Tuesday, March 31, 2015

Iska Dhaaf - General Malaise



Tommy from the ever diligent Heaven is an Incubator posted an amazing piece about SXSW today over on Joup. In it he covers a full week of SXSW happenings in the way that only someone who lives in Austin and has been attending the, ahem*, "festival" for a long time can. You won't see any "It" band blow jobs here; Tommy covers everything equally, spending as much time in the less publicized venues with the less hyped bands as he does with the hype monsters that deserve it.

Case in point: Iska Dhaaf. I'd never heard of them before. As I began going through the names of bands he lists and checking into them for myself I really hit a very particular frequency with these guys. This song is one of the reasons why. They're on bricklanerecords and are very much worth looking into, as this track is only the tip of the iceberg based on my research thus far.

Thanks Tommy!

*Sorry, haven't been, always wanted to go but about six months ago when, while applying for a place playing there I found I had to write an essay about what it would mean to me to play there, SXSW quickly became as eye rolling as Coachella to me. I've never been to either and although there's no way I'll ever do Coachella I would absolutely do SXSW - despite the "essay" thing - if I could hang out with Tommy.

Tuesday, March 24, 2015

Faith No More/Mr. Bungle Comic Book!



Mike Wellman, my good friend and co-host on Drinking with Comics, along with artist extraordinaire Matt Jacobs have a Faith No More/Mr. Bungle comic coming out in June. It's the history of the bands written from a "fan's eye view" and from what I've seen so far, this is a must for any Patton fan!

Birthday Music

Today is my birthday and because of that I took the day off work and am spending the day surrounded by my lovely wife and our three cats and MUSIC!

There are a couple albums that really say "Birthday" to me, not in a general, "Oh this is good to play on someone's birthday" way but in the way that for one reason or another they mean something to me about my day of reiteration.

Ween's Chocolate and Cheese:



Frank Blank and the Catholic's Pistolero:



Frank Black's self-titled post-Pixies debut:



And the sad one, well, the song I choose to represent it here, Ween's GOD WEEN SATAN Birthday Boy. I had to do a live one for this song. Had to:



Sunday, March 15, 2015

Richard Adam Reynolds's Henchmen



Another great short by Richard Adam Reynolds and Waking Dream Studios, the fine folks who gave us the awesome Hellblazer fan film Soul Play.

Beneath the Panels: Nameless Issue #2


The second issue of Grant Morrison, Chris Burnham and Nathan Fairbairn's Nameless came out two weeks ago and I spent a pretty large amount of time going through it. There's not nearly as much material to "decode" in this one as Morrison comes clean with a lot, however as is always the case when researching anything with Occult ties, there are so many rabbit holes you end up falling through that, well, I think this installment of Beneath the Panels will add an extra sense of what is going on in the book. You can read it right now over on Joup.

Tuesday, March 10, 2015

Anticipation: Tales of Halloween


I realize I'm jumping the gun a bit, after all it is only March. However, after just now stumbling upon this impending release I find myself chomping at the bit for October! Lucky McKee? Neil Marshall? Joe Begos? Darren Lynn Bousman? And the topper - Mike Mendez? Auteur of The Convent, my all-time favorite indie horror flick and one of my favorite movies ever, period? SOLD! And when you consider that, holy crap, it's already March and the first three months of 2015 have already flown by, well then, I guess it's just as good as June then too. And if it's just as good as June, then we might as well call it September, and if it's September, October's right around the corner! Depressing that time flies that fast yes, but at least now we have something to salivate for in the meantime as life hits warp speed on another year. And while I didn't find anything cinches October as the month of release, chances are it's a safe bet.




Sunday, March 8, 2015

Big Man Plans...


... the new collaboration between Eric Powell (The Goon) and Tim Wiesch, is the topic of discussion in this week's edition of Thee Comic Column, over on Joup. It's vertically challenged, nice and violent exploitation and, accordingly, a whole lotta fun!

Friday, March 6, 2015

Happy 17 Mr. Lebowsk... er, Dude!



Thanks to my cousin Jim for pointing out the fact that on this day in 1998 - 17 years ago - The Big Lebowski premiered. We had a viewing tonight in honor of the anniversary. Such an amazing movie. Some great music therein as well, from Kenny Rogers' totally out-of-character Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In) to the Credence, to I Hate You by The Monks (which I'd never realized was in the film before) to this rustic little cover of one of my favorite Stones songs from my favorite Stones album, performed by Townes Van Zandt.

Dude, wherever you are seventeen years later, keep abiding sir!

Thursday, March 5, 2015

Drinking w/ Comics issue #19



For issue 19 we filmed at Torrance, California's newest and best independent book store, The Book Frog! And, here's the kicker - the green wall we sat in front of was so perfect Joe.Baxter suggested we use it as a green screen. I think you may agree that it turned out wonderfully!

