p e n g u i n d e v i l

Yes, it is catch-up time again (super twice catch-up, as I wrote this draft in 2012 and didn’t publish it until 2019)…

In brief…



Desperate Man Blues…
A Documentary about Joe Bussard, a record collector since way back with an enormous and unique collection of old americana records. The film is a fascinating tale of the history of record collecting and the appreciation of the music, starting long before it was considered collectible. He discusses how he started collecting records in the South of the 1950’s, a time in which these were considered pretty worthless by most. He would just stop by people’s houses looking for unwanted records and he could get 400-500 in a day. But, even more so than his stories, some of the high points of this movie are the many times when he plays some of the great things from his collection: Charlie Patton, Dave Macon, Jimmie Rodgers, film of Son House (I’ve never been a big fan of Son House, but watching him play guitar is pretty amazing), Clarence Ashley, and even an original Robert Johnson record!



Bussard is quite charismatic in a way as he is an incredibly enthusiastic fellow whose collection is not only fascinating, what with the old blues, bluegrass and jazz records from the 20’s and 30’s, but is also an important archive of American music, one which he wants to share… Even to the extent that, as a teenager, he started a radio station in his house, until the FCC came and visited him and shut him down.

He also quite opinionated, voicing such sentiments as: “rock is a cancer of music, it killed everything.” and “1933 was the last jazz record. 1955 was the last country record”. Sentiments that may be a bit hard to take at face value but, considering the source, one assumes that there must be some merit to the opinion. All in all, I would say a must see movie for anyone who is serious about classic american music or record collecting. Just a great story.

Un Flic.
Another Melville classic! This 1972 crime caper has everyone’s favorite frenchman, Alain Delon, working on the side of the law (for once…) to track down a notorious bank robber, and nightclub owner, played by Richard Crenna.

It starts right off with a memorable scene of four men in a Plymouth in the lead up to a bank robbery on a rainy waterfront street. Everything is tinged blue and quiet. In fact, I find the whole movie to feel quiet and memorable. Through the movie we quietly follow the thieves as they go about trying to avoid being caught by the flic on their tail. And, no matter how it ends up for them, I find it to be very nice to watch it unfold … Who needs gratuitous gore and scary music when you’ve got class and style?



Predator
We’re all gonna die…

Yes, it’s a classic, but you have to make it through the first ten minutes, where we are treated to a slow moving festival of a group of super dudes going comically out of their way to look as macho as possible (while we also get assaulted with a slew of some of the worst one-liner’s that have ever graced the silver screen) as they are flying into the jungle in a helicopter. Once they get on the ground though, the situation improves dramatically… Okay, the stuff with Carl and Arnold is pretty bad so maybe once they get into the jungle the situation, at least for us lucky movie goers, improves dramatically.

Oh, but the story? Well, for anyone who doesn’t know, a bunch of macho dudes (Arnold, The Body Ventura, Sonny Landham, Bill Duke!) are flown into the jungle on a mission to rescue some diplomats downed behind enemy lines. Of course, as with anything involving the government, that story is just a cover up. They get joined by Carl Weathers and run off into the jungle where they start getting pursued by an invisible super-hunter from outerspace. This hunter, or predator shall I say, makes them look pretty silly as he picks them off with his cool alien technology, including some classic ridiculous scenes such as when Mack just starts shooting into the jungle, then he is joined by everybody else shooting and they shoot hundreds of rounds into the same little area mowing down tress. Yes, it’s a dramatic bit, but it is safe to know that all of these guys know that if there was anything there it would have been taken out early in the fireflow and that most of that time they had just been wasting ammunition for dramatic macho sense.

With his usual smarmy attitude, old style MTV t-shirt and a gun that is like a lawnmower cannon against the jungle, The Body was one of the most entertaining aspects of the movie. However, the most memorable scenes involve Bill Duke and Sonny. Anyway, what the hell can you say? It’s a classic.

So yes, a month and a half of nothing. I know that my readership (by which I mean Myself) finds that very obnoxious. Well, today is the lucky day. I watched two movies tonight and it’s the weekend, so I’ll splurge!

