Movie Review: No Time For Rock Stars: The Vans Warped Tour

This documentary is not a comprehensive view of the summer punk/metal tour, The Warped Tour. It is a study of the underbelly of the 2010 edition, following only those participants the producers had access to.

Major rock 'n' roll names included in the 2010 tour like Pennywise and Alkaline Trio are seen only in fleeting moments, if at all. Instead, the film examines three musical acts not necessarily representative of the tour, and an unsigned band that follows the tour across the country, in the hope of getting a moment of stage time.

So while being an interesting documentary on the grueling hardships faced by these young vagabonds of the road (in another century they would have been circus people), the film abandons us to stage left when we want to see the main attraction. It's like being a witness to the mosh pit, when we want to participate.

Never Shout Never, a band led by 20-year old Christofer Drew, is woefully out of place on The Warped Tour. Drew comes across like an intelligent one-fifth of a boy band with a belly of teeny-boppers following him around and begging him for an emotional squeeze and autograph. His compositions are accomplished but his band is anonymous and his music is decidedly light. His presence here is mystifying.

In one disturbing scene, he injures himself diving from the stage into the mosh pit just as the human sea is parting. He is swarmed by fans as he hobbles off to the hospital, clearly in pain. Not quite the punk riot Warped is legend to be.

Mike Posner "broke out" on this tour. The Timberlake-like singer, writer, and producer, who takes the stage alone with a microphone and sings to computerized music, is extensively interviewed. He seems destined for a successful career with a business-sense savvy and several hit singles as a result of Warped. He flies in and out of the tour while "finishing his album in L.A.". The do-it-yourself on a jet ethic.

Suicide Silence is more representative of Vans Warped Tour; a heavy metal outfit with a scowling sore throated-ed singer, Mitch Lucker, who transforms from menacing stage star to tattooed working-class joe when he's interviewed. He sees his career as a practical way to raise his daughter.

Finally there is Forever Came Calling, a band not signed to The Warped Tour, who follow the tour around the country in their modest van while selling their CD for $5 a pop. Their story of a band begging for attention, hoping for a big break on the stage, is the rock 'n' roll equivalent of Broadway's 42nd Street.

The camera work by Josh Salzmans glistens in sunny sky blue and is alive with excitement while capturing looming Texas thunderclouds threatening to close the show down. The entire film looks great.

             Mitch Lucker of Suicide Silence.

But No Room For Rockstars only skirts the issues and dynamics of The Warped Tour. It never tries to be anything more than a fly on the wall of the tour's lesser stages. Even brief interviews with the long haired, charismatic, ex-con stage manager, or the Santa Claus-looking tour bus driver, (the Warped tour's very first employee), outshone the musician's time in front of the camera. Rarely do rock 'n' roll acts have anything significant to say outside their performance.


this review was first published at blogcritics.blogcritics.org/video/article/movie-review-no-room-for-rockstars

MUSIC REVIEW: Spielgusher, "SPIELGUSHER"

Of poetry, spoken word or music, Spielgusher's debut album can be best described as poetry with an ambiance of bass, guitar, and drums. Famed music journalist and Blue Oyster Cult mentor Richard Meltzer (he bunked with B.O.C. for awhile and wrote "Burning For You"), recites his socially diseased diatribes as Mike Watt (Minutemen, The Stooges) on bass, Hirakata "Shimmy" Shimzu on guitar, and Yuko Araki on drums (both played in Japanese artist Cornelius's band), create an alternative universe of cosmic blues-rock that fits rather succinctly into his twisted pornographic observations.

Here's one non-pornographic "poem" called "The Man Who Thought Death Was Dying" in its entirety: "If I only had to wash the upper half or lower half of my body, I would take more showers. I bet you didn't know I only take one every other day."

Add the fact that Meltzer delivers his words as if he has a metal plate permanently lodged in his forehead and you may want to politely toss your listening ears into his Salvation Army coin kettle and quietly move along.

Yet, as if through some manipulative power of poetic persuasion and dirty joke joviality, somewhere between "Fuck Awareness Week" (track 9) and "Tropic of Nipples" (track 41) in this 63-track CD of musings and music, a true art emerges. It's suggested here that the most common language from the lowest street trash philosophy speaks volumes. In Meltzer's sordid world of body waste flow and nonchalant menace ("Fuck My Sister") he unleashes an intimacy of animal-like urges, as if reciting from a crude room in a downtown hotel, that are as disturbing and familiar as our most deviate deepest thought.

