2018: December 30th

It's been a few years since I've put on any of Ween's music. Still one of my all-time favorite bands, their break-up back in 2012 I was heart-broken. A reunion seemed possible down the road, but it hurt regardless because Ween were two friends that had gown up and shared so much making music together, it was exactly like my friends and I - Grez, Mr. Brown, Sonny, Tim - who had done the same. Then, in 2014 Aaron Freeman - AKA Gene Ween - released this song and I was deeply affected by it. I found myself hoping Ween would not reunite; I didn't want him to end up back where he had been. And ever since I've felt a disconnect from Ween.

Then, two days ago a younger guy was listening to Mac Demarco. I'd heard Salad Days before, but something about it grabbed me in that moment. I put the album on my headphones and by the end had an irresistible urge to listen to Pure Guava. After Guava, I dipped right into Painting the Town Brown, and for the first time in probably ten years listened to the entire 25+ minute Poop Ship Destroyer version in sheer, invigorated awe.

I've avoided seeing Ween since they reunited in 2016, despite the fact that they've played near me countless times. I'm not sure I'll go see them live again - not because of a grudge, just because I've seen them live SO many times - but it's nice to reconnect with something I love in a purely organic way.

Stay Brown!

Links to The Horror Vision's 2018 Year in Horror:

Apple Podcasts
Spotify
Google Play

I watched a couple flicks last night.



First Marvel movie I've seen since Civil War, which, along with batman vs. superman, kinda broke my interest in big two comic book adaptations. I would have been fine skipping this one, too, except I have to say, the trailer for Endgame has me, and I figured I should see the flick that leads into it.

I didn't hate this, but I will say I absolutely hated the overbearing score by Alan Silvestri.

All along, I've been far more interested in where Marvel is ultimately going with the big picture for their cinematic universe, and Endgame looks like it will shut the door on the Avengers, at least for a time.



Fucking insane. That's all I can say. Must have been an influence on Panos Cosmatos.



I watched this one more because I was in a Joe Bob mood than for the movie itself. That Last Drive-In special is still up on shudder, under series I think, and each film and its adjacent commentaries are listed as episodes in the 'season.' Did I call Blue Sunshine insane? I was wrong. This IS insanity. Like Porky's fucked Ghoulies and had a horny, satanic baby that grew up and went to college with the revenge of the nerds cast.

Playlist from 12/29:

Shannon - Let the Music Play (Single)
Ministry - Animositisomina
Corrosion of Conformity - No Cross No Crown
Deafheaven - New Bermuda

Card of the day:

Not, I think, the beginning of a journey, but the end of one.

Rest in Purple

I almost posted something when I heard the news of Prince's death this morning but I stopped myself. I was at work, entering long strings of data into a spreadsheet and trying to jar myself awake by listening to Iron Maiden on my headphones. During the resultant trance-like state two things happened simultaneously: first, just as one song ended and another was about to begin I overhead two of my co-workers talking in a vague way about what sounded like a celebrity death. Second, a text bubble popped up on my phone. It was from my friend Ray. Without stopping my typing I looked down and saw this:

The two disparate streams of  information collided in my mind and in total shock I said the following sentence very loudly, "What? Prince can't be dead!" I said this so loud that one of the girls who works in another department came over to see if I needed help. A few minutes later she left and another person from a department even farther away came over and gave me a hug. He was wearing purple, of all colors.

