Peter Hoflich

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLXFa_rW3NI&feature=share – Possibly the true originator of the surf movie, Bruce Brown in this film showed what a DIY filmmaker out to create his own genre could do. While the narration is hokey, the shots are achingly, stunningly beautiful. They chronicle a world long, long gone, making this a matter of historical record and immensely valuable, even if it’s full of their nutty viewpoints.

The film starts off slow, showing plenty of background on what the beach scene was like in those days. “Only a handful of surfers ride these big waves. Half of them are sportsmen, the rest are nuts.” Two of our surfers go off for a trip around the world, and they start off in Africa. Despite being good boys, they let their views be known on their visit to Senegal, when they note that “being good Africans, they threw rocks” in greeting.” Dubious. Still, it’s interesting to see how our little California boys get around. They engage a village chief, who is not a natural surfer, but somehow someone gets it going. They note the primitive village, the expensive hotel, the difficulty of getting a surfboard into an African taxi, and the jungle. “Most of these people had never seen a white man before.” They go to Ghana, the go to Agip gas station and get ripped off (a gip), “people came to the beach with their lunch and the kids and still had two hands free.” RIOT!!!

They note that the temperature of the water in Nigeria was the same as the air – 91 degrees fahrenheit (32 degrees celsius – they make the same point in Endless Summer 2 when they are in Costa Rico); no way to cool off even in the water if it’s that hot. There’s also plenty of death in the seas – “step on a stone fish, you die in 15 minutes.” And there’s all the corny jokes – like the “Terrence of Africa”, with Lawrence Of Arabia imagery and music. Ha ha. The boys surf down a few sand dunes, which looked like a lot of fun, before finding a new surf spot of their own in the middle of Africa. They went to New Zealand in 1965, when there were 2 million people in the whole country… and 10 million sheep. Bruce shows some amazing waves can let a surfer just go on forever, apparently, Bruce just included a short part of rides that went on and on for 15 minutes!! And in Tahiti they could take waves out as well as back in again. “There are no waves in Tahiti.” Bonus features: Interviews with Bruce Brown and the guys who were in Endless Summer. Talking about how the film made surfing legitimate for 40 minutes, self-congratulatory but with some new good music, as well as many repeated scenes.

Yes, that’s right – the music is just great, and so is the cover graphic of three people posing with their boards! Everything about this film is wonderful, except maybe the languid pace, and some of the corny jokes. But you really get a sense of innocence from surfers who never smoke or drank, and who had short hair and no tattoos, just the months of golden sunshine permanently tattooed onto the bodies. Nice.

A four-disc Bruce Brown collection exists that contains only one of the films he made after Endless Summer (it’s called Endless Summer 2, where Bruce re-visits the beaches he went to in Endless Summer) as well as six short films made before Endless Summer.

Endless Summer 2 – Nice follow-up to Endless Summer, starts off with surfing wipe-outs, surfing dogs, a Texas wave machine, two Alaska surfers, surfing with grizzlies, and all sorts of other nutty surf-related stuff, along with the usual droll commentary. Catching up with Robert August from the first film, then heading down to a desolate beach in Costa Rica, a nice Costa Rican party, and then a wicket seaplane crash landing! Surfin’ five-year-olds, and all sorts of other nuttiness. Nice musical variety this time around with guitar, sax-y jazz, and other stuff. Return to the beaches of Africa – in the first film there had been an empty beach, now they have 1,000 luxury condos, and altered surf conditions (so long pristine surf spot). We meet Walter the surfing Zulu who can’t swim. They throw in some comic relief with a contrived lion safari story of a stalled car. Nice. There’s a day of incredible rides in Fiji, and some cool Tangerine Dream-ish underwater zones. “In Australia you go to the pub. You just do. There’s one pub for every two Australians.” There’s a river rafting tour, and then some commentary about Indonesia. “Bali is the most densely populated place on earth. Java ditto. Java has more poisonous places than anywhere else.” Uh, well… not true.

It’s good to get back to Bruce Brown’s world, especially for a non-surfer like me. I love opportunities like this that really let you live someone else’s life.

Slippery When Wet – A slow-moving early Bruce Brown documentary that includes 15 minutes of set-up to what surfing is. “In the beginning…” Some nice comic relief from Mooks. going to Hawaii with fantasies in mind. Crab grabs a cigarette but. Some tandem surfing, and a nice wipe-out collection.

