Thursday, February 28, 2002
Wow, am I ever glad I didn't buy the cheap dvd copy of Blue Velvet last year. The new special edition comes out on June 4, with a better picture and some more bells & whistles...but no commentary. David Lynch doesn't do commentaries. Says they interfere with the movie's gestalt and whatnot. He has a point...his movies are better left unexplained, although I'd like to hear him tell us why he made the revolting piece of tripe that is Lost Highway...
A wicked quote from Jon Stewart last night: "Afghanistan was recently liberated from a totalitarian regime, and the first thing that happened was that they played music in the streets. Three days later, even they were sick of Creed."
While I'm on the topic of the Worst Band On The Planet, why, why, oh why, do idiots phone in requests for 'My Sacrifice' on daytime radio request shows, when they should know that awful song will be played three more times before 5:00? The massive popularity of such a ham-fisted band just baffles me.
You've got to love Dylanphiles...personally, I like 'Cry Awhile' a lot...
Bob Dylan's "Love And Theft" didn't win Album Of The Year at the Grammies like it should have, but that wasn't the real reason I watched...Bob and his guys put in a solid performance of 'Cry Awhile', and looked as good as ever. Refreshingly simple set-up, with the bare minimum lighting (looked like floor lights only, but I could be wrong). That's the first time I've seen or heard his new drummer George Recile...he adds a different dimension to Bob's songs, a little more flourish. His predecessor, David Kemper, was great, but more laid back, his drumming a little more subtle. I'll have to hear a complete set with the new guy sometime...
Wednesday, February 27, 2002
My first cd review for PopMatters is now up...
Picked up the new Joey Ramone album today, after a bit of a search around town for a good price (thanks, HMV, but there's no way I'm paying $29 bucks for it!!!), and I'm so glad I got it. Just a wonderful album, and that's not just because Ramone died a year ago. It sounds better than anything The Ramones recorded since the underrated Pleasant Dreams, sort of resembling a cross between the brilliant punkpop of End Of The Century and the world-weary intelligence of 'I Wanna Live'. Only thirty-four minutes in length, it's a slick, lean record, with nary a throwaway track.
Highlights? 'What A Wonderful World' is sublime, much less sappy than the Satchmo standard, and much more heartfelt (the opening riff is lifted from 'The Return Of Jackie & Judy'). 'Stop Thinking About It', 'Searching For Something', and 'Don't Worry About Me' hearken back to the Ramones' glory days, while 'Spirit In My House' and 'Like A Drug I Never Did Before' resemble the heavy stuff from the 80's & 90's. 'Mr. Punchy' is a classic goofy Joey Ramone tune, and his cover of The Stooges' '1969' is ferocious. The songs everyone will pay most attention to will be the great 'I Got Knocked Down (But I'll Get Up)', a touching statement from Ramone, a candid admission of both his vulnerability and his optimism, and the wondrous 'Maria Bartiromo', his extremely catchy ode to the CNBC reporter, which will wind up very high on my list of favourite songs of the year. Don't Worry About Me is flawless, one heckuva swan song from a rock & roll icon. A beauty.
Tuesday, February 26, 2002
Monday was a nice day to sit back and savour the Big Win...
Here's a good cartoon about the whole USA-Canada game...Also, be sure to read the story about the infamous loonie, which will quickly become the stuff of hockey legend.
For some reason, I can't find the new Lambchop cd in town...the only copy in town must've sold. Thankfully, I was able to get a temporary copy burnt. So how good is Is A Woman? Very good. Is it better than Nixon? No, but few things are. Nixon was an amazing album with a genius concept: alt.country soul music with lyrical themes that echoed the life of Richard Nixon. On the new album, it's much simpler. Very quiet, in a Velvet Underground closet mix type of way. Real cozy feel to it. If there's a flaw, it's too long. It goes for over an hour, and something this laid back should be more brief to have more of an effect. People might say that this is like Yo La Tengo's last album, but for a long record, at least it had minimal variation.
Not that Kurt Wagner did a bad thing, it's just that eleven good songs sometimes don't make a good album., like how Lucinda Williams' Essence gets off to such a slow start in its first four songs. They're all good, individually, but it comes close to overkill. That said, Is A Woman is a great album. Wonderful atmospheric album with some real subtle touches that require closer listening (plus, dig the nifty reggae in the title track!). I have a hunch this will get a lot better the more I hear it. I'm not familiar with all the lyrics yet, but here's a great Wagner gem from the lovely 'The New Cobweb Summer': "The link between profound and pain/covers you like Sherwin-Williams"
Sadly, the best song Lambchop has done lately isn't on the album. Their cover of Sisters Of Mercy's bombastic signature tune 'This Corrosion' is the best cover tune I've heard since The Gourds' versing of Snoop Dogg's 'Gin & Juice'. It's a ridiculous choice of a song, but wow, do they make it work. If you have Audiogalaxy, you can find it here.
