I received a spectacular early birthday present in the mail from Mr. Brown yesterday - Dead Guy's Work Ethic E.P. I first discovered Dead Guy back in 1995 when Victory Records released their Fixation On A Coworker LP. I was writing for Subculture magazine back then, and somehow became their default Victory Records guy, so I received all the promo CDs the labels sent in. I did not care for most of the bands, but Dead Guy... they kind of blew me away right off the bat.
Funny thing about this live EP record, this track labeled as "Druid" is actually "Extremist" or "The Extremist", one of my favorites from that Fixation LP. Song still shreds some serious face, and it reminds me I still need to track down that Dead Guy documentary Vinegar Syndrome's Partner label has for sale on their site/app.
Watch:
The verdict is out on Shudder's upcoming From Black. The trailer - I watched about half, and it sold me - looks like it can go either way, good or bad.
April 28th, we'll see. I love some of the imagery here, but certain elements of how this trailer is cut make me wonder if this will just be a rehash of what we've seen in some better movies of late.
Playlist:
Spotlights - Seanace EP
Spotlights - Love & Decay
Cristobal Tapia de Veer - Smile OST
Dead Guy - Work Ethic EP
Dr. John - Ske Dat De Dat
The Veils - ... And Out of the Void Came Love
Sunn O))) - Domkirk
The Police - Synchronicity
King Woman - Celestial Blues
Card:
From Jonathan Grimm's Bound Tarot, which you can buy HERE.
One of the rare moments where I'm going to read a card at face value - I'm making some snap judgments about people in my life and it's leading to an uncomfortable mental space.
Really digging this new EP from Spotlights. Order from Ipecac Records HERE.
NCBD:
As of Monday, I'm finally back from my two weeks in LaLaLand. Trapped up in West L.A./Santa Monica at the Sonder hotel at Found, I didn't get a chance to hit up my beloved Comic Bug until my final day in town, but I saw some old friends and got to pick up a few books that weren't on my list. Also, will be returning to Rick's Comic City today to grab my Pull-List books from the last two weeks, so here's everything I will have acquired starting back on NCBD 3/08/23:
This Week's Pull 3/22/23:
Last week's Pull, 3/15/23:
This, the penultimate issue of Hulk, is one I actually missed out on; I never added to my Pull, and The Bug was sold out, so I'll have to find it online somewhere.
The only one I've read at the point of reading this, I started out feeling pretty non-plussed, but ending up really liking where this second issue of Immoral X-Men went. I don't love Sins of Sinister, however, I'm reading through it simply to see the pretty big-swing ideas the X-writing stable are taking with it.
LOVE LOVE LOVE this cover!
Two Weeks Ago, 3/08/23:
Based on the Master of Reality and now Back in Black homage covers, I am SO hoping they do one for Mercyful Fate, Don't Break the Oath on a future issue of this series!
I'm glad this regular X-Men book isn't adhering or pausing for Sins of Sinister. With issue 19's start of a Brood-based story, I thought I was going to roll my eyes, however, the entire set-up was fantastic (the Nowhere thread is amazing!). I'm really looking forward to this one!
Read:
While in LaLaLand, I had a couple of occasions to catch up and hang out with my good friend Chris Saunders, formerly of The Thirsty Crows, and my co-host on the hiatus-ending-soon podcast A Most Horrible Library. Chris gifted me a beautiful Hardcover copy of Stephen King's newest novel Fairy Tale, and at ~120 pages into its ~600 pages, I'm hooked!
I haven't read a new King novel since 2010's Doctor Sleep (thanks to Mr. Brown!) and reading Fairy Tale makes me remember how much I adore the man's prose. I'm realizing now that one of the everlasting endearments of King's mind and how it translates to the page is he writes about a world that, while modern and incorporating modern elements (the internet, online shopping, current cultural establishments), King's world still feels very much like the world I grew up in, the one-two weeks in LaLaLand convinced me did not exist at all anymore. That's a very welcome refresher at the moment, as it gives me hope humanity isn't as far gone as it often feels when in a high-population center or tooling around online.