First off was a movie that I’ve been wanting to see for a while and was recently surprised to find available to stream on Netflix: Until the Light Takes Us. I didn’t really know much about it, except for that I thought it was a low-budget doc about the early days of Norwegian Black Metal and, well, that’s just what it is! As someone who is a fan of the Lords of Chaos book, this film was certainly the best document that I’ve seen on those “church burning and death”-filled early days of NBM. The movie is basically just interviews, the majority of which are with Fenriz, though a good deal of Varg is in it too. There is also some lame and weird stuff with Bard. Plus Frost, Hellhammer and those Immortal guys all have some stuff to say.

Frost does some black-metally corpse-painted performance art crap in Italy that was really embarrassing but even worse, while I know that corpse paint out-of-context does seem somewhat silly, I would rather see Abbath and Demonaz in their corpse-paint work-look than see their sunglasses and leather coat wearing, slick-backed hair euro-trash selves (what I like to think of as “the Ulver effect”), which is what we get here. Fenriz of course, looked his cool trve-metal self the whole time.

I’ve always kind of liked Fenriz and it was entertaining to watch his sort of rambling reminiscences and complaints about what happened with Black Metal, it becoming a product and all. Varg (still in prison when this was filmed) comes across as coherent and intent on explaining everything, but he also comes across as an arrogant sociopath. So, while it was worth it to hear his step by step description of his murder of Euronymous, it also makes you doubt his “self-defense” defense.

Most annoyingly is Bard though. I don’t know much about Bard, being primarily familiar with him from reading Lords of Chaos, but here he is presented in shadow with his voice disguised… Maybe he is a mob informer or something… I don’t know, but I couldn’t help but think it was a bit silly, i mean, what? Is Varg going to come calling with his pocket knife again?

Before that though, I watched X-Files: Fight the Future. Over the last 2-3 months I’ve watched the first 5 seasons of X-Files and this movie, coming out after the conclusion of the 5th Season is, in my mind, where the show should have stopped. In case you don’t know, in the 5th season of the show, exactly what the big conspiracy is all about comes to light and we learn a bunch about how it works, then the X-files are shut down. Fight the Future starts out with them being reassigned and working on a domestic terrorism bomb threat. But of course, something is discovered in the aftermath of the bombing that points to a government cover up and off we go! Well, everything about the conspiracy is really brought to light and explained in this one, and even though the ending is set up to lead to a continuance, I really thought that they could easily have just ended the series nicely with this movie.

Well, only two more weeks of this semester and then I will most certainly need to get caught up with this! Of course, the best way to get caught up is to start by not falling further behind, so, with no further adieu, our watching this evening… I started off this afternoon by trying to get into three sci-fi movies Eden Mor (snore), FAQ (I think I only got about a minute into that one) and, yes, Lynch’s Dune. I might have stuck with Dune, but as it seemed about as corny as the last time I tried to watch it back around when it first came out, I was none to upset to shut it off. After that though, I met with greater movie success…

Though I wasn’t sure if I felt up to watching Kurt and Courtney, being more in the mood for the Queen documentary that I came across, I watched it!

Even for those who aren’t particularly interested in the subject (such as myself) Kurt and Courtney is a rather good film. These British filmmakers go to his childhood home, talks to friends and relatives, talk to Kurt’s ex-girlfriend and school teachers and even Courtney Love’s father (who, yes, has conspiracy theory), so it really tries to focus on what kind of guy he was and what his upbringing was. After watching the movie, I don’t want to offer any theories about Kurt’s death either way for fear of Love’s lawyers giving me a call, but let’s just say that the filmmakers don’t shy away from either the conspiracy story or the suicide story, they just let the people explain what they think. Regardless, you do get the sense that knowing Courtney killed him, one way or another… As she does come across as be the lame, shallow and selfish person that everyone (or everyone as far as I can tell) seems to think that she is. It was a bit startling to see so many “northwest” type of people, it really brought me back to the early 90’s…

We then did watch the Queen Doc, Becoming Queen… What it had in common with Kurt and Courtney is that no music from the band appears in the film, no members of the band talk to the filmmakers, and that it focuses on pre-fame days, but that’s about it. In its defense, as befits the title Becoming Queen is a good enough biography of Queen, focusing primarily on the youth of the band member and the originals of the band itself. They do interview a number (a small number) of people who knew them and played with them in the pre-Queen days. But there really isn’t too much to it. More so than the Kurt documentary, this one really did suffer from a lack of Queen’s music being in the film.

