We finish Seven Days commemorating Shane MacGowan with the sadly autobiographical "The Old Main Drag," the second track on 1985's undisputed masterpiece Rum, Sodomy & the Lash. Shane talks very frankly about this song in that Crock Of Gold Documentary I mentioned earlier in this run, and it really added new light to not only that track, but the first two Pogues records in general.
Plastic:
It arrived.
I'll post my own video at some point - NOT an unboxing video, as I'm generally not a fan of those - but at this point, let's allow the professionals to speak for my absolute joy. Glad I backed this.
Yeah, I know it's not the original version with Cait, but I couldn't really pass up posting this one, as we lost both of them this year.
Watch:
A few years ago, I read John Ajvide Lindqvist's novel Handling the Undead and really liked it. A very quiet, contemplative approach to the "living dead,"
As has become my custom, I'm posting this trailer here but not going to watch it . I want to go into this one not having the slightest idea what to expect from an adaptation.
Playlist:
Laura Cannell - Midwinter Processionals
The Pogues - Rum, Sodomy and the Lash
Opeth - Blackwater Park
Shane MacGowan and the Popes - The Snake
Opeth - Deliverance
Card:
Lots'a Disks. Let's see here...
• Six of Disks - Success
• Seven of Cups - Debauch
• Five of Disks - Worry
All the emotional fallout I've thus far been too busy to experience in having the connection to my childhood home severed at the age of 47 is about to come crashing down. My folks are out of the house in South Suburban Chicago and into the new one in Clarksville. There's still work to be done unpacking and arranging, but just being there all day yesterday unloading the last trailer of stuff or watching the movers bring in their furniture - furniture I've seen in the other house all my life - and set it up in foreign rooms was enough to create a sort of disorientation in me that feels a lot like what the Debauch card looks like. Not poison, but murky. Murky emotions that the Success of finally finishing this months-long project has kickstarted.
I'm really digging this first album Shane cut with The Popes, particularly this duet with Máire (Moya) Brennan. I seem to gravitate to any duet MacGowan does - the way he always uses the opportunity to juxtapose his hardened rasp with some of the most staunchly beautiful voices around. This one feels very prescient at the moment.
Watch:
Among the trailers we saw before Godzilla Minus One, Bleeker Street's I.S.S. was the one that really stood out. Primarily because this one looks a bit too close to home. I mean, this is pretty much the scariest trailer I've ever seen:
The anxiety this trailer instills in me is uncomfortable, so much so that I believe I'm going to have to force myself to see this in a theatre. Funny how the things that scare us as younger beings change later in life. Based on the world we live in, I.S.S. feels especially frightening.
Live on Conan O'Brien in 1995, shortly after MacGowan was sacked from The Pogues for 'alcohol-related' issues. I have no experience with The Popes, other than what I've heard at other people's houses. I guess I didn't realize the chronology. I will say, so far, I like this first record The Snake better than I like those later Pogues records. That might be a knee-jerk reaction, time will tell, but I thought this made a nice time capsule of MacGowan's first year away from the band that most people - myself included - know him from.
NCBD:
My pull for NCBD this week isn't a big one, but it's comprised entirely of things I am bubbling with excitement for.
I have to say, after taking a chance on last month's first issue of Szymon Kurdanski's Blood Commandment number one, I've been waiting for number two pretty impatiently. Kinda stoked about this book!
Here's one I know ZERO about - Andrew Krahnke's Bloodrick. I'm not sure what caught my eye here, however, in reading about it on League of Comic Geeks, I noticed a comment from someone who read this in its previously self-published iteration. This makes me happy, to see something go from self-publishing to being distributed by Image.
I loved the Stuff Of Nightmares Halloween special in October, and I'm assuming that, regardless of the fact that Christmas Horror is not my favorite niche in the genre, I will like this equally well. This is just such a great book. No contest who wins the Horror Anthology war this year, with The Silver Coin still on hiatus.
Soundwave's on the cover and I'm hoping like hell he's in the issue! So far, Daniel Warren Johnson's take on the Transformers has a complete hold on me.
Doom's X-Men? Huh. I'm getting a total "Oktober Guard" vibe here.
Watch:
Oh, that's why Bloodrik caught my eye!
I've been watching Genndy Tartakowsky's Primal on Max, and I am absolutely in love. For years, I've harbored ill will for any animation that isn't Cowboy Bebop or the original Transformers animated film. I have no idea where that came from, but it proved pretty all-encompassing, so a lot of shows/films friends recommended I passed on. This was a random find thanks to Walter and Ryan at Rick's Comic City and although the first episode grabbed me, it wasn't until two nights ago, when I couldn't sleep, that I became 100% completely invested.
There is such an amazing heart to the relationship between the two characters - one a man, one a dinosaur - that when they are in peril I become invested to a degree a lot of live-action SciFi loses.
From Jonathan Grimm's Bound Tarot, which you can buy HERE.
• Five of Wands
• Four of Wands
• VIII Strength
Not hard to read this one at all. Finally doing a bit of restructuring with Black Gloves & Broken Hearts, just to punch-up some of the relationships, and even though it's not a lot, it feels like a ton this close to the end. Apply Will and be Strong.
