Completely Conspicuous #571: Come On, Sporto

Part 2 of my conversation with guest Phil Stacey about growing up as sports fans. Listen to the episode below or download directly (right click and "save as").

Show notes:

- Recorded on the way home from Tree House Brewing

- We still don't get esports

- Bands who sing songs about sports

- Weezer at the Winter Classic

- Short attention spans and sports

- Sports gambling is big business

- Super Bowl prop bets are popular

- Shohei Ohtani is the greatest baseball player we've seen in a long time

- Luck is a big factor in fantasy baseball

- The occasional Toronto championships

- Some people don't like sports

- Getting blown off by Rickey Henderson

- Jay: Both daughters played competitive sports

- Younger daughter is a Leafs fan

- Watching your team lose sucks, but it's not the end of the world

Completely Conspicuous is available through Apple Podcasts. Subscribe and write a review!

The opening and closing theme of Completely Conspicuous is "Theme to Big F'in Pants" by Jay Breitling. Voiceover work is courtesy of James Gralian.

Completely Conspicuous 570: Rooting Interests

Part 1 of my conversation with guest Phil Stacey about growing up as sports fans. Listen to the episode below or download directly (right click and "save as").

Show notes:

- Recorded on the way to Tree House Brewing

- Phil: Grew up watching sports with his dad, playing sports with his brothers

- Watched a lot of tennis in the late '70s/early /80s

- Both read the sports page of the local paper

- Collecting sports cards was a big hobby

- Jay: Began watching hockey with dad, quickly became obsessed

- Played street hockey with the neighborhood kids

- Phil: We played outside with no supervision all day

- Now we don't let our kids go anywhere on their own

- Imagining you're a pro athlete

- Memories of church league hoops

- Jay: We played "foot hockey" (aka soccer with a tennis ball) every day at recess

- Street hockey got serious, playing teams from across town

- No fun playing sports against your boss

- Jay: Parents wouldn't let me play organized youth hockey

- Didn't play sports the first two years of high school because of multiple moves

- Good way to make friends

- Jay: Played a lot of sports after college

- Played soccer, hockey, golf, tennis

- It's no fun when people start acting like jerks

- Started getting involved with coaching youth sports when kids started playing

- Some parents take their kids' sports way too seriously

- Let your kids enjoy themselves

- Sports fans can be really dumb

- Going to games as a kid

- Baseball is a major sport, but it's getting tough to watch a whole game on TV

- The kids love the e-sports

- To be continued

Completely Conspicuous is available through Apple Podcasts. Subscribe and write a review!

The opening and closing theme of Completely Conspicuous is "Theme to Big F'in Pants" by Jay Breitling. Voiceover work is courtesy of James Gralian.

Completely Conspicuous 569: Smash Your Head on the Post-Punk

Part 3 of my in-person conversation with guest Jay Breitling as we discuss our favorite music of 2021 so far. Listen to the episode below or download directly (right click and "save as").

Show notes:

- Recorded at CompCon World HQ

- Still with the fan noise

- Kumar's #7: Sleaford Mods with perennially pissed off minimalist post-punk

- Breitling's #6: Multi-instrumentalist Colleen with hypnotic ambient album

- Kumar's #6: More IDLES-y post-punk from across the pond with TV Priest

- Breitling's #4: More Slumberland bedroom pop goodness from the Reds, Pinks and Purples

- Kumar's #5: St. Vincent goes for a late '70s Bowie vibe

- Kumar's #4: Jeff Rosenstock revisits his ska-punk roots with a remake of his 2020 album No Dream

- Breitling's #3: Blue Ocean with release combining two EPs of shoegaze

- Kumar's #3: Excellent guitar-heavy ripper from Juliana Hatfield

- Breitling's #2: Pardoner with a hot rock release reminiscent of Pavement and Parquet Courts

- Kumar's #1 and Breitling's #5: Kiwi Jr.'s second release of sardonic slacker rock

- Breitling's #1 and Kumar's #2: Dinosaur Jr. with a great collection of songs

- Let's go see rock shows!

Completely Conspicuous is available through the Apple Podcasts directory. Subscribe and write a review!

The opening and closing theme of Completely Conspicuous is "Theme to Big F'in Pants" by Jay Breitling. Voiceover work is courtesy of James Gralian.

Completely Conspicuous 568: Go For Soda

It's part 2 of my in-person conversation with guest Jay Breitling as we discuss our favorite music of 2021 so far. Listen to the episode below or download it directly (right click and "save as").

Show notes:

- Recorded at CompCon World HQ

- Still with the fan noise

- Kumar's bubbling under picks (aka "Bubblahs"): Lots of cool UK post-punk (Black Country, New Road; Squid; Yard Act; Sleaford Mods; TV Priest,; Dry Cleaning), The Hold Steady, Mdou Moctar, Guardian Singles,Nick Cave & Warren Ellis, Teenage Fanclub, Iceage, McCartney, Ex-Hyena, Fridge Poetry, Glitterer, The Dirty Nil  

- Breitling: We're living in Blade Runner/cyberpunk times

- Regional lingo

- Minor sax resurgence

- Difference of opinions on The Weeknd

- Breitling's #10: Stomp Talk Modstone with a collection of Chinese shoegaze

- Kumar's #10: An EP of lost songs from The Tragically Hip's 1991 Road Apples sessions

- Breitling's #9: Floating Points/Pharoah Sanders/London Symphony Orchestra with a cool collab

- Kumar's #9: Shame's second release is full of fun, fiery post-punk

- Breitling's #8: Fog Lake with a droning take on isolation

- Kumar's #8: Striking collab between Ellen Kempner of Palehound and Melina Duterte of Jay Som

- Breitling's #7: Palberta puts it all together

- To be continued

Completely Conspicuous is available through the Apple Podcasts directory. Subscribe and write a review!

