Peter Hoflich

Had a great weekend. On Saturday Zen went out for a trial for the Maris Stella Secondary School softball team in Kallang. There were four other boys, and he did well overall – it was interesting for him to see how other kids train, and to go through exercises with kids who were not the Coconuts. Hopefully he will be selected, we find out in August (ditto for the School Of The Arts, where he auditioned for both the Music programme, and the Theatre programme). Great! After that, we at a wonderful shrimp noodle dish, and then took a top seat in a double decker through south Singapore to Vivo City. We walked through the mall, then over the boardwalk to Sentosa, where we watched The Addams Family at the Festive Grand Theatre. It was a lot of fun! In the evening, we went back home, had a simple dinner and chilled out.

On Sunday played a lot of guitar, wrote a new song, “September Death” (both music and lyrics) and watched a guitar instruction DVD with Naoko and Zen.

Here is also a before-and-after pic of Zen’s naval models (Yubari, Kiso and Illustrious). Cool!

Zen trying out for the Maris Stella softball team

Hey hey, it

bus view of Bugis

bus view with Naoko

Sign in need of repair

The Addams Family on stage

Zen’s battleships – before

Zen’s battleships – after

Battleship gallery

R

Rocky – I finally showed Zen Rocky for the first time; for Naoko and I it wasn’t the first time, but there were so many scenes we’d forgotten it was like seeing it for the first time. Wow!!

The opening fight takes place under the eyes of Jesus, the story unfolds slowly and we get a sense of what kind of guy Stallone’s Rocky is – somber, not so smart, with a heart of gold. He’s also hard to understand, and a lot of the films dialogue is buried in murk – we only really get to understand what anyone’s saying when Apollo Creed comes into the picture, with his “be a thinker, not a stinker” appeal to kids to put their energy into study and not sports (and Creed himself seems to be a bit of an academic/bookworm – we see him reading, we never see him training… quite the opposite to Rocky himself). One significant scene shows a Creed associate watching a TV interview of Ricky slugging the beef, a look of concern crossing his face; he calls Creed to come over and have a look, but Creed’s not interested – he thinks the fight with Rocky is going to be a walk in the park and he’s more interested in business matters – a near-fatal, arrogant mistake. There’s also no big music until 80 minutes into this 120 minute movie, and that’s when we hear first a big 70s funk them, and finally the gigantic themes that we have for so many decades associated with triumph – THE ROCKY THEME!!! Love it all.

The movie is full of great dialogue:

Marie: Hey Rocky – screw you, creep-o.

Apollo Creed: Apollo Creed versus the eye-talian stallion. Sounds like a goddamn monster movie.

Adrienne: Hey, it’s Thanksgiving.
Rocky: To you. But to me it’s Thursday.

Mickey: Like the Bible says, you ain’t gonna get a second shot.

Mickey: Women weaken legs.

Mickey (to Rocky): Eat lightning and crap thunder.

Great famous scenes, like when Rocky puts the five raw eggs into the big cup and drinks them right down – gulp! The running and training scenes and the big triumphant climb up the steps. Rocky’s entire courtship of Adrian, and the turkey-out-the-window scene that moves it forward. Mickey confronting Rocky in his apartment, talking about the 1923 fight with passion and despair, Rocky’s rage to the empty room and his reconciliation with Mickey. Pauly’s rage at Adrian, Adrian’s rage at Pauly. Apollo Creed giving his energy to the crowd with his showmanship while Rocky watches, bemused and a bit disgusted. Creed’s muscles are amazing and compact – Carl Weathers in his prime!! The fight is only 10 minutes at the end of the movie, and is supposed to cover a full 15 rounds, but what insanity, what madness, especially that first devastating punch, the punishment, the lancing of the bloated eyebrow, and the ultimate finale, with the “ADRIAN!!!! ADRIAN!!!!” Wow… what a movie!!!

This edition comes with plenty of extras:
- a commentary track (which my system played through the sub-woofer, which meant I couldn’t understand anything). There was a cool 12-minute video collection of 8mm films made by director John Avildsen that shows Stallone training with Carl Weathers, silently. Interesting test case, and Avildsen talks about using the 8mm to experiment and save the actors embarrassment, a blueprint, a sketchpad, try out lenses, angles, lighting, and to show Sly how heavy he was. There was a lot of rehearsal time for the fight scenes. They learned from a fighting script that Sly wrote out for them, had six weeks of prep, the entire film had a short schedule and budget of $900,000. Wanted a soundtrack like Beethoven’s 6th, which they’d play during the 8mm screenings. The 8mm clips showed a body guide, they did all the cringing early so that there’d be no cringing when the dailies came in. Sly and Carl Weathers are shown with their swollen-face make-up.
- an 8-minute tribute to Burgess Meredith, which talks about how he had been making films since the 1930s, and his performance exceeded all of Sly’s expectations, with a great voice. Burt Young reminisced how they got nominated together. Carl Weathers describes the meeting in Rocky’s apartment. Lee Grant went out with Meredith to an Indian guru show, talks about their escape speeding down the highway (not sure why this is included). Burgess Meredith, 1907-1997. Only Sly’s face is seen, all others are off-screen narrating.
- tribute to James Crabe for 3 minutes, mainly the director talking about his talents as a cinematographer on their 12 movies together, starting (ironically) with Save The Tiger. Opening scene in grim club shows Jimmy’s genius – shades and darkness. Always finding solutions to tricky camera problems. Was nominated for his work in The Formula, not Rocky. 1931-1989.
- a teaser trailer and trailers for Rocky I, Rocky II, Rocky III, Rocky IV and Rocky V. Great! Cheezy announcing like “You can compare him to Nicholson, DeNiro and Brando. But he is Rocky!!” “His name is Sylvester Stallone, but you will always remember him as Rocky!”
- three original TV spots, two of 30 seconds, one of 60 seconds
- a commentary of 28 minutes with Sylvester, recounting how he went to Hollywood and was trying to make it, rented a small room, from which he could open the window and close the door without leaving his bed. Wrote and wrote. Was with Butkus his dog. Saw Muhammad Ali fight Chuck Wepner, the Bayonne Bleeder, who knocked Ali down. This put him into a writing frenzy, and three days later he had a script, 10% of which remained after the rewrites produced the final script. The original screenplay was very dark, with an anti-hero who throws the fight, Mickey is angry and racist. Rocky doesn’t want to be part of that world any more. Too angry and unrepentant. Stallone got a break at a casting call when he mentioned he’s a writer. “Come back later.” The studio liked the script, but didn’t want Stallone in it – Ryan O’Neill, maybe, or Burt Reynolds. “My $40 car had just blown up, so I was taking the bus to work.” Lots of injuries during the production, knuckles flattened out punching beef – beef is hard! Stallone’s dad is bell ringer, brother doo-wop singer. Talia Shire was one of the last choices for Adrian. Sly describes characters and motivations to the film, back stories. They had wanted to use Ken Norton for the Apollo Creed role, but lucked out with Carl Weathers. “Mr Avildsen, I could do better if I had a real actor reading with me,” he said. “Carl, that’s Rocky, the writer and star.” “Well, maybe he’ll get better.” Nice – that’s the attitude we want for this movie! Stallone talks about his dog Butkus’ “train flatulence.” Recounts the original ending for Rocky, where he’s looking for Adrian finds her backstage, gives her a light hug, picks up a flag, they fade into the distance. Describes the process of deciding the final freeze frame.

R2

Rocky II – The sequel to the great film doesn’t live up to the original (it can’t), but is still pretty good – nice dialogue, great performances, wonderful chemistry, even if it does at times feel a bit patched together and the plot is a bit too hook-driven. Of course, there’s nothing mistaking the fact that the first one hour and 45 minutes only exists to bring us the final 15 minutes of the Rock Balboa vs Apollo Creed title fight… but what a final 15 minutes!!!

