Julee Cruise Sings King Dude

 From the Split Single Sing Each Other's Songs for You, on which King Dude does a very sedate but ultimately charming version Rockin' Back Inside My Heart.

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Watch:

Continuing on that Netflix Trailer dump from a few days ago:

 

"From the creators of Dark." That's all I needed to know to get excited about 1899, which I feel like I've been waiting on for a really long time.

 

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Read:

One of the things I've been meaning to do for a couple years now is to begin re-reading Wrapped in Plastic magazine. This was a Twin Peaks/David Lynch-focused magazine published from roughly 1992 to 2005 by Craig Miller and John Thorne. In the wake of Julee Cruise's death, I decided to pull out issue 61, which has Cruise on the cover and chronicles the 2002 Twin Peaks Fest, which she attended as a guest.

In doing this, I realized that the first issue Cruise appeared in, October 1993's issue 7, was one of the early issues that came out before I knew about the magazine. My collection runs issue 16 through the final issue, June 2005's issue 75, with a reprint of issue #1. I never made it around to filling in those gaps, and obviously, with Cruise's death, the going eBay price is, for the moment, astronomical. That said, issue 7 has a gorgeous cover, and I wanted to post it here:

Wrapped in Plastic was a HUGE part of my life for about ten or eleven years, and I flip through the issues often, however, I haven't really read one in ages.

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Playlist:

Julee Cruise - Falling

Julee Cruise - The Voice of Love

Julee Cruise - The Art of Being a Girl

Kate Bush - The Dreaming

Ghost - Impera

Battle Tapes - Sweatshop Boys EP

Blut Aus Nord - Hallucinogen

Mike Doughty - Live At Ken's House

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Card:

Dipping once again in Jonathan Grimm's Bound Tarot for today's reading:

My general definition of the Four of Swords is based on Crowley and Freida Harris' Thoth, which subtitles the card as Truce. That said, I've decided I am not going to look at the Bound Tarot in the 'learned tradition of tarot, but in a more personal interpretation. 

Decisions that hang heavy over your head: this card evokes a tough decision that will open the door for indecision to immobilize you. I'm not sure if this has to do with something coming up at work, or our impending trip to Tennessee in about a week's time, when we will begin looking for our new home. Our pre-approval came back as a win yesterday, so with that out of the way, we really just have to get there and try and find something. By the looks of what we're seeing online, our new focus in Clarksville may mean we have to decide between several places, all of which seem fantastic. I can see how that would be a crippling decision.

(Obviously, most if not all of the homes we're seeing now as available on our Real Estate Agent's portal are going to be under contract before we get there, however, what we are seeing is an indication that there are a lot of places that will tug at our heart strings.)

You can buy a set of these amazing cards on Grimm's site HERE. 

Consider Your Health Before You Rust

 

Collaboration between NIN and Health. 

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Watch:

A new show by the creators of Dark? I'd heard about this last year, but completely forgot about it. 

 

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READ:

You may know C. Robert Cargill's name best as the co-writer of 2012's brilliant Horror movie Sinister. He's also a novelist, and although I'm unfamiliar with most of his work, I began his new novel Sea of Rust recently and can tell you it is fantastic.

The novel takes place in a world devoid of humanity. It's our world after the AI war that wipes us out, after AI factions off into super mainframe intelligence - there are two and the denizens of the novel refer to them as OWIs, or One World Intelligences - and rogue robots who fight for the freedom not to succumb to the edict of trading their selfhood for the ease of becoming part of the hivemind. There are so many analogs to our world here that it's crazy; from the Corporatization of everything to individuality in the age of our own accelerated (social media), that the book has an uncanny ability to feel in harmony with our lives even during the, frankly, pretty damn well-written action sequences. I'm really digging this one, and am moving Mr. Cargill to my 'pay attention to everything he does' list.

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Playlist:

Turquoise Moon - The Sunset City

Myrkur - Folkesange

DJ Muggs the Black Goat - Dies Occidendum

Ennio Morricone - The Thing OST

Judas Priest - Painkiller 

Kate Bush - The Dreaming

Zeal and Ardor - Devil is Fine

Waxwork Records - House of Waxwork Issue #1 OST

Led Zeppelin - Eponymous

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Card:

 

Ah, restraint. Thank you for the reminder. Here's the mantra for when I'm scouring ebay for things I do not need: I WANT A HOUSE. 

Isolation: Day 131

I've had The Smiths on the brain of late, particularly The Queen is Dead, and even more particularly this song. I love Morrissey's lyrics, but even more, I love his delivery of the lyrics. "Dreaded sunny day, so let's go where we're happy, and I meet you at the cemetery gates" is a hysterically subtle indictment of 80s Goth culture - a considerable part of the band's fan base - that is beautifully countered by genuinely thought provoking and despondent lines like, "All these people, all those lives, where are they now? With loves and hates and passions just like mine, they were born and then they loved and then they died."

It's just so damn good.

The Smith are a band that, when I'm into them, I feel my love for each song and album deepen with each listen.

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Last night, K and I finished Dark Season Three.

Holy. Shit.

In the interest of understanding the insanely well-written intricacies of this series, we'll be starting season three over again tonight. This time, however, we're going to follow every episode we watch at night by listening to the Digesting Dark podcast episode pertaining to the episode. These guys really know the show, and both K and I are really looking forward to having some third person insight into this one, because no one else we know is watching this, and it BEGS to be discussed.



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Last week, the Maniac Cop trilogy dropped on Shudder. I've been wanting to see the original for years but haven't had much luck. As far as I knew until Arrow's recent release, the Larry Cohen created, William Lustig-directed Action/Horror classic had not been in print for quite some time. How was it? Exactly what I expected, and wonderful for just that reason. It's not everyday you have Bruce Campbell and Tom Atkins in the same flick.



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Playlist:

The Smiths - The Queen is Dead
Tamaryn - The Waves
The Soft Moon - Deeper
Jello Biafra and the Guantanamo School of Medicine - White People and the Damage Done
Me and That Man - New Man New Songs Same Shit Vol. 1
The Stooges - Funhouse
Steve Moore - Bliss OST
The Beatles - Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band


Card:

Big influences spur a new project. Yes. Very big. Not a new project, but a new direction for the current book as I've decided to take a completely different tack than I was originally planning.

Isolation: Day 93

Calling it now: RTJ4 will be my album of the year. Everything surrounding this one is perfect. The digital form of the album dropped months early on Wednesday, June 3rd. The physical is still slated for September, so you know the boys saw the opportunity to issue their statement when it was most needed, in the midst of the Protests and Riots that surrounded George Floyd's murder at the hands of Minneapolis police officers. This particular song directly references Floyd's death, leading me to believe RTJ was recording lyrics up until only a few days or possibly even hours before they dropped the album. That is legendary in my eyes. 

I've never been a huge fan of the previous three RTJ records. They're good, and I may grow to like them more in the wake of the impact 4 has made on me, but all my qualms are shattered here. The instrumentation and arrangements are amazing; bombastic, interesting, and weird. Catchy to boot. The lyrics, too, are a level up. As are their delivery, there's a new urgency on this album, one that I can only equate to Chuck D of Public Enemy fame, for my money still the best rapper ever.

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I should offer a small explanation on my continued use of the "Isolation" moniker for these posts. While a large part of the rest of the world have shrugged off Science's warnings about the continued threat of COVID-19, I am not so cavalier. K and I will be continuing to practice isolation for months to come. Especially after the spike we're already seeing in local microcosmic environments, rising numbers it seems most of the population is content to ignore because they have, "had enough."

Whatever. Thin the population - it does nothing but help the planet and those who will remain.

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New season of Dark arrives in just two short weeks. That means K and I have to re-watch seasons one and two soon. Nothing like the anticipation that comes from being invested in a series that is not only fantastic, but that has been finite and perfectly plotted from the jump.

