Best Of 2016: Kadhja Bonet

2016 sucked!! Honestly I think it was a shit year for everyone, especially on a global/political level. And still going… yay! It was very successful at driving me further into my fear of humans.

That being said, humans keep creating good art. Somewhere, right now, a masterpiece is being made.

Being more than slightly agoraphobic I can’t recommend any particular live/concert experiences, but I would recommend not being agoraphobic if you can help it. I’m starting to consider YouTube vloggers as legit friends.

Memorable Films

Divines: A French-Qatari project from director Uda Benyamina. I don’t remember the last time I had an art-induced cry quite like that. Super solid. The acting was maybe the freshest and realest I’ve ever seen. It’s that good.

Moonlight: Directed by Barry Jenkins. Tense, heavy, sincere, deserving of all its praise. Elegantly crafted, with awesome details in the cinematography as well as editing. It’s hard to watch films where the characters age and look like new people sometimes, but it’s worth it for the perfect meeting of content and style.

Under the Sun: Russian made, Directed by Vitaliy Mansky. This faux documentary (?) filmed in North Korea is technically from 2015, but I’m including it because it only reached US theaters in July of 2016 (I don’t know about everywhere else). This film will blow your brain open and give you some terrifying perspective about real-life social/political shit. You will understand the question mark once you are immersed in the film.

13th: A documentary by the scholar Ava DuVernay. Good reminders for those lucky enough to be in the know; good first exposure for those who accidentally ingested a full dose of US propaganda.

Requiem for the American Dream: Noam Chomsky laying it all out. (I think this is also from 2015 but I don’t care.) I had to watch it a couple of times to catch everything.

Memorable Albums:

I stay on Rihanna’s Anti. So much fire. I always wash dishes to it. I usually listen up to “Yeah I Said It” and then start it over, if the kitchen’s not clean yet.

Anderson Paak’s Malibu definitely felt like a musical revival, rebirth, and new birth, feeling fresh and familiar in all the good ways.

Kaytranada’s .0001 mixtape was super dope and I strongly prefer it over his more official album release of the year, 99.9%. It’s great for solo dance parties.

We reviewed Kadhja Bonet’s The Visitor on October 21.

TV Review: WWE Story Time, “Travelers’ Tales Part II”

By Tyler Hodg

WWE Story Time, a collection of tales from former and current WWE wrestlers set to cartoon depictions, has proved itself to be a decent source of humor and entertainment within its two installments. The issues I had with the debut episode, such as the poorly rendered animation, subdued subject matter, and short length, have not been rectified; however, the stories themselves make the second episode better than its predecessor. For this reason, it’s best to examine the anecdotes individually, and to continue using this format with reviews of future episodes.
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Music Review: Don Rich and the Buckaroos, Guitar Pickin’ Man

By Melissa Bratcher

In the pantheon of great guitarists, there are ones that come easily to mind: Jimmy Page, Jimi Hendrix, Chuck Berry, Jeff Beck, B.B. King. I’d add the Buckaroos’ Don Rich to that list. His style is immediately recognizable, and without his sonic experimentation, Buck Owens’s catalog would lack a certain verve. While Owens was always happy to dip a toe in the rock side, Don Rich’s playing upped the ante. His fuzzed-out guitar work on “Who’s Gonna Mow Your Grass?” is as fresh and timely as anything recorded in 1969, and viscerally satisfying. This is pretty remarkable for someone who was hired to play fiddle.
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Movie Review: Delusion

By Jeffery X Martin

Horror is usually a young person’s genre, with films filled with pretty people, adorable meatsacks who exist only for the slaughter. Casting a film with ordinary middle-aged folks should lend more credence to a scary movie. If terrible things can happen to your uncle, they can happen to you. It brings the terror home.
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Podcast: TV or GTFO Episode 10, “Family Matters”

By Sachin Hingoo

This week on the TENTH episode of TV or GTFO, Sachin and Gary finally acknowledge the show whose lead character, Steve Urkel, is somehow, one of the most iconic TV personalities ever. Family Matters ran from 1989 to 1997, amassing a whopping 215 episodes and becoming the crown jewel of ABC’s TGIF Friday lineup (along with Full House and Perfect Strangers).

