Jesus Lizard LIVE!!!

Live from Birmingham, Alabama, courtesy of the Live from Birmingham YouTube channel. I have been meaning to head down to Birmingham since moving just over three hours from it. This would have been perfect! Drat! Oh well, 

Seeing a bearded Yow brings a smile to my face. Weird to have that opening drum hit on Seasick hit and not see him throw himself into the crowd. NOT a criticism - I stopped crowdsurfing a long time before he did. 

Live from Birmingham's mission statement (from their YouTube page):

"LIVE FROM BIRMINGHAM is the home of Subcarrier, an Alabama Public Television production filmed and recorded at SATURN in Birmingham, AL, featuring performers from across the musical spectrum. Subcarrier is the continuation of WE HAVE SIGNAL, a project active from 2008 until 2015 when the world-famous venue BottleTree closed."

I've added Saturn to my venues to watch list. 

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Watch:

I've been sick and largely offline, so I completely forgot that GDT's Frankenstein received a trailer the other day. My good friend Chris Saunders messaged me a reminder, though, and after watching it, well, I am speechless:

 

I will be shocked if this doesn't claim my best-of-the-year spot. That said, is this going straight to Netflix? Because that would be a goddamn shame. This needs to be seen in a theatre!

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Read:

I've been sick all weekend, and in that time I blew Preston Fassel's Beasts of 42nd Street.

After my recent re-read of Our Lady of the Inferno and now this, Fassel is easily in my top five favorite authors at the moment. These are so insanely compelling, even if dark A.F. Our Lady is dark, but not in the same way Beasts is. Man, this really took me some place not very nice, but it was a hell of a ride, and I'll definitely make the trip again. Here's the solicitation blurb from publisher Cemetary Dance's website. Important to note that while this is readily available to order from the bezos corp, Cemetary Dance lists it as Out of Print. So grab it now:

"In the kingdom of the damned that is 42nd Street, there’s no lowlier subject than Andy Lew. An unrepentant junkie, voyeur, and degenerate, he’s only tolerated by the more dangerous men around him because he keeps the projectors at the Colossus theater running on time, entertaining them with the most extreme horror cinema money can buy. 

"There’s something unique about Andy, though. He owns a movie. It’s the only one of its kind. No one knows who made it. Only he knows where it came from. The woman it stars is beautiful beyond imagination—and the images it depicts are more nightmarish than the darkest depths of Hell. The beasts of 42nd Street will do anything to possess it, but there’s something they don’t understand. Andy loves the woman in the movie—and he’ll go to any lengths to protect her… A savage love letter to 70s exploitation cinema and a biting satire of toxic fan culture, Beasts of 42nd Street makes horror dangerous again as it ventures into the mind of a psychopath like no other— one that will have readers recoiling even as they keep coming back for more."

I LOVED this novel. It plays with so many ideas from the 42nd street mythos - snuff, projection reel theft, Satanic Panic, Police conspiracy - bundles them all together in a brilliant, engaging story that takes you into the alleyways of late 70s Manhattan and plays with your sense of the world as we know it. Or think we know it. 

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Playlist:

Calderum - Mystical Fortress of Iberian Lands 

White Rune - The Spell of Eternal Fire

Blut Aus Nord - Memoria Vetusta I: Fathers Of The Icy Ages

Federale - Reverb & Seduction

Genghis Tron - Dead Mountain Mouth

Emilie Leviensaise-Farrouch - Censor OST

Blut Aus Nord - Ultima Thulée

Ruin - Plague Transmissions, Vol. 1

Tangerine Dream - In Search of Hades: The Virgin Recordings 1973 - 1979

Pink Floyd - Ummagumma

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Card:

From Jonathan Grimm's Hand of Doom Tarot, which you can buy HERE.

• Ace of Swords

• IV: The Emperor

• Eight of Pentacles

A breakthrough of Will that successfully affects the "rules" of whatever the objective is will require intense concentration and dedication.

Another reminder for me to get back up on my horse and stop resting on my laurels. 

Julee Cruise - Into The Night

 

Here Julee Cruise's haunting vocals and Angelo Badalamenti's equally compelling music provided the soundtrack to one of my favorite scenes from Twin Peaks, Season One: The hike to find Jacques Renault's cabin! 

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Watch:

To once again refer back to that Netflix trailer dump from last week; GDT and Panos Cosmatos working together as part of a GDT anthology series?

 

Sold! Also helming episodes are Jennifer Kent, David Prior, Guillermo Navarro, Keith Thomas, Catherine Hardwicke (on a thus-far untitled episode that has H.P. Lovecraft credited as a writer), Vincenzo Natali, and Ana Lily Amirpour!

