2018: November 9th

I'm in an Ethyl Meatplow mood this morning, so I started the day off with their Barry Adamson-produced, 1993 record Happy Days, Sweetheart before I move into Daniel's Pick for the Joup Friday Album. Now, I've had Happy Days for a long time, considered myself a fan of both Meatplow and Carla Bozulich's Geraldine Fibbers, but I guess I've never really dug around on youtube for more stuff by either because I'd never seen this live footage before. This is one for the annals of history folks, 90s underground awesomeness, short-lived but amazing nonetheless. And really, could Carla Bozulich be any hotter than she is in this video?


Playlist from 11/08:

Various Artists - Twin Peaks Limited Event Series Soundtrack
The Chameleons UK - Strange Times
Tom Waits - Bone Machine
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - B-Sides & Rarities Vol. III
Boy Harsher - Country Girl EP
The Body - I Have Fought Against It, But I Can't Any Longer
Jóhann Jóhannson - Mandy OST


Card of the day:

Breakthrough. I've got a meeting this morning that could use one, and a lot of writing to do this weekend that could benefit from my plotting breakthrough from earlier in the week carrying through to a few more smaller epiphanies.

2018: October 12th

Here's a track off one of my seasonal go-to's this time of year, The Final Cut's 1992 Consumed, which also happens to be my pick for today's edition of The Joup Friday Album, which you can read over HERE on Joup.co.

Continued 31 Days of Horror last night with Killer Klowns form Outer Space. Man, John Vernon is the shit, isn't he?

31 Days of Horror:

10/01) Summer of 84
10/02) Rope
10/03) Dreams in the Witch House
10/04) Crash
10/05) The Fly
10/06) Re-animator
10/07) Night of the Demons
10/08) Species
10/09) The Roost
10/10) The Convent
10/11) Killer Klowns from Outer Space

Tonight? I'm thinking either George A. Romero's Day of the Dead or Dario Argento's Phenomenon. But we'll see.

I didn't talk about NCBD yet this week, primarily because I've been too busy to stop in and pick up the one thing that came out on my pull. But oh what a 'one thing' it is:

This original Hardcover Graphic Novel from the creators of recent favorites of mine Fatale, The Fade Out, and Kill Or Be Killed, My Heroes Have Always Been Junkies ties into the Criminal Universe in a small way via that series' first arc, Coward. Interestingly enough, I just read Coward for the first time a few days ago. I couldn't have timed that better if I'd tried! Criminal is the only Brubaker/Phillips series I've yet to engage with, and this little serendipitous jaunt should catapult me further into it nicely. Thanks to my good friend Joe.Baxter for lending me his trades and getting me started!

Playlist from yesterday:

Monolord - Rust
The Black Queen - Infinite Games
In Solitude - Sister
Blut Aus Nord - Memorial Vetusta II - Dialogue with the Stars

No, that damn second part of the novel still isn't finished, but I did come up with the plot point I believe it has always been missing. The somewhat clunky elements that haunted a certain character's motivations have now been replaced with what I can joyously say is a new, elegant arc that puts everyone where I need them to be for the plot to resolve in part three. I spent a good deal of time yesterday re-writing chapters in part one in order to massage this element in and it sent me skyrocketing into the second half with renewed vigor. So here's to that!

Card of the day:

Mind distracted at times you say? Why yes! All that writing time yesterday was hard-earned in between being distracted by this and this and this.

Bastards!

2018: June 29th

New Alice in Chains went up earlier this week. I haven't listened to it yet, not suer that I'm going to until I can hear it in the context of the new album (which I'm not even sure we need), but I figured I've posted everything else recent they've done here so I might as well do this too, if only for posterity's sake:



I was unofficially tagged to do this week's edition of The Joup Friday Album and it's up HERE if you'd care to take a trip with The Atlas Moth to open your weekend.

Playlist from yesterday:

Liars - Eponymous
PLANETS - The Dark Woods
David Bowie - Diamond Dogs
Wire - Pink Flag
Wrong - Feel Great
Slayer - Reign in Blood
Zombi - Spirit Animal
The Atlas Moth - Coma Noir



Card of the day:

Unkindness and a lack of empathy. Hmm... Definitely going to keep my head down today.

2018: March 10th 11:05 AM

Starting today with Nine Inch Nails - The Downward Spiral because Katie did it for the Joup Friday Album last night and I didn't get a chance to listen to it then.




Filming for Drinking w/ Comics #40 went fantastic - our little comic book reading session at Mike's the night before helped facilitate a show where for an hour and some chance we actually spent pretty much the entire time talking about comics! Should be up in about a week.

Playlist from yesterday:

Teenage Wrist - Chrome Neon Jesus
The Rolling Stones - Sticky Fingers
The Horrors - Primary Colours
Darkness Brings the Cold - Devil Swank, Vol. 1

Second to last party ever in my pad will happen tonight as I host a birthday party for two dear friends. Next week is my annual St. Paddy's, week after I turn 42 and move for the first time in 11 years and 11 months (remind me to tell you about my 111/1111 thing sometime).

Card for the day:

Strength, stability. Stable material balance. All good signs of things to come based on the outcome from our endeavors (K's more than mine - she really busted her ass on getting us the new place). 

2018: March 2nd 6:08 PM

This is late compared to how I've been posting here. Long day.

