Hello everyone! Dave’s Strange World will return in full effect for 2013. In the meantime, check out this recent beyond awesome cover of David Bowie’s “Space Oddity.” Hope everyone is having a great holiday!!
This is a raucous holiday favorite by an early Bob Seger. It’s a little derivative of Mitch Ryder and James Brown, but still a lot of fun.
I’m signing off for the holidays. But check back every once in a while … You never know when Dave may get strange during the next week and a half. Please take care and have a terrific and safe holiday and New Year!
Hands down, the funniest evisceration of holiday sanctimony … EVER!! If you’re a fan of “Christmas Shoes,” please don’t watch this. Please know that my intent is not to demean anyone who loves this song. After all, I’m a huge fan of “Love Actually,” which many people despise for the same reasons I despise this song. Whether we want to admit it or not, we all have our form of holiday sanctimony that we love. But seriously folks, “Christmas Shoes” is really f–king awful and Oswalt gives it the treatment it deserves. Not safe for work or little ones.
The Replacements’ loving tribute to power pop pioneer Alex Chilton. Chilton had many hits as a teenager as a member of the Box Tops and was later a pivotal member of Big Star, one of the best bands of the early 1970s.
Many alt-rock legends loved Chilton. My favorite story involves the Butthole Surfers. From Michael Azerrad’s wonderful history of American 1980s alt-rock, “Our Band Could Be Your Life,” Azerrad related that one night, Surfers lead singer Gibby Haynes was having one of his usual, violent, acid-drenched freakouts backstage at a gig in Holland. Allegedly, Haynes was completely naked and having multiple altercations with the security of the gig, to the point where 10 people had to hold him down. As Haynes was freaking out back stage, a man asked if he could borrow a guitar. Haynes lit into him, yelling “BORROW A GUITAR??!! WELL, WHO THE F–K ARE YOU??!!” itching for an fight. The man calmly said “I’m Alex Chilton.” Haynes immediately calmed down, opened all the guitar cases one by one, and said “Take anything you want.” That, my friends, is what we call the power of ethos.
I’ve always been a bit sheepish about admitting my love for this knuckle-dragging anthem of the early 1970s. Mostly because I’ve never been much of a fan of lead singer Sammy Hagar. However, I have to say Hagar delivers the goods here. Along with Nazareth’s “Hair of the Dog” and Foghat’s “Slow Ride,” this is my favorite bass-heavy, multi-layered guitar, nasal-draining hard rock song of the bell-bottom and ludes decade. I’m sure this is on some gentleman’s club all-time Top 10 and if it’s not, it damn well should be. No less a man of taste than post-punk legend Julian Cope raved about Montrose’s first album in his recent book “Copendium,” so at least I have good company.
This may be a bit shopworn, but I still think this is pretty funny/awesome. The Dan Band covers Bonnie Tyler/Jim Steinman’s overblown Wagnerian ballad from the early 1980s, only with lots of f-bombs thrown in as punctuation. This first became famous through its appearance in the Todd Phillips’ comedy “Old School.”
Many people remember Julian Cope for his mid-1980s solo hit “World Shut Your Mouth” or his stint as lead singer for the post-punk band The Teardrop Explodes. In recent years, however, Cope has built a formidable reputation as a writer on all matter of subjects, most notably music and antiquities. His overview of Krautrock (1960s-1970s German psychedelic rock) from 1995, “Krautrocksampler” is considered a classic, even though he refuses to have it republished because of factual errors he’s since discovered and because he claims there are others more knowledgeable than he is. His antiquities books “The Modern Antiquarian” and “The Megalithic European” have also proven to be very popular.
Cope’s latest book “Copendium” is a massive collection of essays (over 700 pages) culled from Cope’s website that chronicles terrific, but ignored or forgotten music albums, spanning several different genres. Among the artists that Cope exhaustively writes about: Von LMO, The Electric Eels, Montrose, Pentagram … even a Van Halen bootleg gets a detailed essay. If you love discovering new music and enjoy great writing, “Copendium” is damn near perfect.
This came out a couple of years ago, but I still haven’t completely absorbed all 463 pages of it yet. This, my friends, is the definitive and most exhaustive look at punk rock on film ever created. Carlson and Connolly reportedly spent 10 years putting this massive tome together. The concept? Watching and reviewing every film between 1975 and 2000 that not only had punk rock as its subject matter, but also every single film where someone who looked even remotely punk appeared. Blessed with the ability to rent videos for free from Seattle’s Scarecrow Video (the best video store in the world!) over the course of this project, Carlson and Connolly watched … and watched … and watched … literally thousands of films … all for the sake of proper documentation of this important subculture on celluloid. Even the publisher (Seattle’s esteemed Fantagraphics) reportedly thought they were nuts, but fortunately had the gumption and foresight to see this project through. Even if you don’t like punk rock, this punkopedia is ridiculously entertaining from start to finish. However, it doesn’t look like it’s currently in print, based on the high cost of copies on Amazon. Fantagraphics: please republish this or at least, put out a Kindle version for those who love to browse this tome, but don’t have the luggage to carry this coffee table size book with them while they’re out and about.
Be sure to hear the entertaining interviews with Carlson and Connolly that appeared on the terrific “The Gentleman’s Guide to Midnite Cinema” Podcast for more details:
http://ggtmc.libsyn.com/bonus_12_interview_with_zack_carlson
http://ggtmc.libsyn.com/bonus-29-interview-with-brian-connolly
One of the most riveting films ever made is the 1969 French-Greco political thriller “Z.” While it won best Foreign Film at the 1969 Oscars, it was also nominated for Best Picture that year, which it lost to “Midnight Cowboy.” While I love “Midnight Cowboy,” “Z” is arguably the better film. It’s intelligent, fast-paced, action-packed, and was a sizable hit back in the day (grossing the equivalent of $84 million in 2012 dollars), which is amazing for a foreign language film. A big part of the film’s success is the awesome score by Mikis Theodorakis, which rivals the best scores by Ennio Morricone.
Some excerpts of the amazing score are below:
You can hear the influence on Giorgio Moroder’s classic score for “Midnight Express:
A positively brilliant use of one of the Who’s best songs in the splendidly droll Wes Anderson comedy “Rushmore.”
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