Last night marked my first live show since hitting 2 of the 3 Mr. Bungle shows in LaLaLand back in February 2020, mere days before COVID struck. I've reacquired my comfort level with seeing movies in the theatre, largely because you can very much curate how many people you'll be exposed to. Not in every case, but with Matinees and seating charts online, it's pretty easy to limit exposure. A live show is a more, "All bets are off" situation, though, so it's taken me a while to prepare. That changed recently, though.
When my good friend Jacob introduced me to The Mysterines' music, without even thinking I googled them to see if they were on tour - a practice I've maintained for years when I find a new band I love. When I saw they were playing on May 4th at the Peppermint Club, I didn't think twice about buying tickets.
I'm glad I did.
Not only were The Mysterines awesome, but in preparation for the show, I looked up opener Bexley and was pretty blown away by her 2021 self-titled album. Above, I've posted my favorite song from said album, and since Bexley is local, I'll definitely be keeping an eye out for more shows, as she and her band were also great.
You can check out Bexley's Bandcamp HERE or her official site HERE.
Watch:
Oh my. I probably wasn't supposed to laugh out loud, but I did. And then I winced enough to almost fall out of my seat.
The Sadness is written and directed by Rob Jabbaz, and as far as I can tell, this is his first full-length film. IT LOOKS F&*KING AWESOME, so I'll be watching this the day it drops on Shudder, next Thursday, 5/12/22.
Playlist:
Sepultura - Chaos A.D.
David Byrne & Brian Eno - Everything That Happens Will Happen Today
David Lynch - Crazy Clown Time
Soundgarden - Superunknown
Bexley - Eponymous
Card:
Water of Water, pure emotions. This can trip me up, so I'll be attempting to keep a cool on any over-the-top moments I might have; there's a lot of ridiculousness at work of late, and I've grown a bit cantankerous when certain people are involved. Play it cool.
The Gutter Twins - Mark Lanegan and Greg Dulli - performing "Idle Hands" on David Letterman. Easily my favorite song by the Twins, not because their other material is lacking, but because Lanegan channels a fucking demon with the low end on his voice in this one. The album version is sonically preferable, but how good is it to see these two icons playing side by side?
Listen:
Thanks to Mr. Brown for messaging me about this one dropping - I'd missed it completely.
I am SO hoping this means there's a new Whigs full-length on the way. Also, wondering if Dulli released this earlier than expected as a statement on Lanegan's passing. Super awesome track, can't wait for more.
Watch:
Tomorrow on Shudder:
The trailer Hellbender one played a few weeks ago during the halfway point of the Joe Bob Brigg's Valentine's Day Special. I've been looking forward to it since, and it finally hits tomorrow on Shudder.
Playlist:
Boy Harsher - The Runner OST
Black Sabbath - Paranoid
The Gutter Twins - Saturnalia
The Gutter Twins - Adorata
Metallica - Kill 'Em All
Zeal and Ardor - Eponymous
The Jim Carroll Band - Catholic Boy
The Afghan Whigs - I'll Make You See God (single)
Mark Lanegan Band - Here Comes That Weird Chill
QOTSA - Songs for the Deaf
Chrome Canyon - Director
Cult Leader - A Patient Man
Card:
The watery aspect of water. From the grimoire: "Deep, Emotional Realms of Personality." I'm plumbing ideas of Deep Personality in a new writing project I'm using to bridge the huge gap I've suffered in working on the second Shadow Play book. This is a short, probably a serialized piece for No Sleep, since the other was so well received, and it's keeping me writing while so many interruptions have made it impossible to hit any kind of a continuous stride while working on the novel.
Continuing to hang out in the 80s music of my childhood, I've added a Talking Heads binge to my Police one (still listening to Synchronicity on an almost daily basis).
In 2008 Pascal Laugier ripped my soul open with his film Martyrs. The one film of the 'torture porn' generation to transcend the genre, Martyrs - the original, French version - is a milestone in horror cinema that made me feel something no other film has. Four years later his follow-up, The Tall Man, played like an ABC, movie of the week and left me flabbergasted that the same man had made it. Now, six years later, Mr. Laugier has once again made a film that affected me so deeply, I am still thinking about it four days after viewing it. I'm not posting a trailer here because I watched Incident in a Ghostland with no knowledge what it was about and think you should do the same - I sampled the trailer a few minutes ago and it gives WAAAAY too much away. Just watch it blind; it's $3.99 to rent on Prime right now and is very much worth the money. But do me a favor: watch it alone, in the dark, and if you smoke, maybe have a hit or two beforehand. And then, well, prepare yourself.
Another film I watched recently is The Witch in The Window, streaming on Shudder and nested in their "Best of 2018" category. Very good film; it has a moment that chilled me to the marrow. Very understated horror, with the main focus on a splintered family. This trailer I have vetted and have no qualms posting because it does what a trailer should do - gives you a feel without spoiling anything about the film.
Playlist from 12/23:
Tool - Undertow
The Police - Synchronicity
Talking Heads - Sand in the Vaseline (disc 2)
Amy Winehouse - Back to Black
Card of the day:
Macrocosmic emotional event? Perhaps a commentary on my re-finding my Christmas spirit last year and it really filling me with an all-pervading joy this year during the season?
New Le Butcherettes! Very 90s sounding, not in a bad way. New album comes out February 1st.
New episode of The Horror Vision went up on Sunday. You can find it on Apple, Spotify, and Google Play, as well as at TheHorrorVision.com. This episode is our reaction/interpretation of Luca Guadagnino's Suspiria remake. Other topics include The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, Shudder's Dead Wax (which I LOVE), and the Indiegogo for The Barn II, which is fully funded as of 11/21 and now Indemand, which apparently means you can still contribute and secure cool rewards. I still haven't seen the first Barn yet - it's been on the list for at least a year if not two now, so what the hell am I waiting for, right?
NCBD this week isn't as light as last week, but it's light. Check out this gorgeous cover for TMNT 88:
Die! Die! Die! has been hit or miss with me so far, but the opening discussion between two high level US government officials in issue #4 may have permanently endeared this book to me. It's kind of a more violent, more philosophical approach to GIJOE and I find myself wondering if that was the goal. The real shocker here is that Stray Bullets Sunshine and Roses is on issue #40. Where the hell does the time go? It wasn't that long ago that David Lapham's brilliant B&W crime comic had been on hiatus for 9 years and we were jumping at joy with the announcement of its return via Image. Now we're 40 issues in on the second or third volume of this new series. And you know, it's still awesome.
Playlist from 11/27:
Monolord - Rust
Mastodon - Once More 'Round the Sun
Mastodon - Emperor of Sand
The Knife - Silent Shout
Mudhoney - Digital Garbage
Gogol Bordello - Gypsy Punks Unite
Ghost - Infestissumam
Godflesh - Post Self
Card of the day:
Gonna be an emotional day? Doesn't feel that way. There's a passivity here when it's water on water, however the passivity acts as a perfect transformer for other energies, maybe some that lack emotion.
... and I'll be damned, it won't replace the original, but it looks like it could be a really good film on its own. I dig that they seemingly went out of their way to make it look and feel old school 70s Euro horror, or at least that's what I'm getting from this trailer. Reading the description, sounds like the plot got a tweak too, so that could further help make this new one its own thing. While I'm typically not in favor of remakes, a few great ones have come along that stand on their own. I'd say take for example Evil Dead 2013, but then we all know that's not a remake but, "another door the Necronomicon can open." Maybe there's some similar thread here.
Tom Yorke's score sounds great - I was kind of expecting noodley electro, I'm glad to see I've underestimated him.
Playlist from June 3rd:
Burzum - Hvis Lyset Tar Oss
Sleigh Bells - Tell 'Em (single)
Fen - Epoch
Ghost - Prequelle
Deafheaven - New Bermuda
Card of the day:
Relying on my back-up deck today, as I left the house in too much of a hurry to pull from my beloved Thoth. Queen of Cups - more emotion than you can shake a stick at. Doesn't feel that way thus far. We'll see.
It was kind of a restless night; we were woken up repeatedly by people in the courtyard/parking area just outside the bedroom window. I'm not going to complain, as this is obvious karmic penance for the old-school weed circle some of my guests on Saturday had going off and on until 3 or 4 in the morning. Usually, I pride myself on being a good neighbor (unless it's to women named Dorothy), but Saturday just veered out of my control. I think there's footage of me doing my DIO impersonation at, like, 11:00 PM. My DIO impression is LOUD. Sorry neighbors. I'm gone in under two weeks, and there's a lot of pent-up stress the alcohol released, so that's what happened. In the give-and-take of communal living, everyone gets a chance to be a dick, and everyone gets a chance at making amends. I'll have been here one month shy of 12 years, and in that time I've pretty much been good enough to have pre-mended anything bad I do, which is good because next Saturday is St. Paddy's. This is commonly a quieter affair: I make corned beef, drink Guinness and Bushmills, and we watch the best damn Irish mob movie ever, State of Grace. This time it just might go off with a little more gusto, because there's a bunch of people, myself included, that want to say goodbye to this place.
I keep referring to parties here, but that's not exactly true. What I host are movie nights. It's generally the same cast of characters every time: Ray, Kenta and Maddy, Robert, Alex, Shailesh, Jesus, Joe, with a few now-and-thens like Keller who attend as well. Generally, everyone arrives between 8 and 9, I cook or we order out, and then we commiserate for a bit, watch a movie, commiserate a bit, watch another movie. These are not parties, per se. Peppered throughout these I'll have a party here and there, usually in honor of someone's birthday. I think the last rager I had was my divorce party (earned, believe me). This past Saturday though, on the surface a birthday party for Ray and Maddy, was part of a two-step goodbye. We'll all still be able to hang, just not at my place and specifically, not at this place, where I've hosted going on seven years. It's been special, and I think a lot of my attendees - many who are in their twenties and early thirties now - see this place as their first communal, hang-out place. So we have to send it off right.
Playlist from yesterday was super small. Spent a lot of great time with Keller working on out writing project, so music would have been a distraction to two of us so geared toward it.
Etta James - Eponymous
Monolord - Rust
Paul Zaza - My Bloody Valentine OST (Waxwork vinyl)
My copy of Waxwork's reissue of Goblin's score for George A. Romero's original Dawn of the Dead should arrive today. SO psyched. I didn't do the Waxwork subscription this year, as this is the only release of the five I HAD to have, and I bought my boss a copy as well because he just got a record player and loves old horror, so I thought it was an appropriate 'record player warming' gesture.
Card of the day:
I've always been interested in the reflection in this card. It may simply be a scaling issue, wanting to devote as much of the card's area to the image and thus compressing its mirror image, but it seems more to me like there's a distortion here. This is the watery aspect of water, so we're talking emotions on top of emotion. That can blur things a bit. Also, there's a lot of lunar influence in this card, the Ibis, the crayfish and of course the big ol' moon behind the queen, and moon affects the flow of water, i.e., the tide. It also affects our brains, i.e., lunatic. And being that either the time change, the cumulative stress of work and the encroaching move, and/or my sarcoidosis medication may or may not be disrupting my sleep (hence why I'm up at three something AM on a Monday before work writing this), I feel a bit loony of late.