 

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Playlist:

Julee Cruise - The Art of Being A Girl

Sex Pistols - Never Mind the Bollocks...

Def Leppard - Hysteria

Angelo Badalamenti - Dark Space Low (Hour-long version HERE)

Yard Act - The Overload

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Card:

The watery, or emotional aspect of our Earthly drives/desires/needs. This is a presumption since I won't be house hunting in Tennessee for about another week, but I think this is a good reminder that we have to temper our emotional drive to get the hell out of California with the pragmatic realities of actually doing this smartly and successfully.

Also, the Queen of Disks always reminds me to survey my 'Kingdom' and appreciate where I am and how I got there, especially the people in my life who have helped. If you're one of them - and you very well might be if you're reading this and I know you - thank you. You've helped bring me to this point in my life.

Straight to You, Beyondfest. Straight to You

I threw on the Bad Seed TeeVee youtube station yesterday afternoon and let various iterations of Mr. Cave and his band/s wash over me while I finished laying out a friend's novel that I've been working on editing. It was a pretty great mix of Nick Cave, ranging from classic Birthday Party live footage to Grinderman to this track, which I've not heard in I don't even know how long. It lifted my day's transition into evening, and I thought I'd share.  

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Watch:

Rejoice, for it is upon us once again!

Beyondfest 2021 tickets went on sale Friday, and luckily I had the day off because it took me two-and-a-half hours to get through the bottleneck on the American Cinematheque's website. I'm out of town for almost half of this year's fest, but there was NO WAY I was going to miss attending this year, as if our plans materialize, I will no longer be a resident of LaLaLand come next year's. 

So what did I get? 

Tickets to the West Coast Premiere of the new 4K presentation of Andrzej Żuławski's 1981 CLASSIC Possession. I am so excited to see this film - which I'd never seen before earlier this year and have now watched twice - on the big screen!

Also, the West Coast Premiere of Scott Derrickson and Robert C. Cargill's Adaptation of Joe Hill's The Black Phone, another film I've been anxiously awaiting. 

That's it for now, however, as always with Beyondfest, there are a pretty extensive number of free, RSVP day-of screenings I'm eyeing, and although it's nice to be back in an actual theatre for this year's fest - last year's was at the Mission Tiki Drive-In out in Montclair - it feels like a loss to have this fest not be at the Egyptian Theatre. That said, with a large portion of this year's films at The Aero, I'm uniquely positioned nearby due to the proximity of my work. So stealing off for a free afternoon screening shouldn't be all that difficult.

Also, holy hell - did you see this?!?

What a cast! Holy cow, I guess I didn't realize we were getting a new GDT film this year, and by the looks of it, this ups the ante even from his previous, the stunning The Shape of Water. Between Beyondfest, now this, and let's not forget Edgar Wright's Last Night in SoHo, the last quarter of 2021 are looking good for theatrical viewings.

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Playlist:

The Hives - Veni Vidi Vicious

Type O Negative - Origin of the Feces

Type O Negative - Life is Killing Me

Type O Negative - October Rust

Bridge City Sinners - Here's to the Devil

Sleep - Dopesmoker

Sunn O))) and Boris - Altar

Boris and Merzbow - 2R012PO

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Bad Seed TeeVee Feed

Nico Vega - Lead to the Light

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Card:

Caught between two two major forces, unable to make a decision. Consult the inner voice that arises from introspection. In other words, I'm smart enough to make my decision, I'm just not trusting in my gut.

2019: June 4th Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark Trailer!

To say I have extremely high hopes for this one is an understatement. I know, I know; that's never a good idea. That said, when was the last time GDT let us down?

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Good news! Just to prove I'm not an anti-DC Comics curmudgeon, I watched the first two episodes of the DCU app's Doom Patrol last night and it is AWESOME! So happy for this. A fabulous cast, dark yet often hilarious vibe - thanks in large part to Alan Tudyk's narration - and stories ripped right from Grant Morrison and Richard Case's seminal early late 80s/early 90s run, but altered in a way that really keeps the spirit of the book's madness. Such a joy to have this. Also, watching this made me realize it's probably been 12 or 13 years since I originally read Morrison and Case's run, so I'm starting that today. More like this DCU, please!