Now, I am not a the biggest Prince fan. But I am a Prince fan. Especially the Prince who helmed the Revolution for the iconic record/movie Purple Rain. As for his other music, there's lots I like and some I could never hear again and not care. As Tommy from Heaven Is An Incubator laments in his own post pertaining to this momentous loss for the music community, because of our age Prince's music was something of a backdrop to our generation's entire childhood. Growing up in the 80s Prince was EVERYWHERE, literally. And it wasn't just the songs he performed, it was also the material that he wrote for other performers: Sheila E., Sheena Easton, The Bangels, Morris Day, Stevie Nicks. As I got older the extremely unique sounds Prince made with his music followed me, often in sneaky or almost subconscious ways. The first song on Public Enemy's masterpiece Fear of A Black Planet, "Brothers Gonna Work It Out" is loaded with samples of Prince's guitar. Skinny Puppy's bleak and brilliant Last Rites has snippets of Prince's weird, over-flanged percussion laced throughout. Later still, one of my all-time favorite bands - Ween - covered Prince, lovingly lampooned him and downright homaged him on many, many occasions. But the older I became the more Prince's influence on my musical life remained peripheral; the cassette copy of Purple Rain that my cool, older cousin Jim gave me for Christmas the year it came out was worn out long ago and the only Prince I'd had in the collection through my thirties was a beat-up copy of Sign O' The Times on vinyl and a double-disc greatest hits my ex-wife had brought with her to our twelve year sharing of a music collection. When she moved out all that went away. Luckily though...

Every year from Memorial Day to Labor Day Hollywood Forever Cemetery hosts something called Cinespia - an organization that projects movies on the side of a mausoleum in the cemetery's enormous - and beautiful - grounds. Ray and I, along with several of our other friends, go to as many of these Saturday night screenings every year as possible. Two summers ago Cinespia showed Purple Rain. I hadn't seen it since the 80s and Ray's a fan so we went and it completely re-inspired me to love Prince. Again, not all his music, but for that album in particular. I've long said that when he's gone Prince would be remembered as probably the single greatest driving force in the Pop music of the 80s. After watching Purple Rain and then re-buying and binging on it hardcore for a few weeks I had an even deeper realization about this record:

As far as records go, Purple Rain is the Philosopher's Stone of the 80s.

Now, when I say Philosopher's Stone I need to quantify what I'm talking about. I've approached this concept previously but in less specific terms. Obviously in every decade or 'era' of music there are movements, fashions, trends and scenes. And somewhere within all those dark and incestuous nooks and crannies I believe there is one album that perfectly sums everything else up. For the 80s I would argue that album was Purple Rain. Prince's 1984 masterpiece is a microcosm of nearly everything musical that surrounds it; there's elements of Funk, Soul, New Wave, Metal (that serpentine guitar lick in Computer Blue? Those blast beats in the last third of Darling Nikki that I never noticed before I reengaged with it? Metal baby); Purple Rain has it all and what's more all of those seemingly disparate elements are perfectly synthesized into a coherent whole. That's the key. For perspective I've argued elsewhere that the 90's Philosopher Stone album was the Beastie Boys' Check Your Head, another synthesis of the musical world around it.

(Incidentally, I don't think we have enough distance from the 00s yet to determine what might be that era's Philosopher's Stone, but I'd also argue in a few years we might look back and say that because of the democratization and decentralization of music that particular era ushered in there actually might not be one).

With all of this said I need to end this diatribe before I become any more grandiose. Not possible you say? Believe me, it is. So to finish I will leave you with a video a friend showed me a couple years ago. This thing just blew me away. No matter how you feel about the musicians that are on stage to begin with, watch this all the way through because at approximately 3:28 this rendition of what might just be my favorite Beatles song becomes god-like. And Prince? Rest in Purple sir. Rest in Purple.

Live WEEN from last week's shows

Screen shot courtesy of Tara Cushing's youtube channel

Mr. Brown sent me a sampling of what some of the fine folks who attended these reunion shows have put up on youtube. This user, Tara Cushing, has an wonderfully extensive documentation of all three nights so check out her youtube page here. They make me smile. Again, I simply cannot describe how happy I am to see one of my all-time favorite bands back together again - I'm literally tearing up just writing this.

BOOGNISH!

Ween's 1st Reunion Show was Last Night...

from: http://www.heyreverb.com/blog/2016/02/13/ween-returns-our-1stbank-center-review-and-photos/113602/

...and although I wasn't there and won't be at the next two nights, Jambase has the entire thing mapped out, photographed and even some video! Check it out!

