The Cocteau Twins

This was my introduction to The Cocteau Twins back around late 90's. In the Napster days I'd pulls samples from all the different bands I'd never heard but always wanted to and make mix discs out of them. If I dug the stuff I'd go out and buy the record. I used to call those mixes Satan's Discoteque Volume whatever. Some of them were pretty good, I'll have to post a couple here at some point. Anyway, these were the two songs by Elizabeth Fraser, Robin Guthrie and Will Heggie that I downloaded first and totally at random. Talk about 100% accuracy, as not only do I still think these two songs - which open and close my favorite Cocteau Twins record, Heaven or Las Vegas - go great together, but either one of them would be strong enough to have make me a life-long fan, which I am.

Mick Harvey Has a New Record Coming Out

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It's titled Four (Acts of Love), due June 11th according to mxdwn. I couldn't find anything to post from it, so here's an interview from last year I'd never seen before.

The Virgins - FMD (NOT the video!)

So I first encountered this group this morning. They have a new video for this song. This is another reason why I generally don't dig music videos (though I post an awful lot of them, eh?). I watched about ten seconds of it and in the same flash of realization knew I loved the song but hated the video. Oh how I wish my first impression of the song had been cerebral instead of visual. Sorry, but the 80's video mock-up's been dead (to me at least) for some time - it's just not funny on any visual level at this point. But enough criticism, because again, I really dig the song.

The Melvins w/Scott Kelly - Warhead (Venom Cover)

Chelsea Light Moving "Empires Of Time" Northampton, MA 2.24.13

Found a couple of these posted on Brooklyn Vegan today. Nice. You can see the others and read about the performance if you go here.

My Friend Sonny's Audition for Check Please

He just kills it in this. I haven't seen Check Please in forever being that I've lived 300 miles away for years but seriously, Chicago or not if you landed here and you like funny, watch this and then Like it, Tweet it, whatever. THIS HAS TO HAPPEN!!!

Batman Inc #8 (Spoilers)

image courtesy of www.rpad.tv

Sucks. I'm sad. Damien was easily my favorite character in the DC universe.

"But in the new issue #6 when he meets Alfred the cat, I realized that I was probably drawing him with a smile for the first and last time. That was rough. I spent forever trying to get that smile just right." - Artist Chris Burnham from a newsarama conducted interview.

I do a full write-up of my reaction here

Atoms For Peace (Thom Yorke, Flea) - Ingenue Video

I don't know too much about Atoms for Peace yet. I've avoided a lot of stuff slowly trickling out onto the web because even though I LOVE Radiohead from OK computer on to about Hail to the Thief, I have to be in a distincly Radiohead mood in order to listen to them and really get the full benefit from it. Radiohead is a very particular mood or tone for me and to indulge it out of turn does both the band and my own self a disservice. That's not to say that I think Atoms for Peace will necessarily sound anything like Radiohead, but you know, it's relative. And I'm posting this from work, so I've not even heard it as I post it, but I'm pretty sure I'm ready for it.

James Wan's The Conjuring

I loved Insidious. Haven't seen Sinister yet, but have heard nothing but good things. This trailer was - and I can't believe I'm able to say this as most movies don't qualify - but this trailer was FREAKIN' SCARY AS ALL HELL. And that's what I love.

Stitches Trailer

Brilliant! Evil clowns are, often, hard to turn down. Here's another I've posted before and am still waiting to be actually made and released:

Summer People - I Do What I Want

Found this on Brooklyn Vegan. Pretty bad ass. You can go to the band's bandcamp and hear more of their music. From what I've seen thus far I'm really digging Summer People.

Mr Bungle Live 1/10/91 - LA's Club Lingerie

The Bronx - New Video: Youth Wasted

I love The Bronx. Sometime in 2003 or 2004 I saw them open for the Dillinger Escape Plan at the Fireside Lounge in Chicago (oh how I miss the Fireside) and they just tore through an amazing set that had me buy their CD on the spot. Fast forward to 2006 and The Bronx II had just come out - and it was even better than the first record! Singer Matt Caughthran is one of the few frontmen who can maintain an intimidating intensity without sacrificing his wit of humor and I like that. This video irked me in the opening moments, as it appeared to be yet another 'band pretending to play' theme, but then all the bizarre male stripper shit kicked in and I had quite the laugh. I haven't had a chance to buy the band's new album, surprisingly titled The Bronx (with a frequently added "IV" to help it stand apart from their other three albums) but it's available in shops and on itunes and it's only a matter of time.

And now since I'm in a Bronx mood, here's some footage of them playing what may possibly be a basement in Barcelona. The sound quality isn't that great, but it's still pretty cool to see them perform in a space this small:

David Bowie The Stars (are out tonight)

The Wait - Killing Joke 1980/metallica 1987

And the cover. The older I get the more Garage Days Re-Revisited is the only album by this particular band that I can 100% get behind. Well, that's not entirely true, but some days it definitely is.

Writer's Inspiration

Tool Re-Issuing Opiate via Their Website

This is good news. I've been slowly gaining escape velocity into a full-out Tool binge with all of the conjecture floating around the interwebs pertaining to the possible release of a new Tool album this year. There's some interesting things going on with this re-issue of the band's first EP, which you can read more about here.

Iggy Pop Talks about new Iggy&The Stooges record

Props on Mr. Pop's ripping of the smashing pumpkins. Awesome!!!

