Always a pleasure to get a new video from Tennis System. L I E is the final track on this year's Pain EP, and it was one of my favorite EPs of the year. This band is awesome! Support them HERE.
Short post today, as I'm chasing down a new idea for a short story.
Long night of hanging with the old school gang. And it got Old School, believe me. The playlist was out of my control and largely nostalgic, with Mr. Brown handling most of the duties, and everyone else popping in a disc here or there for a song or two. Fantastic time, Fantastic friends, and Fantastic music. Here's what I can piece together from the fragments of memory floating on a rocky sea of Goose Island 312 and Italian Beef:
Playlist from 12/07:
Sharon Jones & The Dap Kings - It's a Holiday Soul Party
Jon Spencer Blues Explosion
Reverend Horton Heat - We Three Kings
Iron Maiden - Piece of Mind
Anthrax - Sound of White Noise
Beastie Boys - Paul's Boutique
Jon Spencer Blues Explosion - Now I Got Worry
Card of the day:
Definitely the appropriate feeling for being home among all my loved ones, so I'll leave it at that.
The first time I heard The Buzzcocks it was their single What Do I Get, circa 1998, and I was floored. After coming up in the early 90s and absolutely HATING the pop punk movement (do I hate green day more than I hate crappy 70s bands like Ace, Styxx, and Kansas? Yes. Yes I do), I was shocked to find there was pop punk that didn't turn everything I loved about the original 'punks' - a social movement more than a sound, per se - into a marketing ploy. Then, to find that as that as they evolved, the Buzzcocks melded more with the Post-Punk movement, I've often felt this band were way more important in the annals of rock history than they are generally given credit for. Even I haven't listened to the Buzzcocks as much as I feel I should, my familiarity starting and stopping with songs on an old mixtape back in the day, and an career-spanning anthology Mr. Brown gave me years ago.
I began working on my Top Ten Favorite Albums of 2018 list the other day. Did Beak>'s L.A. Playback make the cut? Honestly, I'm not even sure yet. It's always a favorite year-end activity of mine, to comb back through all the music that came out over the past year and boil down my ten favorites, but it's never easy. There's A LOT of good music out there. I also always look forward to reading other people's lists, chief among them the ones published by Heaven Is An Incubator and Joup's Daniel Fiorio. I'll definitely be posting links to those here when they drop.
In the meantime, here's some Live Beak> I found on youtube. Love KEXP! So many awesome bands - reminds me of the old Peel Sessions, or in a more contemporary, LA way, Part Time Punks.
Playlist from my travel day yesterday was primarily six sustained hours of Burial's Untrue, with a few other things thrown into the mix. That's how I travel: I put on an album, almost always electronic in nature, and drill it on repeat. This helps me reach a strange, liminal state, a kind of hypnogogic trance, and that helps me ride the day out in a strange but beautifully peaceful fugue, where none of the inconveniences or discomforts of traveling bother me, and I end up with a creative re-charge. Previous albums I've done this with are Boards of Canada's Geogaddi, Music Has the Right to Children, and Tomorrow's Harvest, and Moderat's II and III.
12/06:
Burial - Untrue
Burial - Kindred EP
Bohren & der Club of Gore - Gore Motel
Card of the day is super special today, because my good friend Missi surprised me with a present last night - a Mini Thoth deck. No disrespect to that Hansen Roberts deck I've been using as a back-up over the last year, but I have absolutely NO connection with it. Actually, while I can admire the beauty of many decks out there (chief among them that mind blowing Vertigo Comics deck), Lady Frieda Harris/Aleister Crowley's Thoth deck is the only Tarot deck I have a working connection with, so it's the only one I use. Maybe someday that will change, but I kind of doubt it.
I broke the deck in reading for Missi last night, and as usual, her understanding and interpretation of Tarot always inspires me, so the cards are charged and ready to go, and to celebrate I'm doing a spread today instead of just one card:
Full disclosure: I never factor in reversals. That said, while making this giff, I wanted to portray the cards exactly as they were drawn, so I kept that intact. Also, the fact that all three cards are reversed either totally negates the idea that a reversal in this case would matter, or testifies to it. Either way, I read them as the card, not their positioning.
