I'd never heard of Jade Bird until yesterday, as finding this record proved pure happenstance, in the best possible way. During my afternoon writing session at the coffee shop, the music on my earbuds stopped just long enough for me to catch a snippet of "Trick Mirror." This track reminds me of something I can't yet place; the up-front bassline, Bird's soft vocals accentuated by a rhythmic cadence that soars at times with lush double tracking, and that ghostly reverb return that's pinned in the depths of the right channel of the mix. It adds up to a pretty compelling tune.
"Trick Mirror" is taken from the 2021 album Different Kinds of Light, available on Ms. Bird's Website HERE.
NCBD:
Here are my picks for NCBD today:
Saga! Like TMNT below, I'm behind on this one. Still, just seeing a new issue of Saga hit the stands brings a smile to my face. Still gotta make that twice-aborted re-read happen!
If this is only Part Three of "Showdown at the Easy Creek Corral," that means this issue is really just going to continue to crank the tension between Erica and Cutter, which is INSANE because it's already almost at the point of being unbearable! NOT a complaint, mind you, I'm just way more invested in this book than ever before - a feat for sure - and the creative team have set up a massive payoff. Talk about great serialized writing!
So far, Lemire and Sorrentino's Tenement is vying for my favorite spot out of all their Bone Orchard Mythos titles. Can't wait to read this and see where the new issue takes our band of trepidatiously misplaced travelers.
I'm behind on this series again, and I doubt I'll be catching up before my trip, so by the time I get back, I should only have to wait a week or so before I can read TMNT 143, 144 and 145 in a burst.
The first issue of Gerry Duggan and Javier Garron's new iteration of Uncanny Avengers was a pleasant surprise, so I'm hanging in for the foreseeable future. This might be the book where I felt the ramifications of the Hellfire Massacre the most.
Listen:
It was a great pleasure indeed for me to be asked on as a guest of John Trafton and Miles' Fortune's This Movie Saved My Life podcast.
John, Miles and I talk all things Horror, with a particular emphasis on 90s Horror and 1998's Fallen, which I had never seen before. Here's the trailer:
Fallen is by no means a 'must-see' film, however, I definitely liked it better than most of those late 90s, post-Se7en serial killer movies.
Playlist:
QOTSA - In Times New Roman
Godflesh - Purge
Zeal and Ardor - Eponymous
Madlove - White With Foam
Lead Into Gold - The Sun Behind the Sun
Jade Bird - Trick Mirror (single)
Ash Borer - The Irrepassable Gate
WYTCH FINGER - The Dance EP
Card:
From Jonathan Grimm's Bound Tarot, which you can buy HERE. Just a reminder that Grimm's new Tarot Deck, The Hand of Doom Tarot, is both gorgeous and live on Kickstarter right now. Here's the LINK.
• Six of Wands
• Ace of Pentacles
• Ten of Cups
I inadvertently upset a delicate balance last night and can see my hard-fought plans - which have taken a few weeks to solidify - are in jeopardy. That's a bit of a hyperbolic statement: I'm trying to watch what I spend pre-LaLaLand, and I went ahead and bought a record on eBay. Nothing crazy expensive, however, finances are a delicate balance at the moment simply because we've depleted a lot of our 'home fund', and I really want to build it back up. The trip is going to have its financial footprint - work pays for all the travel and my meals, but I'm planning on being out and about as possible. So I'm reading this Pull as a gentle warning: No more late-night record buying for a while.
I couldn't very well pass up Prince's Sign O'the Times, though. I used to have that, but it went out the door in my divorce.
From 1987's Sign O' The Times, probably my second favorite album by Prince, who died six years ago today.
Something about this album, and this song in particular, really conjures all of the tones and textures, smells and sensual impressions of 1987 to me (it's not exactly readable as 1987 in my head, but when I figure where I was in my life, the specific things I remember about my parents' home at the time, I know it's 1987-1988). There's an underlying tone or ambiance to this track that feels very specific to that time, even though I do not believe I ever heard this song at that time.
This isn't unparalleled. The recording technology of the time - the sonic signatures of microphones, whether you're aware of them or not - definitely inform the era. Also, the keyboard patches, the drum sounds, all of it adds up to a certain era in the recording industry. That's not magick, and it's not B.S. It's fact. I'm assuming that has a lot to do with why this song impacts my memory so drastically. But it makes this album particularly important to me now, so many years later. It's like a time machine, because I can literally smell my parents living room - where I snuck up to watch Friday Night Videos - when I hear this song.
