Adios Shea Stadium, and "Love for Money" the new video by Willie The Kid featuring Trey Songz, Gucci Mane, Bun B, LA the Darkman and Yung Joc

With Willie Nelson in town following Farm Aid last weekend, and a lot of posts about baseball, I couldn't resist Miss Theda's pitch "don't sleep on this joint... post this up now!!!" in her recent email. I felt I needed to do something music-oriented, and less classic/adult oriented too.

I also caught what was probably my last game at Shea Stadium last night, continuing on the old vibes. It's so weird that they are knocking down these buildings that I thought would last forever. A few Shea highlights for me include playoff games in 1986, sparsely attended, post-Seaver games in the late 70s, Mayor's Trophy games, concerts like The Who (with The Clash opening, coming out on cd next month), The Rolling Stones, Simon and Garfunkel and a pair of Springsteens, Jet games that were very cold, and many, many Met games. Maybe there was no Babe Ruth on the Shea field who played for the Mets other than Tom Seaver, but there were countless greats from other teams who played there, and who we often went there to see. A few of these that I saw include Pete Rose (who I saw hit his 2,995th hit), Mike Schmidt, Nolan Ryan, J.R. Richard, Dave Parker, Cesar Cedeno, George Hendrick, Lou Brock, Steve Garvey, Ron Cey and countless others. It was the park I went to the most as a youth, paying $1.50 for a GA.

After a game in September 1979, me and my friends figured out how to sneak into the US Open and saw Bjorn Borg vs. Jimmy Connors that day, and John McEnroe and Ivan Lendl on repeated trips combining baseball and tennis.

One thing the new stadium will also have is deafening LaGuardia Airport traffic flying overhead.

As Willie the Kid says, "Love for Money."



MissTheda.com is a site run by my friend Theda Sandiford, covering technology, hip hop, r&b, culture and politics. Stop by when you can!

I'm stoked that it's become seasonally cold here in NYC, with a few bad rainstorms and strong winds to get the trees up to speed. Even a week or two ago, the colors hadn't come out... very weird autumn here, it felt a few months behind. Could it be climate change?

Anyhow, the traditional record promotion season ends next week with the last chart reports taken as holiday music edges out new albums. I'm sure everyone in that scene needs a good rest. I wonder what albums are coming out in the new year, does anyone have one they are looking forward to?

--What's an "album" anyway?

I will try to come up with some picks for upcoming releases, considering my "lists, and lists of lists" post below. People like lists and I have to make some of mine public. I do know there is a new Shelby Lynne ("Shelby Lynne channels Dusty" LA Times live review 11/1/07) album coming out in Feb 08 (just typed 02 by "accident").

I was surprised to see KEXP (not their link -- surprise!) on the cover of the NY Post today (see above for detail). Someone used an mp3 player to record a cop's interrogation and the paper used a Zune tuned to the station. Nice hit for them, it inadvertently shows you can listen to the radio on it and their new colors. Do you know anyone that has one? The new tv ad with kids listening and sharing on a bus seems like a familiar idea.

Remember this: "Won't you please save this seat for someone with a Zune?"

Oh they also mention the Grammys™ on the cover of the Post. Not a bad day for music actually. Amy Winehouse proves the business is still growing new superstars and there is still some meaning to the term "rock star." It's an old fashioned way of doing things that permeates more than just her retro sound, not intentionally of course. But due to her behavior, I'm looking forward to NOT seeing her endorse shampoo, phones, resorts, etc. Maybe she can be on "UK Ink."

It's not a music event but I saw it on the way home from Carbon/Silicon the other night. That was a pretty good show, but not because of their great songs. The band had exuberance, their guitar jamming was a treat for anyone who enjoyed Mick Jones' playing in The Clash. Tony James will never live down pictures of his old band Sigue Sigue Sputnik, one of the grand failures in the history of the business (in my opinion at least). Transvision Vamp also comes to mind, maybe they even had some common pedigree?