Currently in love with Louisville, KY band Jaye Jayle's 2018 record No Trail and Other Unholy Paths. This was produced by David Lynch's long-time music supervisor/collaborator Dean Hurley, and pretty much blew me away from first spin. Think Mark Lanegan/PJ Harvey vibe, but with some dirgey Doom goodness thrown into the mix, I can't wait to go through the band's back catalogue, available on their bandcamp HERE.
Jaye Jayle's music - or at least on this album - totally fits in with my visual life at the moment, because tonight K and I are scheduled to finish Season 3 of Deadwood. I've watched the series before, although I haven't seen Season 3 but the one time, back in the aughts. This viewing has kind of been like seeing it for the first time again. I'm amazed at the pot boiler the show is building out of the Hearst/Swearengen-Bullock skirmish, and I can't wait to finish this out and then keep my fingers crossed 24/7 that the movie we have now actually seen pictures of in EW really does come to pass. Seems impossible at this point that it wouldn't, but you never know...
NCBD: Not a whole lot today, but a new issue of Seven to Eternity is always a reason to celebrate, and D.J. Kirkbride's Errand Boys comes to a rip-snortin' finish with issue #5!
Playlist from 2/19:
Pink Floyd - Works
Young Widows - Old Wounds
Jaye Jayle - No Trail and Other Unholy Paths
Alice in Chains - Rainier Fog
Algiers - Eponymous
The Body - I Have Fought Against It, But I
Chris Connelly - Artificial Madness
Beck - Odelay
A few nights ago, K and I watched the 1986 film At Close Range, directed by James Foley and starring Sean Penn, Christopher Walken, Chris Penn (looking a lot like Jason Mewes back in the day), Keifer Sutherland, Crispin Glover, and Mary Stuart Masterson. I can remember this film for as far back as I can remember; seeing the television trailers for it as a kid, glimpsing the VHS box at the general store that served as our first video rental outlet (well before Blockbuster or Hollywood existed); but I never actually saw the movie. However, we noticed it's on Prime right now, so I finally pulled the trigger. Not bad; early 80s teen angst/crime mash-up. Interesting to see Christopher Walken before he settled into being Christopher Walken in every role. Also, interesting to see Keifer Sutherland before he was a name brand - he has all of about two lines. Glover and Sean Penn both deliver as usual, and Mary Stuart Masterson does a good job with some of the more uncomfortable scenes. All in all, I'd give it 3.5 out of 5.0.
The soundtrack utilizes the opening, instrumental portion of this Madonna track as score, so we hear it a lot. It served as a serious nostalgia trigger for me, so by the point in the film where they bring in the vocals, I was certain I'd heard it before and placing it was driving me nuts. Now Live to Tell is stuck in my head, or the opening notes are, at any rate. There's not a lot of Madonna I really dig, but I think this track is going onto that list.
Playlist from 2/18:
Pink Floyd - Animals
Young Widows - Old Wounds
Deftones - Gore
Faith No More - Sol Invictus
Pink Floyd - Works
Jimi Hendrix - Electric Ladyland
Emotional intelligence with a penchant for secrets and introversion. I think it's time to pull myself out of the hole I dug for myself while sick over the last week. Today = Writing session.
To say I have been waiting for an adaptation of Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman's Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter Witch for a long time is an understatement. Mr. Brown and I read this back in the mid-90s and I've been a fan since (though I could definitely use a re-read). I remember Terry Gilliam was attached for a while, and Johnny Depp and Robin Williams were set to play the Angel Aziraphale and the Demon Crowley, though which was set for which I can't remember anymore. Regardless, the fact that we're finally getting Good Omens, and as a series no less, makes me very happy. The title sequence was revealed recently and watching it, I feel anticipation unlike any in a while. I just wish this could have come to fruition while Mr. Pratchett was still alive.
Playlist from 2/18 was non-existent.
The penultimate episode of True Detective, Season 3 aired last night and it was HUGE!!! I won't spoil anything here, but this season has been masterful.
Also, Episode 5 of Rick Remender's Deadly Class aired on SyFy and it pretty much left me speechless. This has been such an amazing adaptation of a comic, probably the best one I've ever seen, and all the glory is owed to Mr. Remender. In the back matter of the most recent issue of the Deadly Class comic, Remender talked on how he surrendered sleep and freedom to be the show runner on Deadly Class, and he's filled out the story in the comics with much love. Nothing has been added that doesn't expand the source material organically, and the actual ratio of straight adaptation to screen has been fantastic. Episode 5 was the Vegas episode, and the use of animation here was amazing. Reminded me of The Wall, a bit. SO freaking good.
