Tommy gave me a new favorite record yesterday with his edition of The Joup Friday Album. The Paper Chase had been recommended to me several times by several different friends, chief among them, I believe, Mr. Brown and Jeffrey Equality Brooks, but it wasn't until Tommy put God Bless Your Black Heart up and I read his interpretation that I actually succeeded in hearing them beyond a track or two (and let's be honest, the immediacy of Apple Music helped immensely as well).
Playlist from Friday, 7/07/18:
Secret Chiefs 3 Traditionalists - La Mani Destre Recise Degli Ultimi Uomini
Beak - L.A. Playback
The Paper Chase - God Bless Your Black Heart
SQÜRL - EP #1
Jozef Van Wissem & SQÜRL - Only Lovers Left Alive OST
Jim Jarmusch & Jozef Van Wissem - The Mystery of Heaven
Jim Jarmusch & Jozef Van Wissem - Concerning the Entrance Into Eternity
My obsession with Predator is at an all-time high. My friend Joe and I walk around all day at work quoting this scene:
Playlist from 7/05:
John Carpenter - Lost Themes
Grimes - Oblivion
Goblin - Dawn of the Dead (Theme)
David Lynch - The Big Dream
Alice in Chains - Facelift
Mastodon - Emperor of Sand
Crippled Black Phoenix - Horrific Honorifics
NIN - Add Violence E.P.
Perturbator - New Model
In light of recent news, let's have some Them Are Us Too, shall we?
I finally saw A Cure For Wellness. Visually I dug it, and three-quarters of the way through I was still more or less smitten. The last third, where Gore Verbinski couldn't quite decide how he wanted to end the film, just that he absolutely had to wedge in a series of scenes that all felt as though they ended the movie, really toppled the film under the weight of lofty ambitions. A Cure For Wellness just falls apart at the end, and it's a shame. Worth a watch for sure, but even at $9.99 I have buyer's remorse that I picked up the Blu Ray. #firstworldproblems for sure.
Also watched the 1986 Transformers animated movie - the ONLY Transformers movie in my book - for the first time in probably fifteen years. Still pretty damn awesome, and the soundtrack actually bothers me less today. All the ambient/synth-based stuff is great. The hair metal not so much, but again, it doesn't quite bother me as much now as it did fifteen years ago.
The new Drinking, Fighting, F*&king, and Crying is up HERE.
Playlist from 7/04/18:
Sinoia Caves - Beyond the Black Rainbow OST
Joseph Loduca - Evil Dead 2 OST
John Carpenter - Lost Themes
Card of the day:
Balance. Also, results from hard work or actualization from an idea. This is good; working on a new short story.
How about a little Ted Leo and the Pharmacists to kick off the mid-week holiday?
Get you feeling good? Me too. There is so much Thin Lizzy in that song it's awesome!
The Comic Bug recently bought at massive collection and that means there are about a dozen long boxes (at least) of comics out for $1.00 right now, set up in the middle of their shop. A couple weeks I did some light digging and, as I always am when digging through back issue long boxes like this, I was in the mood for grabbing a few 80s/early 90s copies of Newsprint Marvels. I went with a few issues of The Avengers, specifically #352, 353, and 354. Why? Well, I never really read Avengers growing up, however I did pick up a few issues around this time back in the day and I've always been subsequently intrigued by the way the team - much like Chris Claremont's Uncanny X-Men, often cycled out the 'Big Names' and operated with a cast of C, D, and maybe even E level characters. And you know, that didn't make the stories bad, it actually made them more interesting than just having status quo re-achieved after every arc or crossover.
Also of note in these three particular issues, penned by Len Kaminski and drawn by M.C. Wyman, is the heavy influence of the original Evil Dead movies. You see it a bit in the covers to 353 and 354, but there's a lot of little stuff lovingly cribbed from the ED2 and Army of Darkness. This fits, as these were published right about the time AoD was released.
Great covers, right? I am especially fond of 353.
Playlist from 7/02:
John Frusciante - Niandra LaDes and Usually Just a T-Shirt
Zeal and Ardor - Stranger Fruit
Jane's Addiction - Kettle Whistle
Nirvana - Incesticide
Cocksure - Corporate_Sting
Deafheaven - New Bermuda
The Casket Lottery - Smoke and Mirrors E.P.
Fever Ray - Plunge
White Hex - Gold Nights
Jeff Grace - House of the Devil OST
Card of the day:
Pressure has eased. Yes - perfect. Yesterday was the first day after I handed over the 76k+ second draft of T12 to Keller. Immediate relief, although I didn't come until I walked to my writing spot, fired up the laptop and closed the T12 Scrivener doc, then opened up my short story one and started something new. So yes, the pressure has eased.
Dug out the first John Frusciante solo album yesterday. Hadn't listened to it in some time. Say what you want about the performance/production, but there is something so psychologically intimate about this one. The story that he was basically found living in his own squalor when he recorded this on a four-track is legendary by now, and I no longer even remember if it's true or what the specifics are, but there's some raw shit here, and some of it is genius.
Playlist from yesterday was short:
Underworld - 1992-2002 (disc 2)
Underworld - Beaucoup Fish
Deadsy - Commencement
John Frusciante - Niandra LaDes and Usually Just a T-Shirt
I know this track from the OST for a movie called The Devil's Business. This is a soundtrack I love from a film I have never seen (need to change that). Because of this slightly obscure relationship with the material, I forget about this one for long stretches, something triggers my memory (usually an early, gray morning - the somber tone of this track always fits with an early, gray morning) and I pull it out for a few days. I don't think I need to explain that that is exactly what happened this morning as I woke up tired, and dragged myself through the preparatory hygiene required for me to go into work.
While listening in the car, I knew that since my drive would only take me ~20 minutes, I'd want to continue with the album once I got inside, punched in and began the tasks of the day. When I went to Apple Music, however, I was bummed to find the soundtrack was not there. As a work-around I googled the first track and for the first time in memory realized it was not a composer, but a band. After another quick search I found the track I wanted to post (above) AND I found an awesome band I had previously never heard of, Crippled Black Phoenix.
Playlist from 6/29:
Best Coast - Crazy For You
Zeal and Ardor - Stranger Fruit
Windhand - Grief's Infernal Flower
Windhand - Soma
I also subscribed to Bret Easton Elli's Podcast on Patreon and listened to two fantastic episodes:
B.E.E. Podcast - 6/15/18 James Van Deer Beek - wherein they discuss a lot of things, including but not limited to the 2001 70mm redux, Roseanne, Me Too and the usual woes of the business.
B.E.E. Podcast - 6/28/18 Ben Fritz - really great discussion about the death of Sony and the state of the movie business.
