Another weird library addition, not so much a book as a “book-like object.”
Le Guin, Ursula K. Four Different Poems. Longhouse, 2007. First edition chapbook original, a 3″x5″ card with an accordion foldout attached and a title band signed by Le Guin wrapped around, one of only 24 signed copies, a Fine copy.
An odd item with a very small limitation. Bought for $20 off the Internet.
Fox has evidently cancelled the science fiction police drama Almost Human. Which is a damned shame, since it was the first attempt to do a serious post-cyberpunk drama on American TV. (The true first was Japan’s animated Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex.) While it wasn’t a great show (it had too much 1970s cop dram patina to it, including the requisite Climatic Gunfight at the end of every episode), it was a pretty good one and had a lot of potential.
Well, so much for that. Unless another network picks it up, or the DVD sales convince Fox to pick it up again. I’m not holding my breath.
Back in the dim mists of time, they used to demonstrate the speed of atomic chain reactions with arrays of mousetraps. Now someone has done the same experiment, with the added benefit of a high speed camera:
Given that Popes John Paul II and John XXIII were canonized as saints today, here’s Adorable’s “I’ll Be Your Saint”. Never mind that they’re more Dreampop than Shoegaze, or that I’ve already done a Shoegazer Sunday post; two posts for two saints!
Mercury Rev is an American ban that got dubbed Shoegaze early on, then evolved in a more pop direction. “You’re My Queen” is actually one of their more pop numbers, but I think it fits nicely into the shoegaze category somewhere between Black Tambourine and Polyphonic Spree.
In the 1970s, director William Friedkin made three great movies, one after the other. The first, The French Connection won the Academy Award for best picture. The second, The Exorcist, was not only one of the greatest horror films of all time, but one of the highest grossing films ever.
However, his third film, Sorcerer, a remake of the French film The Wages of Fear, sank like a stone at the box office, despite having one of tensest action sequences ever filmed:
It also doesn’t help that the film was later butchered for the international market.
The film has long been champion by many (including Roger Ebert) as a lost classic. But the film was never released on Blu-Ray.
The Blu-Ray version is the full film, restored and remastered with Friedkin’s oversight, and is reportedly “stunning”.
I’ll definitely pick this up, because even on VHS (kids, ask your parents what a VHS was), it was an extremely well-made and gripping film (and one I prefer to the original Wages of Fear).
Warning: Don’t pick up the DVD released the same day as the Blu-Ray, which is reportedly a “botched” full-screen transfer, as the restored version of the DVD isn’t available yet.
While I was poking around iTunes listening to covers of “Road to Nowhere,” I stumbled across this:
If you like Flogging Molly or The Dropkick Murphys, you’ll recognize the Celtic folk punk sound of Mr. Irish Bastard.
Would you believe they hail from Münster, Germany?
Like other bands of their ilk, drinking seems to play a big role in their music:
I should really put up one video that’s an actual video:
I liked the sound so much that I picked up their first album, St. Mary’s School of Drinking for a mere $4.83 off iTunes.
They’ve also done a complete album cover of Never Mind the Bollocks, but I think I prefer their original work.
Obviously, I should have put this up for St. Patrick’s Day…
Sometimes I’ll cruise iTunes looking for covers of songs I like. While doing so for Talking Heads’ “Road to Nowhere,” I discovered that one ensemble had released the same cover of “Road to Nowhere” under multiple band names.
Eleven times.
Indeed, the versions of “Road to Nowhere” on iTunes by the following bands (all of which clock in between 3:49 and 3:53) are all exactly the same:
Moreover, several of those incarnations of the same band (Studio Sunset, Burning Down the House, Psycho Killers, Wildlife, Klone Orchestra) appear to have issued the same entire album of Talking Heads covers (with the same tracks) multiple times. Indeed, they appear to have done it three times under just their Studio Sunset name!
(BTW, if you really want that album, the cheapest version is Burning Down the House’s A Salute to Talking Heads, which is a mere $5.99, compared to $7.99 or $9.99 for some of the others.)
But wait! There’s a completely different group that did the exact same thing with the same song.
Eleven times.
All these covers of “Road to Nowhere” under these band names (all of which clock in around 4:01) are the same:
Finally, here eight cover versions that are not only exactly the same, but the underlying track is so close to the ones above they might be the exact same version with a different vocal mix:
Danish band Spokraket offers garage band psychedelic surf rock married to Here Come the Warm Jets-era Brain Eno, offering plenty of distorted guitars and end up sounding like a low-fi version of Black Tambourine. “Just Go Spit Out Another Lie” is pretty much a steady state Shoegaze song: Like the riff and groove? Just wait around and there will be plenty more of it coming down the pike…
And here’s an earlier live version of it, when it was called “(Drifting Away In) Solitary Dreams”
A while back I featured this Lego ball machine from Japan.
Well, this one (also from Japan) is twice as insane.
It may even be from the same guy.
(Hat tip: Lou Anders‘ Facebook page.)