Playlist:
Le Butcherettes - A Raw Youth
Screaming Females - Desire Pathways
Bohren & Der Club of Gore - Sunset Mission
Led Zeppelin - Houses of the Holy
SQÜRL - Silver Haze
The Police - Regatta de Blanc
Burial - Untrue
Boards of Canada - Music Has the Right To Children
Boards of Canada - Geogaddi
Wayne Shorter - The All Seeing Eye
Spotlights - Seance EP
Spotlights - Love & Decay
Card:
From Jonathan Grimm's Bound Tarot, which you can buy HERE.
Emotional security leads to an Emotional breakthrough that ultimately could turn into a profitable partnership.
My good friend NY John at work is always a bastion of interesting Rock'n Roll info and anecdotes. I miss talking to him on a daily basis, when he'd drop by my department at work to vent about corporate moronity and we'd eventually segue into talking about the Stones, Talking Heads, Television, etc. While in the office the other day, he told me to cue up Led Zeppelin's The Rain Song, and upon the intonation of that first, iconic note, he related that he'd read an interview with Jimmy Page where he said he took the chord from The Beatles (I'll let you determine which song). Anyway, hearing just that one chord made me want to hear the entire song, and hearing the entire song, I had to spin House of the Holy and Physical Graffiti in their entirety. I feel a Zeppelin jag coming on. Been a while, and I'm pretty eager to sink into it. Being that I bonded with the band's music at a pretty young, formative age, I feel as though those times when I'm under their spell, my brain works differently. It'll be nice to feel that old familiar "Led Zeppelin" brain again.
Also, this is probably my favorite song by the band (although on any given day I might give you an entirely different answer.
Fitting, this track, as it's been raining in LaLaLand more consistently than I'd seen in some years when I lived here.
Watch:
Monday and Tuesday of last week I was able to sneak in a couple of really cool LA theatre jaunts. When in Rome, right? First, courtesy of the always amazing Cinematic Void, my Horror Vision cohost Ray and I saw a pretty damn nice 35 mm print of Popcorn at the Los Feliz 3 Theatre:
This was fantastic, especially since A) Ray gifted me a Popcorn t-shirt and, B) I got to see Cinematic Void guru Jim Branscome interview Popcorn's star Jill Schoelen after the film.
Then last night, Ray and I got to attend Pi Day, 25th anniversary of Darren Aronofsky's landmark debut film Pi. Even better, before the film, Aronofsky, Star Sean Gullette, Producer Eric Watson, Cinematographer Matthew Libatique, Composer Clint Mansell and actor Stanley Herman (subway singer) spoke about the film at length. Talk about inspiring.
I haven't watched this one in a while despite the fact that I carry a very tangible love for it with me on an almost day-to-day basis. It's been at least 15 years since I last watched Pi, and I found I remembered it pretty much verbatim. Also, hearing Mansell's score now, I realize it was that which pushed me into really exploring electronic music back in the day. Everything about this one is iconic.
Part One: Last night, my friend and Horror Vision cohost Ray reminded me about one of the institutions in LaLaLand that I adore: Henry Rollins. One thing LA has going for it is that, if you are music-minded, Rollins was, for a time, ever-present. The old LA Weekly free magazine sported a column by him (now long gone since the paper was purchased and 'streamlined' somewhere around 2017. Even better, Rollins has a two-hour radio show every weekend on local public radio KCRW, 89.9. I was a loyal listener for years, then, at some point, they moved his shows from Saturday night to Sunday and I just fell off. Ray's reminder came in the form of a two-part aha moment. First, KCRW has an app where you can stream their programming regardless of when/where you live, and two Rollins is back on Saturdays at 10:00 PM! Now, sure I could have been listening all along via the app, but the Rollins Saturday night was an event, similar to Joe Bob's Last Drive-In, and I really kinda want to listen to it when it airs. So that's what we did last night.
Part Two: Damone is not a band Rollins played last night. I found this band and their debut album with is twenty years old this year in the resulting rabbit hole I fell through after Rollins' show. This is straight teenager powerpop, a genre I do not usually go for. But this... my mileage isn't super sound on this - the album wears a bit as it goes on, but only a bit. And this opening track kicks some serious ass.
This reminds me of a kind of teenage Danko Jones in a way, and with a similar quasi-70s aesthetic, it reminds me how there was a moment in the very early 00s when it seemed like 70s Hard Rock started to resurface.
I think about other bands I can name from the teenage power pop area of music and they all lean into calling themselves punk or pop punk - I think that's where they go wrong. They're all also fronted by men who go out of their way to sound like pubescent boys, so that doesn't work for me either. I don't know if it's the mainly female vocals, a girl rounding up to being a bit macho, instead of a boy rounding down to come off vulnerable, but Damone just works where most of those other groups fail miserably. Also, they're named after Damone! You know, Dream Police?
Play:
The other rabbit hole I fell down yesterday:
Working on-site is exhausting for a myriad of reasons, so I haven't had a lot of time or energy in the short periods when I'm in my hotel. Haven't had the energy to watch much let alone read, so it's a good thing I brought my Switch, and even better that the algorithm saw fit to pop up a video on youtube titled, "Super Cyborg is basically Contra on Switch."
Yep. True. Well, the first level is almost exactly Contra, and a lot of the gameplay is the same, but it's going to some weird places with insect and sealife-based bad guys, with some pretty gross ideas they throw at you to shoot. And, of course, there's a 40 lives code, which really opens up the enjoyment.
Playlist:
Windhand - Eponymous
Cough & Windhand - Reflection of the Negative EP
Henry Rollins - KCRW Broadcast 727
The C.I.A. - Surgery Channel
Damone - From the Attic
Card:
A direct commentary on not forgetting how good I have it right now, and how much I miss K while I am away. Wealth, indeed.
From the Nameco Arcade version of Splatterhouse, now up for pre-order at SpaceLab9 HERE.
Float:
I've been using my time in LaLaLand to try and reprogram some of the bad behavior I've developed since moving to Tennessee. Well, okay, calling it bad behavior is a bit hyperbolic, but here's a list of my transgressions:
• I used to average 14K steps a day. Now I average 4K. BIG difference, especially when you consider the next two points.
• Found I could eat all kinds of bread again without it causing me inflammation problems in my gut, which is how it's been since 2014 or so, and as a result, for the last 5 months, I've eaten bread multiple times a day every day.
• I went years barely eating red meat. I reserved that for special occasions or Chicago. However, we once we found a good Mexican place in Clarksville - something we 100% did not think we'd find - I ordered a big ol' carne asada burrito every Friday for months. This culminated with me eating two of those burritos one night. And when I say carne asada burrito, the only ingredients besides the tortilla are steak, guac and pico de Gallo. So that's like half a cow for two of these bad boys.
Now, I'm not one of those super health-conscious types, but I also adamantly will not give up drinking beer and do not want to be an old man who's super thin with a gut like a boulder, so something has to give. Since I woke up and flew out here this past Monday, I've fasted 74 hours (mostly in 8, 13, or 16-hour increments) and walked a stunning 40 miles - just over 84K steps. I've also done something I'd wanted to do for about the last 8 years I lived in LA and didn't - I booked two sessions and am planning at least one more at Float Lab Westwood.
I can't quite explain how the first session made me feel, except that it was fantastic. I've talked in these pages recently about needing to meditate more, and in general learn to relax a bit. When I stepped from that first session back out into the world, I was in such an altered state I couldn't believe it. My second one was yesterday, and although a bit frustrating - for whatever reason I just could not let go of my thoughts - I still count it as successful. Also, between the two, I think I've figured out a bit of a regiment to get what I need out of the experience, so here's hoping number three will be even more beneficial.
