[The following column, printed in the Monday, May 5th edition of Synthesis Weekly, is an installment from our literature columnist, Emilie Clark.]

Things I’ve Learned From Women Who’ve Dumped Me
Edited by Ben Karlin
Grand Central Publishing

In an interesting turn on the book cover theme: Things I’ve Learned From Women Who’ve Dumped Me, an anthology of essays penned exclusively by men, has a very blue cover. I think it is cornflower blue, but not being an interior design major, I might be wrong about that. Anyway, it seems that sometimes men also get stereotyped and gendered through the use of infantilizing color schemes. But I will say that this blue is a much nicer color than the pink of last week, and I was not embarrassed at all to be seen reading this book. My manly boyfriend says the color wouldn’t embarrass him either. So there you have it.
The premise of this book is pretty obvious. A number of famous and semi-famous male authors and comedians tackle some break-ups and the lessons learned from them. Andy Richter talks about how hard it was for a teenager of his girth to find a girlfriend; Stephen Colbert writes about an old girlfriend, but lets his wife redact the naughty bits; and Neal Pollack tells an especially hilarious cautionary tale about midnight emissions and pets.
Most of the stories are pretty funny, some of the laugh out loud variety, and some of them even have a bit of heart. But I was surprisingly underwhelmed. As I read the list of contributors, my anticipation grew strong, but a lot of the big names seem to have just phoned it in. Standouts include “A Dog is No Reason to Say Together” by Damian Kulash Jr., singer of OK Go, who tells an intriguingly honest story about a relationship that could have been mine or anyone else I know. It’s about that kind of pre-marriage long-term relationship where the terms and contracts are really hard to define and you’re not sure how or when it should end. Another standout is Barbara Karlin’s forward, “I Think My Son is a Catch.” I’m sure you can guess what it’s about.
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Once upon a time (actually, 2001) when Synthesis.net was first standing to make a name for itself in the internet game, one of our correspondents, the lovely Laney Erokan wrote a review of a Dave Matthews show in Las Vegas that featured some hippie band named Widespread Panic as openers. She wasn’t exactly feeling Widespread Panic, writing in her review:

if I could think of any word worse than “suck” to describe a band I would use it. Macy Gray also opened and for some reason she played before Widespread Panic (bad decision), so we missed Macy instead of missing Widespread Panic and had to sit through an hour of shite…long, drawn-out jams, barely any vox and just plain boring music. The only thing that kept us entertained through the hour of crap was the hippies on ecstasy

Big deal, right? I mean, so what if someone writing for some shitty website doesn’t like a band, especially one that already has a solid enough fan base. You would think it wouldn’t be a big deal, but no, all of a sudden cyber hippies were coming out of the woodwork, e-mailing us all sorts of vulgar comments and even threats of violence. Peace and love apparently go out the window when Widespread Panic is involved.

I bring this up as a warning to budding music journalists out there, as the band is set to embark upon a summer tour, including a stop at this year’s Bonnaroo Music Festival. DON’T TALK SHIT ABOUT WIDEPSREAD PANIC! You might find your prize race horse’s head laying next to you in your bed the next morning…

Dates after the jump

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The highly touted boys from Brighton are back with their sophomore release, Konk, that hit stores earlier this week, but some are questioning whether the pre-release hype matches the merit. The Kook’s debut release Inside In/Inside Out was exceedingly well received, but reviews for Konk have been mixed. Betty Clarke of The Guardian gave the record 4 out 5 stars saying, “The woolliness of their debut has been replaced with a determined pop sound that dips into hard-edged rock,” but New Music Express was less than optimistic, and rather disappointed:

“What’s clear is that they’ve lost the songwriterly knack they originally wielded with abandon and replaced it with clichés and a foggy palimpsest of what they once had. We recommend they search high and low for that spark of brightness in time for album three.” NME.com

I haven’t picked up the record yet, but if the single is any indication it looks like I’m in store for a watered down version of Inside In/Inside Out. To be honest, when I first heard “Always Where I Need To Be” I thought I was still listening to The Kooks first album. Check out thise video below and decide for yourself.

The Kooks- “Always Where I Need To Be”

Apparently Maxim’s two-and-a-half star review of the Black Crowes new CD, Warpaint, was just an “educated guess.” From their web site:

How is it that a magazine can review an entire album–and assign a star rating to it–without actually hearing the album?

Case in point: the “review” of Warpaint–the new album by THE BLACK CROWES–in the March issue of Maxim magazine. The writer–who has not heard the album since advance CDs were not made available–wrote what appears to be a disparaging assessment anyway, citing “it hasn’t left Chris Robinson and the gang much room for growth.”

Incredulously, the magazine gave the album a two and a half star rating–although neither the writer nor the editor could have heard more than one song (the single “Goodbye Daughters of the Revolution”).

When approached for an explanation, the magazine described the review as “an educated guess preview.” Huh?

Black Crowes manager Pete Angelus says, “Maxim’s actions seem to completely lack journalistic integrity and intentionally mislead their readership. When confronted with the fact that they never heard the album they are claiming to ‘review’ in their music section–with a star rating, no less–they attempt to explain that it was an ‘educated guess.’ In an email correspondence, Maxim went on to state: ‘Of course, we always prefer to (sic) hearing music, but sometimes there are big albums that we don’t want to ignore that aren’t available to hear, which is what happened with the Crowes. It’s either an educated guess preview or no coverage at all, so in this case we chose the former.’”

Angelus continued, “It speaks directly to the lack of the publication’s credibility. In my opinion, it’s a disgrace to the arts, journalism, critics, the publication itself and the public. What’s next–Maxim’s concert reviews of shows they never attended, book reviews of books never read and film reviews of films never seen?”

Here at Synthesis, we pride ourselves on listening to at least two songs of an album before giving it a disparaging review.

Marilyn Manson, live at the Uptown Theater on February 11th in Kansas City, MO. Photos by Anna Perry. Read a full review of the show written by Crystal K. Wiebe at Synthesis.net. More photos after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »

Sometimes people send cool shit to Synthesis for review. A few weeks ago we got to play around with the Centerfold Guitar by DeVillian guitar company out of Sweden.

It’s a hand made guitar that folds in half for easy transport. It’s also a heavy devil and industrial as fukk. VideoMatt took some footage of me giving it the once over.