This is interesting because it slightly mirrors the drawing I did for Missi last night, with two Cups divided by a Sword card. My overall reading is simple - I'm having trouble with the setting for the final scene in the book, because it's not enough of a 'set piece.' to change it, I must be cruel or kill one of my darlings - something about the scene that I've been adamant not to change. This will lead to a breakthrough.
I'm doing Thursday's post on Wednesday night because I'm up and off to LAX early in the morning to fly to Chicago! Yay!
A couple months ago I posted about Perturbator's side project, L'Enfant De La Fôret. Well, that record fell right the heck off my radar, and it wasn't until I saw Heaven Is An Incubator post this GORGEOUS track that I remembered how much I'd been looking forward to it. And Tommy hit the nail right on the head - this track reeks of Lynch/Badalamenti, which, of course, immediately endears it to me. I can't wait to ingest this entire record during my trip. Name your price and buy it HERE.
Playlist from 12/05:
The Veils - Total Depravity
Grimes - Art Angels
Godspeed You! Black Emperor - Hallelujah! Don't Bend! Ascend!
The Body - I Have Fought Against It, But I Can't Any Longer.
Gil Scott Heron - The Revolution Will Not Be Televised (Single)
Scroobious Pip vs. Dan Le Sac - Thou Shalt Always Kill (Single)
Algiers - Eponymous
Jóhann Jóhannsson - Mandy OST
David Lynch & Alan Splatt - Eraserhead OST
Card of the day:
"Insatiable hunger for life and endless, powerful energies." Well, that definitely is the standard definition for how I roll in Chicago. It'll be interesting to see if this year is any different? Well, I've hit a point where I just don't have the energy I previously had. I knock out during movies at home ALL the time now on weekends. I feel a general, low-grade exhaustion on a daily basis. Part of it is I'm 42, and part of it is my first alarm rings at 4:07 AM, five days a week. Normally, I hit Chicago and hook up with my lifelong friends and I can hang out all night, drinking beer and talking music, movies, comics, whatever. Will that be the case with this trip? Well, the card seems to imply it will, so we'll see.
How do you get me to be excited about Sabrina, the Teenage Witch? One word:
SATAN!!!
Defying ALL fucking logic, I absolutely loved the first half of season one, and was pleased as a goat's paunch to hear there's a second half coming on April 5th. The severity of Sabrina's actions in the 8th episode especially sold me, and
I head back home to Chicago for a little over a week tomorrow. VERY excited. This year it is twelve years since I moved, and previously I have only ever gone home in October. Last year when my Uncle Phil passed away I flew home for about a week right after Christmas and realized I actually enjoyed being home in the winter. I wouldn't want to make a yearly habit of it, but there was one night that really made an impact on me. A Sunday, I drove up to the North Side of the city to see my sister and her boyfriend's new apartment. From the South Suburbs where I grew up and my parents still live, that's Lagrange Road to I-55 to the Dan Ryan 90/94. It had just snowed and the trip was stark, desolate and beautiful. I loved the empty trees, the way their branches crosshatch the sky, and the moon irradiates the clouds. I realized I missed winter, in a small way, and when K said she wanted to experience it I was only too happy to book this year's visit in December.
Along with the general vibe I'm interested in exploring in a winter setting, the trip also gives me the opportunity to do something I have wanted to do for years now, namely, film a Drinking with Comics in my old Chicago comic shop, Amazing Fantasy, with two of my best friends, two fellows that, unbeknownst to them, helped me conceive the concept of the show, just by always being the guys who stand around at gatherings with me, drink beer and talk comics. So Sunday, 12/09 we're planning on streaming live to Facebook from Amazing Fantasy in Modena, IL, with Mike Shinabargar and John "The Viking" Bickness. Can NOT wait.
NCBToo many comics out today to go into great detail. Here's my list:
If this is the return of Negan, I will be SO very happy!
