Human
head
for
my
hunan
hand,
oh
my
god,
I
just
thought
of
a
name
for
my
bran
new
band.
All posts by Mike
Review: Spike Jones – Strictly for Music Lovers [BOX SET]
No, this isn’t the fraud-Jones behind Being John Malcobitch, but the other Spike Jones. Spike Jonze, the 4th Beastie Boob, is and forever will be moronic just like the Cajun inspired spelling of his last name. Why people are always talking about Spike Jonze, the jambalayian-retard, and not the real Spike Jones is beyond me. Perhaps these people just don’t want to feel like they live in tiki-bungalow with Yosemite Sam. Well change is on the wind, and heralding that change is the Spike Jones Box Set, “Strictly for Music Lovers”. With the ludicrously cheap price tag of under 25 dollars, this excellent four CD set provides hours upon hours of musical hoots, whoops, shoots and WWII humor to boot. It is a matter of time before Jonze and all of New Orleans’s crawfish are sacrificed in the Wicker Man.
Review: Bo Hansson – Music Inspired by Watership Down
I mentioned the magical man in my review Kate Bush’s “The Kick Inside”; and now due to the current Lord of the Ring craze, all of Bo Hansson’s albums have seen a reissue by EMI International. Hansson’s “Music Inspired by Watership Down” has not only long been out of print, but to my knowledge it was never made available on CD (I had a copy of it on vinyl). Perhaps not Hansson’s strongest album, Watership Down is still far better then his frequently overrated Lord of the Rings album. The reissue of Music Inspired by Watership Down not only gets a nice write up on Bo in the liner notes (which on the upside is quite long, but on the downside focuses far too much on his Lord of the Rings album) it also receives a bonus track, the fabled Migration Suite. Straight up prog-heads probably won’t be too impressed by the freewheeling noodling session that the Migration Suite undoubtedly was and is, but for the tried and true acolytes of Bo, whoa – Migration Suite, RECORDED LIVE IN THE STUDIO, kicks Frodo’s fur-covered-ass, keeps the ring and throws Sam in the volcano for never being in Goonies 2. One of the track’s many highlights, somebody playing a foul note on guitar, makes me think that it is a virtual garentee one of the other album’s bonus tracks will include a drugged up Bo blurting something indecipherable and sounding like the Swedish Chef.
Review: Kate Bush – The Kick Inside
This album is FANTASTIC and is one of the best music purchases I’ve made in the last century. “The Kick Inside” is destined to become one of my all-time favorite albums. When I listen to it I not only feel like I live on Venus’s Moon, but the band who plays my daily Venusian BBQ is the Bo Hansson Elektric Light Orchestra with their singer, the starry elfin maid Kate. Why would I say such a thing? It is either what might be the highly mysterious narwhale mating calls introducing track two, or that fact that there simply is no accounting for taste. My roommates would have the latter. Screw them.
Making a Feature Length Movie
Over the past several months or so, I’ve come to the slow resolve of embarking on a journey of making a feature length movie. The biggest demon I face in accomplishing this is my general ignorance concerning the logistics of how to realize such a goal. Though that is a problem, and as many would have it a fairly “big one”, I’m a firm believer that most everything that ever looked hard in part looked so because there was no uncertain amount of mysticism surrounding it. Mysticism is the enemy of man, and though I’m sure T-Rex meant something else when he wrote the line “messing with the mystic” in a drug addled haze of delusion , I too am ready to start “messing”.
Accordingly I’ve begun with what I’d label as the preliminary steps towards the realization of this goal. At this stage this has mainly been confined to research on my part into just how one would go about making an independent feature length movie. In subsequent posts, my hope is to talk about the progress I’m making, the material that I’m reading, the problems I’m encountering and my overall thinking about the project with the two-fold aim of clarifying my own thoughts and too dialogue with others who might share a common interest.
Response About Productivity
Tim recently wrote a post about productivity and organization and this is my response.
Thoughts on GTD (a poem):
GTD
sounds
a
bit
Don
Lapre
or,
at
least
it
does
to
me,
tee
hee
hee.
The List
“The List†is relatively effective so long as it is checked with some degree of regularity and, perhaps more importantly, is “edited”. My problem is I’m guilty of not editing my lists and they often become mazes unto themselves giving birth to baby minotaurs.
Cicada Video
For some time Tim and I have been interested in recording soundscapes. Last summer, during the cicada craze, Tim went out and managed to record some cicada-scapes. I’m sure Bernie Krause could have recorded a cicada humping a grain of sand, but by our amateur-soundscaping standards, I thought the cicada sounds that Tim captured were pretty fabulous. My favorite moments would be when a cicada hit the microphone, or a plane could be heard flying overhead, fading in and then out of the cicada summer-haze. We’ve not posted any of these soundscapes, but if for some reason there is a great internet-outcry to hear them, we’ll post them. Then you too can slobber in an ecstasy of sound as cicadas hit microphones at minute fifteen.
The eventual plan was to put an EP that would be part soundscape and then part cicada-electronica. The electronica end of the plan never became a reality, as it was contingent upon a lot of time and most likely outside help. So the recordings sat.
Eventually however, video artist and photographer Meggie Miao (who also happens to be Tim’s girlfriend) approached us and asked us to record a song about cicadas that she could use in conjunction with some footage of cicadas she had shot. So Tim and I went away and wrote a cicada song, though not the song we envisioned. It did however use the cicada-scapes. So part of the original plan was implemented.
The resulting video, thanks to Meggie’s excellent writing and directing, looks absolutely spectacular. And who knows, perhaps there will be an electronic cicada song yet…
The video is available here in .mov format and the song is available here as an mp3. Quicktime might be required to view the video.
Review: Thin Lizzy – Jailbreak
I bought this album at the same time I bought Blueberry Goatse. The first time I listened to Jailbreak, I was very pleased. Right after it, I put in Blueberry Boat for the first time. At track 3 of Blueberry Boat, I hit eject and put back in Jailbreak back in.
Review: Fiery Furnaces – Blueberry Boat
Listening to this album is like trying to insulate an igloo with wet leaves, a waste of time, energy and effort. Blueberry Bloated blows like a cold case of the blueberry balls, not because it would be more cost effective to heat the igloo with the ignited happening hipster wind and excessive experimental gas released from the album’s punctured guts; but simply because I can’t fathom what would ever possess someone to write the line, “Later at lunch with the taco lettuce crunch crunch” and then sing it in what is possibly the most annoying vocal delivery “EVER”. Listening to the line makes Urkle’s voice sound like listening Courtney Cox climax with a double pronged dildo. If anyone wants me to spend more time with this piece of garbage, then all I’m saying is I’d better get my
Taco-cocko-sucko-ed.
Risk 2210
Brian: “I’m quitting. I’ve lost anyway.”
Mike: “Dude, don’t quit. Quitting is for girls.”
Brian: “Exactly. I’m going to go talk to some.”
Brian vacates the room, leaving only Thom and Mike continue to play.
Thom: “Brian went to look for girls.”
Mike: “Yeah. I know.”
Thom: “Any woman news with you?”
Mike: “Play the game.”
Thom: “Don’t be so touchy.”
Mike: “How about you then? Any women news with you?”
Thom: “Shut the fuck up.”
Note: Contrary to
the fact that Brian generally meets women at the bar, Risk is about the control of all the world’s women.