to—not released as part of the artist’s/band’s active chronological discography and therefore disqualified, despite the original Experience in full flower. An absurd bounty of posthumous collections means mediocre Band of Gypsys—the fourth, final and worst LP of his life—might not even be Hendrix’s thirtieth-best live album, never mind humanity’s. It’s too bad because “Machine Gun” is a career apex.
3. Bob Dylan – The Bootleg Series Vol 4: Bob Dylan Live 1966, The “Royal Albert Hall” Concert (1998)
Bob Dylan’s Manchester Free Trade Hall show (initially wrongly credited on bootleg recordings as the Royal Albert Hall) may well be the most famous gig in rock history. The story is incredibly familiar (“Judas!”) but what’s amazing is how tensely gripping the recording is, even when you know what’s going to happen.
“Judas!” “Play it fuckin loud.” Contemporary bootlegs are allowed—it’s my goddamn blog.
2. James Brown – Live at the Apollo (1963)
All three of Brown’s Live at the Apollo albums are essential, but the first volume clinches the prize: it’s atmospheric, electrifying, and it captures classic chitlin’ circuit soul, simultaneously raw and incredibly tight. The screams and cries from the audience that strafe its eight tracks only add to the experience.
Collect the best tracks from Brown’s Apollo canon (ignoring Live at the Apollo 1995 outright) and it still wouldn’t be as good as 1972’s 1992’s Love, Power, Peace: Live at the Olympia, Paris. Canceled releases count too, OK??
1. Kiss – Alive! (1975)
Man, who didn’t like Kiss? Back in the mid-seventies when America was stuck in between Watergate and Star Wars, Kiss reminded us that there were still broads to be nailed, beer to be imbibed and a good time to be had by all. Alive! is total sonic proof of Kiss climbing their apex and knocking off one of the all-time great live albums.
Haha, just kidding, it’s “badly mixed” Jerry Lee Lewis (!) in the top spot. This is, ostensibly, an AFC Championship recap post so I won’t get into which albums are missing from this list—the short answer is jazz—but to leave off Alive! is the sort of bullshit that caused us to break up with England a quarter millennium ago. Speaking of hilarious nonsense and, I don’t know, clumsy transitions:
Cam Newton continues one-sided beef with Drake Maye, says Patriots QB is not a game-changer
[…] “What I’m telling you is the truth. The person that’s delivering the truth, you may not like,” he said.
This one goes back almost a month, notably before Maye started playing poorly in the playoffs, but Newton remains all-in with some kind of OUTRAGEOUS SPORTS MEDIA PERSONALITY long game. Gimme a break—all we need is another victim-complex asshole with a microphone confusing his opinion with “the truth.” Speaking of the first family, let’s return to the cineplex and see what’s playing on screen four:
Melania review—Trump film is a gilded trash remake of The Zone of Interest
Sounds bad.
No doubt there is a great documentary to be made about Melania Knauss, the ambitious model from out of Slovenia who married a New York real-estate mogul and then found herself cast in the role of a latter-day Eva Braun, but the horrific Melania emphatically isn’t it. It’s one of those rare, unicorn films that doesn’t have a single redeeming quality. I’m not even sure it qualifies as a documentary, exactly, so much as an elaborate piece of designer taxidermy, horribly overpriced and ice-cold to the touch and proffered like a medieval tribute to placate the greedy king on his throne. […] It’s dispiriting, it’s deadly and it’s spectacularly unrevealing. […] Two hours of Melania feels like pure, endless hell.
If only it weren’t sold out everywhere! You’d have to be a sexual deviant to score a ticket:
Patriots owner makes surprise appearance with President Trump at Melania screening
Good lord.
[“Handy” Bob] Kraft was photographed next to Trump in the presidential box at the
Trump-Kennedy Center in Washington. He was attending a special screening of the new Melania Trump documentary, Melania. […] Kraft has known Trump for decades and donated to his first inauguration in 2017, so they go way back. Their relationship seemed to cool recently, however, as Kraft said in late 2024 that he hadn’t spoken to Trump since the events of January 6, 2021.
“The events”!
That is apparently no longer the case, as the two seem to have smoothed things over. Earlier this week, Trump said, “Bob Kraft is a friend of mine” and called the Patriots a “great team.”
Even a stooped, senile, bloated, bronzed, bigoted, narcissistic, incurious fascist can be right once a lifetime, though we can do without his transactional fandom. Fuck the both of them with the largest immigrant fist available. Anyway… you say there was a game? Bring us home, Oliver “Ollie” Connelly colleague Graham “Oh So English” Searles:
Maye vs Stafford for MVP and Aaron Rodgers getting flattened: NFL end of season awards
Two of my favorite things: a Patriot in the MVP discussion and Aaron Rodgers getting flattened. First:
MVP
Drake Maye struggled through a blizzard as the New England Patriots dragged themselves past the Denver Broncos and into the Super Bowl. But he endured, holding on to execute in the critical moments. […] Maye’s athleticism came to the fore with a twenty-eight-yard scramble up the middle as he sensed the orange sea parting just enough for him to dart the Patriots into chip-shot territory and a 10–7 lead in the third quarter. Then Maye put the Broncos to the sword with a rogue audible.
