"All in all, Gallo put more effort into this production package than the whiny Wes Anderson, the sputtering Spike Jonze, the un-darling Darren Aronofsky have put into their whole lives."
Vincent Gallo has tried to sell the film equipment with which he shot The Brown Bunny on Ebay. Bidding closed without the reserve of US$86,000 being met, but that's probably just because no-one emailed Ebert the link in time. Supervixens II buzz? We're starting the rumours right here.
ravey jasey spacey
This piece by Kathy McCabe ran in the same issue of the Daily Terror's gig/club insert as a piece by her slagging off "NME's reporter" (freelance feature writer Paul Moody, actually) for writing that local press weren't invited to the Vines' secret gigs last December. What's worse, Kathy - being told something by a press office and having made as splendid an album as Accept The Signal, or writing something this moronic and having edited Australian Rolling Stone?
...the fuck?
Watching Rage - Fatman Scoop's follow-up single uses the chorus from It Takes Two (mimed by a girl in the video), attempts to break into White Lines at one point, and has the "whoo! yeh!" loop running through the whole thing. It's 2004!
...Jesus shit! And now it's Chicks On Speed covering Wordy Rappinghood, or quite possibly just filming a new video for the original.
gettin' melbizzy in the hizzy
Melbourne's public transport is so baffling to me. Down there for a few days last week, catching up with friends who live there and selling things for people who don't (ie nb illustrations), and was left to navigate myself around more than usual. Spent over an hour walking around the city trying to find a tram stop that would deliver me a tram that would deliver me to Prahran, and I simply couldn't. (Felt better about this when Tree, who's lived in said suburb for years, admitted that she didn't know how either.) So I got the train, which I knew would take me pretty much to the door of one record shop I wanted to visit, but the ticket-selling system baffled me again. At least in Sydney, if you can't figure out the machines, there'll be a little bloke behind a window who can sell you a ticket - not so down there, it seems. And once I, after going back and forth between maps and diagrams and signs and the actual machine, finally figured out what sort of ticket I wanted, the machine appeared to be telling me that it would only accept payment from credit cards or something, but I couldn't really tell, and had to give up and go to another machine.
Then once you're on a train, there's so much room. You can stage a small party in the aisles or even between seats, whereas at home the seats are so close together that my knees literally don't fit if my legs are straight. And they're all single-story. My theory is that the carriages are designed to just look like fancy trams, in order to lull the residents into acceptance...
oh fuck it, just release Country Mike for reals
Adam Yauch has answered a bunch of questions from children on the Beastie Boys site. Main scoop? The new album is straight hip-hop, mostly programmed, and totally self-produced. Do I bother hoping for a full record as hot as Alive At Yauch's House (that's the storming sirens-and-guitars version from the 12", kids, not the Anthology cut) or just give up and expect something as cheesy, flow-free and featuring a Mike D so limp he's delivering rhymes from a prostrate position on the studio floor, like In A World Gone Mad?ah-choo
SNEEZE return with one of their classic THREE SETTER afternoon shows! First one since July 2002. Woo-hoo!Late news: the new album WILL be available at this show! Be the first kid on your block with your very own copy...When? Saturday, March 20, 3-7pm only $5 to get in (doors open at 2pm)
Where? The Excelsior Hotel, 64 Foveaux St, Surry Hills, Sydney
Why? The band will be warming up for the release of the JUST THE BLUES SPED UP album which will be out on April 5.featuring ....
NIC DALTON,
TOM MORGAN....
SIMON GIBSON
CAMERON BRUCE
BILL GIBSON....&...LETICIA NISCHANG.....
The followup to 2001's Lost The Spirit To Rock & Roll sees Sydney-based Sneeze do a complete u-turn from the soul sounds and come up with a sprawling, crazed and defiant twenty track ode to Rock & Roll. JUST THE BLUES SPED UP contains the Triple J and FBi summer hit 'If It's Catchy It Means You Stole It' and longtime Sneeze faves 'When Honey Snaps', 'Going Skiing, Pretty Weird' and 'Might As Well Chalk It Up'.
Just The Blues Sped Up Tour April dates will be here soonDON'T MISS IT!!!!
Wayne Coyne is programming Rage
- it's great, of course, and he's so much fun to watch talk. But I'm watching thr clip for American Music Club's Johnny Mathis Feet, and notice that Eitzel does the same "caught up in emotion, can't deal with this piece of everyday clutter in front of me" throwing-the-mike-stand aside move that he did repeatedly when I saw him at the Hoey a couple of years ago. Sensitive singer-songwriter in faux-artistic frenzy schtick shocka!He also did the standing-up-and-accidentally-kicking-his-stool-over-in-the-process move, with his eyes screwed tight with emotion, a couple of times in that show. The first time, I ran up from the side and righted it - he acknowledged this at the end of the song, or possibly of the verse, cracking the obvious gag about me being the stool roadie he'd brought all the way from the States, etc. Now I'm wondering if he was covering for annoyance at his performance of pain being interrupted, or if he actually hopes for diligent audience members to pick up his props each time and allow him another chance to kick 'em down...
"But she still respects the monkeys."
The BBC reports:One solution that was tried was to move the monkeys to woods outside the town.
The dominant males were sedated and transported there in the hope the others would follow.
But a few hours later the male monkeys were back, and for now the people of Keshabpur have learned to live with their dubious blessing.
posted at 14:32, 24/03/2004 | Comments (0)
"Well, I don't need to wait for DC to call, you know. I wrote and drew my first Batman story when I was ten."
Eddie Campbell's given an interview to The Pulse's resident incoherent J. Contino. Thankfully he's in good form, cracking off responses that lift this one head, shoulders and bollocks above the usual form-letter responses that she normally ctrl-v's out. Mostly about his new Batman book, but there's also the odd teaser about new autobio The Fate Of The Artist, the usual bar-room (or front-balcony, these days) philosophising, some smart thinking about how to approach superhero texts (being that this year, he's drawing them for the first time since his balls dropped), and the story behind why he's doing two issues of Captain America.
You know, Iron Man's in it too and it's great to spend time with these old pals of mine. I almost feel that any minute the Lava Men are going to turn up, just like they did in an issue of the Avengers I illustrated way back in 1965 when I was nine.
bought last week
By the time Efil4zaggin came out, I was over NWA.
Like any teenage boy worth my salt, I had loved the profanity and rage of
But when the album dropped, I'd been living with a full album of new Ice Cube
for six months, which was funny, witty and still packed with enough swearing and
violence to fulfill my white, suburban, vicarious needs. And with so much
publicity for the album hanging on its offensiveness (as opposed to the
shockingness of Compton), I picked the LP up in Central Station
(the old one, underneath Phantom on Pitt St) and felt the last skerricks of my
interest drain out as I scanned the tracklisting. "One Less Bitch"? "Findum,
Fuckum and Flee"? "I'd Rather Fuck You"? "To Kill A Hooker"? Uh, no
thanks.
I never even thought again about reversing my decision and checking it out
until almost ten years later, when Beck Hansen interviewed Outkast for Mean
Magazine. In the midst of enthusing about mutual favourites from the era, both
parties agreed that out of the NWA albums, Efil4zaggin was the one to
get. Or at least the one to bump in your truck. But it still took a few more years
and some intermediate steps to actually make the purchase.
In 2002, I finally bought my first copy of Appetite For Destruction (the
Gunners album, not the Efil album track - hold on): original Euro pressing, full
Robt. Williams cover, the whole deal. I'd had to stop liking it in high school
when it became the province of jocks and bullies, and though I quickly reclaimed
my affection once out of that environment, hadn't felt a need to be able to
listen to it round the house. But now that I was revelling in the awesome dirty
rock'n'rollness of the thing again, 13 years later, I started to feel an itch to
also reacquaint myself with Straight Outta Compton - another fantastic
album released around the same time, with young people singing about their lives
in Los Angeles, and how sex and drugs and police oppression shape their
worlds... the two albums are practically twins, two sides of the one coin.
