Dramarama - Anything, Anything

It's weird, I never heard this song before I moved to LA. Here they play it on pretty much every rock station, still, despite it being considerably old. Even KROQ plays it, and their rotation is about fifteen songs wide and really only dips into the 90's for (of course) Nirvana and (inexplicably) that Harvey Danger song Flagpole sitta (which I actually dig).

Marvel's Doctor Strange Movie

image courtesy of screenrant.com

This news is hours old so I'm not breaking anything here, but I just have to say that the fact that Marvel Phase 3 will contain a Doctor Strange movie is AWESOME!!!

Now, who to cast, eh?

UPDATE: Well, I've started a petition to get Hugh Laurie cast as Stephen Strange, not thinking that it will work per se, but as a method for showing Marvel support (or, I guess, lack thereof, for the actor getting the role). Read about and link to sign it on Joup: Laurie FOR Strange.

Also, check out Laurie's LastFM site here.

An Unexpected Gem of a Compilation

Oh, along about ten or eleven years ago there was a great little record store in Bridgeview, IL. It was about the only good thing in Bridgeview that was good, unless you count numerous adventures in Guidish Park trailer park (now known by some other, uppity name). Anyway, the store was called Unabused Music and it was run by a great uy named Mark. He specialized in having weird imports, bread-and-butter albums by great bands and generally just a nice selection of interesting left-of-center items. I discovered Au Pairs via a 6-disc compilation set I purchased from Mark.

It doesn't look like much. Frankly it looks like it's trying waaaaayyyyy too hard. But something made me buy it* and I was very glad that I did.

Along with Au Pairs there are a number of standout tracks that introduced me to a bunch of bands that I'd either heard of but never really heard or just plain had never heard of. This is one:



The live version of Chelsea's Right to Work on the Shit Factory is a lot more... concise and in general a better listen, but the one above is quite the interesting watch. I mean, the performance above pretty much becomes a shambles at one point, but that's part of the whole atmosphere of this scene - or at least as I understand it through my research, not having been there.

Lastly, the first track that really did it for me on the aforementioned Shit Factory was The Fall's Rowche Rumble - I'd always been aware of the accolades The Fall were given but they had remained on my periphery until I heard this track and fell absolutely in love.




.............

* This was when I was in a band called The Yellow House - a band that ended up making some pretty decent strides in really making a name for ourselves. It was easily my most radio-friendly group, kind of a combination of Blur, The Kinks and Black Rebel Motorcycle Club. In a Magickal effort to help us achieve our goal (which in the end it didn't) I named the Record Industry my 'god' and began making a weekly 'sacrifice' to it by no matter what buying two new CDs every Monday. This turned out great for my record collection, however the band eventually died right on the cusp of something great.

Ka sera sera

Start 'em early

Prepare your child for a job in the fast food industry with this helpful (and - in some cases - disturbingly prophetic) play kit!

Did somebody say lower your self esteem?

Dog Faced Hermans - Keep Your Laws Off My Body

The Cure - carnage visors

This is The Cure that I reeeaaallly love: Cold, dark and eerie. I'm glad they finally lightened up, but damn is this an exercise in PERFECT TONE.

Carnage Visors was hard to come by for most of the 90's. I remember seeing it on the B-side of the Faith cassette at Wind Records in Oak Lawn, IL. I didn't buy it, it disappeared and then when I went to buy Faith on disc it didn't have Carnage Visors. I eventually found it on an Import of B-sides and rarities, but I've still never bought Faith, probably just from the force of habit of waiting to come across a version with CV on it. About time I do that though - I'm largely unfamiliar even with it as an album but I remember at the very least The Drowning Man and The Funeral Party are great.

Flaming Lips - Seven Nation Army ( Live )

The Flaming Lips doing Seven Nation Army by the White Stripes but with the verse lyrics of The Butthole Surfers' Moving to Florida.

"My name... is Florida."

Butthole Surfers @ Doornroosje 1985

I never saw them live but out of everything I've found thus far on youtube this clip comes closest to what I always thought one of their shows would have looked like back in the day. Completely fucking insane. How couldn't it be, the original name of the band was The Inalienable Right to Eat Fred Astaire's Asshole. Why the change guys? Really?

Anyway, while googling the aforementioned original band name I found this excellent page HERE that is an oral history of the Surfers. Wow - such a good read. Should be converted into one of those Brilliant little 3 31/3 books.

Also, in researching my missing copy of Psychic... Powerless... Another Man's Sac I found the cover artist's website. Pretty wicked: http://www.macioce.org/

Assembly Line People Program - Glass Static

One of the best live bands I saw at Chicago's Fireside Bowl back in the late 90's. There's such a rift with a lot of groups from this time (my own from the time - Schlitz Family Robinson included) where they were very time/place and just missed the proliferation of digital/inter-tube age. A LOT of great bands from that era just haven't developed a posthumous presence online and it's a shame but totally understandable. One day maybe...

In the end I like to post this stuff to try and catch the artists' attention even if just for a second to say, "Hey, thank you. This was awesome and I still enjoy it to this day."

sys.exe - liquid sky

I know this guy. I really dig his stuff. He's doing some Christian Fisting remixes for us soon.

I'm excited.

Janice Whaley - Wow

I'm not even sure where to start with this one. It began with me reading one of my favorite blogs, Condemned to Rocknroll. Someone left a comment on one of the articles about an all-acapella Smiths cover project. I'm not very into covers, but I happened to have cracked The Queen is Dead and Meat is Murder back out today and of course, like an addict reintroduced to their favorite substance the second I get a nibble of The Smiths it's a very short distance to obsession. Pretty soon I'll be laying on the living room floor, reading Neil Gaiman's Sandman and listening to The Headmaster Ritual over and over and over again.

So after listening to that I did some snooping and found some more of her music. I'm really digging this as well.

Nick Cave - Fifteen Feet Of Pure White Snow

One of my favorite Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds songs from what is DEFINITELY my favorite album by the group - how have I never seen this video before???

Brilliant!!!

(note Jarvis Cocker in the smashing green suit)

Chelsea Wolfe - MER

Psychetect

Klint Finley is the mastermind that runs one of the best information-nexus sites on the internet, Technoccult.net. He also has a description-defying music project called Psychetect. It is fantastic. It takes me to strange inner spaces where reality melts and my thoughts turn into liquid fire. It is equally great to write to and great to zone uncontrollably; a much-appreciated Shamanic presence in the sometimes bleak and chaotic inner landscape that bubbles around beneath the furthest corridors of my consciousness.

Psychetect's E.P. Extremism is available for $2 here on bandcamp (you can also link to it through technoccult, which is probably an even better route to take because if you've never seen the site before you'll be able to get a feel for just how much information is there.

Battle Tapes

In my absence from keeping this blog there are SO MANY things that I have forgotten to put here. Take Battle Tapes for instance. In September 2011 my life had gone through a bit of a storm - I'd went through the slow death of Borders Books - a place I'd worked as a supervisor at for 5 years. And brother, it was a slow, painful death. Near to the end I was able to jump ship and begin a new career in the cryogenic field. That was August 2011, so like I said, September that year was a learning curve to say the least (I'd never had any experience in cryo-anything). Around this time my beautiful wife surprised me one Friday with tickets to see Helmet the following evening at, of all places, The Viper Room. Neither one of us like the Viper Room very much and this show was no exception. In fact, it pretty much made us HATE it. The place is soooo cool, if it was only run a little better. Case in point, the show had two bands on the bill and was supposed to start at, if I remember correctly, eight-thirty. Well, the club superimposed a local showcase in front of the Helmet gig and we ended up sitting through (by which of course I mean standing) two very, very bad "So Cal punk bands". Think of how much green day just absolutely sucks while trying oh so hard to convince every one - including me thinks, themselves - how 'punk rock' they are and then multiply that by about two thousand.

Yeah, that bad.

Anyway, by the time Helmet's opener came on neither my wife nor I were in a mood to tolerate even one more shitty band. Good thing Battle Tapes came out and BLEW THE FUCKING DOORS OFF THE CLUB. Really, I mean they were the highlight of the show, not really because they were better than Paige Hamilton and crew, but because when we had to leave only about seven songs into Helmet's set (Helmet! At a club as small as the Viper Room!!) it didn't hurt that bad because Battle Tapes was just that good.

I signed up for their mailing list and a few months later received word that they had released an EP for free on their site. Said EP is still available for free download here and I've posted their widget above so you can even hear it first.

It's sooooo good!!!

Corrections House - Hoax The System

The long-whispered about featuring Sanford Parker of Chicago Black Metal/Industrial band Nachtmystium along with Scott Kelly  of Neurosis, Mike IX Williams of Eyehategod and Bruce Lamont of Yakuza and Bloodiest has finally arrived. Above is their bandcamp, below the first video. Great throwback to the Industrial days of old. 

FIDLAR - Cheap Beer

The guys in FIDLAR bring the old school aesthetic without sounding like they're rehashing anything. Debut album came out today on Mom + Pop Music. What's more, you can buy the album directly from the band in what has to be the best Bundle pack I've seen in a while - either as CD or LP w/ t-shirt or (and this is my favorite) as CD or LP with a custom SKATE DECK! How freakin' cool is that? Mine cracked about a year ago so this might be the way to go if it doesn't sell out right away. I don't skate very often these days, but it's felt weird to not have a deck. I've had one on hand since about...1987.

2013 Sundance Film Festival Shorts: The Apocalypse

I've been routing around looking at a lot of the shorts at Sundance. I REALLY liked this one.

From Sundance

JELLO BIAFRA & the GUANTANAMO SCHOOL OF MEDICINE LIVE @ SO 36

Biafra's new(er) group doesn't get the props or traffic they deserve. This is every bit as awesome as the Kennedy's - further proof who really wrote all those DK songs.

