Mark Damon Hughes blogs about tech and everything else
Excellent suggestions from Apple Music. I sometimes wonder if there's anyone still there doing human-curated music, which was the whole selling point of Beats Music, and then run across something like this.
Listening to these performances from 1979, when I was a kid, and they sound so much better than anything new.
"A lot of you might not've heard it, because we've only just become fashionable."
—Lemmy, 1979, throwing all the shade at new-fans
It is very weird to me that there's been basically no new music made in the last 20 years. Some '80s-'90s bands keep truckin' along, Reznor, TOOL, and Mustaine still rock. We get some last-gasp geriatrics from Black Sabbath and Van Halen. There's like a half-dozen good new retro bands like Raveonettes, Within Temptation, Zeal & Ardour, BABYMETAL. A very few good new bands like Anamanaguchi; most chiptune is shit, but the 'guch are half rock 'n roll. I liked Slime Girls a few years ago, but that's trashy pop. Rock ain't dead but it's on life support. All the hardcore bands are gone. Rap is in a sad state when Snoop Dogg, bad joke of the '90s, is a top star of the present.
What are the kids listening to? Literally muzak, neutered Madonna imitators like Spears, Swift, and Gaga, and sucker MCs like Drake.
Yeah, yeah, I'm a cliché: Unfrozen caveman John Spartan doesn't like "mini-tunes" the kids listen to, put him back in the fridge. Middle-aged man wears black leather and wants the kids to scream into their speakers and mosh in a pit, and they dress like yuppies and want an early bedtime and quiet background noise.
Odd film, but I love it. Halloween I & II completed the Michael Myers story. Then III was a totally new thing. The intent was to make an anthology series, but no, dumb people just wanted more of Michael; I think all subsequent "Halloween" films are irrelevant and stupid (OK, I do like the Rob Zombie movies). I was a spooky monster kid, but still wasn't allowed to watch the first two at the time of their release, but somehow H3 at 12 was OK. The soundtrack is one of Carpenter's better mood pieces, not as iconic or repetitive as the first two; people sometimes forget Carpenter's as much a musician as a filmmaker.
Plot & characters of the film remind me strongly of The Stuff, Phantasm (especially II-III), and Killer Klowns From Outer Space; losers struggling to expose some terrible danger to Humanity, mostly failing and running. That's what Lovecraft was on about, and how every Call of Cthulhu game should be, not gangsters throwing dynamite at Shoggoths, but truck drivers and kids running for their lives and coming across as crazy people to the useless pigs.
"And don't forget to wear your masks. The clock is ticking, it's almost time! Happy happy Halloween, Silver Shamrock!"
Bonus:
So the playlist:
So I was thinking about Lester Bangs, who basically taught me how to write with his reviews (which explains a lot, you know? I had higher ambitions but some rambling reviews with moments of clarity and profanity are what I can manage), then remembered Bruce Sterling wrote an alt-history biography "Dori Bangs" about him and Dori Seda hooking up, reread it. Fucking fantastic and a little heartbreaking, highly recommend it.
Styx famously sang:
"The problem's plain to see
Too much technology
Machines to save our lives
Machines dehumanize"
But of course that wasn't the problem at all. People were the monsters all along. Machines only suck because people program them to suck.
The solution is clear.
Don't want to wake up with no one beside me
Don't want to take up with nobody new
Don't want nobody coming by without calling first
Don't want nothing to do with you
—Warren Zevon
Black Sabbath: Your greatest joy is painting in unventilated rooms.
David Bowie: There is still, somewhere, a Dig Dug or Zaxxon machine with your high score on it.
Mott the Hoople: You are David Bowie.
Rush: You carry a small flashlight everywhere, and use it at least three times a day.
Steppenwolf: You have three or more cigarette burns in hard-to-reach places.
Golden Earring: You have three or more intentional cigarillo burns.
Derek and the Dominos: You have successfully used cooking spray as tanning oil.
Jim Croce: You have worn only socks and sock garters to a nude beach.
(what the heck, three good McSweeney's in a series? Normally they turn whiny after one or two)
So anyway, that's my playlist today.