Here's one of my favorites that I was happy to see that they played last night.

WEEN's BACK!!!

The best news EVER came down the pipes yesterday and I've been too busy swooning to post anything about it.

WEEN IS BACK TOGETHER!!!



Now, it remains to be seen if Boognish can go home again after all the static, but let's fucking hope so. I seriously had tears in my eyes every time I've listened to them since they broke up.

Interestingly enough, this past Saturday, two days before the announcement I spent the whole day breaking in a new Ween shirt Mr. Brown gave me a while back and that of course meant I also spent the day listening to them. All day. All night. I now kind'a feel as though I may have done something of a 'rain dance', cuz within a day or two Mr. Brown shot me a text with the announcement and my happy circuits exploded all over the got'damned place!

WEEN circa 1996 on Australian Radio

"Here on the Chocolate hotline..."

If you click on the previous WEEN link I posted this week, "Beacon Light", and follow the link that Chester Whelks left in the comments you can read about Aaron Freeman's upcoming record. I miss the hell out of WEEN, but I want them all to live great, healthy lives too. So I'm behind Aaron and can't wait to hear the new record.

"Eating a Lobster Hoagie on my house boat" - fan-fucking-tastic!

WEEN - Beacon Light Live

There are days when I miss WEEN so much it hurts. This is one of those days. Listening to Pure Guava, thinking about how awesome this band is.

Z-Rock Hawaii

Earlier in the week Mr. Brown sent me a text alerting me to the fact that Dick Trickle passed. He spurred me to dig into the Ween catalogue and pump Stroker Ace - the song that really is the only reason why I know who Mr. Trickle was. This put Ween back in my thoughts, and led to my breaking out some White Pepper as I lay around reading on this lazy afternoon. While browsing through my nearly twenty Ween CD's (proper releases, odds-n-sods assemblies I made back during the Napster days and all of their Chocodog releases. I think the only two things I'm missing is, inexcusably, the proper 12 Golden Country Greats - which I always forget I'm missing until I go to listen to it because I have a demo version - and the Kostars record they contributed to with members of Luscious Jackson) and I come across Z-Rock Hawaii, the record the Ween Brothers made back in the day with Japanese insanity enclave The Boredoms. The entire thing is a masterpiece from a different world, but these are my two favorite songs from it.

RIP Dick Trickle w/ WEEN's Stroker Ace

Taking a suggestion from Mr. Brown and going public with it - this one's for the late Mr. Trickle.
"Light up the wheels and go for brokeStomp that pedal with a sniftin strokeSmack that roadblock caught in a pickleI'm gonna hit that line like old Dick Trickle"

Moist Boyz - Paperboy

Not where my head's at, but I never completely pass up anything that has connections to Ween.

Some New Live WEEN

Courtesy of Mr. Brown, setlist below.



Video streaming by Ustream


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SETLIST

denver 12/29/11 first of 3 nights. they set a record for # of songs played. no song repeated on any night. (Mr. Brown adds that, "We just may have the next live disk set, they sound in top form." - yes they do my friend. Yes they do.)

did you see me?

golden eel

stallion 3

my own bare hands

spinal mengits

buckingham gn

captain

zoloft

mollusk

learnin to love

stroker ace

gabrielle

tick

object

roses r free

ice castles

final alarm

the argus

powder blue

richard smokr

pumpin 4 the man

I saw gener cryin in his sleep

put coke on my dick

shamemaker

band onthe run

homo rainbow

tried & true

someday

encore,

freedom76

your party

fluffy

Chick publications: Saving us from Ourselves for over 40 years

Many of you will know what Chick publications is, even if you don't know that you do.

Wait, backup.

