Tom Morello Was A Stripper

In a column written for nme.com, Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello has revealed the he once worked as an exotic dancer.

When I graduated from Harvard and moved to Hollywood, I was unemployable. I was literally starving, so I had to work menial labour and, at one point, I even worked as an exotic dancer. ‘Brick House’ [by The Commodores] was my jam! I did bachelorette parties and I’d go down to my boxer shorts. Would I go further? All I can say is thank god it was in the time before YouTube! You could make decent money doing that job – people do what they have to do.

So wait, you can graduate from Harvard and still be “unempoyable?” I think what Tom’s trying to say is ‘don’t worry about getting into a good school,’ because that’s what I got out of it. How can a political science degree from an Ivy League school be worthless? Maybe there wasn’t a huge job market for making a “wiki wiki” scratching sound with his guitar in Los Angeles at the time?

The other thing we got out of this was that there’s probably a good number of awesome puns that can be applied towards Tom’s old job. Drowned In Sound, where we first heard about this, has the best one, with “Balls On Parade.” In fact, except for our tag, we can’t top that.

Gene Simmons Speaks Out On Health Care, Wal-Mart

In an interview last week with the New York Post, KISS bassist Gene Simmons weighed in on the Obama administration and Wal-Mart. Guess which one he’s for and which one he’s against? (hint, the new KISS album, Sonic Boom will be out exclusively at Wal-Mart on October 6).

“They’re terrific. They give 2.5 million people jobs,” he says of Wal-Mart. When asked by the notoriously right-wing Post what he thinks of the current political leadership, he stated “Means well, lacks experience. And that’s dangerous. I voted for President Obama, but his health care plan is a complete disaster.”

Oh Gene. Only someone completely out of touch and beholden to corporate interests would call Wal-Mart terrific. I mean, it’s a great store to go people-watching and all, but they’re union-busting and pay the majority of their workers below the poverty level. And as far as politics, does anyone really give a fuck what Gene Simmons thinks? There are some musicians out there, like Otep and Rage Against the Machine, who are known for being politically active. And then there’s KISS, a band whose 30+ year career consists of new ways of writing songs that say “let’s bang.” Don’t get me wrong, they’ve got some amazing songs, but asking Gene Simmons about politics is like asking Born of Osiris what their favorite Misfits song is.

Samsung Recommends A New Ozzy Guitarist

I don’t know if this new ad for Samsung’s cellphones is poking fun at Ozzy Osbourne’s search for a new guitarist, or just a bit of unfortunate coincidental foreshadowing. Also I wonder if the chimp’s name is a shot at Mr. E. Lee, who apparently needs his place in metal history defended.

[Thanks to the excellent Hypebot for the heads up.]