R.E.M. - Crush with Eyeliner

to add to the fifteen-year-olds-searching-for-self-behind-a-locked-bedroom-door: i had bad crush when i was 15. it was dumb. the kind of thing where you just talk on the phone at 10pm after finishing your homework. it didn't go anywhere and i ended up shaving my head.

the R.E.M. album Monster was my album of choice. particularly the songs "Bang and Blame" and "What's the Frequency Kenneth." but this video kind of captures the theme a bit better.



directed by Spike Jones, who must've cheated on Sophia Coppola around the time he filmed this video, inspiring Lost in Translation and the utter ruination of my favorite bedroom music for 21-year-olds.

future noir

coincidentally (see 808 State post), last week i caught Blade Runner: The Final Cut at the American Film Institute out here in the D.C. area. it was my first time seeing Blade Runner on the big screen, and the first time to see the pre-Director's Cut version of the film. the latest version restores the image and sound impressively; the Final Cut was released in 5-disc box set in late 2007.

Vangelis composed much of the soundtrack for Blade Runner, and his tracks for the opening and closing credits are two of the most riveting moments in the film. the well-known Blade Runner "theme" does not appear until the film goes black at the very end. it's a stirring way to close the narrative. but until i saw this screening at AFI, i didn't appreciate the opening sequence, and how the soundtrack works as a soundscape, immediately bringing you into the dystopia.



at -2:30, when i saw it in the theater, i was like, "oh damn."


and just for fun - Blade Runner scenes mixed to Royksopp's downtempo hit "What Else Is There."

jawbreaker "fireman"

one of the perfect bands i wish i liked when i was supposed to like them when i was fifteen sitting in my room alone with the door locked listening to music. instead i was listening to lots and lots of david bowie, but jawbreaker is good retro i-think-this-is-how-i-felt music.

Jawbreaker - Fireman
by moouun

love vigilantes

bernard sumner's faint voice often seems to crack and fade live. some of my favorite new order songs are the substance b-sides, no vocals, heavy dance. "love vigilantes," not a single, has lyrics that border on cliche, but the force of sumner's delivery here conveys, through sheer force of will, that he believes them.

it's easy

For a long time, I was a cynic. I thought life was just a long sequence of letdowns and moments of brief happiness interrupted by long spells of pain and sorrow. I was wrong. I believe.

8080808

In the post Max Headroom, Blade Runner late eighties, computer graphics and virtual reality had momentarily an aesthetic of their own. My friend Phillip had a home theatre and one of those cheesy laserdiscs of computer-generated landscapes set to new age music. We sat around one afternoon and watched this sixty minute demo of Jean-Michel Jarre on LSD.

Ironically, my first exposure to computer animation was "Oliver and Company," the Disney movie, which incorporated digital rendering of some scenes. This movie also marked another turning point: the last Disney film before "The Little Mermaid."

The revolutionary late 80s.

808 State made a hi-tech music video for "Pacific State." Their pure techno acid house sound is one of the few retro genres not to be mined by a new generation of collective memory musicians.

.

bo diddley split screen

don't know when the performance was recorded. late sixties? early seventies? unmistakable guitar, so often imitated!

bo diddley quivers as he strikes the first chord on his guitar, and i shudder as though all his tense energy is more invigorating than the most unrestrained guitar shredders.

fuck it we'll do it live

this is just to awesome not to post. meme levels are high.



"FUCK IT, DO IT LIVE"

music: Lucian Paine.
video: Torrey Meeks.

let me be your mighty wings

i've searched for a long time but haven't found a way to make top gun cool. after all these years, it's still lame. even the mash-ups are disappointing. the other i found was soulja boy meets the top gun theme. this one was almost cool. if the creator of this video had used the cheap trick vocals instead of the trashy house vocals, i think it might have been a winner. the video has a couple good moments, and the irony of gay disco on top of a butt-slapping testosterone military movie isn't entirely wasted.

after watching it several times, the mash-up is starting to grow on me, and perhaps the baby d. vocals were a good choice. euro-house is often derided, but this song could work at a discotheque.

the author recut the opening of the movie to work with the music, and the omission of the human interaction and dialogue suggests that top gun can be interpreted as the story of the airplanes. the actors and story are incidental. the thrust of the narrative is the planes: taking off, landing, exploding, recovering.

consider the movie in the inverse. would it be possible to excise all scenes with planes and watch the movie? the answer is a resounding "no." to watch the heartbreaking love story of tom cruise and kelly mcgillis across the death of anthony edwards and suggestive gay fantasies of val kilmer would be torture without the planes.

