Seven Days of Shane Day 5: You're the One

 

I'm really digging this first album Shane cut with The Popes, particularly this duet with Máire (Moya) Brennan. I seem to gravitate to any duet MacGowan does - the way he always uses the opportunity to juxtapose his hardened rasp with some of the most staunchly beautiful voices around.  This one feels very prescient at the moment. 

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Watch:

Among the trailers we saw before Godzilla Minus One, Bleeker Street's I.S.S. was the one that really stood out. Primarily because this one looks a bit too close to home. I mean, this is pretty much the scariest trailer I've ever seen:

The anxiety this trailer instills in me is uncomfortable, so much so that I believe I'm going to have to force myself to see this in a theatre. Funny how the things that scare us as younger beings change later in life. Based on the world we live in, I.S.S. feels especially frightening.

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Playlist:

Carpenter Brut - Blood Machines OST

Steve Moore - Bliss OST 

Dream Division - Beyond the Mirror's Image

The Nips 'N' Nipple Erectors - Bops, Babes, Booze & Bovver

Shane MacGowan and The Popes - The Snake

Blackbraid - Blackbraid II

Rein - God Is a Woman

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Card:

From Missi's Hand-colored Raven Deck, a single card pull as an indicator as to how my day will go moving my parents into their new house.

Something will not be what it appears on the surface.

Seven Days of Shane: Day 4 - Whiskey Nancy

 

Live on Conan O'Brien in 1995, shortly after MacGowan was sacked from The Pogues for 'alcohol-related' issues. I have no experience with The Popes, other than what I've heard at other people's houses. I guess I didn't realize the chronology. I will say, so far, I like this first record The Snake better than I like those later Pogues records. That might be a knee-jerk reaction, time will tell, but I thought this made a nice time capsule of MacGowan's first year away from the band that most people - myself included - know him from.

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NCBD:

My pull for NCBD this week isn't a big one, but it's comprised entirely of things I am bubbling with excitement for.

I have to say, after taking a chance on last month's first issue of Szymon Kurdanski's Blood Commandment number one, I've been waiting for number two pretty impatiently. Kinda stoked about this book!

Here's one I know ZERO about - Andrew Krahnke's Bloodrick. I'm not sure what caught my eye here, however, in reading about it on League of Comic Geeks, I noticed a comment from someone who read this in its previously self-published iteration. This makes me happy, to see something go from self-publishing to being distributed by Image. 

I loved the Stuff Of Nightmares Halloween special in October, and I'm assuming that, regardless of the fact that Christmas Horror is not my favorite niche in the genre, I will like this equally well. This is just such a great book. No contest who wins the Horror Anthology war this year, with The Silver Coin still on hiatus.

Soundwave's on the cover and I'm hoping like hell he's in the issue! So far, Daniel Warren Johnson's take on the Transformers has a complete hold on me. 

Doom's X-Men? Huh. I'm getting a total "Oktober Guard" vibe here. 

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Watch:

Oh, that's why Bloodrik caught my eye!

I've been watching Genndy Tartakowsky's Primal on Max, and I am absolutely in love. For years, I've harbored ill will for any animation that isn't Cowboy Bebop or the original Transformers animated film. I have no idea where that came from, but it proved pretty all-encompassing, so a lot of shows/films friends recommended I passed on. This was a random find thanks to Walter and Ryan at Rick's Comic City and although the first episode grabbed me, it wasn't until two nights ago, when I couldn't sleep, that I became 100% completely invested.

There is such an amazing heart to the relationship between the two characters - one a man, one a dinosaur - that when they are in peril I become invested to a degree a lot of live-action SciFi loses. 

And they are always in peril. 

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Playlist:

Psychetect - Extremism

ThingsCon15 - Warren Ellis 

Yawning Balch - Volume One

Justine Hamline - Worst Locals Ever

Chelsea Wolfe - Abyss

Them Are Us Too - Part Time Punks Session (2015)

Bryce Miller - City Depths

Calexico - Seasonal Shift

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Card:

From Jonathan Grimm's Bound Tarot, which you can buy HERE.

