Here’s another sketch I drew at the laundromat the other day. This one is entitled “don’t worry, I’m a robot from the future.” I don’t know about you, but if a dracula was about to bite me, I would want to be falsely reassured that he wasn’t vampire before he sucks up all my precious disease free blood.
Incidentally, I still have that idea for a BBC sitcom about a vampire that I want Kevin Eldon to star in. Anyone out there know how I can make this happen?
jareddriskill
It’s one of those dreams when you realize it’s the end of the school year and you’ve totally forgotten to take a class that you signed up for. However, the twist is that that in this dream, I knew that I had the class at the beginnning of the semester, but somehow neglected to show up after a few classes.
But I have to back track for a little bit, because at the beginning of the dream I found out that I had to retake a history course from my old high school, which is several states away. I managed to show up for a copule of week and ace the dogshit out of my tests and quizzed but I got lazy and discontinued showing up. Not wanting to fail after awhile, I show back up and the teacher stopped me at the door and told me that I past the point of passing because I missed so many classes. But I didn’t care, I mean shit, I already got my high school diploma!
jareddriskill
Man, this weeks “the best of the best of soul train” comes from my first week of writing this blog. I was so young and full of unrealistic, lofty aspirations back in the day, wasn’t I? It’s funny to feel nostalgic for something that happened just under a year ago.
Enjoy!
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We are in for a treat, for this, the first ever best of Soul Train Report on jaredriskill.com! The Best Of Soul Train gods were smiling upon me when they pulled out this late 1970’s classic. What a way to kick things off!
We had songs from Donna Summer “I Feel Love,” Barry White “Ecstasy,” Ohio Players “Ohio” and “Brick House” by the Commodores that were danced to by a surprisingly energetic 1970’s era Soul Train Dancers. I guess the week this episode was filmed was the first week that cocaine was introduced to the Soul Train set. As you will find out in future installments, that usually all the 1970’s era episodes feature some depressing looking foot shuffling from the Soul Train Dancers.
Speaking of cocaine, The first musical guest, the Whispers, performed a disco version of Bread’s “I Want to Make it with You.” I shit you not. As Nancy Reagan would say a few years later, “Just say no.” The Whipsers’ second “live” performance was a song called “I’m Gonna Make You My Wife.” I’m surprised that this song isn’t a standard at wedding receptions today.
The second musical guest was Johnny Guitar Watson. Imagine disco funk with progressive jazz flourishes with echo laden bluesy talking vocals. He also had a brass section featuring an Asian guy with thick glasses and a Dorthy Hammil haircut on trumpet. You just had to be there.
Johnny Guitar Watson played three cuts. The first called “Real Mothah For Ya” the second one, “Tarzan” was a progressive jazz number, or as I like to say, boring! The third, I think, was called “Making Love At Dawn” which was the better of the three songs, but that isn’t saying much.
The Don Cornelius interview gaff of the week: To a member of the Wipsers who stood out of first number because he severed his Achilles tendon and could not perform the dance routine required for the song: “I hope you feel better soon so can can sever it again!”
The Soul Train Scramble board answer: Jimmy Carter! Yes, I couldn’t believe how lame an answer it was either.
The Soul Train Line: This week solo dancing was done to a dancey funk song I never heard of before. The chorus went “work over me/work me over.” If anyone knows the identity of this song and who the artist is, please let me know!
“Until next time on these same stations, you can bet your bottom money that it will be a stone gas honey! Love, peace and SOUL!”
jareddriskill
Welcome to another edition of jareddriskill sketchbook! Earlier tonight, I inexplicably took my sketchbook to the laundromat with me and this is what I came up with while my clothes were in the spin cycle. I have no idea what this sketch is supposed to mean or how the idea suddenly came to me, but I think it is hilarious.
Yes, that is supposed to be a horse on the right hand side. (No one has ever said I am such a good artist that I can draw anything that I can put my mind to.)
There are 27 fundamental artistic mistakes in this sketch, can you figure them all out?
jareddriskill
Morrissey/Greatest Hits ( deluxe version US)/Decca Records 2008
What can I say about my hero with the jet black sense of humor that hasn’t already been said before? Like him or leave him, you have to admit that he is one of the finest lyric writers to have ever existed. Unlike some of his militant fans I wasn’t too upset when I found out that part of his new record deal with Decca records included yet another compilation album. Remember the dark days of 1997-2004 when Morrissey didn’t have a recording contract and his fans had to settle for a series of endless best of… albums and b-side collections? We balked at the lack of original material, but we bought them anyways. At least this greatest hits compilation includes two brand new songs, which you gotta admit, that it is a step above the norm.
(If you ever want to bitch about endless repackaged compilation albums, no one can beat the standard set by the band, New Order. Who, I believe, have more singles collections, best of… albums and greatest hits collections on the shelves than they do proper studio albums.)
While I admit that each and every one all of his singles from his previous two albums plus a couple of his usual standards (“Suedehead” and “The More You Ignore Me, The Closer I Get,” for instance) hardly constitutes a “greatest hits” package in my opinion, but hey, it’s Morrissey’s world and we just live in it. Also I have to admit I wasn’t thrilled when I heard that all the songs were remastered because most of the songs on this album are only a few years old but I was quite surprised how the remastering process evened out the two disparaging production quality styles on the songs from “You Are The Quarry” and “Ringleader of The Tormentors” so they flowed together quite smoothly. Well done.
The two new songs, “That’s How People Grow Up” and “All You Need Is Me,” prove once again that Morrissey hasn’t lost any of his sharp, mordant wit. Though the drummer on those two songs is heavy on the cowbell. (Either that or whoever mixed the those two songs inadvertently left the click track on in the final mix.)
The Deluxe US edition of “Greatest Hits” includes a live version of “That’s How People Grow Up” and a music video for the same song. Not bad, but I wouldve prefered another new track. You can’t win them all.
jareddriskill
Sorry for the lateness of this post, but I’ve had other pressing academic issues to handle today but with the Internet being what it is those of you who will read this post in the future, the lateness of this edition of my review of post modern film history won’t even matter. Such is life.
This week in the syllabus, we are covering the beginning of the 5th era of Hollywood, ( whatever that was. It wasn’t explained to the class by the professor) which was unofficially kicked off by today’s film, “Bonnie And Clyde.” A film which was controversial back when it was first released, but looking at it now in today’s context, this comes across as a tame as a modern network television prime-time program, if not even more boring. But hey, Richmond, Virginia native, Warren Beatty, can still do the machine gun jitter bug with the best of them.
I have to admit that the blue grass soundtrack in “Bonnie and Clyde” is still somewhat “modern” sounding what with the recent bluegrass music revival started by “Oh Brother, Where thou Art” soundtrack. Though I have to admit when you find that the same artists who sang the “Beverly Hillbillies,” the soundtrack loses it’s effectiveness. I just kept expecting Jethro and Granny to show up in the background shaking their fists during one of the car chase scenes.
next week on the syllabus: 2001: A Space Odyssey!
jareddriskill
I’m having minor external hard-drive issues today, plus I have some assignments due for school in the next day or so, so no random item tuesday this week. sorry.
jareddriskill
The Foxglove Hunt/Stop Heartbeat/itunes 2008
The Easter bunny has been good to me this year, giving me two great 1980’s music inspired albums to review for today. First, we had the earth shattering “Stainless Style” by the Gruff Rhys led Neon Neon (please see the post entitled “neon Neon” for more details if you haven’t checked it out already) and now we have “Stop Heartbeat” from The Foxglove Hunt, the new group from ex-Fine China frontman, Rob Withem. Hot damn!
I had been a huge Fine China fan for many years with their New Order crossed with The Smiths sound even though they were once signed to the christian indy rock label, Tooth and Nail. I don’t know, there is just something about the term “christian indy rock” that doesn’t sit right with me. (But… before I scare any of you off, I have to add that Fina China’s christian references were very few and far in-between and I got the feeling that the few references that they had were begrudingly added in order to maintain Tooth and Nail’s fundamentalist dogma. But hey, how many groups these days claim to sound like New Order and/or the Smiths and have actually managed to pull that nigh impossible feat off? )
Anyway, after releasing the superb “Jaws Of Life” album Fine China called it a day, yet another bright light in the music world extinguished by the public’s brutal ignorance of truly great music. But today after some aimless internet surfing, I came across the FoxGlove Hunt’s myspace page and I felt I was instantly reunited with an old friend and then I immedately bought their debut album off itunes.
The Foxglove Hunt continues where Fina China had left off. Instead of hiring a new backing band, Rob Withem has decided to go all Soft Cell and formed a elctronic duo with Ronnie Martin from a group called Joy Electric and the end result comes across as an ethereal mix between New Order, the Smiths and “Organisation” (an underrated album if there ever was one) era Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark. They even pull off an amazing cover version of “Love My Way” by the Psychedelic Furs! Will the signs and wonders never cease?
jareddriskill
Neon Neon/Stainless Style/itunes 2008
Just when I was getting jaded with the modern music scene, Neon Neon appears right out of the ether just in the nick of time. I mean hot damn, finally it’s about time that somebody gone back to the mid 1980’s and pulled out some musical gold to build a foundation of kick ass sounding rock and roll on.
(Of course, for some reason the 1980’s are totally reviled by the modern day hipster, and is thusly, treated as a major joke. I mean yeah, the 1980’s were pretty bad, but when you sit down and think about it, every decade is just as chock full of crap too, it’s just that the 1980’s is special because it has an unusually negative stigma attached to it.)
Neon Neon is a yet another side project from the seemingly prolific Super Furry Animals frontman, Gruff Rhys, and as we all know, any project that he puts his hand on the plow to is guaranteed to be interesting. This time around Gruff teamed up with US record producer Boom Bip, (who, frankly, I have never heard of before) to create a tribute concept album to John DeLorean and the DeLorean DMC-12 ( aka the car used in the Back To The Future film series) in the vein of those great film soundtracks to John Hughes films (Pretty In Pink, The Breakfast Club, ect.) In fact, “Stainless Style” sounds like what the soundtrack to Back To The Future would’ve sounded like if a) it were made in 2008, instead of 1985 b) that if the film was made by John Hughes instead of Roger Zimeckis. ( But don’t worry: there aren’t any Huey Lewis and The News throwbacks on this album!)
Only a couple of minor complaints about “Stainless Style:” There are some a few modern hip hop inspired vocal tracks on that I tend to automatically skip over because I’m not really a fan of modern hip hop and because Gruff Rhys doesn’t sing on them. Also, if you download the album off itunes, like I did, you are given a totally useless digital booklet, which does nothing but take up space on your hard-drive. But other than that, we (already!)have a possible contender for the best new album of the year.
jareddriskill
