yacht rock saturday: "magnet and steel" by walter egan

paraphrasin' wikipedia is like writin' the gambler

walter egan was a native new yorker who grew into a '70s soft rock cat. his stuff was produced by the fleetwood mac team. i got into "magnet and steel" through the boogie nights soundtrack. it really is one of those random, perfect, soft '70s pop landmarks. i would put it right up there with starland vocal band's "afternoon delight".

incidentally, boogie nights has an amazing, spot on soundtrack. that got me into the emotions. has there ever been a better song than this?:

Video Sunday: Massive Attack

In preparation for new Massive Attack stuff this year, I though I would post some promos of theirs that I haven't gotten around to. "Teardrop" is one of the most spine tingly dingly pop songs ever, and it has a striking video wherein a fetus sings Liz Frazer's unforgettable vocal. And, yeah, now it is the theme to "House":



"Inertia Creeps" is creepy. It is also one of the most awesome (and fairly prescient) interpolations of Aegean rhythms into beat pop.



Those two were from Mezzanine. This one, "Sly", is from Protection. Both rank among the best albums of the '90s in my brainbook.

That Driving Beat

Found a great vintage dance clip on youtube for this Willie Mitchell classic.

Do A Couple Of Things

Sometimes I get a James Pants video jones. My 2008 list had a great clip for "We're Through". This one is for "Do A Couple Of Things", and I just noticed how funny it is that the actual verse of the song negates the title by insisting on "One Thing" and then affirms the title by listing several "Things" to "Do". This is one of my favorite 3 or 4 tracks on Chrome Children, the Adult Swim/Stone's Throw collaboration.

New Lily Allen

This is the video for the new Lily Allen single "The Fear". New ablum drops in February. Not only is she cute 'n spunky (which, on the British scale, puts her in like the top second percentile of the local population), but her music is entertaining and nifty. I'm not doing too good a job of arguing her credibility, so just watch her.

Also, go ahead and download the mp3 at Fluxblog. You know you'll want to hear this again in the next day or two.

Lucy Pearl

The post on Raphael Saadiq a few days ago got me thinking about his under-discussed discography. Tony! Toni! Tone! is pretty well established, if still under-rated, in the pop canon, and people are starting to come around on his heretofore brilliant solo career. What may be receding into the popcult ether is Lucy Pearl, one of a relative few soul supergroups that only lasted for about a year. Under Saadiq's lead, Lucy Pearl's Voltron was completed with the production wizardry of Ali Shaheed Muhammed of A Tribe Called Quest and Dawn from En Vogue. Yes, Dawn has a last name (it's Robinson), but it has always just felt better to say "Dawn from En Vogue". Despite the superstar weight this group supported for almost a year, the music sounds remarkably casual and comfortable, a Saadiq specialty. Like most of the man's work, the Lucy Pearl stuff turns out to be immaculately constructed and arranged after the pure low-key pleasure is drained from it. Let's take a look at "Dance Tonight":

Run DMC To Be Inducted Into The Rock 'N Roll Hall Of Fame

damn straight.

New Telefon Tel Aviv Coming!

The boys have taken their time since their classic Map of What Is Effortless, but Palms Out Sounds is reporting that Telefon Tel Aviv will be finally dropping another full length on the twentieth. Check this post for the scoop on Immolate Yourself plus some tasty new mp3s. And now here's some old (brilliant) shit:

Saadiq: Soul's Jizm

Raphael Saadiq has been one of my favorite musicians for years, going back to his historical role as the leadman for Tony! Toni! Tone! With that family group, he kept the idea of a self-sufficient R&B band afloat for the New Jack era and capped it off with a classic, House of Music, that basically created the blueprint for neo-soul. Saadiq's solo release last year, The Way I See It, sounds like an evolution of that blueprint. Saadiq uses his modern production know-how and long honed songwriting genius to concoct a set that sounds vintage '66-'72. Its like his challenge to the Daptone/Ronson retro gems of the past few years. Definitely one of my favorite records last year. Here is a shallow Billboard interview:

Notorious

Getting pretty sick of this promo checking out vh1 documentaries on my daddy's TiVo. It raises some questions, though, as I'm not sure about the unknown lead. When somebody is playing a huge popcult icon I always thought sounded rather stupid, is he a great actor or a poor actor when I see the trailer for the biopic and I think he sounds rather stupid? Let's figure this out just from the ad, as I'm not planning on seeing this move in the theatre!

Romero v. Donovan: Season of the Witch

Sometimes people think the filmocanonography of George Romero stretches no further than his Dead cycle. Well, my friends, those people have not seen Knightriders, Martin, or The Crazies. They also haven't seen Romero's early '70s exploitation of modern witchcraft to explore the feminist awakening.

Sometimes people think the Donovan songbook stretches no further than "Mellow Yellow". Well, my friends, those people never checked out his theme song (first released in 1966) for George Romero's early '70s exploitation of modern witchcraft to explore the feminist awakening, Season of the Witch. Madman Mike picked up on the song independently, I think he might like the movie.

Immortal Like DISCO

Palms Out Sounds has recently unleashed a post mentioning the notorious 1979 Disco Demolition Night. Ironic that this proto-rockist display of violently drunk cultural fascists happened in Chicago, where Disco found new life as House a few years later. Take a look at the Palms Out post for a good argument for Disco's vitality in the present day and some nice downloads. I suppose I can understand being sick of disco in 1979, but I hope its clear by now a commercial cannibilization of an important movement cannot kill it. Nor can ETOH baseball fans.