Surf Crazy – Huntington Beach has a surf club of its own, its founder is a guy called Lightning!! Highway 101. Sand dune surfing. Great cars. Pretty girl skirts. Breaks lots of surfboards for nutty prank stunts. Lightning shows up many many times. Stupid balsa wood plane with bottle rocket interlude. Modern guitar rock has been added to the end, not sure why.

Rod Stewart, Reason To Believe – the Complete Mercury Studio Recordings – Containing the first five solo albums of Rod Stewart’s career (The Rod Stewart Album and Gasoline Alley on disc one, Every Picture Tells A Story and Never A Dull Moment on disc two, and Smiler and some odds and sods ons disc three), the first song is a near-unrecognisable version of the Rolling Stones’ “Street Fighting Man” (ironic, since his Faces bandmate Ron Wood, who played with him on many solo recordings as well since they came out in succession of Faces stuff, ended up with the Stones after his gig with the Faces was up; he plays bass and guitar on the first Rod Steward album, and is present in some form for the rest of them). Somehow Stewart turns this Stones track into something quite R&B… before kicking out the jams and rockin’ to something more faithful… before getting into the weird piano bit from “We Love You”, one of the Stones’ strangest songs. It’s a weird number all right. This is followed by great blues numbers – “Man of Constant Sorrow” (Rod plays guitar) and “Blind Prayer”. “Handbags and Gladrags” is a great mellow piano ballad, the classic Seventies drums kick in, and it’s a pop song! “An Old Raincoat Won’t Ever Let You Down” starts off with a wicked piece of bass noodling, before kicking into a great rockin’ blues song, one of Stewart’s top standards. “I Wouldn’t Change A Thing” reminds of Emerson, Lake and Palmer with the big old keyboard stuff… and, yep, that’s him playing it too!! It’s quite a dubious track… “Cindy’s Lament” starts off with some keyboard stuff, before rocking out with some pretty violent, heavy rock hooks. It also has quite… eccentric… production, with the song fading out, then fading back in again, before fading out for good. Why don’t they make music like this any more? His version of “Dirty Old Town” is interesting, especially given that I’m more used to Shane McGowan’s version and not Rod’s polished acoustic guitar and keyboard version that is a bit new age. The folk shoutings of “Gasoline Alley” are good fun, topped off with moodiness and gentle love. “It’s All Over Now” is the second Stones cover (actually a Bobby Womack track), and it’s full of some great honkey tonk. Rod pulls off a slower, grungier, drudgier, bluesier, more honkey-tonkin’ version that sounds just great! A cover of Bob Dylan’s “Only A Hobo” has a lot of Celtic feel to it, nice. Stewart takes a stab at “My Way Of Giving”, the great Small Faces song that provided the blueprint for Robert Plant’s great white blues shouting; Rod’s not up for the task of trying to match Steve Marriott’s original vocals, though, and he shows some restraint. “Country Comfort”, an Elton John song from his Tumbleweed Connection album (an album lacking in very big hits), is a bit forgettable as a selection; a very long “Cut Across Shorty” is splendid, especially with the great guitar buzz at the end. “Lady Day” and “Jo’s Ballad” are weird little folk songs that are kind of pretty. “You’re My Girl (I Don’t Want To Discuss It)” is a superb rocker that also appears on the fantastic Faces box set in a live version, that is just a joy to have (Rod’s solo version is much faster and less tired-sounding). It’s full of hot guitar, enough to cover the semi-irritating key riff. The last song on the first disc is the single version of the Bobby Womack song “It’s All Over Now”, which is half the length of the album version and fades in. This was issued as a single in September 1970.

The title track to Every Picture Tells A Story is, of course, a legend, and makes a great opening song for that album, and for disc two. Great rawckin’ blues with a tinge of acoustic guitar, and that magnificently sleazy voice. “Seems Like A Long Time” is a great song with great lyrics, if a bit sing-along, some nice blues lead guitar. The following songs are even folksier, with “That’s All Right/Amazing Grace” a very cool version of the Elvis classic that is tacked onto… a church standard. Seems like a very stoned combination. “Tomorrow Is A Long Time” starts another acoustic set that includes “Maggie Mae”, with its wondrous medieval guitar intro (not always heard on the radio), all amazing songs. “Mandolin Wind” is a very cool electric folk song full of wonderful pluckings. “I Know I’m Losing You” rocks hard with great bluesy guitar, heavy bass, and that voice!! “(Find A) Reason To Believe” is cool with its keyboard and fiddle, while “True Blue” is a fairly standard rocker. “Lost Paraguayos” zooms with acoustic rock, while “Mama You Been On My Mind” is a bit boring with its keyboard. “Italian Girls” is a wild rocker with some cool honkey tonk guitar that leads to a cool cover of Jimi Hendrix’s “Angel” that sounds quite okay. “Interludings” is the name (did you know it had one?) of the instrumental bit that leads up to Rod’s best song, “You Wear It Well.” The mightiness of “You Wear It Well” doesn’t need to be explained here, although it does take up a large chunk of Amy Linden’s liner notes. “I’d Rather Go Blind” is a slow, limp version of the great song, while “Twisting The Night Away” has a good rock feel to it. “What’s Made Milwaukee Famous (Has Made A Loser Out Of Me)” is the B-side of the “Angel” single and a pretty damn cool country song.

Disc three starts with a horrible orchestral and choral version of “Pinball Wizard”. this appeared in 1973 as a new release on the Sing It Again Rod greatest hits collection (check out the horribly tasteless Rod-in-a-whiskey-glass album cover below); thankfully this is the only such song on this collection. Appalling. “Oh! No Not My Baby” is a Carol King song that comes off as a bit dull, with strings and conventional sounds overall, although it’s basically the Faces playing. It was issued as a single in 1973; the B-side, “Jodie” is a true Faces composition by Stewart, Wood and keyboardist Ian McLagan, which also appears in the Faces box set. “Sweet Little Rock ‘n’ Roller” gets us back on the right track again, thankfully, but not for long. “Lochinvar” is a silly little medieval madrigal or something that leads into “Farewell”, a soppy guitar ballad that sounds quite nice. “Sailor” is a pretty good rocker that uses plenty of saxophone. Great rockin’! Weird keyboard and icky strings on “Bring It On Home To Me/You Send Me”. “Let Me Be Your Car” is a song that works well, it’s a rockin’ Elton John composition with Elton himself on the piano and singing. There’s a pretty standard cover of “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman”, except it’s awkwardly re-titled/re-sung as “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Man”. Imagine Rod singing “you make me feel like a natural… ma-aan” and you get the picture. Silly. “Dixie Toot” is a cool funky honky tonk rockin’ piece. “It’s been so long since I had a good time”, lovely. “Hard Road” is a decent rocker, while “I’ve Grown Accustomed To Her Face” is a sweet acoustic guitar instrumental piece that Stewart had nothing to do with. “Girl From The North Country” is a nice Bob Dylan tune. Nothing special, really, but nice burbling keyboards at least. “Mine For Me” is a crooning Paul and Linda McCartney number that’s not very interesting, although there’s a pretty good, moody guitar solo on it.

The collection also pulls out five songs from the Handbags And Gladrags collection that had been previously unreleased in the US. “Missed You” is a cool little ballad-like song, “You Put Something Better Inside Me” is a great little song that

shouldn’t

be great – it’s pretty schmaltzy – but it really heats up with hot, wonderful female backing vocals; it has everything, even whistling (it also has a kind of sexy title, if you think about it that way, heh heh)! “Crying Laughing Loving Lying” is a folky number with wonderful guitar, while the old standard “Every Time We Say Goodbye” comes off truly schmaltzy (yuck), although it gets a bit better towards the end when the band starts to swing and the guitar kicks in. “So Tired”, the last track on the collection, is kind of tired-sounding at that…

The booklet is not bad, containing eight photos of the young Rod Stewart’s costumes and hairless chest, song listings and full credits, as well as a short 4-page essay that is mainly concerned with what a great song “You Wear It Well” is, the standard praise, those ho-hum biographical details about his past playing with Long John Baldry in Steampacket in 1965 when they supported the Rolling Stones, and all the things that took off from there. Weird how “Maggie May” was the B-side to a lesser-known song. Hmmmm….

Rod appears as a backing vocalist at 1:30.

Rod’s first band, Shotgun Express, with songs full of sixties production excess!

