April 2008
April 28, 2008
Here's a new interview with Robert Forster about finishing one of departed band-mate Grant McLennan's last songs "Demon Days." It's a good tune, making an impact with short direct lines and a simple, subtle melody, like so much of McLennan's best work. The Evangelist, the new Forster solo album the song is featured on (released in the states tomorrow), also hits the mark as a sad and funny tribute. It's not where I'd recommend one start when beginning with The Go-Betweens (try Before Hollywood or Tallulah), but like the best of either McLennan or Forster's work, it's an album that sinks in and rewards repeat listens. I need to write more about these guys sometime soon. (I've added "Demon Days" to the top of my muxtape.)
April 16, 2008
Here's a time lapse video of a man trapped in an elevator for 41 hours. As Kottke points out, it's not easy to watch.
April 15, 2008
Pregnant? Brooklyn? New Hampshire?! Brooklyn at heart explains all.
April 12, 2008
This is a link to a video I don't have the heart to embed on my own blog. Intolerance is an ugly thing, and the four "talking heads" featured in this video live in the gutter, live beneath the gutter. Makes me want to puke.
April 12, 2008
Liz Phair wrote about Dean (formerly of Luna) Wareham's memoir "Black Postcards: A Rock & Roll Romance" in last week's nytimes. Sasha Frere-Jones also chimed in. I'll have to put this on my list. And maybe add a Luna song to my muxtape (an online service that just keeps getting better).
(on a different, but not completely unrelated, note: Bob Dylan won a Pulitzer?!)
April 12, 2008
Defective Yeti has a great post on the perverse appeal of Lost (no spoilers):
An episode ends with someone on LOST finding a leather-bound tome entitled "Secrets of the Island." Yes! Finally we'll learn what's going on! But in the next installment, that person opens the book to discover that the whole thing is written in ancient indecipherable pictograms. Dammit! But in the last five minutes, someone notices that the final third of the book is blank, and the ink of the last entry is fresh! "It's a work-in-progress," says Major Character. "Someone is still writing it!!" And in the last five minutes of the next episode it is revealed via flashback that Other Major Character studied Ancient Indecipherable Pictology in college--holy shit!!!! And this goes on for three more episodes, at which point Major Character confronts Other Major Character with the book, and he (O.M.C.) confesses that he is using the book to record the movements of the other castaways, but only because a giant, ambulatory, sentient coconut threatened to kill him if he didn't. And you, the viewer, are, like, "well, I'm glad the mystery of the book is cleared up BUT WHAT'S THIS ABOUT A GIANT AMBULATORY SENTIENT COCONUT??!!!" Lots and lots of clues (and episodes about clues), but you're not one jot closer to understanding the central mystery. And meanwhile the LOST prop department is hastily burying the book in a Superfund site, hoping that no one remembers the title.
April 1, 2008
Not one, not two, but three music videos to dry out a wet tuesday.
The Leningrad Cowboys & Red Army Choir doing their best "Sweet Home Alabama":
(via boing boing)
Tom Waits and his "Chocolate Jesus" (a little late for Easter, I know):
(via Conscientious)
And, finally, one of my favorite bands, Robert Forster and Grant (r.i.p.) McLennan (a.k.a. the Go-Betweens), singing "Clouds," one of my favorite songs: