This is a 4-song CD single that includes two tracks from Tool of the Man and two new songs. “Everything Burns” is a light and peppy number that would have fit in well on the LP. “Matter Crush” isn’t bad but it’s a bit drab compared to the other three tracks.
Blow Up is a movie that I have often heard referenced in relation to other movie’s I love, most notably Deep Red. I went in not knowing what to expect other than that it involves David Hemmings photographing what he thinks was a murder. The title is a reference to a long scene in which he enlarges the photos to see the details (parodied so well in Mel Brooks’s High Anxiety). My expectation was that this was going to be an intense thriller. I was wrong. The film is more of an art film about perception: can we always believe what we see? I would have preferred a thriller, but as it is, the film makes its point well in its rather heavy-handed use of anarchist mimes(!). Aside from highbrow intentions, the real reason to see this film is the Mod-era fashion, art, music and locales. There are tons of wonderfully memorable moments that seemingly have nothing to do with the plot such as Verushka’s photo shoot or the Yardbirds playing for an apathetic crowd of mods.
After the Poster Children moved to a major label they began to sound tighter, punchier, less-droney and they started mixing their albums louder. All of this was a great improvement and for a while it seemed as though they would just keep one-upping themselves with each new release. This CD also contained the first “Magic-Eye” 3-D image I ever saw. It literally took me hours before I was able see the dorky “PC” logo they embedded in the visual-noise. From the moment that the image converged in my eyes I was able to see beyond the bounds of time and space.
I went into this film not knowing anything about it and ended up liking it despite the slow, SLOW build-up. The retro, early 80s mom-jeans style is great. Did I mention that this one takes its time to get rolling? However, once things start happening, all bet are off. This is one of the rare low-budget films that satisfies the Joe Bobb Briggs’s standard of “anyone can die at any moment.” The final act feels a bit over-the-top after the quiet creepiness of the second act, but it was not so crazy as to make it seem that out of place.
This is the first Poster Children CD that I bought at the time of its release. This was back when they were quickly becoming the kings of the Champaign-Urbana music scene (or maybe arch-dukes bested only by The Didjits). Now, in hindsight, I know that this would not be their best recording, but it certainly felt like the bar by which any following release from the band (or any other Cham/bana band for that matter) would be judged. The sound of the record more or less encapsulates the droning wall-of-guitars sound of the scene from which they emerged. This disc has some of my all-time favorite tracks from the band: “Love,” “Water,” “Space Gun,” and the list goes on.
Just about every Poster Children album has one weird, out-of-place song that either very poppy (“If You See Kay”) or takes a different musical approach (the rapping on “What’s Inside the Box”). In any event, Flower Plower is like an entire record of these one-off tracks. Admittedly, some of the songs just plain suck. But, along with the bad there are some near-classics too like “Eye” and “Dangerous Life.”
Mac McCaughan’s solo project sounds more or less like Superchunk with lower fidelity and lower fun. When I listen to it I think that it is a good record, but once it’s over, it’s completely forgotten. Definitely, lacking in the hooks department.
That title is quite a mouthful, ain’t it? I am continuing my recent excursion into econ-type books that are probably a bit over my head. This book is literally a line-by-line refutation of Keynes’ General Theory. It does a good job in laying out the main points of Keynesian economics before refuting them—relying very heavily on actual quotes and citations. Lewis then spends the rest of the book recapping and then refuting. The attack isn’t quite as devastating as the jacket quotes would lead you to believe, but by the end I was pretty well convinced of that Keynes was at the very least just a sloppy writer who was more or less just rambling about how he thought economics should behave.
This is a science fiction tale based on the premise that, sometime in the distant future, our planetary defense army would be comprised of elderly men and women who trade the last years of their lives on Earth for the prospect of getting genetically younger/modified bodies. The only catch is—as wars against technologically superior alien races tend to go—the vast majority of recruits die in their first year or so of service. An interesting concept but I feel like the fact that all these characters are supposedly wizened old folks doesn’t really effect how they behave. In fact, they all seem to talk in the same Bill Murray-esque, smart-allecky manner. One wise guy is enough, thank you. What we get is more of a standard military, band-of-brothers story that is for sure entertaining, but not as deep and probing as it could be.
After having read the comic a few months back I thought it would be a good time to finally watch this old TBS staple (along with The Beastmaster). Visually, this film is stunning in its art direction and fashion. That alone is reason enough to watch it. But, aside from the look of the film, there isn’t much else going for it. The plot is stupid and exists only to get us from one sexy spacey situation to the next. I guess the film is trying to be comedic but the only genuinely funny part was David Hemmings and his bumbling revolutionary character.