Oct 242007
Oct 242007
Some of the best live guitar performances I’ve ever heard are collected below. Sheer genius — enjoy!
Sheer genius 1:
Sheer genius 2:
Sheer genius 3:
Oct 242007
“A Hard Day’s Night” came in a No. 2, followed by “The Harder They Come,” “Pulp Fiction,” “The Graduate” and “Superfly.” “American Graffiti” and “The Big Chill” rounded out the top 10.
Oct 222007
This has been a Filmways Production.
Oct 222007
Here’s a quarter-baked idea, but it’s a busy day and I want to get it out there while the gettin’s good. Remember when rock was concerned with authenticity? Remember when authentic rock titans the likes of John Lennon walked the earth, or at least hovered above it as if they were actually putting some wear on the soles of their shoes? I do.
I remember being about 14, catching up on my Beatles-infatuated boyhood to see where the band members’ solo years led: cool album tracks that I’d missed during my early years of puberty and my last dash of dreams of being a major league baseball player. I’d been reading those Lennon interviews in Playboy and Rolling Stone, really concentrating on every word the coolest and most authentic member of The Beatles uttered. I recall being very excited to hear “Working Class Hero”. This seemed like a song I could really sink my teeth into. This seemed like a song that would speak to the me I thought would be cool to be!
The first few times I heard the song I was disappointed. It was too slow. It “told” me rather than “showed” me. It sounded like folk music. It wanted to express anger, but I wasn’t feeling much of it. To this day I still find “Working Class Hero” a boring song. But Lord knows it strove for authenticity and grappled with issues of serving The People. Continue reading »
Oct 202007
Townsman mrclean suggested this fine thread idea, which I don’t think has ever been hashed out in the Halls of Rock before: Is there a complete album you love with no dud to skp?
Oct 202007
Consider this another one of my It’s about time you weighted in with an opinion, old man! reports.
My wife and I watched Wes Anderson’s Bottle Rocket last night. To our amazement, it didn’t suck! In fact, it was really good. As is always the case with his films, the hip soundtrack almost drowned out the movie itself at times, but for once the action going on in the movie itself was worth watching. In contrast, years ago, when I suffered through the next two films he would make – you know which ones I mean – and some cool song came on to possibly put me out of my misery of watching a bunch of spoiled rich kids crying over the fact that their toy soldier collection was knocked out of place by the maid, I’d briefly dig the song I was hearing and then get more pissed that Anderson spent even more time shoving his toy soldier collection down my throat.
Bottle Rocket, unlike those next two films by Anderson, is simply funny and charmingly self-aware. There was a brief scene in which one of the Wilson brothers took time during a heist to rearrange a toy soldier that had been knocked out of place. Perfect! Part of the backstory was that Luke Wilson’s character had had a nervous breakdown. In his next two movies, Anderson would have harped on this, had Wilson sitting by his Close-and-Play, endlessly spinning a Leonard Cohen song. In Bottle Rocket, this fact is just a device to make the more handsome, serious, and less flexible (in acting terms) of the two Wilson brothers a little more credible regarding his choice of friends. But I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know. Surely I’m the last Townsperson to get around to seeing this film.
