As promised in a prior post, here goes a piece on music I’ve recently started liking.

Let me go artist-by-artist in no particular order.

1. Porcupine Tree

These guys are British and they make Art/Experimental/Prog Rock. I seem to have an affinity for Prog Rock and Porcupine Tree grabbed my attention from the very first song I played: Blackest Eyes off their 2002 album, In Absentia. I’ve been playing their stuff over and over again in the past 3-4 days and I love it! Their music reminds me of Pink Floyd and A Perfect Circle, both bands I like. Their music is vibrant and they incorporate a variety of styles into their songs. Must Listen! They are poised to dethrone Tool from the top position on my weekely charts - the first time since around April. Of course, that doesn’t mean another artist will best Tool in my eyes (or ears).

Recommended Tracks: Blackest Eyes, Trains, The Sound of Muzak, Pure Narcotic, Piano Lessons, Lightbulb, Strip the Soul, Stop Swimming

2. The Mars Volta

I just started listening to them today so I don’t have a concrete opinion yet. But from I’ve heard so far, they seem interesting to say the least.

3. The Living End

If you like Green Day, you are certain to love The Living End. This Australian Rockabilly/Punk Revival trio turn in energetic music that will put a smile on your face even if a lot of it is serious in tone. Their 2006 album, State of Emergency, has been refered to as American Idiot Part II and that is true to some degree. These guys have their own style what with the stand-up bass and Australian accents. The lead singer does sound somewhat like an Australian version of Bill Joe Armstrong and on the track “Wake Up,” the children will remind fans of Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick in the Wall.” All in all, a good band and definitely worth your time.

Recommended Tracks: ‘Til the End, Wake Up, What’s on Your Radio, State of Emergency, Into the Red

4. The Supersuckers

Take this sample:

someday someone will ask
yeah this one’s for the kids
well if you look back on the days
and they ain’t got time to waste
with that mopey dopey shit
so cut the crap and bring the hits
and everywhere I go
all the motherfuckers know
that I’m ready

are you ready
I said I’m Eddie Spaghetti
here to rock your ass steady
are you ready
(yes we’re ready)
then grab a drink and chug a lug
have some sex and take some drugs, alright

Recommended Tracks: Rock n’ Roll Records, Rock Your Ass, Pretty Fucked Up, Bruises to Prove It, She’s My Bitch

5. The Riverboat Gamblers

These guys are pretty good. Their albums are around 30 minutes but it’s balls to the wall rock for those 30 minutes. The music is an excellent blend of garage rock and punk revival and is fun to listen to. They just don’t seem to wanna let up on the sonic assault until the album is done.

Recommended Tracks: Just listen to the entire albums…they’re only 30 minutes.

Among other new music by artists I have been listening to for a while, there’s Switzerland by Electric Six and Blood Mountain by Mastodon. Both are excellent albums and certainly worth checking out even if you haven’t heard of either artist…ever. This is as good a time as any to start!

This post shall serve as a double-review. You will read my review of the Electric Six concert on 9/16 in New York City and then my thoughts on their new album, titled “Switzerland.”

So, let’s get things underway with the concert. When I bought the tickets, I saw that Aberdeen City would be opening for Electric Six. When I got to the venue, I found out that there were two more bands playing that night - The Last Vegas and Liam And Me. Oh well. E6 were scheduled for a midnight appearance. The venue was more like a club and held only about 800 people. So wherever you stood, you were always real close to the band. The first band, The Last Vegas came on at around 9:20pm and started with a bang. I saw them and I thought, these guys are so…AC/DC. They tried hard but their singer sucked. They looked like posers from the word go and as the set went on, it just got worse. Plus, they were really loud - and in a small venue, everything is loud already. I was really glad when they got off. The next band, Liam And Me, came on at 10pm and these guys looked sincere. Their music was decent and not as loud as the previous band. However, the sound levels were too high so I stuffed some tissues in my ears to prevent permanent damage.