Stewart recording with Jeff Beck… all this happened before the songs on this collection, but I thought it would be fun to place Rod in context a bit…

The new Iron Man movie came out, and I saw it with my family. It was pretty good! Both Zen and I agreed that it is the best of the three movies so far, warts and all, although I’ve not yet found many people who agree with me. The film is based in part upon a six-issue storyline called “Extremis” that is not at all as good as the movie, although the art by Adi Granov is pretty good.

Iron Man 3 – Friday afternoon a very skinny Iron Man dropped in by the office, recruiting people to watch his film, due to be released that day. Actually… it was a gimmick from my company, we’d booked a theatre to watch the film, and the appearance of a scrawny little Iron Man, alongside some beefy Iron-ettes, was just what we needed! I finished work at 5:45, had my dinner by 6:15, got to the mall where the theatre was at 6:45, waited amongst the crowd for the velvet rope to be raised at 7:05 (nothing like claustrophobia to start your movie experience), the film started at 7:15. Awesome!!

The film was great, probably my favorite Iron Man film so far. There’s very little armour in the film, and when it’s there it’s sort of an afterthought, or parodied and made fun of, or belittled (now there are many suits… but only one Robert Downey Jr). Well! Clearly some decisions were made in production, some negotiations, some deals were met.

Nonetheless, the result is generally satisfactory. The story is generally very good, the villain is also quite all right, and there’s a pretty good plot twist that messes with things. The dialogue doesn’t sizzle like earlier movies (except in parts – the scenes with the interaction between Tony and “the kid” are pretty good, and my son Zen and I had a big laugh at t his many times). I also noticed that the music tie-in songs were really awful this time around – no Black Sabbath (Part 1), not AC/DC (Part 2)… what’s going on? For a big budget production, surely they could have brought in some decent tunes. Did all the music budget get shifted over to Robert Downey Jr?

But these are minor quibbles. There’s plenty that’s right about this movie:

- Robert Downey Jr is just plain funny!!
- Guy Pierce is also very good in this flick.
- the Iron Man world of this film veers quite sharply from the comic book world; this is a good thing
- they introduce the world of AIM, Advanced Idea Mechanics, an evil force, but they forego the usual buckethead clones; great!
- Ben Kingsley as “The Mandarin” is utterly awesome!!!!!

Of course, not everything is great:

- having a white guy play “the Mandarin”
- (barely) introducing the army of super-powered maniacs, one of whom might be Pepper Potts
- ending the series unannounced (the Batman end-of-series was long-projected, this one wasn’t)
- the end-of-credits segment was not worth waiting around for (maybe they’re trying to discourage us from doing this, given the expectation of having this sort of thing come up).

Overall the film is very good. Watch it!!

Iron Man “Extremis”, by Warren Ellis and Adi Granov – This is the tale that inspired the movie, at least the science serum element, which tends to get a bit too silly in the philosophical debate department (takes itself way too seriously). A group of domestic terrorist anti-establishment types, one a survivor of an FBI shoot-out, dose one of their members with the extremis serum, which they got from a disgruntled researcher with compromised principles. Adiran Killian is one of them, but he blows his brains out in despair in the early pages (yes, it’s quite different from the movie, where someone called “Adrian Killian” is a psychopathic maniac-for-hire who also runs a bucket-headed organisation called AIM).

The book gets into Tony Stark’s private life, and we are quite privileged to observe him waking up in the morning (alone), taking a shower, and getting on with his day. There’s a lot of philosophising about using military money to develop technologies that do good, there’s the re-telling of the Iron Man creation, and there’s a lot of people with closed mouths and word balloons indicating that they’re talking (I always hated that). There’s also a scene of a board meeting where they try to convince Tony to step down as CEO and focus on research (borrrrr-ring). One amazing slaughter of a one-man extremis army destroying an FBI centre and burning hundreds of workers alive. Gross. Iron Man takes on the extremis dude, is nearly killed, then doses himself with extremis himself, becomes indestructible, and flattens him before he can take down the White House, before figuring out who the true culprits are. Nice.

Of course Iron Man doesn’t call in the army, SHIELD, the Avengers, or even Stark International to help him out when he’s mortally wounded… he goes to someone he met (and slept with) once a decade before. Nice.

It’s weird to see how much comics have changed – we get to see Iron Man totally murder his adversary – ouch!! Comics weren’t this violent when I was growing up, but I guess we live in a desensitized age. The book comes with tons of bonus material at the end – a series of covers Granov made for other Iron Man issues, sketches, and the script for the fifth installment in the series (not sure why this would be interesting to anybody, but there it is; I didn’t read through it myself).

The Best of Simon and Kirby – Since I love all things Jack Kirby, I had to check this out, as it is all early Jack Kirby art, and hardly any of it is guys-in-tights superhero stuff, rather samples of his 1940s work with Joe Simon on superhero titles (Captain America fights the “Red Skull”, then there’s The Vision, the Sandman, the Stuntman, Fighting American, the Fly, Blue Bolt), science fiction stuff, war stuff, romance titles (!!?!?!?!?!?!), crime, westerns, horror and “sick humour”, for publishers as diverse as Archie Publications, Centaur Publications, Charlton Comics, DC Comics, Fawcett Publications, Fox Features Syndicate, Funnies Incorporated, Harvey Publications, Hillman Periodicals, JC Penny Company, Mainline, Marvel Comics, National Periodical Publications, Prize Comics, Timely Comics, Pulp Magazine, US Coast Guard Academy, Your Guide Publications. Nice!

The book starts off with long essays by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby’s biographer Mark Evanier, laying out the zeitgeist of what these guys had to do to build the comic industry in the 1940s when there was a war on. The sole recognisable character, and maybe the only Marvel comic in the whole collection, is the first one, and it shows Captain America fighting a “Red Skull”, who turns out to be… a guy in a Red Skull disguise. It’s a pretty silly story, with some so-so action and bizarre motivations (why does a traitor need to wear a costume to kill people – so that the last thing that they see before they die is a red mask? The production is a bit sketchy, especially the lettering, which never really matches up (in some cases they use multiple fonts/embellishments. Comics have come a long way since. However, The Vision story is pretty cool as there’s a lot of mystery as to who The Vision really is, which combines well with a tale of a powerful werewolf under the spell of a beautiful she-werewolf the victim found while on a mission in Tibet. Sandman fights a rampaging “Thor”, and Kirby uses some really strange layouts (they look great, though – just hold the page from you at a distance to take it all in! The Stuntman story is silly, with our hero confronted by the famous Hollywood actor/part-time detective (??) Don Daring (!!) who is his lookalike (!!!!), and they go on a murder case together. Except that they’re both too stupid to solve the mystery (which doesn’t make sense anyway). Oh well. The Fighting American adventure with Doubleheader is probably one of the better stories, as its full of really snappy dialogue. Also some very creative layouts.

In the science fiction chapters, Ken Kurage’s adventures with the evil tree people of Uranus (enter also a beautiful Amazon from Mars). The lettering in this one is particularly funky. Blue Bolt’s adventure with the evil Green Queen is kind of cool. In another tale astronauts capture the Soviet Sputnik satellite, then find a strange organic object inside a space coffin. Not really sure what that one was about.

In the war stories, there’s an incomprehensible Boy Commandos story about midget millionaires who were exempted from service forming their own militia and taking on Agent Axis… couldn’t make sense of it. “His Highness The Duke Of Broadway” is a very good story about a nuclear bomb in Manhattan. Another story called Booby Trap, set during Korean War fighting, has a lot of realism. It’s scary how the troop of 12 is set upon by enemy soldiers and whittled from 12 down to three.

The romance tales (a genre which apparently Simon and Kirby invented and were very successful with). “Weddin’ At Red Rock” has a pretty interesting twist ending – a beautiful girl tricks the outlaw who has claimed her into marrying her ?!??). “The Savage In Me” is about a missionary girl who falls in love with a rough American adventurer in China (shades of The Sand Pebbles and Romancing The Stone) that includes some pretty questionable roughing-up. In some way, these stories were the most interesting in the collection as I’ve defnitely never in my life read romance comics.

The crime stories were interesting too – one is about a marijuana addict who tortures and kills women when he can’t get his reefer that is supposedly based on a true story (lack of reefer makes people violent? can it be? maybe a sorta “non-reefer madness” or something…). Lots of interesting sexy violence here. Great layouts – one page combines two round panels with four square panels, a real work of art. There are also two stories that depict the lives of Ma Barker and her family of criminals, and Al “Scarface” Capone. These are also dripping with violence, especially the various summary executions that both carried out eye-to-eye.