Watched Russ Meyer's Mudhoney Sunday night. Made after Lorna and before Faster Pussycat, Kill! Kill!, it's the second of his black & white 'Southern Gothic' period. In these movies he stuck lame moral messages into what were essentially cheesecake movies just to give them some 'socially redeeming value', but as for Mudhoney, I really enjoyed it. A drifter gets a job as a hired hand at a farm run by a lady and her uncle. The lady's husband is a drunken wifebeater, the drifter likes the lady, so there you go. Conventional story, true, but when Meyer sticks in his own trademark touches, like three lookalike blonde women (who look like 1960s pin-ups in a 1930s period movie), some great film noir b & w camerawork, very ugly supporting characters, bawdy, jazzy music, some nasty violence, and of course, go-go dancing (something that, in a Depression-era story, has to be seen to be believed), you've got yourself a movie that's a stone gas to watch. Recommended.
Sunday afternoon...
Thanks, boys!
Sunday, February 24, 2002
It's 2 a.m., twelve hours before game time, and I'm so nervous I think I'm going to die. Uuuuuugggghhhhhh...Go Canada. Please.
Saturday, February 23, 2002
Chuck Jones died yesterday. Today should be a worldwide day of mourning...
So It's Canada versus USA in the gold medal final Sunday afternoon. My worst nightmare. I don't think I can bear to watch it.
Friday, February 22, 2002
Congrats to the Canadian Women's Hockey Team! You did us all proud. What a game...
On the Men's side, it's Canada vs. Belarus this afternoon. Just don't get ahead of yourselves, boys.
I've just read the worst, suckiest book I've read since Elizabeth Wurtzel's ridiculous Prozac Nation some seven years ago. Chuck Klosterman's tribute to 80's metal, Fargo Rock City, could have been good, but instead it's half a thesis about how great Bon Jovi and Poison were, and half a memoir of a twenty-eight year old, self-obsessed dullard. He totally comes off as one of those kids way back when who loved Warrant and Trixter, and considered themselves sooooo metal. While he's obsessing and waxing philosophical over Nikki Sixx and Bret Michaels, he barely gives any mention to Iron Maiden, Metallica, Queensryche, Slayer, or Megadeth, five of the most important metal bands of the eighties. Instead, he calls Iron Maiden idiotic and says their fans were nobody but angry loners (okay, he's half true there), he preaches that KISS's atrocious Animalize is their best post-makeup album, you can't listen to a Metallica album all the way through (come again?), he says he doesn't 'get' Slayer's Reign In Blood, he thinks W.A.S.P.'s Live...In The Raw is a good live album (it was recorded in a studio with fake crowd noise, dummy!), and, get this, the doofus actually claims that Zeppelin's 'Living Loving Maid' is better than 'The Rain Song'. That alone is enough of a barometer of Klosterman's musical intellect. The dude was more into the poodleheads than real talent.
Granted, there was some talent in the hair bands, and I liked a fair bit of their stuff. Cinderella's first album is fun rock & roll (aside from the ridiculous 'Push Push'), Faster Pussycat, as I mentioned the other day, was darn good, Ratt's Out Of The Cellar was effective pop metal, and Appetite For Destruction was utterly brilliant. But come on, analyzing the music of the Vinnie Vincent Invasion is going too far. And let me state for the record that Motley Crue was the most overrated band of the 80's...Shout At The Devil was goofy but had its moments, but the rest of their output is quite boring.
Anyway, Fargo Rock City could have been something very entertaining, a real pleasure to read, but it was ultimately undermined by its author's sheer egotism and complete lack of musical taste. He's the worst rock writer since Chuck Eddy.
Wednesday, February 20, 2002
Stunning. Simply stunning.
Tuesday, February 19, 2002
Don't you hate it when you go through an early Saskatchewan spring for two weeks that creates huge puddles of slush, making the simple, pleasurable task of walking a cute little dog an exercise in extreme messiness, and then just when you have a nice day where everything's suddenly dry and you're sitting at home with a happy, clean puppy, you get a huge snowfall that night? Curses!