Not many sympathizers will be pro-activated by his views on child abuse: All parenting is abusive; depriving children of pornography is abusive; teaching a child the concept of heaven and hell is abusive and should be punishable by a lifetime on a chain gang ("Red Herring"). But, it's pause for a sober moment's thought.

Nor will everyone be romantically inclined by his valentine to love, in which his beloved waits on her menstrual cycle before sitting on his face ("Premenstrual"). But there is no denying the sloppily pronounced "dar-ling" and "lo-ve", as if using all effort to stop his tongue from slipping out his mouth, speaks from the hungry and poetic heart.

And the dreamy, interluding music seems keenly aware of Meltzer's warped yet not insensitive point-of-view, like a paddy wagon combo casually following and ready to snatch him up at the first sign of true dementia.

Spielgusher is 27 years overdue as '80s hardcore punk legends Minutemen had planned to collaborate with Meltzer in 1985 before Minutemen guitarist D. Boone was killed in a car accident.

It's better late than never, and given Meltzer's penchant for death-affirming issues, not a moment too soon. His own words provide an invitation to a session with Spielgusher. "Be playful, be generous, invite snails into your home and offer them beer.".

there's a suspicious black sedan sitting outside my home so i gotta tell you this review was first published by me here

Music Review: Sunkissed - Bad Weather California

The theme to Bad Weather California's sophomore album, Sunkissed, on the Family Tree record label, is the sun - how it shines when you're hanging at the beach, skateboarding down a street, or just killing time making love and getting busted for weed on a sunny California afternoon.

Tommy James and The Shondells said it: "There's a ball of fire in the sky, it keeps watching over you and I", ("Ball of Fire"). So did beloved mid '60s pop band The Cyrcle: "The worst is over now, the morning sun is shining like a red rubber ball" ("Red Rubber Ball" written by Paul Simon). All three bands agree, the sun is - there.

Bad Weather California celebrates the big yellow ball with a Vitamin C enriched celebration of blessedly ignorant youth with an element of reckless teen danger, as if '60s cartoon band The Archies ("Sugar, Sugar") were to break with convention and rob a liquor store.

A flash of fluid, exotic West African guitar highlights this teen tribe's dopey, surfer-without-a-cause songs which are all about smiling and sunshine and loving and hot guitar licks. Picture a laid back beach party bonfire you feel compelled to approach, and in no time find yourself stripped down to your skivvies and joining in on an awkward teen dance to the Sun Ra. Meanwhile the party is passing around a joint and experiencing a cosmic connection to - well, everything.

The most compelling track, "Let it Shine" ("Sunshine! Taking me home!") features a Richie Valens-like guitar plugging rhythm into a funky, downbeat, hand-clapping jam which reaches fever like a hot Calypso number begging you to the dance floor.

When they're not hanging at the beach, cooing lovemaking, or lamenting the stems and seeds at the bottom of their stash, they're championing rockabilly stomp, Jesus and Mary Chain slop, and precious Green Day teen philosophy. Given the thirty-something photo of the band on their CD, a proud arrested development prevails. Mom and Dad will just never understand, man.

Produced by Akron/Family's guitarist Seth Olinsky (the difference between the two bands seems to be that Akron/Family prefers doing their drugs indoors), Bad Weather California's Sunkissed is for anyone who ever allowed the sun to kiss their shoulders while gazing at the ocean as mom and pop pointed to an NPR-light-jazz listening future.


An agreement upon risk of death compels me to say this article was first published by me, the author at blogcritics.blogcritics.org/music/article/music-review-bad-weather-california-sunkissed/

Twitter This

i stare at twitter and don't know what to do or say -
2012 came in like a tired wave lapping against my hungry shore. Drink, drink, drink, it seemed to say.

With the New Year I unearthed all the books I've amassed from book sales, lying in piles here and there and began to organize.

But I started paging thru the first one I picked up and never got back to it. Maybe next year.

I swear, the voice on my new navigational system said, "I told you to turn right, asshole!".

Whoops, wrong satellite.

While organizing, I fantasized about putting all the books in respective genres; fiction, non-fiction, etc.

Oh, what a library it would be.

I read "The Book of Old Silver - English, American, Foreign", by Seymour B. Wyler - all 400 pages and I don't know why.

Saul Bellow. Now there's a name. I read his "Henderson The Rain King" years ago and I'll never forget the roller coaster ride with the circus bear. Bear with me.

So I read one of his very few plays from my book burning pile - the failed, much maligned "The Last Analysis". Broadway bomb of 1964 after much revision.