That’s followed by tales from the west, including one about gun-runners trying to arm the natives against the white man that involves crazy stunts, as well as a cool Bullseye tale of “Major Calamity”, the sole survivor of two Indian raids who is needed to save a town from marauders. Great conflict there!

The horror comics are really cool too, including covers for “The Strange World of YOUR DREAMS (We will buy your dreams)” and tales like “the Scorn of the Faceless People.” Here comic book psychologists interpret the dream of a guilty salesman who bit off more than he could chew in the rural countryside. Here we see for the first time the kind of nutty Jack Kirby dungeon sequences that he’s so well known for. Great composition and creative use of panelling – one page has panels in the top left and bottom right corners, with the middle a big splash drawing (this story contains both horror and romance). This is reinforced with one of the “Your Dreams” stories, depicting a woman’s torment as she dreams of being locked in a tower. The commentary tries to make this nightmare a positive thing, but… nice try.

The final chapter of “Sick Humor” tries to show the funny side of Joe and Jack in titles like Sick and The Psycho News Form Here To Insanity, but… it really didn’t seem funny at all.

Here are some cool visuals from the selection.

One of Singapore’s well-known art-rock indie bands of instrumental post-rock, they play music in the manner of Isis (sans vocals) or Pelican, or any of those other electric instrumental post-rockers. They play a lot of gigs around Singapore, but I somehow manage to always either miss them for legitimate reasons, or blow them off out of laziness. This is bad, I know. But when I went to a record fair I did buy their two main releases! I understand that the guys in the band are art directors at agencies around town, and it shows in their packaging. The music is pretty cool too – I didn’t like it at first, but it has really grown on me.

I Am David Sparkle, This Is The New – Seven slabs of instrumental post-rock madness from 2007, these songs are bright, dark and jangly. The best song on the album is “There Is No Time For Love, Only Chaos” (deep!), which has some good metallic moments interspersed with cool Sonic Youth jangling riffs. “Dance Of Death” shows the band trying to do something innovative by bringing in some sort of drum machine sounds, but it’s just a bit too irritating and in-your-face. The untitled bonus track (“Bonus Track”) does this electronic drum thing a bit better, with cool bass sounds, sparkly keyboard, and all sorts of other madness. Very nice.

The packaging is totally insane, there’s no plastic, it’s entirely made out of complexly-folded heavy stock paper – a sewn booklet that seals the CD inside a paper fold. You actually have to slice the heavy paper to get your music, man! The artwork is simply intense arrangement of black lines, in the foldout covers you can read the words “I see shadow movement stalled”. There are other obscured words in the rest of the packaging, but I can’t really make it out.

I Am David Sparkle, Swords – Swords was released in 2010 and is very similar to the appropriately-titled This Is The New. “Wild Horses” sets things off with some weird guitar effects, some spare drums, layers of guitar sounds, and then driving riff after riff after riff after riff. The whole album is like that, with moments of punchy surf guitar breaking through the dense mix of post-rock. I’m really not sure what “Ghostfuck” is all about, but it sure is pretty noisy. “A Bad Corpse (Your Majesty)” uses some very cool guitar moods to scale the noise down somewhat. “Heights” has some pleasant melodies, it’s good fun. “Jangan” is very chilled out, but builds up very nicely to a pretty brisk rocker. “The New 21″ has cool bass sounds and great riffs. “Sixtysix Calibre” goes nutso with heavy riffs, and also some great slowdown moments. “Everybody Loves Somebody” sounds like a lovely little lullaby, very sweet and pleasant. This may be the best song on the two albums, with its rolling riffs and great emotional maturity. It’s also the longest song they do. “Sleep”, the final track, starts off as a pleasant intertwining of two guitars.

Overall, Swords is a lot more mature than This Is The New, has no fails, and is just generally better-produced and has more drive and variety. I also love the packaging – a simple paper Pac-man shell that spits out a CD. Elegant and unique. I also like how the word “swords” is written in curly medieval calligraphy and then sliced apart.

