dada - puzzle - 1992

There's a funny story about dada's first album, "puzzle," regarding my friend Topher. For the longest time, he insisted that the lyric "I just tossed a fifth of gin" was, in fact, "I just tossed at Village Inn." Even after correcting him, he insisted the misheard version was better. Who I am to argue with puking at a Village Inn? (They don't even have them in California. Man, okay, that's even funnier.)

Dada are a band from L.A. with a very distinct sound - lots of buzzy guitars with desert flavor mixed with high elements of psychedelia. They're sort of the perfect L.A. sound. You can imagine dada as a band playing under neon lights while there's a thunderstorm on the wind. "Puzzle" debuted in 1992 with the song "dizz knee land," which was something of an indie hit, a sort of us-against-them anthem that connected with a lot of people my age at the time. It got the band a good amount of attention, for better or worse.



There's something so wonderfully dizzy about dada's sound, those guitars from Calio that buzz and hum, hypnotic and yet rarely meditative. But it's not like that the only appeal - Gurley's bass work is solid and interwoven, and Leavett's drum work is complex while still approachable. But what really set dada apart was the fact that both Calio and Gurley take turns at vocal duties, and the two sound similar, but are still very distinct.



dada put out four albums, broke up, got back together again, put out another album in 2004, and other than  20th anniversary tour in 2013, there hasn't been much from them, which is sad. I've always really liked the band. You should give them a  listen.

Pink Floyd - Wish You Were Here - 1975

And now for something completely different.

Everyone with a passing interest in classic rock has a favorite Pink Floyd album.

The majority of people say "Dark Side Of The Moon," because that's the one that everybody bought (and I do mean everybody - it's sold over 50 million copies, so I'm sure there's a remote tribe in the deepest deserts of Russia who jam out to it regularly).

A lot of people will say "The Wall," because "The Wall" was also a huge success, and I think a lot of people key into that anti-establishment thrust that's the center of that massive double album. But for me, my money's always been on "Wish You Were Here," the band's ninth album, and certainly their spaciest.

"Wish You Were Here" is also easily the one with the fewest number of songs, having only five tracks. Now, keep in mind, none of those five tracks is under five minutes in length, and two of them are each over twelve minutes in length, and those two mega tracks are really the two halves of one song that sprawls over nine parts, the gloriously epic tribute to former band member Syd Barrett "Shine On You Crazy Diamond."

So, Syd Barrett had been a member of Pink Floyd for a while, but eventually his mental health with into a state of decline, and he needed to leave the band. There's been a lot of speculation about what was actually up with Syd Barrett - certainly the constant LSD use didn't help any, but people have theorized it might have been schizophrenia or bipolar syndrome, although after his death in 2006, Barret's sister said he never suffered from any form of mental illness. I suspect we'll never really know. Maybe it's better that way.

It's almost nine minutes in to the album before you hear Roger Waters sing a single word, the sprawling instrumental opening gloriously swirling around during the first few parts of "Shine On You Crazy Diamond (Parts I-V)" and those words are "Remember when you were young / you shone like the sun..." It's clear the band missed the person who used to be their friend, but they also missed who they used to be when he was around. The two major themes of "Wish You Were Here" are absence and frustration. Absence, in how the band was less unified now than it had been in some time, and frustration, in how the music industry was chipping away at them. It's easy to see "Welcome To The Machine" as a statement on how much they hated what the business was doing to them, and "Have A Cigar" cuts right to the bone with its talk of "riding the gravy train."

To me, though, the title track has always been my favorite Pink Floyd song. "Wish You Were Here" is both nostalgia and wistful without being defeatist. It has a certain world-weariness to it, but there's also a strong sense of resolve in Gilmour's vocals, a sense that he's going to keep on walking, that the way out is through. "We're just two lost souls / swimming in a fishbowl / year after year / Running over the same old ground / What have we found? / The same old fears / Wish you were here..."

It doesn't get any better than that.

Captain America - The Winter Soldier Ultimate Collection - 2010

"Hey Cliff," I hear you saying, "I just saw the new Captain America movie and I would love to know more about where all of this Winter Soldier stuff comes from. Can you help me?" Relax, fearless reader, I got your back.

In 2004, a writer named Ed Brubaker wrapped up his exclusivity contract with DC Comics, and was a free agent again. He walked into Marvel's offices and they asked him, "What do you want to do?" He told them he had a pitch for Captain America. He detailed it out. They said "It's all yours."