The film has a rushed-together feel to it, with lots of filler – the first five minutes are a replay of the final five minutes of the first Rocky movie (as if anyone needs a reminder!!), and then there’s a long ambulance-driving sequence as the credits roll, and later some crazy scenes from the hospital, with an enraged, testosterone-driven Apollo Creed ready to carry on the fight right there from his wheelchair! Rock is relaxed and charming about it, talking from a face that’s nothing more than clobbered, raw meat, from which emerge highly refined lines of great dialogue in an impromptu press conference:

What were you thinking as you went into the last round, Rocky?
That I should have stayed in school.
Rocky, do you have brain damage?
I don’t see any.

There’s a great “did you give me your best?” scene in the hospital, and then it’s back to life – marriage, showing off, throwing around money, the money starts to run out, then there’s the reputation. The injured eye is a problem, but after a while it isn’t. Taunts and threats and treaties and training ensue. The film picks up the tiger imagery – the snow tiger at the zoo when Rocky proposes to Adrian, his tiger jacket; it also props up the religious imagery – Rocky’s prominent necklace cross, praying before the fight (twice), getting the priest to bless his fight, getting married in an Italian ceremony in the church. Scenes with bad jokes, like the “condominium – I never use them” joke give the feeling that there’s plenty of filler here. With his impulse shopping and bad driving (and lying about it), we see a side of Rocky we couldn’t see in the first film, when he never ever had any money. Bad commercials and comic relief as Rocky dresses up in proto-Rambo gear that’s maybe more mock Fred Flintstone.

Another area where the second film is different is in its music – they had seven times the budget, and some of that clearly went into music – there’s great new music in the first half, as well as the second (the first film had practically no music in the first half). I know that this is only a story, but it’s still pretty weird to think that he actually named his turtles Cuff and Link!

Great chicken chasing scene with Mickey – the film really amounts to a bit of charm, some drama, and a touch of actual fighting. At weigh-in, we learn that Rocky is 205 pounds, Apollo Creed 225 pounds. “Undefeated anywhere in the world.” This time around we see Apollo Creed’s wife/girlfriend, cementing that part of his relationship (even though we don’t see her again). The fight plays around with cinematography a bit, including slow motion scenes, culminating in those scenes, where he thanks everybody (God included) … except his wife!

A flawed but fun film!

RIII

Rocky III – I had to watch this one last, because it wasn’t available in Singapore! Luckily, Amazon had it, ha ha… The film doesn’t disappoint, as it has all of the trademark Rock items – hamming-it-up comedic scenes (the nutty endorsements), training sequences, a passionate speech by Paulie-the-loser, a motivational speech by Adrian, a recap of the final moments of the previous film, crustiness from Mickey, personal tragedy, irony (Apollo’s “it’s too bad we gotta get old” comment), fall-and-recovery, and that indomitable Rocky spirit. It’s also got music, both good and bad. And great dialogue:

- You’re just a jealous, lazy bum.

- You ever fought a dinosaur?
- No, not lately.

- What does this guy eat for breakfast?
- 202 pounds.
- Huh?
- [announcer] And weighing in at 202 pounds… the heavyweight champion of the world… Rocky Balboa!

- You’re going to wear your anatomy on the outside. Nobody does this much for charity.
- Bob Hope does.
- That’s true

- The ultimate man… versus the ultimate meatball.

- [Rocky Jr] What happened to Goldilocks?
- [Paulie] Bot busted for trespassin’, 30 days in the cooler.
- [Rocky] Nice, Paulie!

- Can he swim?
- With a name like Rock?

- There is no tomorrow.

One of the things that’s missing is the run-up-the-stairs sequence, but they cover that off with the unveiling of the Rocky statue on the same steps.

The Hulk Hogan cameo if hammy, but fun.

Nice film, even it it’s not as good as the previous ones.

RIV

Rocky IV – The movie starts with good times, Rocky and Apollo getting in the ring to spar, with some famous last words from Apollo: “You know, Rocky, it’s too bad we gotta get old.” The early part of the film is goofy, with Pauly gagging around with a pet robot; not too long, though, as we see the entrance of Drago, who quickly gets his bout with Apollo. Great scene of a bewildered Drago in the ring in Las Vegas, James Brown in full American glory, Apollo entering the ring in full bombast, Rocky mugging for the camera, looking dopey. The crowd booing Drago. Paulie’s “I’m the un-silent majority!” The movie is dark, very dark. “You can’t win.”

Unfortunately, the music in this film is especially bad, but with all the new junk there’s a big play on the past – we get another montage from past films, with lots of emphasis on Mickey and the importance of values. “Doin’ that one more round when you don’t think you can is the most important thing in life.” Rocky and Adrian have one of their many emotional speeches, this one on the stairs:

Adrian: You’ve seen him, you know how strong he is. You can’t win!!
Rocky: Adrian, Adrian… always tells the truth. Maybe I can’t win. Maybe the only thing I can do is take everything he’s got. But to beat me, he’s gonna have to kill me. And to kill me, he’s gonna have to have the heart to stand in front of me. And to do that, he’s got to be willing to die as well. I don’t know if he’s ready to do that.

Then we get the famous training montage, with very little humour at all, just majesty as Rocky conquers nature, in contrast with Drago who conquers science and machines. Paulie gives a great speech as Rocky and Adrian are heading out to the ring:

Paulie: Rocko, I know you’re kinda busy just now, but I wanna tell a something I never told ya before. I know that sometimes I act stupid and say stupid things, but you kept me around when other people would have said ‘drop that bum’. You gave me respect; y’know, it’s hard for me to say these kind of things, because that ain’t my way, but if I could just stop being myself and step out and be someone else, I’d wanna be you. You’re all heart, Rock!
[kiss on cheek]
Rocky Thanks, Paulie.
Paulie: Now blast this guy’s teeth out!!
Rocky: I’ll try.

Rocky in the ring – “I see three of him out there.” “Hit the one in the middle.” Later, cracks appear in Drago’s invulnerability, “He’s a man”, they realise. For Drago, it’s the opposite: “He’s not human. It’s like hitting an iron plate.” Drago begins to bleed from below both eyes, and then things begin to go bad for him. Ouch!! At the end, Drago shows his ambition and his selfishness, and Rocky gives his great “Everybody can change” speech. Nice!

RV

Rocky V – Starts off with a naked Stallone in the shower, the only time in the whole film we’ll see any of Rocky’s famous physique (this film is in many ways different – there’s no big title bout at the end – but it also falls back to the tried and true as they go back to their old neighbourhood after losing all of their millions and wander the tough, brawling streets of the first two movies). Rocky faces a nasty press conference and deals with an aggressive fight promoter George Washington Duke (full on the Rocky tradition of giving guys tough names – hey, who gave that man a mic?!?), then we see him briefly in his own home, before he loses everything. Wow! Rocky has a cool interaction with his son (Stallone’s real-life son Sage Stallone), with his drawing of his French teacher Madame Dupont. Nice speech about his raccoon eyes, and how seeing his son was like seeing himself born again (sad to reflect that Sage himself died in 2012, and Stallone lost his first son – while Sage did a great job in Rocky V, Stallone cast another as his son in Rocky Balboa in 2008, a sign that things were not right). “Every day you learn something new and every day I forget something new. Listen, we’re in this thing together.”

As he’s moving out, he finds his old enforcer clothes (gloves, hat), and he slips casually back to his old self as a local neighborhood guy, Adrian takes up her old job in the pet shop (and wears her old glasses)… only Rocky Jr needs to fend for himself again on the mean streets (which he does eventually). Flashback to Mickey’s cufflinks speech, angel on his shoulder, living and dying, “heart, not muscle” speech. Crazy taunting from outrageous promoter George Washington Duke, “do you like reaching in your pocket and only feeling your leg?” Drama!!!!

The screenwriters also has a clear a penchant for giving his characters totally silly names, and the prize fighter Tommy Gunn is no exception (he’s even called “the Machine” Gunn as a ring nickname – how original!!). Rocky’s early speech to Tommy about fighting is embarrassing, he really sounds like an old fighter who’s beginning to lose his marbles (I’m sure that’s completely intentional, of course). Rocky and Adrian shout and cry at each other in a series of dramatic speeches. In a return to the original, Rocky gets the priest’s blessing from the window, they recreate the opening scene of the face of Jesus looking down upon the boxers (nice touch – it could be cheezy, but it works well).

But it all falls apart, and soon Tommy Gunn tells Rocky “It’s my way or the highway,” from behind the wheel of his sports car (pure cheese, which shows what a piece of work he is). Great hostile post-title fight scene. Pretty soon, we see George Washington Duke (with his awesomely huge glasses), and realise that his plan has actually come together – it was to play up to Tommy’s ego and eventually to draw Rocky out to take on a neophyte champion. They have a beautiful street brawl, and it’s heartbreaking to see Rocky finally coming to terms with what a scumbag Gunn is. Great tripping action and all sorts of yucky nonsense. The denouement is beautiful too: “You’re going to love Picasso.” “Yeah? Well, I love almost everybody.” Unfortunately, the movie ends with a lame and unforgettable Elton John ballad (never thought I’d be sentimental for Survivor – thanks, Elton, for not coming through), but by now nobody cares – Rocky has won the day!!

RB

Rocky Balboa – “Time goes by too fast.” A film of many small episodes, it’s like a collection of short stories that characterise most of the Rocky films, and the little stories that make up the life of Rocky Balboa, the people in his life, and the working class city of Philadelphia. In the opening scenes, we see Cuff and Link, Rocky’s turtles, Adrian has died of cancer (“It was woman’s cancer.” “She was a great girl.” “The best.”) We see Rocky interacting with the neighborhood people, and perhaps Stallone is wishing for this kind of a simple life (he seemed to have a great time filming it, as we see from the documentary footage on the DVD). Lots of great idiot savant wisdom from Paulie. “If you live some place long enough, you are that place.”

And so… we take a tour of the shattered parts of that place, including the destroyed ice rink. Rocky Jr is now an investment banker (shades of Oliver Stone’s Wall Street?), and a potential new romance with Little Marie (the “screw you, creep-o” girl from the first Rocky film), and Rocky trying to become friends with her son, Step; they get a dog, call it Punchy, and young Step features less and less in the story (a short story that ran its course?). Interactions with Rocky Jr are painful – he’s a selfish ass, and not up to much in life. What does he get from avoiding his father? This all leads to a dramatic confrontation speech and more actifying:

The world ain’t all sunshine and rainbows. It’s a very mean and nasty place and I don’t care how tough you are – it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me and nobody is going to hit as hard as life. But it ain’t about how hard you can hit, it’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward, how much you can take and keep moving forward. That’s how winning is done. Now if you know how much you’re worth, then go out and get what you’re worth, but you gotta be willing to take the hits, and not point the finger saying you ain’t where you wanna be because of him or her or anybody; cowards to that and that ain’t you. You’re better than that.

The reunion stuff is not as convincing as it was in Rocky V (and even then it wasn’t very convincing). But the story of Rocky is not really about the dominance of these minor characters, it’s about the majesty of Rocky the icon – the other characters hardly matter. Even the champ (played by real-life light heavyweight champ Antonio Tarver!) he fights is uninteresting, bathed in glaring light (the whole movie is shot in ugly halogen light). The drama of getting there is more interesting, and this included a battle with the boxing association about his license:

It’s your right to listen to your gut, it ain’t nobody’s right to say no after you earned the right to be what you wanna be and do what you wanna do. The older I get the more things I gotta leave behind. That’s life. The only thing I’m asking you guys to leave on the table is what’s right!

Of course, there’s still a training sequence, and this time Rocky gags when he tries to drink the raw eggs. Oh well! Of course, when he’s ready to fight, Rocky comes out with Sinatra’s “High Hopes” as his theme song, totally anticlimactic to the champ’s gangsta rap theme. Sheesh!! Mike Tyson has a cool cameo – Mike!! Dixon hurts his hand on Rocky’s head making the intra-generational battle more realistic. The film ends, and it’s the end of an era. Stallone somehow managed to catch the mood of the times and slip this one in – an era with no deserving champion, a real champion of a bygone era stands a chance to fight the reigning champ to a standstill. Everything’s good, the sport gets a nudge, the Rocky fanatics get their fix, the champ gets some publicity, everybody’s happy. You just have Stallone putting his heart into the film like always, and that’s what we want to see. Paulie even gets a nice speech:

It takes guts climbing in that ring when yo know you’re gonna take a beating. You’re gonna do alright, Rocko.
How do you know all that?
The stuff in the basement

Nice.

The film has eight deleted and alternate scenes, including one alternate ending – In one Paulie paints a picture of a dog that has been shot between the eyes, and we hear him complaining about 31 years in the plant, while Rocky is asked to wear a hairnet in the meat locker (!!!); Rocky gagging on the raw eggs, cleaning Paulie’s room; alternate scene to meeting Little Marie in the bar; awkward scene with Step – “I was teachin’ myself to be uncomfortable; I thought it might come in handy.” “Mothers should be goof-proof.” Paulie crying in the alley when he was fired; sparring to opera music; alternate ending where Rocky gets the decision. Goofy boxing scenes where the guys are smirking.

The set also comes with a “making-of” documentary that goes through the various motivations for Sly to make this film, and what got it going. It was the story – “the last thing to age is the heart.” The script was finished in 2005, and then it went forward. “You haven’t peaked yet?” “I still got some stuff in the basement.” Scene with John F Street, the mayor of Philadelphia. The extra features also shows full virtual battle (not very interesting), as well as the work that went into rendering this stuff (more interesting). Nice stuff!!

FRC

Fargo Rock City, by Chuck Klosterman – This book about eighties heavy metal was practically written for me. Wow! Metal! High school! Awkward teen geekiness! Nothing to do and nowhere to go on a Saturday night! Budding writer!

I loved the first 20 pages, it described my world of that time perfectly, even if I wasn’t into more than 50% of the bands mentioned – I couldn’t believe it!! It starts with Motley Crue, dwells on Def Leppard and Vinnie Vincent’s Invasion and Van Halen and Bon Jovi and Warrant and Cinderella and especially Skid Row, and eventually kinda stops at the Bullet Boys (which not even Klosterman can defend).

The last 10 pages were a pretty good denouement too, in their deconstruction of Queensryche.

The pages in between, though, are problematic.

Structurally, the book is set up very well, with short chapters that are about the length of a long-ish newspaper article (in other words, short enough for the author to write at one sitting, and also short enough for a distracted reader to finish in a brief sitting). They are all titled after significant dates in glam rock history that chart its rise and eventual fall: “October 26, 1983 – the worldwide release of Motley Crue’s Shout At The Devil” is chapter 1, “March 24th, 1984 – Van Halen’s ‘Jump’ holds off ‘Karma Chameleon’” is Chapter 2, and there are also chapters titled “’99 Luftbaloons [SIC]‘ for a fifth consecutive week to remain America’s No. 1 single”, “October 15, 1988 – Heavy metal’s finest hour: the three best-selling records on the planet are Bon Jovi’s New Jersey, Guns N’ Roses’ Appetite for Destruction, and Def Leppard’s Hysteria”, etc. The best title is probably “October 10, 1987 – Whitesnake’s “‘Here I Go Again’ is America’s No 1 single, ousting Whitney Houston’s ‘Didn’t We Almost Have It All’”. The chapters cover issues such as the presence of metal on MTV, the nature of heavy metal videos, interpreting heavy metal through video, absorbing heavy metal in rural America, the under-estimation of sales and chart positioning of heavy metal albums in the pre-SoundScan days when sales were rough guesses by executives (and therefore the presence of significant anti-metal discrimination), the influence of older bands on glam, random lists of great metal albums (with Kosterman-ish descriptions of their contents and significance… to him), an analysis of Guns N’ Roses pretentious trilogy of videos from Use Your Illusion, any many other worthy topics. Klosterman keeps his personal anecdotes to a relative minimum, but at one point goes on at length about a trip he took with his debating team where conversations about Lita Ford featured prominently. Thankfully, he hardly writes about sports, a topic that will permeate his later writings (and one that I care not a jot for – but read through anyway).