Playlist from 12/04:
Opeth - Watershed
David Bowie - Station to Station
Ghost Cop - One Weird Trick
Emma Ruth Rundle - Marked for Death
The Veils - Total Depravity
The Besnard Lakes - The Besnard Lakes are the Roaring Night
Jim Reeves - The Best of Jim Reeves
Recently, I've had a brutal nostalgia for the late 00s. In some ways I find this odd, because that time period is largely a cold, lonely bubble for me. At the same time, I am a person who often enjoys cold, lonely bubbles, and winter always brings that out in me, so I guess this is all right on schedule.
The other thing about the time period in question is, by and large, the late 2000s didn't seem at the time like a hallmark era for new music. There was a definite feeling of lethargy and fraud as the digital file model began to destroy the industry we had known. Looking back now though, there was a lot of good stuff (not as much as now). Just look at a lot of the what's been creeping into these pages the last few weeks and you'll get a taste of what I was listening to during those years: LCD Soundsystem, Underworld, Burial, Kylie, Friendly Fires, Crystal Castles, Arab Strap. Lots of electronic, pop, and dance. I feel like the first decade of the new century, my second and final, ended when I fell back hard into metal, specifically black metal. The interest had been bubbling up again for a few years - Opeth and High on Fire were really the only 'metal' bands I listened to consistently during this time (Type O doesn't really count as the kind of metal I'm talking about and they're always a constant), and then really only closer to year's end. Somewhere around 2009 I got curious and began skulking through the metal sections of the few remaining record stores in the area. I discovered The Ocean Collective's Fluxion, the reissue, and from there it wasn't long until Blut Aus Nord blew my mind and sent me into a progressive Black Metal spiral. But as I said, most of that era was electronic music-oriented for me, and I'm falling back into those sounds pretty hard right now. Especially Burial's 2007 debut, possibly both the most iconic and enigmatic record of the era. Nosing around online for a track to post here, I found this:
I haven't had a chance to watch this documentary yet, but I can't wait to dig into the story of this album, because as I intimated above, I was still under the impression there was a cloud of secrecy around Burial and his music. I knew at some point an actual picture of him made some rounds online, but other than that I know nothing. Also, this is another little tidbit I found that blew my mind.
**
To wrap around back to a topic from a few days ago, during my recent re-watch of 28 Weeks Later, I found that it contains one of the most horrifying sequences I've seen on film. A lot of the horror is created in the camera work, but let's not gloss over directing a crowd this size; the sequence really gives you the feeling of utter helplessness that can accompany being stuck in a surging crowd. I've been there - not on this level, but in my teens I was at a Pantera show at Chicago's Aragon Ballroom where, after the show as everyone filed out of the concert area and down the double stairs that led to the ground floor exit, some stupid with a taser began to send wicked jolts of electricity running through the nuts-to-buts crowd. This was only a year or so after the AC/DC stampede that killed several people, so probably with that fresh in their minds, the crowd began to panic. Luckily, the situation never escalated beyond mere potential for disaster, and we all made it home safe after all.
Here's a little bit of that scene I'm talking about; it will suffer viewed out of context, so I'm really only leaving this here as a frame of reference for what I'm talking about. If it's been a while since you watched it, or if you haven't seen it, 28 Weeks Later is one of the most worthy sequels to a fantastic original film in recent memory, and very much worth your time. Plus, Robert Carlyle:
Playlist from 11/02:
Frank Sinatra - Ultimate Sinatra
Zombie Zombie - A Land For Renegades
Playlist - NIN between live sets (get HERE)
Opeth - Deliverance
Burial - Untrue
David Bowie - Low
Jóhann Jóhannsson - Mandy OST
11/03:
The Music - Eponymous
Burial - Untrue
Arab Strap - The Red Thread
Brainiac - Hissing Prigs in Static Couture
Polvo - Today's Active Lifestyles
Mastodon - Once More Round the Sun
Uniform/The Body - Mental Wounds Not Healing
Perturbator - B-Sides and Remixes, Vol. 1
Card of the day:
Instability. Situations that can lead to hot-tempers. This is a work-related pull, I think so I guess I should be on the look out for things that piss me off here and try to play it cool when I encounter them.
The B&W photography in this video is breathtaking. Directed by Katherine Dieckmann, who did a lot of the breakthrough REM songs back in the early 90s, with DP duties by Jim Denault, who, among many other things, shot more than a few episodes of seminal HBO series Six Feet Under and Carnivále, this video blew me away. Sharon Van Etten's new record Remind Me Tomorrow comes out January 18th, 2019 omg Jagjaguwar; you can pre-order the record and stream Jupiter 4 and another track HERE, and keep in mind, that's barely a month away at this point.
Early last year when Oz Perkin's Blackcoat's Daughter hit Prime streaming, I'd been waiting for the film for what felt like forever. When I finally sat down to watch it, the experience was a touch anti-climatic because, well, I fell asleep. Now, this happens sometimes - more and more often actually - and I never blame the film. The fact of the matter is I wake up while it's still dark out and work long hours and I'm just not able to hang sometimes. But during that viewing, I nodded off, woke up, rewound and finished the film despite my grogginess. And as often happens in situations like this, the movie suffered for it. But again, I'm always hesitant to blame the film when this happens. What I usually do is put the flick on the back burner, wait a good long while, and then try again.
So last night I re-watched Blackcoat's Daughter - formerly titled February (which I think is a much better title, despite the fact I'm not sure why the school would be going on break in February instead of December) - and I'm not entirely sure I think my narcolepsy during that first viewing was my fault. The pacing is slow but that's not really a problem, as some of my favorite horror films are 'slow burns'. This though, I don't know. Maybe the thing that makes me less forgiving is the fact that there is one thing about this film that I think completely ruins it. I don't want to go into spoilers, but there's a casting issue that I call complete bullshit on; the kind of subterfuge that doesn't work at all but was done simply to add a red herring element and keep the audience in the dark until the end. Makes the film fall into the High Tension category for me, where no matter how much I did like about it - and there's plenty, including a pretty powerful final twenty minutes - the film will never 'work' for me because of the filmmaker's reliance on a contrivance that is beneath the quality of the rest of the film.
Oh well. It was very cool however to revisit this and realize that the main girl has gone on to become Sabrina! Very cool surprise.
Playlist from 12/01:
The Atlas Moth - Coma Noir
Judas Priest - Fire Power
Impaled Nazarene - Suomi Finland Perkele
Emma Ruth Rundle - Marked for Death
Card for the day:
And just like that, the cards reflect that after calling myself on my own BS yesterday, I had a killer 2+ hour writing session, made serious headway, and intend on doing the same today.
New Astronoid out February 1st on Blood Music. Saw these guys open for Zeal & Ardor a few months ago. Very good. Can't wait for the album! Thanks to Heaven is an Incubator for tipping me off to the imminent release.
Finally got around to the first movie-and-a-half of my 28 Days double header. We watched 28 Days Later last night; K had never seen it before and it's been a few years for me. This flick is still top of the line for me. I love the way it's shot, I love the cast, and I love the way Alex Garland's story progresses in a very Romero-but-not-Romero way. What I mean by that is, there are plenty of cues from the godfather of the undead: the shopping spree, conflict with other humans, soldiers... the scene where the Ragers infiltrate the soldiers' compound during dinner reminds me so much of Day of the Dead when the zombies are in the mines. But nothing in 28 Days Later feels regurgitated or rehashed. Maybe that's because it's from the perspective of a different country. As similar as our culture is to Britain's, there's a lot of differences that make each distinctly unique, if you look below the facade (Maybe you don't even have to look that deep). Also, I think there's a certain panache to the writing and directing - it's not necessarily because the film was 'big budget'; I'm not even sure it was a big budget at the time of its production. And as an aside, it's been sometime since a layman like I could mentally juxtapose the concepts of 'Big Budget' with 'independent' in cinema, probably because today, unless you're making a pre-franchised flick that will play in China, you're basically not big budget. But that also doesn't make you independent; ask a filmmaker like Joe Begos - a true indie - if he considers half of what people call indie actually indie, chances are he'll say 'Nope.'
Anyway, with the first one down I was raring to get into the sequel, which I'd only seen once, but then we both fell asleep during 28 Weeks Later. Not the movie's fault, it was late. From what I did see, I can attest to the fact that 28 Weeks' opening sequence is just as awesome as it was the first time I saw it, with ramifications that echo very nicely through the film. I hate splitting movies into more than one viewing, but this is a loaner from a friend and I've had it forever, so we'll be finishing it from where we left off, later today.
