Play Ball? and Why Randy Rhoads Ruled

For those of us who get excited about opening day of Major League Baseball season, it's a sad time. You see, believe it or not, the Red Sox and the A's opened the season already... this morning... at 5:00 AM central time.... in Japan. Brilliant marketing move by the deep thinkers at MLB. Anybody else have a watch party? And by watch party of course, I mean I caught 1 at-bat by Fat Papi while getting ready for work. Ridiculous. No beer or brats for me, but I did have some Captain Crunch and coffee! Now THAT'S baseball!

Not a lot of new music in stores today, but here's what you've got to pick from:

Bryan Adams ~ 11 (creative title for his 11th album don't ya think?)

The Cavalera Conspiracy ~ Inflikted (featuring brothers Max and Igor Cavalera from Sepultura and Soulfly)

That's about it. Not much more to get excited about in the DVD world either, but at least a couple of cool things so there's quality, not quantity:

Stephen King's The Mist (see my review here)

Lost Highway - A very cool and weird film from director David Lynch from 1997 with Bill Pullman, Patricia Arquette and Balthazar Getty.

So not a lot to pick from to spend your money on I guess.

When I was at the NCAA tourney games this weekend I heard something that made me want to puke. Not just 1, but 2 of the school's bands played Ozzy Osbourne's "Crazy Train". I'm serious. I should say they tried to play it, because when Ozzy Osbourne, Randy Rhoads and Bob Daisley wrote the song I assure you they never thought it would be played by college bands with guys blowing into things. I've been cranking it since 1980 when the Blizzard of Oz album hit the shelves and my collection and it's meant to be played on screaming heavy metal guitars at an ear-splitting volume only and should be played at parties, cruising the strip or maybe to fire the crowd up. Hearing it played on wind instruments only caused my bowels to get fired up. It was a disgrace and somewhere Randy Rhoads rolled over in his grave and puked, which probably still sounded better than the bands did. R.I.P. Randy and all I can say is I'm sorry.

I never got to see Randy play live, as I did see the Diary of a Madman tour in Memphis but the plane crash had already happened (March 19th) and I saw Brad Gillis handle the ax. He did justice to the songs as he's a great guitarist, but I'm sorry I never got to see polka-dot flying V. I had a chance as the tour stopped in Pine Bluff, AR (March 5th) before his death but I waited until the Memphis show on April 28th, which proved to be too late.

Here's the way it's meant to be, from the live Tribute album. Turn this up and try not to think about tubas and trombones. It's really pretty easy to do.