Cities - Talking Heads

Think of London, a small city

It's dark, dark in the daytime
The people sleep, sleep in the daytime
If they want to, if they want to

I'm checking them out
I'm checking them out
I got it figured out
I got it figured out
There's good points and bad points
Find a city
Find myself a city to live in.

There are a lot of rich people in Birmingham
A lot of ghosts in a lot of houses
Look over there!...A dry ice factory
A good place to get some thinking done

Down El Paso way things get pretty spread out
People got no idea where in the world they are
They go up north and come back south
Still got no idea where in the world they are.
Did I forget to mention, to mention Memphis
Home of Elvis and the ancient Greeks
Do I smell? I smell home cooking
It's only the river, it's only the river.

The World I KnewTodd Leaves New York City

I know this is slightly corny, but I've always had a soft spot for the quasi-Christian rock band Collective Soul.   

Their eponymous second album was released around the same time I moved to New York City, so there's one song from it that always sticks.

Hitting the charts around now, 21 years ago, THE WORLD I KNOW might be the most perfect summation of my emotional state as a prepare to leave Manhattan for Hollywood.  I'm not usually a lyrics person (I hear the music before I listen to the words), but this air-guitar ballad pretty much nails it.

The World I Know

Collective Soul

Has our conscience shown?

Has the sweet breeze blown?

Has all the kindness gone?

Hope still lingers on

I drink myself of newfound pity

Sitting alone in New York City

And I don't know why

Are we listening

Hymns of offering?

Have we eyes to see

That love is gathering?

All the words that I've been reading

Have now started the act of bleeding

Into one, into one

So I walk up on high

And I step to the edge

To see my world below

And I laugh at myself

While the tears roll down

'Cause it's the world I know

Oh it's the world I know

I drink myself of newfound pity

Sitting alone in New York City

And I don't know why, don't know why

So I walk up on high

And I step to the edge

To see my world below

And I laugh at myself

While the tears roll down

'Cause it's the world I know

Oh it's the world I know

So I walk up on high

And I step to the edge

To see my world belo

And I laugh at myself

While the tears roll down

'Cause it's the world I know

Oh it's the world I know

no surprises • radiohead

a new album from THE HORRORS

At long last a new album from one of my favorite modern bands THE HORRORS.

They get more commercial in sound with each release, but they're still dark and spooky.  Dig the first track HOLOGRAM here...

Gotham City of Stars

I've been trying to figure out where I've heard the opening of the La La Land tune City of Stars before.

Not to ruin your Oscar weekend, but...

a bit more of the old IN and OUT

IN                                                         OUT

Grey                                                    Black

Janelle Monae                                               Beyoncé
                        "RESIST"                                  "MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN"

KenKen                                                    Sudoku

Butter                                                    Bacon

Cash                                                  PayPal

$200 Chromebook                              $1000 iPad Pro

FilmStruck                                            SeeSo

Dungeons & Dragons                          Game of Thrones

James Baldwin                                     Ta-Nehisi Coates

MET Opera                                     Terminal 5

Iced Americano                                   Ice Coffee 
Rasputin                                   Hamilton

Chartreuse                                        Bitters

               Snow                                              Snapchat      

what's going on MARVIN GAYE

BEST SONGS OF 2014

Here's my year-end round up of best songs, which you can listen to below on the player, or go directly here to Spotify (and subscribe/follow).

Highlights on this mix include...

Chandelier Sia
Sia went a little Gwen Stefani with her latest release.  Not so much in terms of sound, but definitely in direction.  This hit single has introduced the former Zero 7 lead vocalist to a new audience that probably won't appreciate her more subtle work with that group, nor her first two solo albums.  Chandelier is bold, brash and ultimately catchy in a good way.


The Writings on the Wall OK Go
I think of OK Go as a modern day Oingo Boingo (again, not so much in terms of sound).  They are the right balance of goofy and talented, and every new album brings at least one track like this new one.  It's a solid song with, of course, another brilliant video.


Magic Coldplay
I've tried really hard to hate Coldplay, but I can't.  I think they're really talented.  Basic and arena-friendly, but in a good way.  Their latest album got a lot of criticism for going too far from the band's sound.  Thought it wasn't one of their better efforts, standout songs like Magic or Sky Full of Stars linger.  My only complaint is the omission of their brilliant single Atlas from Hunger Games: Catching Fire recorded between albums.  That's one of the band's best tracks, period.


Say Goodbye Beck
Beck's Morning Phase LP is a mellow gold companion piece to his 2002 Sea Change.  It's infinitely better with repeat listens, as was Sea Change in fact.  Say Goodbye taps the melancholy tone of the full album, but I would honestly place any of the tracks as one of the best of 2014.


Johnny & Mary Bryan Ferry with Todd Terge
What more could you ask for than the Slave To Love rocker covering an Addicted to Love rocker?Robert Palmer's classic tune is reimagined as a creepy, whispered ambient tale by another post-punk rocker, Bryan Ferry.  To be fair, I should mention that Avonmore, Ferry's newest album, is an outstanding through-back to his classic Roxy Music sound.  But this track gets everything right in a very meta way.


Demon Bear in Heaven
Time is Over One Day Old is one of the best albums from 2014 and Bear in Heaven delivered a really solid follow up to their 2012 album I Love You, It's Cool.  Again, the band builds electronic synth and choral loops for the backbone of the song.  Ultimately, the ironic and slightly hostile lyrics can't even break you away from the beat.

My Pre-Halloween Music Mix

I've made a few changes to the mix throughout September, so be sure to subscribe on Spotify to my spooky Halloween Head Start...

HALLOWEEN HEAD STARTa spotify mixCountdown to Halloween

The Best Article Listing 50 Best Anything You'll Read This Week...

Every other article on the web is a top 10 or 20 or 50 or whatever list, so it's no surprise that print newspapers and magazines are hitting the trend hard.

Thanks a lot, Buzzfeed.

That said, this week's cover story in THE VILLAGE VOICE is pretty darn fun.

Check out their picks of the fifty most New York City albums EVER.

And better yet, listen to selections from them on SPOTIFY below...





And,

OCTOBER MUSIC MIX - now available on Spotify

October gets all spooky-kooky with my Spotify music mix below.  

Enjoy with the lights out.

kids just don't understand...

Here's what happened when I shared my 80s vinyl collection with my niece (age 8) and nephew (age 10)...

 

mix tapes reborn

I'm moving for the first time in over 12 years from my humble little apartment in the city, and I can't believe the amount of crap I've accumulated.

I've decided that moving is good if only to motivate you to purge unnecessary items from your apartment.  This is Spring cleaning on a massive level.

I found a draw filled with 80s cassettes, Cassingles and college mix tapes.

It's really hard to part with a mix tape, especially the ones you made.  There's a sentimental connection to the format, or should I say art form.  But there's also a sense of ownership to the creations.

As I was tossing them one by one into the garbage it dawned on me that I could recreate the mix tapes on Spotify.  These tapes were mainly for my listening pleasure, and each one represents a very specific moment in my life.

I'm thrilled though not only to rediscover the tracks for myself, but also allow anyone out there with Spotify to experience them too.

All of the following original packaging images below click through to the Spotify lists...

NEW YORK CITY MIX
I know.  Really original title for this one.  I made the mix when I had first moved to NYC in 1995.  It's the one mix tape I always had with me though and listened to it pretty much nonstop until MP3s...

I'M NOT MONKEY BOY
This has mid-90s all over it.  Collective Soul, The Rembrandts, Paul Westerberg, Bjork?!  Not all the tracks on this (or some of these other tapes) are on Spotify, by the way, but most of them are.  The title for this one came from something I'd mutter under my breath as a miserable Executive Assistant starting out in the Entertainment Industry.

YOU'VE NEVER SEEN ME VERY UPSET
The title comes from Tom Cruise's line in Mission Impossible, which I would quote pretty much daily in my 20s.  There's a ton of techno, trance and dance stuff on this one that didn't survive past 1999.  What ever happened to Deep Forest, by the way?

 

SILENT GLANCES FROM WAITERS

This one is dark, for the most part.  I remember the title came from the fact that I was really bad at realizing I was being hit on when I went out.  I got a lot of silent glances, sometimes from waiters, that didn't add up to anything ever.

MAGWITCH PROVIS BOOGIE
I never read Great Expecations in school.  It probably wouldn't (still to this day) be my favorite book of all time.  It had a profound impact on me reading it in my mid 20s.  The title of this tape comes from a major character in the book (known as both Abel Magwitch and Provis).

VICKI 4.0
My roommate Vicki came out of the closet exactly 5 months before I did. The range of emotions, drunken binges and broken hearts that occurred during the year we figured ourselves out was epic.  Joking about how she constantly was reinventing herself to be newer improved, I would call out each version, and right about Vicki 4.0, this was the soundtrack to our lives.  It's also, pretty much, the soundtrack to any gay bar in New York during the late 1990s.

BEST OF 2012 • MUSIC

Don't deny your heart.

Bask in the glory of my BEST SONGS OF 2012 mix on Spotify...

i have a moustache now and other midweek musings

I have a moustache now.
It's two weeks old.
I look like this...

Yes, I am participating in MOVEMBER, which is a fundraiser that allows me to grow an awesome moustache during the month of November for a great cause - fighting Prostate and Testicular Cancer!

If you think that's awesome, and I know you do, CLICK HERE and donate whatever you can!

You can keep up with my moustache progress on that page too.

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 

Last night I caught Killing Them Softly which is a lovingly boisterous crime caper with a sense of ironic humor.  I enjoyed the director's previous film The Assassination of Jessie James by the Coward Robert Ford and he brings the same off-beat visuals to his new film.  Returning is Brad Pitt, but he's just the anchor for a phenomenal cast that gets to ham it up - Ray Liotta, James Gandolfini, Richard Jenkins and Scott McNairyn (look for Sam Shepard in a brief but memorable roll too).