Revised again for publication, - it's hysterical. My interpretation - once beloved comedian  has nervous breakdown while attempting to build a Freudian School of Comedy in New York City. Picture Milton Berle in a clown suit as a student of Socrates. I loved it.

Speaking of Broadway, I found a rare record in the bins - "Pat Carroll in Gertrude Stein" (Caemdon TRS 367),  a solo show from the late 1970s with Carroll as Stein musing about her beloved Parisian life while Alice B. Toklas naps in the other room.

Brownies.

I rung in the New Year with it. Felt like I was tipping glasses at 27 Rue de Fleurus. Felt the same way about Hemingway's "A Moveable Feast", which I read on a bus trip to NYC years ago, also about the American expatriate artists who graced Paris in the 1920s. Poor Ernie.

But I wasn't enamored by Woody Allen's "Midnight in Paris", or is it "Paris at Midnight"? - with Owen
Wilson magically being whisked away to the art colony of '20's Paris.  I certainly didn't dislike it (loved the surrealists), and I was just glad he had a hit movie. It seemed a bit dumb. Pedro Almodovar's "The Skin That I Live In', also let me down a bit. A modern day Frankenstein story about a scientist who creates a synthetic human skin. I thought it was a bit ridiculous. Good chill at film's end, though.

And strangely, art house movie guy that I am, I loved "Mission Impossible 4 - Ghost Protocol". I can't get the Mission: Impossible musical theme out of my head now and I keep looking around for my next assignment.

In the same record bin that revealed Gertrude Stein, I found The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (Philips PCC 616), Ernest Hemingway Reading, (Caedmon TC 1185) and Bernard Shaw's Don Juan in Hell, Directed by Charles Laughton (Coloumbia Masterworks SL-166).

Inside one of those albums was a nice copy of Theatre Arts magazine from April 1952. It extensively covers Broadway and global theatre and it's proving to be as entertaining as any copy in media today. Great vintage advertising; the complete text of "Don Juan in Hell"; a heavy emphasis on the troubling new medium - television (One foreseeing article predicted a near future where people would pay for better television!); and a very funny article, "Second-Nighters" about theatre attendees the night after a Broadway premier: "Second nighters come to see the show, not each other. They are in their seats at curtain time. There is no irritating rustle for place during the entire first act, no dropped programs, crushed insteps, frenzied whispers. There is no rivalry between the center aisle striders and the actors onstage. Coughers are at a minimum, drunks sparse.".

A little while ago I was suddenly dropped by a bunch of unassociated "friends" on Facebook. I was "unfriended" and didn't know why. So I hired a private detective and learned that I was unfriended because of a crack I made about Jesus Christ on this blog. All I could think was, "Jesus, SOMEBODY is READING my blog!!!".

so the heck with you.

I had an incident at 7-11. I was going in the store and some kid standing outside asked me if I would buy him some beer. I said, "sure", took his money, went in the store, pulled out my cell phone, and called the cops. The cops came and hauled him away. I bought a 5th of Vodka with his 20 bucks. He's being executed next week.

Just sayin' - proud to be an American and do my bit to curb teenage drinking.

Theatre Review: Occupy Animal Farm by Justin Karcher at The Subversive Theatre Collective

I'd forgotten what a great story George Orwell's Animal Farm is. I remember reading it in elementary school and the teacher went to great lengths to explain the love declared between male pigs Napoleon and Snowball, the leaders of an animal revolution, was NOT the same as the love between a man and a woman. It was more brotherly and certainly not sexual.

The Subversive Theatre Collective, a feisty and tireless political theatre group working out of an old Pierce-Arrow automobile plant in Buffalo, New York is presenting Occupy Animal Farm, an original play based on Orwell's allegorical novella about a political revolution among animals on a farm. Here, there is little doubt Napoleon and Snowball (Jeffrey Coyle and Jonathan Shuey) are gay pigs frolicking in the mud, plotting revolution and very much in love.

They are self-proclaimed leaders of the revolt after convincing the other farm animals that pigs are the smartest of the animal kingdom. Early in the play while scheming to take control of the farm, Napoleon unexpectedly announces to Snowball, "I love you.". It's a funny scene with a finely executed dead beat that caught the audience unaware as if responding, "Did we hear that right?".

I was reminded that the book was a real page-turner, and the integrity of Orwell's vision, a cleverly comic fable with totalitarian thunderclouds threatening a socialist agenda, is intact in writer Justin Karcher's original work, which leans heavily on the humor while never relaxing the muscle that gives the story dramatic weight, even suspense.

