Music Review: Preservation Hall Jazz Band, That’s It!

By Melissa Bratcher

An important fact that not everyone knows is this: If a band has a tuba player in it, it is generally worth going to see live. This goes double for the Preservation Hall Jazz Band. The Preservation Hall Jazz Band was founded in 1961, dedicated to promoting traditional New Orleans jazz. Their new album That’s It! is their first album of entirely original music in their entire 50-year history. Produced by My Morning Jacket’s Jim James and Preservation Hall’s Creative Director, Ben Jaffe, That’s It! is an album of future standards.

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Ten Horror Movies For Kids

By Paul Casey

Poltergeist, 1982

Age ratings—whether from state censorship or from voluntary censorship outfits like the MPAA—remain an irritation in my life. They are, at best, an imprecise attempt to prevent ideas and images from reaching individuals who are not able to process them in a reasonable fashion. I do not trust anyone who claims that they were better off in their early years by adhering to such restrictions. Those who do not step over to have a look at what they are told is sure to scar them for life are not only invariably dull people, but also those who end up a blubbering stain when confronted with ideas which do not conform to the guiding hand of the censor. Such people become greater sexual deviants and violent criminals and are a drain on the resources of our fine society.

This fear of cinematic behavior seems to forget how horrifying even an average, moderately resourced human being’s life can be. Genre movies, particularly those on the lower end of credibility, suffer worst. Of these lower genres, none suffer so badly as Horror. Horror, we’re told is the thing from which children should be kept from at all costs. Children and teenagers though can benefit greatly from an early entry into the genre, for it is in Horror that life’s most awkward and disturbing issues can be tackled in relative safety. For those things a person is likely to experience in life, or perhaps already has, Horror can help address them in a way which the safer genres cannot.

There are many Horror movies that children should watch that don’t fall under my selection criteria. Of course you should watch Psycho, the original Dawn of the Dead, and John Carpenter’s The Thing. To qualify for this list though, movies had to be oriented towards the younger viewer. This meant focusing on those films with young protagonists, movies that had something important to say about growing up or the parent/child relationship.

Additionally, any movie with harsher violence or sex had to have a helpful resolution that a younger person can use. Though there are plenty of happy endings here, few are easy or safe. There are also some decidedly unhappy endings. The hope is that these movies will serve as a primer for the adventurous child or young teenager. I also hope that the movies are of benefit in a way that the parade of IT WILL BE ALRIGHT REALLY mush cannot offer. There are horrible things waiting for you. It is worth preparing for them.
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Assemblog: July 5, 2013

Big Bad Wolves

New this week on Popshifter: Ann celebrated Pride Month with a review of Hirsute Pursuit’s Tighten That Muscle Ring; Julie thinks that Dave Davies’s I Will Be Me is mostly excellent; Cait takes umbrage to the word “twee” in her rapturous review of The Three O’Clock rarities compilation The Hidden World Revealed; Lisa has some offbeat suggestions for Fourth of July movies; Jeff time travels with Tesla’s Real to Reel; I recommend Big Star: Nothing Can Hurt Me for fans and not-yet-fans; Paul gifts us with a beautiful, touching article on the significance of music; and an anonymous contributor has some stern words for convention (non)attendees.

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Unconditional Musical Love

By Paul Casey

Enniscrone Beach

We traveled a lot in the car. Ireland is a small country but we made the most of it. It was common to be inside of our diminutive Toyota Starlet for five hours at a go. Trips back and forth to Enniscrone, Sligo, were an annual event. Once we were there, we would travel to the Céide Fields or up towards Donegal on long road trips. Being the youngest member of the family, I would call the backseat home. My brother and mother up front, talking about some sight or other, I would be happy to occupy myself with Calvin & Hobbes or The Famous Five. A little bit later it was Star Wars.

Usually the car was in immediate need of repair, or all-out replacement. Fear of breakdown was high, and there were more than a few times when we had to get out and push. When it ran, though, and the window could be pulled down—only halfway in the backseat—things would get a feel to them. My father was there on the first trip, and maybe the second. His presence was an aberration. He was not meant for this place. This was a three-person operation.

My uncle was a secretive sort, at least from the lowdown perspective of a six-year-old. He lived in the garage of my grandmother’s house and hoarded all kinds of wonderful things. Seinfeld came from his collection, as did anything to do with The Beatles. We arranged a cunning switch one year, where we managed to copy all of the White Album and the entire Anthology onto 90-minute cassette tapes. That summer was full of good sound. Skewed takes on well-known songs would sit beside the genuine articles. I got used to Paul McCartney asking, “Is it rolling?”

