It's getting a bit tough to make it through all seven entries of 80s Metal Week and not repeat myself, but then it occurred to me, there is no way I wasn't going to include this song and, particularly, this video, which is ridiculous. That said, this one has stayed with me since I first saw it on Empty-V back when it came out, so I wanted to do it justice.
Watch:
David Lynch Executive Producer on a surreal thriller dealing with doppelgängers?
Sign me up. This also reminds me that I still haven't seen My Son, My Son, What Have You Done, the film Lynch produced for Director Werner Herzog back in 2009.
Cypress Hill - Back in Black (pre-release singles)
Cypress Hill - Eponymous
Metallica - Master of Puppets
The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion - Now I Got Worry
Anthrax - Spreading The Disease
Back Sabbath - Master of Reality
Blut Aus Nord - Hallucinogen
Soul Coughing - El Oso
Card:
Dealing with issues of stability as we move into the phase of booking all of the locations and services that will precipitate our escape from LaLaLand. Also, taxes always induce mild to threatening anxiety in me.
This song is an absolute classic. It's not going to profoundly affect any of our lives, but damn if it isn't a near-perfect pop-rock ditty, with some outstanding production work from Bruce Fairbairn, who also brought us Aerosmith's Pump, AC/DC's Razor's Edge, and The Cranberries' To the Faithful Departed, along with a whole host of other records in his career.
Watch:
After hearing nothing but good things about Netflix's new show Archive 81, K and I decided to take a breather from Cobra Kai (about a quarter of the way through the new season) and give this a try:
So far, we both really like it. Creepy, and filled with things that totally pique the analog fetishist that I locked away inside myself long ago when moving forced me to get rid of a lot of the old equipment I had. Also, and this is always a plus, Archive 81 is super creepy. Two eps in and we dig.
NCBD:
Another week packed with new comic book goodness:
We're getting really close to the end. The last two issues were jaw-droppers, let's see what Messrs. Remender, Craig and Loughridge have in store for us this week.
Really digging this book. It's not reinventing the wheel, but I definitely feel Block and Stark in its DNA, which in and of itself isn't unusual for a crime comic, but when you've got Zadarksy and Phillips driving, there's sure to be some intense crime drama.
All praise Saga, it hath Returned!!!! I could not be happier about this, however, I have not had a chance to really get my re-read of issues 1-54 going, so that kinda sucks. I'm not about to wait to read this until I do, however, that would have been my preference.
How could you not love a book with this cover?
Speaking of covers, for someone who never really gave two squash about them before, I'm becoming a bit obsessed. This would probably clock in as my favorite thus far from either of the Two Moons story arcs, and even though I'm finding this one hard to read month-to-month, seeing this makes me want to allocate some time this week to re-read this second arc.
You know, when I saw that "Captain Krakoa" crap in last month's solicitation for X-Men issue 6, I rolled my eyes. Turns out I was wrong - it's not what it seems, and it's awesome!
Here's a new one I'll definitely be subscribing to through my shop - a continuation of the Netflix series, which was unjustly canceled before it could really even get going.
Playlist:
Odonis Odonis - Spectrums
Ministry - The Mind is a Terrible Thing to Taste
Lard - Pure Chewing Satisfaction
Burial - Antidawn
Burial - Untrue
Mastodon - Hushed and Grim
Public Enemy - Fear of a Black Planet
James Brown - 70s Funk Classics
Ghost - Call Me Little Sunshine (pre-release single)
Atrium Carceri - Kapnobatai
Lustmord - Dark Matter
Card:
Yeah, something is standing in my way, and it's totally me.
Okay, hear me out on this one.
Back about the time I graduated High School - 1994 - my girlfriend at the time's older sister was dating my friend Rob. They had a dingy little apartment in Palos Hills, above the iconically scummy Pizza Pub on 103rd and 88th avenue. Their neighbor was an 80s holdover with a super 80s cocaine mustache that listened to Night Ranger. Fancying ourselves as belonging to the indie rock hoi polloi, we nicknamed this poor guy "Night Ranger" and made him the butt of all our jokes. But guess what? This song fucking rocks, and as my A Most Horrible Library cohost Chris Saunders has pointed out, has one awesome guitar solo. Which was definitely important in its era. nearly 40 years later, I'm secure enough in myself to admit, I totally dig this song, too.
Watch:
I've been on a bit of a "Folk Horror" bender, in both literature and movies, and I started my weekend bender with Arthur Machen's The White People (not about January 6th, 2021), then re-read H.P. Lovecraft's The Festival, one of the best examples of Lovecraft dipping his toes into Folk Horror, and also, probably my second favorite story among his oeuvre.
