Thursday, February 7, 2013
Mr. Bungle Full Live Show ~2000
Wow. A professionally shot Mr. Bungle concert from the 2000 California tour. I saw them three times for this album and I'd forgotten just how much of a workout each one was for the band. Props for BrainPhreak to posting this.
Barry Adamson - If You Love Her
If you're not familiar with Barry Adamson, former bass player for Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Nick Cave and the Cave Men, Magazine and for a short time the Buzzcockss, and you dig any measure of the stuff I toss out on this page, go get 1996's Oedipus Schmoedipus. An anthological record that features Adamson's jazz/noir musicality and style plus a number of great guests (Carla Bozulich, Nick Cave, Jarvis Cocker to name a few). If you're a David Lynch fan you'll recognize track number two on the record, it had a pretty memorable moment in Lost Highway. Mr. Adamson's soundtrack to Carol Morley's 'Dreams of a Life" which will be aired in the UK tonight, Feb 7th. Said ST can be purchased here on iTunes.
All of the man's albums are fantastic, especially my favorite, 1998's As Above So Below. Atticus Ross assisted with some of the programming and produced it and Flood's on hand for a couple of tracks as well. It's fantastic; a dark, jazzy descent into a noisy, ionic hell where the kiss of an angel waits mockingly just out of reach. Overdoing it? I don't think so. You don't know Barry.
Adamson's earliest records (Moss Side Tory, Soul Murder) are fascinating because they are soundtracks - complete with dialogue snippets - to movies that never existed outside Mr. Adamson's mind. The genius displayed therein put him on Trent Reznor's map back in the early 90's. Reznor used a few of Adamson's tracks and the influence of his MO to put together the Natural Born Killer's ST and then a few years later of course the aforementioned Lost Highway. Two years ago Adamson - a "Cinematic Soul" by his own admission, wrote, directed and released his first film - a 'novella' entitled The Therapist. The film is a heavily-influenced first film but it is good, strong in tone, and it points to even better things to come from this man whose work I love so much. A friend and I saw him live last year in an intimate show at LA's Hotel Bar. Just Barry, minimal accompaniment. It was awesome.
Wednesday, February 6, 2013
Soundgarden - Into The Void (Sealth)
I was lucky as hell to get this as a teenager sometime around the time it came out. One year for my birthday my Aunt Dotty gave me a bunch of Coconuts gift coins and I used them to purchase four albums on CD (the only time I'd ever bought more than two at once at that point): Slayer - Decade of Aggression, Skinny Puppy - Last Rites, Pink Floyd - The Piper at the Gates of Dawn and SoundGarden - Badmotorfinger. With Badmotorfinger I was able to find a copy of the two-disc version where the album proper is complimented by a second disc, SOMMS, or Satan Oscillate My Metallic Sonatas. The second disc starts with a cover of Black Sabbath's Into the Void, a song that I believe has one of the greatest riff-structures of any heavy music anywhere. Soundgarden handle the material VERY adeptly and definitely manage to add something to it. The day I first heard it I was at long-gone Red Tower Records in Orland Park, IL. I asked the clerk what it was (I'd actually never heard either Soundgarden or that particular Sabbath song at that time, I guess this was sometime in '92) but of course didn't have enough money to afford both it and whatever I'd come in for originally. Luckily I was able to find that later copy - the last I ever saw (I always looked).
New Man Man in 2013!!!
Yes!!! Apparently the band is trying for a summer release after recording the record in three weeks and beginning mixes now. There's a great interview with Honus in Paste here. They've been trying songs out live so I set to scouring the old tubeU but haven't found anything yet. However, despite The Life Fantastic not leaving my CD player or iPod from about the time it was released in April 2011 to Autumn of the same year I somehow had never seen this video for Piranhas Club before now. Careful - this made me smile up and down for quite some time after first watching it (like the song doesn't do that enough. Great video). It's not going to play here, just follow the link - Anti seems overly protective of this but hey, that's cool.
HBO Films: Phil Spector Trailer
I'm no longer really a fan of Al Pacino's work in cinema. Everything up to and including Brian De Palma's Carlito's Way and I'm in, Carlito's Way especially, as I feel it is a modern crime masterpiece, a tear-jerking love story and it features outstanding performances by not only Mr. Pacino but Sean Penn as well. It is a shame though, that the Carlito Brigante character has slightly been ruined for me by the fact that it became Pacino's ONLY persona after that. Some have corrected me and said that Al put a slight mod on Carlito for Scent of a Woman and that is in fact the character he's been in EVERY movie since. Either way, it's wore out its welcome. The one exception to this is HBO's 2010 movie You Don't Know Jack where Pacino turned in a fantastic role performance as Jack Kevorkian. Honestly up to that point I didn't think I'd ever see another great Pacino performance again.
Now HBO is giving us the above - a film where Pacino portrays enigmatic looney tune Phil Spector, possibly the greatest record producer in human history (which he reminds up of in the trailer) and convicted murderer. I gotta say, I'm excited again. From what we see in this trailer I'm thinking we're not going to get another fine-tuned, wonderfully-nuanced performance out of Mr. Pacino, but honestly in this case I don't care. Spector fascinates the hell out of me, and to have someone who can get all HOO-HA bugfuck crazy at the drop of a hate playing him makes me even more excited (as long as we don't actually have to hear him yell Hoo-Ha that is). There's a documentary about Spector on my Netflix cue - it's been there for a few years and last I checked it still hadn't been released, so this will have to do for now. Besides, I've a feeling the whole story is probably so disturbing that it'll be good to break the ice with some larger-than-life fiction before getting into the real nooks and crannies of the story.
Wherever you fall in the Spector polarization, let's not forgot what he did give us, before he started taking things away from people.
Hot damn that's a fine song and one of my favorite recordings. Ever.
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