Bands with a gimmick

Nothing can take a mediocre band and make them freaking awesome faster than a good gimmick. Take a C+ band and give them a good shtick and you've got an A- minus band. It's that easy. I don't know why more bands don't do it. Bands don't seem to be following this formula very much anymore, but here are a couple of my favorites from a couple of years ago....

Man or Astroman? They claimed they were from outer space. They wore weird spaceman costumes. They played kinda futuristic surf rock interlaced with sound bites from forgotten Sci-Fi movies. I know pretty stupid. But they never broke character. And their shows were a lot of fun. I can remember seeing them with Les Savy Fav at Fletchers in 1997 or 1998. (Was it Fletchers?) I don't remember, but I do remember it being one of the most entertaining shows I've ever seen.

Here's a clip...


Servotron. These guys pretended to be robots bent on enslaving humanity. They dressed in really cheesy robot costumes, painted themselves silver and put on an amazing show. They sang songs about mildly famous mistreated robots(Vicki from Small Wonder! R5D4!), and also about how stupid human civilization is.



The Causey Way. I discovered this group a little later on and unfortunately never got a chance to see them live. Their gimmick was that they were a cult posing as a band. Except they claimed they were not a cult. In fact that was their motto "The Causey Way is not a cult" I guess they tried to indoctrinate you at their shows or something. Sounds like fun! Oh, and get this, the band had two of River and Joaquin Pheonix' sisters in it. Crazy!

Doubt

Heather got me to watch this Doubt movie on Saturday night. I realized I hadn't seen a movie in a while (I haven't watched any of these married movies yet), but was neither excited nor dreading watching this particular one. It was nominated for all kinds of awards among them being Oscars for Best Supporting Actor (Phillip Seymour Hoffman), Best Actress (Meryl Streep), Best Supporting Actress (Amy Adams AND Viola Davis), and Best Writing (whoever wrote the screenplay for this movie).

As you may be able to tell from the Academy Award nominations the acting was top-notch. Four of it's five nominations were for acting performances. I am a huge Phillip Seymour Hoffman fan, and I can't think of any movie he's been involved in that I disliked (Punch Drunk Love being one of my favorite of his roles). I think he's one of the best around and he gives another great performance in this. All of the ladies were good as well. As far as recommending this I'm not so sure. I think it was really well done, like I said the acting was great great, and the plot interesting. My hesitation to recommend is similar to my hesitation for recommending Hard Candy some time ago. There was definitely a discomfort level while watching it. I personally like to be uncomfortable when watching movies or TV shows (my love of Curb Your Enthusiasm is one example, also while I didn't love the movie, the discomfort that Meet the Parents gave me was also something that I embraced). So while I may be OK with some weird feelings when viewing a movie, I might hesitate to recommend it to everyone. Perhaps a plot synopsis will help you understand this. Take from IMDB:

It's 1964, St. Nicholas in the Bronx. A charismatic priest, Father Flynn, is trying to upend the schools' strict customs, which have long been fiercely guarded by Sister Aloysius Beauvier, the iron-gloved Principal who believes in the power of fear and discipline. The winds of political change are sweeping through the community, and indeed, the school has just accepted its first black student, Donald Miller. But when Sister James, a hopeful innocent, shares with Sister Aloysius her guilt-inducing suspicion that Father Flynn is paying too much personal attention to Donald, Sister Aloysius sets off on a personal crusade to unearth the truth and to expunge Flynn from the school. Now, without a shard of proof besides her moral certainty, Sister Aloysius locks into a battle of wills with Father Flynn which threatens to tear apart the community with irrevocable consequence.

The whole Catholic school thing definitely brought back some Calvert Hall memories, but I am realizing that Calvert Hall wasn't so strict as the stereotypical Catholic school as portrayed in movies. Regardless, there were some similarities. Nothing relating to the main plot though, I swear. Anyway, Doubt was a really good movie. If the plot is something that interests you I say go for it full-force. I enjoyed it, and while I won't watch it again I am glad I watched it the first time.

One thing that I can recommend to lovers of weird music is an AMAZING interview with one of my all-time favorite musicians, alto saxophonist Tim Berne (interviewed by Ethan Iverson of The Bad Plus). This definitely isn't for everyone but if you are a Tim Berne fan it is a must read. If you like weird music but don't know of Tim's music check out Part TWO where you can listen to some clips and read about them. The Bloodcount clip is particularly incredible (as could be expected). Anyway that article is on Do the Math RIGHT HERE.

Rant--Chuck Palaniuk

Ricky had a really nice post on time travel yesterday, and Heather mentioned this book as a recommendation if he wanted to continue to explore different takes on the subject. I will begin by saying that I loved this book. I love quite a few books, but this one is near the top of the books I have read in the past couple of years. I even bought the book for Brother Eric for some holiday, and he doesn't like to read books anymore. He didn't read this book I don't think, but that is beside the point.

Of anything Chuck Palaniuk I have ever encountered this is my favorite by far. I've read Survivor, and I've seen Fight Club and that stuff is fine, but Rant is where it's at. I swear. Very early in the book the reader is presented with the knowledge that Buster Casey (Rant) is dead, and the entire book explores the very strange events of his life, beginning with his obsession to get bit by poisonous spiders and snakes. If you want a complete rundown of the plot check it out here. It's been about two years since I read the book, so you'll get a better idea from reading that.

The time traveling element doesn't get introduced until the middle of the book, and it involves a nighttime activity called Party Crashing. If you read Rant and don't want to party crash you are not like me. I read Rant, and I wanted to party crash. You will have to read the book to find out what party crashing is. There are two more installments of the Rant series scheduled to be released in 2011 and 2013 and I will definitely read both. My explanation of this book isn't great, but it is coming to you as a very very high recommendation from me. Whatever that means for you...this book is worth a damn. Ricky, it isn't an option for you to not read this book. Eric has it, so does Heather...one of them will be nice enough to let you read it.

BACK TO THE TIME MACHINE

Let me start this by saying that I love time travel movies. This stems from a much larger love of science fiction movies altogether, but time travel really brings out the “what if” questions. Most of them are preposterous like, "what if a women travels back in time, get impregnated and gives birth to herself?", and some are based on the chaos theory like "what if you make one tiny change in the past but it alters the entire course of human history?".
I guess what I really love about time travel movies is that they highlight the question of whether we (humans) are truly autonomous or are we following some predestined chain of events.

There are two time travel movies that I’d like to recommend, although one is just a half recommend and I’ve only seen it once and it was recently.




Timecrimes is about a man who experiences a bizarre series of events and eventually stumbles upon a time machine where he must hide to escape an unknown attacker. After traveling backwards in time he becomes so afraid of altering his past self’s experience that he does some awful things so that nothing is different from how he experienced it before. It’s an interesting concept and runs opposite of most time travel movies where characters are going back in time so that they can change what their past self experienced.



The second recommend was a recommend to me from Chris Dahl, and is called Primer. I was shocked by how much I enjoyed and continue to love this movie. Primer is different from other time travel movies in so many ways. First of all, the whole movie was made with less than a thousand dollar budget, but it feels like any high budget indie film. The filmmakers really knew how to work with what they had. Secondly, Primer leaves the hockus-pokery out of the equation and looks at time travel as any other innovation, a scientific experiment with unexpected yet explainable results, and accidentally discovered by two normal Joes in their garage. Lastly, Primer throws wrenches in the audience's perception of events because it's difficult (at least at first) to decipher which time line the audience is observing at any given time.

