Something 4 The Weekend # 224

Grant Hart: Intolerance: "2541" [mp3]

The memories crowd in on one another, and as I get older, it becomes more difficult to discern how old any of them are. Lunch last Wednesday seems as long ago as that night I fucked a girl who's actual, given name was Bunny.

All those summers spent driving around the western states merge into one seemingly endless road trip, and so it doesn't seem to matter whether or not I traveled with Ike in '96 or '87 or '88 or maybe he was with Biff and me in '93, or Katie and Amy and Rachel and Dave in '85. I do remember he recorded a frame drum part for a Sufi dude in Sonoma because that was some of the best hash I ever smoked in my life. I think Frank was there that year. Frank was definitely along for the ride in '88 because that was the year of all the forest fires.

I had a Moons Over My Hammy sandwich, fries and a Coke at Denny's last Wednesday.

They say time seems to move faster the older you get, and at 45, that seems to be true, which might explain why the memories crowd together and lose some of their context and chronology, like home movies that aren't date-stamped. They also say that near death, your life flashes before your eyes, and of course that makes perfect sense, that at the end of our lives, all those accumulated memories are piled thick and endless, depthless, on top of one another.

And then we die.

If there is an afterlife, and we get to keep all those memories, perhaps eternity means that time ceases to exist or have meaning, and so our memories have a chance to spread out, slow down, so that we can take our leisure with them. Relive any moment of our lives with a clarity and understanding that even exceeds the moments themselves. To reunite with old friends, long forgotten, and family we lost. Reliving afternoons with my grandpa at the Milwaukee Public Museum, or Schlizt brewery. That slow and steamy encounter with Bunny. Our family's vacation to Florida in '76, or all those long weekends camping up in Plymouth.

Which I guess suggests we try our best to make the memories good ones.

Of course, I tend to believe that when our body dies, so does our consciousness. Nevertheless, we should still try to make the memories worthwhile.

Hotcha! Hank

Don't Wanna Know If You Are Green Day

Green Day have had their moments, but I can't say that I was ever a very big fan...And considering how I feel about concept albums, you might think I'd at least like their American Idiot album, but I found it kinda trite...Anyways, they always had a certain melodicism to 'em, and a certain tone that makes this Husker Du cover sound about right...

Hotcha! Hank

Don't Want To Know If You Are A Sideways Maneuver

Nothing much to say here except I always thought bassist Gil Norton rocked one of the finest moustaches in rock history, and did it with furious style.

Hotcha! Hank

Something 4 The Weekend # 84

Husker Du: Zen Arcade: "What's Going On" [mp3]

Ahhh, Zen Arcade...Back in the freshman dorms at UW, the opening drumroll of the opening song on this album ("Something I Learned Today") was enough to send my roommate, Saint Jim, running from our dormroom in fear and loathing...He hated Husker Du, and as much as I loved 'em, I positively adored them because they helped me get our room to myself pretty much whenever I wanted...That's something I learned within the first week or two of school that year, and the knowledge served me well...It's not that I hated Saint Jim, I actually loved the guy and we got along pretty damn well, but when yr living on a dorm floor with 63 other people, and going to freshman lectures with 600 students in those intro classes, and working in a school cafeteria with 100 others at any given time, and drinking in overcrowded bars on State Street, one will do what one can to get some peace and quiet...

Of course, there will be balance in the universe, and Saint Jim only had to slip Simon & Garfunkel's Bookends album on the turntable to get me running from the room with a scream, so it all worked out in the end...

Anyways, I always loved this song, "What's Going On" more than any other tune on Zen Arcade because it marked the turning point in the story Husker Du was telling on this concept album about a teenaged boy who runs away from his fucked up home only to realize that the real world outside his home is even more fucked up...Harsh lessons for the protagonist, and fertile fodder for an 18 year old like myself, moving away from home for the first time, nevermind that my parents were pretty fucking cool, and I never had any complaints or misgivings about my childhood. Like the protagonist, I did learn quickly that the world can oftentimes be an extremely cruel place, littered with damaged and damaging people...Cynicism's gotta start somewhere, right?

