// Category Archive for: Retrovirus

Music Review: Various Artists, Mutazione: Italian Electronic & New Wave Underground 1980 – 1988

By Less Lee Moore

For those of us who still listen to much of the same post-punk music we listened to in the ’80s, discovering new bands from that time is as exciting as hearing those new bands who are obviously influenced by those same sounds. The recent release of Mutazione by Strut Records is cause for celebration. Mutazione is a fabulous, two-disc compilation with 26 tracks of Italian post-punk music from 1980 – 1988. The arrangement of the songs is superb, like an excellent mixtape made by a music-savvy friend. For that we can thank Alessio Natalizia of Walls, who curated the collection.

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Music Review: Various Artists, Loose Lips Might Sink Ships—Greasy Instrumental Magic From The Vault Of Lux And Ivy

By Melissa Bratcher

If you were to give Quentin Tarantino a copy of Loose Lips Might Sink Ships—Greasy Instrumental Magic From The Vault Of Lux And Ivy, he could probably pull a movie out of it, or the soundtrack to one at the very least. It’s a tidy, brief collection of pockets of unheralded instrumental awesome, and it may as well have been subtitled “All your guitar vs. sax needs are covered here.” Like it says on the tin, these are tracks culled from Lux Interior’s Purple Knife Show and they cover the gamut of early rock with twangy guitars, dirty sax, and surfy beats.

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Music Review: Serge Gainsbourg, Intoxicated Man 1958 – 1962

By Melissa Bratcher

Serge Gainsbourg was a provocateur. That cannot be disputed. He wrote songs about subjects that raised the eyebrows of the world (Incest? Check. Sodomy? Check. Cigarettes? Heaven forefend, but check) and courted notoriety. Still, the man was a poet and a great wit.

Intoxicated Man 1958-1962 is a tantalizing glimpse into the origins of Serge Gainsbourg. A vast collection (66 tracks), it illuminates his early career as a chanteur, singing story-driven songs. Full disclosure: I know only the most rudimentary French. I could pick out the occasional word I understood (like window and love— he sings quite a bit about windows), so I missed some of the nuances of lyrics. It was a challenge.

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Music Review: The Fun Boy Three, The Fun Boy Three

By Melissa Bratcher

The re-release of The Fun Boy Three’s eponymous debut album makes for fascinating, exhausting listening. A mix of musical styles—ska, rocksteady, jazz, dancehall—primitive percussion, sharp horns, and smart harmonies, it all seems so light and pleasant. Until you listen to the lyrics. Politically aware and a capsule of the fear and paranoia of Thatcher’s Britain in the early 1980s, these are not songs for a blithe singalong. Which is good.

Hatching fully formed from the forehead of The Specials after feeling creatively stifled, Terry Hall, Lynval Golding, and Neville Staples created something bold. These songs didn’t need to be arranged for horns and female vocalists (though on several tracks they are joined by Bananarama, to great effect) and the result is stripped down and innovative. The Fun Boy Three sounds immediate still.

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Music Review: Scared To Get Happy: A Story of Indie-Pop 1980 – 1989

By Stuart Myerburg

Scared To Get Happy takes on the daunting task of documenting the evolution of indie-pop in the 1980s. Given the diversity of styles that can fall under the indie-pop umbrella, a comprehensive study of all facets of the genre would be nearly impossible, especially in the span of five discs. But the compilation makes things more manageable by limiting its scope. Focusing exclusively on British artists and evoking a particular time and place in musical history, it endeavors to tell a story rather than be a definitive guide.

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Blu-Ray Review: The Burning (Collector’s Edition)

By Brad Henderson

There are a plethora of slashers from the ’80s, and a few stand out for numerous reasons. Some of these films have an iconic killer or a bizarre story line; some may have pretty sweet kills, or they may be so silly it’s funny. The Burning has none of these attributes, but it’s still awesome.

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Music Review: Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart, I Wonder What She’s Doing Tonite

By Melissa Bratcher

Both the liner notes and the back cover of I Wonder What She’s Doing Tonite posit that Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart’s association with the Monkees hurt Boyce & Hart’s legacy—that by having written for a “made-for-TV” pop band somehow diminishes their songwriting credibility. Every Monkees album, save for the soundtrack to Head, had at least one Boyce and Hart song on it. And most of those songs were perfect little pop diamonds, carefully crafted and catchy as anything.

I Wonder What She’s Doing Tonite is a collection of the best of Boyce & Hart. Full of complex pop songs with amazing production, these songs will make you wonder just why they aren’t revered like Goffin/King or Mann/Weil. It’s pure joy in your ears.

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Blu-Ray Review: The Fog: Collector’s Edition

By Brad Henderson

Many of you already know about a company called Shout! Factory. Some of you know that they now have a subgroup that specializes in horror, known as Scream Factory, which has been releasing films on their label since last year. Their horror catalog is growing, and hopefully will continue indefinitely. Their latest releases for the month of July are The Incredible Melting Man and The Fog, the latter a horror classic from the master of horror himself, John Carpenter.

The Fog is an original idea composed by Carpenter and Debra Hill, a simple story, yet pulled off with such finesse. Carpenter haunts you with his mesmerizing score and his beautiful, well-crafted shots.

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Music Review: The Three O’Clock, The Hidden World Revealed

By Cait Brennan

“You like pop, right?”

The grizzled, ancient record clerk—god, he had to be at least 28!—leaned over the counter.

“What, like Phil Collins?” I asked. Oh, it’s 1984 in Phoenix, by the way.

“God, no, that’s like—bubblegum or something,” he coughed, like he ate a big black bug. “Here,” he flips through the in-store play copies and pulls out a record with some weird pasty kids making kissy faces under a dilapidated pagoda. This crazy sugar-crash stomp comes storming out of the store speakers, swirling keys and guitars ringing in my head like the bells of Notre-Dame. And then the singer, with a voice like none other: “sitting complacent, are you there where I see you, with a cantaloupe girlfriend . . .” What?!

“They’re the Three O’Clock, man,” says he. “A little twee for my taste, but I kinda figured you’d dig it.”

The clerk got my $4.98 and I got Baroque Hoedown, the first EP by the Three O’Clock. It’s at least 20 years later before I even begin to suspect what a cantaloupe girlfriend might be, but I dive headlong into this “paisley underground” thing, rifling through record bins until I have all their stuff, which at that time included their album released as The Salvation Army, and their full-length LP, Sixteen Tambourines. They would go on to release great albums on IRS and Prince’s Paisley Park records, but for me, their stuff on the brilliant Lisa Fancher’s Frontier Records is still the greatest.

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Music Review: Big Star: Nothing Can Hurt Me Soundtrack

By Cait Brennan

There’s a part of you that gets wistful sometimes when you see some secret treasure you love finally get its day in the sun. You think back to the day, seven worlds ago, when a friend of a friend handed you a cassette tape of some band you never heard of called Big Star, on an obviously fake record label called PVC Records. The friend gives you a knowing look and you don’t know; you don’t know you have a universe in your hand, that this grubby little tape is going to change your life, it’s going to detonate some ecstatic explosion inside you, and you will never be that person ever again. And a thousand miles later you chance across another copy in the cutout bin of some strip-mall record shop and you buy it for 49 cents and you put it in the hands of someone you love who’s never heard it, and you look at their uncomprehending expression and think “that was me, once upon a time.” And if you’ve chosen wisely and the quantum entanglement is aligned just so, the chain reaction goes on.

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