After 6 months of serious and strenuous evaluation, the BrumBrum Academy is proud to announce the Brummies for 2009. Previously: 1, 2
Music
Boom Shadow by Nino Moschella
2nd album from the guy who I anticipate new work from the most. It’s a near-guarantee that I’ll love every piece of music that he puts out.
Good City for Dreamers by General Elektriks
It’s been a while since their last release, but he picks up right where he left off 6 years ago.
Ray Guns Are Not Just the Future by The Bird & the Bee
Easily the closest I get to pop in my listening habits, but I think I’m a sucker for Greg Kurstin’s production.
Asterios Polyp by David Mazzucchelli
I remember the author from one of my favorite super-hero graphic novels back in ’88, but I’m glad to see that 20 years later he’s done his first self-written graphic novel.
Nothing
I didn’t realize it until I started this list, but what the hell has happened to me?! I apparently stopped reading this year. Asterios Polyp is the only book that I can remember reading the whole thing. I mean, I read a few things that were published before 2009 which don’t count, but still…
Also, somehow KCRW was able to coax Sly out of hiding for his first on-air interview in over a decade. Interesting bits in the interview: If You Want Me To Stay is a literal edict to fans that he’ll stick around as long as people want him around; and that he used to get into arguments with Charles Manson at Doris Day’s place around the time he recorded Que Sera Sera. Listen below:
Great six-page article on my favorite stand-up comedian. He single-handedly made a poor movie watchable. Good call on Todd Phillips’ part on letting Zach be Zach for this film, which is more than can be said for this piece of shit.
Someone posted this unreleased re-recording and also somehow came across a great cover that John Lennon did of I Want You To Want Me around 1980 that is a touch more minimal (w/ clarinet!):
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It’s just like Dougie Bendle in reverse! In ’86, his parents took him at the age of 14 months to see the Dalai Lama. He was enthroned as the reincarnation Lama Yeshe, the reincarnated lama of a spiritual Buddhist leader. Now he’s 18 and has escaped. Now wants to use his Kiss tickets and make out with Patty Matthews.
The music industry makes records louder and louder and have pushed beyond reason in an effort to stand out amongst the rest of the radio. This drives me nuts. Every time I listen to a Lily Allen record, I can’t stand the fact that the drums are distorted to make a buck; and I particularly can’t stand the fact that the people who perpetuate this problem know about it, but deny that it’s a problem in the first place:
“Somebody told me about [people complaining that the Guitar Hero version of Death Magnetic sounds better]. Listen, what are you going to do?… …The Internet gives everybody a voice, and the Internet has a tendency to give the complainers a louder voice. Listen, I can’t keep up with this shit.” – Lars Ulrich
Lebron James may end up having the greatest basketball season in the history of the NBA this season. And the funny thing is, he’s still got flaws in his game: His post-up game; Spotty outside shot; Stands still and dribbles too much. I’m betting that he’s going to end up being the best player to ever play in the NBA. Case in point:
Back in 1986, actor/director Beat Takeshi, a man who doesn’t like video games, wanted to show people how foolish they were for liking video games by making the most annoying video game of all time for the Nintendo. For example: A level where you must sit in front of the TV and hold the select button for 60 minutes. Apparently it’s coming to the Japanese Virtual Console on the 31st of March.
In a similar vein, Penn & Teller created a video game for the SegaCD in which you must drive across the Nevada desert in real-time for 8 hours in order to get “1 point”. There’s a torrent available for the brave.
After Stacey Lester posted his 12 favorite song covers on Facebook, I couldn’t help myself but to compile my own list. In no particular order:
Andrew Bird – Don’t Be Scared
Originally performed by the Handsome Family
Drastic reinterpretation. Don’t miss the reprise at the end. Love the 3 bar loop over 4.
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Groove Collective – Martha My Dear
Originally performed by the Beatles
One of the most abstract covers I’ve heard, but still great.
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Audrye Sessions – Waltz #2 (XO)
Originally performed by Elliott Smith
There have been lots of albums dedicated to covering Smith, but almost all tracks fall short. I think I got it bad for intimate reinterpretations.
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Estradasphere – Super Buck 2
Originally performed by Kōji Kondō
Ah, nastalgia. Also check out this take on the classic song.
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Toots & the Maytals – Louie Louie
Originally performed by Richard Berry
Ahh, so much more personality…
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Jose González – Heartbeats
Originally performed by the Knife
Taken from an elctropop song, this is further proof that I love a good intimate music.
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Jose Feliciano – Golden Lady
Originally performed by Stevie Wonder
Great take on an all-time classic with a samba twist.
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Phantom Planet & Mark Ronson – Just
Originally performed by Radiohead
I think I have a tendency to like Radiohead covers more than the originals. I know, blasphemy to some…
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Easy Star All Stars w/ Citizen Cope – Karma Police
Originally performed by Radiohead
All the songs on the Radiodread album are surprisingly good; you’d expect a reggae cover album to come out cheesy, but it works.
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Wynton Marsalis – Thelonious
Originally performed by Thelonious Monk
One of my favorite tracks by my favorite jazzman covered with a little kick
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Derrick Laro & Trinity – Don’t Stop Till You Get Enough
Originally performed by Michael Jackson
The falsetto isn’t as strong as MJ, but for some reason it makes me like it more.
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Steve Martin & Bernadette Peters – Tonight You Belong To Me
Originally performed by Gene Austin
Special moment from the greatest comedy of all time.
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Here are all the songs for you to download: Covers.zip
Around the age of 10, I started discovering music that I felt that was meant for me for the first time. The first band that I ever latched onto was Faith No More, but that quickly turned into a strong connection to the Red Hot Chili Peppers. My friend Kaley and I were drawn to their high-energy aggressiveness in songs like Stone Cold Bush and Get Up And Jump1. Being from a little town of 3,000 people limits one’s exposure at that age to what you can get on the MTV; the Chili Peppers was IT for us.
We would slowly branch out to discover music through them. I became a lifelong Fishbone fan and my first concert was Firehose, both bands mentioned in RHCP songs. We knew that George Clinton produced the RHCP album “Freaky Styley” and found out that Kaley’s dad had Funkadelic’s “Standing On The Verge of Getting It On” on vinyl. Kaley would turn the RPM to 45 and yell, “IT SOUNDS JUST LIKE THE PEPPERS!”
One late night around this time, I turned the channel to PBS and caught this:
I was blown away and I called Kaley the next day to tell him about what I saw. At the time, I wasn’t resourceful enough to be able to find out who they even were. That added to their intrigue, but I soon discovered that it was Sly and the Family Stone and I was an instant fan. I wanted to know as much as I could about the man and his group.
Strange thing is, for Sly Stone (who led the group) being such an interesting story – stealing the show at what may be the most legendary concert of all time to hitting rock bottom while being on the run from the FBI – only little bits of info has come out about him in the last 35 years.2 In 2007, Vanity Fair did a seven-page article regarding his sabbatical and potential emergence; This last September was the first complete biography3, “I Want To Take You Higher“, of the man and the band was released. The book reveals a little, but upon my reading felt incomplete. UPDATE: I just learned of another bio that came out in Feb. of ’08 that I haven’t yet read.
BUT, what I’ve discovered after reading Higher is that the Dutch are NUTS for the man. I found that in 1992, two Dutch film students set out to document their search for Sly in “Let Me Have It All” (their results are below); Another Dutch documentary about Sly, “Dance To The Music” just finished completion and was aired on Dutch television. AND, another biography written by two Dutch twins that has been in the works since 2002 is set to be released in early 2010.
Back in ’97, when the web was still in its infancy, a Sly and the Fam fan-site webmaster4 was flown to LA by Sly specifically to teach him how to browse the web on a computer. During this time, he was allowed to hear Sly’s 15-year backlog of unreleased material. Since hearing this account5, I’ve fantasized of Sly coming back and releasing a huge backlog of unheard material.
These days, Sly is slowly making more public appearances; if only a few over the course of the last three years. While I’m sure that it’ll be tough to reach the level of his heyday, I feel that if I just am able to catch a glimpse of the man, however satisfactory, it’ll feel like I’ve completed something; regardless of whether it has any actual merit or not.
PS: The only site that I’ve found that publishes Sly & the Fam news is this one, but they don’t have an RSS feed. I used Feed43 to scrape the news off of this page into this feed: Sly & the Fam News Feed
Let Me Have It All (1994, 48 min)
Preview for the just released Dance To The Music (2008, 2 min)
The Skin I’m In (2000, 60 min)
Because jumping is okay in a jumping kind of way (hey-hey).↩
Quite possibly by Sly’s own design. He apparently gets excited about the idea of being the Howard Hughes of the music world.↩
In ’98, there was a book by Joel Selvin called “Sly & the Family Stone: An Oral History”; in 2000, there was a documentary called “The Skin I’m In” that aired on Showtime. But these were relatively incomplete accounts compared to “I Want To Take You Highter.” For some reason, Jeff Kaliss, author of the latter book, decided to talk shit about these former projects; commenting on their negative tone about the subject matter, which seemed to give the impression to the reader that his book wouldn’t stoop to such lows. I’ve taken in all three, and I’d say that all of them regard the subject matter with much the same tone.↩
Once again, it’s time for the BrumBrum Awards honoring excellence in various media over the course of the last year:
Books
Bottomless Belly Button by Dash Shaw
I think this is the largest graphic novel I’ve ever read, coming in at 720 pages. I kinda imagined that this was a book by Noah Baumbach in which Noah was able to grow beyond the rut he got in with Margot at the Wedding.
Born Standing Up by Steve Martin
I grabbed this because I was particularly interested in Dane Cook’s parallels to Steve’s stand-up career (not really). And I’m a sucker for any tidbits I can find on the Jerk.
A Practical Guide To Racism by C. H. Dalton
The perfect book to keep by your side when you need to inflame the racial hatred that you’ve worked so hard to hide away.
The Way I See It by Raphael Saadiq
Not as innovative as his first release, but still is probably tied for the best album out of the recent Motown revival along with…
JIM by Jamie Lidell
The first guy I know about to do the whole modern Motown sound came out with a close to perfect album. Every track is solid.
Metropolis: The Case Suite by Janelle Monáe
I have a strong feeling after hearing this album that she’s going to be huge, with crossover appeal to a number of audiences. She’s supposed to release another EP in Q1 of ’09.
Bigger Stronger Faster by the Chris Bell
I went into watching this movie against steroids in competition to now not knowing what to think. Might not be as superbly told as Man On Wire for a documentary, but it had more of an impact on me.
Let The Right One In by Tomas Alfredson
I thought about this movie for a couple days after watching it. The two 12-year-olds in this do just as good of a job as most of this years nominees.
The Dark Knight by Christopher Nowlan
A little bit of an obvious choice, but that doesn’t stop it from being hella good.
Boom Shadow by Nino Moschella
Good City for Dreamers by General Elektriks
Ray Guns Are Not Just the Future by The Bird & the Bee
Star Trek by the J.J. Abrams
In The Loop by Armando Iannucci
The Informant! by Steven Soderbergh
Asterios Polyp by David Mazzucchelli
Nothing
