What The Cuss

Since becoming acquainted with torrents, I've been downloading a shit ton of music left and right. It's much easier to get into new music when money is not an issue. As a result, I've assembled a playlist of old R&B, ranging from LaVern Baker to Etta James to Little Richard to Howlin Wolf to Muddy Waters to Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers. For some reason I threw some Trashmen in there, though they're white surfy garage pop. That playlist kind've mutated out of what I could find of the Pink Flamingos soundtrack.

I've also just finished up a playlist of the most shamelessly eighties synth and pop. It's almost three hours long and I can't wait to force people to listen to it at work.

As far as movies go, I recommend Fantastic Mr. Fox and Pecker. FMF is beyond me; I really can't explain why everyone should see it, just that it shouldn't go unseen. I mean, aside from the fact that it's fucking STOP MOTION animation (jizzzzzzzz!), characters, dialogue, plot, etc., tickled me so much. Not to mention I couldn't name a single voice actor, which meant the voices were done really well.

Pecker has Edward fucking Furlong in it. Yeah, he's kinda gross nowadays, but in the nineties, oooh gurl was he fine! The only other John Waters film I've seen is Pink Flamingos, and, despite the immense, unfathomable differences between these two films, I could see certain touches in the characters and the ways they related to each other that seemed distinctly John Waters-y.

And, of course, 8 Femmes, one of the most terrible French movies I've ever watched in the name of education. A murder mystery, in which the master of the house is dispatched, and the eight women living there are trapped by a snowstorm, locked gates, cut phone line, and a shit car. The master's sister ends up making out with his wife, who was cheating on him with his business partner who was fucking his sister, but that's okay, because he was fucking the hot maid while the black cook was falling for his sister and his mother-in-law was reminiscing about poisoning his wife's father, while his frumpy sister-in-law tried to jump his bones and his eldest daughter who's not actually his daughter was getting knocked up by him, and the whole time his younger daughter plotted the whole thing because she, the plain, boyish daughter, wants to be his best girl.

I would be happy to suffer through that last one again with Kate, because I know she can appreciate such a piece of work. Plus the clothes and the women are pretty hot.

I have just blinded you all with science.

Musical Revelations

Srsly people, I am starting to become musically depressed. Guys I like, such as Jim Morrison and Eric Clapton, half their stuff's not even original! I mean, I knew rock and roll in the sixties evolved out of the bluesy stuff, but there's a fuck of a difference between evolving and jacking. I would imagine that, back in the day, most of these white, disenfranchised middle class hippie kids didn't think much about crediting the original musician when they stole his songs. Elvis too, you Presley cocksuckers. When I hear the original versions of songs like "Back Door Man" and "Spoonful," I can see what people mean when they say that later bands just took the songs and distorted them and made them all sloppy and messy. Kinda like Led Zeppelin. I mean, especially like. When I realize the resemblances between supposedly classic rock bands and the older bluesy guys, it's easy to see how the older music, the rhythm and blues, was basic and skeletal, with reverent guitar solos that never detracted from the singer's words, but only added to them. Guys like Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page practically jizzed their pants every time they got to perform a guitar solo, and consequently went all over the scale like the hobbits in Mordor, nevermind what that one guy was trying to sing. It's hard to sing when you're out of control and jizzing in your pants.

These things I'm saying aren't particularly well-informed, and it's not like I've listened to the real rhythm and blues for hours and hours. Really, this is my first impression of guys like Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf. Oh my good damn god are they awesome.