Next up, M.R. James' A Warning to the Curious, followed by his classic Oh, Whistle and I Will Come to You, Lad. I'd never read this one before, as James - just like Machen and their contemporary Algernon Blackwood - have been on my radar for the better part of twenty years. I wasn't disappointed.
Even though I'd never read Whistle, way back circa 2011 or 2012, I was introduced to the story at the H.P. Lovecraft film fest at San Pedro's timeless Warner Grand, where along with a host of other great Lovecraft/Weird Fiction films, they played the BBC's 1968 adaptation of the story, directed by Jonathan Miller and starring - in a rather iconic role - Michael Hordern as Professor Parkins. This one has stayed with me for ten years or so now, crystal clear in my memory compared to a lot of other movies I watch, and it was quite satisfying to finally read the source material.
Amazingly enough, the entire thing is on youtube. Here you go:
Totally worth your time, Miller's adaptation kind of feels like an extra spooky episode of The Twilight Zone. Now that I've read the story and found this online, my plan is to rewatch it within the next few days.
Finally, I'm working my way through Blackwood's The Willows, which is probably the longest of these stories I've read so far, and isn't really impressing me all that much. Yet. I'm hoping this is just a case of my falling out of sync with the concentration required to shift my mental palate to a place where I can read and enjoy fiction written in slightly outdated vernacular. Just based on this small sampling thus far, I'd have to say James stands out as my favorite of the three. I plan on continuing on, however, even if Phillip Pullman's final book in the original His Dark Materials trilogy is still at 83% on my kindle. I'm not usually one to be so capricious about my reading, but at the moment, I have to go where my passion takes me.
I'd like to add, if you're at all interested in reading James' work, I've found A Podcast to the Curious to be a wonderful supplemental source for exploring and contextualizing his work.
Author & Punisher - Maiden Star (pre-release single)
Author & Punisher - Beastland
Author & Punisher - Women & Children
Drab Majesty - Careless
Zombi - 2020
Zombi - Shape Shift
Zombi - Digitalis
Card:
While I've never really been a fan of this card as a Pull, seeing it now makes me think there's a bit of tumult occurring in my creative side. That feels right - I've recently finished editing my friend Jen's first novel, and now I have to get myself back into my own groove. I may need to take a different tack than I'm used to if I want to jumpstart myself back onto the road to where I was.
I've written about Skid Row before, both here and back on Joup, and while I've pretty much always defended their sophomore record Slave to the Grind for being released the same summer as Metallica's Black Album and being heavier, my absolute love of their self-titled debut definitely disappeared for about a decade and some change after I deemed it too "hair rock" to partake in.
Fuck that.
There's no denying some 80s Metal cringe here, and how that "dangerous kids on the street" zeitgeist that all these bands tapped into and sold hard in the 80s reached its absolute zenith on this record. But looking back- that's a great thing. This isn't slaughter or winger - this is a more real version of the act, if such a thing is possible. Maybe it was Bach's track record over the last few decades - certainly his appearance on Trailer Park Boys made me believe he was still exactly what he claimed to be on this first album. An album that's so perfect, even its ballad holds up. Throw in the iconic single 18 and Life, and you get the perfect soundtrack to suburban, middle-class high school punk kids (not Punk kids) in all their cheap whiskey swillin', stolen cigarette smokin', guitar center hangin' metal-dude voguing, and no one sings it better than Bach.
Watch:
This. Now. Please:
Aw hell, they took my favorite Turtle and mixed him with equal parts my favorite Universal Monster? Just take my got-damned money, NECA.
Look at those lightning bolt sais!
Playlist:
Slayer - Reign in Blood
Alio Die and Lorenzo Montaná - The Threshold of Beauty
DeadMau5 - Catbread (single)
Van Halen - 1984
Card:
Looking at the bigger gameboard. Seeing beyond the smaller machinations, and really attempting to construct a bigger picture. Too much Mr. Miyagi of late, or am I crystalizing my vision for 2022? Only time will tell.
This song has been creeping back into my good graces for a few months now, and finally, I'm ready to scream it from the mountains - well, not that dramatic, but still, Ratt's "Round and Round" is a nearly perfect little piece of 80s pop hair metal. It fuses that "dangerous kids on the streets" vibe that no other music captures as well as 80s Hair metal (aka Butt rock, as my friend Two would say). This song really brings back memories of being a punk kid, stealing Cutty Sark or Seagrams VO from our parents and wandering the streets of Chicago's south suburbs, smoking marlboro lights and rebelling against our perfect little 80s suburban lives because... well, because we were fucking kids! And yeah, that's why rallying behind a tune like this has been a difficult place to go for the three decades since - it's embarrassing to think of yourself being so... cringe. But it was part of our generation, and I'm finally ready to own it.