We then followed that up with The International. I wasn’t sure about it, but we wanted some kind of suspenseful thing, we were limited to Netflix Wi, it was directed by Tom Tykwer (though I’ve not seen Run, Lola, Run, I am a fan of his Winterschläfer) and it had Clive Owen, so I went for it. And, well, I didn’t have anything against it. A nice big conspiracy with banks and governments, hit men and all of that good stuff It was engrossing enough and entertaining, if nothing particularly special. There was a scene with, yes, a bit too much gunfire (who do they think made it, John Woo?), some small plot failures pop up and it was generally fairly predictable. But it was entertaining enough and had some good characters… And lots of nice scenery as the story popped all around Europe. I could have done without Naomi Watts though as I didn’t really buy her portrayal of her character.

A few weeks back we had a delightful Metal weekend. So delightful that when it was over I decided that this would be the year that I finally attend Wacken! Until I saw that the plane tickets alone would cost over $1000. No Wacken Open Air for me this year.

Anyway, the point is that we finally saw Anvil: The Story Of Anvil! What a great film! I knew that it was billed as a true life Spinal Tap about some Canadian metal band, but that was it. I actually hadn’t ever heard of them when the movie came out (even though it is my favorite era/style of music) and now I really can’t understand why. The band is just great! And even after staying smewhere near the bottom for all of these years, they have continued work their day jobs, release albums and fight the good fight, Anvilling whenever they get the chance. Of course, this is not to say that it doesn’t have its Spinal Tap aspects… A long lasting metal band hoping to get a big increase in popularity sets out on an ill fated tour that just falls apart as it progresses during which the two focal members of the band have a tiff and one walks out. all against a background of lots of interviews.

In 1984 Anvil toured Japan with some big names in Metal/Hardrock and in the movie they make a big deal about this “SuperRock Tour” and how the other bands on the tour all got really big… But on hearing about it, the reason that comes to mind for this is that most of those other bands already sucked pop-rock ass (Bon Jovi, Whitesnake), or learned to suck pop-rock ass to get rich (Scorpions, Metallica)… Anvil has stayed Metal (based on the movie and what music I’ve heard) and, um, Trve. In fact, in the scenes they show from SuperRock, they have a decidedly Venom appearance. You can’t get much more metal than that. But, sadly, I seem to have lost the screen caps that I made… They must be around here somewhere…

The movie was actually inspiring and I ended up getting a bunch of their albums after watching this and was not disappointed. I would most recommend Metal On Metal.

Anyway, I highly, highly recommend seeing Anvil: The Story Of Anvil. Even if you don’t like Metal. Hell, even if you hate it! It’s a great movie, and it’s fun and touching and they are actually a pretty damn good band.



Of course, after that we had to follow it up with yet another viewing of Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey. Anthropologist (and Headbanger) Sam Dunn’s story of personal Metal fandom blended with an overview of Metal culture and some exciting interviews (the Trve Kvlt gods in Norway, Dio in L.A. and at Wacken, and the Tattooed Millionaire himself at Hammersmith Odeon). This movie is always a good time! And it is another great documentary that has appeal even for those who could care less about the music. Keep you eyes peeled for the high points (Gaahl’s dramatic voice of support for Satan, Necrobutcher getting upset at Wacken) and just let the low points pass by (Alice Cooper’s tiring “They all copied me, I did it first” monologues and the irritating inclusion of Slipknot).

I’ve never been an active fan of Joy Division, owning only the Substance compilation, but I am fond of some of their music (especially They Walked in Line from their days as Warsaw… I’m not sure why this never ended up on any “Joy Division” comps) so I’ve never given them much thought. But once we saw that there was a documentary out about them, considering that they were such a seminal band with such a short dramatic history we decided that it was a must see. So we saw Joy Division.

After having seen the movie, I would suggest that it still is a must see for anyone with any interest in this band or in “modern” music in general. It was quite good, and produced somewhat different than I would have expected, it had the air of a high quality public television presentation and it was very dark. Lots of grainy old footage of the band back in the day and the current interviews were lit very darkly. Of course, the subject was dark too… Starting with the youthful despair of England and ending in death… The full 4 years from that Sex Pistols concert in 1976 up until the end in 1980.