The opening and closing theme of Completely Conspicuous is "Theme to Big F'in Pants" by Jay Breitling. Voiceover work is courtesy of James Gralian.

Completely Conspicuous 567: Unmasked

It's part 1 of my in-person conversation with guest Jay Breitling as we discuss our favorite music of 2021 so far. Listen to the episode below or download directly (right click and "save as").

Show notes:

- Recorded at CompCon World HQ

- Apologies for the loudness of the fan! Pretend you're skydiving!

- First time together since December 2019

- Kumar: Check out Mdou Moctar, West African guitarist on Matador

- Rollins and his listening habits

- Breitling: Watching a lot of rock docs

- Concerts are coming back and we're going to some

- Oh great, the Eagles are touring again

- Plenty of reissues out; gotta make money somehow

- Streaming continues to be the main way to listen to music

- Remembering the days of the Walkman and then later MP3 players that held 8 songs

- Breitling's still producing a weekly radio show called Parcheesi Redux

- Internet radio shows and podcasts are filling the gap left by commercial radio's stagnancy

- I'm still doing my radio show Stuck In Thee Garage on BFF.fm

- Breitling's bubbling under picks: Lilys reissues, Mogwai, Fievel Is Glauque, Spirit of the Beehive

- To be continued

Completely Conspicuous is available through the Apple Podcasts directory. Subscribe and write a review!

The opening and closing theme of Completely Conspicuous is "Theme to Big F'in Pants" by Jay Breitling. Voiceover work is courtesy of James Gralian.

Completely Conspicuous 566: Bastards of Young

Part 2 of my conversation with guest Phil Stacey as we count down our favorite albums of 1985. Listen to the episode below or download directly (right click and "save as").

Show notes:

- Recorded IN PERSON at CompCon world HQ for the first time since February 2020

- Phil and Jay's #5: R.E.M. follows up two classic albums with a quirky effort

- Band gradually grew in popularity

- Phil and Jay's #4: The Cult hits the right combination of goth and hard rock

- Ian Astbury's lyrics were appropriately cryptic

- Phil's #3: An out-of-left-field pick with the Dead Milkmen's debut

- "Bitchin' Camaro" was the "hit"

- Jay's #3: Pete Townshend's solo peak

- He's mainly focused on Who tours since then

- Phil's #2: Talking Heads delve into Americana

- Surprisingly, their best-selling studio album

- Jay's #2: Husker Du continues their hot streak

- First of two releases in '85

- Robert Palmer covered "New Day Rising"

- Phil's #1: Conflicted about picking the Smiths thanks to Moz being a d-bag

- Phil was an early fan, at least among his peers

- Jay's #1: The Replacements keep getting better with each album

- The band kept self-sabotaging through their entire career

- Favorite songs: "Bastards of Young" (Jay), "Barbarism Begins at Home" (Phil)

Completely Conspicuous is available through Apple Podcasts. Subscribe and write a review!

The opening and closing theme of Completely Conspicuous is "Theme to Big F'in Pants" by Jay Breitling. Voiceover work is courtesy of James Gralian.

Completely Conspicuous 565: We Are the World

Part 1 of my conversation with guest Phil Stacey as we discuss the music of 1985. Listen to the episode below or download directly (right click and "save as").

Show notes:

- Recorded IN PERSON at CompCon world HQ for the first time since February 2020

- We were scheduled to record a podcast the weekend that everything shut down last year

- In '85, Jay was 17 going on 18 and Phil was 15 going on 16

- Jay: Finished high school, started college

- The year of rock charity

- We are the World featured a disinterested Dylan

- Dylan starred in the movie Hearts of Fire a few years later

- Live Aid was a huge event on both sides of the Atlantic

- Also, Farm Aid, Sun City and Hear 'N Aid

- DLR left Van Halen

- The PMRC hearings led to those Parental Advisory stickers that told kids where the good stuff was

- Lots of pop on the singles chart

- Phil belted out "Easy Lover" under hypnosis

- Phil's favorite non-top 5 albums: Hoodoo Gurus, INXS, Tears For Fears, Dire Straits, Jesus and Mary Chain, Tom Waits, The Cure, Husker Du, The Pogues, U2, Prince, Sting, Tom Petty, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Del Fuegos, Til Tuesday, Waterboys, Meat Puppets, The Indestructible Beat of Soweto

- Jay's non-top 5s: Robert Palmer, Fine Young Cannibals, Camper Van Beethoven, Big Audio Dynamite, Rush, Robert Plant

- To be continued

Completely Conspicuous is available through Apple Podcasts. Subscribe and write a review!

The opening and closing theme of Completely Conspicuous is "Theme to Big F'in Pants" by Jay Breitling. Voiceover work is courtesy of James Gralian.