Card of the day:
Okay, many will say I probably should remove this card from my mini Thoth deck, but I left it in and drew it, so I'm stuck interpreting it. Hmmm... I've said this before recently and not followed through, but perhaps I should pull some Crowley off the bookshelf in my room and peruse for inspiration?
New track from Perturbator, who had previously stated he was done with the synth wave thing. This is definitely something different, and I'm hoping only one facet of what will be a widely different adventure for the musician, who is perhaps just as equally ambitious as he is talented. A good thing, for sure.
As for pre-orders, there's nothing listed on either the Perturbator or Blood Music bandcamps yet, but when I find something, I'll be sure to post it here.
Back in 2006, Scottish write Alan Campbell messaged me on myspace - remember that? - and, having noticed I talked about the work of China Mieville a lot, asked if I'd heard of his debut novel, Scar Night. Set in a city that hangs on massive chains above a bottomless pit, I really didn't need to read any more than that to seek the book out. Thus, my love of Campbell's Deepgate Codex series was seeded. Four books and five years later, I saw an announcement for a new novel and series go up, Sea of Ghosts: the Gravedigger Chronicles, Book One. Only problem was, for years I could not seem to get the book in the U.S.
At some point Sea of Ghosts fell off my radar, and remained obscured to me for some time. Now, a few weeks ago, I finally ordered a copy and, having received it yesterday, began reading it. It's good to be swaddled in Campbell's lush, fantastical prose again.
There's not a lot of fantasy I like, primarily because, from my experience, most of the genre is made up of authors who love Tolkien and want only to write inside his tropes. Hence, no matter how many people I drive mad with my resolve, I will never read or watch Game of Thrones. I'm sure they are excellent, but Knights and Dragons are most assuredly not my thing. It's been done to death. Mieville's take on fantasy - where everything is his own creation - is more my taste, and I'd add Campbell and Peter V. Brett as similar contemporaries. Campbell's Deepgate Codex plays with the textures and aesthetics of Steampunk, for example, but never feels the need to limit itself by those aesthetics, preferring instead to incorporate them into the author's own unique world-building ideologies. And with his undermining explorations of the tenants of religion, political power, and military intelligence, Alan Campbell's aesthetics always engage and expand my own imagination, and quite often make me smile. I'm excited as pie to be back in one of his worlds again.
Playlist from 2/16:
David Bowie - Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps)
David Bowie - Station to Station
Beastmilk - Climax
Jozef Van Wissem & Jim Jarmusch - An Attempt to Draw Aside the Veil
Red Rider - As Far As Siam
Frankie Goes to Hollywood - Welcome to the Pleasuredome
Pink Floyd - Animals
Frankie Goes to Hollywood? You mean, like Relax? Yep. How did that happen? Well...
Two nights ago K and I watched Body Double for the first time. I LOVED this flick; possibly my favorite De Palma film, or at least right behind Carlito's Way. Body Double is early, macabre thriller De Palma, and its tone is compelling and unapologetic for turning the camera's eye on a protagonist that is as seedy as he is well-intentioned. In the film, there's a sequence that utilizes pretty much the entire track Relax, and seeing it I remembered encountering the LP Welcome to the Pleasuredome on the shelves of a thrift store back in the oughts. The album art and design was involved, and I remember thinking it looked as though this band I only knew the one track by - a track I liked very much - may have had ambitions on a level similar to groups like early Genesis, or Pink Floyd. I'm not sure why I didn't buy the record that day in the thrift, but I'd always meant to get around to listening to a full album by Frankie, partially just because I don't know that I've ever spoken to anyone else who had.
So, spurred on by Body Double - a film I really can't say enough good things about - I used the good ol' Apple Music to listen to Pleasuredome yesterday. Verdict? Hmmm... not sure. Ambitious? Yes. Nobly so? Maybe not. Bloated with its own regard? Probably.
I may get back around to re-engaging with Frankie Goes to Hollywood's Welcome to the Pleasuredome some day, but in the meantime I'll still crank Relax whenever I hear it. Like now:
Card of the day:
I'm hoping this points to being back to all cylinders, and not the fact that in order to finally extricate this damnable flu, I need the help of a trained professional. I'll know by the end of the day, I'm sure.
Spending my morning with Brian Sweeney Fitzgerald, aka Fitzcarraldo. This is one of the most impressive motion pictures ever made. Period. I'm planning on following up the film with a viewing of Les Blank/Michael Goodwin's The Burden of Dreams, the documentary about the making of Fitzcarraldo. If you've never seen these films, what's so amazing is this: in Werner Herzog's Fitzcarraldo, the titular character, as played by the always brilliant Klaus Kinski, is a would-be entrepreneur in the early 20th Century Amazon with one great dream in life: to build an Opera house in Iquitos, a small city in the jungle. To fund this, Fitz's plan is to become a Rubber Baron by exploiting the one region of rubber trees still unclaimed in the area - unclaimed because the rapids in the Ucayali River that leads from the Amazon directly to the region are unnavigable. But Fitz has a plan.