...So it was a 3-3 tie with the Czechs Monday. Wanted a win, but the full effort was there, and Canada had a couple of unlucky bounces. But one question? Why the heck should we be worrying about Canada's effort? That part of their game should be automatic. Still, they're starting to dominate. Finland on Wednesday night, which will not be easy...those guys are a wolf in the proverbial sheep's duds.
Interesting thing here. This is the tenth anniversary of Rhino Records' phenomenal Beat Generation Box Set, and to celebrate ('celebrate', meaning squeezing more cash out of Beat fans), they've just released a companion cd featuring selectins from the original box set. The cd, called The Best Of The Beat Generation, like the box set, combines literary high points, good jazz, and loads of irresistable Beatsploitation kitsch, but best of all, it has nine or so tracks that aren't on the original box set (see my previous 'squeezing money' comment). The new stuff includes another cool Slim Gaillard tune (he of the flat-top floogie with the floy floy), another Lord Buckley monologue, another hipster fairy tale, and more. Even though I have the box set, this is still really enticing...I'll have to make the rounds to see if anyone here stocks it. In the meantime, think I'll pop the box set in the stereo right now...
Continuing the Kerouwhacky theme, Kerouac's early novel Orpheus Emerged will be coming out in hardcover next month. It's been available as an e-book for over a year now, but now the actual book will get a bit more attention. I have it from a reliable source that the book is pretty darn awful and amateurish...I'm curious to see what it's like nonetheless.
Monday, February 18, 2002
Ever have one of those days when you write a sarcastic e-mail that drily bashes the U.S. to an individual but end up sending it to, like, hundreds of conservative American sports fans? Post 9-11? At the height of the Olympics? Oh me oh my, yesterday was hell.
So Canada squeaked by Germany 3-2 Sunday, with a huge game against the Czech Republic tonight. Should I be worried? Hockey guru Steve says, yes, be afraid. Be very afraid. I say they're improving, but not enough to make me confident. We'll see.
Sunday, February 17, 2002
I'm beating a dead horse here, but Saturday night I saw Faster Pussycat, Kill! Kill! for the umpteenth time tonight, this time on the very cool Drive-In Classics channel here in Canada. The huge Russ Meyer Fest every weekend is terrific...Friday had Beneath The Valley Of The Ultra-Vixens, which I already have on tape, but I still gave it a watch. It's definitely not Meyer's best by any stretch, but its one redeeming quality is Roger Ebert's goofily-written narration, sort of a parody of Our Town. But that's a bout it, the rest is pretty dull.
Next weekend should be good, with Mudhoney (the movie, not the band) showing, or at least so says the channel. The listings for these new tv channels has been dicey at best...
All the Russ Meyer films I've been immersed in this past month has also sparked some renewed interest in the LA Eighties glam band Faster Pussycat. Named after the movie (duh), they were perhaps the only band (aside from Guns 'N Roses) from the late Eighties to exhibit any semblance of true talent. Yeah, the goofy look was there, with the lipstick, hairspray, and Joe Perry-clone guitarists with the ubiquitous ciggy hanging from the mouth, but these guys played some great, raunchy rock & roll, stright from the book already written by the New York Dolls and early Aerosmith. Their 1987 self-titled first album was excellent, a short, sleazy spitwad of an album. Their video for 'Don't Change That Song', in fact, was directed by Meyer, featuring clips from the Fater Pussycat movie, and at sixteen, was my introduction to the seamy world of Meyer's. Needless to say, I was intrigued...Anyway, tonight I went digging through my huge box of Eighties tapes looking for that cassette, but I realised I had sold it at a garage sale years ago, most likely in a fit of anti-nostalgic loathing of the Eighties I went through ten years ago. Darnit anyway, I lost a good one. Guess I'll have to find the cd sometime. I did find Fater Pussycat's second album, Wake Me When It's Over, and it's not as good as their debut, which essentially ended their fifteen minutes of semi-fame. Still, the trashy 'Where There's A Whip There's A Way' nearly lives up to its predecessor. If you've never heard any of this stuff, try finding it on Audiogalaxy...it's worth it.
Saturday, February 16, 2002
From what I've heard so far, the new Lambchop cd, Is A Woman, is very good. I've only heard three songs (they're such huge downloads for my 56k connection), but it's clear the album is a departure for Kurt Wagner's project. Less lush orchestration; instead, the arrangements are more spare, with mainly piano & guitar, with quiet appearances by bass and baritone sax, and Wagner's vocals are brought right up front in the mix. If it were more miserable, it'd be a rip-off of The Tindersticks. One song, 'The New Cobweb Summer', is gorgeous, simply breathtaking. I think this'll be an album that will take some serious listening before I decide whether it's better than Nixon, which is a tough album to beat. Q Magazine hated it, while The Guardian loved it. It's polarizing fans already...
