A Clockwork Orange At first, I thought this was going to be a tough review to write. When I first started getting into Kubrick’s movies, I remember really liking A Clockwork Orange but some scenes at the beginning sort of tainted my opinion of the movie. Yep, I’m talking about that scene you’re thinking about, and I really couldn’t think about A Clockwork Orange for years without thinking specifically of that scene. Going through the AFI Top 100 list, I...
The Shawshank Redemption Hello there, dear reader and welcome to another edition of TV Party Tonight! We have several Warner Brothers movies in the chamber and I want to start with the movie I’m most excited to talk about which is the Shawshank Redemption. Why? Because. I’m about to go to bat for this movie and bat HARD. The reason why I think I need to do this is because this movie gets a bad rap, and it kind...
WHO: Mac McCaughan WHAT: The Sound of Yourself WHY: Being late to the game is the name of MY game. I only discovered Superchunk a few years ago and have been loving diving into their back catalog. The Sound of Yourself is frontman Mac McCaughan’s solo work and it serves as an exploration of styles, not sticking exclusively to the rocking sounds of Superchunk. While the songs here expertly vary from ambient, to ballads, to straight up rock songs, what...
A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the You’re Class, I’m Trash LP by The Monsters. Arguably the greatest compliment one can pay to a punk record is not to call it “good” or “great” or anything like that (because such terms can be – and have been – dismissed as a matter of opinion or as a matter of perception), but to simply exclaim, “You’ve gotta hear this” to as many potentially receptive ears as possible. Word tends...
Crossroadsby Jonathan Franzen I watch so much fiction (movies, TV shows), that I make up for it with the books I read. I didn’t read much last year, but when I did, I tried to stick to non-fiction, autobiographies, etc. But when Jonathan Franzen releases a book, that all comes to a stop. I’m what you would call a literary dum-dum. I judge books by their covers. I can’t recognize an elegant sentence if it was repeated for an entire...
WHO: Billy Bragg WHAT: The Million Things That Never Happened WHY: Billy Bragg has easily slid into the “easy listening” category over the past few albums, but what sets him apart is that his music still packs a powerful message. It’s quite an efficient and interesting way to get your point across. The Million Things That Never Happened is a pandemic album in that it deals with issues of divisiveness and conflict that became more prominent during that time. It’s...
A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the Voodoo Rhythm Records Label Compilation Vol. 5 LP. I confess that label compilations have never been my favorite thing. Not that I’m definitively against the form (I have heard some good comps over the years, and labels like Sub Pop, Killrockstars, Epitaph, Fat Wreck Chords and Pirates Press have a longstanding history of having produced some pretty great ones), it’s just that many of the compilations I’ve heard (and this includes...
A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the 3LPs in the Acid Box by Acid. There’s no question that bands have come up with some pretty unusual items to include with their albums and/or box sets in the twenty-first century, but Acid – the band formed by Jeff Hassay and Imaad Wasif (Wasif – the guitarist who filled in for James Iha in the Smashing Pumpkins in the Nineties, formed The New Folk Implosion with Lou Barlow and collaborated...
Hello, dear reader. We thought we were out of the woods with this whole pandemic thing, huh? Looks like we have to hunker down for a while longer. We’re prouder than ever this year to bring you our take on the best this year had to offer. We’d like to consider ourselves mostly a music site, but there were some undeniably great movies and TV shows as well. Lists like these are all over the internet, but remember that, as...
A deeper look at the grooves pressed into Black Label Society’s Doom Crew Inc. 2LP. Funny thing about the bands and/or projects launched by guitarists, they tend to focus heavily on guitar. It is not uncommon, for example, for songs on such albums to feature extended examinations of the guitar as the central thematic and sonic element of every composition; the instrument functions more as the spine of the songs than the drums or bass or piano do. One needn’t...