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Talking Heads - Remain in Light
Protomartyr - Under Color of Official Right
My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult - In the House of Strange Affairs
My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult -  Confessions of a Knife
My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult - I See Good Spirits, I See Bad Spirits
Earth - Full Upon Her Burning Lips
Man or Astro-man? - 1000X
Man or Astro-man? - Intravenous Television Continuum
Deafheaven - New Bermuda
Dean Hurley - Anthology Resource Vol. 1: △△

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Card of the day:

Pure Will is what will be required from me to competently finish the novel; I've read this thing now multiple times, but it's been multiple versions as I've refined the plot. This was my first heavily plotted novel (my first novel that's going to see the light of day in a published capacity), and as such there's plot detritus hanging around my head from other versions. This final, post-Beta Reader go-through is to catch any last minute spelling or grammatical errors, neither of which should be possible at this point, as a human Beta Reader can miss something - though Missi didn't miss much - but Scrivener, Grammarly, and Vellum should not. I'm finding the first two have indeed missed a few small errors, and it's freaking me out. There's a predilection for reading absent-mindedly when you have had this much contact with something, and thus I'm requiring Pure Will to stay as focused as possible while reading. I'm roughly 40% of the way through, so I've adjusted my goal to end-of-week I order the first proof, so we'll see.

2018: December 20th

I've never been a very big MC5 fan. I've always labored under the idea that the right time/place just never hit me with them, despite several of my best friends being huge fans well back into the 90s. Mr. Brown saw them live recently, and alerted me to the fact that the new band is, for me, something I simply can NOT ignore. Original guitarist Wayne Kramer is joined on this current tour by:

Billy Gould - Faith No More
Kim Thayil - Soundgarden
Brandon Canty - Fugazi
And one of the best live vocalists I've ever seen, still to this day probably fifteen years after last time seeing him with one of my favorite bands, from Zen Guerrilla, Marcus Durant. I missed the show in LaLaLand, and I'll have to live with that, but thanks to KEXP and their wonderful Live on KEXP series, I at least have this.

Tangent: REJOICE - Heaven is an Incubator has released his albums of the year; read all about them HERE. Mine's coming eventually...

I really intended on posting the new Hellboy trailer that dropped yesterday. I love the two Hellboy flicks GDT did, especially Hellboy: The Golden Army, which I always thought felt like the first movie if someone gave it a Mandy-sized dose of LSD. I was sad to see that run of Hellboy end, but with Harbour as the red-skinned pulp hero, Ian McShane as Bruttenholm, and Neil "Dog Soldiers" Marshall directing, I'm all in. Even though I HATE the first trailer. After having a momentary panic, I did some digging and my encroaching suspicion seems to be confirmed: this trailer was edited in a slightly dishonest way, so as to push a bunch of humor to the front and give the film a more "Guardians of the Galaxy" type vibe. This of course makes perfect marketing sense marketing wise, so I'm willing to forgive that, especially when a Deadline interview with creator Mike Mignola includes this quote: "Neil is a horror director so the idea then was to make a darker film." Read the full interview HERE. Yeah, the interview is three months old, but I feel like Mignola's words are more poignant now that we have a trailer that, hopefully, is at least a touch misleading.

Playlist from 12/19:

Cash Money (Audio) - The Green Bullet
Kevin Morby - Singing Saw
The Police - Synchronicity
Billie Ellish - Party Favor (Single)
Billie Ellish - When the Party's Over
Kavinsky - Night Call (Single)
Corrosion of Conformity - No Cross No Crown
The Atlas Moth - Coma Noir
The Damage Manual - >1 Remix EP
The Damage Manual - Eponymous
NIN - Bad Witch

Card of the day:

The Earthy aspect of Air. My initial impetus is to translate this as herald of a possible external or internal conflict today, however in looking at the nifty little reference book that came with the beautiful mini Thoth deck my good friend Missi gifted me while I was in Chicago, I read this: "A young woman, stern and revengeful, with destructive logic, firm and aggressive, skilled in practical affairs," and I realize this is EXACTLY one of the characters I am writing in the book at the moment, one of the ones that brings everything around to the book's conclusion. Cassandra Tenorio is very skilled, motivated solely by vengeance, and maybe should act a little more like it. Gloves = off!

Thanks again Missi!

Treehouse of Horror XXIV Intro by Guillermo del Toro

See what I mean? I haven't really had any interest in watching the Simpsons in years. I love seasons 3-around 10 or 11, then that's just kind of enough for me personally. The odd episode here and there can be cool, but it's just not something that factors in much. But this... del Toro is just a God.

Video Introduction to Guillermo del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities

This man can really do no wrong in my eyes. Not many people can so wonderfully translate the dark fantasy concepts that linger and skulk through their subconscious/imaginations.