Robert Wolsey

Robert Wolsey

@vinylbuzz.bsky.social

I witnessed 80s and 90s pop culture history like Forrest Gump. Stanford '86, Communication. I talk to animals. Rocking the 518 for 20 years. vinylbuzz.us

1.1K followers920 following584 posts

"Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" just wrapped its 4th season, still in fine form. Did you see a single mention on Bluesky about the only Star Trek show still going? Paramount apparently doesn't care.

In honor of my 40th reunion at Stanford later this month, this is the story of the day in January 1986 I spent with the Red Hot Chili Peppers. My roommate on the college board brought them to campus on their Freaky Styley tour. He hired me and other friends to work security. Only 300 tickets sold.

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The crowd is immediately crushing against the feeble barrier; me and the Steves try to hold it up. Soon all three of us are off the ground, completely horizontal with our hands holding the barrier and feet against the stage. We remain like that for most of the show. Those 300 people are CRAZED.

I watch the show from this insane position. Martinez has a top hot on, foreshadowing my encounter with Slash in 1989. Flea just thwacking nonstop. Hillel pumping the wah pedal. Kiedes manipulating the crowd like a myth. The RHCP that you know are a faint shadow of the band I saw that night.

In honor of my 40th reunion at Stanford later this month, this is the story of the day in January 1986 I spent with the Red Hot Chili Peppers. My roommate on the college board brought them to campus on their Freaky Styley tour. He hired me and other friends to work security. Only 300 tickets sold.

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They're LA surfers, so they're impressed that I'm Jesse Martinez's cousin. (Google "Jesse Martinez skater.") We smoked some weed and got ready to open the doors. Anthony is shirtless in a short American flag skirt and purple cotton briefs that he would keep flashing to the crowd all night.

From the first note, the crowd is going crazy. "Chili Peppers are red hot!" they chant between every song. Flea and Martinez are super tight, and Hillel's guitar is soaring like fucking Hendrix. It is the greatest guitar performance I will ever see. It inspires for life my style of playing guitar.

In honor of my 40th reunion at Stanford later this month, this is the story of the day in January 1986 I spent with the Red Hot Chili Peppers. My roommate on the college board brought them to campus on their Freaky Styley tour. He hired me and other friends to work security. Only 300 tickets sold.

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Like a scene from "Fast Times" the band spills out. Flea is wearing his bass. He will never take it off, and never stop playing it for the next 10 hours. He's still going when they get back in the van at the end of the night. Neither he nor Anthony Kiedes is wearing a shirt. Kiedes is jacked.

Hillel Slovak, their original guitarist, and drummer Cliff Martinez are there, but Flea and Anthony do all the talking. We have lunch and soundcheck. I'm blown away by Hillel. Massive distortion and a wah pedal, he sounds nothing like the plinky tone on the record.

In honor of my 40th reunion at Stanford later this month, this is the story of the day in January 1986 I spent with the Red Hot Chili Peppers. My roommate on the college board brought them to campus on their Freaky Styley tour. He hired me and other friends to work security. Only 300 tickets sold.

A 4-foot high wood barrier had been set up in front of the stage, creating a zone for me, Steve B, and Steve C to stand facing the crowd. It would prove to be woefully inadequate, as the small crowd was whipped into an absolute frenzy. But let's back up...

That morning at Mem Auditorium John H is devastated by the poor ticket sales. "Who the hell do they want? Who would you actually pay to see?" College radio is in its heyday. They're exactly who should be a big draw. A white van pulls pulls up, and the side door slides open with a cloud of smoke.

Robert Wolsey reposted

With the Strait of Hormuz closed, Iraq has resorted to moving its oil across the desert to Syria in hundreds of tanker trucks, in true Mad Max style. From there, it will be shipped to worldwide markets.

The divide started when we were 10 years old and sitting in church on a Sunday. Half of us sat there thinking "why are we all pretending this bullshit is real?" The other half were wondering if they were going to hell.

When I heard that Marvel was doing the Multiverse after "Endgame," I assumed they would build a new hero roster in an alternate world and then end the phase by merging them in. They had a soft reset button for their increasingly unwieldy canon sitting right there and they just ignored it.

A fleet of Tesla Cybercabs? Was the Amazon plane crash in Miami actually Jeff Bezos' AI trying to fight Elon Musk's AI?

Chris⚖️Justice@chrisjustice01.bsky.social

💥 New footage of today’s Amazon plane crash in Miami. At least 5 people were killed & 5 others injured in the crash

Agentic AI? OK, impersonate an 80-year-old Fox News believer's loved ones to deprogram them. Text them and FaceTime them fact checking Hannity and Gutfeld in real time. Teach them the facts of life that Rupert Murdoch has hidden from them.

Paramount is really trying to kill Star Trek. I had no idea that Strange New Worlds had returned with Season 4. It is as if they want bad ratings. Meanwhile, the show keeps trying bold wacky stuff and Paul Wesley's James T. Kirk continues to be an uncanny take on one of TV's greatest characters.

Introduce yourself as what almost killed you. Hi, I'm the 300-foot drop at Yosemite's Vernal Falls that happens if you don't get off the natural waterslide in time.

Okay, I'm unmuting "NFL" now.

Robert Wolsey@vinylbuzz.bsky.social

I love watching NFL football and reading the takes on social media...during the football season. But my feed has way too much about the draft and free agency. I'm muting "NFL" until the preseason starts. There's nothing I need to read about football until then.

In Nolan's "The Odyssey," Matt Damon's Odysseus makes one macho blunder after another and keeps getting people killed. Oh, toxic masculinity is bad, the hero is a actually a dufus, I get it. But then at the end he suddenly goes beast mode and singlehandedly saves the day? What did we learn here?

Within a few years, any mechanically-inclined society living in AppleTV+'s Silo would engineer a stair-climbing machine. No way they just unanimously accept a 140-story climb. We see them jerry-rig elevators; those would be permanent, too.

No one wants to hear it, but when you burn your thrusters in space, you do not keep moving at the same speed. You accelerate like a motherfucker. Every movie/TV in space is less realistic than Asteroids.

Remember when Journey stayed up all night snorting coke with the money for their "Separate Ways" music video and the next morning made the cheapest looking video in history?