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Completely Conspicuous 667: Everything In Its Right Place

Release Date: 12/02/2025

Completely Conspicuous 683: The Island Life

Completely Conspicuous

Part 2 of my conversation with Phil Stacey about choosing 10 artists to listen to for the rest of your life if you were stranded on a desert island. Show notes: Bowie would pivot from one persona to another Phil: The Stones, but leaning heavily on the 1965-1981 period The Stones and the Who have so many compilations out In the Stones vs. Beatles argument, the Stones have the edge as a live band Jay: The Clash are one of the most important bands Not a huge catalog, but there's still plenty there The US Festival was the last gasp for the original lineup Phil: Repping for the Tedeschi...

Completely Conspicuous 682: (I'm) Stranded

Completely Conspicuous

Celebrating TWENTY YEARS of podcasting with part 1 of my conversation with Phil Stacey about choosing 10 artists to listen to for the rest of your life if you were stranded on a desert island. Show notes: Started this show in August 2006! Instead of Desert Island Discs, we each chose 10 artists that we'd be limited to hearing on a desert island Mixing up genres Jay: I ruled out a lot of classic rock acts that I've listened to all my life Limiting artists to music that came out under their name, not in other groups This magical island has killer WiFi Phil's honorable mentions: Bowie,...

Completely Conspicuous 681: Quick and to the Pointless

Completely Conspicuous

Part 3 of my conversation with guest Phil Stacey as we discuss our favorite American artists. Show notes: Our favorite American artists since 2000 Phil's honorable mentions: Black Keys, Dead & Co., Gary Clark Jr., Jack White, Kurt Vile, MJ Lenderman, My Morning Jacket, Parquet Courts, Raconteurs, Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings, St. Vincent, Them Crooked Vultures, Vampire Weekend, Waxahatchee, Yeah Yeah Yeahs Jay's honorable mentions: Walkmen, Neko Case, LCD Soundsystem, At the Drive-In, Stephen Malkmus, Speedy Ortiz, Jeff Rosenstock, Protomartyr, Outkast, the Strokes, Interpol, Titus...

Completely Conspicuous 680: Welcome to the Occupation

Completely Conspicuous

Part 2 of my conversation with guest Phil Stacey as we discuss our favorite American artists. Show notes: Jay's take after seeing Goose Took us a while to get into the show Phil's #6: Phish took over the jam band crown from the Dead Jay briefly met Trey Anastasio at UNH before they got famous Goose hasn't been accepted by the entire jam band audience Jay's #6: Originally had Van Halen ranked higher, but dropped them because of the Hagar years Combined Eddie VH's revolutionary guitar work with DLR's showmanship Eddie inspired a generation of guitarists and Dave inspired a generation of hard...

Completely Conspicuous 679: Yankee Rose

Completely Conspicuous

Part 1 of my conversation with guest Phil Stacey as we discuss our favorite American artists. Show notes: Recorded in the CompCon HQ backyard studio America's 250th birthday Looking at our favorite American singers and bands, pre-2000 and post-2000 Starting off with our top 10 of bands who debuted pre-millennium Sticking to rock artists for the most part Phil's honorable mentions include: B-52s (toughest omission from top 10), Beach Boys, Beasties, Beck, JB, Cars, early Chicago, Doors, early Foos, Little Feat, Nirvana, Pixies, Linda Ronstadt, Seger, Sleater-Kinney, SRV, Stevie Wonder,...

Completely Conspicuous 678: Knee Deep in the Hoopla

Completely Conspicuous

Part 2 of my conversation with guest Jay Breitling as we count down our favorite music of 2026 so far. Show notes: Breitling's #6: Kurt Vile's love letter to Philly KV writes songs about nothing and they're great Kumar's #6: Great album from Chicago's Ratboys Leading the wave of bands with sweet female vocals and rocking instrumentation Breitling's #5: 17-track compilation from the Laughing Chimes It's like a typewriter, retro and satisfying Kumar's #5: Hot indie rock from Philly's Gladie Led by former singer of Cayetana Breitling's #4: First new LP from Broken Social Scene in a decade...

Completely Conspicuous 677: Time for a Slacker Revolution

Completely Conspicuous

Part 1 of my conversation with guest Jay Breitling about the best music of 2026 so far. Show notes: AI music is apparently a thing on streaming services Saxophone Colossus, mfer (RIP) Blue dot syndrome: Tours getting canceled because of poor ticket sales Who woulda thunk Kiefer Sutherland couldn't sell out concerts? Many artists are trying to fill venues that are too big We're going to a lot of concerts Why is beer so expensive at music venues? What is a walking class? The Osbourne family has licensed an Ozzy hologram for use in ads ABBA does a hologram show of them in their prime Maybe older...

