This was Saturday:

Worked on vocals, Day 5. Good progress. At this point, all the songs are sung, and we're going back over them to see where I could hit things better, or change a vibe here and there. Once all the main parts are locked, then I go in and "double" parts, do harmonies, and have fun with the vocal "icing".

Got home around 8:30pm. Dave, Stephen, and Chris had a Camp Freddy gig at the Wiltern. Scheduled to play were Macy Gray, Davey from AFI, Terri Nunn from Berlin, Stephan Jenkins from Third Eye Blind, Jerry Cantrell from Alice and Chains, and Billy Duffy from the Cult. I had been planning on going out to the Hollywood Forever Cemetery for the last Cinespia event, a viewing of "Rosemary's Baby", but had forgotten that the Camp Freddy gig fell on the same night...

I love the Wiltern, it's an old-timey theater with tons of vibe, seen many good shows there including Rufus Wainwright, Radiohead, and Crowded House.

The show was to start at 9:50pm, we got there around 9pm and had some time to kill so we went backstage to say hi to the guys. Everybody was in good spirits, and there were loads of people backstage. Dave comes up to me and says "Dude, we need you, can you sing The Who tonight?" ...Apparently Macy Gray was sick and didn't show up, and they were short one song. Who am I to turn down a request like that...??? The Gods of Rock would burn me alive were I to decline. We sat down and went over the "Baba O'Reilly/ Pinball Wizard" medley we worked up for the Nascar show a couple times to get ready.

Spent some time yodeling in the dressing room while the first few tunes were played, then after Davey did his couple Bowie tunes, I went out and rocked it.

Had a blast. Yes, I did ask "is Princess Abby here?" ... I know your name from your website. Saw Snow White in the front row with a Panic Channel shirt. Stephen had one of his new Panic Channel kick drum heads on in full glory. The Camp Freddy shows are really fun to watch, but even more fun to play in. I got to share the stage with Terri Nunn, one of my major High School crushes. Awesome. She looked hot and sang her ass off, really knows how to command the stage, and she's just a wisp of a thing. Again, Jerry Cantrell was the shit, just full rock fury with his Les Paul and doing the furious hair swinging. Played "Them Bones" - one of my favorite Alice in Chains songs.

Before the show, Stephen Jenkins and I hung out a bit and we sang my Who tunes to get ready... kind of a Rock and Roll study hall. He got a cell phone call from someone who had just seen Ashlee Simpson on Saturday Night Live totally blow it and get stuck with the wrong backing track to lip synch to. I TiVo SNL every week, and was super excited to get home to that.

After the show, Riss, Dave and I got a pizza. A frigging incredibly good pizza. We bailed around 1am and Riss and I went to a party at Riss's friend Mark's house. He is such a great host, and we always have fun over there. Well, mostly fun, at one point this chick came out of the bathroom and cornered us on the couch outside (overlooking an awesome view of Universal City), and proceeded to babble her silly fucking face off. I mean wow, after 10 minutes of inane babbling about herself, herself, and her favorite topic, HERSELF, without either of us offering up any kind of interest or conversation, I began to wonder if stimulants were involved: if she had just come from a visit from the "booger sugar" fairy. Riss is very polite, and sat there nicely nodding and offering up the occasional "oh", or "really?", and I was silently wishing that my eyes could shoot lazer beams and make her yakking head explode off the top of her neck if I squinted hard enough and thought bad thoughts. I bailed inside and sadly Riss didn't take the exit ticket and listened some more.

We went home a little while later and settled in for some good old fashioned network television humiliation.

Let me preface my upcoming tirade with a little back story.

I have watched Saturday Night Live for years. There are good years, there are bad years. There are timely, classic sketches that are meaningful and funny, ...and boring, lame, never ending waste of time sketches. When it is great, it is the best comedy show ever, brave, funny, and scary cause it's LIVE. What I love is that it is the very last bastion of classic "Live" comedic television. In the tradition of all the old greats who had to make something funny happen OR ELSE. No editing, no do-overs. So I keep abreast on SNL year to year. As hardcore as it must be coming up with an hour and a half of material to shoot live every week, the musical performance part of the show also has an important place.

Since the show started in the 70's, SNL has been like a running timeline of almost every major popular recording artist, performing their songs LIVE before the audience. It's really astounding how many classic performances have been captured in that studio. Like the Elvis Costello famously changing songs, in mid-song to one he wasn't supposed to play. As I was growing up, I watched every week primarily for the musical performances, and have never stopped. One thing you could always count on was that they were LIVE. Yeah sure, with the years, more backing tracks have been used; a percussion track here, a sound effect there... but not THE LEAD VOCAL. Never. NO.

Saturday Night Live has been the place where an artist cemented their place in history with a great two song appearance. I was at the taping of Nirvana's first appearance, and you could feel it everywhere: the electricity of history being created. Sometimes SNL has changed my mind about someone, too. When Christina Aguilera was on for the first time, I expected yet another useless pop product, but was amazed at how great of a singer and performr she was. She isn't my knid of music, but I totally respect her gifts as singer and performer after that show. Same goes for Avril Lavigne. Not on my iPod, but she went on that show and sounded great AND SANG, definitely represented.

When Britney was on for the first time, the press was full of speculation,"Will she or won't she" lip synch? She had been accused of it in her live performances (and rightly so). When the show came around, she sang (sort of), there was definitely singing going on, but it was mixed with backing tracks - a very popular way to go on live TV these days. Her second song was sung live - and not that super impressive.

Since then sadly, more and more "artists" have been straight up lip synching on SNL - Britney's next appearance, Janet Jackson, and now our little sweetie pie, Ashlee Simpson.

If you haven't seen the tape, or read what happened, here goes:

She played her first "methodically crafted to exploit the buying tendencies of the female teen market musical product", "Pieces of Me". Obviously lip synched. Sounded like the start of the song had her live vocal mixed in, then they faded it out to pure tape. Not even lip synched very well, ...like Britney quality lip synching. Awkward dancing. It was very catchy, but leaves one with a cold, uneasy feeling. Like when you are stuck humming the hook, you have somehow become apart of something ...wrong. Not Evil really, like Diet Evil.

Her second song is now history. Here's my take on it: who ever is responsible for triggering her "backing" tracks punched the wrong button. The wrong song "Pieces of Me" instead of "Autobiography" starts playing and HELLO! - Ashlee's voice is coming out, but she isn't singing. The sound guy quickly turns down the lead vocal, but you can still hear a bit of it as she begins her "Hoe Down" dance, and the hired alterna-boy band is stuck with nothing to do by continue playing the wrong song. Ashlee skulks offstage, ..commercial break. If you saw it live on the west coast, they mixed out the wrong vocal playing as she wandered around onstage, but you can download the east coast feed for the real thing.

So we finally get what I believe karmically HAD to happen at some point, someone got what they deserved, the exposure of a their sham. It should have happened to Britney.

Hey, there will always be 2-5 prepubescent chicks with pop hits that ride the tops of the charts. Young girls identify with them, and have millions of dollars to freely spend on anything they make. Either they don't know that they don't sing live, or just don't care. If everybody does it, then why would they even think that it's important to have songs sung live? So Ashlee now will pay (let's hope) for all of them, Britney, JoJo, Janet, Beyonce and all the rest. Ashlee can't even limp along on Britney's excuse for lip-synching "I do alot of dancin' Y'all, I can't do both at the same time!" - hell, why would we ask of her something so strenuous??!! I think they all deserve this to happen to them. The public shouldn't stomach lip synching at all - ever. Ashlee seemed to be against it when she said: "I'm totally against it and offended by it. I'm going out to let my real talent show, not to just stand there and dance around. Personally, I'd never lip-synch. It's just not me."

Do I sound like I am getting on a high horse? - hell no! I have spent years working on how to sing in tune - it ain't easy! If a manager is greedily trying to exploit a young, not ready for prime time singer, they should give her lessons, training, and stage experience. I know that would never happen though, when you can just push a record out while she is as young as possible, and have her sing to a tape live- the little girls won't care. And they don't. They want to be a part of something theirs, a shared adoration experience. Ok, fine, so lip synch at the "concerts", but don't dirty up something cool like SNL with that crap.

I am eating this Ashlee shit up, I love it! Even though I do feel bad for her - she has to feel so overwhelmed and frightened right now - she has appearances all this week and I am sure her tyrant DadManager is whipping her like a dog to go out there and be what she is not nearly ready to be, and she has to be absolutely shitting her capri pants.

Also let me lavish a big "You Suck" to the producers of my beloved Saturday Night Live. At some point, someone should have put their foot down and started telling the musical guests - "don't lip synch on our show", but as with everything, that was probably a poor financial decision they didn't want to make.