Keep in mind, this is 2004. The "Iron Man" movie wouldn't come out for another 4 years. The Disney buyout of Marvel wouldn't happen until 2009. Marvel was just starting to regain its footing, and Brubaker's run on Captain America was one of the biggest lynch pins in that, following in the footsteps that Brian Michael Bendis had been doing with Daredevil (springboarding off of the relaunch that writer-director Kevin Smith had given it in 1998). Brubaker would write Captain America for eight years, wrapping up his run in October of 2012. The most recent series has been written by Rick Remender and it's, well, it's no Brubaker, let's just leave it at that. I realize Remender is trying to do something radically different, but, hell, I don't think I really wanted something radically different.

So, here's the thing - Captain America is a tough nut of a character to crack, much in the same way that, say, Superman is, but for different reasons. With Superman, you have the "overwhelming force" problem. Part of Superman's schtick is that he's basically power without limits. That means to tell interesting stories, you're limited in the kind of tales you can tell - Superman grapples with the morality of his overwhelming powers versus the common man, Superman copes with being an outsider, or Superman's powers are reduced and/or he finds a foe as strong as he is. There's only so many times the kryptonite card can get played before readers go "this again?" And it's hard to relate to Superman, because, well, he's got more power than we're really even able to comprehend. We as an audience are more likely to relate to shy Clark Kent than we are Superman.

Captain America had a similar problem in the Marvel universe, in that there were a limited number of stories people could really tell with him - Captain America's classic "man out of his own time," the world's changed, the burdens of leadership and the pressures of not fitting in. For much of the 1990s, the idea of Captain America even seemed antiquated, awkward, because what did the idea of "America" even mean? Mark Gruenwald (who wrote the incomparable "Squadron Supreme") tried to make Cap a relevant character, having him deal with political and social issues, but it still just didn't seem to work. They tried getting Rob Liefeld to make Cap popular again (as part of the disastrous Heroes Reborn event) but it just didn't connect.

Then 9/11 happened.

In the aftermath of 9/11, Captain America revealed himself as Steve Rogers in the Marvel Universe, and the Avengers collapsed. Rogers joined S.H.I.E.L.D. And that was about where Brubaker came in. See, Brubaker's pitch was that he wanted to do two things - he wanted to tap into the sort of 1970s paranoia that was highly relevant to today's modern political/espionage landscape, and he wanted to bring Captain America into the modern age, not by struggling with it, but by trying to figure out not just what he meant in this new world, but what the idea of being Captain America meant. He wasn't going to take the boy scout approach that so many writers had taken with Captain America, but wanted to really evaluate what sort of image a person who bore the name "Captain America" and who had fought in World War II would have of the country he resided in now. It was time for Captain America to stop living in the past and start adapting to the present, all the while struggling with old foes and adversaries from his past who had already adapted to the modern age.

Brubaker's run isn't flawless, believe me (the "Death of Captain America" and "Captain America Reborn" storylines are somewhat shaky), but when Brubaker's at the top of his game, his Captain America run is something truly special, the kind of pop-spy fiction that we don't get a lot of in comics these days. The start of Brubaker's run is pretty important, because it lays a LOT of the groundwork that's seen in the new Captain America movie, and you can get in on that with "The Winter Soldier Ultimate Collection," which collects the first two books of Brubaker's run on Cap. If you still want more after that, you can move on to "The Red Menace Ultimate Collection," which continues Brubaker's run. Both are great investments. Steve Epting was a great artistic match for the neo-noir spy stories Brubaker wanted to tell, and the two were a match made in heaven. You don't really need to know more than the basic origin story of Captain America to get into either of these, so if you want to read the books where the movie drew inspiration from, this is the place to go. (Hell, if you're eagle-eyed during the movie, you can even spot Brubaker making a quick cameo. I think he'd earned it...)

I would have been content for Captain America to continue being a new-wave espionage story even after Brubaker left, with the new writers picking up the mantle of "how do you be a good guy in a world where it's increasingly hard to tell the difference between the good guys and the bad guys?" as well as the "the actions of the past always have ripples on the actions of today" second layer Brubaker laid down, but Remender seems intent on taking Cap into less grounded territory, maybe to try and prevent any comparisons from his run and Brubaker's, which is unfortunate. Marvel needs to understand that its audience is mostly older people now, and while it's good to make sure you have titles aimed at the younger audience, you also need titles aimed at the older audience who are looking to find stories that appeal to them. Thankfully, there are a number of books that Marvel's putting out that work, and that are starting to fill that gap - Matt Fraction's "Hawkeye" (although it's certainly more light hearted) as well as Nathan Edmonson's "Punisher" and "Black Widow," but both of those titles are just starting, so I'm judging from early days. Jonathan Hickman's "Secret Warriors" tried to do the espionage thing, but it was too mired in Marvel continuity and frankly just too hard to peel open. The potential was there, but Hickman's work as of late has felt like the kid who's too cool for what he's writing, keeping things a little too aloof and too inaccessible. His run on the Avengers has been a pretty big letdown, feeling more like an attempt to recapture what Warren Ellis did with "The Authority" but with Marvel characters, and it just doesn't work. His "Infinity" crossover was, I think, the sign that too many balls were in the air at once. I'd love to see someone do a S.H.I.E.L.D. comic focusing on Nick Fury and maybe a handful of agents that didn't go so far down the rabbit hole, written by someone like Brubaker, or Greg Rucka. Hell, I'd love to take a shot at writing one, but someone would have to convince Marvel to give me a shot at writing something. So Quesada? Call me. I've got a pitch that would knock your socks off...