The White Stripes, Under Great White Northern Lights, CD and DVD – This CD/DVD package to celebrate a documentary of The White Stripes’ tour of every province and territory in Canada (amazing idea – this band latches onto something quirky and then sees it through, very classy!!) comes with a booklet that contains a nice essay by Jim Jarmusch, mostly hyping the film we are about to watch by describing scenes from it and explaining the emotions he gets from certain scenes (Jack and Meg’s wordless love as they acknowledge the tenth anniversary of their first show, etc), much as I will be doing in this review right here, ha ha ha. Comments on consistency and spontaneity, style, and the strange beatnik humor that they have. “[Jack] becomes pure BOY to Meg’s archetypal GIRL.”

There’s a CD and a DVD in this set, what to review first? Okay, let’s do this alphabetically:

the CD – The set starts off with the sound of bagpipes, then kicking into the huge blast of noise that is “Let’s Shake Hands”. Bursting! (Sadly, there’s no listing of where these songs were recorded, other than that they were selected from the 2007 tour of Canada – “A shows” and “B shows” are listed in the booklet). “Little Ghost” is a great little folk strummer on speed. “Blue Orchid blasts us apart with its raw power, and “The Union Forever” is pure MC5 drama and storytelling. “Ball And Biscuit” has Led Zeppelin-y crowd interaction scenes that are pretty cool. “I’m Slowly Turning Into You” is some damn cool grooviness, with its weird keyboard nuttiness going on and on as Jack freaks out on his whacked-out voice, babbling away and away and away. Wow! The collection contains the band’s stunning rendition of “Jolene”, after which Jack says “My name is Jack White and this is my big sister Meg White on the drums.” Sister… yeah right!!! “We Are Going To Be Friends” is a nice little mellow song, chugging along at Jack’s typical amped-up pace. “I Just Don’t Know What To Do With Myself” is good fun, and the crowd sings along nicely. “Prickly Thorn, But Sweetly Worn” is a jangly mandolin track that also sounds a bit Zeppelin-esque, but has a cool singalong chorus that the crowd obliges Jack on (“that’s our cousin on the bagpipes”… our cousin?!?!?!). “Fell In Love With A Girl” is good, bluesy rockin’ fun, as is a very long “Seven Nation Army”, which has a increasing crowd singalong on the riff.

the DVD – I’d become more interested in Jack White after seeing him in Let’s Get Loud (reviewed here) and observing amazed how he outclassed both The Edge (not hard to do) and Jimmy Page (Jimmy Page, man!!!). I was happy then to watch this personal documentary of the band playing both big venues as well as surprise venues (bowling alleys, a boat in Charlottetown, a flour mill in London, pool halls, etc), and even going so far as to announce a one-note show where they rolled in, blast one single chord, and left (to encore calls for “one more note” – Canadians may be boring, but they are known for their sense of humour).

This is probably the world’s first black and white AND red film, it is very Emily Strange throughout. For the footage done in the north, it is still daylight at 11:15 PM. Jack agonises over the criticism of the band’s image-consciousness, noting how Spin wrote “The White Stripes are simultaneously the most fake band in the world and the most real band in the world. Everything about the White Stripes is a lie.” (Jack should probably be reassured that Jim Jarmusch finds them the real deal at least). When they are in Yellowknife the mayer picks them up from the airport and drives them in to town! Interesting to know that Meg and Jack bowl all over the world, and that Meg never talks and hardly sings. Meg does lead vocals on one song. Another song is synchronized with a 1930s film. They go to Iqaluit in Nanavut territory, many things are red and white, mud town, Rita guitar. They sing songs for the Inuit council, which Jarmusch notes is when they seem at their happiest and most engaged. Jack uses guitars that don’t stay in tune, no set list, keyboard far away, these components force them to create. Plays in a kilt at one point.

There’s a touching scene of Meg weeping as Jack plays a guitar at the end. Very nice video.

Played an awesome live show with my band MegalomaniA on Thursday night. Platinum Music World Disco Bar is awesome – best lasers in Singapore!!

Here are some amazing pictures and a wicked video.

Video
Video of MegalomaniA rockin’ Platinum Music World Disco Bar, Soft Collective live show, April 25th 2013.
* Into The Void – 2:40
* NIB – 8:40
* War Pigs – 14:40
* Paranoid – 22:06
* Children Of The Grave – 25:10
* Iron Man – 30:00

Hey, here’s another new Black Sabbath song – The End Of The Beginning, from their show in Aukland!!!

