Showing posts with label Henry Rollins radio show. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Henry Rollins radio show. Show all posts

Sunday, March 12, 2023

Damone is a Super Cyborg!!!

 

Part One: Last night, my friend and Horror Vision cohost Ray reminded me about one of the institutions in LaLaLand that I adore: Henry Rollins. One thing LA has going for it is that, if you are music-minded, Rollins was, for a time, ever-present. The old LA Weekly free magazine sported a column by him (now long gone since the paper was purchased and 'streamlined' somewhere around 2017. Even better, Rollins has a two-hour radio show every weekend on local public radio KCRW, 89.9. I was a loyal listener for years, then, at some point, they moved his shows from Saturday night to Sunday and I just fell off. Ray's reminder came in the form of a two-part aha moment. First, KCRW has an app where you can stream their programming regardless of when/where you live, and two Rollins is back on Saturdays at 10:00 PM! Now, sure I could have been listening all along via the app, but the Rollins Saturday night was an event, similar to Joe Bob's Last Drive-In, and I really kinda want to listen to it when it airs. So that's what we did last night. Part Two: Damone is not a band Rollins played last night. I found this band and their debut album with is twenty years old this year in the resulting rabbit hole I fell through after Rollins' show. This is straight teenager powerpop, a genre I do not usually go for. But this... my mileage isn't super sound on this - the album wears a bit as it goes on, but only a bit. And this opening track kicks some serious ass. 

This reminds me of a kind of teenage Danko Jones in a way, and with a similar quasi-70s aesthetic, it reminds me how there was a moment in the very early 00s when it seemed like 70s Hard Rock started to resurface. 

I think about other bands I can name from the teenage power pop area of music and they all lean into calling themselves punk or pop punk - I think that's where they go wrong. They're all also fronted by men who go out of their way to sound like pubescent boys, so that doesn't work for me either. I don't know if it's the mainly female vocals, a girl rounding up to being a bit macho, instead of a boy rounding down to come off vulnerable, but Damone just works where most of those other groups fail miserably. Also, they're named after Damone! You know, Dream Police?




Play:

The other rabbit hole I fell down yesterday:

 

Working on-site is exhausting for a myriad of reasons, so I haven't had a lot of time or energy in the short periods when I'm in my hotel. Haven't had the energy to watch much let alone read, so it's a good thing I brought my Switch, and even better that the algorithm saw fit to pop up a video on youtube titled, "Super Cyborg is basically Contra on Switch."

Yep. True. Well, the first level is almost exactly Contra, and a lot of the gameplay is the same, but it's going to some weird places with insect and sealife-based bad guys, with some pretty gross ideas they throw at you to shoot. And, of course, there's a 40 lives code, which really opens up the enjoyment.




Playlist:

Windhand - Eponymous
Cough & Windhand - Reflection of the Negative EP
Henry Rollins - KCRW Broadcast 727
The C.I.A. - Surgery Channel
Damone - From the Attic




Card:


A direct commentary on not forgetting how good I have it right now, and how much I miss K while I am away. Wealth, indeed.

Monday, May 3, 2021

Death Valley Girls and the White of the Eye

After discovering Death Valley Girls late last year via (I think) the Henry Rollins radio show on LA NPR WKRC and having a brief moment with their then-new album Under the Spell of Joy, I kinda forgot about them again. However, the album popped back up on my radar last week during my black-out period here (BUSY!), and I've been listening to it ever since. Excellent album, which you can pick up from Suicide Squeeze Records HERE.




Watch:

I watched quite a few movies over the last five days or so since the last time I posted, however, Donald Cammell's White of the Eye may have left the biggest impression on me from those films I didn't already know. My co-host Tori talked about this one on the most recent episode of The Horror Vision, and our fellow cohost Anthony hit it square on the head when he described the film as a "Southwestern American Giallo."


You're going to have to be in the mood for 80s tropes, i.e. gratuitous guitar over sweaty sex scenes, and mullets like you may have never seen before, but if you can put you're head there and imagine you're watching this one late at night on a local affiliate at around 1:00 AM on a Saturday, you'll do just fine. Stand out performance by David Keith, who kind of transcends his "poor-mans Kurt Russell" thing and really does something cool with his role.




Playlist:

I'm not even going to try and log everything I've listened to, because I on a good day I usually mess that up. Here's what I remember:

Death Valley Girls - Under the Spell of Joy
Jello Biafra and the Guantanamo School of Medicine - White People and the Damage Done
Black Sabbath - Vol. 4
Mrs. Piss - Self-Surgery
Prince - Sign O' The Times
Gram Rabbit - Music to Start a Cult To
Voyag3r - Doom Fortress
Tomahawk - Tonic Immobility
CCR - Bayou Country
Deftones - Ohms
Lustmord - Hobart




Card:


My second shot of the Pfizer Vaccine is coming up this Thursday, so let's see if it knocks me out as hard as the first one did. 