Fuck dockers.

Oh, and yes, that's Andrew Weiss of early Ween and Rollins Band fame, on bass.

Sound City Official Trailer

I respect the hell out of Dave Grohl but his music does next to nothing for me. It's textbook radio rock - not bad, just not for me. Likewise for most of the modern bands touted herein (Queens of the Stone Age and NIN being the exceptions). But I LOVE Neve boards and a lot of recording history happened at this place. I heard an interview with Grohl and Corey Taylor from Slipknot/Stone Sour on Kevin and Bean late last week and although I didn't particularly go in for the track they premiered for their shared music project The Sound City Players (which also features Rick Nielson of Cheap Trick and Krist Novoselic I'll put the song up as well. Props to Grohl for doing all of this, again it's not my cup of tea but it's cool to see someone with so much stature in the mainstream rock community actually do cool, creative and respectful stuff like this. And props to the bands who participated in the doc, from Fleetwood Mac to Slipknot to Cheap Trick and everywhere in between.

Wrong (2013)

'

This looks amazing. And come on - William Fichtner is THE shit!!! Directed by Quentin Dupieux, the man who made Rubber (2010).

Decoding Tool's "Holy Gift"

I found this about two months ago. It's been some time since I've listened to Tool. They're a band I love but I have a very specific mindset that I have to be in in order to listen to. Part of this is because they are not a 'passive' listening band. Tool is very engaging with their music, I cannot just put them on in the background. I wrote a massive chunk of my first, unpublished novel to Lateralus and to this day it remains my favorite of their records. This was a time when I was also really falling into Magick and the album fit perfectly - the enigmatic way in which the band conducts itself lends to their mystique, as does a lot of the little 'hidden' things they do in their music and on their website. If you're interested in what I'm talking about go here. That's a link that was hidden on their site back around the time Lateralus dropped. How many famous rock bands spend time talking about/doing this kind of thing? To some it would be an act, the whole Magick thing, or a fashion, but to Tool and their inner circle there has always seemed to be the air of research into our world, and in keeping with this Tool's Holy Gift makes perfect sense.

There is a video here that explains the concept, but the basic gist is that the Fibonacci Sequence is integral to the record Lateralus - it contemplates or draws upon it in several places. Could there then be some hidden meaning/message in re-arranging the track listing of the record in accordance with Fibonacci's numbers?

Swans - The Seer

Okay, so I'm fairly late in the game on this one. I spent a large part of the year (7 months to be exact) holed up and working on a screenplay that may never see the light of day due to artistic disagreements. In that time a lot of music came and went under my radar as I was completely unplugged from any semblence my usual practice of scowering high and low for new stuff. I played MAJOR catch-up during the last two months of the year, the whole time harboring a feeling that one of the albums that "got away" - Swans newest record The Seer yet somehow never managing to transmute that feeling into acquisition. Then, about  a week after I posted my top ten albums of 2012 on Joup a friend of mine gave me a copy of The Seer and I loaded it into my ipod. About a week after that on a day off I put the album on and had trouble ever turning it off.

Frankly, until this record the Swans frightened me a bit. About five years ago I picked up the Cop/Young God - Greed/Holy Money reissue put out by Some Bizzare Records and although I LOVED the music I had a bit of an adverse reaction to the general tone of the record. Now, this in itself is a little out of character for me. I love a lot of dark, sometimes violent music. I'm not a prude and I don't scare easy. However, at the time I bought this record I had just finished reading George Petros' book Art That Kills and it had unnerved me, made me question some of the areas of art that I dabble in. Sometimes things we take at face value have deeper meanings that we don't stop to contemplate. Petros' book - while covering many artists whose work I truly love and consider historically important - also covers some that, well, fell more on the 'leave that the fuck alone' side of things. What's more around this time some strange happenings had resurfaced and to put it very succinctly a friend and I were seriously questioning whether A) a Magick ritual we had crafted in the form of a song for our band The Forest Children had caused a violent crime in our old recording space, or B) we were losing out minds for thinking this might be the case. My initial reaction to the Swans record was a combination of a psychic hangover from Mr. Petros' book, this hazy personal event and, specifically, the lyrics for track #2 on the Swans disc, a song titled Job.

I put the record away for a while.

I am a MASSIVE GodFlesh/Justin K. Broadrick fan and after buying one of the earlier Jesu albums and finding myself smitten with the vocals of Jarboe I made the connection and dug Swans back out. At first I isolated the Jarboe-sung tracks, soaking in the haunting, spectral atmosphere I'd not made it to before. Then I held my breath and gave the entire two discs another spin from beginning to end.

Wow.