• Five of Wands

• Four of Wands

• VIII Strength

Not hard to read this one at all. Finally doing a bit of restructuring with Black Gloves & Broken Hearts, just to punch-up some of the relationships, and even though it's not a lot, it feels like a ton this close to the end. Apply Will and be Strong.

Seven Days of Shane: Day 3 - Nipple Erectors - All the Time in the World

Before The Pogues, MacGowan fronted a band with Shanne Bradley called The Nipple Erectors (subsequently shortened to The Nips). I first discovered this group in the late '00s, thanks to my Drinking with Comics cohost Mike Shin. This was when my Pogues fervor was at its zenith. The album Bops, Babes, Booze & Bovver stayed in my old school iPod for a few years (I never had a physical copy), but disappeared somewhere along the way. Pretty cool to find them again now, on streaming, and be able to hear the record start to finish (I believe what I had was missing several tracks). 

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Watch:

Julien Temple made a Shane MacGowan documentary a few years back, and I'd kind of forgotten about it until Mr. Brown brought it up after the man's passing. Back on my radar, I fired Crock Of Gold up last night on HULU.

 

I liked this, but I do feel there's a lack of third-party, objective material. Maybe the point was to allow Shane the glory of self-mythologizing himself; why deny the man, he'd been in an awful state at the time this was made and it may have been Temple and Producer Johnny Depp's idea to just bask in the legends that already exist anyway, letting MacGowan grow them to whatever size he saw fit. Not a bad gift for a man trapped in a wheelchair at the end of his life, reaping the rewards of a life of debauchery. It's not like the film doesn't set this up in the first few moments - Crock Of Gold opens with an animated smattering of all Ireland's mythological creatures and folklore, from Leprechauns to Cú Chulainn to Children of Lir to... Shane being handpicked by god to be, "The man who would save Irish music." And, in a way, he totally did. Anyway, if you're a fan or even just curious, this is a nice walk through the man, the myth, the legend.

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Read:

Somehow, I forgot to mention the pre-order the good folks at Bad Hand Books have going for next year's new Laird Barron collection. Not a Speck of Light comes with a signed bookplate.

Sixteen new stories? Wow, and while it's not going to be easy to wait until Q3 next year, talk about arriving at the perfect time of year! Pre-order Not a Speck of Light from Bad Hand Books HERE.

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Playlist:

Steve Moore - Christmas Bloody Christmas OST

Steve Moore - VFW OST

Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats - Blood Lust

Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats - Vol. 1

Dream Division - Beyond the Mirror's Image

Various - Joe Begos' Bliss Spotify Playlist

Electric Wizard - Wizard Bloody Wizard

Shane MacGowan and the Popes - The Snake

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Card:

From Jonathan Grimm's Bound Tarot, which you can buy HERE.

• Ten of Pentacles (Disks)

• I: The Magician

• XIV: Temperance (Art)

Trump One two days in a row, eh? I'm apparently missing something...

Ten of Pentacles indicates Earthly completion, and I'm betting that has to do with (again) my folks finally being into their place. The recurrence of the Magus, however, indicates something that will need adjustment or patience (not that there's not been call for quite a bit of that already). 

I tend to remain hung up on the "Art" aspects of Trump XIV, however, there is an element of "Things falling into place." So again, the Magician is the missing piece of the puzzle.

Seven Days of Shane: Day 2 - Sally MacLennane

 

While considering what MacGowan song to post for day two of Seven Days Commemorating Shane MacGowan's passing, I was reminded of this track via this week's edition of Warren Ellis' Orbital Operations newsletter.