Weird. But cool. Very cool. Thank you, Prince. Whether you realized it or not, you instigated time travel.
Watch:
I had no intention of watching this flick until I did. It is fantastic, and probably directly responsible for my purchasing tickets to see Anthrax in late July (if I still live here). Mr. Brown and I saw Anthrax - with opener White Zombie - in 1993 at Chicago's Aragon Brawlroom for the Sound of White Noise tour. This means I've never seen Anthrax with original singer Joey Belladonna.
To say I am excited would be an understatement. It's not going to keep me from moving, but if I am still here - because I'm thinking even if we find something in Tennessee in June, closing will dictate we're still in LaLaLand by the time of this show - I can't wait. At the freakin' Palladium, no less.
Playlist:
Various Artists - Nativity in Black: A Tribute to Black Sabbath
Black Sabbath - Master of Reality
Black Sabbath - Paranoid
Midlake - The Courage of Others
Midlake - The Trials of Van Occupanther
Led Zeppelin - Coda
Peter Gabriel - So
Prince - Sign O' The Times
Windhand - Grief's Infernal Flower
Wolves in the Throneroom - Two Hunters
Card:
A little concerned that, along with yesterday's draw, there seems to be some sort of conflict on the horizon.
As I continue to work my way through that stack of records that Relapse Records put out in 2020 and that I won for their 20th Anniversary, one of the bands I had no experience with whatsoever is Inter Arma. Garbers Days Revisited is an all-covers record, and I have to say, my first listen was super fun. Opening with Ministry's "Scarecrow" - super relevant to my recent listening habits - the group move through versions of "Southern Man", "March of the Pigs", and "Running Down a Dream", to name a few. All these versions range from sludged-up to more or less straight forward, such as the above Prince track.
Very cool record with one of my favorite album covers in a while, so I'll definitely be digging deeper into the Inter Arma catalogue.
Read:
Not realizing that Bernie Wrightson's graphic novel adaptation of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's Frankenstein is out of print, I ordered what I thought was a copy from Amazon a few days ago. What arrived instead was the illustrated novel that features 40 of Wrightson's drawings. Needless to say, I was a bit disappointed - I've read Wrightson's sequel, Frankenstein Alive, Alive, but never that original. What makes it worse - the book goes for a minimum of $150 used with the nice version garnering between $300-$500 - is Bernie Wrightson's Frankenstein adaptation was a book that routinely sat on the shelves at the borders I helped manage for years, and I just never got around to buying it.
Regardless of the letdown, looking at the illustrated novel, I realized it's been since Junior High since I actually read the original, and this new version has a bunch of cool supplemental material - a forward by Stephen King, a "historical context" essay and timeline, and the 1831 introduction by the author herself. Needless to say, this is my next read.
Looking through the illustrations, I realize what a shame it is I came to really appreciate Wrightson so late, as Mr. Wrightson's work is only describable as exquisite.
Playlist:
Bit of a 90s parade of late, but that doesn't happen all to often, so I'm going with it:
Death - Human
Faith No More - The Real Thing
Guns N' Roses - Appetite for Destruction (Deluxe)
Deafheaven - 10 Years Gone
Disappears - Pre Language
Garbage - Eponymous
The Maine - You Are OK
Inter Arma - Garbers Days Revisited
Card:
As I often view this card as a nod toward saving money or 'nesting,' I've taken recent interpretations to possibly reference avoiding tempting social situations. I've had about five social outings - all super small with only one or two other people outside my own household - in the last year (hence this blog's brief stint titled 'Quarantine Junkie'), but recently, I've felt the urge to see a friend or two. Nope. Time to batten back down that Will and get the course set straight ahead. I recently came across this article that should serve as enough of a reminder. The idea of our air quality being so adversely affected by a record number of cremations is baffling - we're living in the setting for a Sci-Fi Horror Film, and not even aware of it on a day-to-day level.