Watch:
We needed a palate cleanser after the insanity of the Yellowjackets season finale, and we found it in Cobra Kai!
I'd been reticent to watch this, but after rewatching Karate Kid one and two for the first time since they were in theatres I found I really dug them. Nostalgia, of course, but also, they're good Hollywood flicks. My first bout with part three was a mixed bag - some fantastic stuff, and some terrible stuff. But once we started Cobra Kai, well, it's been three nights as I write this, and we're about a quarter of the way through the third season. The show is constructed in these perfectly balanced, bite-sized episodes that really accentuate the writing - which, while very tv - is also extremely well done.
I feel about Cobra Kai in a very similar way that I feel about IDW's TMNT. Whereas I've been saying for the last nine years that the latter is the best reboot of a preexisting property I've ever seen, Cobra Kai is the best continuation of a pre-existing property I've ever seen.
Playlist:
Judas Priest - Screaming for Vengeance
Author and Punisher - Drone Carrying Dread (pre-release single)
Author and Punisher - Maiden Star (pre-release single)
First single from the forthcoming album Impera. Man, it's been a minute... glad to have Papa and crew back. You can pre-order Impera HERE, but a word of caution - be careful. Their prices seem incredibly cheap this time around - I've always felt Ghost's merch was crazy expensive - but they really hammer you with add-ons while you're checking out. I fell for it (happily), but be warned.
If you're a regular reader of this page, you'll know that a couple years ago I began sifting through a lot of the 80s rock that I'd either ignored or abandoned after adolescence. I called the project "Recontextualizing the 80s" and meant it very much in earnest. I was a kid in the 80s but became a young adult in the 90s, and as many of us know, part of that process is breaking from the things you liked as a child. Right, because at 16, 17, 18 or even into your 20s, you're such an adult. More like, fake it 'til you make it.
One thing I've learned as I entered and defeated my thirties is there's really no such thing as 'adults' as they are advertised to children. The only difference between a kid and an adult is if you accept responsibility for your own actions and everything that follows through from that. Of course, I might just be saying that because I'm a nearly 46-year-old dude who still buys transformers and geeks out over Marvel Comics, but you know, I think I'm right. As a bartender, I saw a lot of adults who acted way more like children and thus was born my theory.
But I'm trailing off on a tide of tangents.
Anyway, the 90s served as the crystallization and final stand of the indie rock scenes that began in the 80s, and with their coalescing into the larger arena of pop culture, a complete refusal to acknowledge any music containing artifice. This was great at the time, but if you're even the littlest bit self-aware, you eventually realize that not every band or musician has to have a straight-lipped, white-knuckle chokehold on "TOTAL INTEGRITY OR DIE". Sometimes it's good just to have fun, and yeah, all the cocaine and mascara of the 80s metal scene pretty much tells you at a glance that's all a lot of those bands cared about. Sometimes that sucks, and sometimes it's okay and carries with it a certain kind of integrity in itself. So for the next seven entries of this blog, I'm going to post tracks that I've either rediscovered a fondness for, finally admitted a fondness for, or have discovered a fondness for.
Get ready, and please, don't throw any Pavement keychains at me. That shit hurts and I never really got into them in the first place.
We start with a song and an album by the 80s Prince of Darkness himself that I used to never like, even back when I liked Ozzy. With the exception of "A Shot in the Dark" - which I believe I've posted in these pages on several previous occasions - I never took a liking to The Ultimate Sin. A couple years ago, however, I decided to give it another shot and guess what? I totally dig every damn track on this record.
Watch:
Now, as if to fly in the face of everything in the previous section, I spent part of last weekend doing a mini Danny Boyle marathon. First up, my first (finally) viewing of The Beach.
I'm a big fan of Alex Garland's novel, and although Boyle's adaptation changed quite a bit from the book, I still dug it, especially the always delightful Robert Carlyle as Daffy.
Next, the original Trainspotting, which I've lost track of my number of viewings for and still adore.
Last and perhaps most bafflingly, I had my first-ever viewing of T2 Trainspotting, the sequel.
I really should have seen this one a long time ago, but never got around to it, always kind of bummed I missed its microscopic theatrical run. I suppose some of the blame lay with the fact that, since I've forced myself to stay away from reading Welsh's last few novels - despite the fact that I still count him in my top three authors of all time - I also moved away from all the other areas of his work. I'm pretty sure at the beginning of every year I tell myself and my readers that this is the year I return to reading Welsh, and finally acquire and burn through all those novels I've missed since I read Skag Boys, but the truth is, while I'm still working on writing a genre series, the idea of drifting back into Welsh's prose may alter my own voice in a way that makes these next two books even more impossible than they already sometimes feel.
Whatever.
