geekent's Buy Nothing Year

Source (purchased/given/borrowed/the wife's): purchased
Date Acquired: March 28, 2005
Original Review: ... well put together, however, there's not enough rhymes to make it a solid hip hop album, and it's not enough turntablism to make it a good dj album..."
Thoughts/Memories/Remembrances: Disappointment. I was in the market for a new DJ to get into, and equally enthused for more Francophone hip-hop, and some random tracks of Porier's I had heard were intriguing and inviting. But this didn't measure up to expectations.

Re-Review: Quite frankly it's a dull album. To its credit, it's over 4 years old at this point and still has modern qualities to its style and production, but it never did retain my interest after I bought it, and upon revisiting it still doesn't. As the album plays through its scant 33 minutes, I even find myself wondering if I hadn't just listened to one song or another already; it just blurs together into a disinteresting mash. It's certainly got beats, but none of those beats have any hooks. The guest rappers, Séba and Diverse, provide something to attract the listener's ear, but the backing loops and rhythms don't glue you to the track, and eventually the words themselves just fade into the atmospheric nature of this album.

Rating (keep/sell/undecided): Sell

Source (purchased/given/ borrowed/the wife's): purchased
Date Acquired: cd - November 27, 2005, dvd - May 14, 2006
Original Review: movie review - "It's not as winged or sharp a mocumentary as "A Mighty Wind" or "This Is Spinal Tap" but I don't think it intended to be. There is an affable candor to it that sweeps you in, and the character of Terrifico is almost larger than life, Elvis-esque in many ways, and though perhaps a little stiff as an actor, Murphy excels as a performer both vocally and physically... The movie comes off more as a doc, rather than mock."
cd - I was pleasantly surprised. And not just surprised, these songs are country with that alt pop edge which Murphy excels at. In serving the needs of the film Murphy, with director Michael Mabbot, have created a fascinating and genuine country album that isn't just kitschy mocumentary music.
Thoughts/Memories/ Remembrances: Okay, click on one of the reviews above and read how much I lurve me some Matt Murphy. From my first exposure to the Super Friendz (the Halifax-based pop band, not the cartoon) in high school through to the arrived-in-Toronto-just-as-I-did Flashing Lights, and then back again, and recently the ensemble City Field. He's a pop-music machine and one hell of a live performer. So to find him doing -gasp- country music and not just ironically but classically, and for a film which he stars, and is actually good in, no less (or that's what I recall anyway, in revisiting perhaps my cloud of adoration/apologizing will lift to see a different truth). The recent Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story is a less sincere, less earnest exploration of the world of country music, and the music, strong though it is, is still comedic in tone. I wanted to revisit Guy Terrifico to not just compare, but to see whether I can overcome my MM adoration and really see how I actually respond to it.

Re-Review: I honestly had some trepidation as I approached watching the film again. The CD wasn't nearly as hard to engage, since I genuinely like the bulk of the songs on the soundtrack and have listened to them often, but the film, having only watched it once prior was a bit more of an unknown. Was it actually entertaining or had the music I like so much skewed my opinion?

(streamed at Spinner ... thanks to Chromewaves for the link)



Media: web stream (now available on CD)

Release Date: January 15, 2008

My overwhelming affection for Stephin Merritt and his numerous side projects dissipated about two or three years ago with both "i" (under the Magnetic Fields banner) and "Showtunes" (under his own name) being disappointing diversions (I didn't even manage to locate his Lemony Snicket instrumental project, but also didn't put much effort into trying). I think Merritt is one of today's greatest lyricists and equally one of the most talented composers, but I'm almost loathe to say that he piqued at his epic "69 Love Songs" and he has been working in the shadows of that behemoth ever since.

As well, the conceptual meaning behind his side projects, like Gothic Archies and Future Bible Heroes have essentially been integrated into his Magnetic Fields gig, and somehow it's less interesting this way. I should be terribly disappointed that I can't buy Merritt's latest album, but previewing it now, I'm not.

**ITEM**
We're selling comics, dvds and cds soon, Aden and I are. I will have a spreadsheet available of all items and prices (o.b.o), and Graig'slist will be hitting Craigslist and GeeBay around the same time... maybe... if I figure this whole internets resale thing out.

**ITEM**
I had a hamburger and fries and a vodka-laced beverage last night...and it was good. Breaking my own self-imposed rules makes me such the rebel, no?

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Apparently my RSS feed is a bit tankered, as the new installation of Moveable Type with all it's weird Java interfacedness isn't working up to snuff. It's causing headaches as comments and trackbacks are locked out, pinging's right off, and yup, the "convert line breaks" doesn't work properly. So previous posts you're probably seeing as one grand Kerouac-ian lump-o-text, but now, with this very post and the power of html encoding, you should see paragraphs (oh, the novelty of it all).

