Written by Elvis Costello, but covered way better by Dave Edmunds in 1979. Those vocals, those harmonies, and that wonderfully sloppy late 1970s production style endemic of Costello and Nick Lowe from the period. A song that proves that even acoustic guitars can rock just as hard as electric ones.
Produced by Dave Edmunds, the Groovies’ best known-song. It sounds like an almost-perfect Stones-Byrds hybrid, which is an awesome concept in any musical idiom.
Andy Griffith … as Satan! One of the most frighteningly intense performances of all-time by one of America’s favorite “nice guys.” As much as I love “The Andy Griffith Show,” this performance makes me wish he had gone an edgier route in his career. He certainly had the chops for it. Seriously, as great as Burt Lancaster was in “Elmer Gantry,” could you imagine Griffith tearing it up? Regardless, this is the performance of a lifetime and of course, was ignored by every major film awards society and group back in the day.
One of the most ferocious performances I have ever seen on film is Bogosian’s turn as talk radio host Barry Champlain in Oliver Stone’s film “Talk Radio.” Like Andy Griffith’s performance in Elia Kazan’s “A Face in the Crowd” and Ryan Gosling’s performance in Henry Bean’s “The Believer,” these are performances so frighteningly intense that they seem to come from another planet. Tellingly, none of these performances were ever nominated for any major awards.
Unfortunately, all I’m able to post here is the original trailer. The stunning monologue / freak-out Bogosian does near the end of the film that I originally posted has since been taken down by YouTube. To be fair to this trailer, this was one of the first uses of George Thoroughgood’s “Bad to the Bone” in a film (after its use in John Carpenter’s “Christine” and a film called “Slayground” from the mid-1980s) before it got overused during the 1990s.
Why Bogosian never became a bigger star is beyond my comprehension. If you ever have the chance to see him live, do yourself a favor and go. I saw him in 2001 in Albany, NY and it was one of the best live performances I’ve ever seen. Also recommended, his performance film “Wake Up and Smell the Coffee.”
Patton Oswalt’s hilarious monologue about a forgotten and since found film “classic.” Lots of bad language on this one, so not safe for work or your kids.
Yes, at its worst, I realize this looks like a Gen-X version of “Thirtysomething” with a few f-bombs thrown in. However, I really think it’s going to be much better than that. Apatow is a great, astute writer and despite his popularity, is unfairly dismissed by many folks as the guy who popularized “d–k jokes with heart.” I’m a huge fan of Apatow’s … loved not only all of his films, but also two of the TV shows he had a hand in (“Freaks and Geeks” and “Undeclared.”) Paul Rudd’s and Leslie Mann’s characters were the best part of Apatow’s “Knocked Up” and I’m very pleased to see Apatow made a follow-up exploring those characters’ lives.
PT Anderson’s (my favorite living filmmaker) new film is coming out this Fall. It looks like another masterpiece. Even though Anderson insists this film is NOT about Scientology and NOT about L. Ron Hubbard, I hope he has a decent legal fund at his disposal.
One of the most transcendent moments of my pop culture youth was hearing this “song” on my local classic rock station during a marathon of the 500 “greatest classic rock songs of all time” back around 1985 or so. It wasn’t an official entry, but the acknowledgment that the area’s most popular classic rock station gave to a “hardcore punk” band was pretty cool at the time … even though said band was making a mockery of several 1960s and 1970s AM radio hits. While I’m a non-ironic fan of 1960s and 1970s era AM pop, I still love this “savaging” tremendously … mainly because I suspect the band secretly loves this stuff because it’s played so well.
A great surf-rock tune that would have been relegated to the dust-heap of pop-culture had it not been used in John Waters’s 1974 film “Female Trouble” during the montage of Divine’s Dawn Davenport’s character marriage to Gator. A tune too bizarre to be bustin’ surfboards to, but damn, I’m glad it exists. Love the piano on this track.
Dave's Strange World 