This week I'm filling in for KJVM on the Joup Friday Album. This installment's a bit of a departure for me. Read it HERE and welcome the weekend in with a theatrically evil 80s Metal icon, for better or for worse.

Playlist from yesterday seems 100,000,000 light years away, and I didn't take very good notes, so here goes from memory:

High On Fire - The Art of Self Defense
Sleep - Volume 1
High On Fire - Luminiferous
High On Fire - Blessed Black Wings
Sleep - Dopesmoker (Vinyl, which alters the experience by having to flip the side four times and remove and replace one record with another once)
Preoccupations - Eponymous
Type O Negative - Life is Killing Me

Was March 1st national Matt Pike day? Seems like it might have been.



Card of the day for today, which might be viewed a moot point at 6:16 PM, however you can learn a lot about Divination from reverse-engineering a draw:

From the Grimoire: Will indicate failing to achieve a goal. Paired with the 8 or 9 of Swords (which I did, drew two more cards and one was Interference) may indicate treachery. Or "Won't get the job." Hopefully that's not pointing toward the apartment we just applied for.

Broken Social Scene - KC Accidental

Broken Social Scene is one of those bands I'd always meant to check out but never got around to. Changing that tonight, thanks to Chester Whelks' write-up for this week's edition of the Joup Friday Album. Favorite song so far, because it reminds me a bit of Godspeed You! Black Emperor, without the severe gravity (not that gravity is a bad thing).

The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion: Now I Got Worry

... is my pick for this week's edition of The Joup Friday Album. Not gonna lie, I mainly write fiction now so writing like this is a little more difficult for me now. That said, I'm pretty proud of this one. Great album to open a Friday to!

Pearl Jam - Porch on SNL 1992

I'd never seen this before. Not the biggest Pearl Jam fan - love first and most of the second record, pretty much stopped after that. I've always respected them as a band though, even if it's a once in a blue moon event for me to actually throw one of those two records on to listen to.

Until recently. I spoke about the reasons why I am currently indoctrinating myself with music from my high school years in this week's edition of The Joup Friday Album. Both those first two PJ records fit into that, especially the first one and especially this song. I got chills watching this a minute ago, so I had to jot it down here for posterity's sake. Enjoy.

Grimes - Visions

...Is my choice for this week's edition of the Joup Friday Album. You can hear the album and read what I have to say about it on that link above, and you can watch the video for Oblivion below.

David Bowie's Reality is this week's Joup Friday Album

You can read my thoughts and subsequently listen to Reality here. This is actually, I think, considerably more than just me talking about my favorite Bowie record. This  piece is the product of four long weeks of contemplating what the icon meant to me and why I have previously always gravitated more toward his later works.

Placebo - Meds

I missed the boat on this one. Meds was in my collection for sometime but not by my intentions directly. I'd given it a half-attempted spin or two and not found the band to my liking - at the time - and that was that. And of course, the reason why I generally do not get rid of CDs is that A LOT of music is very time-and-place insofar as how you take to it. Murphy's Law dictates that if you do get rid of an album you have a pretty good chance of getting into it shortly thereafter. And that's just what happened here. My friend Katie's pick for the Joup Friday Album this past week was Meds and in reading her write-up and throwing the album on my headphones while at work on Friday I literally fell in love with it. First two songs gave me chills. Still do, two days and about six listens later. And yeah, Meds is no longer in my collection so I will have to be re-buying it. #don'tsellyourmusicbuildalifelibrary



I absolutely understand why previously I did not like this band. It's somewhat ineffable, however after really thinking about Placebo's sound in the context of the time this record hit I think I've come to some fairly weighty conclusions. There's no denying my initial prejudice has to do with the fact that Meds specifically and the band's sound in general has a lot of the trappings that bigger-market rock bands trafficked in during the early oughts. The voice and the way it sits in the mix, the guitar tone, the slightly narcissistic point of view and the underlying programming that gives the songs a sort of slick, Marilyn Manson Mechanical Animals three times removed feel is, to me, indicative of this era of rock music, where many of the bands that blew up to varying degrees just generally leave me cold and suspicious of contrivance. That said, I think a lot of what I just described is actually the product of one particular metric that I can't really prove as anything other than a hunch - the fact that beginning with the late 90s and traveling on into the early 00s a lot of the bands who rose to prominence were helmed by the first generation of artists to do so having been raised on meds for most of their lives. The sound I describe above has a slightly overly-polished veneer - hence the suspected contrivance - because that's what the filter of meds does, it polishing reality. That's what a lot of that era's music is about, coping with that, and it makes sense that would leave its sonic fingerprint on the music. Again, I can't prove it, but Meds specifically would definitely appear to add credence to my thinking.

What say you (the Universal You, that is?)

Oliver Nelson

My wife writing about one of the greatest jazz records ever in this week's edition of The Joup Friday Album. Awesome!

Nick Cave and 20,000 Days on Earth

image courtesy of meltcomics.com

Last night my wife and I attended the premiere of the new film 20,000 Days on Earth. It is a fictional documentary about Mr. Cave, and probably my favorite film of 2014 (definitely up until this point it is). Read about it on Joup here, where I've also posted Mr. Cave and his Bad Seed's masterpiece And No More Shall We Part as my entry into this week's The Joup Friday Album column.