The characters in Primer are so real. Basically they are just like any IT guys you know. They are on the geeky side of normal, they talk shop even when they are not working and they have no real adventures in their lives. They are two pedestrian engineers who accidentally discover time travel and they struggle with how to utilize their new power without abusing it. Their awareness of paradoxes initially keeps them away from their past selves, but they eventually exploit their abilities to play the stock market and beyond. Ultimately, Primer examines what extremes the protagonists will go to in order to prosper, to learn, to experiment and to protect the biggest secret they’ll ever have.

Expect a lot of twists and turns in this one, but don’t expect to understand them all or even spot them all the first two, three or seven times through the movie. While Primer does have a David Lynchesque “what the fuck just happened” quality about it, each viewing rewards you a little more instead of leaving you even more confused. I highly recommend this one and will happily lend it to anyone or will come watch it with you. I never tire of this movie.

Obama's Blackberry

Hey everyone,
Have you seen this?

I got this book a few weeks ago, and LOL'd the whole way through. OMG WTF! Anyway, it's this book of made up stuff that Obama gets on his Blackberry. Text messages from Bush, emails from Bill Cosby...that sort of thing. What caught my attention was the front cover of the book. A text from Biden asking Obama if he can leave early. Funny! What's also great are the reoccurring themes through out the book. Dennis Kucinich keeps trying to find a buyer for his 1970s Volkswagen van, Arnold Schwarzenegger keeps writing Obama to let him go to find Bin Laden, Bill Clinton keeps asking Obama to send Hillary to Africa or China, Clarence Thomas keeps asking to hang out, etc. Here's how the book starts...an email from Bush:

From: George W. Bush
To: Barack Obama
SUBJECT: Did my dog show up at your house?

Hey Pardner,

My dog Barney has been missing for the last couple of hours, and I'm wondering if he did one of those "go back to the old house" situations. I know it's far, but he's a quick l'il sum'bitch. Wait, there he is. He's here. He's outside running up right now so... Hey there, good boy. Who's my little chunky monkey?

Lauura? He's back! He just ran up. I wrote to Barack. They hadn't seen him.

K,
W



Go get this book!

Ben Kweller....

Oh man is it Tuesday already? You really lose track of the days when you're off of work. But hey I am not suffering because I am off work, only my blogging is suffering.

Did you know Ben Kweller put out a new album in February? I didn't. I just got it the other day and I am really digging it. If you don't know Ben Kweller you should. He was in a band called Radish as a teenager and has had released some pretty rocking solo albums. This new album, "Changing Horses" has a real big country tinge to it. I Love It! Here is a video from it.

The Dirty Projectors--Bitte Orca

I know I've recommended this one to a few of our FR readers already, but I have to give a strong recommend to the new Dirty Projectors album "Bitte Orca." I have liked the Dirty Projectors stuff before (I listened to Rise Above a bunch when I got it off emusic) but Bitte Orca is a whole new level for them (for me, anyway). I guess the title a lot of people give the band is avant-rock, whatever you want to take that for. Whatever you call it, it is really good. The new album particularly.

You can check out a wide range of their stuff at their myspace page, but the recommendation from me is that you just buy Bitte Orca. Maybe listen to a couple sound clips first and see if it is up your alley. The only person who didn't like it so far is Huff, but I don't know what is wrong with that guy. The album itself is really difficult to desribe, but their are a lot of great arrangements, really weird high vocals, strings, angular rhythms, etc. Just listen. If you don't like it I'll buy you a Natty Bo next time I see you. I am only making that offer because I don't think anyone reads this anymore, and if people do read this I bet they won't make it this far in the post.

One side note about the band...a fun fact that drew me to them in the first place. The 2007 album Rise Above is an attempt to recreate a bunch of Black Flag songs. This wouldn't be very interesting if they were just covers. Instead the band tried to recreate the songs from memory, not going back and listening to the songs (which they hadn't heard for years) before recording them. The result is something that sounds completely independent of the originals, with more references than covers occuring. Anyway, check out Bitte Orca...I think you'll enjoy. Here is a video from the album...the song is called Stillness Is The Move: