July 15th - Frank Black/Teenage Fanclub

Day 6 of Frank Black Appreciation Week, and I'm trying to dig deep. Like I said previously, I could easily just post 7 days of The Catholics, or Pixies, but this man's catalogue winds deep, and I really wanted to try and represent that, so here's a track off Frank's 1994 John Peel Session, where Glasgow band Teenage Fanclub acted as his band.

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I finished my re-read of Grant Morrison and Richard Case's six-volume Doom Patrol series from late 80s/early 90s DC Vertigo. SO good, and reading the source material just confirms my belief that the DCU television adaptation of Doom Patrol is the best comic adaptation I have ever seen.

The final volume, Planet Love, has such a harrowing example of an Apocalypse scenario, I dare say I read it in a quick, edge-of-my-seat burst. The Candlemaker is an example of a comic book foe who gestates quickly and thrives on being somewhat two-dimensional.

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I was so very wrong about Drab Majesty's Modern Mirror the other day when I said it would drop July 26th. I came home later the same day to find the vinyl I'd ordered months ago on my doorstep, and I spent Friday night and several hours over the subsequent weekend listening to it. Really good, if a bit short. The vinyl is a little bit annoying, in that it's a double LP, so there are literally two songs on each side. That's a lot of superfluous flipping, and a very start/stop listening experience, if you ask me.

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Friday's episode of The Horror Vision, wherein we discuss Possum, as well as Luca Guadagnino's 2018 Suspiria, which we've talked about before, but here go into at length and a host of other films, will be up in a few days. In the interim, my co-host Anthony Guerra caught the Aja/Raimi flick Crawl the other night and did a quick reaction piece. Check it out:

The Horror Vision on Apple

The Horror Vision on Spotify

The Horror Vision on Google Play

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Playlist from the last couple of days:

Frank Black and the Catholics - Pistolero
Boy Harsher - Careful
Black Polygons - Lobélia
Motörhead - Ace of Spades
Motörhead - 1916
Joan Jett and the Blackhearts - Up Your Alley
The Monkees - Eponymous
Drab Majesty - Modern Mirror
Ritual Howls - Rendered Armor

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Card of the day:

Gonna need it. Two potentially stressful weeks coming up at work, and I'm still slogging through this final read of Shadow Play - which, by the way, is turning out very good. It's just difficult to re-read this for a third time in a row now. It's affecting all my other reading as well.

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.