Rogue Audible… is that playing on screen five?
He again took off running, this time for a game-sealing first-down, outfoxing Denver by not telling his offensive line he was going to ignore his coach’s call for a stretch run and keep it. […] The argument over whether Matthew Stafford’s league-leading total yards and touchdowns make him the better MVP candidate is legitimate, but only if you like one-yard throws to Davante Adams on the goal line.
Emphasis mine, motherfucker! Right in the nuts!
Maye has better numbers in many other areas, including completion percentage, QBR and yards per attempt. Those numbers speak to a twenty-three-year-old with the maturity to vault his team from 4–13 last season to the Super Bowl this time around. If the Patriots prevail in Santa Clara, Maye will be at the heart of the matter, finding the path through the Seattle Seahawks’ smothering defense.
If the Patriots prevail in Santa Clara, Maye will have as many Super Bowl titles as Aaron Rodgers and Joel Klatt put together. Speaking of Rodgers:
Sack of the year/gaff of the year
Aaron Rodgers has just thrown a sixty-eight-yard touchdown to put Pittsburgh ahead 31–30 in Cincinnati with two minutes left in their week seven matchup. The forty-one-year-old is jumping, fist pumping and bounding to celebrate with his fellow Steelers. Only his left tackle wants to join in. As they reach the sideline, Broderick Jones delivers a blindside hit, knocking his quarterback flat on his face. Rodgers then rolls over, attempts a shove as he gets back to his feet while raging at Jones for getting to the quarterback. Rodgers lamented to Jones in a text, “I love your energy. But also I’m forty-one. You can’t be out there tackling me like that.” Jones wryly disagreed postgame: “If he throws another touchdown on Sunday I might tackle him again.”
Couldn’t happen to a nicer douchebag. Mike Florio, bring us home with some weird pre-AFC Championship clickbait:
Week one loss to Raiders may haunt Patriots today
Revenge is a dish best served cold. And Pete Carroll, who was fired by the Patriots after the 1999 season, managed to get a measure of vengeance that has complicated significantly New England’s path to its next Super Bowl appearance.
Say what you will about the man’s awkward storytelling and overreliance on tropes but Florio is an awkward storyteller overreliant on tropes.
It happened in week one. The Raiders, who otherwise went 2–14, upset the Patriots in New England—just weeks after the Patriots unveiled a statue of one of the Raiders’ current owners. In the moment, week one wins and losses mean nothing. Sixteen games remain.
You’re so close, Mike.
But those outcomes from the opening weekend can echo into January. As the Las Vegas 20–13 win has done.
How about the week three loss to the Steelers? That was a pile-of-shit performance that could have actually derailed the entire season. Edan was beside himself with the fumbles.
If (and it’s no small if) the rest of the season had played out the same way, the Patriots would be hosting the Broncos in the AFC Championship. And the Patriots wouldn’t be playing Denver, where they are 0–4 all time in the playoffs. That said, the Patriots would have had to beat the Bills, not the Texans, last weekend; Buffalo won during the regular season at Gillette Stadium. And the Broncos would have had to beat the Chargers in the wild-card round and the Texans in the divisional round. Regardless, New England’s season-opening loss became the difference between securing the top seed and landing in the second spot.
“This could have happened! Or that! Which might be better… or worse! And then: it leads to this and/or that, and suddenly Aaron Rodgers is on the cusp of having two more titles than Drake Maye and Joel Klatt put together!”
And if the Patriots were hosting today’s game, it would have been played in a full-blown snowstorm.
Mike! I don’t understand your point! I just don’t!
The Patriots have experience when it comes to kooky week-one outcomes that complicate the playoff picture. In 2024, New England upended the Bengals in Cincinnati to start the season. The Patriots otherwise went 3–13. And the Bengals, who with five straight wins were one of the hottest teams in the league at the end of the regular season, missed the playoffs by one game. Flip the outcome against New England, and the Bengals would have qualified.
Flip the outcome against any of the Bengals’ eight—eight!—losses and they would have qualified! Come on, Mike!
So remember that when September rolls around. Week one generally means nothing. Specifically, there’s a chance it will mean everything.
Sure, Mike, let’s just breeze past the Super Bowl, free agency, the draft, summertime, training camp, the all-important preseason and countless roster moves throughout so we can worry about opening weekend next season. “It means nothing… or maybe everything!” I’d say stick to fiction but… you know. Was there not another “Report: Firedcoach McLastname scheduled for second OC interview with Sportstown Footballteam” story to aggregate instead?
Someone please call my lawyer.Up next: The Patriots spend the bye week in Coney Island. Cheers!
More Cream Please 