New Kaiser Chiefs



Mr. Brown sent this to me recently but in the deluge of email I've acquired in the last few days I didn't get to it until just now. Very nice. It's so interesting to me how something that I know for a fact would have sounded extremely dated to me ten years ago now sounds smooth and, if not fresh, apparent, as in this is exactly where we should be right now musically, as older decades cycle back through out consciousness from a different cultural perspective.

Sunday, March 1, 2015

Adam Green's Digging up the Marrow & Joe Begos's Almost Human



Not only does Thomas Williams run the best damn music blog around, but he contributes A LOT to Joup, the online magazine my good friend Grez started a few years ago and I help run. One of Tommy's columns is Thank God for VOD, where he begins every entry with the acknowledgement that he isn't able to go to the theatre as much as he would like (same here) but VOD helps him see most of what he wants to. Of course, coupled with the difficulty heading out to the movies these days is the fact that a lot of the movies guys like Tommy and I want to see don't even open in more than one theatre in any given major population center, for a weekend at best, so VOD is a godsend. But I'm behind in my movies and I finally made it around to one Tommy wrote about last june, Joe Begos's directorial debut, Almost Human. I liked it a lot, it was a great nod to 80s sci fi horror, specifically as Tommy points out early Carpenter, and Begos crafted a very specific late night UPN tone - also as Tommy points out. I love the nostalgic approach when it's done right. And Almost Human is - there's definitely room for him to grow, but I got the same vibe from Almost Human as I did from Ti West's The Roost when it first came out, and if that's any indication, there's sure to be some great stuff following this debut.

Afterward watching the film, while researching Begos and the cast on IMDB, I stumbled across the trailer for Adam Green's new film Digging up the Marrow, and after watching it I am VERY interested. First, you had me at Ray Wise. Second, Green will forever get the benefit of the doubt from me because of Frozen. No, not the disney movie. I'm talking about the film where three college kids get stranded on a ski lift over a long weekend. Can you say traumatic?

Anyway, looking forward to seeing this quite a bit. And if you haven't given Almost Human a chance yet, you should. It's streaming on Netflix so that makes it even more accessible to most. Also, directly after I posted this I flipped over to Bloody Disgusting and found an article and pictures of Looper star Noah Segan on the set of Begos's follow-up to Almost Human, The Mind's Eye. Excited!

Beneath the Panels #4: Nameless and the Place of Fear



The new and final Beneath the Panels pertaining to Nameless #1 is up over on Joup. Issue #2 comes out this coming Wednesday, so this is a last minute wrap-up until we receive the next transmission from Morrison, Burnham and Fairbairn, courtesy of Image Comics.

The Chameleons - Swamp Thing



In late January my wife went to Austin, Texas for two weeks. During her absence I found myself somewhat in a state of disorder. My routines, namely work, commute, write, watch/read could all remain the same but my down time was eerily lonesome. I had our three cats, but they tend to exist in one of two modes - eating or sleeping - so although they were always present, there was a lack of conversation. During that time I listened to a lot of music, loading the old iPod with a number of records I had been meaning to get around to for some time and spent my days at work getting to know some new music. One of those records was The Chameleons' Strange Times. This was the first Chameleons I'd had the opportunity to delve into and it made a very strong impression very quickly.



One of the things I always find so interesting about the "Post Punk" era is the fact that many of the bands attributed to the genre sound a great deal to my ears the way the British New Wave of Comic creators in the 80's read/looked to my eyes/brain. Killing Joke sounds like 80s/90s Vertigo comics, so does Joy Division, The Smiths*... the list goes on. Upon first listen I found this was also the case with Strange Times, especially the track Swamp Thing, which whether my interpretation was a suggested planted by the title or merely some shared DNA with the book, reminds me so much of the tone of Alan Moore's Swamp Thing run that I've pulled the trades I read a scant two years ago back out and am preparing to re-read. It's an eerie, sometimes defeated tone; an often emotionally overwhelming ode to the in between places we often fret to explore, and The Chameleons craft it very well, with a unique approach to arranging the standard rock instrumentation (guitars, bass, kit and keyboards) and a knack for open, verbose lyrics that somehow perfectly balance a line between ambiguity and precision.

NEW Faith No More - Superhero



May 19th cannot come fast enough!

I'm posting this track here for others, but full disclosure I am not listening to it. That won't be an easy pledge to keep, however I'm really looking forward to hearing all the new songs on the album in the context of the album. While I broke down and listened to Motherfucker - my wife bought me the 7" for Christmas - that's as far as I'm willing to go for now.

via Bloody Disgusting.

Faith No More!

Spider Gwen and the Inclusive Age

Art by Rodriguez & Renzi, Mod by @erinoutrageous


Let's talk Zeitgeist, shall we?