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On Money and Manners in Geek Culture

By Anonymous

With geek culture becoming more and more prominent, there is a lot of discussion, both online and IRL, about convention etiquette. The topics range from how to act around celebrity guests, to when to take pictures, to how to respond to sexual harassment at conventions. But I’m here to tell you that conventions you aren’t even attending may deserve more respect than you’re giving them.

Because, you see, I don’t care whether you can afford to go to my convention.

I should explain. The convention that I work on gives 100 percent of its proceeds to charity, unlike most fan-based conventions and corporate conventions, which may include philanthropy but which operate mainly as businesses. We may not have world-famous celebrity guests, but food and lodging are included in the ticket price (with varying rates for day trips and one-night stays, of course). And yet, despite our charitable purpose, it feels like we can’t even mention our event in public without someone complaining about how expensive it is.

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Movie Review: Big Star: Nothing Can Hurt Me

By Less Lee Moore

When I first heard Big Star, I wondered “Why weren’t these guys huge?” like all their other fans have been wondering for the last 40-plus years. Big Star: Nothing Can Hurt Me answers the why, but their lack of mainstream success still boggles the mind. When Brian Wilson sang “I Just Wasn’t Made For These Times,” he could have easily been singing about Big Star.

The story of Big Star is full of both good things—talent, camaraderie, ambition—and terrible ones—bad luck, personal demons, and death. This mixture of the bitter and the sweet is a good metaphor for Big Star’s music, which fuses the two in an unforgettable aural and emotional experience. This is what drew fans and critics to the band and what continues to characterize their legacy.

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Waxing Nostalgic Cover Albums: Tesla, Real to Reel

By Jeffery X Martin

Imagine going back in time to 1975. You’re at a rock and roll club on the biker side of town. Your dad is young; his polyester shirt is unbuttoned down to his navel. His gold chains shine like treasure amidst the jungle rope vines of chest hair he proudly displays. His straw cowboy hat encases his skull like a crown. He pounds down a Schaefer in this bar, filled with Tareyton smokers who would rather fight than switch. There’s an underlying aroma of the sweet leaf. You sit down at his table. He leans in and speaks to you.

“The band’s about to start, kid,” he says. “I’ve been into these guys for a while.” He raises his hand and almost immediately, a blond in a halter top is pouring a beer into your proper Pilsner glass. Feedback begins to bleed from the slightly raised stage. The musicians begin to tune their instruments. The drummer taps his snare cautiously and pounds out a quick bass rhythm.

“I bet they start with some Deep Purple,” your dad says. He takes a surreptitious bump of coke and waits for the band to get going.

The singer approaches the microphone. “Good evening, everyone,” he says, “we’re Tesla, and this is ‘Space Truckin’.'” Your dad nods knowingly. Tesla? What the hell is Tesla doing here?

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Ten Films For The Fourth Of July

By Lisa Anderson

True Colors, 1991

On Thursday, the United States observes its Independence Day. Many Americans will celebrate with cookouts, fireworks, or parades, and many of them will also kick back with a favorite, seasonably appropriate movie. The movies one usually thinks of on the Fourth of July are generally war movies or historical films, like Saving Private Ryan or Patriot, and those are perfectly valid options. However, I thought I’d suggest a few more offbeat choices for films to watch while escaping the heat on the Fourth.

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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: Dave Davies, I Will Be Me

By Julie Finley

As a “lifer” in regards to being a Kinks fan, I felt that I should definitely review my childhood idol’s newest release, that idol being Dave Davies. I won’t give a history lesson on The Kinks (as there are enough online sources out there that could clue you in), but I do need to note that Dave’s relationship to his brother Ray has been well-documented as being unrestrained, to say the least. It is no mystery that Ray prefers that Dave live in his shadow, and that the competitive dysfunction between the two of them is one of the things that has led to both having a prolific output of work throughout both of their lives (even outside of The Kinks).

Quite honestly, though, Dave’s career is still often overlooked despite the fact he has been even more fruitful in his endeavors regarding the creation of new material. Ray hasn’t had that much solo material since The Kinks stopped recording in the mid-’90s, but the solo work he has put out is mostly rehashing his old catalogue with a few albums of brand new content. Dave has actually put out more original material than Ray since the ’90s! Yes, some of that has been re-releasing long-lost music that was never released as The Kinks, but the bulk of his output has been original material.

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