Kings Of Leon: Only By The Night

Release Date: September 23, 2008

Every once in a blue moon, an album gets under my skin so bad that it engulfs my bloodstream. I want to breathe it. I want to drink it. I want to fuck its brains out, while it plays in the background. Twice.

I guess a great album is kind of like a good romance, it falls in your lap when you aren’t searching for it. This rings exceptionally true with southern rock boys, Kings of Leon, and their fourth full-length release, Only By The Night.

Truthfully, I despised the first (and in turn, the last) thing I heard from Kings of Leon, that damn “Molly’s Chambers” hullabaloo circa 2003. I hated it so much that I didn’t give the rest of their catalog a chance, so naturally I wanted to kick myself when I found myself nodding to their newest single, “Sex On Fire” every time I heard it on the radio. It grabbed me by the jugular and made me want to believe what vocalist Caleb Followill was crooning, something eerily similar to the Bono effect. His voice haunted me, and when the album appeared in a care package from a friend, I considered it fate. I popped in Only By The Night for the ride home, and the first track, “Closer,” had me instantly at hello. How could it not, with lyrical content pertaining to the life of a vampire! Sex-ay.

Sonically it’s Stones meets Afghan Wigs with a dash of Zeppelin, showcasing equal parts melodic and forceful — but never contrived. Only By The Night floats its listener through a space-rock odyssey, reminiscent of a good high without the edgy comedown. My favorite track, Revelry, tugs at the heartstrings, encasing so much painstaking emotion that it resonates like a bad dream. Lyrics such as “I get lost in the light/So high don’t wanna come down/ To face the loss of the good thing that I have found” hint at both addiction and the loss of a love, both two topics that seem more familiar to the masses these days than they do foreign.

A velvety smooth album from start to finish highlighted with fuzzy guitars and rich vocals, I just want to reminisce on good (and bad) times past with a bottle of wine and a pack of smokes while basking in the light of revelry.

Kings Of Leon: Listen Closely

No. You, are not…

Little Miss Sunshine is overrated! There, I said it.

This critical darling, independent film sensation from a few years back is a joke.

I am a supporter not only in theory, but in practice, of independent film, but this movie is a black stain on the culture.

This movie is a gilded turd masquerading as a gem.

It’s mind-boggling to me how many respected film critics heaped praise on this preposterous piece of puff (how do you like that for alliteration!).

The worst part is that I’m a Carelly? A Carellite? A Careller?  I’m a big fan of Steve Carell – let’s put it like that.  And even he couldn’t avoid the many icebergs that this sinking ship hit along the way.

Art imitates life right?  Great.  I get that there are some quirky families out there in the real world.  But let’s examine the Damn Hoover (hehe) clan for just a minute…

WARNING: There be spoilers down below!

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Greg Kinnear is a motivational speaker who doesn’t actually motivate.

Steve Carell is gay and slits his wrists due to unrequited love.

Paul Dano has stopped speaking, wants to join the Airforce, and hates his family – I’m actually with him on this last one; I hate his family too.

Alan Arkin is the do-as-I-say-and-not-as-I-do junkie Grandpa.

Abigail Breslin is the precocious preteen with body image issues.

Toni Collette is the glue holding it all together.

You might be saying to yourself at this point, “that’s great Lenny, but what sort of hijinks ensue?”

Well, if you cool your jets for just a sec, I was actually getting to that…

Abigail Breslin gets a call telling her that she’s been accepted to compete in a pageant – in the Little Miss Sunshine pageant – to be precise.   The whole family piles into their needs-to-be-push-started VW Bus and heads to Californee (just like the Clampetts), on a cross-state trek to make the registration deadline.

At an early gas stop, Steve Carell, bandaged wrists and all, bumps into the unrequitee of his love (the reason for the wrist slitting), along with the unrequitee’s new boy toy. How convenient.

Grandpa does heroine. Who doesn’t?!

Paul Dano realizes he can never fly jets because it turns out he’s color-blind.  So much for that self-imposed months long vow of silence.  Homeboy straight flips out!  Sixteen or so years and it’s never come up until now?  The grass is green, the sky is blue.  Nothing?  Not once?  Really?!

Did I mention Grandpa dies along the way?

But that was to be expected, he was old, and a heroine addict!

That sucks though, cause with Grandpa dead, they have to cancel their road trip and put the man to rest.

What’s that?  You think they were actually gonna let a pesky little thing like the corpse of a loved one stand in the way of the Little Miss Sunshine pageant?  Nay!  Nay I say!

All they had to do was steal him back from the hospital, fold him in half (before the rigor mortis) and stuff him in the trunk of the bus.  Easy peezy.

It’s a good thing the highway patrolman that pulled them over was so cool about the whole thing. Oh wait, even though the cop actually took Greg Kinnear to the back and made him open the trunk, and began to rummage through its contents, the invisibility cloak (or you know, the like, blanket) that the family draped over Grandpa’s decaying cadaver (out of respect) proved it’s worth as the otherwise suspicious cop just figured that it was the dude porn that was making Greg Kinnear so nervous.

See, I knew there must have been a reason that Steve Carell was gay!  If he hadn’t been, there never would have been dude porn in the bus and the family’s plans would have been thwarted by that nosy cop.  Hooray for Gay!!!  Take that Bible Belt!

And finally we get to our climax.  The talent portion of the pageant, i.e. the big musical number.  With Grandpa still rotting in the trunk, Olive (Abigail Breslin) takes the stage to perform the talent her and Grandpa had been secretly working on.  (Preposition be damned!)

Olive’s talent?  A striptease.  Gosh Grandpa, you’re so incorrigible!

It’s a shame that Grandpa’s dead though, because that man was a visionary.  Start ‘em out young, so that by 14 when they’ve fully developed and blown this Popsicle stand called junior high, they will have already had 5 or 6 years of amateur experience before hitting the pole professionally, using the forged documents showing them to be of legal age, that they bought using money they made selling Grandpa’s leftover heroine stash, only after pinching a little off the top of course, just in case.  Ripple of Evil anyone?

Anyway, 6 years of amateur experience?  A polished performance is what that amounts to.  And if you’re anything like me, you too won’t stand for (get it? you won’t stand cause you’ve got a chubby) an unprofessional stripper.

But I’ve gotten ahead of myself…so Olive is onstage performing her “talent” for the outraged masses in the audience, as gasps and astonished looks fill the crowd.  Or rather, fill most of the crowd.  Because wouldn’t you know it, there stand the Hoovers beaming with pride.  It’s all come together, they’ve learned what it means to be a family (everyone except for Grandpa, natch, since he’s still dead in the trunk).

Being this new unit of one, a family, they refuse to let common sense and decency give sweet little Olive a complex.  So they run up on stage and support their little miss whore by showing the viewing audience that these actors have no dignity.

This movie was one contrivance after another, and it squandered the talents of it’s very capable cast.

I’m surprised that Grandpa didn’t show up alive and well in the end – “Dead?  You thought I was dead you numbskulls?  I was sleeping!  The heroine must slow my heart rate down.”

The only way this movie would have been less plausible is if, not to be upstaged by Olive (Abigail Breslin), Toni Collette began shooting flaming sea turtles out of her cooch.

The one thing I will praise this movie for, is for introducing the viewing masses and quite probably Paul Thomas Anderson, to Paul Dano.  Paul Dano went on to costar in PTA’s There Will Be Blood where we has able to hold his own while going toe-to-toe with the incomparable Daniel Day Lewis.

- Lenny

Cool Hand Luke

PAUL NEWMAN HAS PASSED AWAY.

When I first heard the news, I literally gasped.

It wasn’t an ironic, forced or facetious gasp.  Nor did I merely utter a disinterested “gasp”.

A sincere gasp manifested itself as I stumbled upon the sidebar on IMDB while looking up cast info for Choke.

To say that Paul Newman is a great actor, wow, I guess I mean, to say Paul Newman was a great actor, is to say that Pope Benedict is kinda religious.

I don’t believe anyone, short of possibly Robert Redford could do this man any justice in remembrance, so I won’t even try.  There are many more experienced and talented writers/reviewers afoot that I’m sure would make these words, I type, seem like an insult to the legend.  Roger Ebert springs to mind.  He has a lengthy and undoubtedly in depth and informative article up on his site.  I didn’t dare read it beforehand as I was afraid it would shame me out of writing this piece.  That being said, here’s what I wanted to share:

I had the great fortune of seeing Cool Hand Luke for the first time the way it was meant to be seen, projected on the big screen.  I’m not old enough to have seen it opening night, but I was lucky enough to catch a revival of it at the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood, put on by the American Cinematheque.  I was left in awe.  I wanted to be Cool Hand Luke / Paul Newman.  He said he could eat 50 eggs, but I didn’t believe him.  He proved me wrong though, and I would never doubt him again.

One of the many reasons I like John Cusack as much as I do is that in Serendipity he, or at least his character, claimed Cool Hand Luke as his favorite movie.  And then he went on to extol it’s virtues to an uninitiated Kate Beckinsale.  And while I don’t know it for a fact, I feel like this little bit of character exposition was taken directly from Cusack’s personal life.

But Cool Hand Luke was only one of a myriad of roles in which Paul Newman shined. He was able to out-grandiose Jackie Gleason in The Hustler. This was no small feat my friends.  Jackie Gleason was larger than life and commanded your attention.  Any single episode of The Honeymooners will attest to that.  And yet there was Paul Newman as Fast Eddie, with that mischievous grin of his, daring you not to be captivated.

The Hustler

Here is where I feel Paul Newman‘s true appeal lies (for me anyway)…

The way I see it, Paul Newman was, is (it just feels wrong using the past tense) a cross between Jimmy Stewart the Everyman, and Steve McQueen the Badass.

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He was our very own Jimmy McQueen.  He combined the best of those two paradigm’s.  This makes him a paradox.  A paradox because you can’t be an everyman badass or a badass everyman.  You just can’t.  But he was.  He was the guy you’d want by your side in a fist fight, and he was also the guy you’d first call if your dog had just died.

But here’s the thing…it’s not just the myth or legend of Paul Newman that I’m a fanboy of, it’s the man himself.  I caught the “Redford on Newman” episode of the befittingly-titled Iconoclasts on the Sundance channel.  The amount of time and effort he put into charity work was humbling.

But why did he put his image on all of his Newman’s Own products?  Was it because of an ego the likes of which Oprah has never seen?  Nice try, but sorry, no.  It was because 100% of the profits go to charity.  It’s simple math really, the more Newman’s Own sells, the more money that goes to charity.  (Paul) Newman’s Own image sells ranch dressing and that was all the reason he needed to slap that glorious mug on every bottle/jar/can/jug & canister.

Rest in Peace Paul Newman.  Say “hi” to my Grandparents for me.  I’m sure you can speak Russian, can’t you?

Respectfully,

- Lenny

Hey there my pretty little chillun, and welcome to the second installment of my article. If you did not catch the first post, you can click here to read part one.  I hope that this article will give some people some insight into this genre of rock and moreover what rock is supposed to be and shouldn’t have been.  There will be plenty more preaching coming soon, so stick around…

What GY!BE do is quite deliberate.  This isn’t always the case.  For instance, take Explosions in the Sky. This band does not employ noise quite nearly as much as GY!BE, however there is a crushing monotony, a slow churning cadence to several of their albums.  In the absence of noise, they employ quietness, or something nearing it.  With this band, the voice of the song is expressed through tonecolor and dynamics.

Explosions in the Sky

Every single one of their songs crescendo from a barely audible twangy guitar, a lulling bassline, and a soft kiss on the high hat. They build the songs into auditory explosions, each instrument beaten so hard by its owners it becomes a wall of waves of articulated noise.

You can hear each instrument clearly, but when overlapping each other in a frenzy, it sounds like a tornado from 10 feet away.

To see this band live is heartbreakingly-intense.  It’s like watching four tragic love stories at the same time as they gently caress the strings of their instruments, the drum kit softly kissed by the drummers sticks, then suddenly falling violently upon them.  The destruction of the instruments, the wall of noise couple together to articulate a passion, fervor, and earnestness not seen in rock ‘n’ roll since the first proto punk bands stumbled onto the scene with nary a fucking clue about what to do with the instruments before them.  Yes, it’s very pretty to listen to, but that’s not the point.

The strong point of any Explosions in the Sky song never lies in the lilting guitars or the precise drumming.  It’s in the frenzy and fever of the climax when they can barely hold on to their instruments because their quite literally hitting them so hard.  At those moments do you find yourself lost in the storm.

The Mars Volta has gained the most success commercially out of all of these bands and has had the most deviation from album-to-album.  The two founding members of The Mars Volta were previously in a very competent punk band known as At The Drive-In, who had the potential (not unlike their predecessors The Refused) to single-handedly revive punk rock; as it stands, punks undead corpse continues to be whored out by Hollywood and Madison Ave.  That is a topic for another article however.

The Mars Volta

The Mars Volta’s punk roots are very apparent in each of their records.  They’ve mashed together a number of genres, including Progressive rock, Samba, Latin-Jazz, and metal.  I would argue that The Mars Volta had reached their climax with Frances the Mute, their last truly unique record.  Their last album, Bedlam in Goliath, was an exercise in masturbation, with Amputecture, their third album a harbinger of the dull, self-absorbed, sticky mess that was to come (no pun intended). I won’t discuss these albums in detail since they suck and have nothing to do with my point, directly at least.

So I guess the best place to start is at the beginning.  Following the Tremulant EP which only hinted at the potential of this band in its infancy, the band released De-loused In the Comatorium, very much a textbook example of a progressive rock album.  The primary and only really important difference is their approach to the formula.  The album begins with Inertiatic ESP, an intro to the fury of musicianship that is to unfold for the next hour.  The tracks melt right into each other with no pausing or stopping; this album has a narrative which isn’t surprising considering it had been based on a short story written by the guitarist.
However obtuse and cryptic the lyrics may be, the strength of the narrative, once again, lies in the frenzy and noise this band has managed to marry with competent musicianship. I’m not implying that this band intentionally tries to sound like they suck, but they understand that noise, when executed properly and within context, can be just as potent as any instrument. This is what was at the heart of the aesthetic of rock ‘n’ roll. These musicians just happen to know what they’re doing as well.

The fact that they are so pretentious and self-absorbed and unwilling to produce something that does not comply with their aesthetic is what allows them to reconcile chaos and order in their music.  It is the only thing that keeps them from creating something that may sound similar and just as good, but is in fact only an approximation of what is good and is strange and disjointed merely for the sake of being different and strange and disjointed.

Noise is Rock is Noise

Rock music as we know it is in a strange time.  It’s become a massive dust-bunny picking up the scraps of whatever commodious gimmick has passed through our pop culture collective.You can’t even tell what little insignificant speck of dirt started this whole snowball effect.Rock has become a disturbingly polished caricature of itself.

Indeed, rock is still a lot of dumb noise, but now it’s not saying anything.  It’s only trying to sell us something. If you’re gonna make some fucking noise, do it right.

These bands do it right.  Of course, if you don’t care for noise like I do, then don’t listen to me. I personally have not grown out of the childish lust for disorder and noise aesthetically, though many tend to.Understandably, many do not have patience for this music.  It takes listening, and it’s very very difficult at times.  Listening to these bands is a lot like losing yourself in an introspective nightmare during a bad mushroom trip.  Who needs all those bad vibes?  Well, I don’t, but these bands do such a good job I can’t help it.

When all of rock music has become a caricature of itself, a slick bombastic figure mocking the listener with its put-on charisma and swagger plastered across it like some cheap accessory, it’s pretty refreshing to see something that’s got just as much bombast, if not more and is at least earnest about it because it isn’t too self-aware for its own good.

ONE Sunset is a restaurant & lounge located at 8730 Sunset Blvd West Hollywood, CA 90069. Being that it is on Sunset, street parking is a joke, so expect to pay the $9 valet charge, or walk a mile.

We arrived pretty early, to avoid any potential of not getting in. It was around 10:30 p.m. when we got there, and the place was still in “restaurant” mode at that time (this will be explained later). You walk in and what you see is what you get. It is essentially just one really large room, with tons of tables, and two bar areas.

ONE Sunset - Who am I? What am I?

The bar areas could essentially be just one long bar, as they are on the same wall, but I guess they want the illusion of a different setting. How is this achieved? There is one step up-or-down you take, and about 5 feet of separation between “each” bar.

An hour into the experience, waiters start clearing out some tables, to make way for the pseudo dance floor. Hmm? People are finishing up their meals, while the mood is being set by louder music and even less lighting. More drinking occurs, and people start spontaneously dancing.

A Restaclulounbar?

So I beg the question: what are you, ONE Sunset? Are you a bar? Are you a lounge? Are you a restaurant? Are you a club? Well, in my opinion, ONE Sunset wants to answer “yes” to all of the above. The problem with that, of course, is when you deviate from your main niche, you lose the ability to be great. Maybe this place could be a great restaurant…maybe it could be a great lounge…how would I know though? Trying to do everything usually doesn’t work out, and ONE Sunset does not prove me wrong.

I can’t say the drinks were expensive, considering it is a place in Hollywood, on Sunset – if you expect to not pay $10/drink (or more), then you better pregame it pretty thoroughly. Also, the people were what I expected them to be – Hollywood types. I hate Hollywood, and I hate the people that live there. That being said, I did chat up a couple attractive, and relatively down-to-Earth girls. One was there for her 30th birthday, and she was an absolute doll. The other was pretty cool, until she found out what I do for a living, and then she was “over it,” if you will.

If you feel like dressing up, and having a night out on the town, ONE Sunset can help. Expect to be confused, expect to pay a lot, and expect to find relatively few people of substance. If you are cruising for puss, it is not a bad place to do it…the music does get loud, so you better look good, or prepare to yell a lot.

Appaloosa is a modern-day Western written, directed and starring mister Ed “I will fuck you up” Harris.  The film costars mister Viggo “I will gently kick your ass” Mortensen. The film will be in theaters everywhere on October 3rd, but being that I live in Los Angeles, I am part of the “lucky” few that get to see it early.  Harris plays the bad ass Marshall, and Mortensen is his “not-as-bad-ass” bad ass Deputy.

Look! Two Indians Kissing!

Harris and Mortensen meet up again after kicking your ass in A History of Violence.  There seems to be a pattern with these two actors – Harris is the bad ass with no morals (cock), while Mortensen is the bad ass with morals (pussy).  I got to thinking, and decided I would put together a handy-dandy table to elaborate.

As my extensive research shows, Harris is a born bad ass with no shred of moral fiber, while Mortensen is the bad ass that you would trust to walk the dogs and clean up after them – what a sweetheart!

The film takes place in a small town, where Harris and Mortensen were summoned to clean up the riff-raff.  Chief riff-raff’er is played by Jeremy Irons, who easily gave the best role in the film.  Irons‘ character runs the main gang in the area, so the idea is if the head is cut off, the rest of the body follows.  Harris and Mortensen get close to putting down Irons, but their first couple of tries fail…I wish I could say due to clever and interesting twists in the plot, but I can’t.  They were just obvious plot mechanisms to prolong the story, for a final show-down, which itself was pretty lackluster.

So Pi is 3.14?

Intertwined in the story is the love saga between Harris and Renee Zellweger’s character.  Also some pretty obvious ploys to incorporate her into the bringing down of Irons‘ character.  Mortensen‘s character has a little fuck buddy on the side, but she means as much to the plot as the horses in the above picture.

What I really enjoyed was how quirky the Marshall, Virgil Cole (Harris‘ character) was portrayed.  Even though he was the authority figure, he still had some very human traits; the most repeated was a desire to expand his vocabulary, but having to rely on his deputy, Everett Hitch (Mortensen‘s character), to pronounce difficult words for him.  The rapport between the Marshall and his Deputy was very real, and many of their verbal exchanges will make you smile or chuckle.

