Silver City Should be Seen Again...and Again (Review)...

...Here's a film that came out in 2004, just before that year's presidential election, come on, you remember...just before that faux "mandate" that we're still paying for (to the tune of 2 billion simoleans per day) got foisted on us-- remember that? Well, around that time John Sayles directed Silver City, a so-prescient-that-its-funny-and-scary-as-hell flick that dropped in September of that year. The premise follows the political ascension of Dicky Pilager (Chris Cooper) who's on the fictional campaign trail in Colorado. Although Dicky's a "presidential-looking" charmer on TV screens, he's a day late and a dollar short intellectually; especially when it comes to dealing with the aspects of public policy that directly affect his constiuency (quickly evidenced whenever he opens his pie hole to utter an impromptu thought)...None of this seems to squelch the efforts of the powers-that-be from trying to slide him into office at all costs...Chuck Raven (Richard Dreyfuss), Dicky's ruthless campaign manager, performs all the skulduggery behind the curtains while keeping his charge conveniently out of the loop about his misdeeds as head string-puller...

....In keeping with that last little bit, Raven hires Danny O'brien (Danny Huston), a private investigator/ burned out-journalist, to do his dirty work. As the story maintains, O'brien begins to uncover more and more information which awakens the dormant, hard news journo hibernating within...it's deja vu all over again: Sayles' Silver City is is an unapologetic noir interpretation of what was around the corner back in '04; holds a message that bears repeating as the nation gears up for 2008 and the stakes are higher than they ever were four years ago, though a lot of those same arguments seem to have arisen re: the back channels of America's electoral process, the reliability of a cowed fourth estate, immigration/ conservation laws, etc...

...Silver City is equally a broad satire of our rapidly devolving political situation as it is a clarion call to seek (and pay attention to) ineluctable hard facts, past and present; fact that can't be found by just sticking our heads in the sand while dumbed-down McNews casts wash over us...Every member of this film's cast deliver the goods with simultaneously hilarious and poignant results. While Sayles' political leanings are worn right beside his wrist watch, Silver City does what any political film worth it's salt should: it raise questions about the status quo...See for yourself, give it a whirl, you've got plenty of time to check it before November '08, so there's no excuse not to...

...Wipers: Before There was Kurt, there was Greg Sage...

...there's nothing finer than being reminded of a great band that you'd totally forgotten about but used to love...no, wait there is something better, being turned on to a band that you'd totally slept on by someone who knows your tastes (and has a good ear of their own)...it's the gift that keeps on giving...




















...having said all of the above, upon closer inspection, I realized, to my pleasant surprise, that Micki had slipped me some of their shite already when she was here earlier in the year while I was at work or something, the point is I had 'em and (yet again) hadn't gotten around to 'em (we swapped a grip of tunage, son)...again: it's the gift that keeps on giving....


















..is this real or is this Memorex...well, it's kinda both; after doing a little looking around I've found that my favorite cuts come from the LPs Is This Real? and Youth of America...I've got a long list of "best-nobody's-talking-about" and these guys have been added to it...look 'em up if you've heard-of-but-haven't-checked, don't know who the hell I'm talking about...or just plain like to find good tunage then these dudes are definitely it ...if you see 'em, cop 'em and don't ask questions...I've been born-again-hard on this group's instrumental "When It's Over" all weekend...

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...for more Wipers tunes and a link to Micki's original post, click the header or click here

Agent Orange’s Living in Darkness (Review)

...I was waaay too young to fully absorb Agent Orange when they first dropped their debut LP Living in Darkness but luckily, through the magic of analog recording/ digital remastering I can turn back the hands of time to September 1981 (a month before my 9th birthday, yo)...the re-ish, of their seminal set opens with the original version of “Bloodstains” which chugs up in your facial like Jaws’ dorsal fin and then it’s on to the passable “Too Young to Die” followed by “Everything Turns to Grey”...things start getting interesting on their version of Dick Dale’s “Miserlou” and even moreso on the infectious “The Last Goodbye” but then there’s a relapse on “No Such Thing” which strikes me as a track of filler, plain and simple…

...going forward, I learned from the liner notes that the version of “A Cry for Help In a World Gone Mad” was recorded totally unrehearsed and, not to put too fine a point on it: it sounds like it…this is followed by a “Darkness Version” of Bloodstains that only an AO afficionado would really dig on (all’s I really checked was the way it was mixed down)...of the seven remaining cuts, the ones I skipped to for multiple spins were: “Pipeline,” a crunch-rock take on the Ventures’ instrumental guit-fiddle classic from way back when, then “Breakdown” (which any early-era Clash fan will gush over) and “Mr. Moto,” another instrumental cover cut from back in the day and worth a double-take. The last cut on the newer CD is actually an interview from 1981 wherein Mike, Scott and James shoot the shite and expound on why they were doing what they did when they did it while recording the original LP…Taken as a whole, I think Living in Darkness is worth copping; a collection of punk tunes that’ll butter any punk-lover’s popcorn; a keeper for those who like a touch of the hard stuff every once in a while…here are three of the cuts I’m vibin’ on…I’ll begin with breakdown…

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Oolooloo: The Pietasters Return with a 2 Tone Twist...

...Back in my Atlanta days I got turned on to the Pie Tasters' 2 Tone sound by the lead singer of a group called the Skunks (a Ska outfit from Baltimore who we played with at The Bank years before)...he gave me a cassette tape of this album and I was hooked (there only a handful of American bands that I feel captured that British sound from the days when Chrysalis Records was bumpin' the Selecter...the Specials...Madness back in the 80s)...at any rate, I got a notice the other day announcing a new, forthcoming album and a tour (if you're on the east coast check 'em out-- no shows west of Nevada as of this writing--I'll post the itinerary beneath the player below)...here's a picture of them kicking it in front of the Frolic Room (which is one of my LA haunts )...















Shebeen there and bought the soundtrack ...No Doubt almost got it on a right on a couple of cuts but never consistently and I never got all the into the Mighty Bosstones' sound for some reason...the Pietasters, however, are the real deal...this LP was perfect for walking around the streets of New York (I still check it while riding the trains here in Flossed Angeles, as a matter of fact)...hold tight when checking the cut below because it's a two-fer due to the way the CD was cut; it starts off with "Tell You Why" and then at around 4:03 it rolls into an uptempo "old yeller" called "Maggie Mae" which goes great with a pint (or two or three) of the black stuff...

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Here's some copy from the itenerary and press release with some of the dates:

For Immediate Release:

SOUL SKA PIONEERS THE PIETASTERS
RELEASE NEW STUDIO ALBUM
ALL DAY ON AUGUST 21, 2007.

...Soul-ska pioneers The Pietasters release their new studio album, All Day, on August 21, 2007 (Indication Records / RedEye USA). The release marks the band’s first release in five years. Produced by Todd Harris (James Brown), All Day displays an impeccably refined Pietasters: soul-drenched and in fine songwriting form. Expect The Pietasters’ signature sound of skankin’ punk rhythms and raucous vocal rumblings slowed down and sticky thick with the sounds of early Motown and Jamaican soul. The result is subtly nostalgic and enticingly fresh, offering plenty for both longtime listeners and younger underground music fans who missed the ska scene on the first (or second and third) go ‘round. Indeed, there is something truly timeless about ska music; and who better to remind us of that than The Pietasters?

“This record is a version of what a van ride with us would be like,” says The Pietasters’ bassist and songwriter Jorge Pezzimenti of their soul roots, rock and reggae-inspired new album. All Day captures the high energy, brotherly camaraderie and attention to detail on which they’ve built their rock-steady name as an explosive live attraction.

The Pietasters bring their high energy live show, and their new material, to venues coast to coast this summer. The current list of confirmed show dates is as follows:

June 28 River Street Jazz Café Wilkes-Barre PA
June 29 Grog Shop Cleveland OH
June 30 Mr. Small’s Theatre Pittsburgh PA
July 04 Asbury Lanes Asbury Park NJ
July 13 All Good Festival Masontown WV
July 20 The Whiskey Annapolis MD
July 21 The State Theatre Falls Church, VA
August 10 Royal Lake Park Fairfax VA
August 11 Martin’s Downtown Roanoke VA
August 16 Rock and Blues Concert Cruise Boston MA
August 17 Valentines Albany NY
August 18 The Chance Loft Poughkeepsie NY
August 22 Peppermint Beach Club Virginia Beach VA
August 24 Cat’s Cradle Carborro NC
August 25 Ska Weekend-Old City Knoxville TN
September 5 TBA Albuquerque NM
September 6 The Clubhouse Tempe AZ
September 8 Clark County Amphitheatre Las Vegas NV

...for more details and date additions go to The Pietasters' official site

Check It: Duke Ellington's New Orleans Suite

...If you’ve relegated Duke Ellington’s body of work to your Ken Burns incidental music file and consider his contributions to jazz to be a relic like, say, the Rosetta Stone, to be acknowledged as important but now rendered useless to the language because the lexicon has moved past wherever it was previously—if you park your car in that garage, then I’d suggest you pick up a copy of New Orleans Suite which was released in 1971…This LP is one of the swingin-est efforts from the Duke's thick songbook and demonstrates that although the times may change, some things don’t—Ellington and co. were still as relevant when they threw this one down as they ever were…


...The Germans have a word for the way that Ellington composed his music: Fingerspitzengefühl which literally means—to possess a steady or smooth hand at something, an instinct for dealing with a situation and I think that Ellington’s musical instincts are dutifully exemplified in New Orleans Suite which holds some of the maestro's best...The highlights begin from the jump with "Blues for New Orleans" which opens the set and once that brass refrain/ sax solo takes you to the proverbial "there" Wild Bill Davis will churchify your mind with the Hammond B-3 and reel you right on back in...After slowing everything down with a flute-heavy "Bourbon Street Jingling Jollies", "Portrait of Louis Armstrong" will make the big toe shoot up in your boot, as Little Richard might say-- you'll hear some of the finest brass section hooks and swerves ever captured on acetate during the 70s but it doesn't stop there because later, "Second Line" will inform that Ellington's posse was still tighter than a drum, even if the world had moved on to fusion and pop material by that time...the appropriately placed "Portrait of Mahalia Jackson", another flute-joint, moodily closes out the set and serves as a sonic wave good bye as four years after it was pressed, Ellington passed away in New York City...there's a little bit of music history wrapped up in these recordings as it contains the last recordings ever cut by alto saxophonist Johnny Hodges who passed away during the recording sessions. Too, you'll hear Ellington stalwarts throw it down like a pride of lions; the horns section alone boasts jazz workhorses like Paul Gonsalves (tenor sax), Russell Procope (alto clarinet/ sax), Johnny Hodges (alto sax) and Cootie Williams (trumpet) among many others...
























...it don't mean a thing if you ain't got that swing: New Orleans Suite contains a couple of great examples of what a "swinging" ensemble sounds like...the drums make your ass want to do one thing and the horn pulls you elsewhere...that's it, yo...Check out "Portrait of Louis Armstrong" for example, first everyone's groovin' together and then, BOOM, they diverge (while still harmoniously together on that next level)...the swinging starts around :08 and even moreso around :19 to :30 (you'll really hear what I'm talking about more clearly around 1:06-ish, so wait for it)-- by 1:27, it's all over, son, either you'll feel it or you won't )...




















...everyone has their mental list of "take-this-one-if-there's-a-fire" albums and for most of the artists in my collection I have one...in Ellington's case there's two: New Orleans Suite and Live At Newport 1956 because both albums take decades of artistic refinement, imbues that with ingredients from (what was then ) the new and bridges whatever gap lay in between the two points; inextricably connecting their coordinates by acoustically iterating the importance of reflection and exploration of the unchartered...yeah, that's right, just like the Rosetta Stone...

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***click header to check a couple more tracks I threw into the comments on my MOG***

E Ku'u Baby Hot Cha Cha

...Aloha, what's crack-tacular? Me?...I'm playing it close but its safe to say that there's no reward without risk and the former is not as savory without a dollop of the latter which brings me to this wine-based umbrella drink sitting beside me while I envision sitting on the beaches on one of the islands in the chain that lies about 5 hours west of the Pacific Coast Highway...(intersection of Ocean & Wishire below; the Pacific's right on the other side of those palm trees)....



















....I'm keeping the karmic wolverines at bay Hawaiian style today with a couple of tracks I found on a compilation in the library, originally from the state that single-handedly keeps the people who make Spam *extremely* happy (I'm not taking the piss, they go buck-wild for the mystery meat over there , apparently)...grab yourself whatever the guy passed out on the floor is having, kick your feet up and get Gilligan's Island up in here...and remember "Aia a kau ka i`a i ka wa`a, mana`o ke ola" (one can think of life/ the future after the fish is in the canoe) which is along the lines of 'don't count your chickens before they hatch' check this tune out (click header for full post)...aloha mofos...

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Rewind: Bernardo Bertolucci's The Dreamers (Film Review)

......ahhh, the summertime...when many a city-dweller seeks refuge in a movie theater, and while I check screeners on the regular, for gigs, there's still nothing finer than finding that film you'd been planning to see, kicking back on a hot day (beer optional) while a film maker weaves a cinematic tale for you on the screen...well, it used to be...Finding a film with kind tunage is getting harder and harder these days (especially if you don't cotton to the mewling of glass-jawed dandies and teeth-achingly saccharine pap that gets you reaching for a bucket)...I was pleased as punch to hear a grip of it on this Bernardo Bertolucci film that dropped a couple of years ago......(press play)...