Rum, Sodomy and the Lash is easily my favorite album by The Pogues - almost to a fault, as my preoccupation with this and Red Roses For Me have caused my knowledge of the band to atrophy long ago. Sometimes I become hung up on one or two albums by an artist or band, and it just stops there. Not necessarily a bad thing, as I always eventually get around to adding another album to the fire. In the case of The Pogues, however, I've always felt a declining interest after the second album, with really only about half of If I Should Fall From Grace With God holding me in its sway. But the death of an artist tends to inspire reassessment, so what happens as we go deeper into the band's discography over the course of the next five days (but not before running around MacGowan's work outside The Pogues for a while).
 

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Watch:

Saturday afternoon, we took a break from unloading my parents' first round of possessions into their new house (Mayflower moving picks up the bulk of it today) and went to the theatre to catch Godzilla Minus One. My parents accompanied us, and I have to say, all four of us were pretty blown away. 

If you can believe it, this was the first Godzilla movie I've ever seen. Verdict? Godzilla Minus One blew me away.

The thing I'd complained about after trying to watch Legendary Studios' Godzilla: King of Monsters (I fell asleep before Godzilla ever hit the screen, hence why I'm counting G-1 as my first) was that film's obstinate preoccupation with the human story. It is interesting, then, that the thing that moved me about Minus One - indeed, the major component of the film's story - is the human element. I'd imagine that says something about the comparative character development and overall writing between the two: Toho's Minus One is simply a better-written film that is less concerned with box office spectacle, favoring instead a genuinely moving story that takes place inside this retelling of the mighty lizard's first interaction with humanity.

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Playlist:

Tangerine Dream - Hyperborea

S U R V I V E - RR7349

Turquoise Moon - The Sunset City

Van Halen - 1984

The Flesh Eaters - I Used to Be Pretty

Opeth - Blackwater Park

Anthrax - Attack of the Killer B's

The Pogues - If I Should Fall From 

The Nips 'N' Nipple Erectors - Bops, Babes, Booze & Bovver

Yawning Balch - Volume Two

Rein - God Is a Woman

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Card:

From Aleister Crowley and Lady Freida Harris' Thoth Deck.

• I: The Magus

• XVIII: The Moon

• Ten of Disks - Wealth

Often an indication of the potency of Will or the spark of creative essence, seeing it here with the Ten of Disks, and the Eighteenth Trump, this becomes a pretty clear-cut message that the application of perseverance will reveal nearly overlooked information that, in turn, leads to some form of renumeration. Pretty sure this has to do with my folks' move, although the specifics elude me at the moment (and that's 18 right there for you).

RIP Shane MacGowan

A CRUSHING blow for this reality. Thus begins my Seven Days of Shane!

 

Eating the Flesh of Robots

One of the records Mr. Brown lent me in our recent record swap is The Flesh Eaters 2018 album I Used to Be Pretty. Holy cow, is this a burner of a record! If you dig the track above - my favorite at the moment - check out the entire record.  

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Watch:

I've been in a bit of a rut with watching anything other than Happy! the last few days, and when I finished season one, I found I wanted something more. One of the things I found is Netflix's Love, Death + Robots.

I have watched this show before, although not in any consistent capacity. I've had Sci-Fi on the brain, though, and my decades-long avoidance of most animation that's not Cowboy Bebop seems to be falling away - never understood what that was all about, anyway - so this slotted in nicely.

Previously, only a few of these really left an impression, particularly Season Three's In Vaulted Halls Entombed, which I've watched quite a few times since it came out a year-and-a-half ago (the whys of my obsession are obvious if you've seen it). This time, however, I'm playing through entire seasons and really enjoying what I'm seeing, particularly The Very Pulse of the Machine, Life Hutch and The Drowned Giant. Oh, and Three Robots. Yes, that's a fantastic piece of post-apocalyptic satire right there. 

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Read:

I finished Richard Kadrey and Cassandra Khaw's The Dead Take the A Train and am definitely placing it among my favorite novels of the year. So much fun, and all while being Hellraiser/Evil Dead level GOREY! This is the first book in a series, and I'm down for all of them that follow. 