The first thing I noticed when I went back to Cop/Young God - Greed/Holy Money was how Michael Gira was so obviously a huge influence on them. Many a band quote Broadrick and GodFlesh as influences but I'd never really delved into what bands influenced them. But the overall tone of the album was just still too dark for me. Actually, dark is not even the tone. While beginning this post a couple of days ago I dug the record out again (much to my wife's chagrin) and listened to the entirety of the first disc. It still takes me to a mental place that I just don't feel comfortable going. But here's the thing - that in and of itself is a feat for an artist. Just because the record causes this reaction in me doesn't mean I don't think it's an important or 'good' record. Au contraire - this makes me think it is something extremely special, to be reserved for special occasions when my inner psychonaut feels the call to places darker than I normally trek.

Anyway, The Seer has trumped much of my list for last year - maybe all of it. It is a magickal, complex and limitlessly rewarding piece of music the likes of which I've not heard assembled in one place before. It is now time then, for me to go back and begin buying all of the Swans records I've missed out on over the years.

Tonight Tonight Tonight! Henry Rollins Radio Show

Before I watch Instrument I'll be listening to Henry Rollins' weekly radio show on NPR station KCRW. You can follow the link below and stream it if you do not live in Los Angeles or any of the sister areas in Southern California that carry this station. Week after week it is the BEST radio show I've come across, not because I'm a huge Rollins' fan (which I've become BECAUSE of the show) but because he plays the most eclectic array of tracks and his absolute Love of music seeps through every moment of the two hours from eight to ten that he's on the air.

KCRW Broadcast 199 - Henry Rollins on KCRW

Fugazi - Instrument

Whoah. Never thought to look for this on the 'tubes. Somehow it has evaded me since it's release in (I think) '99.

Dig in.

New Alice in Chains

I'm posting this without even listening to it as I'm at work and the computer I'm on does not have speakers. After Black Gives Way to Blue though, Jerry Cantrell and crew have (yet again) earned the benefit of the doubt.

Whereas with a lot of folks my age (36) Nirvana was their important new band during high school in the nineties, mine was AIC. Not to say I didn't like Nirvana - I did and still do. To a point. But the first time I heard Dirt - specifically the track Junkhead - it was like Layne, Jerry and the boys were speaking directly to me, summating my experience (minus the heroin) and presenting me with music the likes of which I'd never heard before (and really still haven't since) while doing it. When Cantrell began touring again under the name Alice in Chains I was skeptical but hey - it's not his fault Layne died. I made peace with it. Then when I heard they were releasing an album I was a little taken aback.

But then I heard it.

Several old school bands have released new or 'comeback' albums in the last ten years that somehow seems to pick up EXACTLY where they left off. Bauhaus's Go Away White and now Soundgarden's King Animal spring immediately to mind. But how Cantrell did it w/out one half of the main songwriters is beyond belief.

In an interview I read recently he talked about how with this upcoming album he was in the unique experience of feeling sophomore jitters for the second time in his band's career. I don't know how well album sales and their tours are doing for the guys in Alice but I hope it's keeping them living a good life.

They deserve it for all of the wonderfully innovative rock they've made over the years and I for one will be buying this new album DAY IT COMES OUT just to help show support to a band from the past that STILL has not disappointed me to date.

Upstream Color Trailer #1

Chills.

BRMC's "Specter At The Feast"

Beginnging at the end of December Black Rebel Motorcycle Club began releasing teasers for their forthcoming record "Specter At The Feast"

I am excited.This is the third of six teasers (three more still to come). They're cool, but they won't give you the feeling of how awesome a Rock n Roll band they are. This will:

Justin K. Broadrick exclusive DJ set for Self-Titled

In writing a forthcoming piece on Swans I stumbled across this little gem over on Self-Titled Magazine's page. Click here for write-up/track listing. Super Awesome and thank you kindly to these fine folks at Self-Titled!!!

NEPHICIDE by JOGGER

While I've been off writing for my friend's magazine Joup I realized how much I've neglected my blog when I found that I had not posted anything on it since the video for Liars' No. 1 Against the Rush dropped in June.

June!!!

Anyway, while I work up some content here's my favorite music video EVER (only slightly hyperbolic of a statement there). The video's director, Matthew Robinson, has some great content on vimeo you can link from here.

Down the stairs it came

A still and potential album cover from my band The Forest Children (formerly known as Darkness Brings the Cold).

Liars - No.1 Against The Rush (Official Video)

Say it ain't so WEEN...

I spent much of the week disconnected from the world at large and after a particularly rough Friday, June 1st I succombed to the medicine of sleep at an uncharacteristically early 8 PM and slept the deep, restorative sleep of the over-worked. When I awoke this morning I logged into the virtual world and toured around my usual sites in an attempt to see what I'd missed over the last several days. It was on one of my favorite of those sites – a marvelous blog entitled Heaven is an Incubator – where I came across the news that one of my all-time favorite bands, Ween, had called it quits.

Not a good way to start the day.

It's no surprise really, and although it saddens me deeply I must say that if this is what Aaron Freeman, aka Gene Ween needs to do at this stage in his life, then I am happy he made the decision and support it fully. Still... it's been five years since WEEN's last album proper – La Cucaracha – and I would be lying if I didn't admit that there is a very large part of me that really wanted one last record before this finality which, if I'm being honest, is really not that much of a surprise.