Using great old still footage and film of the band performing in the clubs around town and the insightful and enthusiastic interviews with involved folks make it a very interesting story of the band, of the scene (musical and otherwise) around Manchester and the development of Joy Division’s sound and album covers. It is a very psychological story that they tell, starting with how the terrible state of social and civil disrepair in England in the late 70’s led to these disaffected youth and their music, the connection between the reality of Manchester and the music of Joy Division and the effect that Ian Curtis and Joy Division had on those that experienced them. They bring in Tony Wilson (the late owner of Factory Records), the designer who put their album covers together, the Belgian journalist who became Curtis’ special friend, Genesis P-Orridge, Pete Shelley and all sorts of folks who really bring the reality of the scene and the effect and importance of the band to the fore.





Of course, Ian Curtis takes a good deal of the focus here as the singer and lyricist (interestingly, the band members claim to have really not paid any attention to what the lyrics of the songs were) who was bipolar and became epileptic. His youthful marriage, being torn between his wife (represented here only through text from her book) and his girlfriend (who is frequently interviewed in the movie) and just his general lack of well-being. The New Order fellows (the remains of Joy Division) all seem like nice regular blokes and the frankness and honesty of the interviews is very heartfelt and revealing.

But there is also more ephemeral matter here, they show some albums that I would very much like to have fall my way and there is a goodly amount of film of the bands early shows, and, that said, Joy Division was worth watching just to catch a glimpse of Ian Curtis dancing.





For special features, it has extensions of the interviews which, though outtakes, are still interesting and are extensive enough to be could well just be another movie. Joy Division is well produced, quite interesting and is pretty much an essential music documentary.

I’ve never been a fan of live music, which is not to say that I haven’t seen my share of great concerts or got plenty of enjoyment out of Unleashed in the East, but generally it just doesn’t move me. In a similar vein, while I’ve always liked Pink Floyd a good bit, I’ve rarely gone out of my way to listen to them and my familiarity is really limited to the songs of The Dark Side of the Moon to The Wall. What’s become strange is that in the last week or so, my listening interests have really centered on Pink Floyd, including older albums that I hadn’t ever really heard before, especially Meddle and Obscured by Clouds, both of which are really great albums. I must say, I am really enjoying it this new focus. I have probably listened to more Floyd in the last week than in anytime since those nights in the late 1980’s when I would drink a bottle of Night Train and listen to The Wall every night, but that is a different story. What started me off on this kick was seeing the cover of this live Floyd piece.

And so the other, related, odd thing is that I have become fixated on live albums! Starting with listening to some songs from the above Pink Floyd 1972 show in Böblingen, German (which is really great spanning 50 minutes and three songs, I’d like to get the full concert!), I verged into the endless well of greatness that is live Sabbath! I’ve owned a live Sabbath disc for a good while (called “war pigs”) which is alright, but now I’ve heard the Dio-era Live at Hammersmith Odeon, which is great and I’ve begin enjoying other shows from the from the Ozzy Era, more greatness. Though I listened to some AC/DC live stuff, it wasn’t that good as it seems to tend to be poorly recorded (I’m of course not talking about If You Want Blood), but aside from that, this stuff that I’d never really thought much about before is really working for me right now. I even got a live Rainbow Album from 1979, Perfect Roger’s Birthday Party. And it’s pretty damned good too! Where does one stop?

Sure, I love Gary Numan as much as the next guy. Probably more. And I listen to him quite a bit, as I have since, yes, Cars came out. Back in the early 80’s I was all about Replicas (sorry, it’s Gary Numan. I don’t need any of that Tubeway Army talk), the Self-titled Tubeway Army record (I have that tagged as Gary Numan too, maybe I should change that one), The Pleasure Principle, Telekon (possibly the best album ever recorded… By anyone) and I, Assassin. I’m still pretty friendly with most of those, especially Replicas and Telekon, but I hadn’t listened to I, Assassin in many, many, many years. Today though, I gave it a whirl and quite enjoyed it. Sure, it’s no Telekon, But damn. It is still pretty darned good. I especially like “Music For Chameleons” and “We take Mystery To Bed”, but it’s an all-around strong album.