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

 

There's a new band to celebrate from my favorite Indie label Graveface Records called The Casket Girls.  It's a crossover band featuring members of Black Moth Super Rainbow, Dreamend and The Marshmallow Ghosts.  It's haunting pop rock at its best.  Available as a digital download and CD.

If you're a member of their record club, I don't have to tell you that it's also available on Vinyl, but that's our little secret.

Unless you join their Record Club here and then it's your secret too.

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 

In the too little too late department, I finally saw the Microsoft Windows pop-up store in Times Square this past week.  I literally laughed out loud upon passing it.

Finally Microsoft has sort of attempted a branded retail presence and they've ripped the form from Apple.

• Guys in casual wear with lanyards around their neck - CHECK

• White or transparent, minimalistic furniture to display the goods - CHECK

• Oversized propaganda graphics for walls to loom over customers - CHECK

• Colorful "new" product line - CHECK

Some words of advice to Microsoft.  "We're not for everybody"probably isn't the best first line of your new Windows Phone campaign should you perhaps want to increase your Market Share in the sector.

bewared of the week(midweek musings on stuff)

Amazon.com has a plethora of Horror Blu-rays on sale right now for Halloween.  I picked up the newly remastered version of Tobe Hooper's overlooked THE FUNHOUSE for 30% off, which is as low as I've seen so far.

But the best deal on right now is 70% off the OMEN Collection.  Too bad the first one is really the only classic.  The others are kinda meh to me.

FedEx is having a Small Business contest and you should help out the awesome charity SCARES THAT CARE, which helps provide assistance to children injured from burns.  All you need to do to help is click here.   Please support them today!

I always repeat this blog post about my WORST HALLOWEEN COSTUME EVER, but my mom just finally saw it this year.  At this rate, she'll see today's post in seven years.  #technology

In other Halloween news, there are some great classic movies back on the big screen, and some even nationwide.  Tonight, Fathom brings Rifftrax on Birdemic LIVE.  Not that that's a classic or anything.  SCREAM comes back to select cities next week via TUGG, so check that out here. And the granddaddy of all, the one and original John Carpenter HALLOWEEN comes back courtesy of Screenvision, so book here.



I made a mix on Spotify called OCTOBER 2012 Mix • Scary, Spooky, Dark, Hip that you should check out.  It's not just for October though.  Listen year round for optimum freakiness.

DESTROYER remembered

This is me at the age of 7 with KISS Destroyer.  

Be sure to check out my thoughts on the album (re-released this week) over at Forces of Geek!

RIP Ken Russell

I was midway through High School when my Early Civilization teacher Mr. McCreedy recommended I watch Ken Russell's Rock Opera Tommy.

I'm sure it had to be sparked by the fact that most of my movie-going habits revolved around new Hollywood releases when not rewatching the oeuvre of Spielberg and Lucas.

Or it could have been my much bragged about discovery of my parents' late 60s records, which included The Who, but also obscure psychedelic vinyl dreams like The Electric Prunes.

Years before viewing anything remotely avant-garde, the cinematic suggestion came at the right time in my life. With the exception of a heavily edited-for-television Altered States, it was the first Ken Russell film I'd ever seen and I never forgot the first viewing.

I wish I could brag that I saw the film projected on an Omnimax dome under the influence of a nice closed-door contact high, but I first saw Tommy on a crappy pan-and-scan VHS. I don't even think the sound was stereo. But none of that really mattered. This was not only my first experience with the music from The Who's rock opera, but the eye-popping visuals assault you even with the sound off.

Suddenly Tina Turner wasn't just the leggy comeback queen from Thunderdome or Private Dancer. She was a gypsy - the ACID QUEEN.

Ken Russell commands such a crazy performance from her, it's hard to believe she's only in the movie for one song. It's equally impressive that his assembled dream cast of Jack Nicholson, Ann-Margret, Oliver Reed and Robert Powell are so into being pushed to dramatic extremes.

Suddenly movies had deeper meaning. Thematically it dared me to question religion, society, government, medicine, celebrity culture and commerce. Technically it introduced me to radical montages, gonzo narrative, inventive camerawork and outrageous set pieces. I still marvel, in this age of motion-capture CGI, at the number of optical effects performed in-camera.

Tommy also became the film I subjected a lot of my friends to sit through. In part, this was to show-off the lunacy that it was, but mainly to verify the cool-factor of my teacher.

marshmallow ghosts: THE MOVIE!

I am a HUGE fan of the record label Graveface Records (although I'm still waiting for my free LP from them for collecting enough points [hint, hint]). When I heard their MARSHMALLOW GHOSTS band was currently shooting little movie to go with their October 11th release (which you can order here, btw), I just about dropped my trick-r-treat bag.

Check out their trailer for "CORPSE REVIVER NO. 2" here, which is said to rival THRILLER.

The Marshmallow Ghosts present Corpse Reviver No. 2 Trailer from Graveface Records on Vimeo.