Prodigal Son Returns Friday to the Sunset Strip! Jason de Cordoba debuts Siren Call

The photo above is of the "de Cordoba boys" as we were known growing up in the Palisades, Jason, Tony and me, with the Road Runner shirt and the blissed out smile on my face. My last name preceded me everywhere I went. Tony and Jason were my role models. We lived to raise hell and have as much fun in the sun as humanly possible. Fireworks, smoking pot, jumping bikes off ramps over the neighborhood children, riding motorcycles and ATVs in the middle of the night all over the Palisades, putting bananas in tailpipes, setting boobytraps for cars, playing ditch, hiking through sacred tribal grounds of "our" Chumash ancestors, and always getting into trouble. As my mom reminds me, we all made it out ok, as we're still alive. Yes mom, we are!

Jason became a legend for his dedication to music, turning our garage into a recording studio and throwing insane houseparties while the rest of the family went on vacation. I still don't quite understand how Jason convinced my parents to let him stay alone at home. He even recorded the performances of local bands in our living room, where close to a hundred kids from as far as Malibu and Mar Vista came to party. Somewhere there's a vhs tape of early performances by the fuzz rock band Mustard in our living room. Fred Bucher crashing mom's porsche into a wall. It's the stuff of legends.

His love for music was contagious. Tony learned bass and had good success with his own band. And before I knew it, I was learning to play drums so I could join Tony and Jason for long sessions playing Rush and Led Zepellin in the garage.

Jason was born to rock. His guitar was and still is his best friend. Our dog Duke habitually pissed on it whenever he got a chance, perhaps he was jealous. Jason is his happiest when he has the Fender Stratocaster in his hands, channeling Jimi Hendrix, Carlos Santana or Alex Lifeson. He's a bad-ass, guitar weilding , troubador expat living in the capital city of Austria, Vienna. For well over a decade he's been sharing his shred with Europe in various guises.

This weekend, he returns to L.A. to share with us his latest project, Siren Call.

Siren Call make's their Los Angeles Debut this Friday Night (8pm) at Hollywood's Legendary Roxy's On The Rox.

Siren Call - Vienna meets California in this new and fresh international line-up. Pop/post grunge tunes with an original flair! Siren Call delivers a sunny kind of darkness, mixing Nirvana's raw emotional power with the playful sensuality of Gwen Stefani's vocals. 

ON THE ROX: The Roxy Theatre 
9009 West Sunset Blvd. 
West Hollywood, CA 

Then on Saturday they are playing the Whiskey.


I'm sure when he takes the stage, I'll have flashbacks of the endless hours we spent hanging out, playing music and raising hell. He's never strayed far from that guitar. The song truly remains the same.

See you all tomorrow!

Political Pundits, The Sirens Of The Airwaves

First of all, you'll run into the Sirens,

who seduce all men who come across them.

Whoever unwittingly encounters them

and hears the Sirens' call

never gets back.

The Odyssey, Book 12

Why do we listen to the grand predictions made by political pundits? Their predictions aren't nearly as accurate as a coin toss.

Pundit Prediction Scorecard from theatlanticwire.com

Tech Crunch reports on the most successful predictor of yesterday's election, Nate Silver of Fivethirtyeight.com. Silver successfully predicted the election outcome for every single state in the nation.

Silver’s analysis, and statistical models generally, factor in more data points than even the most knowledgeable political insider could possibly juggle in their working memory. His modelincorporates the size, quality, and recency of all polls, and weights them based on the polling firm’s past predictive success (among other more advanced statistical procedures).

The answer may be that Americans rather enjoy the talking heads, regardless of the veracity of what they are saying. Television networks would have a hard time selling ads if they couldn't spend endless hours debating competing predictions all day long, all the while generating the perception of uncertainty which they can then relieve with their "news." These sirens of the airwaves render (nearly) all who listen incapable of rational thought. Nate Silver is a rare example of a person who takes an empirical approach to answering the question, "Who will win the election?" His is an example I try to emulate. Until then,

Tie Me To A Mast And Fill Your Ears With Wax!