A few months later, I tracked down a vinyl copy on a trip to Melbourne. But hold
on... this is a current pressing, whch is good, but it's a double, with bonus
tracks on the fourth side... hmm.
I soon found out about the admirable Priority re-release plan, which saw the two
NWA full albums, the first four Ice Cube albums, and Eazy's solo remastered with
bonus tracks. Bless you, Priority, even if some of your priorities are suspect.
While I still would have preferred a single vinyl edition (to snuggle up matily
alongside Appetite in the cupboard), I'm content to compromise for low
cost and extra tracks in swish quality.
(Though the selection could have been wider - lovely to have the
extended Straight Outta again, and the remixed single version of Express
Yourself, with all the non-Dre rappers introducing the verses... but if you're
going to lift A Bitch Iz A Bitch from ...Posse, why stop there? The
original version of 8 Ball and Dope Man would be no less redundant than Compton
and Express, and the clean lyrics on Dope Man are actually better than the
sweary ones on the album. This would also give more space between the vocal
version of the Express remix and its instrumental cousin (which could have stood
retitling from its original 12" labelling as Bonus Beats).)
(Taking Boyz N The Hood and Fat Girl for the Eazy Duz It bonuses would
also have made a lot more sense than sticking a four-years-later, post-Dre (?)
EP on the end.)
But now, another year on, I run across the expanded Efil4zaggin (and a
couple of the lesser Cube solos) in Pitt St's glorious Everything Only $10 CD
shop (if anyone's reading this from foreign lands, new CDs cost around $30 in local currency). If Beck and Outkast love it, how bad can it be? Dre's leaps forwards in
production alone should make it worthwhile, and you're not as sensitive and
wussy as you were at 17...
But I'm still intelligent enough to find it appalling, it turns out. Yes, it sounds a lot smoother, shinier, more professional than Compton, but with no good songs backing the money up, it sounds as empty as a Mutt Lange record. Where Compton was shocking, in the sense of startling the listener with it's content, Efil4zaggin can only manage to be deliberately offensive - there's no thought or message behind the offense, no intention of exposing the listener to new ideas or confronting their preconceptions. The misogyny has likewise gone from being casual to being offensive: in a song like Gangsta Gangsta, Cube managed to convey that the abuse of women was rooted entirely in jealousy and a desire to impress other males, while still revelling in the swaggering braggadocio; here, there's no such self-awareness or layers of performance, just Fear Of The Other. The only moment of admiration for me came with the skit that dismisses culpability for violence at concerts, and the only fragments of wit come in the songs that Eazy sings. (Actually, those are rather fun - and one could even make a case for a glimmer of sincerity in I'd Rather Fuck You.)
It is worth the ten bucks just to have heard it, and to have access to 100 Miles & Runnin' whenever I want it, but shit - it's no wonder the previous record is the one with the classic reputation, despite this one selling so many more. Though you have to assume for every one of the million or two sold of Straight Outta Compton, at least three copies were taped for other kids at school.
Satan's Saddoes
Next Monday at Cult Sinema:SATAN'S SADISTS (1969)
The ads touted this one as a portrait of "Human Garbage - in the sickest love parties!" Go sick mate! Russ Tamblyn [West Side Story, Twin Peaks] stars in his second psycho-biker role of 1969 (cf. Free Grass). He and his gang while away their time by killing and raping college girls after slipping LSD into their coffee. They're finally (spoilers!) taught a lesson by a hitchhiking Vietnam vet. In 1969! Now that's an early entry for a long-standing cinematic trope...
Music by Davy Allen & The Arrows under the name "The Nightriders" - Jay Katz remarked on Monday night that it must be the best score for any biker film ever: "the movie's terrible, but the music's incredible!". The program also notes that it's "probably the absurdly grossest biker movie of that period", and comments on the credit listing for Regina Carrol as "the freak-out girl."
