By Less Lee Moore
As a fan of the 1973 made-for-TV movie Don’t Be Afraid Of The Dark, the news of the upcoming remake made me skeptical.
Don’t Be Afraid Of The Dark was one of those movies from my childhood that could scare me just thinking about it. I can’t even remember if I actually ever saw it, but like I said a few years back, I always remembered it as “the movie with the things in the fireplace.”
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By Matt Keeley
GOLD: Before Woodstock, Beyond Reality is a 40-year-old lost film starring a comedy hero, Del Close. Like another film by a comedy hero, Savages (a Merchant-Ivory film written by Michael O’Donoghue), it’s a noble failure.
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By Matt Demers
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By Christian Lipski
When there’s a re-release of anything to be reviewed, the question is always there: what am I actually reviewing? Am I revisiting the material, or the re-packaging?
I have a feeling that what I should focus on are the new features, in this case the liner notes, the mastering, and the bonus tracks. But before that I will say there’s a reason Don’t Say No was chosen for reissue, and that’s because the songs are loud and ballsy but also sassy. I didn’t pick up the album for myself for many years after its release in 1981, but by that time I already knew most of the songs by heart. Like Foreigner 4 or Journey’s Escape, it permeated the airwaves that year.
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By Danny R. Phillips
It would’ve been easy to make a documentary about The Rolling Stones’ golden age (Let It Bleed, Sticky Fingers, and Exile on Main Street) completely flattering and slanted. That is not what the makers of this DVD did.
They recognize glaring mistakes (the two or three albums past Exile) as well as acknowledge The Stones’ experimentation and expansion into country, due in no small part to the presence of guitarist Mick Taylor (who had just left The Bluesbreakers) and Gram Parsons (The Byrds and The Flying Burrito Brothers) and his own fast friendship with Keith Richards as both drug buddy and musical touchstone.
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By Emily C.
I guess this story begins with Kraftwerk, where a lot of musical stories begin—and end. I’ve been obsessed with Kraftwerk since I was a kid—I can remember having the Bavarian picnic scene from Trans-Europa Express on my wall for years—but I hadn’t heard their “Krautrock” efforts until quite recently (well, in the last decade). After getting into the first two Kraftwerk records, I became curious about Neu!, who actually began as an offshoot of Kraftwerk circa 1971.
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By Noreen Sobczyk
Did you ever notice that Johnette Napolitano rarely, if ever, gets mentioned in those Top Women of Rock lists? Even if Concrete Blonde never had a good song on any album besides Bloodletting (which, rest assured they did), this album alone is enough to put her in the Top 20. Napolitano has the swagger, songwriting talent, and the vocal ability to assure her space as, perhaps not the Queen of Rock, but as a high-ranking member of the royal court.
On Bloodletting, Napolitano shows her vulnerability, desires, and strengths in spades on classic songs like the dysfunctional love song “Joey” (the band’s biggest commercial success); “Tomorrow Wendy” (a cover of the heartbreaking Andy Prieboy song about a friend dying from AIDS); and “Bloodletting (The Vampire Song);” one of the best vampire songs ever written, arguably second only to Bauhaus’ “Bela Lugosi’s Dead.”
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By Christian Lipski
Photos by Deborah Lipski
Praga Khan’s girlfriend
tempts the audience
Dante’s, Portland OR
July 14, 2010
Touring together for the first time in 15 years, Lords of Acid and My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult are the main events on the Sextreme Ball 2010 tour, which began in Seattle on July 13. Both bands were part of the techno music movement of the late ’80s/early ’90s, and judging from the first two sold-out shows, both are still popular among the electronica crowd.
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By J Howell
Oh, to revisit the heady days of 1989. . . as a young person, two things (at different times, and both seemed to recur often) were the focus of my adolescent adulation. These were head and shoulders above everything else (and made a killing from my obsessive need for more and more merchandise): Star Wars and The Cure.
Before I give myself an opportunity to digress on the efficacy of the Lucas Merchandising Machine, let’s talk about The Cure. Rhino has just released a curated-by-Robert-himself reissue of Disintegration in three discs: the first, a remaster of the record; the second, a collection of rarities; and the third, an expanded version of Entreat, a live record from the “Prayer” tour following Disintegration that was originally released in 1990.
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By Emily C.
Confession: I am a massive fan of the early output of the Human League (Reproduction and Travelogue era) and Heaven 17. I still have my vinyl copies of Penthouse and Pavement, The Luxury Gap, and How Men Are at my disposal. If anyone needs some surprisingly undated anti-capitalistic-fat-cat synthesizer masterpieces, please locate these albums right now.
At any rate, the small contingent of Heaven 17 fans which still linger to this day are well aware that the group still exists with two of its iconic three-man lineup—Glenn Gregory, the Rutger Hauer-esque, smooth-as-hell lead singer; and Martyn Ware, the mustachioed evil synth genius who had an ax to grind with one Phil Oakey (you know, the asymmetrically-haired one from the Human League).
But my question is, what the hell ever happened to my personal favorite member of H17, Ian Craig Marsh?
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