To spice things up, Klosterman puts in a chapter about alcohol and drinking, which is refreshing, in a way, by being quite a fair bit less pretentious than the rest of the book, if not a bit sad. “I am drinking each shot [of cheap tequila] over my kitchen sink, just in case I vomit.” This is the chapter that he didn’t want his mom to read, but at least it seems fairly honest.

At least the book starts off very well (despite mentioning Stryper twice within the first five pages), and it naturally it jumps straight into Chuck’s gods, Motley Crue. Well, they’re his gods, but maybe the boys were even mightier than gods in Klosterman’s impressionable teen eyes. “Compared to Nikki and Vince, Zeus was a total poseur.” But even a fanboy like Klosterman can’t deny that this story doesn’t have a happy ending and he is quick to jump to the ending:

Sadly, the Crue proved to be ephemeral, coke-addled deities. Rock critics spent an entire decade waiting for heavy metal to crash like a lead zeppelin, and – seemingly seconds after Kurt Cobain wore a dress on MTV’s Headbanger’s Ball – they all got their shovels and began pouring dirt on the graves of Faster Pussycat, Winger, Tesla, Kix, and every other band that experimented with spandex, hairspray and flash pots. Metal had always been a little stupid; now it wasn’t even cool. This was the end. Yngwie Malmsteen, we hardly knew ye.

Some of the points he makes are pretty interesting, if a bit cagey.

For reasons no one will ever understand, Van Halen took the majority of their influences from Grand Funk Railroad. This is not to say that Grand Funk wasn’t a decent group; it merely means they didn’t seem to influence anybody else. And – apparently – this is too bad, because there are about a kajillion horrible bands who claim they were influenced by Aerosmith and Led Zeppelin. Maybe Grand Funk Railrosd knew something everyone else missed.

We are left to assume that Led Zeppelin’s eponymous debut was the first speed metal album ever recorded (that is, if “we” are “a bunch of idiots”).

He makes funny comments about Def Leppard, and how they lost their way with their fourth album Hysteria (their follow-up to Pyromania, which Klosterman rightly describes as “one of the cornerstones of the genre”). Unfortunately, Hysteria was an album that was just a bit too popular with girls, and took something away from the guys.

When girls named Danielle who wore Esprit tank tops sudenly embodied the Def Leppard lifestyle, it clearly indicated that Def Leppard no longer represented the people who had comprised the core audience for (first album) On Through The Night. As a shooting guard on our high school bsketball team, I recall travelling to an away game and listening to our vapid cheerleaders sing at the front of the bus; they were singing ‘Armageddon It’ and ‘Love Bites.’ That alone was indisputable proof that Hysteria sucked.

Klosterman often gets his perspective on things just about right. “[1981] was the year John Hinckley shot Ronald Reagan, and I wasn’t surprised at all (in fact, it seemed to me that presidential assassinations didn’t happen nearly as often as one would expect).” Other comments seem just about right (but we can’t really know because we weren’t in the same space he was at the time): “the first two Poison records were the sonic equivalent to the best masturbation imaginable.” He also gets great quotes from guys like Gene Simmons that sort of put things into interesting new perspectives: “You don’t want a large female audience. If you depend on women to buy your records, you end up going the way of New Kids on the Block. Female audiences tend to be unfaithful.” Maybe this is what happened to Def Leppard. Interestingly, he gets the same quote out of Lemmy (“I’ve never seen anyone become a better guitar player by dying than Randy Rhoads. Nobody ever talked about him when he was alive, but suddenly everyone started saying he’s some kind of genius. He was a nice guy and a very good guitarist, but he wasn’t a Hendrix or a Clapton or anything like that.”) in 1998 that the producers of the Lemmy documentary got, showing just how long Lemmy’s been repeating that particular line about Rhoads (Klosterman eventually has something to say about Rhoads, and it’s not pretty – more on that later).

Klosterman includes a hilarious quote from Dokken percussionist Mick Brown:

Drinking is my profession. Drums are just a hjobby. I have to admit that I’m a pretty bad influence on a lot of people. The girls who hang around me will take a couple of days off from their jobs, and then find out they’ve been fired when they return to work. And they get really torn up. I go, ‘Listen, if you can’t handle it, then don’t hang around me. I don’t want to ruin your life just for having a good time.’ I’m a party professional. I stay in on New Year’s Eve because all the amateurs are out.

Klosterman likes to effect a similar sass about himself: “I like to drink, and I like to rock. You think I”m an idiot? Fine. You don’t have to come over.”

He makes dangerous statements that may actually be good criticism:

It’s very common to see an album panned because “there’s not much beyond the single.” I don’t think that kind of logic matters. For example, “Tubthumping” by Chumbawamba has proven to be a more important album than Bob Dylan’s Grammy Award winning Time Out Of Mind, simply because Chumbawamba’s disc offered one great song that defined the moment of its popularity. I don’t think there’s any question about which of those two LPs will be more fun to find in a jukebox twenty years from now.

Not sure why he’s comparing a single to an album, but I guess there’s something there nonetheless.

He has a great description of a Slayer show where he saw people enter crazed states where they punched random strangers in the face (usually with the opening chord of “Raining Blood”).

Slayer would be Spinal Tap if they possessed even an ounce of irony, but – as it is – they are [SIC] most serious band that ever lived. The result is absolutely punishing. Slayer is kind of like a guy who walks up to you in a bar and says he’s going to rape your wife, burn down your house, shoot all your friends, cover your kids with acid, and then slowly starve you to death while rats nibble at your emaciated flesh. Now, if this hypothetical guy is merely a drunken goofball, that kind of complex depravity seems hilarious (almost endearing). But if he’s the one guy on earth willing (and able) to do all those things, you’d suddenly realize you’re talking to the craziest, most sinister motherfucker who ever lived. Slayer is that one guy.

I get the rest of it, but not “endearing”. Oh well.

As a part-time humorist, he also occasionally he hits the mark with weird, non-sequitar stuff:

Here’s a list of what types of girls the premier metal groups liked (or at least seemed to like)…

GUNS N’ ROSES: Bixesual models; submissive women; girls who would buy them booze.
MOTLE CRUE: Stippers; women who have sex in public (particularly elevators); lesbians.
DEF LEPPARD: Femal vampires only.
FASTER PUSSYCAT: GNR rejects.
W.A.S.P.: Magician’s assistants; women with rape fantasies; lower primates.
BANG TANGO: Faster Pussycat rejects.
BON JOVI: The girl next door.
VINNIE VINCENT INVASION: The dominatrix next door.
SLAUGHTER: Girls who couldn’t make the cut as Bon Jovi groupies.
WINGER: Whoever Bon Jovie groupies used to baby-sit.
KISS: Any girl who wasn’t dead.
IRON MAIDEN: Dead Girls.
JUDAS PRIEST: Boys.
METALLICA: None of the above.

As for the rest of the book, it is full of plenty of bummers, including more sarcastic remarks about Canada (like when he say that Motley Crue’s “Looks That Kill” video “is probably the most ridiculous video ever made, unless you count videos made in Canada”). You get similar comments in Klosterman’s other books – it makes you wonder if he only makes comments about Canada because it’s such an easy cheap shot (everybody else does it), or maybe because it is in fact the only country he’s been to outside the US (I don’t recall him mentioning trips to the UK or France or Japan – he did go to Seattle once, though).

Klosterman fills a lot of space with cruel comments about death, and this is how he goes about describing Led Zeppelin’s mephistopholean world when he notes that John Paul Jones was “the only Zepster who was never penalized by Satan’s power; the other three were all struck by evil (John Bonham choked on his own vomit, Robert Plant tragically lost his son Karac, and Page would go on to collaborate with David Coverdale).”

He makes similar comments about the death of Razzle, the drummer of Hanoi Rocks:

At the time, the event did not seem like a tragedy. Before the death of Razzle, I had never even heard of Hanoi Rocks. Hardly anyone had; I’m sure the untimely death of their drummer was the greatest thing that ever happened to their commercial viability. My main concern was that Vince was okay – that is to say, okay enough to finish the new record.

