From Reed’s highly underrated album “The Bells” from 1979, comes this lovely homage to the Crystals and the Ronnettes, with a rollicking Phil Spector-ish saxophone and swinging beat carrying it along. Reed was really onto something with his late 1970s Arista-label recordings in binaural sound. They are truly a wonder to listen to even to this day.
The cultural success of 1984’s “This is Spinal Tap” unleashed not only several films, but an entire genre we now know, sometimes love, and sometimes loathe, called “mockumentary.” Some of the mockumentaries that have followed in “This is Spinal Tap”‘s wake have been good, some bad. “Fear of a Black Hat” is on the good end of things. Granted, it’s not a perfect movie and it’s very uneven, but it’s also quite funny, intelligent, and charming. And if you watch it more than once, it will definitely grow on you like many good comedies inevitably do. I remember reading about this in “Film Threat” magazine back in 1993 and when it hit one of my local theaters in the spring of 1994, I was intrigued enough to check it out. I think it was a test release, since it didn’t get national distribution until later that summer. I remember being one of two paying customers in the theater (and the showtime was a discounted matinee) and I remember liking it a lot. I saw it many months later when it came out on video and liked it even more. The attached trailer seems a little corny by today’s standards, but don’t let that dissuade you from checking it out. It’s a solid mockumentary. And trivia note: the beautiful female interviewer is Kasi Lemmons, director of the brilliant “Eve’s Bayou,” “The Caveman’s Valentine,” and “Talk to Me”. (Sorry, I have a bit of a crush on Ms. Lemmons)
Cundieff popped up later on Michael Moore’s 1990s show “TV Nation” and has been involved with many great comedy TV shows, from”Chappelle’s Show” to “The Wanda Sykes Show.” Cundieff’s a very funny man. Let’s hope he gives us another feature soon.
I love loud, sharp percussion and heavy guitars. Wait until the full crush of guitars kicks in about 1:05 into the song It reminds me of the way the wall of guitars kicks in on Ian Hunter’s “Once Bitten, Twice Shy.” This song has the same beat as my daughter’s favorite schoolyard singalong “Lemonade, Crunchy Ice” and rocks just as hard. I have no idea what the video has to do with the song, since the song never mentions customized Volkswagens.
Probably the funniest thing I’ve seen on SNL in years. Really dumb people who think they’re smart is always one of my favorite comedic genres. However, Cecily Strong positively nails it, from the deliberate, thick-tongued way of speaking to the distracted mannerisms to the strongly held convictions about concepts she has no clue about. Positively brilliant.
OK, I realize I may be raked over the coals for this by the true believers of the church of Iggy, but I think this is a really good cover of Iggy Pop’s “Success” done with a swinging Gary Glitter-esque beat. From the Durannie’s hit or miss covers album “Thank You” from the 1990s.
For a brief period during the early – mid 2000s, lo-fi garage punk seemed like the “the next big thing.” While the genre had been around for years, the White Stripes brought it to the mainstream and achieved huge commercial success, surprisingly with little-to-no commercial polish present. Seriously, those White Stripes recordings from that period sound like they came directly from the Crypt Records catalog. The Hives (from Sweden) were another band from that period everyone expected to be big and while they achieved some recognition, it wasn’t on the level of the Stripes. Still, their music was truly wonderfully grungy stuff. 10 years later, this still packs a punch. And it’s nice to see they’re carrying on the fine Swedish pop band tradition by wearing matching suits.
Easily the coolest song I’ve heard in the past month, this cover of an old 1930s tune (famously covered by Louis Armstrong, Louis Prima, and Cab Calloway) filtered through some wonderfully minimalistic punk blues.
One of my favorite songs from “American Idiot.” I love the way this starts out as straight-ahead punk, then slows down to harmony-laden Beach Boys inspired pop. The opening lyrics are terrific: “St. Jimmy’s comin’ down across the alleyway … Upon the
boulevard like a zip gun on parade … Light of a silhouette … He’s insubordinate …
Comin’ at you on the count of 1,2-(1,2,3,4!)” and then a hardcore breakdown that will nail your d–k to a tree.
While Paul Bartel’s “Eating Raoul” was distributed by the “classics” division of a major studio (in this case, 20th Century Fox) back in 1982, it’s still one of the best “indie” films of that decade (when “indie” actually meant something). It’s also one of the funniest. The premise is genius. A financially struggling couple, Paul and Mary Bland (played by Bartel and Andy Warhol/Roger Corman regular Mary Woronov), can’t seem to break out of their dead-end jobs to achieve their dream of opening a restaurant. Since their apartment building is overrun with rich perverts and swingers, they come up with the genius notion of luring these lovely folks to their apartment with an ad in a swingers newspaper, killing them, and then stealing their money. Trouble ensues when they bring in locksmith/burglar Raoul as a business partner who helps them dispose of the bodies. Despite “Raoul”‘s grim, blacker-than-black subject matter, the movie is actually very sweet (though it feels odd to say that, given the perverse subject matter). A great example of how you can handle otherwise offensive subject matter in a funny, relatively non-offensive way. However, it still more than earns its R-rating, so probably not the best film to show your parents or people you don’t know that well. The Criterion Collection just released a lovely Blu-Ray version of “Raoul” with all the extras you would expect from them. Dave says check it out.
Here is the earliest known recorded version of Tim Buckley’s enduring and classic ballad. It’s quite different than the version that was eventually recorded for Buckley’s 1970’s “Starsailor” album. The version here (performed for “The Monkees” TV show in 1968) is more of a straight-ahead ballad, instead of the bizarre and heartbreaking version that appears on “Starsailor” that sounds like it was recorded by someone really ready to cast themselves on the rocks in despair. A great and underrated song that keeps gaining more resonance as the years continue. In just the last few years, Robert Plant, Bryan Ferry, and Sinead O’Connor have all done covers. The most famous cover, by This Mortal Coil, has already been posted on Dave’s Strange World.
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