From: owner-loud-fans-digest@smoe.org (loud-fans-digest) To: loud-fans-digest@smoe.org Subject: loud-fans-digest V7 #304 Reply-To: loud-fans@smoe.org Sender: owner-loud-fans-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-loud-fans-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk loud-fans-digest Wednesday, January 9 2008 Volume 07 : Number 304 Today's Subjects: ----------------- [loud-fans] Dutch Holly/top 10 [Scout82667@aol.com] Re: [loud-fans] Meanwhile, over at the Multiplex... [zoom@muppetlabs.com] Re: [loud-fans] Meanwhile, over at the Multiplex... ["glenn mcdonald" ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 8 Jan 2008 18:32:45 EST From: Scout82667@aol.com Subject: [loud-fans] Dutch Holly/top 10 I had a friend invite on MySpace, and this is one of the best Coupland-defined "musical hairsplitting(s)" I've ever come across--on her page, and thought I'd pass it along. Also, it's not like anyone is burning with anticipation to know what my top ten are for the year, so I'm not doing one this year--my teaching job has demanded so much of my former music time (and now I'm taking a sign language class to communicate with deaf Special Ed. kids) that I don't think I could give an honest assessment, even though I've bought a significant amount of CDs--I don't have the time to listen to them like I once did. I probably spent more time with Pylon's GYRATE plus and The Modern Lovers and Lilac Time reissues than anything else this year, and that was on my Christmas vacation. Tremble in fear, the fogeyman cometh, - --Mark Skidding backwards into the 80's on a slick of garage rock and neo-punk and busting through a wall of Marshall Stacks with Pete Townsend from the Who smashing his guitar over Dave Grohl's head while Frank Black shaves his head in your bathroom mirror. Jane Wiedlin from the Go Gos sees the whole thing and calls Nina Hagen for help, but Kim Deal pulls up in Kate Bush's limo just in the nick of time and her and Kim Gordon from Sonic Youth take the straight razor from Frank Black and cut a band from a new cloth....Dutch Holly **************Start the year off right. Easy ways to stay in shape. http://body.aol.com/fitness/winter-exercise?NCID=aolcmp00300000002489 ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 8 Jan 2008 17:59:48 -0800 (PST) From: zoom@muppetlabs.com Subject: Re: [loud-fans] Meanwhile, over at the Multiplex... > Some people love it, some hate it. The ending is rather controversial, to > put it mildly. For me, it's near the top, though I'd probably take THE > RIVER to a desert island if I had to choose. GOODBYE DRAGON INN for me, although someday I'd like to see DRAGON INN, just to find out what I'm missing. > I'm pretty sure that the Voice poll was just for films that had a one-week > theatrical premiere in NYC in 2007. So NOTES would have been 2006 in NYC, > and THE BET COLLECTOR and BEFORE WE FALL haven't yet gotten this kind of > distribution. (The Jeturian may be eligible in 2008, as it's having a run > at MOMA this month; the Lee had only two screenings at MOMA late in 2007.) > ZOO, though, was eligible for the Voice poll. - Dan Possible, although the fine print reads as follows: The Ground Rules We asked each critic to cite 10 films, three male lead performances, three female lead performances, three male supporting performances, three female supporting performances, 10 films without distributors, and one choice each for documentary, first feature, and worst. Ranked ballots were weighted as follows: For film: 1 (10 points), 2 (9), 3 (8), 4 (7), 5 (6), 6 (5), 7 (4), 8 (3), 9 (2), 10 (1). For performance: 1 (3), 2 (2), 3 (1). Unranked films were awarded 5.5 points each, unranked performances two points. Ties were verboten. Outside of the undistributed category, we asked voters to focus on films that opened for U.S. theatrical engagements in 2007. ...so it apparently comes down to what you consider a "theatrical engagement." And here's Metacritic's list: http://www.metacritic.com/film/awards/ Whoa, talk about a one-two punch! Andy "Fascinating album. The Indian tambura, the Middle Eastern oud, and upright harp, all blended together amazingly..." "Nah. Nah, you know me. I just can't listen to any of that fusion shit." - --overheard at my place recently regarding Alice Coltrane's Journey JOURNEY IN SATCHIDANANDA (in fairness, the tambura and the oud never appear together) ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 8 Jan 2008 22:40:33 -0500 From: "glenn mcdonald" Subject: Re: [loud-fans] Meanwhile, over at the Multiplex... I have a baby now, and thus am taking a couple years off from going to movie theaters, but I can contribute a top 5, at least: 1. Pan's Labyrinth 2. Fay Grim 3. Children of Men 4. The Host 5. The Golden Compass I'm pretty sure those first two would be on the list even if I'd seen more movies... ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 8 Jan 2008 23:06:52 -0500 From: "Brian Block" Subject: [loud-fans] music top 10 (annotated) My 2007 music top-ten, annotated and mostly unranked: Bodies of Water, Ears Will Pop and Eyes Will Blink Cat Empire, Two Shoes Cloud Cult, the Meaning of 8 Decomposure, Vertical Lines A Maria McKee, Late December Modest Mouse, We were Dead before the Ship Even Sank Rasputina, Oh Perilous World Sage Francis, Human the Death Dance Bryan Scary, the Shredding Tears Serj Tankian, Elect the Dead Unranked with one exception: the obvious #1, to me, was Rasputina's Oh Perilous World. I have all five Rasputina albums, but until this year they'd mostly struck me as an interesting gimmick band -- the gimmick being that two women with cellos, and a male drummer/sound-mangler, dress in stylish wrong-century clothes and sing songs about strange, often morbid or gender-twisted historical events. Melora Creager's an extremely expressive and tuneful singer, and I love cellos, so I'd stuck around for the increasingly tossed-off third and fourth albums (their second, How We Quit the Forest, being a weirdly-passionate minor classic). But for this album, Melora discovered the interesting messed-up-ness of the 21st century, and the album builds itself around an empathetic re-imagining of the Mutiny on the Bounty story for the modern 3rd world -- a project which fascinates her/them enough that they enhance their songs with their sharpest compositions ever. I think it's brilliant. The others: Bodies of Water, centered on a husband-wife team, play friendly-optimistic mass-vocal pop songs with theatrical ambition; instrumentation can be fancy, surging, and orchestrated at times, but is secondary to the vocals. Somewhat like a smarter and more in-tune Polyphonic Spree, or a young Andrew Lloyd-Webber lounging around making music at home with his family, or Mates of State with more instrumental and vocal talent. Cat Empire are what Sublime or the Mighty Mighty Bosstones might have been if I'd liked those bands (and their singers) better. Party music -- ska-pop, updated swing, music hall -- unabashed and catchy and with lyrics just okay enough that I don't mind singing along. Cloud Cult, another band that dramatically improved for its 5th album this year, has become a surging, glossy, thoroughly radio-worthy indie rock band, but may be too joyous, and welcoming for the role. Craig Minowa is a more in-tune version -- and probably smarter version, frankly -- of the Flaming Lips' Wayne Coyne, if that band had put its recent arrangement ambition in service of its earlier more guitar-heavy Priest-Driven Ambulance style. Decomposure's Vertical Lines A is the lyrically and sonically densest album I've heard in years, and ten listens in, I've only started unpacking it. At best, it may be insightful and brilliant and vastly original, but I can't tell yet. At worst, it has some excellent melodies and harmonies, and sounds like the work of a guy who spent a lot of time listening to Brian Wilson's Smile, Nine Inch Nails' the Downward Spiral, El-P's Fantastic Damage, and various Aphex Twin records, and all the while thought "Geez, that's easy; I could do that". And at worst, there's something wonderful about that kind of nerve, especially since he doesn't seem to be wrong. Maria McKee, who first caught my attention with Life is Sweet (which glenn treated as the ex-country-singer's version of a Hole album), now sounds like an alt-country singer with a Hole album in her resume trying to do Andrew Lloyd-Webber. Fine, so I love Jesus Christ Superstar and Cats; if you have a problem with that, downgrade my recommendation accordingly. Modest Mouse continue to be a talented, dynamic indie-rock band, and Isaac Brock continues to be a smart idealist concealing his idealism behind self-loathing and much-too-keen observational skills. I've loved their last three albums in a row by now; this is the most conventional of the three, but they're never going to sound wel-adjusted. Sage Francis's a Healthy Distrust - my favorite album of 2005 - may be my favorite political record ever, its anger fueled by detail, precision, wordplay, and the agile rapper's ever-present self-awareness and willingness to distrust (though not first or foremost) his own motives. Plus it's an extremely composed, musical album as hip-hop goes -- friends of mine more resistant to hip-hop than I were won over by it. His new album is more personal and thus less lyrically focused, but it's still good music, his skill with words is still there, and I enjoy the heck out of listening to him think out loud. Bryan Scary's the Shredding Tears sounds to me like if Paul McCartney and Queen, circa 1975, had collaborated for a lark on a pseudo-goth album. And it had been recently re-mastered with skill, of course. Serj Tankian, the usual lead singer of System of a Down, makes (essentially) a System of a Down album with a new backing band, and it's near the level of their best. If you don't know what that means, it means heavy metal as an exuberant offspring of Armenian folk music, passionate and ridiculous and reveling in both. http://toolbar.Care2.com Make your computer carbon-neutral (free). http://www.Care2.com Green Living, Human Rights and more - 7 million members! ------------------------------ End of loud-fans-digest V7 #304 *******************************