Again, what’s an “untimely death”? Is that the opposite of a “timely death”. Creepy. And there’s more of the same in his next book, Killing Yourself To Live (when he’s not talking about himself).

He is also incredibly insensitive to Randy Rhoads, who he says “gets a little extra credit for having died in a plane creash. Nonbreathing people get all the breaks. CLear, the easiest way to become ‘great’ is to get ‘good’ and then get ‘dead.’” Huh? It starts to get stupid after a while: “After years of research, I have come to the conclusion that animals enjoy being eaten; they think it’s fun” (and this, in a section on Ted Nugent, is where he gets pretentious, referring to deer as “ungulates”, and horses as “equine”).

Some day, when Klosterman actually dies himself, these quotes will all seem poignant.

He can also be amazingly stupid. “Judas Priest supposedly made kids point guns at their heads; Cinderella made me do the same thing with a hair dryer.” And he can be cruel about other things than death: “What we were too dumb to realise was that the guys in Def Leppard hated the term ‘heavy metal’, and any member of the band would have given his right arm to avoid the label (except for [one-armed drummer] Rick Allen).” But here, I guess the joke’s on Klosterman, because Allen still has his right arm – it was his left arm that he lost in a car crash!!

He gets riled up about the craziest things: “[Dolphins] are the most overrated mammals on the planet.”

He describes Iron Maden as “unattractive, they weren’t prototypically cool, and it was impossible to sing along with any of their songs.” Pardon?!?! I guess he’s never been to a Maiden concert, or seen them perform “Heaven Can Wait.” Dumbass.

He gets the lyrics of an Ozzy Osbourne song all wrong (“Rock ‘n’ Roll Rebel”, quoted on P142, “They say I worship the devil/ They must be stupid, all right.” – it’s quite clear that he says “They must be stupid or blind“… please!!!). He also gets wrong the name of one of the bands that (he says) influenced Metallica, the “Tygers of Pang Tang” (actually Tygers of Pan Tang).

With all of these mistakes or misinterpretations of his subject of choice, I’d say that Klosterman’s probably just too lazy to do his research (either that or he just wants to rile people up); how else would you explain the many errors this pop culture-obsessed geek makes? The biggest/weirdest one is about a Canadian band called Rush:

Most people (or – more accurately – all people except me) do not consider Rush a Christian rock band. However, this fact is virtually indisputable. Aren’t pretty much all of their songs about Jesus? It certainly seems like it. At the very least, Rush albums promote some sort of bass-heavy Christian value system. ‘He’s trying to save the day for the Old World man,’ proclaims the soaring vocals of Canadian spiritualist Geddy Lee. ‘He’s trying to pave the way for the Third World man.’ Isn’t that the entire New Testament in two lines? Didn’t Jesus teach us to big ‘A Farewell to Kings’ and to watch the humble

‘Working Man’ inherit the earth? And I’m sure God likes ‘Trees’ and hates racism at least as much as Neil Peart does.

“Nobody ever believes me when I start talking about Rush’s hard-line Christian stance, but every time I hear their music, it becomes more and more clear. Listen to the song ‘Freewill’: I have a hard time understanding exactly what Lee is talking about here, but I can tell it has something to do with being a good person (or with being an honest person, or a stoic person, or holding some vague personality trait that God would probably support). ‘Freewill’ also implies something about agnostics going to hell, but that’s just par for the course when it comes to Rush. I even have some suspicions about the metaphorical significance of ‘The Spirit of Radio,’ and that goes double for the cover art on Grace Under Pressure, Fly by Night (a fucking owl?), and – most notable – the homoerotic purgatory imagery on the sleeve for Hemispheres. Who is in the Temple of Syrinx? Perhaps it’s Jesus.

It’s a totally silly passage that Klosterman embarrasses himself with – the “me against the world” argument – when all of the rest of us are wondering which Christian band has a Jewish frontman, and an atheist drummer? Chuck, Chuck, Chuck… do we really know ya? Do you even know yourself? He even says grandiose things like “Few people listen to entire albums, even when they’re released by their so-called favorite band.” Excuse me? Speak for yourself, I mainly listen to entire albums!!

Of course, people who makes mistakes will make some excuse about why they make mistakes, especially writers who have a wordcount quota to fill and not really much of anything to write about, but I don’t buy this argument – you’re a writer, you know that people will read what you write (sometimes paying good money for the privilege), and therefore if you present facts they should be accurate. Also, writers whose books get released by major publishing houses like Scribners have access to editors, fact checkers and other support, something not all of us have.

Did you ever notice how Chuck Klosterman likes to start sentences with conversational points like “ANYWAY”, and “As I mentioned earlier”. Chatty things like this make a person wonder if he gets stoned, dictates books into electronic recorders, then them transcribed, lightly edited and rushed to the printers. I know people who like to pepper their long stories with “As I was saying earlier” in conversation, and Klosterman is one of these people. Sheesh! He even goes so far as to admit in a 1988 anedcote about Lita Ford’s “Lita” release. “Talking about the music was more interesting than hearing it (which is still the way I feel about most rock ‘n’ roll).” A telling confession – write (or dictate) your little heart out, Chuck, I’ll listen to music and you write the books.

He also misunderstands words (beyond just the mis-use of “unconscious”, as in the the way some people say “unconscious decision” – I once read Madonna say this in an interview, actually), when he says “Maybe Tesla turns kids into mindless deadheads (which I suppose is a pretty blatant oxymoron).” If he’s referring to “mindless deadheads” as an oxymoron, then he doesn’t know what the word “oxymoron” means. At another point he says “most metal said nothing (and sometimes even less).” What is less than nothing?

He embarrasses himself even further when he writes “I have never met Satan, but he actually sounds like a pretty cool guy. A bit geeky, perhaps, but I’m sure we could still hang out and play Scrabble or something.” Say what? But Chuck’s too clever for me, so I’ve missed the obvious ironic statement here (I got the reference to the “angel dust” that he likes to smoke, and how “he probably has a framed poster of Ronnie James Dio on his living room wall”… Dio… God… Dio… Satan… Dio poster… I get it).

Going on the defense, Klosterman writes many a long passage about why people hate heavy metal for all the wrong reasons, but he’s never really convincing. He makes the lame point that “people who take rock music seriously in a literal sense always seem to be missing the point.” He’s missing the point if he thinks his readership understand what he means with the phrase “to take something seriously in the literal sense.” How could seriousness be anything but literal? He also makes fun of Michael Azerrad for believing that Black Flag fans had to work harder to be Black Flag fans than Warrant fans did, since they didn’t have their bands handed to them on a platter by the media. Sorry, Chuck, that makes sense to no one except you.

Perhaps one of my biggest frustrations with Klosterman is how he alternates between boring people with his navel gazing, and infuriating him with his misinterpretation, mis-analysis and factual mistakes about the very topics he takes on. Ironically, he has no respect for writers who make mistakes in their writing, and aims his tiny arrows at his fellow journalists:

I remember being mildly excited when I saw a nine-inch article about an accident involving Vince Neil Wharton, the lead singer from the “rock ‘n’ roll band Motley Crue.” To me, that line was the most offensive part of the entire article – Mötley Crüe was not a rock ‘n’ roll band.” Bruce Springsteen was in a “rock ‘n’ roll band.” Motley was a heavy metal band. I immediately questioned the reporter’s credibility.”

By Klosterman’s logic, we should definitely also question his credibility (he should too) over the many errors in his book. But I honestly believe that Klosterman is too knowledgable to get many facts wrong, which is why I think that coming up with goofy and controversial (and incorrect) views is merely a gimmick, one that a friend of mine told me Steve Albini regularly indulged in, which is to rile people just for the hell of it and see what happened.

This all makes Klosterman a very unauthentic person, kind of like those flawed characters we get in Wes Anderson movies that we all love. Maybe Chuck isn’t being cagey when he mentions that he’s actually a bad person (this exercise continues unabated in his second book, Killing Yourself To Live where he puts himself down by putting sentences like “my thoughts are unoriginal” and “I have no redeeming social value”, randomly at the end of paragraphs).