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Jesus, talk about watch list overload. Here's a trailer for the new season of Doom Patrol. Luckily, I won't have to waste my time and resubscribe to the DCU app, as I recently signed up for HBOMAX. That said, after subscribing I realized Max does not work on Firestick, so I have to figure something else out. Either way, this is a MUST.

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I finished reading Laird Barron's Worse Angels (Fantastic) and Cliver Barker's Books of Blood Volume One, and now I'm on to a book my good friend Chris Saunders (DwC, The Horror Vision) gave me recently. Mark Frost's The List of 7. I've known about Frost's Arthur Conan Doyle novels since their publication in the early 90s thanks to Wrapped in Plastic magazine, the David Lynch/Twin Peaks magazine I subscribed to in the wake of discovering Twin Peaks as it aired. I always knew I'd get around to reading this and the sequel, 6 Messiahs - which Chris also gifted me - and now is as good  a time as any. 

Here's an awesome website entry about this book that I found while looking for a picture of the cover. 

Chris's gifts came at a most opportune time, because the Al Jourgensen auto is proving difficult to get through. A lot closer to what I would expect from a Tommy Lee auto, all braggadocio and not a lot of believable substance at this point (granted, I'm still pretty early in the book). Of course, I expect sex and drugs from any rock star auto, but Al spends a lot of time jerking himself off - metaphorically, in the book there's plenty of random folks to do that for him - and I can't help juxtaposing this with Chris Connelly's auto Concrete, Invisible, Bulletproof, and Fried: My Life as a Revolting Cock, which I read well over ten years ago now, and which is both eloquent and humble. None of that in Uncle Al's early days thus far, and I can't help but wonder if his depiction of ages 13-16 is this filled with conquests and little else, what will the Ministry years be like? I'll get back to this eventually, but I'll probably have to ramp up my Ministry rotation in order to inspire myself to do so.

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Playlist:

Alice Donut - Dry Humping the Cash Cow

David Bowie - Outside

Flying Lotus - Los Angeles

Flying Lotus - You're Dead

Flying Lotus - Flamagra

Jawbox - For Your Own

Old Tower - The Last Eidolon

Black Magic - Alastor

Blut Aus Nord - Hallucinogen

NIN - Ghosts VI: Locusts

Underworld - 1992-2012

Run the Jewels - RTJ4

Run the Jewels - RTJ3

Hi-Lo - Poseidon (single)

Kendrick Lamar - Damn.

Beach House - Thank Your Lucky Stars

DAF - Die Kleinen Und Die Bösen

Amon Düüll II - Vive La Trance

Makaveli - The 7 Day Theory

Black Sabbath - Master of Reality

Black Sabbath - Eponymous

Kendrick Lamar - To Pimp a Butterfly

Zombi - Breakthrough and Conquer (pre-release single)

Zombi - Earthscraper (pre-release single)

Allegaeon - Apoptosis

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Card:

Explosion of energy/creativity. Fits perfectly, as over the last 48 hours, I have doubled down on finishing the book. By the end of the weekend, I'm hoping to be in a position to begin reading it aloud to K - one of my most important QC steps, as well as pass it off to two friends who I pay as beta readers. SOON.

Mark Lanegan - Skeleton Key

From Straight Songs of Sorrow, the new Mark Lanegan out May 8th via Heavenly Recordings. Pre-order HERE. Apparently, this record is "closely aligned" with Lanegan's forthcoming memoir Sing Backwards and Weep, out April 28th. Pre-order that HERE or HERE.

I can't wait to read that book!

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Over the weekend, in the interest of starting something new and mostly unknown, K and I started Netflix's Black Spot, which comes to the US via France.


BLACK SPOT trailer season 1 vfsta from MEDIAWAN RIGHTS on Vimeo.

