The reign of the fourth Reich has come to an end. No, I’m not talking about the supposedly utopian society envisioned by Hitler where the world lives in the shadow of the Nazi boot heel. That was the Third Reich and that ended before it even started thanks to Hitler’s pedestrian understanding of military strategy, along with his massive over-reactions to getting banned from X-Box Live, discovering problems with Vista, finding out that his friends aren’t going to Burning Man and, of course, that the Cort and Fatboy show were no longer on KUFO. No, I’m talking about the fourth Reich, the one where the world is ruled by a bunch of Germans shredding on guitars and exalting the glory of Glasnost. It was announced over the weekend that the Scorpions are breaking up after being a band for over 40 years. The band announced on its website that it was over saying, "we agree we have reached the end of the road." Personally I’m thrilled about this news because I’ve always fucking hated the Scorpions. It started as a mild distaste when I was a kid, but after working overnight shifts where I’d have to play blocks of Scorpions music at 3am on New Years Day stone cold sober and buzzing on shitty radio station coffee, that distasted bloomed into a full on loathing. Ever since, I ride in the car with my finger at the ready so that I can punch the preset buttons with the might of Thor’s hammer in the event that a Scorpions song is played.
And Conan O’Brien’s run at the Tonight Show is now finished but in the last few days on the air he got a lot of press with his “most expensive new characters” segments where he supposedly got NBC to pony up 1.5 million for a Bugatti mouse, which was an insanely expensive car with mouse whiskers taped to the grill and the Rolling Stones’ “Satisfaction” playing in the background, 4.5 million for Kentucky Derby winner Mind That Bird in a mink Snuggy and watching restricted NFL football and 65 million for a dinosaur skeleton that vomits caviar on a Picasso. As you would imagine, and as he admitted on Friday, it was all a gag. The car was on loan, the horse wasn’t Mind That Bird and the Picasso was a fake. But what was real was the Rolling Stones song. “Satisfaction” is a really expensive song to play because of the royalties that the band commands. But Conan didn’t stop there. On the final night Tom Hanks walked on to the Beatles’ “Lovely Rita” in honor of his wife Rita Wilson. According to Questlove of the Roots who plays drums for Jimmy Fallon’s show, that cost NBC a ton. He tweeted, “yo I hate spoiling but I will have you know that walk on song we just heard was a half milli. I know cause I go the list rate at nbc.” “Tom’s walkon music on conan is on my “restricted” list---wow a $500,000 walkon song lol.” So while NBC didn’t have to pay 65 million for vomiting dinosaur bones, they did pay about a million dollars for less than a minute’s worth of combined background music.
And, in case you were concerned that there was a chance that Axl Rose had gotten any less batshit with age, I have good news. He’s just as crazy and insecure as ever. Last week at a show in Canada, security was instructed to tell fans wearing Slash shirts that they had to turn them inside out and all top hats were to be left outside. Some fans refused and went home but most acquiesced. And while I agree with the top hat rule, because that’s just silly and makes it impossible to see for anyone standing behind you, the t-shirt thing is bullshit.