Heads Up: Mandy just hit Shudder. If you have the service, watch it.
Russ Lippitt, author of the graphic novel Showdown, has a kickstarter going for an awesome board game based on the Showdown series, which revolves around hot rod racing in hell. That description doesn't really do it justice, so for more info, check this out:
Playlist from 11/30:
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - Your Funeral... My Trial
Gimes - We Appreciate Power (Single)
The Besnard Lakes - A Coliseum Complex
Electric Youth - Innerworld
Boy Harsher - Country Girl EP
Iggy Pop - The Idiot
Sepultura - Chaos A.D.
Sepultura - Arise
Ghost Cop - One Weird Trick
Sepultura - Beneath the Remains
Emma Ruth Rundle - Marked for Death
This is interesting. I've had a fairly non-productive week, writing-wise. Part of this is work's been a bitch, but... that's not really it at all. Back in early October, I hung out with an old friend for the first time in a while and he told me about Stoneydelivery.com. Yes folks, these are the joys of living in a state that has legalized marijuana. Stoney Delivery is basically the amazon of pot; I ordered some CBD stuff for pain and a vape pen of Sativa while at work one day, around 1:00, and by the time I got home it'd been delivered, free shipping to boot. Now, I'm not a huge pothead. I was when I was younger; most days I skip it simply because I generally don't write while high, and I try to write everyday, so the one cancels out the other, no problem. Also, I detest cannabis culture. No kidding. Hate it. But you can't blame the plant for the cult of garish losers started in its name, so for years my pot consumption has been relegated to two event types: watching movies (especially in the theatre), and listening to music. One of the best musical experiences I've had in recent years was bringing Deftones' Koi No Yokan home the day it came out, smoking, and listening to it laid out on my living room floor, my stereo speakers loud enough to engulf me. Same with QOTSA's ...Like Clockwork.
These days though, even most album releases have become harder to coordinate the time for a stoned first pass through. Apple has changed how I listen to music - not for better or worse mind you, simply altered - and my writing has continued to increase, while my time feels perpetually diminished. So, along comes this delivery service and suddenly I'm smoking pretty much every day. The vape is discreet, consistent, and not overpowering. With the actual pot I have accrued over the years (myriads of different strains left at my place by friends, all kept snug as a bug in a rug inside an Iron Maiden Number of the Beast lunch box; who says irony's dead?), smoking is always a toss up and an inconvenience. First, the building we moved into back in March is a serious 'No Smoking' building, and I'm not the kind of A-hole who will inconvenience others just to make myself happy. What this means is before the vape, I'd have to take a small walk to take a drag or two off my one-hitter. And the effects of the weed itself was always inconsistent because of so many different kinds, so I never really knew if two hits would leave me lackluster and tired or induce a full-on schizophrenic episode. Now though, it's the same every time and once I figured out my preferred dosage, it became easier and easier to partake. Coming off being sick two weeks ago, I'd garnered a fair bit of inertia, the kind that tempted me to return from work and read or sleep or watch a movie - all things I can do while high - instead of walking to my spot to write. Also, I'm nearing the end of the book and there's finish- line anxiety. This week I became lucid and realized I'd found an excuse three out of the five days not to write. And that's bullshit. I call bullshit on myself.
Which leads me, at last, back to the card of the day. As soon as I saw the Six of Cups Pleasure, I wondered if it might actually be a warning against too much pleasure. For clarification I pulled another card and what do you know, my hunch was apparently correct because:
There you go. Lazy is as lazy does.
The good news is, well, look at all this insight. It's good to call yourself out on your own bullshit. Also, I had a pretty good session last night and plan on writing both today and tomorrow (this long-winded reflection is a step in the right direction; notice my blog suffered the last few days as well). But I always dig when the cards are that upfront with me. It keeps me grounded and reinforces there's a reason I do this, you know, because as a method around our conscious mind and all its hang-ups, they work. You just have to listen when they speak.