If you're a music lover and you don't know WEEN I implore you ...

read the rest on Joup...

                                                                                          

RIP Adam Yauch

Three days ago the world received the news that one of the founding members of the Beastie Boys, Adam Yauch – better known as MCA – died after a long battle with cancer. I’ll not lie, it’s been years since I really followed the Boys’ music, however it was very important to me in my teens/early twenties and as musicians I will always respect them. Paul’s Boutique and Check Your Head will forever be modern masterpieces in my book, even though as I grew older (and so did the boys) I lost the ability to identify with aging men who gesticulate wildly while they throw out rhymes. Well, that’s not really fair to them because the fact is I just kinda lost the ability to identify with most rap, period. Nonetheless, last year about this time I went through a big revival with the BBoys for a few weeks and during that time I gave careful consideration to their 1992 masterpiece Check Your Head and came to the realization that if I was put on the spot to pick the album that I think best encapsulates the “alternative boom” of 90′s popular music it would probably be Check Your Head, an album that transcends their rap/hip-hop roots and really stretches the ideas of musicianship, creative process and good ol’ fashioned FUN (K).




My heart goes out to Mr. Yauch’s family, Adam Horowitz, Michael Diamond and the millions of people he affected with his music, and later his film production company Oscilloscope Laboratories. Below is a re-posting of the article I wrote about Check Your Head‘s place in musical history for Chud.com. I’ve tidied it up and expanded the piece, as MCA’s death has put me back in a state of contemplating his legendary band’s career.

Read the rest on Joup...

Godflesh - Slateman (live)

David Lynch 'Good Day Today' (Official Video)

I'm waaaaaay behind on this but kudos to director Arnold de Parscau and cinematographers Jonathan Bertin, Antoine Bon - not to mention the actors - for the winning video. Very nice

David Lynch - "Crazy Clown Time" (Official Video)

Kevin Smith's SMoviola "Buckaroo Banzai" at the 49th New York Film Festival

Some New Live WEEN

Courtesy of Mr. Brown, setlist below.



Video streaming by Ustream


..................

SETLIST

denver 12/29/11 first of 3 nights. they set a record for # of songs played. no song repeated on any night. (Mr. Brown adds that, "We just may have the next live disk set, they sound in top form." - yes they do my friend. Yes they do.)

did you see me?

golden eel

stallion 3

my own bare hands

spinal mengits

buckingham gn

captain

zoloft

mollusk

learnin to love

stroker ace

gabrielle

tick

object

roses r free

ice castles

final alarm

the argus

powder blue

richard smokr

pumpin 4 the man

I saw gener cryin in his sleep

put coke on my dick

shamemaker

band onthe run

homo rainbow

tried & true

someday

encore,

freedom76

your party

fluffy

The Men That Will Not Be Blamed For Nothing- BRUNEL

Finally... new album March 12th

Ghost LIVE in San Francisco, Feb 1, 2012

I knew I would regret missing this the other night @ The Roxy. Luckily they will be back in April opening for Opeth/Mastodon. My friends Greg and Tori assure me I missed a great show, and as this footage from the night before the LA show demonstrates, I 100% believe them. The only drawback to waking up @ 4:30AM for work everyday is it makes me a wuss when it comes to staying up late.

Oh how times have changed.

Chick publications: Saving us from Ourselves for over 40 years

Many of you will know what Chick publications is, even if you don't know that you do.

Wait, backup.

Many of you will know the work Chick Publications produces even if you do not know Chick publications by name. Have you ever known someone, maybe a high school guidance counselor or janitor, who is a 'born again' and goes about trying to 'save' others by passing out quirky little Jesus-comic strips? If you've seen them then you'll recognize them - they're real small and always have titles like, 'It's not your fault' or 'The Beast' and they're always filled with the idea that the world is going to end any gosh darn moment and since it's possessed by Satan if you don't drop everything* right now you could be attacked by demons or atheists or demon atheists!!! The books themselves look like this:

There was a very quiet school janitor who gave these out in junior high or high school and they've fascinated me since. Part of what fascinates me is that no matter where I go these things always pop up eventually. The other part that fascinates me is while they are earnestly trying to be serious they're really quiet hysterical; hammy to the point that it's incredible to believe anyone takes them seriously. Yet obviously some do just that. Recently someone gave me one at work. 'The Beast',a small black-and-white strip that sports a happy family on the coverwith 666 etched into each of their heads (mom, dad and baby too!!!) and a creepy-looking hand reaching out and apparently baptizing them into the ways of darkness. I hadn't seen one of these for a while and this was a great reminder of just how kookie religion can make some folk. The strip talks about 'Life as it is today' - basically a drunken orgie of fornication and debauchery, citing clipped bible verse after clipped bible verse to tie in technology, slowly spinning the drunken orgie into a war games-like scenario of evil global control, culminatingwith a page that is so ridiculous it requires a visual aid:

Now, I know there is a whoooole mess of good stuff happening in the panel above but I would like to draw your attention to two things in particular. First, as my good friend Ray pointed out the end of world looks kinda cool from the Chick publication camp's point of view, especially if you're a horror movie fan. I mean, I always thought the Apocalypse was going to be some big, abstract menagerie of multi-headed biblical beasts and fires of judgment - apparently that is not the case. Let's see, we've got Bat-winged devils, Baphomet, what looks like it could be Nosferatu. Also there is a zombie (drawn awfully similar to Exorcist-era Linda Blair, no?), a posse of black-robed druid guys and, my favorite, the Wolf man. Do you think the agents of the Apocalypse have to pay licensing fees to use the Wolf Man in their war of Good vs. Evil? I'm betting Universal would be into that. Imagine the royalties.

Second thing I want to talk about from the little jewel above is the caption at the very bottom, beneath the comic frame proper. Let me quote for you now, adding my own emphasis by bolding: 'For factual information on Satanism, read LUCIFER DETHRONED, the true story of ex-vampire William Schnoebelen. By Chick Publications.'

Okay, so, ah, do the words factual and ex-vampire belong in the same sentence if we are not watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer? This led me to do a little google-stalking on ol' Mr. Schnoebelen. Wanna know what I found? Check it out.

http://www.relfe.com/07/Bill_William_Schnoebelen.html

Scroll down and read Mr. Schnoebelen's 'be there done that' list. Satanist, 33 degree Mason, Knight Templar, Thelemite, Vampire (still don't get that one), and Priest for The Church of Latter Day Saints??? Sound like a devotee's list of every other freakin' option out there, besides of course directly attacking the Eastern religions, which I'd bet dollars to donuts they do elsewhere. And that's another thing. If you read down far enough - about to where the article talks about Mormonism - you'll find this little faux pas. Again, I've added my emphasis by bolding:

'Within days, his life fell apart and he lost all his magical power. This crisis led us, ultimately to join the Mormon (LDS) Church…'Ahhh... so Mr. Schnoebelen or his wife are the ones writing this, trying to adopt a third person stance but no doubt brimming with too much self-importance to maintain the distance required for third person, instead falling into self-righteous character and subsequently first person as well.

The whole Chick thing is, I suppose, a cultural phenomenon. However, cultural phenomena are not, by a rule, always good things. Look at skinny jeans. No, seriously, I started out with the intent to debunk (i.e. ridicule) these mini comics that saturate our social atmosphere on underground levels. I lost that thread for a bit above because in researching these things I remembered how much fun they are. However, as I'm sure Count Schnoebelen himself might agree, many times dangerously undermining agencies begin with an ignorant or intolerant message and then work to sugar-coat it in the most seemingly benign or even fun flavors imaginable.Jim Jones anyone???

...................

* Except I'd imagine, your pants.

'Til Tuesday - Voices Carry

M83 'Midnight City' Official video

I Love a lot of music but it's not often that a group affects me the way M83 has. 2008's Saturdays=Youth is a powerhouse album - dark and mysterious in a gorgeous and evocative way. About two months ago when Anthony Gonzalez and crew released their first single off the very eagerly-awaited double album that came out at the beginning of October (album titled Hurry Up, We're Dreaming, lead single titled Midnight City) I first heard it on Youtube with this static image behind it:


















I seriously had chills upon listening to this track the first (and subsequent 200 times). It has become sacred to me, and affects my nervous system like a drug.

A very pleasurable drug.

The album is amazing, as expected, and last night we saw them live at the Music Box. I've been to hundreds of live shows in my life, many very amazing. Nothing has ever affected me the way M83 did. If you like the song below, Midnight City, now with an official video that also completely leveled me with Awe, buy the album (and then go back and buy the others, especially the aforementioned Saturdays=Youth and pay whatever it costs to see them live*, you will not regret it.





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*If you live in LA or anywhere near it they did just pass through here on their tour, however, this Saturday the 12th tickets go on sale to see them at Club Nokia. That's a venue I never thought I'd step foot in, but you know what? It'll be worth it and after seeing them once, just like a drug, it's impossible to think of missing an opportunity to see them again!!!

Bulb - Next Please

Nice...

A Convesation With Myself

I originally wrote this about a year ago* and at the last minute, instead of posting it here on my blogger where my, ah, headier stuff belongs, I posted it on my Chud.com blog to try something different there.

I don't really think anyone got it. However, that is a slightly condescending statement and I do not wish to come off as someone who believes his insight into modern life so important that anyone need get it at all. However, there are points here to be made, and as such I re-post this here now, with the intent of adding to it and possibly making some more sense of these strange mutations we are undergoing sociologically as well as, I think, physiologically.

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A conversation with myself.