Still riding high off that, I ordered Cassandra Khaw's Nothing But Blackened Teeth and started that. 

Look at that cover! 

About a quarter of the way through, and I can say Ms. Khaw may be one of my favorite modern Horror writers. She has a descriptive flair I am head over heels in love with, and her characters feel so very real. The set-up here is fantastic, with a wealthy twenty-somethings friend paying for his small group of friends to stay at a supposedly haunted ancient Japanese estate. I can already tell things will probably get Hellraiser-level bloody, and with a narrator I'm not entirely sure I'd consider reliable, all kinds of hell seems poised to break loose.

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Playlist:

David Bowie - Black Star

Donny McCaslin - Beyond Now

Sen Morimoto - Diagnosis

Opeth - Blackwater Park

Zombi - 2020

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Card:

I'm finding I don't have the bandwidth at the moment to concentrate on involved Tarot readings, so I've been utilizing Missi's Raven Deck for single-card Pulls. Here's today's card:

On the lookout for obscured influences or hidden agendas, so that's (sadly) a "work-related" reading. Also, and perhaps more probable, what am I missing?

The Effigies - Body Bag

 

Thanks to Jim DeRogatis and Greg Kot's Sound Opinions podcast, I realized last night that I had completely missed the fact that Chicago Stalwart's The Effigies frontman John Kezdy passed away back in August. You can read an article about this at the Chicago Tribune HERE. While off my radar of late, The Effigies' 1989 album Remains Nonviewable was one of the records I encountered as a Junior in High School, a record that, like Fugazi's 13 Songs or Black Flag's Everything Went Black, altered my musical trajectory. Kezdy went on to become an attorney,

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NCBD:

Here's my Pull for this week's NCBD:

I still wish the art inside had a little more 'tooth' to it - not the artist's fault, more a mis-pairing, in my opinion. That said, I still couldn't pass this one up. So far, pretty good backstory to the classic film, kind of "other stories from that day." This is the penultimate issue, and as it's the second NoTLD series from American Mythology, I'm curious if there are more on the horizon. 

To say I have been waiting for this final chapter in SiKTC's current story arc would be an understatement. Shit went so pear-shaped at the end of issue thirty-four, I can't wait to see how this resolves (please let this resolve!).

After re-reading the last few issues in a burst, I'm totally back on the What's The Furthest Place From Here train. We stand at the foot of world-building revelations, but I'm really just here for the dialogue and insane antics of this cast. 

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Watch:

SyFy had a good run of original programming a few years ago. Deadly Class was excellent, and a total shame it didn't go longer than one season. Another comic adaptation they actually doubled down on was Grant Morrison and Darick Robertson's Happy!, about a down-and-out NY cop turned hitman whose daughter is abducted by a man in a Santa Claus suit. The daughter's imaginary friend, a cute-as-a-button blue unicorn, seeks out her father and together, the two attempt to save her.

When Happy! came to Netflix, I watched most of the first season and absolutely loved it. THIS is my definition of comedy. For some reason, I never finished the first season and completely missed or forgot there was a second. So I'm watching it again now and I have to say, this may be one of my favorite shows of all time.

This is one of the rare times when the adaptation far surpasses the source material. The book is pretty simple, but the lengths of violence and depravity that Morrison, Brian Taylor and their team put Christopher Meloni through in this show is insane and so utterly fun to watch; I find it impossible not to end an episode in a good mood.

Even if there's also some pitch-dark shit in here, too. 

This is one of those shows I would buy physically if such an item were available, but alas, it is not. 

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Playlist:

Steve Moore - Christmas Bloody Christmas OST

Zombi - 2020

The Flesh Eaters - I Used to Be Pretty

Allegaeon - Apoptosis

Silent - Modern Hate

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Card:

From Jonathan Grimm's Bound Tarot, which you can buy HERE.

• XIV - Temperance (Art)

• X - Wheel of Fortune

• Five of Pentacles (Disks)

Applying intuition and 'Art' can lead to conflict.