**ITEM**
Now that I'm not buying new music, I'm still able to get my fix of sounds-I've-never-heard thanks to CBC Radio 3 live streams and podcasts, and Vancouver's newest DJ GAK (mp3s available on-site or you can tune in live Mondays 10:30 - Midnight eastern or 7:30 - 9 pacific on CITR).

**ITEM**
The Ricky Gervais-fuelled, HBO/BBC produced Extras is airing from square one on the Comedy Network, starting last night (yeah, I know it's been on DVD for ages). Rating: Uncomfortably hilarious. Because Extras is a full half hour show, it runs longer with commercials added in the mix. As such Comedy Network has to fill in about 20 minutes of time and has turned to Adult Swim's 12-minute monstrosity Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!. Rating: Bewildering. The show is not conventionally funny, but instead so beyond irreverent that you just have to stare in awe. Aden was stunned after a few minutes, unable to formulate words to describe it. The creators of the already peculiar Tom Goes To The Mayor un-cartoon have topped themselves, with the help once again of Mr. Show's Bob Odenkirk, and Walk Hard's John C. Reilly ("I'm not ready...").

**ITEM**
Aden received Battle of the Planets DVDs on loan from a co-worker, but they shall not be reviewed, because, quite frankly, there's no way in hell we're going to make it through watching all 16 episodes without either being drunk or wedging the corner edge of a table into our foreheads. The basic idea behind the show is it's a Japanese cartoon (or "anime" as all the kids call it) that was transported to America in the late 1970's, only Japan's cultural take on cartoons in that era were much different than the ol' USA's, and what was teenaged entertainment was made kid-friendly. Each episode was butchered to remove any real violence, any suggestion of death, or, quite frankly, logical storytelling. I wonder if any of the episodes retain even the basic plot of their Japanese counterpart? Instead, a little robot creature, 7-Zark-7 has been inserted into the cartoon, mainly through a voice over to either explain what's happening or to clarify to the kids that all the bad guys evacuated their exploded ship safely, were collected and are now behind bars. The Japanese Gatchaman tamed into Battle of the Planets by the same crew from the Superfriends (shared voice actors and similar musical accompaniment) is a bizarre experience; there's a curious similarity to how Space Ghost: Coast To Coast or Sealab: 2021 would re-use old animation for twisted new purposes, but here it's lacking creativity and moreover diminishing the original animation. Wikipedia details some of the big differences between the original and butchered remakes.

**ITEM**
All out of items for today.

Source (purchsed/given/borrowed/the wife's): purchased
Date Acquired: 2007
Original Review: n/a
Thoughts/Memories/ Remembrances: I bought this primarily because I enjoyed the Beastie Boys' Criterion Collection Video Anthology so much. I also bought it because it was fairly cheap in the used bin, as well I had been hearing much about it in Toronto's weekly freebies and it sounded interesting. I didn't get around to actually watching it until now.

Review: Gotta hand it to the Beastie Boys, they like to do things differently. They're constantly reinventing themselves sonicly, wavering between rap, punk, and funk-instrumental. As far as I know they're the only musicians to get the Criterion treatment for their music videos, and this film is a first for concert videos, almost entirely shot by fans. At the close of their 2004 "Challah At Your Boy" tour, MCA (Adam Yauch) conceived the idea to give almost 50 hi-8 hand camcorders to select attendees at the concert to get a completely different perspective of their live performance.

preamble: Whoo, burnout. It's been four weeks since the last one of these re-review tryptycs from my CD collection. Work has been excessively busy so I've only (barely) been keeping up on my Radio Free GAK podcast and fatigue and excessive gorging at home have resulted in low interest levels. Sporadic blogging aside, I'm going to tweak the Re-Review format (excising the "remembrances" part, primarily) to get things done quicker, such that I'm not having to do so much work.

Albums: Oukast - Speakerboxxx/The Love Below; Huevos Rancheros - Get Outta Dodge; Under The Influence mixed by DJ Spooky that subliminal kid
Date(s) Purchased: - 2003/2000/2001
Original Review (s): - Hey Ya commentary

Clint Mansell's soundtrack (with the Kronos Quartet) for the Darren Aronofsky film Requiem For A Dream is a very potent, intense and frightening work, and also quite beautiful at times. It's achieved a cult status which may at this point surpass the film itself, most likely because of the track Lux Aeterna, which has been coopted by more movie trailers that I can recall... but that's why there's wikipedia. You've no doubt heard it, recently even, on the Telus advert currently showing before most films or shortly afterwards in this trailer:


Babylon A.D.

Yes, of course it sounds familiar. Remember the trailer to such small little films like 300, I Am Legend, or Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers?

Of course, reusing music isn't anything new, I think it's just the rather excessive use of Mansell's wonderful composition that surprises me.

Stranger though is the repurposing of the theme from fanboy favourite The Adventures of Brisco County Jr. (written by Randy Edelman) by NBC for their Olympics broadcast (apparently they've been using it for various sporting events as far back as their 1996 MLB All-Star Game coverage).