Harris and Mortensen give middle-of-the-road performances, but they hit the “bad ass” trait on the nose.  I wish Irons would have gotten more screen time, and we could have really gone without Zellweger’s characater all together.  The film keeps a decent pace, and you never feel bored, especially during the testosterone-filled quick draw sequences.  Some people will like this flick – probably more men than women, but not by a large margin.

This little gem is located at *16153 Victory Blvd Van Nuys, CA 91406.  Springbok is a really chill bar to have a solid evening of drinks and grub.  Personally, I’ve never had the food there, but my friends who have eaten there all say it is delicious.  The theme of the bar is more on the sports bar side of things, coming from South African owners, but it’s far from a straight-up sports bar.

On a typical weekend night, they will have some shitty live band play some shitty cover songs…but after a few drinks in, you are singing along, and don’t even notice the quality (or lack thereof).  As to be expected with a joint in the Valley, the drink prices are reasonable, and they are decently potent.  I think the last time I went, I picked up 4 mixed drinks, and 3 Irish Car Bombs for around 50 bucks.  Not too bad.

The bar is pretty well-lit, so while it has some dive bar features, expect to see everywhere you are going.  Some men (and probably women), employ the “oops, sorry for bumping into  you” tactic to pick up on people, which comes off considerably more obvious without dim lighting.  Springbok also features a nice pool table (free-of-charge), and a juke box.  Both times I’ve been to the bar I have never seen the pool table vacant, but that is not to say you won’t be able to get a game in if you wait.  When the shitty live band isn’t playing, the juke box fills the void, and there’s always good music playing – whether it be older hip hop or alternative, or modern rock.

One of my favorite features it the outdoor smoking patio.  It is the length of the bar, and pretty wide, so there’s always a decent amount of people out there.  If you are like me, and don’t like to be: a.) drowned in music, b.) other people’s conversations, or c.) crowded, then the outdoor patio is for you.  Waitresses are there to serve you drinks, and if you get there before 10:30 p.m., you can order from the kitchen as well.  The staff is pretty young, and always friendly.

The best part of the bar is the crowd.  On any given night, you will find sports guys into rugby, trendsters, Hollywood-types from the Valley, various geeks (i.e.: me), cougars hunting for young cock, frat/sorority types, the down-to-Earth types, and everything in between.  Expect friendly people, good conversations, good times, and some occasional ass to hit on.  If you have never been to Springbok, and you like drinking in a relaxed environment, it is definitely worth your time.

*There is also a Long Beach, CA location.

Welcome kids, to the first installment of a series of blowhard music articles from a man who knows much more than you, but much less than, lets say, Jesus Christ.  The following is in two parts and discusses a totally awesome genre of music oft overlooked.  It’ll blow your freakin’ mind, man.

“Progressive” music has always been something of a black sheep in the rock ‘n’ roll community. It has been a label plastered on most bands with a penchant for long, sweeping tracks and using non-traditional instrumentation (as far as our ubiquitous rock community is concerned).  The truth is this title, this lazy label construed by lazy writers, is meaningless.  The label, like any other is confining, and lends itself to a certain myopia; who in their right mind would lump together Pink Floyd and The Moody Blues in the same category?

The very nature of music demands change, evolution, and in the process many bands are swept away never to be heard again, or sidelined as obscure one-hit wonders (Procol Harum, anyone?), while others sire vastly rich and memorable songs that will in turn inspire a new breed of artist.  What is an artist if they are not evolving, changing, experimenting? “Progressive” is unfair.  At the very least, it is often misapplied if not outright wrong.  Early “Progressive” rock bands, such as The Moody Blues, Pink Floyd, King Crimson, and Yes were certainly at the forefront of experimentation and creativity in rock, but they were no more progressive than most other bands at that time. The song structure of many of the songs in many of their albums maintained a uniquely rock/blues structure, albeit undertaken under different avenues.

Their albums were often created as a single piece of work, the songs flowing into one another to create a larger work; the albums were statements as a whole, and more than the sum of their parts.

However thematic they might have been, and they certainly were that (thank you, Robert Fripp, we’re all holding our breath for when you find that lost chord; fourteenth times a charm!), this was nothing new, much less unique. Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones, The Doors, The Clash, The Red Hot Chili Peppers all have to their credit at least one such album.  To call any of these bands “progressive” would quickly induce conniptions in any and all music nerds within earshot.  It cannot be denied however that these early “progressive” acts have a common thread that binds them. These bands were nothing if not intrepid, self-indulgent, creative groups, often the vehicle for the vision of a single madman (see Roger Waters), and there has certainly been no shortage of these groups in the proceeding years.

Enter the progenitors of our new punk.  It has been said that the great revolutionaries are still yet to come. While we wait patiently for the coming of Christ, a new crop of experimentalists has emerged onto the music scene in recent years.  What will follow will be a brief flight through the soundscapes, the hearts, the imaginations – and utter self-indulgence in some cases – of this new ilk.  We have seen nothing of their like before; this ain’t your daddies rock ‘n’ roll.  This is more.  This is an amalgamation of statements from nameless bards of a nameless all-too-cynical generation.  This is triumphant, evocative, frenetic, sweeping, elegant, and often sad music.  This has no place or time, and it doesn’t even belong to the artists.

This is your rock ‘n’ roll.

Punk Kids And Their Music…

Godspeed You! Black Emperor, The Mars Volta, Explosions In the Sky.  Chances are you’ve heard of one of these.  Each of them has a style and sound indescribable.  You have heard nothing of their like.  They are thick and heady.  They are fibrous and difficult to digest.  These bands are neither for the impatient nor for the faint of heart.  They are uncommonly unique yet bound by discernible traits.  They defy the current tenets of Rock ‘n’ Roll.  Make no mistake; these are rock bands.  They smash the alter of rock leaving no sacrifice and are utterly unapologetic about their self-indulgence.  And most certainly they are self-indulgent if not outright purists and egotists.  Their very music is heresy nailed at the door of modern rock as we know it.  It is what punk might have been had it been approached by more self-aware, pretentious, and articulate men.

What exactly about these bands, what about their music makes them so unique?  This is a fair question and will become all the more poignant as time passes.  These bands have a variety of things in common.  To begin with, all these bands have an unflinching commitment to creativity, even (or especially, in some cases) at the expense of accessibility.

Let’s start off with one of the least accessible and most esoteric groups, Godspeed You! Black Emperor. Their second album “F#A# Infinity,” which includes three tracks spanning 15-30 minutes each, is by no means a singles record with some fluff and filler.  Every note, section, rhythm, and instrument is played and placed deliberately.  These are not mere songs.  No, no no.  This band is unique in its approach to rock ‘n’ roll in that they have created an amalgam of music which reconciles the fiery, untamed, boisterous heart of rock with the contained evocative grace and elegance of an orchestra or symphony.  These are stories, entire pieces, worlds that are created that cannot be described by a few pulsing hooks, tribal drums and snarling voice and swagger that rock seems to exemplify.  The structure of these songs is very much symphonic, employing a variety of instruments, spanning from electric guitars to glockenspiels.  They are concerned with painting a mood, a soundscape, rather than expressing or endorsing some childish sense of fun, recklessness or loathing.  Not that there’s anything wrong with that, of course.

The beauty of this band is their ability to reconcile order with chaos, a concept so profoundly abstract, only the gods could possibly be bored with it.

In their music you will hear bombs falling, glass bottles breaking at a punk concert, people shuffling through crowded terminals at train stations or airports, the sound of a man’s heart breaking all over again at the recollection of a painful memory.  You will hear the monotony and redundancy of modern life.  You will hear your heart beating at an unfamiliar pace.  You won’t be able to hear yourself think.