Josh Ritter - The Animal Years - 2006

That more people haven't heard of Josh Ritter still kind of amazes me. The man puts out consistently great albums, tours incessantly, wrote a book and is just generally a nice guy, and yet, loads of people have never heard of him.

Ritter's music is a blend of folk and rock, with a certain on-the-road feel to it, giving him an almost out-of-time feel, like he's some guy with a guitar riding the railroad across the country, playing songs at stops whenever the train stops to load or unload, like a vagabond troubadour around the turn of the century, or someone in the early days of radio. His first major label effort, "The Animal Years," certainly reflects that sort of feel.

What's amazing is how timeless "The Animal Years" feels, even though a good portion of it is about the Iraq war. Despite the fact that a number of these songs were relating to current events, they're folded in an elegant metaphorical language, full of anachronistic references and oblique meanings. Take "Girl In The War," which references Peter and Paul at the pearly gates, as well as Laurel and Hardy. And the song is full of righteous anger, too. "The angels fly around in there, but we can't see them/I got a girl in the war, Paul I know that they can hear me yell/If they can't find a way to help her they can go to Hell."



That sort of haunting poetry is abundant on the album, and it's colored with instrumentation that varies from simple to complex.


For me, though, there are two songs that are absolute must-hears on the album. The first is the the epic "Thin Blue Flame," that clocks in over nine minutes in length, a dusty trail song that builds and builds and builds like the last stretch of daylight blossoming into a starry night with a full moon draping the evening in shimmering light. I love songs like this, that just keep adding bit after bit, until you realize a whole song has erupted around you.

There's no getting past it, though. The absolute heart of the album is the song, "Good Man," one of my favorite songs not just by Josh, but by anyone. It's a song that skips along, more uptempo than much of the album, but that just makes it all hang together even more.

Later albums from Josh Ritter have all had great songs, but if you want the best cohesive album, start here.

Switchblade Honey - 2003

Over the life of this blog, I'm probably going to end up talking about everything Warren Ellis has ever written, but I wanted to start with one of the gems that a lot of people don't often see - the 2003 graphic novel "Switchblade Honey."

"Switchblade Honey" is a standalone story that has no relation to anything else, and sprang forth, as Ellis tells it in his introduction, as a side effect of his friendship with Patrick Stewart. I won't spoil the wonderful anecdote that he tells in the intro, but the part I will tell you is that he eventually decides he wants to write a sci-fi story where someone like Ray Winstone was the captain. Winstone isn't well known here, despite appearing in high profile films like "Sexy Beast" and "The Departed," but in England, he's known for playing a real force of nature. So Ellis set out to take all the conventions of Star Trek and mainstream sci-fi spaceship stories around that time and spin them utterly on their head.

At some point in the future, the human species has gone interstellar. They end up meeting the Chasta, and they make an utterly horrible first impression. So the Chasta decide to wipe humanity out of existence. They're working their way backwards towards Earth, killing every human along the way on their path to the homeworld. And they're encircled our solar system, boxing us in as they press forward.

Since all conventional thinking has failed, the remnants of humanity decide to think way outside of the box - they get a disgraced captain, John Ryder, give him a one-of-a-kind prototype ship they aren't even sure fully works, let him pick a crew of fuck-ups and criminals, and set him loose. If they can't be the army, they can be the guerrilla fighters. And they don't have any support at all. Even their own people won't recognize them. They are the absolute last ditch effort of a species desperate not to be wiped out - us.

It's a rogue's story, but rogues on the side of angels. Ryder and his crew are troublemakers of the highest order, but they're doing what they think is right, because they don't want to be the only five humans left alive. There's some sense of expectation, to try and save the species, even if a lot of it isn't worth saving. (Suffice to say, the Chasta's dim view of humanity isn't entirely unwarranted.) But some of it is, and that's enough. That has to be enough.