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The Dreamers follows Matthew (Michael Pitt), an American studying in Paris during the politically turbulent spring of 1968. Matt’s a Southern Californian loner and a film buff who spends an inordinate amount of time at the French Cinémathèque founded by Henri Langlois who is called on the carpet by the government for the provocative films he chooses to screen. In defiance of the latter, the French student body revolts. While participating in a protest, Matthew meets the equally cinema-obsessed Isabelle (Eva Green) who introduces him to her brother, Theo (Louis Garrel).

As the story holds, the siblings soon become friendly with the expat and invite him over to dinner at their parent’s flat where he makes a good impression waxing philosophic on the intricacies of Zippo lighters and tablecloth patterns. The armchair cinéastes soon become wrapped up in each other on levels sexual, intellectual and moral as the world of New Wave film and rioting recedes into the background. Oscar Wilde once wrote “I can resist everything but temptation” and Matty is not above the fray in the least. He soon becomes “one of them, one of them, one of them.”

Inevitably, Matt falls for Isabelle’s sybaritic powers and becomes a wedge between Issie and her (sometimes) swarthy twin brother’s relationship. Certainly, there are times during the film that will have the viewer thinking like principal Rooney in Ferris Bueller's Day Off "So that's how it is in their family." Whether or not the brother and sister make good on all the implied incestuous relationship is clarified on the kitchen floor, following a striptease in front of a lighted bust of Chairman Mao Tse Tung while eggs are cooked and cigarettes are inhaled- yeah, your read that part correctly. The film also gives new meaning to the phrase “bring your own toothbrush.”

Hindsight 20/20: The Dreamers is adapted from the novel “The Holy Innocents: A Romance,” written by Gilbert Adair. Bertolucci had the good sense to utilize the character’s source to write the screenplay and there’s also some good music from the 60’s too - primarily from Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Jim Morrisson. Unlike other similarly rated films, the nakedness is tertiary to the storyline and classic film references. Bertolucci makes hay of the NC-17 content by telling an intriguing story. While some of the plot unravels in places, it is still worth watching nonetheless. “Before you change the world, you must remember that you are still a part of it."



Cast: Michael Pitt, Eva Green, Louis Garrel
Director: Bernardo Bertolucci
Rating: NC17
Released in the US: Feb. 6, 2004

Bad Brains RETURNS to "Build A Nation"

...Attention all of you green-hair-faded-grey punk rockers, Bad Brains have returned to replenish the ranks of the faithful with the LP Build a Nation, scheduled to hit the streets on June 26th so lets dive right on into the fray...the set begins with the appropriately titled "In the Beginning" which sails on out of the speakers informing the listener that the Brains are back and the album highlights begin to sally forth with the roots rockin' reggae of "Peace Be Unto Thee", an ode to the Most High that captures Dr. Know (guits), Daryll Jenifer (bass), Earl Hudson (traps) and his brother Paul (throat) in a rub-a-dub style, a sonic thrust that eases on into the crunch-up called "Send No Flowers"-- check for those stripped chord progressions that have been appropriated and labeled de riguer by new school punk posers for all intents and purposes but these cats explored that territory before most of 'em were a twinkle in their daddy's eyes...their seminal self titled debut album actually wasn't: it was a cassette...















...the chunks of hardcore continue flying on "Let There Be Angels (Just Like You)", another hard-charging mosh pit number wherein the Brains bring out the chops on a couple of those mid-song breakdown breathers and keep on keeping on (check the ending)...to the uninitiated, the "love Far-I stuff" might come off ass a trifle preachy but these guys are as unrepentant as ever about their love of Jah (because it was never a sales gimmick, son) which make a band that will stand for something seem like an O.O.P.A. (what paleontologists call an out of place artifact) from a time when people preferred to eschew the pop-isms and spoke their minds, pay checks be damned (which almost looks as crazy in type as it might sound)... the dub factor continues with "Roll On", a skanky keyboard bubbler that brings the chalice to straight to the palace and begs for a Horace Swaby dub treatment and then "Univeral Peace" pick up the pace for three more minutes of that stuff heard on "Sailing On" from back in the day-- at points dyed-in-the-wool BB fans will crave one of those ear-busting shrieks but these guys are older and mellowed out but they still manage to get down to brass tacks and pull out the snap-and-crack which is evidenced on "Build a Nation", the title number, that stomps up in the listener's facial space as it pogo's right into "Expand Your Soul" which follows it and sounds not unlike a slowed down version of "Don't Blow No Bubbles" from 1990's Quickness release (which some consider the last proper Bad Brains release)...and speaking of toasting it up and Horace Swaby (A. Pablo) the cut "Natty Dreadlocks Pon the Mountain Top" actually makes use of an obscure bass line from the maestro's dub songbook while HR drops some DJ-styled lyrics with some of that mid-Atlantic flavor-- so check for the flow...a fitting tribute if ever there was one...





















...the outro, "Pure Love", will remind the sucker ducks who grew up listening to music influenced by the stuff they laid down in seedy recording booths in NYC's alphabet City years ago why, to this day, the Bad Brains crew get the Duke Ellington treatment by people like the Beastie Boys' Adam "MCA" Yauch (who produced this offering himself)...full review continued here

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Lying. Ass. BITCHES; The 2nd Coming...

...rants and raves around the bend...I've been doing my thing but still keeping my ear to the ground and "election day's coming" sez the hoofbeats of the media masses that I hear far off in the distance...I've tried to keep my politics on here to a minimum but my tongue's hurting all the time because of it...I don't know about the rest of you all but all of these debates, saber rattling and gnashing of teeth have already gotten me soured on something that I was already a bit tart about...all of the chatter I'm hearing on talk radio about double-guessing who's actually going to be on the ticket for both parties has gotten me dispeptic and we're only mid-way to 2008....

...just in case you've been under a rock or trapped on a desert Island with a basketball as your only source of communication for the past couple of hours, over in DC, I Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the former Chief White House aide to the Veep just got pinched for leaking the identity of CIA agent Valerie Plame, wife of former Ambassador Joseph Wilson who called the Bush Administration out on the fact that Saddam Hussein never went over there on a nuclear shopping spree of any sort, adding to the snowball of half-truths and obfuscating, fear-inducing misdirection that led to..ahhh, if you don't know the rest by now, I'll have whatever you'be been having for the past few years-- long story short, revealing Plame's cover thoroughly and expediently blew her cover and destroyed her undercover career...the judge's closing gavel hadn't even stopped being hammered before dude's lawyer revealed that he/ his client were going to appeal...my forecast: more of the same, he'll skate and go to "be with his family" and get a big fat, get out of jail free/ pardon sometime around the end of next year...just like Monica "caging votes" Goodling will...the fekkin' tossers...













...I read somewhere that "the star of Monica Gate 2.0" looked as if she was going to burst into tears at one point...B, O, O, H, O, O...was it because she got knicked or because she regretted what she did...Susan Lucci couldn't hold a candle to Goodling's mid-day, courtroom theatrics... my head starts spinning when I think of all the back-channelling that will be necessary to stay appraised of all this shite, and believe me, there will be plenty-- to crib a quote from the Captain Willard character in Apocalypse Now "the shit piles up so fast, you need wings to stay on top of it"...

















...but the Republicans haven't cornered the market on back-room chicanery...across the aisle, Louisiana Congressman William "Dollar Bill" Jefferson (D), got brought up on 16 different charges in Alexandria, VA, among them, taking bribes in the back of his limo-- this was the schnook who got ganched with $90,000 in cold cash quite literally as the money was found in bill form and hidden in bags in his freezer...a crooked politician from Louisiana? Who'd a thunk it?...check out those eyes, he even LOOKS like the Grinch...guess he needed a tube of this...













...Black or white, male or female you can't bury the truth forever but still these crooks sure try to anyway...Libby and Jefferson, due to their governmental ties, will more than likely appeal everything (waste more tax payer's dough)...and we all know what went down last week due to the fact that the Dems don't have the voting minerals to pull off any sort of mandate (the best way to control a mob is to give them the illusion that they're actually calling the shots)....the way earthly things are going; as I get older, I feel more and more like Gary Coleman in the picture above...it's gotten to the point that whenever I listen to the news, I find there's so much shite going on out there (that I have to figure out for myself because most media sources tend to truncate their news copy for editorial purposes...the refrain of this tune pretty much says what I feel whenever I hear about these guys...and don't even get me started on the forthcoming voting season...I guess the imminent malaise I feel slouching toward my inner Bethlehem, like that fictional beast in the W.B. Yeats poem, is the desired effect...what is past is prologue:...all's I'm saying is don't turn to the TV for the truth, seek it and parse it out for yourself and be vigilant in your endeavors because, well, I'll let Gil Scott-Heron tell you why in the cut below...Laters...

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