Disgusting lack of effort by Team Canada on Friday. Just awful. The whole team stunk, but the two worst players were Curtis 'Cracks Under Pressure' Joseph & Scott 'Forgets To Skate' Neidermayer. The first game of the tournament, and already I was ready to fling stuff at the television. Better shape up and get your act together, boys.
On a funnier note, here's an hilarious Pong-related cartoon.
Friday, February 15, 2002
Finally got my copy of Daniel Clowes' new Eightball #22 Thursday, and it did not disappoint. It's as good as Ghost World, perhaps even better, centering around a small American city named Ice Haven and a few of its more fascinating residents. Every one of the character's lives intertwine with the other: A pretentious & bitter middle-aged man who thinks himself a major poet who serves as the story's commentator, an equally sad comics critic, a seventeen year-old girl who hates her mother and her new stepfather and obsesses over an older kid from her old hometown, her hyperanalytical stepbrother who obsesses over his new stepsister, his evil friend at school, an awkward fat kid the evil kid picks on who suddenly goes missing, a bickering married pair of cops who are investigating the fat kid's disappearance, and a lonely but smart girl who publishes her own zine and lives with her grandmother, who happens to live next door to the bitter poet. Throw in a funny story about a caveman named Rocky (yes, he's connected in a way to the town) and the Leopold & Loeb murder case, of all things, and you've got one humdinger of a thirty-six page comic. It's sort of like a small-town version of Robert Altman's Nashville or Short Cuts, a story of seemingly ordinary people living out their lives, which are far from ordinary. Funny, wry, satirical, heartbreaking, all beautifully drawn, very smartly written, and rendered completely in colour, this is a work of genius. Absolutely stellar.
Thursday, February 14, 2002
Many, many thanks to the amazing Joel Orff, who immortalized my own personal Great Moment In Rock & Roll History this week. Take a look for yourself. I'm feeling rather chuffed right now...
Iron Maiden and Todd MacFarlane unveiled the brand-new Eddie figurines today in New York. One is based on Derek Riggs' artwork done for the Killers album cover, and the other is based on his cover art for 'The Trooper' single. They're both incredible, and will be coming out this fall.
Wednesday, February 13, 2002
First off, I have to say that, with Monday's figure skating debacle at the Olympics, hopefully Canada has used up all of its bad mojo for the rest of the Games. Best to get it out of the way before hockey starts. Hey, figure skating isn't a sport, anyway. Come Friday's big game against Sweden, it's ulcer time.
Pulp has released their video for 'Bad Cover Version', and I can say with all honesty, it's one of the funniest vids I've seen in a long time. It's a spoof of Band-Aid, only sung by bad celebrity impersonators, ranging from McCartney, to Jagger, to Kylie, to a gutbusting version of Liam Gallagher (not to mention a funny clip of Jarvis Cocker as Brian May). Give it a looksee, it's priceless. Also, from the Ultracool B-Sides Department, the cd single, which is released March 3 (I think), will also have a cover of 'Disco 2000' by Nick Cave, sung as a slow waltz. Cannot wait to hear that one.
It's one of my favourite times of the year...the Village Voice's Pazz & Jop poll results are out. As expected, Dylan's "Love And Theft" was a landslide winner, but there were a few more pleasant surprises, like my co-winner of Album Of The Year, The Langley Schools Music Project, which placed 29th. The clueless award goes to the critics whose votes ranked The New Pornographers' Mass Romantic 17th...hello, that's a 2000 release, dummies.
Anyway, I suggest you read Robert Christgau's typically long-winded essay, as well as the excellent one by Rob Sheffield. Sheffield notes that the last palindrome year (1991) was a great one for music, and hopes maybe 2002 will be as good. The year is off to a good start, what with a brilliant album by Clinic coming out Feb. 26, the astounding new Wilco album (more on those two cd's soon!), as well as a strong return by Kasey Chambers and the eagerly-anticipated (by me, anyway) cd by Lambchop. Wilco & Clinic are already early contenders for the best of 2002, and they've set the bar really high for the rest of the year.
Sunday, February 10, 2002
Gadzooks, my first update since late December...
There are few things better than Pong and the White Stripes...now the two have combined to make a killer game available for downloading here. I couldn't care less about PS2 and that XBox business...me, I can play Pong forever...