The climax of the album is actually right in the middle of the album.  Like so many of our lives, the climax is never near or at the end.  It is a peak we see in retrospect as we turn back to gaze at the mountain that was our lives.  It is such with this album.  And this is only their second album.  Their fourth release is perhaps the climax thus far in their careers.  “Lift Yr. Skinny Fists Like Antennas To Heaven” spans four tracks, each ranging from 18-25 minutes.  This is a remarkable album and illustrates perfectly the evolution of the band, and the direction of Instrumental Rock in general.  That being said, this album is a very difficult listen.  The entire album is an amalgam between  beautiful arrangement and orchestration, and ambient noise, or sometimes just noise or sometimes no noise at all.  The first time I heard this record I couldn’t even finish it.  I lost patience with it after the first track.  This can pretty much be said about a lot of Instrumental Rock.  Immediately, a lot of it seems dull, repetitive and boring.  A lot of it wallows, quite literally wallows, in masturbatory repetitive arrangement.  This is what you might notice immediately about “Lift Yr. Skinny Fists Like Antennas To Heaven”.  What you fail to notice is that the ambiance, noise and silence are the vox in the tracks.  The same criticisms were made of several proto punk groups such as The Stooges (who I am reluctant to call punk since they were punk before punk was even invented, before they themselves knew it), MC5, The Jam, etc. The difference between GY!BE and these bands is that GY!BE know what they’re doing with their instruments. They don’t suffer from a typical malady in rock ‘n’ roll in which large ambitious ideas are mutilated by being crushed into and spat out by a small misguided mind.  The tracks are open ended, have no conscious message and are simply a beautifully-precise example of free association.

Ultimately, the strength of this band lies in its ability to meld bombastic, pretentious orchestration with unintelligible noise to create something much more than the sum of its parts.

There are other bands that are less deliberate than GY!BE.  In the second installment of this article, I will discuss them and why they rock as well. Tune in next week kids!

*Note*: As an update to this article, you can read the second part by clicking here.

Continuing the theme, I’d like to think that my vagina makes for interesting conversation. And the fact that my little ol’ hot pocket always seems to find itself in some amazingly awkward situation or another, well, it kinda makes me believe that I’m sitting on a Super Hero with magestic powers. (Or, if you are one of my exes, a Super Villain.) Behold my most recent vagina adventurequest…

What kind of misadventure will my Super Hot Pocket find itself in next? Stay tuned!

So what’s your guess? I doubt you’ll guess it, since you’ve never seen the show. Ready? Groovy.

The best show you never saw is Sports Night, which aired on ABC for two seasons.  After just two short seasons, Sports Night won several awards, including two Emmy’s (believe it or not).  It ended with a bang, and I highly recommend you pick up the DVD set, and watch it the entire way through.  Several times.

Sports Night: The Best Show You Never Saw

Sports Night is an extremely witty show, with great writing, great dialogue, and amazing acting.  There isn’t one actor that wasn’t perfect for the role they portrayed, and rarely will you find a dull moment in an episode.  As the audience, we see the show as it is being produced, and we also find out quite a lot about each character’s off-air personality.  The comedy can be dark, at times, with believable drama sequences that flow in-and-out with the humor.  At times, I really couldn’t tell if these were actors, or actual people working on a show…the chemistry was really that beautiful.  Kind of like when good friends talk, and they finish each others sentences…except unlike you and your friends, these people are funny.

Most certainly a satire of the hit show, Sports Center, on ESPN, Sports Night just never had the right audience on ABC for the show to really take off.

ESPN's Sports Center

In the first season, they tried out a laugh track for the show, which was super fucking lame, as you could imagine.  I guess some douchebag at ABC decided to wise up, and they pulled it from the start of the second season.  The lead anchors were played by Josh Charles (Dan Rydell) & Peter Krause (Casey McCall).  Charles‘ character was the smug, cocky guy that had a good heart deep down, and Krause’s character was more on the serious side, but he could have a good time with the proper motivation.

There was always some underlying sexual tension with their boss, played by the super-sexy Felicity Huffman.  Huffman played the character of Dana Whitaker, the show’s Executive Producer.  The romantic scenes between Krause & Huffman were never over-the-top.  The romance would occasionally get a bit mushy between Associate Producers Natalie Hurley and Jeremy Goodwin (played by cute & bubbly Sabrina Lloyd, and nerdy Joshua Malina, respectively), but you deal with that because of how fucking hilarious Malina’s character is.

In fact, my most vivid memory of the show is Malina’s character shooting milk out of his nose.  It was simply priceless.

I want you to watch this show.  Go watch this show.  Rent it, buy it, whatever.  But do yourself (and me) a favor, and watch it.  Even if you hate sports, you will love Sports Night.