Director Drew McCabe incorporates several unlikely theatrical forms into the proceedings: chaotic chase scenes set to the tune of a wacky slapstick soundtrack (think Benny Hill); audience participation that never quite catches on (this only works when the audience is enraptured); and dance choreography (yes, not only do these animals talk, they dance) to Justin John Smith's original, bizarre, and finally memorable music that combines rock and Hindustani influences. The closing dance with the entire cast, a morphing of modern and Asian-Indian dance forms by choreographer Jenny Kulwicki, is strangely effective while having seemingly nothing to do with Animal Farm.

The actors work their tales off. While it would have been more visually fulfilling if the farmyard had several more animals in it - a sheep here, a cow there, everywhere a goat-goat - the seven actors, donning masquerade-like animal masks and sometimes in multiple roles, express graceful acrobatic animal gestures while never hee-hawing the production into farce.

Maria Droz as Mollie, the young horse indifferent to the political revolution and longing for the lazy days of hand-fed sugar cubes and pretty mane ribbons ("No one wants to RIDE me anymore!"), bellies a perfect counterpart of desire to the gang mentality of revolution, as she sashays her way across the farmyard as if on her way to visit Mr. Ed. Brian Zybala as Boxer the work horse masters the sound of a horse snorting (he also does a fine chicken strut in a second role), and, like the hard laborer, is the backbone of this production in a strong sympathetic performance as the genuine believer in political change.

Technical difficulties hampered the show on its second night with one long moment in darkness where nothing happened but a dead stage. The decision to put the only human character in a mask (Matt Kindly as Farmer Jones) lent the stage a bit of confusion as the actor played multiple roles in various masks.

At home after the theatre I lookeed through my books to see if I had a copy of Animal Farm. I need to occupy it again. That is the measure of the success of this production.

Occupy Animal Farm plays through December 17 at The Manny Fried Playhouse in the old Pierce-Arrow automobile plant in Buffalo, New York. For more information call 716-408-0499.


this review was first published by the author at blogcritics.org

MUSIC REVIEW: Kate Bush, 50 Words For Snow

It's marketing strategy that Kate Bush's new album, 50 Words For Snow is released just as the winter solstice is stirring outside. Who better that Kate Bush to hunker down with on a cold winter night, start into a candle flame, tip a glass of wine, and entertain some serious intimacy? Bush's feverish followers, waiting sometimes years between new releases, will indulge in their passion for the art-rock goddess.

The new album finds her conjuring wispy piano chords while musing with her breathy multi-ranged voice on the mysticism of snow. It's an ambitious project that misses very few snowy ideas. Unlike Paul Simon's "50 Ways To Leave Your Lover", we get all 50 words for snow here, assuming phrases like "hunter's dream" and "ankle breaker" constitute words. My favorite here: "poland-sent-it".

The music is often dreary and meandering. An indulgence in mysticism or religion finds her soul deep in her psyche but wallowing in shallow execution. . Opening track "Snowflake" finds the cold white stuff heralding no less than the origin of man with Bush assuming a first-person godlike point of view, "I was born in a cloud", she begins and after trekking the ascent of man allows her son in a choirboy soprano to sing, "I am sky!".

I am tipping my second glass.

This notion, or condition, gets hip deep in the snowdrifts and runs through the entire album. She muses about the man who fell to earth while prancing on simple and amateurish piano chords that seem only the beginning of a creative process. A rough draft of music.

Better is her bizarre take on "Frosty The Snowman". In "Misty" she is seduced in bed by Misty the snowman who apparently is a little chilly in the love department. She sings, "so cold next to me, I can feel him melting in my hand", with all the drama of her most serious work. Here she paints a frightening, maybe enlightening picture of a man made of snow melting in her bed with nothing but the empowerment of women left on the soaked sheets.

But there seems little reason for the distant "Wild Man", the first and probably only single off the album, about the discovery of an ancient man and the attempt to communicate with him. "We found footprints in the snow", the lyrics read, constituting an entry in Bush's snow files.

Her duet with Elton John, "Snowed In At Wheeler Street" is god-awful. A creepy cloying song about a tragic 20th Century love affair that sounds like an old Ashford-Simpson composition set against the backdrop of a concentration camp. Is she truly referencing the Jewish Holocaust in a call and response duet with Elton? - "Then we met in '42 but we were on different sides. I hid you under my bed, but they took you away". Ironically, Elton hasn't sounded this good in decades.

As alluring as 50 Words For Snow seems on the verge of, it is as often a cold affair. Its only intimacy is that we all share some kind of poetic notion about snow. Bush comes close to tapping into that shared consciousness, but never succeeds in conveying that to a great piece of music.

On her official website, there are heaps of praise for the album from several major media critics. I'm glad for that because I've always loved her music. But for me, for now, here's a snowball aimed right at it.

This review was first published by the author at blogcritics.org.

Another Lost Weekend

The next 10 random songs on my iPod are not enchanted twists of fate. The next ten songs randomly chosen from the god of cyber-space on my iPod are indeed - astounding in their own familiar quiet way. I'd like to cheat but it's like the honor system in competitive birding. If I want The Rolling Stones and I get Men Without Hats make beer with a twist of lemon. Or maybe it's time to call the playlist executioner. Blame the Cardinals winning the world series. Blame the Occupy Wall Street crowd who I think should be occupying Skid Row. Organize man! You're fast becoming a tourist attraction.

Open mouth and insert foot and swallow whole. I'm at a new job and there was an employee meeting around a large rectangular table. There was a lull so I spoke. I repeated the scene in "Oliver Twist" where he asks for more porridge.

I don't want a friend I want a designated driver.




I won a pack of unopened Topps baseball cards from 1987 with bubble gum intact from Topps.com. I so want to taste that bubble gum but I did a market check on all baseball cards from that year and they need to remain unopened for another thousand years.

The Handsome Family, Don't Be Scared

Poor sensitive Paul lets birds and weather rape him. Sleepy steel guitar ballad from "In The Air" goes nowhere but in the air.



Men Without Hats, Messiahs Die Young

Synthesized horns, a bongo beat box and a pleasant audio drone made this a surprise hit in the American Bandstand of my mind in 1984. Revolution! of the mind.

The Beatles, Can't Buy Me Love

one of the earliest songs I remember loving on the radio but I thought the lyrics were, "Can't Bobby Love". Not until Brian L. and Robert W. staged a mock lyp-synching Beatles concert in an extravagent elementary school 'show and tell' session did I realize the actual lyrics. It's been a lifetime of preferring my original interpretation of lyrics to the actual words - (Elton John's "Rocket Man"- "burning off the shoes of evermore" ... no?). McCartney's raw vocals and Ringo's garbage can top drumming make this a garage rock supreme classic.


Former actor, famed trumpeter, successful songwriter (Ally-Oop, Wonderful World), owner and founder of A&M Records, (he's the "A"), co-producer of the Tony Award winning "Angels in America" on Broadway, not to mention his string of instrumental hits with The Tijuana Brass in the late '60s, Herb Alpert appears to be one hell of a guy. He's the only artist to have two number one songs on Billboard's Top 100 in the category of instrumental : "Rise" in 1979, and vocalist in 1969 with this song, the Burt Bacharach-Hal David written "This Guy's In Love With You". It's pure '60s shmaltz from a guy who really can't sing which lends the song an effective intimacy, like any "guy" can croon to his beloved. Alleged to be one of George Harrison's favorite records, that's two of us.

Sonic Youth, Sunday

A great noisy guitar jam interrupts this laudable would-be hit single from this forever experimenting band. Perfect mental fodder for my second least favorite day of the week. From the album, "A Thousand Leaves".

Kate Bush, King of The Mountain

This British art rocker has some of the worst rock videos I have ever seen and the video for this, with Elvis Presley's famed sequined outfit flapping in the wind like a homeward angel refusing to go home, doesn't jive with this king of the mountian. Kate, the song is about bravely taking on middle age with the energy of a newborn, right? From "Aeriel".

Swans, Weakling - Man vs. machine and man wins but is eaten alive anyway. Industrial noise and man mantra sounds like a typical day in a factory I used to work in. From "Filth".

Man vs. machine and man wins but is eaten alive anyway. Industrial noise and man mantra sounds like a typical day in a factory I used to work in. From "Filth".

Bette Midler, Delta Dawn

After intermission, Midler came back to the stage in this early HBO concert recorded live in Cleveland, Ohio, and delivered a rousing version of Delta Dawn that brought the house down. Midler makes this more than just a popular ballad - it's an Evangelical sweat busting workout. From "Live At Last".



Drive-By Truckers, 72 (This Highway's Mean) and Shut Up and Get On The Plane

Two songs from The Truckers' "Southern Rock Opera" fittingly close this iPod session - a doom mongering, life affirming tribute to Skynard.