The book was published in 2001 (with a new epilogue written from the perspective of 2003). Sadly, his later chapters talk about the current (to 2001) state of glam metal and he spends time on rap rock/nü-metal by talking about Korn and Limp Bizzkit… awkward (the quote with Korn bassist Fieldy – the guy who became a born again Christian – where he says “I’ve never owned a Beatles record; I’ve never even listened to one” is hilarious. It seems that, for Korn, “our musical history starts with the Red Hot Chili Peppers and early Faith No More”); this despair for the future of glam leads Chuck to hypothesise about recent alt rock gods like Billy Corgan, where he decides that “we all know that Corgan is actually keeping glam rock alive, even through the rock press doesn’t want to believe it. And that’s why he can get away with it. Keep acting pretentious, Billy. We ‘understand’.” Funny quote, but I wonder what Chuck would have made of the downfall of nü-metal, the ironic popularity of the hilarious Steel Panther, or even Corgan’s worship of Rush in the documentary Beyond The Lighted Stage, not to mention the reunion of Black Sabbath and the huge resurgence of heavy metal… Oops, I keep forgetting that this book was written about glam metal/hair rock; oh well, at least there’s Steel Panther. I need to find out if Klosterman’s written more recently on the Panther, and if he’s okay with them or not (I suspect he has complicated views on Steel Panther…).

Given the passage of time (or otherwise), Klosterman’s not-so-very-old book still has a worrying number of unfortunate joke passages that just don’t feel right, like “There’s still a thriving death metal scene in Florida, so maybe the presence of old people makes the concept of death more pertinent.” He refers to Faith No More drummer Mike Bordin as “that ponytail guy” (Bordin is famous for his dreadlocks), and then dismisses the Black Sabbath Ozzfest performances as “How much can you really expect from three fifty-year-old Brits who spent half their life eating acid and pretending to worship the devil?” Yep – he’s really a dick. There’s also an unfortunate moment when he says that David Lee Roth “would look like a fool if the original Van Halen ever reunited.” Well, they did, and he’s right – but didn’t always look like a fool? Don’t guys who dress up on stage act like fools all the time anyway!!

Funnily enough, the endorsements (I’m amazed that he could get any) for the book are in many ways more interesting than the book (especially when they lump it in with other winning books, like Bebe Buells Rebel Heart, Dave Mersh’s The Heart of Rock and Soul, Greil Marcus’ Mystery Train, Peter Guralnick’s Sweet Soul Music and Gary Giggins’ Visions of Jazz). “It may even prompt you to spin ‘Rock You Like A Hurricane’ or ‘Cat Scratch Fever’ again – God help us all”, pants the Phoenix New Times. “His sly, swaggering prose struts across the page like Axl Rose in his prime,” author Max Wingerten writes, clearly proud of his zesty wordplay. “Either one of the saddest or greatest music books ever written,” says Q magazine.

The book is good for a few other things, among them making KISS seem interesting, and turning me on to videos that I think that I might want to watch, like that Whitesnake video with Tawny Kitaen in it.

Interestingly, a book that I’ve read recently that’s much better than this one is by a cook, not a journalist. Anthony Bourdain tells a better tale, and he also has better taste in music.

This book needs an index. Chuck Klosterman is clearly a lazy writer; and his editor (if he has one) is clearly also a lazy editor.

Well, it’s official – MegalomaniA has played its first overseas gig. We headed up to Kuala Lumpur on July 6th by bus, stayed overnight at the friend of our drummer’s place, had great seafood, then on Sunday we headed to the gig hall. Our set was around five o’clock, the fourth of 10 bands to play that afternoon and evening. We did a great job, totally blowing the audience away. We got great comments from our peers afterwards by Facebook:

we really enjoyed your set! it’s like being in a real sabbath gig minus the props and all.. \m/

Megalomania rocked harder! We were practically blown away by your uncanny resemblance of Ozzy, Peter Hoflich! \m/

You guys rocked so hard that you ought put Black Sabbath run for their money! Woohoo!”

Hey what’s up Peter. Megalomania totally killed it the other day.

you are rock peter….

Here’s the full set of four songs: “Into The Void”, “Children Of The Grave”, “NIB” and “Iron Man”.

Here’s a highlight song – “Children Of The Grave”, showing the headbangers in full groove:

Here’s another highlight – “NIB” with a bit of moshing going on. Oh Lord yeah!!

After our set, we had some food and drinks, then I stuck around until it ended at 10:30 or so. All of the bands were great, some better than others. The audience engagement was pretty good, and the later bands had just a bit more than our band had due to the evening “party time” feeling.

Here’s another band that played that day, they are called Instake:

WWKRD?

What Would Keith Richards Do?, by Jessica Pallington West – Prominently dubbed “Unauthorized” on the cover, this silly but fun book clearly doesn’t sit within Keith’s sense of humour itself, making it seem a bit of a paradox. While nearly half of the book is a collection of great quotes on topics such as “the Afterlife and Reincarnation”, “Aging and Longevity”, “Authority”, “Art”, “Fashion and style”, “Inner Demons”, “Inspirations and Influences”, etc, the rest of the book demonstrates the author scrounging around to describe situations and concepts that make Keith (and herself) look wise. This all demonstrates that she’s a great editor (and if there is any lingering doubt that she’s another Tony Sanchez, the six pages of thorough and comprehensive references is further testimony); but she’s not really a great writer, so the opening chapter “Keithism: the 26 10 commandments of Keith Richards” comes off as having a tremendous amount of filler and empty exposition (I also wonder why she can’t just say “the 26 commandments” and has to say “the 26 Ten Commandments” – maybe she’s not such a great editor after all).

Another chapter “What Would Keith Do” presents regular, day-to-day challenges and conjures up a Keith-ish response, using lessons from his life. “Keith And Nitzsche” sets about drawing parallels between Keith-thought and the ideas and quotes of Nitzsche and other famour philosophers, going from the Greeks to Mae West (it’s bit of a stretch). “Prophetwear: Urban Guru Fashion & Style” is an interesting, albeit silly chapter discussing Keith’s armour and personal talismans. “Everyting you always wanted to know…” is a fact file on Keith, most of which I knew (interesting fact – cheese is the only thing that Keith won’t put into his body. Cheese!!!) Then there’s a Keith timeline (interesting fact – he recorded an instrumental called “Scarlet” with Jimmy Page and Ian Stewart in 1973) that is an interesting chronicle of arrests, riots and battles with Mick Jagger (who he calls Brenda).

The best part of the book? The six-page bonus section of insults to various figures such as Chuck Berry, Jean-Luc Godard (“He’s a Frenchman. We can’t help them.”), Mick Taylor, Bianca Jagger, Mick Jagger, Bill Wyman, Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull, the Bee Gees, modern rock stars ilk the Arctic Monkeys, the punks of the seventies, George Michael, Boy George, Oasis, David Bowie, Gloria Estefan and Miami Sound Machine (not sure why they warrant comment), Nirvana, Bob Geldolf and Life Aid, Bruce Springsteen, Robert Plant and John Bonham, Ben Stiller (not sure why he warrants comment), Eric Clapton, Ray Davies and Bob Dylan.

Incidentally, I’ve not read any of the “What Would Jesus Do” type works, so I don’t really have a basis of comparison on that level, but I’d say that as far as objective fun and readability goes, the book is so-so overall. But however he’s presented, at the end of the day, Keith is still infinitely fascinating. In my reviews, I’m typically wont to quote extensively from the books I discuss; I can’t do that here, otherwise I’d be reproducing half of Chapter Five (Keith quotes), so you’ll just have to get this book for yourself – despite my misgivings about the weakness of the other chapters (at one point the author brings in a mention of the Brady Bunch… I really can’t see how she could commit such as crime, as that old TV show was about as un-Keith as it gets – clearly she’s learned nothing from her subject), it’s worth the price of the book on the strength of Chapter Five alone.

