I celebrated on Saturday with some Guinness, some Jameson, and my annual reverence for Phil Joanou's State of Grace, which I just love more every time I see it. And I've watched it every year for maybe 20 years.
Also, if you haven't heard, Flogging Molly frontman Dave King has some health issues that forced the band to cancel their most recent tour, so maybe stop by their Bandcamp and plunk down some silver for one of their albums. Mr. Brown recently recommended the live 2006 AliveBehind the Green Door, and I can attest that it's fantastic.
Watch:
David Cronenberg's The Shrouds opens in select cities on April 18th and nationwide a week later. Really looking forward to this one.
This trailer doesn't reveal too much, but it also doesn't 100% whet my appetite for the film. That doesn't mean anything, though, as just the fact that Cronenberg has a new film on the immediate horizon has me excited. I really liked Crimes of the Future; actually felt like it was the first truly transgressive film I'd seen in a theatre in a very long time. Not sure if this will be a similar experience, but it doesn't matter. Cronenberg is Cronenberg, end of story.
Playlist:
Marilyn Manson - One Assassination Under God Chapter 1
Marilyn Manson - Lest We Forget
Marilyn Manson -We Are Chaos
T. Rex - The Slider
'Til Tuesday - Voices Carry
New York Dolls - Dancing Backward in High Heels
Buster Pointdexter - Eponymous
The Pogues - Rum Sodomy and the Lash
The Who - Live at Leeds
Blind Willie McTell - Complete Recorded Works In Chronological Order (Vol. 1)
New music from Barry Adamson! Special thanks to Mr. Brown for giving me a heads-up on this, as I did not know it was coming.
The new album, Cut to Black, is out May 17th on Lexer Music. Pre-order HERE. They come signed by Mr. Adamson, so that's an extra little thrill in and of itself. But this first single is fantastic, so I'm already excited.
Watch:
This year, K and I did our customary St Paddy's viewing of State of Grace on Saturday night. The film continues to captivate me, even after all these years, to the point that when it finished, I started it over again, only to quickly realize I was fairly inebriated and needed to go to bed. Still, the realization that no other film can follow this one was stunning, but not surprising in the least.
So that left Sunday, March 17th open for a similarly themed film. We chose the Cohen Brothers' 1990 Miller's Crossing.
Hot damn is this a fantastic movie! I mean, I knew that already. I've seen this one several times, but not for close to ten years.
I remember I'd seen Miller's Crossing a time or two previous, but around 2010 I purchased a slim-line set of Cohen movies that contained this, Blood Simple, Raising Arizona, Barton Fink and Blood Simple. I worked my way through re-watching these (Fink was the only one that, if memory serves, I had not seen previously), re-affirming my joy with each, but when I reached Miller's Crossing, I had someting of an epiphany. I had liked Miller's Crossing before, however, I believe I had not been open to its absolute mastery until this viewing. Within a week or two I scheduled a viewing with my California "Movie Night" crew, and upon seeing it again in such close proximity, Miller's Crossing blossomed even more in my eyes; this was surely the Cohen's masterpiece. Anyone who is a fan of Joel and Ethan's work knows what a tempting yet dangerous statement that is, because almost every one of their films feels like their masterpiece when viewed. Simply put, the Cohens have many masterpieces, so does it even which reigns supreme?
Not at all.
Yet, this most recent viewing has me flabbergasted by how much more nuance to the film there is than I'd previously interpreted, and I thought I was pretty in tune with the film then. The dialogue, the characters, the HUMOR! Damn if this isn't just about the funniest "non comedy" I've seen since.... well, probably since the last Cohen Bros. film I watched. They do kind of excel in that, as well.
Miller's Crossing and State of Grace - I would attempt to follow the first with the latter, but not the other way around, so I suppose I'll continue to reserve Phil Joanou's masterpiece for St. Paddy's day and allow for Tommy, Leo and Caspar to pop in and out of my life whenever they want.
Read:
I finished Taft 2012 and raise a thankful glass to my brother in literary adventures, Mr. Brown! FAN-tastic novel, and I can't thank him enough for his patience while it sat on my shelf for the last who knows how many damned years until I finally got around to reading it. Tooling around online, I found this NPR interview with the author, Jason Heller.
Can't recommend this one enough.
Next up, Malcolm Devlin's 2022 Novel And Then I Woke Up, which my good friend and Horror Vision cohost Ray gifted me during a trip to L.A.'s Skyline Books, in the still unsoiled neighborhood of Los Feliz.
I know nothing about this one, only that Ray recommended it so strongly he plunked down the cover price twice - once for his own library and once for mine, so I'm 100% on board.
It is wonderful to have friends who read, who you can pass books back and forth to for discussion and discovery.
Playlist:
Steve Moore - Bliss OST
John Carpenter - Lost Themes
The Rolling Stones - It's Only Rock n Roll
The Rolling Stones - Goatshead Soup
20 Watt Tombstone - Wisco Disco
Bryce Miller - City Depths
Amigo the Devil - Yours Until the War is Over
Merrimack - Of Grace and Gravity
Deafheaven - Ordinary Corrupt Human Love
CCR - Eponymous
Ruby the Hatchet - Fear is a Cruel Master
Ruby the Hatchet - Planetary Space Child
The Damned - Evil Spirits
Funkadelic - Eponymous
The Bronx - IV
Cyndi Lauper - She's So Unusual
Orville Peck - Bronco
The Pogues - Rum Sodomy and the Lash
The Pogues - Red Roses for Me
Brigette Calls Me Baby
Amigo the Devil - Everything is Fine
United Future Organization - 3rd Perspective
Card:
From Jonathan Grimm's Hand of Doom Tarot, which you can buy HERE. Also, Grimm recently launched a Kickstarter for his new deck, The FaeBound Tarot, which you can marvel at and acquire HERE.
Just one Card to start the week off.
First and foremost, I ADORE Grimm's interpretation and design for Trump 18: The Moon. As a card for the day and, I guess, for the week, I'm reading it more inline with the interpretation that tackling an obstacle that might otherwise be easy to sidestep will lead to self discovery and improvement upon conqueroring. So as they say, let us go once more into the fray!!!
The anticipation for Genghis Tron's new album is becoming palpable! It helps that none of these songs are anything I would have expected from this band, which is, of course, a good thing.
Out next week on Relapse Records, there's still time to pre-order HERE.
Watch:
This one popped onto my radar recently, and after realizing Son is directed by Ivan Kavanagh, who also did 2014's The Canal, I'm very much looking forward to it. Here's the trailer, which I myself am not watching, preferring instead to go in blind on this one:
Son is an easy $6.99 rental on Prime at the moment, so that might just happen this weekend. After the werewolf revenge flick I mentioned in yesterday's post, that is.
Playlist:
Run the Jewels - RTJ4
Godflesh - Pure
Suburban Living - Always Eyes
Suburban Living - How to Be Human
Drab Majesty - Modern Mirror
Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats - The Night Creeper
DJ Muggs the Black Goat - Dies Occidendum
Flogging Molly - Float
The Pogues - Red Roses For Me
Card:
We'll skip the obvious allusion to drinking on the morning after a fairly subdued St. Paddy's and go for the archetypal:
From the grimoire: "An artist above all things. Intensely secret and dedicated to his craft."
Been drinking, felt the need to post. I was going to watch an Irish Horror Flick tonight, instead I think I'll round out the evening reading old Garth Ennis Hellblazer issues.
I won't be able to celebrate appropriately until Saturday. Even then, this is the second year in a row I can't gather my movie night squad and feed them Corned Beef, Whiskey, and Phil Joanou's Irish Mafia epic State of Grace, which I watch every year. Still, they're in me heart, eh?