The point being that though I’ve had plenty of Numan to listen to and now I’ve got even more to put on my rotation (luckily I just bought a new iPod, the 16gb Nano), and that seems to be the case for everything. While I certainly don’t have one of the larger mp3 collections (at only 36.5 days), when I stare at all the CD’s and LP’s around here that I have yet to mp3, I start wondering what it is that I am going to do with all of this music? According to last.fm I’ve listened to 984 artists in the last year or so… What happened to those teenage days when I had 15 tapes and didn’t really think that there was much more than that out there? Sigh.

What brings this up is the proliferation of music blogs! My god, there are hundreds and hundreds filled with great, non-mainstream or OP or just plain old and forgotten bands. Sure, they are potential hotbeds of “copyright infringement” , but they are wonderful resources for finding out what is out there! I keep a few dozen of them bookmarked (yes, primarily metal) and I feel the urge/need to browse tham, and find more like them! The main places I keep an eye on are Old Skull Death/Thrash/Black Metal, Dunkelheit, Darkanuss, Axes of Heavy Metal and Cosmic Hearse… The point being, sometimes ones horizons can be expanded too far! Where does it end?!

Now if only someone would upload the Social Climbers LP, so I don’t have to dig out the LP and go through the hassle…

Aww yes. Part two of the Lovecraft Film Festival! Though I enjoyed myself alright on Friday night, I conducted this evening in a more organized fashion.

First thing, I saw the ‘Thickets table in the Bazaar area and bought the “Thing on the Stage” tour shirt that I’d been wanting, which was nice to get out of the way. Then I stepped into a theater to watch a new documentary, Lovecraft: Fear of the Unknown. Pretty much a straight ahead biography of HPL, it was quite good. There was nice archival footage, some nice scenes of Providence (I’ve always been hankering to see Providence) and a lot of great interviews: Primarily Neil Gaiman, Guillermo Del Toro and John Carpenter, but also S T Joshi, Ramsey Campbell, Peter Straub and our own Andrew Migliore! It was quite good and something that I’ll need to be getting when it makes its DVD appearance.

After that it was down to the main theater to see Mike Mignola and Brian Lumley receive their Howie awards and then watch a block of shorts. As one might imagine, some of the shorts were rather unnotable (one seemed to just be a preview), but there were some winners! The highlights were: Eel Girl, the story of a scientist who is rather strangely attracted to his research subject. It’s an uckky “toothy-Siren in the lab” story from New Zealand that has scary teeth and a tub filled unwholesome-looking goo. There was the great AM 1200, which seemed to be a totally professionally done film, though only 40 minutes long. Nice script, cinematography, acting, CG, story-line… Everything. It was a really great short film about a “thing” that lives in a secluded radio station and uses broadcasting to attract people for its own nefarious purposes. It was really great and creepy, with a lot of it taking place out-of-doors in the dark. The third high point, though I don’t generally like comics or animated things, was the wonderful and terribly funny The Amazing Screw-on Head. Based on a Mignola comic, it’s the heroic tale of a, well, screw-on head (who is an agent of Abraham Lincoln) as he goes up against Emperor Zombie (with his two horrible old women and the monkey) and the evil demigod, it was quite great! Seemingly done as a potential TV series that never really took off.

Then to the highpoint of the evening…

Off to Tony Starlight’s to see The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets! How this is my first time seeing them live, I just don’t know. But it was great! The place was packed, the band was in great form (sounding not much different than their recorded material) and they played some great favorites (Shoggoth’s Away, Slave Ship, Ogdru Jahad, the Innsmouth Look), plus some fun songs that I hadn’t heard before.

Though they were cramped ont a tiny stage, they really put on a good show with great energy, humor and just a heck of a lot of fun! And, of course, some great eldritch rock ‘n’ roll. Toren told me that they would be playing in Vancouver BC in December, so I’m going to ponder pretending that I could actually get up there for that show…

In an odd moment I broke out Blind Eye Sees All, which I had been planning on watching for months but somehow hadn’t gotten around to. I owned this on vhs back in the day and this was the first time I’d seen it otherwise (and the first time in probably 15 years since I’ve seen it at all)… Quality-wise it may as well been on vhs still, as it remains red-washed, amateur concert footage, though at least it won’t get worse. Anyway, What am I talking about?