The Plan: To sail upstream on the neighboring Pachitea River, then pull the boat over the narrow strip of land that separates it from the Ucayali. From there, Fitz reasons they can sail down the Ucayali into the region of rubber trees, gather his workers' yield, and haul it back up to the crossover point, it's just a matter of short trips for his steamer up the Ucayali, and the work of transporting his crop back across to the Pachitea.
But, you know, first they have to actually pull a streamliner over a mountain.
So how do you film that? Well, you have to actually do all of it. As in, Herzog had to actually pull the steamer over the land, which required blasting. The Burden of Dreams chronicles the reality of a filmmaker willing to do the same fantastic feat he requires of his fictional character. It is massive, awe-inspiring, and the very best kind of creative insanity, to say the very least.
Playlist from 2/14:
Pink Floyd - Animals
Corrosion of Conformity - No Cross No Crown
Black Sabbath - Eponymous
The Pack A.D. - Unpersons
Jimi Hendrix - Electric Ladyland
Mike Patton - Mondo Cane
Card of the day:
Seems to line up with my viewing this afternoon. Something this inspirational will usually help charge the batteries right before a new endeavor.
My health is much better today, which means I'm back to work. It's been raining here in LaLaLand off and on for days; today the heaven water is planted firmly in the 'On' position, which is cool with me. I always get a kick out of what heaven LA rain does to the city - green sprouts up everywhere instantaneously, as if all this plant life you didn't even know is there has just been waiting for a few drops to come back to life and flourish. And the LA river? Right about now you could probably take a canoe to it.
NCBD this week; I haven't been in to pick up my books in weeks, so despite tracking what came out each of the last few Wednesdays in these pages, I haven't picked up a single one. This week was a big one though, so I'll probably head in today for this, along with everything else:
Second Arc conclusion is bound to be a doozy; firmly the book I look forward to the most each month. No offense, TWD, you're still up there, too:
Soooo good! The idea that we are living in a world with a monthly Criminal book is invigorating beyond description:
And forgot that this hit last week:
Playlist from 02/13:
Secret Chiefs 3 Traditionalists - Le Mani Destre Recise Degli Ultimi Uomini
Pink Floyd - Animals
Jimi Hendrix - Axis Bold As Love
Jimi Hendrix - Electric Ladyland
Card of the day:
Ah, the extra card. Most people take these out, I leave them in. That said, I've never drawn this before so I've never had the occasion to research it. If you do a little quick reading, this is the Unicursal Hexagram Crowley used in Ritual situations. It is a symbol of Crowley's 'religion,' Thelema. Not sure what this is saying; perhaps I should take a few moments today and peruse some of my Crowley texts, just to see if anything relevant bites.
Well, it's been a few days. In fact, the interim between today's post and my previous one on Sunday is the longest I've gone without posting since I began the new format of this page shortly into 2018. This plague I have is no joke, and to top it off we're short at work, so I've had to go in the last few mornings. It's been half-sick days all week, which isn't bad, but half measures apparently are not going to give me the rest I need to beat this, so today I am just off, period.
I'm starting the day re-watching the above Emma Ruth Rundle documentary that Sargent Housedropped last week; makes me want to move back to the Midwest, if I'm being truthful. Although, if I'm being honest, many fleeting glances into other people's lives inspire that reaction in me; from visits home, to contemplation of friends who have beautiful homes and pay less in monthly mortgage payments by half than I pay to rent a small two-bedroom, to the idea of thunderstorms owning an entire season. The early scenes in this doc, those with everyone in the bar, even just the shot of the street outside the bar for that matter because there aren't bars in LA like that, these scenes make me homesick. Then again, I remind myself, it's only one aspect of myself that pines for these things, and as green as the faraway grass of Chicago, or Dayton, or Louisville looks from here in Los Angeles, I'm well aware I have a pretty awesome life set up here. Cost of living is a big check in the CON column, but there's a lot of PROs as well. This is the mental and emotional cost of daily life: the balancing act between all the wants and needs inside us. And I do a pretty good job, for the most part.
This doc also made me remember how much I like Young Widows. Been a while; you'll notice they begin to populate my daily listening again below.
**
Here's a shocker I just found out yesterday because I don't pay any attention to music award shows: High on Fire won a Grammy on Sunday. Holy shit; hell hath frozen over. And as much as I hate to solicit for a paradigm I detest, here's their acceptance footage, because even after watching it twice, I still can't believe it. That said, I feel like this is an Oscars-like, making-up-for-lost-time awarding, because although I dig Electric Messiah, I feel as though the band's truly groundbreaking and undeniable work is well behind them. Still, who'd have thought, eh? Better late than never...