I don’t want to get on a soapbox (yes he does) but there’s something developmentally wrong with the children that are coming up in the high-speed internet, media-saturated landscape of western culture today. Has anyone else noticed how a lot of children do not acknowledge other people around them? Example: Children playing in the street as traffic approaches. Someone yells to them that there is an automobile approaching and they do not move or even acknowledge that they heard the warning, let alone are probably in some kind of immediate danger. Or here's another I've observed – a waiter in a restaurant asks a child what they would like to drink and they have to be prompted by a parent to answer, as if they do not know what a question is unless it appears on a computer screen and contains emoticons or abbreviations? A lot of people are shy as kids, but this is something else. There is a certain… Cronenbergian, perhaps even ghostly blank look on their faces, as if they’re losing or perhaps never learned how to navigate space and interact with actual living, breathing people?

Now, while writing this I’m realizing how much I might sound like some middle-aged housewife who is only recently seeing what the internet/immersive video game/iPod-earbud-hanging-out-of-one-ear-bland-androgynous-hip-pop-channeled-through-the-other-like-some-constant -supermarket-soundtrack youth culture is actually doing to the genome of these, the newest generations of our species, and is sitting down to write a concerned and outraged, albeit completely out-of-date and after-the-fact letter, to the editor of reader’s digest magazine (ah, yeah, you do). But here’s the thing, I’ve known about this for a while. I’ve understood and to some degree even watched this computer mausoleum affect myself. I worked around a lot of teenagers at a bookstore for quite a while. I see the apathy, the removal, the total lack of classic human communication etiquette, grammar, courtesy and honor. The exponential self-interest. It has not been until just lately however that I’d been able to transpose this to how these rising qualities will most likely affect the world I will one day leave behind me. I’m a bit of a classicist and although I’m no card-carrying fan of the human race as a whole, I really must say that it is going to be in a hell of a lot worse shape when the generations that came of age before the internet are gone and can no longer walk the youngins through the simple routine and rituals of daily life.

…………

Okay, here we go. Thanks gramps for waking up and soilin’ yourself with outrage over ‘those damn youngsters…’ When did you become that old guy?

Seriously, you say you’re a classicist but for what? We inhabit the same brain, same body, and it can sometimes be awful hard to follow what and where you think evolution should occur. The thing is this is an awkward stage in human development; the transition from what egotist Tom Brokaw calls the ‘greatest generation’ era of white picket fences, 2.5 kids and a neighborhood where the inhabitants behave more like individual cells in a greater whole than a bunch of individual entities lined up and positioned within their separate environments and something else, something more akin to a global nervous system.

That’s fine, but most of our legally defined social systems are still operating on the old paradigm. Most of us still have to leave the house to make a living, and the more everything shifts to the Internet, the less that’s able to happen for more of us.

Okay, but its probably going to be these younger generations that figure out how to further convert our outdated concepts for business and income. Look at facebook, napster, wiki-this and wiki-that.

Yeah, but those are all things that are further putting the bullet in the interaction between living, breathing people. Why is some kid who has invented the next great profit-bearing internet innovation going to give a shit about helping employ an escalating out-of-work force when he can’t even say hi to someone he passes on the street outside his apartment?

Paaaalleeease! Sure people don’t walk around and say ‘Hi’ anymore; to strangers they pass on the street or to the people that live next to them. This, as well you know asshead, is often a very cunning survival tactic. More than one bad experience has been brought on in our renting career simply by you ‘being polite and trying to get to know the neighbors’. That often leads to 2 AM knocks on the door and awkward, ‘My families all fucked up and I’ve got nowhere else to go’ moments. That might have been fine in the 50’s and 60’s, but now everyone has an agenda and not everyone understands there are basic rules of engagement and expectation when asking strangers or acquaintances for a little friendly neighborhood kindness or assistance.

But that is exactly what I mean! That lack of empathy for other people, the knocker’s ability to understand limits and the knockee’s lack of empathy for another human being who may or may not just need an hour of another person’s time to re-ground themselves, that is all a by-product of the narrowing little lives we lead.

Okay, shut up and let me finish my speel here, okay? Geesh… Anyway, the thing is, as I was saying, we’re at a big ol’ sloppy transition between not only a generational gap but an informational one. People are going to be different now because they have access to waaaaaaay more information. You may think that the old school, 227-ish idea of a neighborhood is a great thing, and maybe it is, but you’re basing what you think you know on the world as you’ve been raised to understand it through the various media outlets that you were exposed to. Let’s face it, our parents and even moreso their parents saw a vast gulf of a difference between our age and theirs because of the constant presence of a television in every house. And to be honest, I know we haven’t watched actual television programming for decades now but we watched A LOT of it as a kid. This and your parents, grandparents, friends’ parents, teachers, school teachers, assemblies, principals, film strips, out-dated Encyclopedia Britanicas all helped give you this idea of what the United States was like in previous generations. But now those influences have shifted and there’s a new paradigm and a new learning curve for these new kids as to what the social world actually is.

Yeah, it’s facebook and youtube and less and less interaction with actual living breathing human beings.

Ahh, hello Mcfly? How many times you use facebook this week?

Hey, that’s different.

Bullshit. It’s affecting all of us and you can’t hold yourself above everyone else. Granted, there is something creeping into the younger generations, that’s one of the tendrils of thinking behind our theory that Autism may actually be part of the next evolutionary jump of humankind. You always walk around referencing how terrible it is that in our culture we lock up schizophrenics and other mentally ill people while in other cultures they cherish them as shaman and priests able to access other, ah, operating systems for lack of a better term.

I guess that’s true. It always seems such a farce to us that anything that goes against social paradigm is treated as a flaw…

Exactly!!! See, the difference here is as the younger generations go through whatever it is they are going through is it is happening on a mass scale. Our last vestiges of the old school, communal world is overlapping with this new, isolated, socially awkward and self-absorbed one and they are by nature of the functionality of each rubbing against one another and causing friction. But when all of us old types die off (or complete a late-arrival change ourselves) things will work differently. There’s a new world transitioning in, and you may not like it, but it is going to be one conducted globally, over the internet, without a lot of the tactile, environmentally-grounded facets of this one.

Like, ah, human cogs in the Matrix perhaps?

Ahh, yeah, I guess so. Or like Wall-e.

Well then, you might be right, but it’s not necessarily a good transition then.

Maybe… maybe not.

Then I guess I’ll just get back on my goddamn soapbox and start over again. “these goddamn kids…”

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to be continued...

Things I Didn't Say: Wolf Moon

The previous entry is fairly simplified – I desperately long to find a way to eek this Autumn tone out of my soul and onto paper where others can possibly feel it as much as I do. For lack of a word and I suppose feeling melodramatic enough to accentuate said mood I'll say that I commune with this time of year possibly stronger than any other. When I was younger and there were actual seasons in the Midwest other than six months of winter/six months of summer with a few sporadic portals of the transitories thrown in here and there, never fully making a 'Season' per se, I remember what a switch music was in this time. I'd go from my summer, hang-out tunes like John Spencer Blues Xplosion, Beastie Boys and Cibo Matto to NIN, The Cure and Type O Negative like that (*snap*). Over the last several years I spent in Chicago I saw that change as the seasons waned, and here in LALA land, well, it's a fairly even keel all the time. I'm not really complaining – I didn't ever want to have to live through a winter again unless A) we live in the UK (ultimate life goal in the category of positioning for both of us) or, B) have a Thompson-esque compound in Colorado. But while I don't miss the winter I miss the rain, and I miss the Autumns of my younger days.

I remember shortly after my friend Jake died. This was like 1997 and he'd been pretty much the only person that connected to this aspect of my brain. We were both HUGE Type O fans and would often spend entire nights just laying around baked out of our minds listening to their albums (only up to October Rust at that point – Jake, you don't know what you missed in subsequent years man). They were the sonic embodiment of Autumn (still are) and something about the combination of the buzz, the music and that sharp, chill Autumn air that grants such clarity morphed. This is about the time I realized I had what is commonly referred to in the psychological community as 'Synesthesia' and man – pinning my senses together with those disparate elements really took me to another place. A place I can still achieve sometimes if the air is right and the music appropriate.

I went there after Jake died. I drove my old wood-paneled dodge mini-van West into the last, dying strains of sunlight one evening, parked at a random forest preserve and listened to this song. I don't know how long I sat there in the diminishing light, or how many times I listened the song, but finally something snapped and I suddenly found myself walking into the woods, disappearing into the slow, thick fog rolling out from beneath the trees, a inspirational carpet that beckoned me along a path into the thicket, amidst strange, night-time animal noises and the reverberations of Peter Steele's haunting vocals and then all at once, I began to run.
I ran for an undecipherable amount of time and distance; I ran because I couldn't stand still, walk or sit any more. My best friend was dead, my world was shattered after a not-so long ago mending (but that's a story for a different time, like when my first novel eventually gets picked up and published) and my eyes were alive with tears. But there I was, running like a madman, like a wild animal beneath the rising moon, shaking with the raw intoxication that that Autumn air can bestow upon those who can surrender to it. Running with nowhere to go but back to my car (eventually), back to my home, back to my life which, though I didn't believe it then, got better.

Thank You Peter, Kenny, Johnny Josh (and Sal in the early days). Thank you for the a soundtrack to a night I will never forget and that will always grant me strength and passion in a world seemingly derived to extinguish them.

Type O Negative - Burnt Flowers Fallen

It's possibly as close as I'll get to Autumn this year, as our yearly October excursion home to the Midwest isn't happening due to my new gig. It's been overcast, dreary and even a little misty in LALA and I'm running with it as best I can. Type O has been in FULL EFFECT in the CD player as I drift into the darker realms of my subconscious.
Oh, and the 2nd annual Los Angeles edition of the H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival* this past weekend helped set the mood quite a bit as well.
To the trees...

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* My review of said Fest