The Horrors Of The Black Museum: Q&A With Paul Corupe And Andrea Subissati

By Less Lee Moore

If you were at FanExpo Canada on Saturday, August 25 this year, you were lucky. Lucky to be alive because the Saturday of the now four-day event is by far the busiest, the most crowded, and the most likely to cause severe claustrophobia, and/or exhaustion.

Besides that, however, Saturday featured the introduction of The Black Museum, a “limited engagement of horror lectures and screenings” in Toronto. The series is named after the collection of criminal memorabilia that Scotland Yard kept at their headquarters in London, England, beginning at the end of the 19th Century.

Although I was unable to attend The Black Museum panels at FanExpo, I did recently get the chance to chat with the two curators, Andrea “Lady Hellbat” Subissati and Paul Corupe to find out more about their macabre multimedia endeavor.

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TV Is Dead, Long Live TV: September 21, 2012

By Elizabeth Keathley

Here is our first installment of “TV Is Dead, Long Live TV,” an ongoing series on the life and death of linear television.

What is “linear television” you ask? Read on . . .

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The Art Of Frankenweenie: From FanExpo to Fantastic Fest

By Less Lee Moore

At this year’s FanExpo Canada, I was fortunate enough to take a trip through the mind of Tim Burton. No, I wasn’t shrunk down like Fantastic Voyage or anything. The kind folks at FanExpo worked with Disney and Mr. Burton to present an exhibit of the artwork for the movie. Since Frankenweenie will premiere at Austin’s Fantastic Fest tonight (and will open in wide release October 5), I thought it was a good time to share these terrific photos with you.

First some history: Frankenweenie was a 29-minute short Burton made in 1984. The story is about a kid named Victor Frankenstein who decides to bring his beloved dog Sparky back to life after poor Sparky is hit and killed by a car.

Like the original, the full-length Frankenweenie is in black and white, but the new version is much longer and will also be released in 3D.

These photos do not do the exhibit justice. The detail was amazing and I literally wanted to play with everything there, even the fake Tim Burton desk.

Take a look at these images and don’t forget to check out the movie in October!

Coal Porters, Find The One

By Cait Brennan

Sid Griffin is one of the great, unheralded musicians of the last 30 years.

How unheralded? Wikipedia, that self-styled arbiter of “notability,” doesn’t even have a page for him. If it did, it would do well to start by calling him one of the most important founding fathers of alternative country.

In the early ’80s, Griffin’s outfit the Long Ryders was a good decade ahead of the alt-country movement. Combining Gram Parsons-style Cosmic American Music with hard-edged, punk-influenced rock, Griffin, with guitarist Stephen McCarthy, drummer Greg Sowders, and a succession of bass players (notably Tom Stevens) brought a much-needed boot-kick in the pants to L.A.’s Paisley Underground scene, and influenced a generation of bands that followed.

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Bob Mould, Silver Age

By Danny R. Phillips

I feel as though I should begin this review with a disclaimer: I believe Bob Mould to be a true master of his craft. From his days with the groundbreaking group Husker Du to his time piloting the power pop band Sugar, Mould has made few musical missteps (I choose to forget the mess that was his electronic music phase). His latest album, Silver Age, is an ode to the genre he helped create, a flawless mix of Husker Du noise/aggression and Sugar’s bouncy goodness.

Some of the music literati have said that Silver Age is the return of Mould to the world of musical relevance. I say it is just an excellent album that proves that he’s never gone away or gotten rusty with age. Listen to several bands over the years, most notably Foo Fighters, and you will hear Bob’s omnipresence. For the past thirty years he has blended aggression with melody, volume with deep thought and beautiful songwriting. Silver Age is certainly no exception.

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Assemblog: September 14, 2012

You’re Next, 2011

New this week on Popshifter: Emily dares you to get “Les Sucettes” out of your head in her review of France Gall’s Made In France and John places Mary Edwards’s Eastern/Central & Mountain/Pacific in his Top Ten of 2012.

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The Spinning Special: Mary Edwards, Eastern/Central & Mountain/Pacific

By John Lane

To understand the title of this review and to enter into the spirit of the occasion, one needs to watch this first; it’s mandatory.

Such is the momentous arrival of Mary Edwards‘s new album Eastern/Central & Mountain/Pacific! Her album title harkens back to a time during the 1970s when television networks would announce the scheduled show times applying to those specific time zones; the casual spectator was always given a dual sense of sweeping national geography and a sense of union, that we were all bound together by what was coming across the channel.

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France Gall, Made in France: France Gall’s Baby Pop

By Emily Carney

France Gall’s mid-1960s “baby pop” was engineered in part by one Serge Gainsbourg, the dirty old man of French music who took Jane Birkin’s English accent to new, filthy heights with their duet “Je T’aime . . . Moi Non Plus” in 1969.

That being said, Old Serge gave the then-teenage Gall a ditty called “Les Sucettes,” a lovely paean to sucking on lollipops that doubled as a song about oral sex. Gall allegedly was mortified to discover what she was actually singing about (Gainsbourg later recorded his own perverted, “wink wink” version, not surprisingly—this guy did a song once called “Suck Baby Suck”).

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Assemblog: September 7, 2012

Lord Of Tears

New this week on Popshifter: I have mixed but positive feelings about the new Weep release, Alate and suggest that you check out Blind Benny’s great new EP, No Honor, while Cait adores the reissues of 20/20’s self titled debut and Look Out! (and not-so-secretly wants them to get back together).

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20/20, 20/20 and Look Out! Reissues

By Cait Brennan

Before Pete Townshend even coined the term, power pop has been competing for oxygen—airplay, respect, dollars, a place in history—with bloaty classic rock. Virtually every interminable flatulent hour of every ponderous wanking jam-band guitar solo on every tiresome, self-indulgent, derivative, larcenous, mystic-hokum junkie 1960s blues-rock “gods” album has been catalogued, compiled, reissued, remixed, remastered, etched into 180 gram virgin vinyl, and shoved into soul-deadening collectible box sets like the rigor mortis museum pieces they are. Meanwhile, some of the most vital music of the rock era, made by great power pop, New Wave and American hard-pop bands, sits forgotten in zombie record label vaults, as the iron oxide tape slowly peels away to dust.

Thankfully, there are still some boutique record labels, run by actual music lovers instead of actuaries, willing to raid those vaults and bring forth musical treasure. So it is with Real Gone Music’s lovingly assembled reissue of 20/20’s acclaimed Portrait albums, 20/20 and Look Out!, two records that helped redefine American rock music at the turn of the 1980s. And they sound as vital as ever.

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