Something 4 The Weekend # 108

Zombi: Surface To Air: "Digitalis" [mp3]

I believe I'm showing my age when I tell you that I don't care, and have never really cared, about zombies...And what I mean is that we've got a full-blown zombie "thing" happening out there in CultureDataLand™ right now, especially among Gen Y and whatever the current teenage generation is called, and I'm ambivalent about it...

And when I say there's a full-blown zombie thing happening right now, they (the kids) know exactly what I'm talking about...I'm not exactly sure when it started, but off the top of my head, I'd rattle off films like Shaun Of The Dead, 28 Days Later, 28 Weeks Later, Zach Snyder's well-liked 2004 remake of Dawn Of The Dead, and next month's remake of Day Of The Dead...Ya got the amazing book World War Z (even I loved it) and The Zombie Survival Guide (both by Max Brooks, son of Mel), the recent mashup novel Pride & Prejudice & Zombies (which has already been optioned for a film), and the popularity of such video games as Resident Evil, Silent Hill, Dead Rising, Left 4 Dead, Stubbs The Zombie, and Dead Space...

I'm on the older end of Gen X, and we had the whole vampire thing happening. Some cultural critics have theorized that it had to do with AIDS, and that makes as much sense as any other theory I could toss out...Our generation came of age with such films as Werner Herzog's remake of Nosferatu, Coppola's Dracula (Winona!), Interview With A Vampire, The Lost Boys, Buffy The Vampire Slayer (the movie and the TV series), The Hunger, Vampire Hunter D, From Dusk Till Dawn, and the Blade trilogy...In terms of TV, I could also mention The Night Stalker, The X-Files, and Angel...

Of course, I would argue that Gen X was also the heyday of the whole alien thing, and also serial killer culture, but I won't blather...

No, what I want to say is that it seems pretty apparent that right now the whole zombie thing is gaining serious momentum, and since I believe that on the internet I am an old compared to most I encounter around the tubes, this whole zombie thing is a Gen Y and beyond thing...

Why is that?

Is it a cultural representation of the veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? A response to the walking wounded stumbling off airplanes at American airports, limbs missing and souls stunned...Shell-shocked and leg-locked...

That's my best guess...What you got?

(Like I said, I won't blather.)

Hotcha! Hank

Maneuver The Mullah Sideways, Said

Muslimgauze: "Mullah Said"

A mesmerizing song, and an evocative video that is essentially a "day in the life" of a typical Persian youth, and Muslim life in general...

Hotcha! Hank

So Many Skull T-Shirts, So Little Rent Money

Two years ago I posted a list of (what I consider) really stupid band names, most of them culled from the pages of Alternative Press magazine...Names that I just don't understand, names that probably nobody understands, names that are meaningless, names that are just plain moronic, names that lack any sort of punch, and names that are actually complete sentences...So many lame names that might work as song titles, or album titles, but just don't make any sort of sense as band names...So, here we are again, two years later, and since I think about this topic all the time because I read Alt Press religiously every month, here's another list...The ones I loathe the most are in bold...

My Children, My Bride
Crime In Stereo
Danger Radio
Breathe Carolina
The Years Gone By
Before Their Eyes
Consider The Thief
The Paper And The Plane
Postmark Twain
Thirteen Yards To Victory
Exotic Animal Petting Zoo (the single worst band name going these days)
A Breath Before Surfacing
I Am Alaska
Sing It Loud
3OH!3
Fake Shark-Real Zombie!
The Two Koreas
Dearestazazel
I Am The Dream
Becoming The Archetype
Forever The Sickest Kids
Admiral's Arms
Love, She Wrote
Motionless In White
The Stiletto Formal
A Kidnap In Color
A Different Breed Of Killer
The Action Design
Light Yourself On Fire
Don The Reader
Late Of The Pier
Forgive Durden
Pathway To Providence
Anathallo
Now, Now Every Children
Report Suspicious Activities
A Bird A Sparrow
Brokencyde
Leathermouth
True Window
Magnetic Morning
East Of The Wall
Davenport Cabinet
Artist Vs. Poet

Hotcha! Hank

A Word With Moshammer's Ghost

zombie also zombi

Function: noun

Etymology: Louisiana Creole or Haitian Creole zonbi, of Bantu origin; akin to Kimbundu nzúmbe ghost