Although highly derivative of Twin Peaks, Dark, and True Detective Ssn 1, I'm enjoying Black Spot quite a bit; it borrows heavily from all three aforementioned shows, but is definitely its own thing. I'd definitely recommend it for fans of those shows and thrillers in general. I've seen references now to both this and Dark as belonging to a genre being called "Into the Woods," and although genre splitting and tagging can become tiresome, I kinda dig that. Suffice it to say, Black Spot is creepy, extremely well lit and well shot, and the voice they've given to the forest is mysterious and exciting.

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This happened last night and I am still unable to completely wrap my head around it:

Apparently, in honor of Relapse's 30th Anniversary, they chose people who pre-ordered records in the past few months and randomly awarded them these nifty golden tickets. What's it good for?

Whoah. I don't know that I've won anything since 1991, when I called Chicago's seminal Rock statin The Loop and won 10 free lawn tickets to see Guns n' Roses on their Use Your Illusions tour. Of course, I never got to cash those in, because two nights before that Chicago show, Axl jumped off the stage in Cincinnati, OH and clocked a dude with a camera, subsequently landing in jail.

One reason why I've always disliked Axl.

Anyway, looks like I have a lot of vinyl coming my way this year. Very cool. Thank you Relapse Records and Happy 30th Anniversary - here's to 130 more (at least)!

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Playlist:

The Mars Volta - De-Loused in the Comatorium
Type O Negative - Bloody Kisses (Digipak)
Mol - Jord
Various Artists - The Void (OSM)
Frederic Kooshmanian - Black Spot (OSM)
Me and That Man - Songs of Love and Death
Burzum - Filosofem
Grimes - Miss Anthropocene
Greg Dulli - Random Desire
Various Artists - Garage Rock (Compilation used in Black Spot)
Slayer - Show No Mercy
Nothing - Guilty of Everything
The Gutter Twins - Adorata
Chris Isaak - Heart Shaped World
Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats - Wasteland
Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats - The Night Creeper

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Card:

I've done a few pulls over the last few days that haven't been logged here, almost all of which have been Swords. The Nine of Swords - Cruelty has followed me a bit. Swords is the Suit I know the least in the Tarot, and this card in particular is, at a glance, always tempting to fear based on face value. However, from the Grimoire:

"The airy nature of Intellect, it is difficult for Swords to rest. Rabid analyzation and thinking in general can produce a loop that one becomes trapped in, the ultimate revelation that Nothing really leads Anywhere and in the end, there is Nothing."

Now, juxtapose this with a clarification card I drew and an interpretation begins to take shape.

Reality is breaking a bit, as Chuck Wendig's Wanderers escalates into a pandemic that cuts a massive swathe through the human population. Oh, and the disease's origin? Bats.

Can you see how that would start to saturate my reality? Also, it was the day after I started reading this book that the first really scary images from China began to appear back in January, and since, well, the arc of the book has been so parallel to the arc of real life (except, thus far, we're on a MUCH smaller scale) that I've had a lot of time to reflect on everything. Interestingly enough, long periods of time reflecting on everything, on all of our existence, leads to the ultimate understanding that Nothing is at the heart of it. Humanity holds itself up by the bootstraps, and although there are more good than bad humans - I think - if things go ugly, it doesn't really matter for the overall organism of the Planet Earth. In fact, it might be better for Her if we were to largely die off. I hope not, because there's a lot of humans I really like - including myself. But then, it's one thing to have an objective view of an extinction event, it's quite another to be able to conduct yourself that way.

2019: June 24th - New Trentemøller!

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Finished Doom Patrol yesterday: absolutely outstanding! I really can't recommend this one enough. And last night, we began the long awaited second season of Netflix's Dark. This show is insanely complex, in a very good way. K and I just finished re-watching Season One a month or two ago in preparation for this season (I actually mistakenly thought it dropped in April, so we were well ahead of the curve), and I'm instantly feeling as though I need a brush-up on the cast. Luckily, there's a ton of character maps available online. I'm still saying there's just too many old, white guys with beards on this show, but that's a small criticism. Overall, I find the mental workout refreshing, and I'm so bitten by the mystery of it all, I'll gladly suffer some confusion.