Having now crested the half-way point in Ramsey Campbell's Alone with the Horrors, I've returned it to the shelf and decided to re-read a few of the stories in Thomas Ligotti's debut collections Songs of a Dead Dreamer/Grimscribe. There's a definite pedigree here; Ligotti is clearly influenced by Campbell, although not in an overly direct way. But there are some aesthetic through-lines I am interested in exploring here, and I'm enjoying this strange little path I've discovered for myself through some of the foundations of short-form modern Weird/Horror. It's definitely helping me understand tone and craft better.
I've watched quite a bit during my sick time. First up, Anthony from The Horror Vision recently gifted me a copy of Scream Factory's Scream Queens Double Feature: John Carpenter's The Fog, and Joe Dante's The Howling. It'd been a couple years since I'd seen The Howling, and I was curious to see the difference the transfer would make, so before watching it I did a quick A/B with my old DVD copy.
Wow. Folks, this is dangerous. Having only recently been converted to the merit of upgrading to Blu Ray - because I refuse to rebuy my collection on another format - I have to say, the difference is huge. So I watched The Howling and was enraptured by the clarity. I also did some reading about transfer technology and what not (Blu-Ray.com is a near limitless source for that), and I have to say, I won't be replacing everything, but some films for sure. Army of Darkness for instance, or at least the DVD copy I have of the Director's Cut, is a laughable transfer; seriously, this was one of the first films I noticed issues on, two years ago when I excitedly sat down to show K the original Evil Dead trilogy. We made it to the third installment and I realized the picture was so bad it looked like we were watching the film on a crappy old tv in 1978 during an electrical storm. I mean, it's garbage.
Army of Darkness isn't a film I can't live without; it's easily my least favorite of all Ash Williams vehicles, but it's an iconic gem and one I want in my collection. But not this terrible transfer. Because, the idea isn't about constantly upgrading and rebuying, it's about Film Preservation. And while I'm not sure if I have to nitpick over the differences between the $10 AOD Blu Ray that Scream Factory released and the $30 one, having all three versions of the film is important to me, so it's going to have to be the $30. But that purchase is down the road, perhaps when one of SF's sales comes up. I'm still trying like hell to save money, and doing a fairly good job doing it, which is precisely why all the information available about transfers and clarity is, as I said at the outset, dangerous.
After The Howling, I changed pace and watched Jim Jarmusch's Paterson. Wow. One of the best films I've seen in a while, and one of my favorite of Jarmusch's to date; he has such a sense of forgiveness, community, and humanity that comes through in his work, that I feel like this film actually helped heal some black, sticky stuff that was left inside me after a falling out I had back in August last year. So good. I'm not posting a trailer, because there's no way a trailer could tell you anything about this film. Just watch it; Paterson is an Amazon-funded film, and thus available on Prime for free.
Next, I finally got around to Werner Herzog's Nosferatu: The Vampyre. I don't always understand or gel with Herzog's style, but he has such a knack for balancing pragmatism with artistic flourish that I always enjoy his films, even if only after they've ended and I'm re-thinking them. That might be the case here. Let's stick with the poster thing, I'm starting to hate trailers:
Finally, with all these long stretches of time on my hands, I thought I'd get around to one of the longer flicks that has been on my list forever, namely, Derek Cianfrance's 2012 MASTERPIECE, The Place Beyond the Pines. This film was enormous to me; a familial crime epic that blew me away and capped my cinema for the day yesterday because, how the hell do you follow something that BIG? And hell, Mike Patton does the score, and I can say this not just as a fan of his but as a fan of cinema scores: fantastically done, Mr. Patton.
Playlists have been tiny, so instead of doing a day-by-day, I'm summate thusly:
Playlist from Sunday, 2/10-Tuesday, 2/12:
SQÜRL - Paterson OST
David Zinman, Dawn Upshaw & London Sinfonietta - Gorecki: Symphony #3, Op 36 "Symphony of Sorrowful Songs": I. Lento - Sostenuto tranquillo ma cantabile
Young Widows - Settle Down City
Young Widows - Old Wounds
Talking Heads - Remain in Light
Windhand - Eternal Return
Morphine - The Night
Secret Chiefs 3 Traditionalists - Le Mani Destre Recise Degli Ultimi Uomini
Jozef Van Wissem & Jim Jarmusch - An Attempt to Draw Aside the Veil
John Carpenter - Lost Themes
Card of the day:
I'm hoping this is a reminder of the past few days, and not a harbinger of more oppressive illness to come.