Then, around 11, Aberdeen City came on. I’d heard these guys were decent and they sure were. They have a weird sound but are a good band. Their bassist is crazy and the singer’s voice stands out over the music. These guys were done at about 11:50pm. Then, E6 started setting up their stuff. When I first arrived at the venue, I ran into 4 of the E6 band members who were taking a walk. No Dick Valentine unfortunately. Even after the setup, there was no sign of E6 until a quarter past 12. Finally, they showed up. The guitarists and Dick were wearing suits which was odd considering the kind of music these guys make.

They kicked things off with “There’s Something Very Wrong With Us So Let’s Go Out Tonight” and the venue was full by this time. Dick was animated and dancing his ass off. The crowd was really into it. Jumping up and down and dancing and yelling. They did about 13-14 songs including “Gay Bar” and left. The crowd yelled for an encore and they came back out. Dick now had a t-shirt on and he played “Jimmy Carter” with Tait Nucleus after telling us that they’d do a couple more and then one more and then finish up with “Dance Commander.” After that, the guys played a couple of tracks off the new album before ending as promised with Dance Commander.

Overall, I was very impressed with E6. Valentine has a great voice and can do weird stuff with it. The rest of the band did their parts well. A couple of times during songs, Valentine just stood on the stage with his hands in his pockets and wearing a big smile. He was drinking all night and was great! I love most of their songs and was slightly disappointed at not getting to hear a few but what the hell. The band put up a great show and played a lot of great songs. I got home really late but it was an enjoyable show, save for the first band and the fact that we had to go through 3 bands before E6 showed up. Tool’s up in 3 weeks time.

Moving on to the album. It kicks off on a slow note with “The Band in Hell” which was surprising considering how the previous two albums opened. The next track, one of my favorites, is called “I Buy The Drugs” (catch the video on the Videos page) which is about a guy who supplies drugs to a sorority. Fun! The next couple of tracks are decent but nothing special although the lyrics to Mr. Woman are hilarious.

“Infected Girls” is track 5 and is another slow jam talking about ummm “infected girls doing it better.” Following this one is “Pulling the Plug on the Party” which is more in tune with the kind of music E6 makes although the lyrics show a different side of the band. “Rubber Rocket” is a song best understood when you listen to it. There is a double entendre in the title and you’ll see how that works once you give the song a listen. “Pink Flamingos” is another one of my favorites but I haven’t yet understood what the song is trying to say.

Among the last few tracks, “Slices of You” is most fun while the closer, “Chocolate Pope” gets the “WTF?” award. “Germans in Mexico” is another one I fail to get although it has a good beat to it. The prize for the longest song title goes to “There’s Something….,” another weird, slow jam.

All in all, I’d say this is a more mature album with better production than the previous two. The synth is not used as much as on “Senor Smoke” but is still used for weird sounds and piano imitations. I think it was on allmusic that I read this album feels like the morning after a party which is about accurate. “Fire” was the party, “Senor Smoke” was the night out after the party, and “Switzerland” is the hung-over, morning-after. But that’s all right, it shows that E6 have more up their sleeves than you’d think. They have taken a new direction with this album but it should still keep fans happy.

PS: I saw a couple of really old Asian ladies at the show. I wonder what they get out of E6’s music?

Samuel L. Jackson. A BIG Plane. Hundreds of Snakes. Put the three together. Snakes on a Plane. 1 hour and 45 minutes of pure, unadulterated, uncompromising, _____ [insert more adjectives here] action and fun await those who dare to go see SoaP. The title is the most obvious movie title ever but the opening couple of minutes are completely misleading. The makers spend a decent amount of time on setting the whole thing up and that is good. None of the characters seems forced although they end up putting in every imaginable personality on there - angry Brit, newly-weds, guy afraid of flying, Hilton-esque bitch with puppy in tow, germophobe rapper with his boys, two kids flying alone - you name it, you got it. And the movie is unapologetic - women, kids, old people, young people, naked people, pilot, air hostess - everyone gets bit and most die. The snakes are shown going after every human part imaginable, male and female. It was a good thing that the makers decided to go all out and get an R rating rather than the PG-13 they were initially aiming for. Without the R, we would’ve missed two great scenes:

1. The scene where the first people get bit

2. The scene where Sam “the man” Jackson delivers THAT line

All right so here’s the story in brief: A dude witnesses the murder of a prosecutor by a gangster identified as Eddie Kim. Eddie sees him get away on his bike and sends his henchmen to kill the aforementioned dude. Jackson saves the dude and takes him into FBI protective custody in an attempt to get him to testify against Eddie Kim. In oder to testify, he must fly to Los Angeles from Honolulu. Left with no other choice, Eddie hatches a plot to take down an entire 747. How? No bombs or crash landings or any of that horse crap. He puts goddamn SNAKES ON A PLANE!!! A few hundred of them and uses a pheromone which makes the snakes go crazy or as Sam the man says, snakes on crack. A few minutes after take-off, the snakes start slithering out as a hatch door was left open. After the first few deaths, there’s a bit of a lull as the snakes start getting into the cabin. A pilot dies, plane instrumentation goes screwy with those snakes going all over it. And then with a jolt, oxygen masks are released and more snakes fall into the cabin. What ensues is best described as mayhem caused when you put hundreds of SNAKES ON A PLANE!!! From here on it’s a regular procession of deaths and gruesome snake bites as Sam the man desperately tries to keep everything under control. Beyond that, the movie behaves like any other action adventure. Sam the man saves the day and all is hunky-dory.

If you go in looking for anything other than a fun time, you will come back disappointed. Leave your brains at the door and just sit back and watch the mayhem. It’s as cheesy as it gets and the movie intentionally forces all those action movie cliches down your throat - you’ll see what I’m talking about. While not as grossing out as something like Saw II, this movie still provides a few pukey moments. Special effects are adequate and unless you are really PICKY about your SNAKES, they get the job done. After all, the movie had an initial budget of just $30 million [they went back and reshot some scenes since they were looking for the R rating anyway] which it should collect at the box-office this weekend itself. I’d say even if it makes around $70-80 million total, it will be a box-office success.

Ultimately, it’s about snakes being unleashed 30, 000 feet above ground and how Jackson kicks some snake-ass (do snakes have asses?) to save the day. If you have a stick up your ass like a lot of movie critics do, then please avoid the movie - that stick will begin to get very painful after almost two hours of sitting down. The movie does exactly what it promised and does it well. I didn’t look at my watch at all once the movie began - not many movies do that for me.

Last night, I went to see A Scanner Darkly, starring Keanu Reeves, Winona Ryder, and Robert Downey Jr. What’s unique about this movie is that it uses rotoscoping. The movie is first shot as a normal movie would be but then graphics artists paint over EVERY FRAME using Photoshop to make it look like animation. The result is that the you recognize the actors even though they look animated. One negative to rotoscoping that I saw, was that at times, the characters and cars looked like they were floating and not actually walking/sitting/rolling. It distracted me a couple of times but wasn’t much of a bother.

So, coming to the story of the movie. It is set in the near future - like 7 years down the line - and is about an undercover cop after a group of individuals who are abusing a drug, known as substance D. But while doing so, he himself starts using the drug and his brain begins to spin out of control. He can no longer distinguish what is real and what is not real. It leaves him in a terrible state by the end of the film and the audience is then told what really goes on behind the scenes in a world where substance D is causing an epidemic. I won’t ruin the end but if you follow the story carefully, you will come to the right conclusion before the movie tells you what it is. If you don’t follow the story, then you will be surprised by the end of it.

The movie is based on Philip K. Dick’s novel, A Scanner Darkly. In the past, other works by Philip Dick have been made into movies - Bladerunner by Ridley Scott and Minority Report by Steven Spielberg were terrific movies when they came out. Richard Linklater doesn’t disappoint with this one and I think reading the book will make the movie even more enjoyable. The movie is relatively short at 100 minutes but it tells its story effectively. Keanu Reeves is perfect for this role - he has always (or should I say only?) excelled in roles that require him to act dazed and confused. Robert Downey Jr. however provides a terrific performance and Winona Ryder does her job well. If you are a Radiohead fan, then the good news is that the movie’s soundtrack features Radiohead and Thom Yorke songs. The bad news is that they only have 3 Radiohead and 1 Thom Yorke song. But whatever, it was a good movie.

Continuing with my top lists, here’s part 2, possibly the last, which lists some of my favorite music from 2005. Let’s start off with the top music albums.

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