Completely Conspicuous 676: Out There

Completely Conspicuous

Part 2 of my conversation with guest Phil Stacey as we discuss our favorite guitar solos. Show notes: Continuing our top 10 Phil's #9: Trey Anastasio of Phish stretches out No studio version of the song Jay's #9: The concise awesomeness of Alex Lifeson A virtuoso in a band of virtuosos Phil's #8: Back to the jam with RIck Mitarotonda of Goose Another band that saves their best for the live setting Jay's #8: Another Matthew Sweet song, this time featuring Richard Lloyd on lead guitar Features a fake ending with even more soloing Phil's #7: Square dancing in gym class led Phil to this Beatles...

Completely Conspicuous 675: Solo Flights

Completely Conspicuous

Part 1 of my conversation with guest Phil Stacey as we discuss our favorite guitar solos. Show notes: Occasional chiming in from CC intern Lily Rolling Stone recently released a top 100 solos list Phil likes the long jammy solos Solos can go along with a riff or go off on crazy tangents Steely Dan used many guitarists Jay used to be into '80s speed guitar Vinnie Vincent went way over the top Charlie Sexton was a guitar prodigy who went on to play in Dylan's band The greatness of early Dire Straits Tough to narrow down our lists Appreciating Billy Idol Eagles bad, Joe Walsh good Terry Kath...

Completely Conspicuous 674: You Can Leave Your Hat On

Completely Conspicuous

Part 2 of my conversation with guest Phil Stacey as we celebrate the return of the MLB season by counting down our favorite baseball hats. Show notes: On to our top 10 Phil's #10: Reaching back to the '50s with the Phillies Jay's #10: Mid-90s Mariners Good use of seafoam green '90s uniforms had a lot of bold colors: Teal, purple Phil's #9: The simplicity of the SF Giants hat Hat designs got pretty weird over the years Corduroy hats were a thing for a while Jay's #9: Classic A's green and yellow look Phil's #8: Dodgers' classic blue and white is another look that hasn't changed...

More Episodes

Part 1 of my conversation with guest Phil Stacey as we pick our favorite songs released in the 21st century. Listen to the episode below or download directly (right click and "save as").

Show notes:

We're a quarter through this century
Phil: Thought this would be easy but came up with a long list
What about a song grabs you?
Jay: Original top 10 list was all songs from the 00s
Songs that didn't make our top 10
Phil: Tribe Called Quest, Vampire Weekend, Meatbodies, Wilco, Ryan Adams and the Cardinals, TV On the Radio, Wet Leg, Franz Ferdinand, Michael Kiwanuka, MJ Lenderman, U2, Frances Forever, Patrick Sweeney, Mudcrutch, Sufjan Stevens, Shearwater, Jason Isbell, Songs: Ohia
Jay: Radiohead, Bowie, At the Drive-In, Drive-By Truckers, Sloan, Sleater-Kinney, Death from Above 1979, Jay-Z, Hold Steady, Gord Downie, Tragically Hip, Living Colour, Outkast, Wild Flag, White Stripes, PJ Harvey, Parquet Courts, Spoon, M.I.A., Kaiser Chiefs
Jay: Found out about a lot of new music from MP3 blogs in the early 00s
Phil's #10: Spoon breaks through
Song was a cover of a song by The Natural History
Jay's #10: Last song from Bowie's iconic farewell album
Love the album but it's hard to listen to because of the sadness
Phil's #9: Mournful ballad from Mark Lanegan
Jay: My favorite Lanegan song
Mixing bubblegum and chewing tobacco is a bad idea
A duet with Chris Goss of Masters of Reality
Jay's #9: A fiery hip hop blast from Run the Jewels and Zach de la Rocha
Waiting for their next album; last one was in 2020
Phil's #7: Bluegrass turn from Billy Strings
Strings is winning over a lot of fans of other genres
Phil's #8: Protest song from Drive-By Truckers
Band chronicles a lot of real-life injustices
Jay's #8: Angry ripper from Superchunk
Commentary on the political climate of 2018
Sometimes fans don't like the message
Jay's #7: White Stripes hit the mainstream
Took a year for their third album to become a hit
To be continued

Completely Conspicuous is available through wherever you get podcasts. Subscribe and write a review!

The opening and closing theme of Completely Conspicuous is "Theme to Big F'in Pants" by Jay Breitling. Voiceover work is courtesy of James Gralian.

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