November 3rd as Portal to the Future

Poignant words from an album I fell in love with in High School. This day will change things going forward. Unfortunately - and I hope to hell I'm wrong here - I'm preparing for either outcome at the polls today to bring domestic terrorism on a scale we've not seen before. Obviously, the preferred outcome is achieved and we step into a new chapter, but I believe the "Stand back, stand by" was meant to put orange's cronies on watch for this very day. Expect militarized action if he is tossed out on his ass, as he should be. Of course, if the opposite happens, well, I guess we'll really know what kind of cuntry (and other cunt like tendencies) we live in, and how many bigots, xenophobes, and downright misguided people surround us. In that case, well, it's going to be a very long four years.

 

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Watch:

This is more of a listen than a watch, but here's a great episode of Henry Rollin's KCRW radio show where Mike Patton is his guest. They get into some great stuff in this one: 

 

In the actual category of 'Watch' however, my first non-US region Blu Ray arrived yesterday. If you listen to The Horror Vision, you'll know my cohost and good friend King Butcher swears by his region-free player, and I finally decided to listen to him. I jumped the gun and ordered several things from Arrow's Shocktober sale - the Hellraiser Trilogy Blu Ray Boxset and Bride of Renanimator - and then doubled down and picked up a copy of the Swedish release of Fede Alvarez's 2013 Evil Dead on ebay. I'd been planning to hunker down and pick up a region-free modified player this week, but LUCKILY, I did some reading first and found out that, joy of joys, the two Sony Blu Ray players I've had for the last several years already are region-free!!! Evil Dead arrived last night, I pulled it from the mailbox this morning upon seeing the notification, and popped it in. Happy to report - it works! 

I LOVE Alvarez's Evil Dead - I count it as my second favorite among all the films - adamantly battle the idea that it's a remake (Tappert, Raimi and Campbell have all said all along it's not), and am psyched to finally own the extended cut.

I'm thinking I may leave work a little early to try and avoid any madness, come home and watch this one while encased in a 'womb of refer.'

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Playlist:

Opeth - Deliverance 

Opeth - My Arms, Your Hearse 

Meg Myers - Sorry 

Foster the People - Torches 

Earth - Full Upon Her Burning Lips 

Apple Music Blackgaze Pioneers Playlist 

Amesoeurs - Eponymous 

Yob - Cleraing the Path to Ascend 

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Card:

I really read around on the Pull this morning, because here's the first card I drew:

From (source) "In a more personal view the Emperor might stand for a time of stability and structure, linear thinking and discipline. Yet we can't live without it, too many of those attributes will only lead to rational despotism and mental poverty."

Wow. On the nose for current situation. However, nothing to indicate which way things might go. (NOTE: I did not set out to direct my morning Pull at the election, that just happened.)

Next, in a classic Past - Present - Future Draw, I pulled:

For Past: Baggage - the Lust of Earthly result leads to a great weight that makes it impossible to get out from under. Yeah, the last four years I've increasingly felt that weight. Finally, for Future:

Hmm. From the Grimoire: "The Airy aspect of Earth. Pragmatism. Can be a bit of a cunt for matters pertaining to money and stability."

The Prince of Disks can be stubborn and ignorant when ill-dignified, which is something I only take into account when I'm having trouble deciphering how the cards in a Pull relate to one another, never in a one-card Draw. The Airy aspect of Earth, so strength in practical matters. This also implies a certain degree of trust-worthiness and inventiveness. Often, a good listener.

Definitely not our current problem's cup of tea, being a good listener.

Is this Biden? It fits some of what I know about him, but the 'stubborn and ignorant' are almost our current problem's calling cards, especially the 'ignorant' aspect. The card was not ill-dignified, so I have to hope that's not the case and we have a change in Guard (I was really hoping to draw XVI The Tower as the future card, but no so luck). 

All this does is remind me that the cards are merely reflections of our inner psychology and how it rubs up against the collective unconscious and, perhaps, more 'cosmic' elements we don't really have a chance in hell of understanding in any literal sense, because they are not literal in nature. So what's the outcome? We'll have to see. Go Vote people. 

Freaked! at the Egyptian 1-17-20

Last night I had the absolute pleasure of seeing the 1993 movie Freaked at the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood. Freaked is a film I don't think I had ever even heard of before a few weeks ago, when I caught sight of the screening via Beyondfest's Twitter. Even though I didn't know the film, I saw them tweet that Paul Leary would be present "with his guitar" and bought two tickets immediately.

Turns out, that was a very good thing...

Written by Alex Winter, Tim Burns, and Tom Stern, and directed by Winter and Stern, Freaked is an absolute marvel of practical FX, courtesy of Screaming Mad George, Alterian FX and XFX. The movie is an testament to a Hollywood that no longer exists. Costing Thirteen Million and boasting a cast that includes but is not limited to Winter, Brooke Shields, William Sadler, Gibby Haynes (yes, that Gibby Haynes), John Hawkes, Randy Quaid, an uncredited Keanu Reeves, and so many more, Freaked is absolute madness. And since this was a Beyondfest event, there was, of course, special guests.

The evening began in Peter Seychelle's comfortable study...

No, wait.

The evening began with Burns, Stern, and Winter explaining how Freaked grew out of their MTV show Idiot Box. From there, they played a first pass at a conceptual Rock n Roll Horror Movie they had attempted to spin out of the show, a feature-length film that, well, in their words, "Was basically The Texas Chainsaw Massacre with the Butthole Surfers as the cannibal hillbilly family."

The footage was, of course, as insane as that might lead you to believe. They began with this clip from Idiot Box, to clear up a joke at the beginning of the film:



Then moved to the aforementioned Rock n Roll Horror Film, Entering Texas:



From there Freaked played, with a stop motion "Holo Rollins" Henry Rollins discount "hologram" set in time to sing with Freaked, the Rollins/Blind Idiot God title song that plays over David Daniels' brilliant hand-animated title sequence title sequence. During the film, Paul Leary did indeed take the stage several times to play live guitar over key "freak out" sequences.

By this time, I considered my investment to have already paid off ten-fold.

After the film the special guests took the stage and Burns, Stern, and Winter were joined by Catherine Hardwicke, John Hawkes, composer Kevin Kiner, the real Henry Rollins, Lee Arenberg, Megan Ward, and FX maestros Bill Corso, Tony Gardner, and I think Jim Eustermann, although by the time we got to the three FX gurus, things were a bit of a blur.

Every time I get frustrated with living in LaLa Land, something like this happens and I am reminded why I absolutely love living in this city. Special thanks to Beyondfest, Mondo/DeathWaltz, and @troniks on Twitter, who provided the beautiful 35mm print of the film. A wonderful night all around. Oh, and all that wonderful Idiot Box and early Winter/Burns/Stern footage comes from turdburglar27's wonderful youtube channel where you too, can watch Entering Texas.

Song:

While I was at the Egyptian last night witnessing early 90s Cinematic Magic, the Melvins played a pop up LaLa Land Gallery. Here's Inky Psyops and Printed Schemes, a song I am not familiar with at all, courtesy of Baby Gorilla, whose channel is always chock full o' great live music.




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Playlist:

Tangerine Dream - Sorcerer OST
Steve Moore - Bliss OST
93MillionMilesFromTheSun - Towards the Light
Mol - Jord
Godflesh - Hymns
Zonal - Wrecked
Butthole Surfers - Psychic... Powerless... Another Man's Sac

Card:

The Air of Water, a reminder to temper emotion with intellect, not always an easy thing to do.

2019: January 17th

Another KXLU discovery. Goddamn that radio station is just killing' it! I don't know much about the band, I'm starting here, with the album Furnishing the Void. It's great, and I'm planning on digging deeper soon enough.

Hey LA, teachers are striking. Support them. THEY make the difference we need made.