NCBD:
Well, this week is a pretty small haul, but it's an issue I've been looking forward to:
Also, this one came out last week, and I've had it on-hold with Atomic Basement:
I'm not entirely certain why I'm buying this one, so let's hope I'm not severely disappointed. I've always said I can't tolerate a monthly dose of the Caped Crusader, and in the past I have been pleasantly surprised by one-off buys like this over-sized anthology of short stories, so I guess we'll see.
Playlist:
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Let Love IN
The Neverly Boys - Dark Side of Everything
Electric Youth - Come True OST
The Birthday Party - Junkyard
Genghis Tron - Pyrocene (pre-release single)
Genghis Tron - Dream Weapon (pre-release single)
Tomahawk - Business Casual (pre-release single)
Tomahawk - Dog Eat Dog (pre-release single)
Card:
Mixing disparate ingredients to bring something new to the table. Committing to follow it through. I'm not quite sure how to interpret that at the moment, however, it may have to do with podcasting and my continued inertia/anxiety about attempting to bring DwC back to life. Plenty of ideas, and maybe the ones that I should be looking at stretch the pre-existing format as far afield as possible.
Friday March 15th was the three-year anniversary of Tom's death. This year it blind-sided me, and I'm ashamed to admit I didn't even realize it until the morning of the 16th, when K reminded me. Tom - wow. When I stop to consider it, I can still feel his loss like it's a wound that's only scabbed over. You know, the kind you bump against the inside of your dresser drawer that sticks, and it opens and gushes blood and pain for a few hours. That's exactly what contemplating my 'former life' is like, in regards to Tom (and Tom alone). You'd think with the number of friends I've lost in my life - an inordinate amount by most people's standards - death would come a bit easier. And I guess it kind of does. But when the loss is someone you see everyday, that you live with, it's different. And Tom stuck with me through the worst time of my life, and what's more, made it clear he understood and wanted to help me persevere. That's pretty insane, if you ask me. The bond we had was unlike any I've had with a cat before or after, and I am definitely a cat lover. Anyway, Tom, I miss you. I'll be raising a pint in your honor later tonight. In the meantime, this one's for you, my friend:
**
If you want to see the best goddamn coverage of SXSW, click over to Heaven is an Incubator's page and feast your eyes on the meat and potatoes of the yearly fest. You can find coverage on a ton of sites, but not like this. Tommy goes out of his way every year to burrow in deep and really find the stuff that matters, not just the stuff everyone already wants to read about. In years past he usually posts about bands that seep up throughout the subsequent years into taking the spotlight, and I'd wager this year is no different. Also, he's started a 'daily jam' posting schedule that I absolutely adore. Link to Heaven Is An Incubator HERE.
**
Friday night, K and I saw Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats at the Wiltern. WOW! Seriously these guys blew me right the hell away. I mean, I knew they'd be good, but this was another level. All business, no nonsense, Uncle Acid easily goes into the category of 'Best bands I've seen live.' Tight performance, heavy as hell, and awash in Occult/psychedelic imagery, I still can't stop thinking about how great their set was. And as much as I dig their albums, none of them do the band's sound full justice. Neither does this video, from youtube Chicanochrist, but it gives you a sense of their visual presence:
Uncle Acid's Wasteland album might not have made it into my top ten of 2018, but I love it and couldn't wait to see it live. Especially because I had no idea what to expect. I'd never seen what the members of the band look like, and especially with Kevin Starrs' unique voice, I harbored a strange, almost B-movie idea of the face attached to the voice. This ambiguity is a rarity these days, and as much as it is partially of my own design, I feel like it's also part of the band's mythos. So when faced with having the curtain pulled back by seeing them live, I had to embrace the idea of giving that ambiguity up.
But you know what? It didn't happen.
Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats took the stage under darkness, with a video image and an elongated version of the loud speaker announcement that begins Wasteland playing over the speakers. From there they ripped directly into album opener I See Through You, then proceeded to plow through song after song, hoping from Wasteland to Bloodlust to The Night Creeper, no acknowledgement of the crowd until after six or seven songs, when the man I'm assuming was Kevin Starrs simply asked how we were doing. Of course, he didn't wait for a reply before kicking into Crystal Spiders from the band's recently re-released demo, Vol. 1.
The reason I can only assume our addresser was Kevin Starrs is because A) he was standing in the middle, and B) he was playing guitar and singing into a microphone. However - and maybe this is simply my self-imposed ignorance of the members of the band, which, as you can no doubt tell from above I prefer - but stage left was another man playing a guitar and singing into a microphone. The music was played so flawless, executed in such a concise manner, that you couldn't tell who was singing or playing what. And other than one subsequent brevity to the crowd, there was no speaking in-between songs. The performance was all about the music and the aesthetic, that's it. So in my mind, the band fully retained their enigmatic presence. Which is awesome, because I love the mythos I perceive around these guys; the evocation of that strange era of the 60s/70s when hippy dippy free love turned into hard drugs, black magick and satanism. This is the first band I've encountered since My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult back in the early 90s that feels dangerous in some capacity.
Opening was local band Twin Temple. My good friend Chris from The Thirsty Crows and The Horror Vision turned me onto these guys a couple weeks ago, and they did not disappoint live. Self-described as "Satanic Doo-Wop," I'd say a more accurate description is a Satanic Amy Winehouse. Either way, check out this video:
Finally, it's St. Paddy's day! Since our new place is considerably smaller than my former residence, I'm unable to hold my annual party, and as such my 'St Paddy's Spirit' is considerably diminished. I've got a corned beef in the slow cooker, and some Guinness to quaff, but I'm not even really in the mood to watch State of Grace - which I'll probably watch and be consumed by anyway.
Playlist from 3/14:
Le Butcherettes - bi/MENTAL
Thin Lizzy - Fighting
Soundgarden - Superunknown
Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats - Vol. 1
Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats - Wasteland
Playlist from 3/15:
Talking Heads - Remain in Light
Le Butcherettes - bi/MENTAL
Ozzy Osbourne - No More Tears
Nick Lowe - The Jesus of Cool
Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats - Wasteland
Playlist from 3/16:
Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats - Night Creeper
Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats - Blood Lust
Card of the day:
Hod, the area of Prudence, defined by Merriam-Webster as the ability to govern and discipline oneself with the use of reason. This applies directly to the self-destructive feelings I have toward a certain project I have right now, one that the carelessness of of one of those involved has led to a flurry of thoughts on my part to end the project. Anger and frustration are a natural reaction when the carelessness of others directly affects our plans, lives, etc. But instead of lashing out, it's always better to just take it on the chin and continue. If, that is, it's something and someone you care about.
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.
Waking up gently after a full-on rager last night. One party left; next week it's Guinness, Whiskey, Corned Beef in the Croc Pot and my annual State of Grace viewing.
Three folks who are near and dear to me have birthdays today. Happy Birthday.
Playlist yesterday was immense; I'll try to get it all but at some point it devolves into a song here and a song there:
NIN - The Downward Spiral
NIN - With Teeth
Screaming Females - All At Once
Dead Milkmen - Big Lizard in my Backyard
Violent Femmes - Eponymous
The Animals - Retrospective
Windhand/Satan's Satyrs - Split
Suburban Living - Video Love
Alabama Shakes - Sound and Color
ACDC - Highway to Hell
Dio - Holy Diver
Proto Radio Playlist (Phil Collins early stuff, Golden Earring, Red Rider, Don Henley)
David Bowie - Scary Monsters (and Super Freaks)
Teenage Wrist - Chrome Neon Jesus
King Woman -Created in the Image of Suffering
King Woman - I Wanna Be Adored
Slayer - Seasons in the Abyss
Grimes - Art Angels
Drab Majesty - The Demonstration
Card for the day:
So I'm going on a journey, eh? A journey to... Redondo Beach!