Cinemension - The Impassioned Cinematic World Of Dan Schneider

The last writing solicitation for the No Ripcord film team yielded some amazing contributors. One of them has been Dan Schneider. I thought he was just an uncommonly insightful, impassioned, and prolific online film writer. I came to find out he is an established poet, something of an enfant terribles (bad boy) of the Twin Cities scene. What do you think, Chris Berry, is this guy cool? Cool or not, he's a very good writer, and he has given No Ripcord some of its best classic movie coverage. Now he's started his own blog, with his own personally selected team of contributors. Check out his comments on No Ripcord, and you will see that he is very demanding. So this movie blog should turn out well. Take a look at his Cinemension blog. Nice post just now on one of my favorite films this decade, David Gordon Green's All The Real Girls.

Forever Songs Pt. 1: Unfinished Sympathy

A few times I've commented on Moby's "Go" and how it always gets used to signify "okay, now ecstacy's going on". I am back in Willoughby now on my dad's TiVo, and inevitably I am once again watching vh1's great documentary The Drug Years. It is interesting because it is well researched and all about drugs in the 20th century, see? "Go" is a pretty great anthem/lazy-indicator-of-ecstasy-culture, but this time I noticed an even better song creeping into the soundtrack. Massive Attack's "Unfinished Sympathy", in addition to having an oddly classy pun for a title, has been used to the hilt in the media before, but mostly for mediocre erotica. Check out the softcore Sharon Stone vehicle Sliver for that. Let us not overlook how great a song "Unfinished Sympathy" is. 17-18 years now and it has not aged, only become more familiar. Massive Attack gets under-rated quite a bit because their innovations actually took and became commonplace. In 1991, though, it was still quite novel to hear a transcendent classical lost love ballad/anthem based around a classic hip-hop sample. This is the apex of Bob James cribs, despite being used by Run-DMC many years before and Ghostface many years later. And Shara Nelson on the vox! How can you beat that? What happened to her?

The Return of Brendan Kennedy

I didn't notice he was gone, but here's my good friend and Beicide stalwart (and inventor of that mucked up way to spell "Bayside") Brendan Kennedy flexing his stand-up muscles.

Gary Collins on Scorcese's After Hours

Gary Collins just contributed a nice review of Martin Scorcese's 1985 nightmare comedy After Hours on No Ripcord. Scorcese isn't usually thought of as a comedy director, but at this low point in his Hollywood career he was a master. After Hours and its forerunner, The King of Comedy, stand as two of the finest dark comedies of the '80s. Go ahead, Netflix them. You won't be sorry for long.



A slight sidenote, a historical factoid, what have you: everybody in the '80s really wanted Rosanna Arquette. This is a song Toto wrote about her:

Jim Gaffigan on Bottled Water

I just like this guy. Anybody know what he's up to?

Watchmen Should Keep A Closer Eye On Contracts

Are any of you looking as far forward as I am to Zach Snyder's filmovieflick adaptation of Alan Moore's The Watchmen? Well, you'd better sit on it for the time being. I need to see this movie. The biggest sources that still cover books have called this one of the best works of fiction in the 20th century, and if some schmuck doesn't movie-ize it I might be forced to read it. Given that it is a graphic novel, it may be easier for me than just a partially graphic novel or even a novel that tells its story just through words (a Dogme-style exercise that used to be popular). Still, give me a movie so I can have both hands free to drink, smoke, and eat popcorn. Unfortunately, 20th Century Fox still thinks they own the rights just because a judge affirmed it. For some reason, Warner Bros. went ahead and made the movie, which they still claim to be releasing in March. Big court starts on January 20th. I can understand why The Day The Clown Cried got lost, but not The Watchmen. Doesn't this look awesome in that Matrix/300 way that it will blow you away in the theatre on opening weekend, then be conspicuous with its problems the moment you see it on video?

How Did They Muck This One Up Pt. 1: Bride Wars

I do not want to see Bride Wars. I do want to see a witty, visual comic confrontation between the stars of Rachel Getting Married and Almost Famous (has Kate Hudson done anything else worthwhile, anyway?), but this looks like a dumb, pedestrian sitcom construct with the stars of The Princess Diaries and the female lead opposite Matthew McConaughey's awesome stoner pecs. I mean, take a look, this shit is just stupid:



Dammit, Hollywood! Take Kate Hudson, please. But it breaks my sensitive heart to see Anne Hathaway break out of your steel talons and put her beauty to great work, only to run back into your cancerous golden arms. Anne, I'm sure you weren't sure about Rachel Getting Married, and Bride Wars may have seemed like a reliable project to retain your commercial clout. But Rachel worked out, dear, and you're getting an Oscar nomination for it! Can we please stop this foolishness, and get you in line to star in Jonathan Demme's next movie? Or what about Gus Van Sant? I think you would like him, he did wonders for Nicole Kidman when we didn't take her so seriously. What about Spike Lee? Or David Gordon Green or Pedro Almovodar? Shouldn't you work with Terrence Malick while he's still sort of making movies? Jane Campion? Mary Herron? Are you really going to let Scarlett Johansen hold a monopoly on late period good Woody Allen movies? I bet you read, how about talking Julie Taymor into helming a strong story again? How about talking David Lynch into another real, 120-minute shot-on-film movie? You can do it, Anne Hathaway. You're my only hope.

A Cruel Game I Play With Myself And Always Lose

From time to time, I like to compare my time in Tallahassee, FL and Norfolk, VA and make them battle. Norfolk forged me and then hosted my heroic battle back into independent adulthood. Tally hosted my emoest character builders and my halycon days of self-destructive subsidized adulthood. It all gets emotionally mixed up and then I have to turn outside for comparison. Take Eugene Mirman. He's played both Norfolk and Tally, and yet the closest he's coming on his upcoming tour is DC. Yet he's playing Tallahassee, at the damn school, too. Come on, Norfolk, we can do better! What happened, Relative Boot kids, bring me Eugene Mirman! You don't even have to invite me to bomb beforehand, I just want to watch.