LSTNT

The Rolling Stones, Let’s Spend The Night Together – A great DVD of 24 Stones classics, filmed in 1981, it was also one of Hal Ashby’s last films (the bearded wild man him self appears in a backstage scene halfway through the movie). The film starts off at a stadium show in the afternoon, filmed at the Sun Devil Stadium in Tempe, Arizona (13 December 1981), before later on moving into the Meadowlands Sports Complex in East Rutherford, New Jersey (filmed 5–6 November 1981). I came into this film with fairly low expectations, but it blew me away – in this video Mick is about the same age as I am now, and he’s in amazing shape; he pulls off a great show – the whole band does!

But not everything’s perfect, and the movie is a bit slow starting off – for starters, the opening scenes feel a bit odd, as the song is a bit jarringly studio-sounding, and there’s a non-live feel to it, like it’s been performed in a small empty room with some crowd noises mixed in. We get a nice behind-stage view of Charlie’s bald spot (what happened to it more recently – wig?). Great ariel shot, balloons rising. Mick’s kneepads look quite horrible. Ian Stewart on piano, only four years before he died. Bill Wyman in shell suit (and later in a pastel yellow suit – ewwww!!!). Random backstage shots edited in during some numbers. Mick snarling to Ron about time. Ron’s make-up people do their thing. During the afternoon gig, we get to see edited in goofy shots from the evening gig. Keith looks like a poor man’s Bruce Springsteen at times, he later comes out in these magnificent bare-chested ripped shirts – wow! Mick plays a Gibson SG on some songs (and also an Ovation), using it mostly as a prop rather than actually playing significant (and distinguishable) guitar parts; no big deal, though, he makes great use of it as a prop, and “(Just My Imagination) Running Away With Me” is really awesome!! Funny to see Bill shaking his head at Mick’s guitar antics (me too).

Weird editing – there’s at least one scene, involving a frisbee landing on the deck near Mick’s feet, reused in the film, and then at another point we see Mick being strapped into his Ovation guitar at stage right and in the next frame immediately he’s singing and playing (it’s at 35:00). What’s missing in between? During “Time Is On My Side” we get images of the young Stones, as well as strange political images, and the weird WTF Nazi costume dress stuff (as we see below). Strange! Mick dons an ugly shoulder-padded blazer, double yuck!! There’s another time capture montage during “Going To A Go-Go” when we see the Meadowlands stage being built, with its weird turntable so that the whole stage can rotate to face all four sides of the place through the course of the gig. Nice touch, great design, must have been a strange effect, though (they had wanted to do something similar at Woodstock, actually, it didn’t work out). Great version of “You Can’t Always Get What You Want”, with great sound – we even hear the pop of Mick removing his mic from the mic clip on his mic stand!! There’s another weird montage during “She’s So Cold”. Mick does a weird crotch wash at 59:30, and an awful lot of mincing throughout. Hmmm… at one point Keith takes a relatively fresh cig that he’s already smoking and throws it on the ground. “Let It Bleed” is full of gag reel shots of Bill and Charlie (the rhythm section), like an off-sync Rolling Stones gag reel. During “Honkey Tonk Women”, out come 100 honkey tonk women, including Gerry Hall!! Wow!!! Ron’s daughter in there too?? Bobby Keys finally shows up near the end, in “Brown Sugar”. During “Jumping Jack Flash” Mick moves around by cherry picker. During encore of “Satisfaction” they release a million balloons from the ceiling, they bounce around the stage, Ron blasts some of them with his mouth-held cigarette. Nice shots of Mick draped in US/UK flag, other endings and finales from various evenings are then also spliced in.

Altogether a really fantastic visual document – just love it!!

This showed up in a montage of the band. WTF??

WTF??? This shows up during the ‘Time Is On My Side’ montage

Here are some shots from the show – great images of Keith and Mick!!

Rock ‘n’ roll!

Rock ‘n’ roll!

Rock ‘n’ roll!

Hal Ashby??

Rock ‘n’ Roll!!

Rock ‘n’ Roll!!

IG

The Infinity Gauntlet – Yet another cosmic Jim Starlin tale of a near-god gaining omnipotence through some gadget (if it’s not the “cosmic cube”, then it’s the “infinity gauntlet”), battling the strongest beings in the universe (Galactus, the Celestials, the Silver Surfer, Thor, Cloak… wait – Cloak?!?), ultimately coming to some conclusion (and several other Gauntlet-sequels).

The tale starts off with Thanos and Mephisto hanging out on some galactic plane, Mephisto is kissing up to him. Great. Thanos has reached omnipotence and he’s still out to charm Death, and builds several tactics for flirting with his cold, cold beloved. There’s some crazy explanation that this is all at Death’s bidding, but that explanation is abandoned in the first chapter. Great. So all of the heroes in the universe unite against Thanos, but led by Doctor Strange, the Silver Surfer, and Warlock.

Wait, Warlock? Isn’t he trapped inside a soul gem, one of the six that form the Infinity Gauntlet itself? Well… no, not exactly; sensing a date with destiny, Warlock engineers that he, Pip and Gamora come into the picture at one point, being weirdly reborn from the reanimated corpses of some hick New Jersey lowlifes. Strange. But it’s nice to see the golden god returned to the land of the living, weird incubator and all. Doctor Doom shows up, but he doesn’t do much (ditto for Drax the Destroyer, who sort of swarms about before being instantly defeated, more than once); Quasar (whoever he is), does even less. Yes, it’s a very strange throw-everything-into-the-mix-and-see-what-works sort of approach. We even get to see Terraxis the Terrible, a sort of female Thanos, who doesn’t do much (except for beheading Iron Man) until she, too, is expended. She really only came into the picture to make Death jealous (as if that was ever going to happen). Great.

There are some strange plot twists – Mephisto convinces Thanos that he can win greater favor with Death by giving himself a handicap, before he realises how stupid that is and gets rid of Mephisto. He takes on all of the cosmit entities (the Living Tribunal, the useless Stranger, Eternity), and is put in his place by Warlock’s crazy hissy fit (“A man always seeking ultitmate power and losing it as soon as he attains it! why? Because deep in his soul he knows he is not worthy of it”). Great!

From his galactic fascist throne, Thanos plots the destruction of the universe (or at least several thousand sun systems), while also tormenting his granddaughter Nebula, who he’s turned into a putrid living corpse (not sure who Nebula is, but she’s later to develop a grand role in all of this). Eros (Starfox – Thanos’ brother) is also horribly tortured, but he’s seemingly less important – I know, it’s all crazy. Of course, there’s also the thing that Starlin does where he kills everybody off, only to bring them all back again (it was an alternate reality folded backwards into itself, then zapped with a ray that makes everything go back to the pre-destruction time – NOOOOO!!!!!). It’s great action, and the turn-about at the end is really great, as is the slieght-of-hand that stops it from going all wrong yet again. Nice plot twists, great storytelling, and fantastic and freaky misadventures. Love it!!

Warlock and the Silver Surfer chill out inside a soul gem and meld souls, Nebula attains cosmic power, all of the heroes get amnesia, and Thanos goes into a freaky, ironic semi-retirement. Awww…

While the plotting by Jim Starlin leaves much to be desired at times, the art by George Perez is flawless. Love it all!!

PSlsftew

Plainsunset, Songs For The Emotionally Wounded – A few years ago I got the first Plainsunset album, Runaway, which had been released in 1999, and enjoyed it as a collection of good, raw, fun pop punk, with groovy tunes like “Cindy Crawford” and “Runaway”. This, their second album, released in 2001 (and then re-issued with acoustic bonus songs in 2007) is a slick vehicle with some relatively weak “driving punk” exercises, followed up by un-exciting acoustic demos. It took a while for me to warm up to it, but as I listen to it more and more, I do find a bit more of the soul behind the production, gimmicks, and borrowed production values.