Many of you will know the work Chick Publications produces even if you do not know Chick publications by name. Have you ever known someone, maybe a high school guidance counselor or janitor, who is a 'born again' and goes about trying to 'save' others by passing out quirky little Jesus-comic strips? If you've seen them then you'll recognize them - they're real small and always have titles like, 'It's not your fault' or 'The Beast' and they're always filled with the idea that the world is going to end any gosh darn moment and since it's possessed by Satan if you don't drop everything* right now you could be attacked by demons or atheists or demon atheists!!! The books themselves look like this:

There was a very quiet school janitor who gave these out in junior high or high school and they've fascinated me since. Part of what fascinates me is that no matter where I go these things always pop up eventually. The other part that fascinates me is while they are earnestly trying to be serious they're really quiet hysterical; hammy to the point that it's incredible to believe anyone takes them seriously. Yet obviously some do just that. Recently someone gave me one at work. 'The Beast',a small black-and-white strip that sports a happy family on the coverwith 666 etched into each of their heads (mom, dad and baby too!!!) and a creepy-looking hand reaching out and apparently baptizing them into the ways of darkness. I hadn't seen one of these for a while and this was a great reminder of just how kookie religion can make some folk. The strip talks about 'Life as it is today' - basically a drunken orgie of fornication and debauchery, citing clipped bible verse after clipped bible verse to tie in technology, slowly spinning the drunken orgie into a war games-like scenario of evil global control, culminatingwith a page that is so ridiculous it requires a visual aid:

Now, I know there is a whoooole mess of good stuff happening in the panel above but I would like to draw your attention to two things in particular. First, as my good friend Ray pointed out the end of world looks kinda cool from the Chick publication camp's point of view, especially if you're a horror movie fan. I mean, I always thought the Apocalypse was going to be some big, abstract menagerie of multi-headed biblical beasts and fires of judgment - apparently that is not the case. Let's see, we've got Bat-winged devils, Baphomet, what looks like it could be Nosferatu. Also there is a zombie (drawn awfully similar to Exorcist-era Linda Blair, no?), a posse of black-robed druid guys and, my favorite, the Wolf man. Do you think the agents of the Apocalypse have to pay licensing fees to use the Wolf Man in their war of Good vs. Evil? I'm betting Universal would be into that. Imagine the royalties.

Second thing I want to talk about from the little jewel above is the caption at the very bottom, beneath the comic frame proper. Let me quote for you now, adding my own emphasis by bolding: 'For factual information on Satanism, read LUCIFER DETHRONED, the true story of ex-vampire William Schnoebelen. By Chick Publications.'

Okay, so, ah, do the words factual and ex-vampire belong in the same sentence if we are not watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer? This led me to do a little google-stalking on ol' Mr. Schnoebelen. Wanna know what I found? Check it out.

http://www.relfe.com/07/Bill_William_Schnoebelen.html

Scroll down and read Mr. Schnoebelen's 'be there done that' list. Satanist, 33 degree Mason, Knight Templar, Thelemite, Vampire (still don't get that one), and Priest for The Church of Latter Day Saints??? Sound like a devotee's list of every other freakin' option out there, besides of course directly attacking the Eastern religions, which I'd bet dollars to donuts they do elsewhere. And that's another thing. If you read down far enough - about to where the article talks about Mormonism - you'll find this little faux pas. Again, I've added my emphasis by bolding:

'Within days, his life fell apart and he lost all his magical power. This crisis led us, ultimately to join the Mormon (LDS) Church…'Ahhh... so Mr. Schnoebelen or his wife are the ones writing this, trying to adopt a third person stance but no doubt brimming with too much self-importance to maintain the distance required for third person, instead falling into self-righteous character and subsequently first person as well.

The whole Chick thing is, I suppose, a cultural phenomenon. However, cultural phenomena are not, by a rule, always good things. Look at skinny jeans. No, seriously, I started out with the intent to debunk (i.e. ridicule) these mini comics that saturate our social atmosphere on underground levels. I lost that thread for a bit above because in researching these things I remembered how much fun they are. However, as I'm sure Count Schnoebelen himself might agree, many times dangerously undermining agencies begin with an ignorant or intolerant message and then work to sugar-coat it in the most seemingly benign or even fun flavors imaginable.Jim Jones anyone???

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* Except I'd imagine, your pants.