Before The Pogues, MacGowan fronted a band with Shanne Bradley called The Nipple Erectors (subsequently shortened to The Nips). I first discovered this group in the late '00s, thanks to my Drinking with Comics cohost Mike Shin. This was when my Pogues fervor was at its zenith. The album Bops, Babes, Booze & Bovver stayed in my old school iPod for a few years (I never had a physical copy), but disappeared somewhere along the way. Pretty cool to find them again now, on streaming, and be able to hear the record start to finish (I believe what I had was missing several tracks).
Watch:
Julien Temple made a Shane MacGowan documentary a few years back, and I'd kind of forgotten about it until Mr. Brown brought it up after the man's passing. Back on my radar, I fired Crock Of Gold up last night on HULU.
I liked this, but I do feel there's a lack of third-party, objective material. Maybe the point was to allow Shane the glory of self-mythologizing himself; why deny the man, he'd been in an awful state at the time this was made and it may have been Temple and Producer Johnny Depp's idea to just bask in the legends that already exist anyway, letting MacGowan grow them to whatever size he saw fit. Not a bad gift for a man trapped in a wheelchair at the end of his life, reaping the rewards of a life of debauchery. It's not like the film doesn't set this up in the first few moments - Crock Of Gold opens with an animated smattering of all Ireland's mythological creatures and folklore, from Leprechauns to Cú Chulainn to Children of Lir to... Shane being handpicked by god to be, "The man who would save Irish music." And, in a way, he totally did.
Anyway, if you're a fan or even just curious, this is a nice walk through the man, the myth, the legend.
Read:
Somehow, I forgot to mention the pre-order the good folks at Bad Hand Books have going for next year's new Laird Barron collection. Not a Speck of Light comes with a signed bookplate.
Sixteen new stories? Wow, and while it's not going to be easy to wait until Q3 next year, talk about arriving at the perfect time of year! Pre-order Not a Speck of Light from Bad Hand Books HERE.
Playlist:
Steve Moore - Christmas Bloody Christmas OST
Steve Moore - VFW OST
Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats - Blood Lust
Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats - Vol. 1
Dream Division - Beyond the Mirror's Image
Various - Joe Begos' Bliss Spotify Playlist
Electric Wizard - Wizard Bloody Wizard
Shane MacGowan and the Popes - The Snake
Card:
From Jonathan Grimm's Bound Tarot, which you can buy HERE.
• Ten of Pentacles (Disks)
• I: The Magician
• XIV: Temperance (Art)
Trump One two days in a row, eh? I'm apparently missing something...
Ten of Pentacles indicates Earthly completion, and I'm betting that has to do with (again) my folks finally being into their place. The recurrence of the Magus, however, indicates something that will need adjustment or patience (not that there's not been call for quite a bit of that already).
I tend to remain hung up on the "Art" aspects of Trump XIV, however, there is an element of "Things falling into place." So again, the Magician is the missing piece of the puzzle.
While considering what MacGowan song to post for day two of Seven Days Commemorating Shane MacGowan's passing, I was reminded of this track via this week's edition of Warren Ellis' Orbital Operations newsletter.
Rum, Sodomy and the Lash is easily my favorite album by The Pogues - almost to a fault, as my preoccupation with this and Red Roses For Me have caused my knowledge of the band to atrophy long ago. Sometimes I become hung up on one or two albums by an artist or band, and it just stops there. Not necessarily a bad thing, as I always eventually get around to adding another album to the fire. In the case of The Pogues, however, I've always felt a declining interest after the second album, with really only about half of If I Should Fall From Grace With God holding me in its sway. But the death of an artist tends to inspire reassessment, so what happens as we go deeper into the band's discography over the course of the next five days (but not before running around MacGowan's work outside The Pogues for a while).
Watch:
Saturday afternoon, we took a break from unloading my parents' first round of possessions into their new house (Mayflower moving picks up the bulk of it today) and went to the theatre to catch Godzilla Minus One. My parents accompanied us, and I have to say, all four of us were pretty blown away.
If you can believe it, this was the first Godzilla movie I've ever seen. Verdict? Godzilla Minus One blew me away.
The thing I'd complained about after trying to watch Legendary Studios' Godzilla: King of Monsters (I fell asleep before Godzilla ever hit the screen, hence why I'm counting G-1 as my first) was that film's obstinate preoccupation with the human story. It is interesting, then, that the thing that moved me about Minus One - indeed, the major component of the film's story - is the human element. I'd imagine that says something about the comparative character development and overall writing between the two: Toho's Minus One is simply a better-written film that is less concerned with box office spectacle, favoring instead a genuinely moving story that takes place inside this retelling of the mighty lizard's first interaction with humanity.
From Aleister Crowley and Lady Freida Harris' Thoth Deck.
• I: The Magus
• XVIII: The Moon
• Ten of Disks - Wealth
Often an indication of the potency of Will or the spark of creative essence, seeing it here with the Ten of Disks, and the Eighteenth Trump, this becomes a pretty clear-cut message that the application of perseverance will reveal nearly overlooked information that, in turn, leads to some form of renumeration. Pretty sure this has to do with my folks' move, although the specifics elude me at the moment (and that's 18 right there for you).