Opening song “We’re Not In” has all of the groovy sounds of a slick pop punk number (the drumming, while snazzy, seems to be a bit off), and it speeds up and becomes a pretty decent bopper with (mostly) the right chops, it sounds very familiar, having been informed by a steady diet of NOFX and Weezer. Second song “Immature” is a confessional love song, it keeps the pace high enough, and has some good technical moments, like the groovy guitar effects “solo”, but it’s also fairly lazy until the rock-out ending. “Priorities” may have some Fugazi-style screaming, but it’s also a pretty mild-mannered pop song, with some “I saw the way you looked at him and I kept it deep inside” lyrics that would make for a pretty cliched young-punks-out-of-love rock video. “Find A Way” has some groovy strumming and kind of soars nicely, the best song on the album so far, despite wishy-washy lyrics (“I said I’m sorry” x3). “Boy Band” sounds way a lot like Nirvana’s version of “Molly’s Lips”. This is a good thing, because it shows them finally getting crazy, “I will be in a boy band and get away with it, I’ll write a book about it”. Okay – nice.. nice-ish, at least. “Talk About It” has a thin-sounding bass-driven chorus that sounds quite wrong, and since it has nothing to distinguish it in the rest of the song (other than a nice guitar sound in the brief spells when there’s guitar), I’ll suppose that they just had bad advice on this one. “Love Songs For The Emotionally Wounded” is a guitar arpeggio-driven ballad that sounds like something from Bobby Vinton, or something. Yes, a song that takes itself seriously, even if I can’t… which then jumps into a song simply called “Plainsunset” which is very hard driving, melodious punk that really sounds great – the band saved the best for last.

In the next number, a 15-minute untitled “hidden” track, they have five minutes of silence, followed by a minute of found sounds edited together to sound like a stroll across the radio dial, then the song starts up – first off, it’s actually a live version of “Find A Way” (the crowd is right into it, which is cool), then a bit more radio dial fussing before it gets into a strong version of “Runaway”, from their first album. “Children (Acoustic)” is a pretty little song, and then “Find A Way” sounds pretty okay as a chilled out acoustic song.” The last time is “New Time. The Epilogue (Acoustic)”, is a pretty nice little song, with guitar, piano, some background singing. A cool demo for a chilled-out song.

TBAT

The Mighty Thor – Blood and Thunder – A long, very drawn out tale of Thor, insane, battling Sif, Beta Ray Bill and the Silver Surfer, intent on destroying Asgard and the universe. He doesn’t actually destroy anything, though, and in the meantime there are some zany adventures with trolls and all sorts of other insanity. In the end it’s all psychological, and when we learn that the reason for Thor’s insanity goes back to his attachment to Dr Donald Blake, we must wonder… why now, after so many years? The story actually picks up mid-point (meaning that it doesn’t bother to show Thor going off the deep end, just presents him as already crazy), and ends with a cliffhanger of sorts, so it’s not self-contained at all – a bit dissatisfying; there’s also a mish-mash of storylines given that the story spans a number of titles (Thor, The Warlock Chronicles, Warlock and the Infinity Watch, The Silver Surfer). The Silver Surfer is nearly useless in all this, despite his grand “I AM THE SILVER SURFER” statementizing; actually, there’s a lot of awful prose in the book:

Doctor Strange: I must apologise for your rude reception. Wong is out for he evening and I was lost in my studies. I’m afraid my house’s defenses perceived you as trespassers and acted accordingly. I imagine I must also apologize for the tea. Wong prides himself on his private blend, but I’ve never been able to work any kitchen magic myself. I hope it’s at least drinkable?
Silver Surfer: It’s fine, Stephen, truly. THough I am probably no judge.

Thor: Prepare to pay for your criminal effrontery, mortal!

Criminal effrontery? Sheesh!!!

In addition to its more familiar characters, there’s also a strange (and strangely ineffectual) black superhero called Maxam – not sure what he’s all about, and the ever-present Pip and Gamora. Nice to see them, even if they don’t do much. They’re there when Maxam gets into a weird bar brawl with racist cowboys (why?).

The story is drawn by a whole bunch of artists, most of whom are very good at drawing over-muscular superheroes blasting stuff, and are not-so-bad at drawing statuesque Kirbyesque Norse gods (in particular Odin, of course, and his outrageous shoulder pieces and amazing carved gauntlets). Drax the Destroyer, here a babbling idiot (although he does play a mean sax), is particularly muscle-bound (and, likewise, also totally ineffectual). Some of the panels look like block prints, many of them are childish and overly-boldly inked, or Crayola-coloured, infused with a coarse weirdness.

But it goes both ways too – Moondragon is looking mighty sexy for a bald lady, with that strange cleaved body suit of hers. Love it!

It’s hard to describe, but this is all really bizarre stuff!! Tom Grindberg, in the Warlock and the Infinity Watch title, does a great job drawing some weird, moody, Mike Mignola-like work, and also introducing Count Abyss, in his desolate hell with his strange one-eyed vixen Maya (they don’t have a part in this story, sadly, theirs probably picks up in later issues), strange god-trolls, and a great battle between Warlock and Thor; we don’t see too much of them. Thor is eventually captured, with the help of Thanos, Doctor Strange and the Infinity Watch, there’s some mucking about in Asgard, a battle royale on the rainbow bridge Bifrost, strange loving scenes between Beta Ray Bill and Sif; yes, Thanos fights it out with Thor, and Odin, and does well. All right – Thanos!! There are freaky adventures in Thor’s astral plane, which is revisited in the end with a grand finale father-son-temptress duke-em-out. Not really worth the read, though.

DOTNG

The Death Of The New Gods, by Jim Starlin – This interesting DC comic revisits the world of Jack Kirby’s New Gods, the powerful beings of New Genesis and Apokolips, who are engaged in eternal war. It begins, Watchmen-like, with the mystery of “who is killing the New Gods off one-by-one, and why?” The book also includes a bit of Jimmy Olson and the Newsboy Legion (a tribute, perhaps, since they were there at the start of the New Gods tales), and they’re thankfully not to be seen throughout the rest of the tale. Great. Mister Miracle (the bizzarely-named Scott Free) and his wife (!!!) Big Barda jaunting around beating up thugs. Ah, those happy times – Barda is early to fall (while Scott Free is checking his email), and Free becomes a brooding Starlin-esque maniac. Nice. Too bad he’s also kind of annoying in his sulkiness – the world of the New Gods is ending, Scott, stop being so self-involved! He even changes his circus colours to “dark hues”, which “more fit these times”. O-kaaaaaay…

Superman decides to hang around and solve the mystery of these murders, and witnesses the weird transformation of Mister Miracle, while also having a silly fight with Orion. O-kaaaaaay… There are nutty encounters at The Wall, we learn about Darkseid and Scott’s varying control of the anti-life equation (which turns Scott into some sort of goofy, corny sparkle-monster), the death of Mantis and Kalibak in battle with Superman and Orion, the end of the Forever People (boooo!!!! I like the Forever People!!!!!). There’s Odin, Zeus and Jupiter (?!?), a freaky battle between Scott Free (as Anti-Life Equation Man), Superman and Orion, and the spectacular end of Orion. Wow – silliness and majesty in the same few pages. There’s the Source, there’s Metron, and all sorts of freakiness as the New Gods die. Talk about a cleaning house exercise! I wonder if Jack Kirby would have enjoyed this – the New Gods were always fighting each other to the death, without anyone really dying, and there were always so many stories, it all just seemed limitless. But perhaps a decision was made somewhere that there was this extra franchise lying around, that DC really just had one franchise too many. Bye bye New Gods. It’s a sad way for them to go. At least we hadn’t gotten attached to the heroes in The Watchmen – would DC have done this to The Justice League, or Marvel to The Avengers?

Of course, they’re not really dead, and a few things are left unresolved – the Source, the New New Genesis/Apokalips, Darkseid himself, and the real fate of Orion. And… what about the rest of the New Gods? Are they gone forever… really gone forever?

The book is full of great art – two-page spreads of the blissful New Genesis life, broad scenes of the hellish world of Apokalips, full depictions of atom-smashing battles, . Some scenes take on a vague Jack Kirby-ness, especially when recounting the history of the New Gods, and then others are just plain crazy, messy, dimension-spanning destruction. There’s also the wild scenes that I won’t mention that show the ultimate re-creation of the world of the New Gods that’s actually quite cool.

Ultimately, while the book is fairly silly (when it isn’t simply dark and overly-gloomy), it has a few redeeming points, mostly at the big-picture level – it also has some pretty amazing artwork! Nice one.