 

Wednesday, July 22, 2020

Isolation: Day 130



Mr. Brown sent this video to me yesterday and it absolutely made my day! Henry Rollins' excitement for music is an enjoyable thing to experience, and watching this has made me miss listening to his radio show on Los Angeles Public Radio KCRW (Link directly to his show, where past episodes are streamable HERE). The show used to be my regular Saturday night thing, but that was years ago, and as soon as KCRW moved him to Sunday at 9:00 PM, it killed my patronage. I've been meaning to make a habit of streaming the shows the day after, and I think this video was just what I needed to finally make that happen.

As far as the subject of the video, Rhino's Funhouse 50th Anniversary pressing - it's awesome for sure, but not something I'd shell out $400 (plus, as Brown pondered in a text, what about shipping on a box that size?). Still, it's a pleasure to hear Rollins geek out about that which he loves, and it's definitely infectious.

**

Two nights ago I woke up from an after-work nap and found K about fifteen minutes into a movie I'd never heard of before. I sat down and ended up getting sucked in, especially when I saw that Hannah Gross and DAVID CRONENBERG both had roles in the flick (as does Aaron Poole). Albert Shin's Disappearance at Clifton Hill is a weird little flick, visually gorgeous, and with definite Lynch influence. Until I looked the film up, as we were watching it, I began to suspect it might be a Brad Anderson film, as Clifton definitely feels like something Anderson might have done around the time he made The Machinist or Transsiberian.



The film is currently streaming on HULU, and is definitely worth your time.

**

Playlist:

François-Eudes Chanfrault - Computer Assisted Sunset
Metallica - Master of Puppets
Melvins - Houdini
The Smiths - The Queen is Dead
The Stooges - Eponymous
The Stooges - Funhouse

**

Card:


Too much to get into at the moment, but let's just say I re-thought the book and am going to try something a little bit different with it than I originally intended.

Friday, November 29, 2013

Nick Cave Record Store Day (that's today) Live Album Release

image courtesy of Spin
I'm not going to lie - there is NO WAY in hell I'm going out to pick this up today. Working a skeleton crew day at the lab and then coming home to work on my script, then later maybe watch a movie or two because I am quite behind on what people have lent me recently. However, I will be going out tomorrow to pick this up. Live Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. Recorded through KCRW, best NPR station in the nation, and if giving Henry Rollins a place for his radio show and putting something like this out doesn't prove that, I don't know what will.

Monday, November 25, 2013

The Henry Rollins Radio Show




Consider this a trailer. Everything about this makes me smile. You can stream these on KCRW's website here.

Nick Cave & Warren Ellis - The Proposition



Since KCRW moved Henry Rollins' show to Sunday it is no longer a weekly event for me. I'm hoping I can change that soon (or they could just put him back on Saturday where he fucking belongs... just saying). I was able to listen this week and man did he blow my mind - as usual. One of the things Mr. Rollins threw down on was the Nick Cave and Warren Ellis White Lunar, which I believe is a comp of some of their film score work. GORGEOUS.

Wednesday, November 13, 2013

the pAper chAse - Said the Spider to the Fly



And onto yet another neglected message, this one from my friend Jeffrey of Apocalypse Cow - the best freakin' recording/production studio in Illinois (well, aside from Mr. Albini's - no offense Teresa, Dan or Jeffrey) - sent me a link to this track by the pAper chAse a couple of weeks ago. Flashback about a year ago and Mr. Brown was out to stay with us for a while around xmas and one Saturday while listening to the Henry Rollins show on KCRW Henry played the pAper chAse and both Brown and I dug it. I believe I tracked the band to a website Rollins mentioned and jotted down a note to go back to them and stuck it under the 'mental pillow' (sounds like a terrifying game played at late 18th century insane asylums, eh?) where it became lost in an ever-shifting sea of puppy dogs and demonic bats. Anyway, Jeffrey facebook'd me this recently and although it doesn't sound like what I remember Rollins playing - I'll have to go back and check his show logs (yep!), which are frighteningly complete, and determine. And if that was something different and I'm just confusing the names, hey, that's two great finds Jeffrey served as catalyst for!

This song is fairly disturbing, especially the really jilted guitars that come in near the end to accentuate the discordance transpiring here.