It's hard for me to choose a favorite Prince song, and it's equally as hard for me to even choose a favorite Prince song off any given Prince album. Sign O' The Times Definitely ranks among my favorite of the man's work, partially because it is so of its time that when I listen to it the very cells in my body and brain move back to how they operated, circa 1987. I can see the ugly orange carpet we had in the living room, the weird 70s plaid sofa and loveseat; I can hear my dog Frisky barking over the sound of B96 low on the radio in my sister's bedroom. I can picture the chill of sneaking out of bed late on a cold Friday night in March to watch Friday Night Videos (we never had cable), and the strain of the title track from the album coming from the Magnavox tv. And for some reason, even though I didn't know or hear The Ballad of Dorothy Parker until later in life, listening to it now instantly evokes these sense-memories, in such a strong way that, if I close my eyes, I am right back there. Time Travel - I've sometimes wondered if it's just our sense of sight that prevents us from this feat, as though the things we build our world from specifically operate/exist within certain visual spectrum parameters, to prevent the layman from actually traveling into the past. Were this so, are there secret places where this is not the case? And who, if anyone, holds the keys to those places?
This weird psychonaut talk may be the result of watching most of the Joe Bob Briggs Christmas Phantasm Marathon last night on Shudder. The series gets pretty trippy as it goes on, so maybe it affected me in ways I did not anticipate...
The newest episode of The Horror Vision went up late last night. This past Thursday night Ray, Anthony, Chris, and myself were fortunate enough to have three of the main minds from Skeleton Crew on to discuss their new feature Secret Santa. Adam Marcus, Debra Sullivan, and Bryan Sexton steer the boat for a nice, meaty discussion on their movie, the horrors of holiday family dinners, independent filmmaking, the state of horror, plus, a lot of in-depth facets of the movie business as seen through a creator's eyes. Here's a trailer for Secret Santa, which I've seen twice now and which gets better every time. Links to our episode on all the usual platforms follow:
Ministry - The Last Sucker
Amy Winehouse - Back to Black
Card of the day:
Calm exterior, tempest inside. This is me at the moment. Nothing bad happening, just unable to find the time to work on everything I want to work on, let alone finish the goddamn book!
However, patience is virtue, and I sometimes feel as though I might have inexhaustible reserves of this precious commodity.
So, obviously the consistency on these posts has begun to suffer a bit. My output here is still great, in my own obnoxious opinion, but it has wavered. This doesn't mean I'm losing gumption, or the new idea that held me in its thrall has gotten old, it just means shit has been hectic. So first, something a little less hectic:
Sign O' The Times is probably my favorite album by Prince, and one that holds me perpetually in its thrall; just hearing the opening notes of The Ballad of Dorothy Parker, with its odd, wobbly sustained keyboard note in the background and overly gated beat means I'll be immediately strapping this one in on the iPod at work in a few. From opening title track to the sexual juxtaposition of the two closers (Hot Thing is a one-night-stand sex romp, followed immediately by Forever in my Life which is something of an ode to settling down), Sign O' The Times IS 1987 to me, start to finish, in tone, themes and presentation, even if I probably only heard the title track at the time. Goes to show how every on the radio after its release was probably taking from it.
Anyway, I don't know if things have been more hectic or I'm just more scattered - well, #2 is definitely true - but I haven't been able to get a lot of work done on the T12 project. It's been a parade of responsibilities at work, even though I often don't feel like I'm doing much and the days are dragging, something that usually never happens to me. Friends say I'm just suffering from starting over in a new place, all my old protocols and procedures suddenly out the window. That must be it.
Playlist from yesterday:
The Ocean - Anthropocentric
Prince - Sign O' The Times
Prince & 3RDEYEGIRL - PLECTRUMELECTRUM
Boy Harsher - Country Girl E.P.
Trust Obey - Fear and Bullets
Black Queen - Fever Daydream
Kings of Leon - Only By The Night
Card for the day:
And there you go. I just interpreted this card as the ruins of an old paradigm for my good friend Missi yesterday - she also does a daily pull - and just like that, I'm taking a few paragraphs ago about the growing pains of an all-new situation and I pull the Ten of Swords to further emphasize that, yeah, rebuild dude.
I almost posted something when I heard the news of Prince's death this morning but I stopped myself. I was at work, entering long strings of data into a spreadsheet and trying to jar myself awake by listening to Iron Maiden on my headphones. During the resultant trance-like state two things happened simultaneously: first, just as one song ended and another was about to begin I overhead two of my co-workers talking in a vague way about what sounded like a celebrity death. Second, a text bubble popped up on my phone. It was from my friend Ray. Without stopping my typing I looked down and saw this:
The two disparate streams of information collided in my mind and in total shock I said the following sentence very loudly, "What? Prince can't be dead!" I said this so loud that one of the girls who works in another department came over to see if I needed help. A few minutes later she left and another person from a department even farther away came over and gave me a hug. He was wearing purple, of all colors.
Now, I am not a the biggest Prince fan. But I am a Prince fan. Especially the Prince who helmed the Revolution for the iconic record/movie Purple Rain. As for his other music, there's lots I like and some I could never hear again and not care. As Tommy from Heaven Is An Incubator laments in his own post pertaining to this momentous loss for the music community, because of our age Prince's music was something of a backdrop to our generation's entire childhood. Growing up in the 80s Prince was EVERYWHERE, literally. And it wasn't just the songs he performed, it was also the material that he wrote for other performers: Sheila E., Sheena Easton, The Bangels, Morris Day, Stevie Nicks. As I got older the extremely unique sounds Prince made with his music followed me, often in sneaky or almost subconscious ways. The first song on Public Enemy's masterpiece Fear of A Black Planet, "Brothers Gonna Work It Out" is loaded with samples of Prince's guitar. Skinny Puppy's bleak and brilliant Last Rites has snippets of Prince's weird, over-flanged percussion laced throughout. Later still, one of my all-time favorite bands - Ween - covered Prince, lovingly lampooned him and downright homaged him on many, many occasions. But the older I became the more Prince's influence on my musical life remained peripheral; the cassette copy of Purple Rain that my cool, older cousin Jim gave me for Christmas the year it came out was worn out long ago and the only Prince I'd had in the collection through my thirties was a beat-up copy of Sign O' The Times on vinyl and a double-disc greatest hits my ex-wife had brought with her to our twelve year sharing of a music collection. When she moved out all that went away. Luckily though...
Every year from Memorial Day to Labor Day Hollywood Forever Cemetery hosts something called Cinespia - an organization that projects movies on the side of a mausoleum in the cemetery's enormous - and beautiful - grounds. Ray and I, along with several of our other friends, go to as many of these Saturday night screenings every year as possible. Two summers ago Cinespia showed Purple Rain. I hadn't seen it since the 80s and Ray's a fan so we went and it completely re-inspired me to love Prince. Again, not all his music, but for that album in particular. I've long said that when he's gone Prince would be remembered as probably the single greatest driving force in the Pop music of the 80s. After watching Purple Rain and then re-buying and binging on it hardcore for a few weeks I had an even deeper realization about this record:
As far as records go, Purple Rain is the Philosopher's Stone of the 80s.
Now, when I say Philosopher's Stone I need to quantify what I'm talking about. I've approached this concept previously but in less specific terms. Obviously in every decade or 'era' of music there are movements, fashions, trends and scenes. And somewhere within all those dark and incestuous nooks and crannies I believe there is one album that perfectly sums everything else up. For the 80s I would argue that album was Purple Rain. Prince's 1984 masterpiece is a microcosm of nearly everything musical that surrounds it; there's elements of Funk, Soul, New Wave, Metal (that serpentine guitar lick in Computer Blue? Those blast beats in the last third of Darling Nikki that I never noticed before I reengaged with it? Metal baby); Purple Rain has it all and what's more all of those seemingly disparate elements are perfectly synthesized into a coherent whole. That's the key. For perspective I've argued elsewhere that the 90's Philosopher Stone album was the Beastie Boys' Check Your Head, another synthesis of the musical world around it.
(Incidentally, I don't think we have enough distance from the 00s yet to determine what might be that era's Philosopher's Stone, but I'd also argue in a few years we might look back and say that because of the democratization and decentralization of music that particular era ushered in there actually might not be one).
With all of this said I need to end this diatribe before I become any more grandiose. Not possible you say? Believe me, it is. So to finish I will leave you with a video a friend showed me a couple years ago. This thing just blew me away. No matter how you feel about the musicians that are on stage to begin with, watch this all the way through because at approximately 3:28 this rendition of what might just be my favorite Beatles song becomes god-like. And Prince? Rest in Purple sir. Rest in Purple.