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Playlist from 6/23:

Ministry - The Land of Rape and Honey
Lovett - The Wind OST
Various - A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night OST
Perturbator - New Model
Ella Fitzgerald - The Best of Ella, Vol. 2

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Card of the day:

Water in Air. The emotional aspect of Intellect. This comes in handy with my current approach to my writing.

2019: January 7th

K and I started rewatching Dark on Netflix this weekend. This show! It's so amazing I can hardly put it into words, however it's also the hardest chronology I've ever tried to keep track of. I don't consider this a flaw; other than a few wee casting issues I have - like how many old guys with white hair and beards do we need? - I think Dark is a stunningly complex piece of work, and I'm happy to watch and re-watch it, discuss and contemplate it. I think the show is worth it, and it feels good to watch it with K - who is really into it - and entertain each other with our theories.

Also, Ben Frost popped on my musical radar via Wire magazine back in 2009 with his album By The Throat, and although I hadn't kept up with him much after that, I was thrilled to see him doing the music for Dark. I was also thrilled to learn, just now, that the main title theme isn't Frost but Apparat, an artist I'm criminally unfamiliar with considering how much I love his collaboration with Modeselektor, Moderat.

As I suspected, my brain completely clicked with Nick Cave's And the Ass Saw the Angel, and I read almost half the book yesterday while rounding out my last day home in bed, letting the fading tendrils of whatever bug I inherited late last week leave my body and prepare me for returning to a full day of work today.

Playlist from 1/06:

Belong - October Language (on repeat, for three hours)

Card of the day:

Actually two cards today, because while I was shuffling the deck the Eight of Cups popped out at me. So, an eight and a nine, so a sequence that moves from laziness to strength. Well, that actually just describes my return to work, where despite being a bit gun-shy about rough, physical exertion after 3 days in bed and some insane pain in my lower half, I actually just worked harder in the last hour and a half than I have in a while. So yes, moving from doing nothing, to being strong enough to just get what needs to be done, done.

Also, switched into HIGH gear on the writing yesterday and worked for almost three hours. Made MAJOR headway. The end is in sight; next round will be to run each chapter through Grammarly, then read it out loud to K.

2018: April 18th

Seeing Windhand this coming Monday at the Roxy. Psyched does not even begin to describe my anticipation.

Episode 6 of Dark sealed the deal; I can't tell any of these damn people apart half the time, but this show is gorgeous and I am deeply intrigued at just what the hell is going on. A friend at work just clued me in to the fact that there are some family trees online and I'm hoping that will help, because I love the show, but I keep getting extremely confused.

Playlist from 4/17:
Mudhoney - March & Fuzz (disc 2)
The Brains - Out in the Dark
The Jesus Lizard - Rash E.P.
The Stooges - Eponymous
The Soft Moon - Deeper
The Ocean - Aeolian
White Hex - Gold Nights

Card of the day:

Well, wouldn't you know. Two days in a row? Hmm... Perhaps I need to let something go? But what?

2018: April 12th 8:35 AM

Going to see this tonight:



New issue of Gideon Falls hit the stands yesterday. I have it with me in my bag, hopefully I'll get a chance to read it today.

Also, picked back up on Dark on Netflix. I had a lot of trouble with this show at first, mainly because the default was overdubs instead of the original German with subtitles. Now that I have that worked out (thanks Charles!) we're back in and it is captivating. I'm still having a bit of trouble keeping track of who is who, but overall the show is so fascinating and absolutely beautiful that I can't wait to have a few hours to just binge some of it.



Playlist from 4/11:

Ghost - Popestar E.P.
Man or Astro Man - Intravenous Television Continuum
Ghost - Infestissumam
Algiers - Underside of Power
Aerosmith - Eponymous
The Ocean - Pelagial

Card for the day:

Breakthrough! Always love seeing this card, especially close to the completion of a project that has been lingering.