I'll not lie and say I'm a fan of 2007's The Weirdness. In fact, I threw it out the window of my car I hated it so much (I know - I don't normally litter. I was making a point though and while that doesn't make it okay, it's something that happened in the spur of the moment). I'll not be buying Iggy and the Stooges' Ready to Die on April 30th unheard, however if this is any indication it might be worth picking up. And I'm super happy that the record is being released on Fat Possum Records and Mike Watt is still in the band, as is bad ass James Williamson (Raw Power baby!!!).

Black Rebel Motorcycle Club - Returning

Mark Lanegan & Duke Garwood - Pentecostal (Black Pudding album)

David Foster Wallace on Voting

“If you are bored and disgusted by politics and don’t bother to vote, you are in effect voting for the entrenched Establishments of the two major parties, who please rest assured are not dumb, and who are keenly aware that it is in their interests to keep you disgusted and bored and cynical and to give you every possible reason to stay at home doing one-hitters and watching MTV on primary day. By all means stay home if you want, but don’t bullshit yourself that you’re not voting. In reality, there is no such thing as not voting: you either vote by voting, or you vote by staying home and tacitly doubling the value of some Diehard’s vote.”

- David Foster Wallace, "Up Simba!" Rolling Stone 2000

Thanks to  Logan Lockner at Paste Magazine for publishing a great list of DFW quotes here last week on what would have been the late Mr. Wallace's 51st birthday (2/21/13)

image courtesy of theatlanticwire

Lineup for Metallica's Orion Fest is a lot of Great bands...

... and Metallica, rise against and RHCP to balance out the good with some blah. But hey, it's their fest, right? Congrats to FIDLAR - really cool that they're on it.

Joy Division Live

My god, what year do you think this footage is from? Youtube truly has EVERYTHING on it Watching/hearing this sends chills down my spine. Words simply cannot express just how important I feel that Joy Division was to music and, subsequently, on comics (80's*/early 90's Vertigo stuff has Joy Division just dripping from it, as if the authors/artists were listening to their music at the time and acted as transducers, turning the sound of Joy Division into their words pictures. I've always thought the same could be said of much of The Smiths' music).

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* I should clarify that what I am perhaps clumsily referring to here is the fact that although Vertigo did not come into being until 1993 there were precursors at DC that would later be "re-branded" as Vertigo books, ie Alan Moore's Swamp Thing or even V for Vendetta which although published under the Vertigo banner for some time now, originally began as a serial in the pages of Warrior circa the early 80's.

Joss Whedon Accepting An Award at the James Dublin Int. Film Festival

This was just before A screening of Whedon's latest film, an adaptation of Shakespeare's "Much To Do About Nothing". According to aintitcoolnews, during the Q&A part of these proceedings someone in the crowd asked Mr. Whedon about Avengers 2, to which part of his response was, "Death, death and more death". Now - it would be easy to interpret this as the killing of characters, but also as ainitcool points out this is also possibly a reference to Death, as in the female embodiment of it that Thanos tries soooo hard to impress in The Infinity Gauntlet. How hard does he try to impress Death? By killing a very large percent of the galactic population. Might this be what the after-credits appearance of Thanos in the Avengers, the forthcoming Guardians of the Galaxy, and perhaps even the sequel to Thor, thus far titled Thor: The Dark World all be leading towards?

One can hope. After watching Whedon's Avengers film I dug out my old Infinity Gauntlet comics and started reading them for the first time in over twenty years. The concept is great but the execution... not so much. Hence the rabid anticipation fans have in seeing this adapted into the Marvel Movie Verse - it can be updated, streamlined and improved upon to no end (let's start with no Adam Warlock, shall we? A large part of Infinity Gauntlet's problem is it reeks of being a kickstarter series to launch what ended up being a pretty short-lived Adam Warlock series).

Frightened Rabbit - Backyard Skulls

Again, breaking my prejudice against videos featuring the band "playing" the music - at least in this case they were slick and did the school dance setting. That helped a lot. I don't know a lot of this band's material but what I know I like. Also working in the band's favor, A) their from Scotland so that's always a plus in my book and B) they remind me at times of that Pulp-era Brit indie rock.

PJ Harvey - Big Exit Live! 2001

Ah, the bombastic opening track from my favorite PJ Harvey record (that I know - I still don't have them all). There is such a tone that runs over this record; it's a little bit Nick Cave (that's probably more due to Mick Harvey's presence on this record and less to do with the fact that Polly Jean and Mr. Cave were at one time an item) and a little Radio Head (which is accented by not entirely because of Thom Yorke's presence on three tracks). It's also claustrophobic and quiet and a little bit hopeless and violent, as if just months before 9/11 Ms. Harvey was channeling the new Zeitgeist of fear and aggression that would be coming down the pipes and never quite leaving us here in the States. Listening to this record is a very specific mindset. It's fun and creatively-inspiring in the right moments but perhaps a bit bleak and haunting at others.

The Dark Knight Does Indeed Return

Just finished re-reading Frank Miller's Dark Knight Returns in preparation for back-to-backing both of these animated adaptions tonight. Can't wait - even without the internal monologue I think these will be freakin' awesome!

Now someone animate Grant Morrison's Gothic storyline from issues 6-10 of the Legends of the Dark Knight book circa 1989.

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds 2001 Concert

Well, the video for Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds live at LA's Henry Fonda Theatre may have been taken off-line, but here's an older show to get us through those withdrawals.