This is the classic Butthole Surfers concert video, comprised primarily of footage from two 1985 Detroit concerts (they actually change between shows back and forth during each song, which is a bit odd and would be unnoticeable if it weren’t for the clothes changing). It is around their classic era for touring, though it predates by a few years my ever had seeing them and does not include either of the famed sights of the nude and painted dancer or the backdrop films. But, it does have: Paul Leary as the core of the band, Gibby (obnoxious as always), and Teresa and King Coffey the dynamic drumming duo, who are about the most entertaining aspect of the film to watch; I find their side-by-side, stand-up, unison drumming to be somewhat entrancing, and of course it provides the backbone and gives a great deal of power and draw to the music. But then, this stuff is filled with power and draw.

The dozen or so snippets from their “bedroom interview” are about as obnoxious and “pretentiously drugged up” as you might expect from them, though it can be somewhat entertaining and I liked some of the dialogue with the interviewer. But in the moments when you get the feeling that someone is trying to think of something nutty to say you start to feel like maybe they could have avoided putting any of this interview in here. But at least you get a sense of what it might be like to hang around with them, for what that’s worth.

The meat of this though is the live footage. The energy and controlled chaos and the brilliant songs, but also the terrible mess and obnoxious subculture artiness brings to mind the terrible false dichotomy of “how have I listened to these guys for so long?” and “how could I not listen to these guys constantly!”. But alas that is where we live when presented with music that is this brilliant.

All sorts of classics are here, especially seeming as this was right about when I started listening to them: The Shah Sleeps in Lee Harveys Grave, BBQ Pope, Cherub, Lady Sniff, Mexican Caravan… Winners all around. Though it does end on a lower note with a dull musical bit that goes on well too long. It is highly worth absorbing the antics, sounds and attitude of these guys. They created many unique musical tangents and this stuff never gets old.

The special features are rather light and they include a concert video from 1991 of Mexican Caravan that I had high hopes for, but it not only sounds terrible, it looks even worse than the main feature. If only they would have included the fabulous Homestyle BBQ video instead (featuring a blistering rendition of Fast), with the wondrous stage show that I am familiar with, as it dates from 1988 which was the year that I first saw them (I actually turned 21 at that concert, the best birthday ever… Until my 40th!)

Oh, where to begin? I found this disc cheap and used (score!) a while back and never got around to touching it until recently. What a blast from the past. In the early 90’s, Amphetamine Reptile was the greatest record label of them all, a half dozen or so of their bands were the meat of my musical meals (Cows, Melvins, God Bullies, Cosmic Psychos, Helmet… And more!). So coming across this DVD, Dope Guns and Fucking up your Video Deck, was a glorious holy grail of time travel back to the youthful days of my mid 20’s!

Totaling 45 videos, divided up in to 4 sections; Vol 1 (1990), Vol 2 (1992), Vol 3 (1994) and Bonus Vids (1994-1997), with terribly annoying interludes between each video (featuring someone who I assume is Tom Hazelmeyer pretending to be a CEO whose corporation just bought AMREP and this is all a promotional tape). Anyway, all of that junk is “must-ff-part” material. But the videos are great! Sure there are some minor dissapointments… Terrible production qualities (they get better as the time goes by), not all the AMREP bands were great… But the high points are must haves!

Where else are you going to find Lubricated Goat’s “In the Raw” (literally…) video, A King Snake Roost video and, yes, you heard me, a glorious four(!) Cows videos…

Cows “Hitting the Wall”

three Cosmic Psychos videos (though none of them are particularly good), two Melvins videos (including the awesome Honey Bucket, filmed in a barn filled with sheep)…

Melvins “Honey Bucket”

and, two actual God Bullies videos(!), which just serve to remind me how badly I need to convert those LP’s to MP3’s!

God Bullies “Cemetery”

Anyway, if you’re in the know, then you know you’ve got to pick this up. If you’re not in the know, then you’ll probably not want to.