Of course, it's not just relaxation I'm after. My interest in Sensory Deprivation tanks shares motivations with my interest in hallucinogens - the latter being something I've found myself not really digging so much the last two times I've micro-dosed Psilocybin.
This is a forever place for me now, no doubt. I expect to be back in LaLaLand about every six months, and Westwood is only 2.5 miles from the hotel I favor while here, so there should never be a reason not to go.
From SQÜRL's forthcoming album Silver Haze, out May 5th on Sacred Bones Records, you can pre-order the album HERE.
Interesting to note that Randall Dunn produced this record. Man's got quite a track record, working with bands like Sunn O))), Earth, and Zola Jesus. Can't wait to hear this entire record; my recent re-watch of Jarmusch's Only Lovers Left Alive for The Horror Vision Presents: Elements of Horror (episode link HERE and HERE for Apple and Spotify respectively) really pushed me back into Jarmusuch's music for a while, both SQÜRL and his work with Jozef Van Wissem. Hearing this first single, I think Dunn was very much a strategic and fantastic choice for this one. Definite Doom vibes, in the best way possible.
Watch:
I'm not watching this trailer! I'm not watching this trailer! I'm not watching this trailer!
I'll have to keep repeating this to myself until March 24th.
Playlist:
The Sonics - Here Are the Sonics
Caladan Brood - Echoes of Battle
Motörhead - Ace of Spades
Pigs x7 - Viscerals
The Mysterines - Reeling
David Bowie - Diamond Dogs
David Bowie - PinUps
The National - High Violet
Fuck Buttons - Tarot Sport
THUS LOVE - Memorial
Wayne Shorter - The All Seeing Eye
T. Rex - The Slider
Black Sabbath - Paranoid
Ghostland Observatory - Sad Sad City (Single)
Grimes - Shinigami Eyes (Single)
Grimes - Miss Anthropocene
The Bronx - II
The Stooges - Funhouse
Card:
Taken at face value, this definitely sums up the last few days at work. Some changes really need to take place, not sure where to start. But Tens are also a the end of a journey, and sometimes an indication of burdensome elements at work. A reminder then, how glad I am that I'm not in-house and managing anymore.
Wayne Shorter passed away last week. To paraphrase something Mr. Brown commented to me in a text recently, the loss of the original Blue Note generation is almost complete now. When I stop to reflect on that, it makes me feel even further into the future than I'd realized. That might be a bit of an obtuse way to describe it, but it's early my first morning in LaLaLand and I'm listening to The All Seeing Eye and reflecting how this music that once provided a vibrant and, frankly mysterious, underlining to popular culture is all but extinct. And Mr. Shorter... well, there's a kind of Voodoo in his music, whether it's the work he did with Miles Davis or an album like this, it always sounds to me like he's summoning something.
Watch:
Another thing I meant to post about last week - the Dead Ringers remake is on the horizon. Not sure how I feel about this, but I'll definitely give it a try.
Playlist:
Palehorse/Palerider & Lord Buffalo - Legends of the Desert, Vol. 1
Townes Van Zandt - High, Low and in Between
Meg Myers - Motel (single)
Burial - Untrue
The Veils - ... And Out of the Void Came Love
The National - High Violet
Brian Eno - Here Come the Warm Jets
Roxy Music - Eponymous
T. Rex - The Slider
White Hex - Heat EP
Card:
I'll be on my mini, "travel" Thoth deck for a while, and as soon as I picked up the cards, I realized how good it felt to return. I really need to mix in Thoth and Missi's Raven tarot again, as I've become a bit too reliant on The Bound Tarot.
Apparently, I may need some strategy in order to accomplish something I've set out to do. I mean, that a bit of a no-brainer; everything requires some degree of strategy. However, I think this is a reference to one of the reasons I'm in LaLaLand and the things I have to do for work.