T2 bears pretty much no resemblance to Welsh's Porno - which wasn't so much a sequel to Trainspotting as it was a sequel to both that and my favorite of his novel, Glue. But Boyle had no time to introduce that other book's key players - Juice Terry, NSIGN Ewart, wee Gally, or Billy Birrell, and as such, opted to make this more of a sequel to his previous film. Which was the smart move, even if it forced this film to hinge around the confrontation between Renton and Begbie, which does not disappoint, even if the rest of the flick - as enjoyable as it is, especially visually - feels a might rudderless at times.
Regardless of any of that, I still really enjoyed this one and will definitely revisit again, especially after I finally do get back on the Welsh Horse (pun intended but not to be read in any capacity other than reading the man's literature).
NCBD:
Marvel is basically stealing my wallet this week:
I've had no interest in the current Death of Doctor Strange storyline until this Black Knight tie-in one-shot. That's because it's Si Spurrier picking up directly from last year's Black Knight: Curse of the Ebony Blade mini-series.
I'd imagine the cover to this one intimates a big reveal. Hell, I hadn't even stopped drooling over the art in this book or the total 70s-Marvel-inspired storyline long enough to wonder who was under the Masked Raider's mask. They have me curious now, though, but just to be clear - and because I almost never say this - I'm here first and foremost for the art. All revelations are just icing on the cake.
So Bruce Banner is essentially exploring the multiverse with the Hulk as a rocket ship? Yeah, it sounds daft, but again, it comes out with a distinctly 70s flavor in Donny Cates and Ryan "Invincible" Ottley's hands, and after picking up the first two issues on a whim, I'm digging Hulk quite a bit.
Let's interrupt the Marvel fanfare with the final issue of Maw, which so far, has been one of the best original concept Horror Minis I've read in years, ranking right up there with Autumnal, Black Stars Above, and The Plot. Great company to keep, and creators Jude Ellison S. Doyle and A.L. Kaplan have totally earned it.
Mr. Brown clued me in to the fact that the Moon Knight trailer dropped a few days ago, and after watching it, I'm pretty excited. The final shot of the costume looks a bit goofy, in the way Daredevil's did when they first introduced it at the end of the first season of the Netflix show from a few years back, but based on how much this one appears to lean into the mental illness aspects of Marc Spector, I'm more than happy to give it a chance.
Speaking of the show's apparent handling of Dissociative Identity Disorder, how many SJWs do you think are going to take to the Twittersphere to cry afoul? Let's hope that doesn't affect anything the show has planned.
I can't wait to sit down and re-read Lemire and Sorrentino's Cold War Psychic Animal WTF series in a tight burst. There's a lot I feel slipping through the cracks month-to-month here, and I'd imagine the big picture these cats are painting will be that much more effective when consumed uninterrupted.
This is where, if you've been paying attention for the last 9 months or so, I say, "I'm just picking up the number one," and then go on to read this new She-Hulk series monthly. Well, maybe that will be the case. I'm not sure I've ever read a comic with She-Hulk in it before. I mean, it seems like, with the number of comics I've read in my life, I would have had to have read something featuring Jen Walters, but if I did, I don't remember it. Still, I've always been aware of the character, and never particularly interested. Or, maybe the advance hype behind writer Rainbow Rowell and Rogê Antônio's new series will surprise me.
Everything about this cover for the new Silver Surfer: Rebirth commands me to buy this book.
I probably will not buy both covers for The Silver Coin #8 - I'll probably go with the Michael Walsh cover below because, hey, body parts in a bloody mop bucket, am I right? Still, the above alt cover by What's The Furthest Place From Here rock god Tyler Boss is pretty f'ing cool, too.
Number 125. Another landmark in the best reboot EVER.
And finally, here's one I really don't want to buy, but might:
It surprises me to no end that in falling back in love with the X-Men, years of oversaturation have left Logan off my radar and in the "Mutants I least want to see in a comic" list. So why even consider this? Fan inertia I suppose, and the hopes that Benjamin Percy might do something that restores my love of the ol' Canucklehead.
Playlist:
PJ Harvey - To Bring You My Love
David Bowie - Station to Station
David Bowie - Let's Dance
Ike and Tina Turner - River Deep - Mountain High
Ministry - Moral Hygiene
Beach House - Once Twice Melody
Alio Die and Lorenzo Montaná - The Threshold of Beauty
Jim Jarmusch and Jozef Van Wissem - The Mystery of Heaven
Eddie Money - Take Me Home Tonight (single)
The Ronettes - Presenting the Ronettes
Pat Benatar - In the Heat of the Night
Donny McCaslin - Beyond Now
The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion - Now I Got Worry
Alio Die and Remco Helbers - The Garland of Dissolution