Two nights ago, K and I finished True Detective Season 1. I've thought a lot about those Jeremy Saulnier-directed first two episodes of Season 3; I have ideas, and I still may do a recap show. Maybe. It's hard to know if the things I observed are going to pan out or just go nowhere; Season 2 definitely shook my faith in the show, and I'm not really convinced some of what I see is go-nowhere red herring fodder. But maybe Crooked Spiral refers to:

It makes sense that, same as the show has gone back to a lot of the story mechanics that made Season One so iconic, they would attempt to tie in that season's continuity. Or, this might all end up a big, "Fuck You," from the show's creator for those of us expecting more of a 'Weird Fiction' angle. We'll see.

After rewatching the Season One finale, I still don't like it very much. But, I've said that before and completely acknowledge that no matter how much I don't like that final episode, Season One is one of my all-time favorite pieces of small-screen cinema.

K and I also watched the pilot for SyFy's Deadly Class, based on the Rick Remender/Wes Craig comic that I have loved since it launched in 2014. I am so ecstatically happy for these guys; this book deserves the world and is now poised to receive it. I'll never forget the month, several years ago, when Remender's "Transmissions from a Basement" back matter announced his departure from Marvel, where he'd just finished helming a massive cross-over, and his somewhat joyously nervous announcement that the coming year would be a, 'year of creator owned comics.' That was a big step for the man, and as I knew he would, he has succeeded ten-fold, the successes only growing. I can't wait to see what happens next!

Oh yeah, the show is fantastic! And Henry Rollins is the Poison 101 teacher! How awesome is that!



Speaking of Deadly Class, a new storyline began in issue 36, which was most definitely part of my haul yesterday at the Comic Bug for NCBD. LOVE this cover.

What else? I'll tell you what else:

An absolutely haunting ending to this epic series, Days of Hate.

Gideon Falls remains my favorite book each month, and this issue has a couple of pages that might just rank as my favorite comic panels EVER.

And last but most certainly not least:

I probably should have just subscribed to Fangoria's relaunch. I missed the first issue, but with Joe Bob on the cover, number two was a must. I'll be honest - when I worked for Borders during the 00s, I learned to turn my back on Fangoria. I straight up thought they kowtowed to a lot of garbage, giving high marks to big studio horror flicks I personally thought sucked. Meanwhile, I'll always be a Rue Morgue/Horror Hound guy. But now that Fango is back, well, I wanted to give  them a chance. After all, there would be no Rue Morgue/Horror Hound if not for this icon. A couple of articles in thus far, and I'm digging it, especially Preston Fassel's Corrupt Signals column, which explores rare 80s horror like this one that I couldn't find a trailer for, but the whole thing is on youtube:



I haven't watched The Black Room, but Mr. Fassel's column has definitely put it on my immediate radar.

Playlist from 1/15:

Boards of Canada - Music Has the Right to Children
The Blueflowers - Circus on Fire
The Handsome Family - Singing Bones
Jozef Van Wissem & Jim Jarmusch - Concerning the White Horse
Secret Boyfriend - Furnishing the Void

Playlist from 1/16:
Boards of Canada - Music Has the Right to Children
Belong - October Language
Fuck Buttons - Tarot Sport
Fuck Buttons - Olympians EP
Corrosion of Conformity - No Cross No Crown
Tool - Aenima
The Blue Flowers - Circus on Fire

Card of the day:

2 cards popped out as I shuffled:

Earthly concerns, eh? And perhaps big, emotional ones. If I'm reading this correctly, it's referring to a peripheral investment situation. Money coming in would be nice...

RIP Alan Vega

Wow 2016. Umm... stop?

Well, the man was 78, so it's not super unexpected. That said, Suicide is very much the mega-influential American band that 98% of people don't know about. I'm not saying that to be pompous, it's just a shame that they achieved a broader spectrum of exposure. Then again, it's a shame, but not a surprise, because there is next to nothing overtly approachable about Suicide's music.

For some of us however, that in and of itself is an attribute. Henry Rollins had a statement earlier, and I'm sure his radio show this evening was dedicated to Mr. Vega. Rollins wrote an amazing column that talked about Suicide sometime last year in his weekly LA weekly column. If I can eventually find it online I'll post a link here. Needless to say, he had the perfect summation of how Suicide's music generally goes from confrontational and alienating to impactful and mesmerizing.