Sonic Youth, Sonic Youth reissue – Starting off with that weird drum beat, the shivering guitars, and the galloping/limping rhythms, this is Sonic Youth as it was first ever hears on the SST original release. Yes, the drums are a bit jazzy, but it’s all there in all its sqruonking glory. The first track is “The Burning Spear”, a song that the band still plays, and the bass is heavy and groovy with a nice rhythm. We don’t get any real noise until halfway through the 3:45 song, a bit before the vocals come in. “I’m not afraid to say I’m scared.” “I Dreamed I Dream” has nice tonal tones, a cool little moody thing, Kim sings this spookily with Lee doing some background vocals. “She Is Not Alone” is one of those really cool, rugged songs with the jungle rhythms and the strange guitars. Very cool indeed. “I Don’t Want To Push It” scrubs and scrubs, with weird jungle rhythms, boogying busily on and on, much faster than the guitars; sounds pretty crazy, man, and a bit alarming for people who thought that the strange was normal – this is stranger than strange! “I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I… know.” Great crazy guitar noise and spidery innovation, with that crazy drumming the while while. YOIKS!!! “The Good And The Bad” ends the EP with some bass-led rhythms, discordant chords coming in, drone, that weird nearly-complete Sonic Youth sound is right there! THe longest song on the album, at over seven minutes, this is the one where they really stretch out and get going. Nice. Half of it is wanking around, and it is all instrumental.

But wait, there’s more! This is the expanded version, with eight new tracks, all of them live bits from September 18th 1981 that show the tracks coming together (the album was recorded December 1981 to January 1982). “Hard Work” is “I Don’t Want To Push It” in instrumental, and “Where The Red Fern Grows” is an early version of “I Dreamed I Dream”, which we get herein both a live version and an early studio version… “Loud And Soft” is a nutty long noise fest, as are the rest – very little singing, quite a lot of instrumental stuff on the live tracks. All of the live songs are interesting, and they have that experimental chugging sound. Nice.

The liner notes are great – we get pieces from all the members, as well as Glenn Branca; I’d say that the note from original drummer Richard Edson are definitely the most interesting, though, and Bryan Coley also has a long piece. Thurston just puts in something enigmatic (in blue ink!). Lots of pics of the band in 1981, looking very optimistic and youthful. Nice.

D.E.A.D., These Cursed Graves – A four-song EP from Singapore’s classic Rob Zombie-inspired horror band, D.E.A.D. These guys are still doing small projects, but I understand that they’re inactive as they’ve re-located to New Zealand (?!?!). Opening track “Madhouse” starts off with sound effects, then those huge riffs that blast and blast with amazing energy and dedication. Love it! Great solo, great riffs, great production, fine screaming over the lyrics that finish off the first song. Wow! “Boneyard Blues” is… more blues. It rocks a la Aerosmith, with huge sounds that groove and groove and groove! The title track is a spooky piece of hard rock, with a great riff, and squealing guitars, a bit of an Iron Maiden feel, sinister sound samples, it’s an instrumental that just rolls on and on and on… for over five minutes. Dominated by that Iron Maiden arpeggio riff, it does feel like it’s lacking… something. Vocals, maybe!? The final song, “A Grave Situation”, moves on and on like a big bad Mindfunk song that rocks and rocks, with sloppy band backing vocals and some very cool guitar noise at the end. Very nice indeed.

The Golden Age of the Living Dead – Happily, although “These Cursed Graves” is not easy to get any more, you can still get “Golden Age of the Living Dead” online for free from this link here. “Scream Scream Scream” is pure horror bliss, with pounding drums starting it off, a great riff, and then some cool giant vibes, wicked singing and a killer chorus. This song deserves to be on someone’s soundtrack!! Colossal stuff. Nearly five minutes of pure madness! “Frankenstein’s Bride” uses the “It’s alive” quote to blast off into the atmosphere with some really good hard rock! These guys pummel like no other!! This song has those Nine Inch Nails vocals before yelling out in real Mindfunk glory!! It’s a bit industrial, but mostly it’s pure rock!! “The Hungry Dead” is a bit more hardcore, quite a faster pace, but still with a blistering solo – wow!! “The Graveyard Of My Mind” has perhaps the coolest intro of them all, a big bad sound-off of grind and pulse of throbbing beat going on and on… very nice. This one has it all. Title track “The Golden Age of the Living Dead” starts off with a cool sample, then goes into a great rock tune with distorted lyrics. Nice!