The song itself is brilliant in my mind because the sloppiness of the playing itself (trust me, these guys are hella better musicians than this song reflects) ably represents the protagonist's mental breakdown, and the doubts and cynicism that have begun flooding his mind...The kid's having a fucking breakdown, and dammit if the song isn't falling apart as well...Stuttering drums, piano vamps cluttering the space, gang vocals that aren't very "tight", shambolic guitar soloing, a false ending...It's all here, and it's all great stuff, from a great band, on one of the very finest rock'n'roll albums ever made...A Punk masterpiece that totally redefined what hardcore could be...Between this and Minutemen's Double Nickels On The Dime, Punk would never quite be the same again...A MUST!

Hotcha! Hank

On The 4th Day Of Christmas...

I give to thee...FOUR KEY SONGS from the soundtrack to my screenplay, TRUE TALES OF WARLORD TODD...I've been writing and revising Warlord Todd for a bunch of years now, cuz I half-suck, and am half-perfectionist, which is a brutal combination for a creative type, innit? [see "Unsatisfied" below]

In a nutshell, the film takes place in the spring and summer of 1985, in an upper middle-class white suburban town, and concerns a dead body found on a golf course, mistaken identity, revenge, teenaged weed dealers, a biker gang, a Latino drug familia from the big city, unrequited love, teen angst, and New Coke, among others...

The songs I've envisioned being used in various scenes are obviously of the time period covering roughly 1979 to 1985, weighted heavily towards 84/85, and represent the songs and bands and styles of music the young people of that era would have been listening to on the radio or watching on MTV...Typically while working on the screenplay, I'm listening to an MP3 CDr containing approximately 200 songs from that general era, but the final working script will probably utilize 20-30 of those songs, with maybe 6 of those being absolutely crucial to the theme and plot...

Husker Du: "Divide And Conquer"

"Divide & Conquer" plays over the opening title sequence, wherein we zoom in from outer space, to the film's location in Manchester, Wisconsin, and follow a kid on a BMX bike (or possibly a skateboard, but that seems too trite) riding through the town...As the song ends, and the opening credits finish, the biker arrives at his destination, a group of other slacker kids hanging out on the edge of a bandshell in a park downtown, who proceed to talk about the events of the opening scene, which happened just prior to this opening title sequence...This song speaks directly to suburban living in that era, and makes broader statements about homogenized culture, people turning into cattle, etc, and as such makes for a very nice opening song volley...Another Husker Du song, "Turn On The News", also features prominently in a later scene...

Laurie Anderson: "O Superman! (For Massenet)"

At approximately the 10 minute mark there begins a montage which includes scenes of the protagonist Hank (hey, that's me!) doing his job as a golf course groundskeeper, finding a dead body in a sandtrap on that golf course, being questioned by the cops, the cops informing the deceased's family, the body being examined in the morgue, etc...This song plays during that montage, and if our protagonist has a theme song, I suppose this is it...

Devo: "Beautiful World"

The film's antagonist and titular character, Warlord Todd, is an unabashed DEVO fanatic, and so several Devo songs are used throughout the film...This Devo song, in particular though, fully captures the classism that underpins the reality of Manchester, WI in 1985, not to mention the heirarchy of the high school... "It's a beautiful world for you...Not me..."

The Replacements: "Unsatisfied"

In some ways, this song might represents one of the major ideas/themes running throughout this movie - the question of how or why these people, who have it pretty damn good in this life, are still not satisfied with what they have...They have money, health, possessions, love, sex, drugs, security...and yet they're empty, and feel cheated by life, the government, God. Some of these people retreat back into a very small corner, while others lash out violently at the world around them...

Hotcha! Hank