Shorts at 7.30, feature at 8.30, Annandale Hotel. Free entry, but make a donation and get a raffle ticket to win Coppola, F.'s The Conversation on DVD.
damn
Dave Sim still would have done Cerebus #301 if the old-skool posse had been down:Q: what happened with the Alan Moore Cerebus #301?DAVE: Actually, that was intended to be the Alan Moore/Steve Bissette/John Totelben Cerebus No.301—the entire Swamp Thing team. John, regrettably, has been suffering from a degenerative eye ailment for a number of years and Alan and Steve had a "never darken my crypt again" falling out over Steve's Comics Journal interview which was, perhaps, indirectly my fault. Steve and I had been talking pretty extensively about business ethics in the comic-book field up through the Northampton Summit and beyond. He was particularly troubled by Alan's laissez-faire attitudes towards collaborations. There are hard decisions to be made when you enter into a creative/business partnership. In this case, Alan and Eddie's collaboration on From Hell which Steve was serializing in Taboo. Steve was trying to maintain a strict arm's length relationship with both Alan and Eddie in line with my conclusions about business ethics. In this case Steve was the "company". It was up to Alan and Eddie to make the business decisions on From Hell. But whenever Steve would present Alan with the decisions that needed to be made, Alan would say, "Do whatever you think is best, Steve." Which seems very nice and friendly and all, until you look at it from a business ethics standpoint: Steve has no place deciding what's best for Alan and Eddie's work. If Steve's calling the shots, Steve is being backed into a situation of being DC. If things go south, Steve is the one who is going to get the blame for "what happened to From Hell," for turning Alan and Eddie into this generation's Siegel and Shuster. So, as per usual with the comic-book field, when Steve attempted to address the over- arching concerns that he and I had been discussing and to try to generate some dialogue in the field, it never made it above the emotional/personal level; Alan's feelings were hurt that Steve had criticized his business ethics and he brought their friendship to an end. Ultimately, the From Hell situation worked out for the best when I talked Eddie Campbell into self publishing. Eddie would make the business decisions for he and Alan. It's very irritating, though, that Alan took such a myopic view of what Steve was attempting to accomplish in his Comics Journal interview. I couldn't do 301 with Alan without slighting Steve and I couldn't do 301 with Steve without slighting Alan.
UNHHHHHH
We stumbled upon Pete Rock spinning at 4 am in a Mexican resturant, going all VH1 Storytellers style, monologue between cuts "I made this.... when I was a younger, happier man, when I was 23.... when I was... a different man.... YOU KNOW WHAT IT'S LIKE?! ( pleading, serious) When the whole world is telling you ... "you are the greatest"? You know what kind of fucking... weight that is to carry around?!" and then would throw the fader over to some track that I barely knew but was so so fresh, so from 1988 with love. he did this between every song, would stop songs early, discussed the death of his father, Jam Master J, apologized for being drunk, talking about stealing from his mom at age 10 to buy albums, and I think verged on tears. Every song he played was one of his, and it was genius. He did this in front of me, Julianne, Partymanica and 11 other headz and the people working the bar.
Remember how I used to lift stuff out of the Rocking Vicar every week?
Weren't those the days, eh?LIFE AT THE SPINNING DISCDon't wait for me to cavalierly nick stuff for your entertainment, get your own every week by signing up at Rocking Vicar dot com.