This post is probably also a good opportunity to mention Iron Man and the Military Industrial Complex.

tu m'entends gosta-berling?

in a sharp piece of satire i had missed until i saw it on you tube, godard twists a dalida song into a tense farce in "week-end"

i was looking for the anarchist cannibal scene, but no one has posted it

falling through the sky

Stephan Bodzin is a minimal techno artist on his own label Herzblut Recordings. this is the "inofficial video" for his piece with Marc Romboy. it looks like a montage of found vids of thrill-seekers doing their sky dives and base jumps. there's even a car falling thru the sky. it's kind of a relaxing video, actually.



Stephan Bodzin vs. Marc Romboy - "Callisto"

should have been there

Lace played the Electrelane version of this Springsteen song a couple weeks ago on her show when I was up choreographing. Along with The Shop Assistants' Peel Sessions version of "Ace of Spades," the Au Pairs' "Repetition," and Raincoats' "Lola," this song is on the short list of best cover versions by an all girl or anti-gender norm post punk band, admittedly a rather narrow category. Grand prize goes to Huggy Bear for its demo version of "Sun Shiny Day."

This video was recorded at the Parish in Austin in June 2007. I was wondering, "Why wasn't I there?" I was just arriving in Lyon for my long sojourn in France, and I'm starting to realize that those two months last summer were probably the last time I will ever do anything so completely irresponsible and exhilarating.

Romain Gavras/ Justice - "Stress"

i know not much about him, but Romain Gavras is causing a stir with this new Justice video. brown kids will take over france!

Justice - Stress



this 2007 vid is a little lighter... and whiter. the message here is more like, struggling white kids will not be forgotten by france! Gavras's compositions share a context (urban youth?) but he used such different, racialized narratives.

Dj Medhi - Signatune

Outfield, BMORE style

there are about 20 remixes of Outfield's 1986(?) hit Your Love. (which is kind of a sleazy song now that i've listened to it for the first time in forever.) but the ny dj Roctakon did a bmore mix and then some nice person made a "video remix" of Outfield's original video. it's a good show!



(vs. original vid)

Tears For Fears "Head Over Heels"

I wasn't going to subject this blog to this video, but the video is so insanely stupid that it just seems to hit me on the head, with a hammer (and the keyboard on the counter: Jeff Bridges meets "Separate Ways"). The end is terrifically sexist, almost as much as the side by side magnet sets I saw at Book People today.

Magnet set on the right: "Great Authors" (all men)
Magnet set on the left: "Women Authors"

Edwyn Collins "You'll Never Know (My Love)"

This is a song by Edwyn Collins, former singer of Postcard band Orange Juice and performer of nineties hit "Never met a girl like you before," of which Coldplay conspicuously lifted the melody for a song on that blue record of theirs. Coldplay provides some useful contrast with Collins, because one could make a rather facile comparison between the two. They both trade in rather syrupy love paeans to generic women, although I can't say for sure whom Collins is in love with. I'd hesitate to put an Orange Juice song on a mix tape for a girl. "L.O.V.E. Love"? Really? Is that it?

However, with all due respect to Coldplay, Collins' love songs convince me. He doesn't sound like an adolescent when he sings about love, even when he was an adolescent singing about love.

Now I've found out from his myspace page, maintained by his son, that he suffered a cerebral hemorrhage in 2005 and is slowly recovering his faculties, enough to write more love songs. Thus, I share with you this, one of his new songs:



Notice the Rick James photo (?).

Here's Orange Juice on Top of the Pops with a magnificent rendition of one of their best songs, from their second record:

pony up

i heard Vitalic's "poney part one" on east village radio a few days ago. the video by Pleix is like Benny Benassi meets Best In Show.



i'd like to think of this as a commentary/critique of slick, sexed-up electronica. but it's probably not, considering the track is from 2001 and slick, sexed-up electronica has only exponentially proliferated since then. also, Vitalic (Pascal Arbez) released the Poney EP on a label called International Deejay Gigolo Records, and he had a side project called Hustler Pornstar. i advise you not to google search that.

but yes, maybe it's all tongue-in-cheek sarcasm that matches the dismal euphoric sound that typifies his music....