I dreamt that I was watching an piece of cinema. The film I watched consisted of one scene which was an overhead shot of a white box placed on the center of a piece of  square ringed beige and chocolate brown carpet that filled the rest of the screen.  As if by magic, drawers from the white box opened by themselves towards the bottom of the screen. There were three drawers in total, each of them full of clothes. The first drawer would open up,  pause for a few moments to allow the viewer to see its contents, close and then the next drawer in the sequence would do the same. Once the sequence was over, the box stayed closed in a static shot and then the film ended. There was no one else in the cinema.

jareddriskill

Jarvis Cocker/ Further Complications

I know this album has been out for a few months now, but taking an extended sabbatical from this blog had kept me from extolling the virtues of one of the better albums released this past summer. “Further Complications” is the second solo album from the former Pulp frontman, who disproved the british rock cliché that moving to France from ol blighty is a sure sign of creative decline. (I mean look what happened to the Spice Girls when they relocated to France for tax reasons. )

When Jarvis released his first self titled  solo album, I said that the track “Fat Children” was the most rocking song written in the past decade, but was disappointed that the rest of the album wasn’t as rocking.  With “Further Complications” Jarvis and his backing band has rectified this problem by hiring former Big Black front man Steve Albini to sit behind the recording desk.  What a great combination Jarvis Cocker and Steve Albini make: you have Jarvis’s biting wit and eclectic musical tastes with Steve Albini’s big drum sound and loud, ambient recording style. I’m surprised that I had never imagined such a combination before in my life. ( Imagine what Steve Albini could do with Morrissey…) Will wonders never cease?

jareddriskill

Ian Brown/ My Way

There is always cause for celebration when the NME proclaimed God-Like Genius from Manchester decides to grace us with another album. I have to admit that when I first read about this album, that I thought that Ian Brown let the God-Like Genius title get to his head and had decided to commit that first stage of career suicide and recorded a cover album.

I mean all the warning signs were there: a slightly bootleg-ish looking cover, song titles that are similar to other semi-popular songs ( i.e. ”Marathon Man” and “Vanity Kills.”  Wouldn’t be awesome if Ian Brown had covered “Vanity Kills” by ABC? Just imagine.)

It turns out “My Way” is an album full of original material except for a surprisingly good cover of the song “In The Year 2525.” (Uhm, I guess that was the God-Like Genius at work.) Rumor also has it that the opening track “Stellify”was orginally written for one of those modern R&B diva types (Rihanna, if my memory and reading comphrension skills serve me right) but was given to Ian Brown because only he can give the song the swagger that it properly derserves. And rightly so, hot damn!

With “My Way,” it appears that Ian Brown has taken musical  influence from mid 1980’s synthpop. Alot of the songs on the album do sound like Simple Minds b-sides from that era. (Yes, I say that as a good thing.) In his infinite wisdom, Ian Brown has proved that you can look to the past without becoming trapped in it. In this era of bands reforming for the simple reason of nostalgia seeking and money grabbing, Ian Brown has shown the world that we don’t need a Stone Roses reunion: he’s still an artist with vitiality and endless potential.

Let his God-Like Genius shine.

jareddriskill 

The only good thing about having your accelerator getting stuck and wrecking your vehicle into the side of the building you work at and then becoming the butt of your co-workers jokes because of it  is that you are put into a position where you are sort of forced to go out and buy a new or new-ish vehicle. (You know, preferably one where the accelerator doesn’t stick when you are trying to pull into your parking space at work.) Yes, it may be hard to believe, my faithful reading several, but yours truly was in such a precarious predicament only a few weeks ago.

As a result of this predicament is that I bought a slightly used 2008 Yaris. The reason I bought the Yaris is quite simple, along with the aforementioned non-sticking accelerator pedal, it had also met the other stringent (and very crucial) requirement that jareddriskill expects out of any vehicle that he will ever own in the future: the color had to be silver.

Yes, there are also other pleasant, unexpected features that the Yaris offers such as its compact size allows for easier parallel parking, a skill I used to totally suck at with my old vehicle. Now I can no longer disappoint people by saying I can’t visit them because there isn’t a parking space I feel comfortable parking my vehicle in. Or how about having power windows because when you want to throw litter out your car window, mainly because you want to give the community service ordered road work crews in the orange reflective vests something to do while re-paying their debt to society, you just can’t be bothered by hand cranking your windows down and then back up again. I could go on and on about the Yaris’ safety features and excellent gas milage, but you go can read about that boring shit elsewhere. Because all that matters is that I think that my Yaris kicks ass.

Jareddriskill

Man, where has the time gone?!? I only was going to take a couple of days off from posting and…. wham! 5 or 6 months have past.  That’s the thing about human nature, you know, we do tend to get lazy sometimes…

So now, I will offer my sincere apologies to my faithful reading several (Hello, Willie and Earl!) for my lack of posts. I’ll try to do better in the future.

jareddriskill

Decayed Architecture. There is a certain sadness about abandoned buildings/industrial sites that calls out to me.  The thought that dozens, or perhaps hundreds, of men had, at one time sweated and cussed in the process of construction of the building which now lay in ruins. Did those men ever once think in between thoughts of  how they were  going to pay their bills or how they were going to have fun on Friday night after getting paid while the sweat was pouring down into and stinging their eyes on a particularly hot summer afternoon that one day in the future, perhaps even within their life times, that all their hard work would be for naught?

I try to not dwell on these thoughts when I see decayed architecture, I tend to let the stresses in my life briefly disappear whilst imagining that I’m in some “last man on left on earth” scenario or simply pretending that I am an archaeologist in some far flung future trying study what life was like on earth when the magic of life had died along Michael Jackson…

jareddriskill

When life gets you down, sometimes the only thing that can pick you back up are the little things. The following is the first in a series about those little things that help stave off the self inflicted dirt nap. Not that I have feeling down or anything lately…

New Tire Fuzz. Yes, after you just plunked down hard earned cash that you barely have to replace a tire on your vehicle, you can fight off the feelings of dread caused by short term economic uncertainty ( how am I supposed to pay rent and buy the complete series of “The State” on dvd now?) by feeling the smooth caress  that only thin strands of vulcanized rubber can produce. 

Ohhh lovely.

jareddriskill

Like most people, I felt a low groan emerge from my lips (a disappointed ”aw fuck!” in my particular case) when I had first heard the shocking news that Michael Jackson had passed away unexpectedly at age 50.  Again, like most folks, I hadn’t given too much thought in the past several years or so about the fact that he was the greatest entertainer that this world had ever seen and that I had taken him (and his talent) for granted for far too long without giving the man his proper due.

Much like a person who had let a love one pass away without once telling them how much the deceased had meant to him or her, I became depressed and went to some random local watering hole to drown out my woes with cheap whiskey. So there I was, sat there in a dark corner of some cheap smokey bar nursing my second or third drink when a very attractive woman walks up and sits next to me.

She asked me what was the matter and I then related my Michael Jackson related sorrows to her. Apparently not listening to and/or caring about the source of my woes, she then said that she thought my hung dog expression made me “look cute” and she then continued a conversation with me to which all I could muster in response were deep sighs and wounded groans.

Without me realizing,  the woman had led me by the hand out of the bar, into her car and then her bedroom where she was trying her best to seduce me and all I could think about while I was laying on her bed, totally flacid despite all her best efforts, was how fucking awful it was that Michael Jackson had died earlier that day.

After a long dry spell of ideas, I’ve decided to break out the sketchbook to see what would happen and the result is this: “the human antichrist,” a phrase that popped into my head while I was drawing this sketch of some random woman. All I had to do to complete this sketch was to add an inverted crucifix necklace and viola!

On second thought, the phrase ”human antichrist” makes technical sense. I mean wasn’t jesus a supernatural male being meaning that his opposite (the antichrist) would be a female human? (Or maybe I’m just thinking too hard about this sort of thing.)

As always, I can see at least 8 fundamental artistic errors in this sketch, can you find them all?

-jareddriskill

I dreamt I’m attending  a concert that is being held in an renovated 1920’s movie palace. The only artist performing at this concert  is some young old school wannabe R&B singer. He only had two songs in his set: the first was a 20 minute long christmas music  medley and his second (and last song) was some overblown, drawn out ballad ( I assume it’s his “hit” single/ signature tune.) The concert was poorly attended, only about 80 people, and most of the audience were more interested in looking at the renovated movie palace than they were paying attention to the R&B singer.

-jareddriskill