Parishioner Peter Gianakopoulos: “I had a customer at a store I worked at in the mid-’90s in Chicago who inquired where the Beethoven LPs were at? I directed him to the Beethoven section. ‘No, no, I want the originals.’ I gave him a brief history of the recording medium and asked what format, prior to the early 78s, these original Beethoven recordings were issued on? The customer answered ‘tape and LP’. He was adamant he’d heard them before.”Parishioner Gary Selwyn: “Down Under by Men at Work was at Number 1, and the lead singer (Colin Hay?) came into the record shop I worked in. When authorising his credit card, it was refused, and I had to cut up his card and send it back. He looked a bit upset - very upset actually, so to try and calm things down I told him how much I liked his single, and if he had a bit of cash he could buy the limited edition Australia-shaped picture disc version of Down Under displayed behind the counter. He hadn't seen it before, so he did. It was £2.99. Probably hasn't increased much in value since, sadly.”
DINNER WITH CHRISSIE HYNDE
Parishioner Mark Ellen: “There’s no great punchline here and it’s not even very funny - especially for vegetarians - but somehow this is just sort of classic. I’m out the other night at a literary dinner in honour of the scriptwriter Paul Schrader (Taxi Driver etc). He’s three seats away to my right along with Hanif Kureishi, Andrew Davies and Robert Wade (who co-wrote the last two Bond movies), on my left an empty seat, and beyond that some nice people from Random House and Esquire. The menus arrive and I go for the pate de fois gras followed by the rare rack of lamb. I know, I know, I know: on a scale of Crimes Against The Animal Kingdom there’s eating veal, then there’s hitting little rabbits on the head with a shoe and pan-frying them in cream and brandy in front of your fellow diners while whistling a Ted Nugent song, and then above this - way, way above - is the consumption of pate de fois gras. So I’m sitting there lobbing back the bubbly wondering which fashionably la te arriver is going to fill the empty chair when the door swings open and in walks Chrissie Hynde. She bowls over to the place beside me, her coal-black eyes barely visible beneath her fringe, at the precise moment our waiter delivers each of us a delicate china cup of French onion soup on a little white saucer. Hynde sniffs it suspiciously. “This got meat stock in it?” Like I’m supposed to know. We flag down the Maitre D who steps smartly to the kitchens to investigate, shuffling back seconds later with some rather bad news: “zer’s a leetle leeeetle beed of cheecken stock in ze zoup”. Hynde’s reaction is not good - he might as well have told her it was radioactive - and it’s at this point, the parish, that a thought occurs to me: I’m fucked. The world’s most militant animal rights activist - a woman, let’s not forget, who’s been to JAIL for her hands-on demonstrations against McDonald’s and the fur trade - and I have ordered a large pile of possibly still pulsating pate de fois bleeding gras. If its arrival, now seconds away, was preceded by a small troupe of weeping geese with a banner informing us the hors d’oeuvre was one of their blood relatives, I honestly don’t think the situation could be any worse. But suddenly I have a brilliant idea! My pal Robert Wade, sitting opposite! We’ve been chuckling away about old Bond movies and he seems a nice enough chap, he’s BOUND to help me out here! So while Hynde is distracted I warn him of the imminent crisis and he smiles and gives me a reassuring wink that says ‘don’t worry, brother, leave this one to me!’ Back comes our waiter laden with plates but he can’t remember who’s ordered what. “The pate de fois gras?” yells Wade theatrically, the entire restaurant is looking. “I THINK you’ll find it was ordered by our friend over here!” and he points at me in a look-at-this-clown, what-a-bastard, WE’RE-all-having-the-mushroom-ravioli sort of way. And I've still got the lamb to come. Hynde stiffens, clearly reading this as some sort of hilarious set-piece cooked up by the two of us to take the piss out of The Planet's Most High-Profile Vegetarian Campaigner, turns to her left, starts talking breezily to the girl from Esquire and doesn't address another syllable to either of us all evening.”
STORM IN A T-SHIRT
Parishioner Andrew Holmes: “On the subject of Family Cat t-shirts, parishioners might like to know that the legacy of the famous Make My Life Beautiful design is kept alive in my novel, All Fur Coat, where it's worn by a drunken, desperate ex-music journo when his Fall t-shirt becomes too sweaty. It was either that or Carter’s Come On Baby Light My Fag. The choosing kept me up nights, I can tell you.”