It’s the story of a Chicago cop, Carl Winslow, and the comedic adventures of his curiously fluid family, one that seems to add and remove characters at the drop of a hat. It also shows how wildly different the show became from its pilot episode to its series finale; Urkel isn’t even present in the premiere, but is very obviously the focal point of the show by the end.

Will this show ever stop making us think about Urkel having sex? Did Urkel murder his fellow astronauts? Where the heck are his parents? Why does Carl think an appropriate gift for his son is a 20-year-old used kevlar vest with a bullet hole in it? Why did they replace the actor playing Harriet so late in the series run? Why is the iconic, and awesome, theme song not present in any of these episodes? Who are these children and where did they come from? Join us to find out, and in the meantime, jam out with “Days Go By!”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYvNiKwWvhk

Don’t forget to like and subscribe to TV or GTFO on iTunes or in your favorite podcast app, or you can check out the episode right here!

Music Review: The Ventures, The Ventures’ Christmas Album

By Melissa Bratcher

Do you lament the lack of surf/Christmas music on your playlist? Are your instrumental Christmas albums just a little too staid? Did you know the Ventures put out a Christmas album in 1965? Did you know that it was called The Ventures’ Christmas Album and that Real Gone Records is reissuing it on CD? Did you also know that it is enormously, utterly fun?
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Music Review: Ray Conniff And The Ray Conniff Singers, The Complete Columbia Christmas Recordings

By Melissa Bratcher

Real Gone Music is here to save Christmas from oversinging, too-shiny production, and weird warbles with their reissues of classic Christmas albums. One of these? Ray Conniff and the Ray Conniff Singers’ The Complete Columbia Christmas Recordings. Collecting best-selling choral albums We Wish You A Merry Christmas (1962) and Here We Come A-Caroling (1965), The Complete Columbia Recordings has all of the classic Christmas songs you could possibly need, done with inspired choral arrangements and a tremendous amount of charm. It’s a retro trip back to the days of silver Christmas trees and really big record player cabinets, and it’s utterly enjoyable.
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Music Review: John Cale, Fragments Of A Rainy Season

By Emily Carney

The biography supplied with this reissue of John Cale’s 1992 stripped-down live album, recorded at various venues, states: “Fragments gives us Cale at his most melodic and moving, a mellowed and certainly a soberer man in a Yamamoto jacket and a lopsided haircut running through a selection of his prettiest songs.” While there’s no doubt that Cale was soberer at that time (having cleaned up his act following the birth of his daughter in 1985), this reviewer will disagree slightly with the bio, only in that not all of the songs on this offering are prettier. It’s also possible that Cale has never truly sonically mellowed out.
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Music Review: Buck Owens And The Buckaroos, The Complete Capitol Singles: 1957-1966

By Melissa Bratcher

Once again, Omnivore Recordings gives us the Christmas gift we need: a new Buck Owens and the Buckaroos compilation. The Complete Capitol Singles 1957-1966 covers a particularly creatively fecund phase in Buck Owens’s career: the early days at Capitol, his partnership with the brilliant Don Rich, and a string of hits that defined the influential Bakersfield Sound. The Complete Capitol Singles 1957-1966 is gorgeously remastered and sounds stunningly good. Crisp, even, with that trebly production that Buck favored (so it would sound good on AM radio) sounding better than ever.
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Five Ways to Get Hyped for “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story”

By Tyler Hodg

With the release of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story approaching quicker than Poe Dameron’s X-Wing, it’s easy to forget the film will hit theatres in less than two weeks.

That’s why I have compiled simple and entertaining ways to get well-versed on the film, all while saving the full experience for the big screen.
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