Date: circa 1871

1: usually zombi

a: the supernatural power that according to voodoo belief may enter into and reanimate a dead body

b: a will-less and speechless human in the West Indies capable only of automatic movement who is held to have died and been supernaturally reanimated

2 a: a person held to resemble the so-called walking dead ; especially automaton

b: a person markedly strange in appearance or behavior

3: a mixed drink made of several kinds of rum, liqueur, and fruit juice

Hotcha! Hank

Tuesday's Fortune: 24 February 2009

MEAL: 2 Roast Pork Egg Rolls + 1 small order Pineapple Fried Rice = $6.45 + $1.55 tip

Hotcha! Hank

Something 4 The Weekend # 107

Muslimgauze: Zul'm: "Teheran Via Train" [mp3]

Bryn Jones was a British dude who called himself Muslimgauze and it's interesting that Wikipedia calls Muslimgauze a "music project" because the dozens of recordings that have been released blur the line between a true artist, a true musician, and something else more akin to a field recording engineer, an ethnomusicologist....

On this particular song, most of the individual parts are field recordings of indigenous Iranians, recorded at different times in different places, and Bryn Jones here has made it a Muslimgauze recording by mixing those individual elements together into this song, the sum greater than it's parts...

Throughout his vast catalog, Mr. Jones works from one extreme to the other...Some songs are truly nothing more than field recordings, others are chopped and spliced and looped and run through samplers and whatnot, and ultimately turned into songs that truly earn the "Experimental Electronica" genre tag that he's been given...

There's a heavy political element to all of this, but I'll leave it to you to follow the links if yr interested...I just like the guy's music, and find it interesting that a full decade after his untimely death from a rare fungal infection, recordings of his continue to be released with regularity...

Hotcha! Hank

Tuesday's Fortune: 17 February 2009

MEAL: 2 Vegetable Spring Rolls + 1 small order Pineapple Fried Rice = $6.70 + $1.30 tip

Hotcha! Hank

The Psychic Ills Maneuver Sideways

Careful with that Mantis, Jimy...Pitchfork gave The Psychic Ills' newest album a 1.4 and called this particular song "tedious"...Again, it probably all comes down to the drugs yr taking...

I'm stone-cold sober at the moment, minus the Alka-Seltzer Cold tablet I just took, and it's all a big bunch of "meh" to me...

Alas, not all Poop is Hot...

Hotcha! Hank

Wooden Shjips Dance Sideways (California Maneuver)

So, is there some sort of New Psych movement happening these days? Grails, Wooden Shjips, The Black Angels, Oneida, Serena Maneesh, The Warlocks, The Psychic Ills, and even Black Rebel Motorcycle Club...Or is just a bunch of Shoegaze overdriven with American Fuzz Technology™ that the critical bloggers are calling The Third Wave Of Psychedelia™?

How many bands of the sort do we need to list before we've got ourselves a "movement" or a "scene"?

Is it even worth considering when I've got plenty of Sonic Youth and Can on CD? Old school Flaming Lips and loads of Butthole Surfers?

Plus - what kinds of drugs are the kids taking these days?

Hotcha! Hank

Something 4 The Weekend # 106

Grails: Doomsdayer's Holiday: "Reincarnation Blues" [mp3]

Billy Powell...Lux Interior...Blossom Dearie...

There's been plenty of death here at HOT POOP in the past couple of weeks, which is really nothing more than the confluence of my tastes in music and my age, I suppose...As a middle-aged man, it's only natural that the artists I enjoy and even idolize are beginning to die with more and more frequency...Blossom Dearie was old enough to be my grandma...Lynyrd Skynyrd's plane went down in Mississippi when I was eleven years old, and The Cramps got started when I was in grade school...

In the midst of life we are in death...etcetera...And so these recent deaths are no real surprise, sad as they may be to me personally...

And sure, some of the sadness is because these deaths remind me of my own mortality, which becomes more and more likely with every passing day, month, year, and the fact that I don't believe in life after death as it's popularly understood in Christianity...

The closest I think we get to a life after death is fame and/or a legacy...Kept alive in the memories of others...This too, is a bit troubling to me, because I'm a middle-aged man who will never know fame, will never have children, has few good friends, only slightly more acquaintances, and will probably fade into obscurity long before I slip this mortal coil...

Coil...

Currently, I'm putting my spiritual money on reincarnation FTW, reasoning that if we do indeed have a Soul, it is an energy, and energy cannot be destroyed, only transformed into another kind of energy...Possibly another soul...Or souls...

Which is why I've long believed I have a little bit of Mark Twain in my soul...Just a little, obviously, because I'm not very witty or insightful...

Hotcha! Hank

Tuesday's Fortune: 10 February 2009

MEAL: 1 order (8) Crab Rangoon + 1 small order Sweet & Sour Chicken = $7.65 + $1.35 tip

Hotcha! Hank

Figure Eight Sideways Maneuver

If you're familiar with the old Schoolhouse Rock series of shorts from the 1970's, then you might already know that Blossom Dearie contributed her unique and considerable talents to several "episodes"...This is one of them...

Hotcha! Hank

RIP, Blossom Dearie

Blossom Dearie: My Gentleman Friend: "Someone To Watch Over Me" [mp3]

I just found out that Jazz singer/pianist Blossom Dearie died this past weekend at the age of 82 from natural causes, and I have to admit, I'm a bit of a mess about it because I absolutely adore Ms. Dearie. In fact, I love Blossom Dearie so much that one of my buddies actually asked me once if I was gay.

Some folks just don't understand.

Anyways, I've just cracked the seal on a new bottle of Makers Mark, and I may very well call in sick tomorrow.

Rest in peace, Blossom. You were amazing.

Hotcha! Hank

EVERYTHINGATHON! February 2009!

We're a week into February, which means this month's episode of EVERYTHINGATHON! is only available for another three weeks...This month, we've got a whole lotta Zappa, and more specifically, a flip-flopping mix of side two of the Lumpy Gravy album, and several variations on one of Frank's signature tunes, "King Kong"...Mix it all together, and whattya get? A KONG GRAVY, of course...Enjoy!

http://www.everythingathon.com/podcast.htm

Hotcha! Hank

Something 4 The Weekend # 105

The Cramps: Smell Of Female: "Surfin' Dead" [mp3]

Ladies and gentlemen, Lux Interior is still dead...

Of course, if we take a cue from the film Return Of The Living Dead, the soundtrack of which this song appears on, well then, there's always a chance he might come back and eat our brains...Or maybe just go surfing...

Hotcha! Hank

RIP, Lux Interior

Lux Interior, lead singer of Psychobilly champions, The Cramps, has sadly passed away at the age of 62 from a heart condition. I really don't have much to say about the man, or the band, except that The Cramps were one of those rare bands that had the best kind of attitude about Rock'n'Roll - that it should be fun. Too many artists take themselves way too fucking seriously, and some of us fans and critics (myself plenty of times) wrongly do the same.

It's rock'n'roll for crissakes! If you can't have a good laugh while rocking out, then something's definitely not right with you, chump...There's also something wrong with you if you don't mix a little drugs/alcohol and sex into the mix...Yeah, that's right - sex, drugs and rock'n'roll are always mentioned together for good reason - they're fun, and they taste great together...

If that ain't yr bag, you might as put some RUSH on yr iPod and just kill yrself now.

RIP, Lux Interior - you were one of the true believers, and a great fucking entertainer, and in the pantheon of Rock, especially NYC Punk in the 1970's (that whole L.E.S./CBGB scene), all I can say is that The Cramps got screwed. In a better, more fair world, you guys would have been huuuuuuuge.

Hotcha! Hank

Maybe Kung Fu Baby Will Help

If kittens won't help this funk, maybe a kung fu baby will...Actually, I thought this was Peter Lorre at first...If you don't know who Peter Lorre is, you're either a dumbshit or young (which is the same, really)...

(Hmm, I wonder if I simply write this blog like an insufferable prick it would make it more popular and make me happier???)

Choke on a baby turd, everybody!

Hotcha! Hank

Maybe Kitten Videos Will Help

Because I don't have the savvy or motivation to network and promote, this HOT POOP blog is inert and vacuum-sealed. It's also lame, [insert negative adjective here], and pointless, so here's some fucking kittens.

Hotcha! Hank

Tuesday's Fortune: 3 February 2009

MEAL: 1 Roast Pork Egg Roll + 1 small order Sweet & Sour Pork = $5.45 + $1.55 tip

Hotcha! Hank