Mr. Vega did a lot of other music as well. This song, a collaboration with A.R.E. Weapons, is one of my favorites.



Safe passage to the other side Mr. Vega. You earned it.

Mike Mendez's The Last Heist

In his weekly column for LA Weekly sometime early last year Henry Rollins discussed how much fun he had shooting a new movie called The Last Heist. Now, I am a Rollins fan, but even moreso the director of this film turned out to be Mike Mendez, who is responsible for one of my all time favorite flicks The Convent back in the very early aughts. Mr. Mendez has not done a whole heck of a lot since then (not a criticism), so this news made me very excited. I waited for sometime, confused He Never Died* with the forthcoming film, and then dropped my guard.

And of course, then it hits. Played here in LA last weekend. Damn!

Anyway, I'll be taking a page from Tommy at Heaven is an Incubator's Joup column Thank God For VOD! and watching this one very soon. Looks fantastic!



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* Which is also great!

the pAper chAse - Said the Spider to the Fly

And onto yet another neglected message, this one from my friend Jeffrey of Apocalypse Cow - the best freakin' recording/production studio in Illinois (well, aside from Mr. Albini's - no offense Teresa, Dan or Jeffrey) - sent me a link to this track by the pAper chAse a couple of weeks ago. Flashback about a year ago and Mr. Brown was out to stay with us for a while around xmas and one Saturday while listening to the Henry Rollins show on KCRW Henry played the pAper chAse and both Brown and I dug it. I believe I tracked the band to a website Rollins mentioned and jotted down a note to go back to them and stuck it under the 'mental pillow' (sounds like a terrifying game played at late 18th century insane asylums, eh?) where it became lost in an ever-shifting sea of puppy dogs and demonic bats. Anyway, Jeffrey facebook'd me this recently and although it doesn't sound like what I remember Rollins playing - I'll have to go back and check his show logs (yep!), which are frighteningly complete, and determine. And if that was something different and I'm just confusing the names, hey, that's two great finds Jeffrey served as catalyst for!

This song is fairly disturbing, especially the really jilted guitars that come in near the end to accentuate the discordance transpiring here.

Henry Rollins - The State of Music Today

I Love this man. Thanks to my wife for finding this.

Heartbreakers - Pirate Love

I'm relatively new to Johnny Thunders and the Heartbreakers. They'd been on my radar ever since first reading Noel Monk's 12 Days on the Road circa 1996/7 - an awesome book about the Sex Pistols only US tour (the half of it they played that is) written by the band's tour manager (Monk). Anyway, everybody in the first wave of British punk seemed to look up to Thunders and his band - for better or worse - but somehow their music always seemed strangely out of reach to me. Fast forward to about three months ago on a Saturday. I was home listening to Henry Rollins' weekly radio broadcast on NPR affiliate KCRW. Mr. Rollins played a Heartbreakers song - I forget which one it was but it really grabbed my attention. Then our gracious radio host went on to talk about how the good folks at White Trash Soul Blogspot had gone through the many different editions of the band's record L.A.M.F. that are available (French, Italian, German, etc) and compiled what they believed to be the best composite edition, culling from all those different sources for each song's individual best possible mix.

Talk about a labor of love!!!

The site then made this ultimate edition of L.A.M.F. available for free download - you can link to it right from that site linked above. When you go there you'll also see that the white trash soul folks break down everything about the different records and how/why they chose what they chose. It's fascinating. And the end is result is fantastic listening.

Tonight Tonight Tonight! Henry Rollins Radio Show

Before I watch Instrument I'll be listening to Henry Rollins' weekly radio show on NPR station KCRW. You can follow the link below and stream it if you do not live in Los Angeles or any of the sister areas in Southern California that carry this station. Week after week it is the BEST radio show I've come across, not because I'm a huge Rollins' fan (which I've become BECAUSE of the show) but because he plays the most eclectic array of tracks and his absolute Love of music seeps through every moment of the two hours from eight to ten that he's on the air.

KCRW Broadcast 199 - Henry Rollins on KCRW