We'll talk more about Ellis again  later, as he's written a number of things that I utterly adore and not enough of you have read. I picked this one today because it's obscure enough that a lot of Ellis fans haven't probably read it, and those of you who haven't read anything of Ellis at all will have a nice self-contained piece that won't run you an arm and a leg, and doesn't trail off in the middle. The trademark things of Ellis are mad-cap characters (check) and razor-sharp dialogue (check), and you'll find them in spades here.  Perhaps the only downer about this particular book is that it's black-and-white, as I think having color would've helped the entire piece, but hey, it's a book about space, and space does have a lot of black.

A Perfect Circle - Mer De Noms - 2000

It's been one of those days, so this won't be too long a post. I want to wrap up the week with A Perfect Circle's first album, "Mer De Noms," from 2000. It's a vicious, moody blend of art-goth rock and heavy metal. It's like The Cure, The Smashing Pumpkins and The Sisters of Mercy were all stuck into a blender.

So, Billy Howerdel, the main musician behind A Perfect Circle, was a guitar tech for The Smashing Pumpkins for a while, as well as Tool, Nine Inch Nails, Fishbone, Guns'n'Roses and others. It was on those gigs that he made friends with Maynard James Keenan, Tool's vocalist. When Howerdel was crashing at Keenan's house, he played some of his demos for him, and the band was formed. They added a number of other musicians, including former Failure guitarist Troy Van Leeuwen and former Primus drummer Tim Alexander, although Alexander was replaced with Josh Freese early on in the recording process of the first album, "Mer De Noms."

The album was a big hit, the highest ranking debut for a new band on the modern rock charts. The video for the first single, "Judith," was directed by David Fincher. They opened for Nine Inch Nails for a while before launching their own tour.



You can definitely hear elements of other bands, but A Perfect Circle are truly different than anything else out there. The two bands that draw the most obvious comparison are Tool (which is mostly just hearing Maynard in both bands) and Failure (in terms of guitar textures and approach), but "Mer De Noms" stands out in that the album is willing to shift from heavy metal to acoustic melody and back as much as it pleases. For example, the second single, "3 Libras."


Maynard joked around that people who were Tool fans had some adjustments to do listening to A Perfect Circle, because he was "actually singing." It's a gorgeous album, and while the follow up, "Thirteen Step," had some great stuff on it, it wasn't as strong on the whole. They also put out "eMOTIVe," which is mostly cover songs, and is also worth listening to. There's been rumors of another album at some point, but we'll see. We're also still waiting for a new Tool album...

Shallow Grave - 1994

Obi-Wan Kenobi and Doctor Who fight over how to get rid of a dead body in their apartment, and what to do with all of the money found on said dead body.

There, I've just sold you on "Shallow Grave." Post done.

... You're still here? Fine.

"Shallow Grave" is a 1994 film, the first from director Danny Boyle, that tells the story of three people - Christopher Eccleston (aka The Ninth Doctor), Ewan McGregor (aka Obi-Wan Kenobi) and Kerry Fox (who never really took a genre busting role) - who share a flat in Edinburgh, but need to take on a fourth roommate in order to pay the bills. They interview people and eventually choose this guy to be their new roommate. Not long after, they find him dead. And in his room, they find a suitcase full of cash.

I really don't want to tell you more about the plot that this, because to do so would be to spoil the fun of the movie. It's a dark comedy, or a thriller with comic elements, whichever you like. It's the first major film role of Ewan McGregor, and he and director Danny Boyle would go on to make "Trainspotting" a few years later, and that would vault both to superstardom.

The film is gorgeously shot, and it was a big hit in the UK, although it didn't really make it's way over here until Trainspotting was hitting, and by that point, everyone knew that Boyle and McGregor were going to be big things. It moves at a mile a minute, and it shifts tones quick and crazy. It's also wildly macabre and gets very dark, so you have to be prepared to roll with the punches. But it's a film I absolutely love, and you'll get a kick out of it.

Buffalo Tom - Big Red Letter Day - 1993

Back in 1992, I got my first job. I was a carnival barker at Peony Park in Omaha. Unlikely, you say? Maybe. But true nonetheless. I worked in the midway at Peony Park, manning the darts game, the milk jugs, the skeeball machines and, my favorite, the ball toss. It was a crazy summer. I learned how to juggle. I found out the age of consent in the state of Nebraska. (No, not for me - my boss was dating one of my coworkers, and they needed to know it. They were within it.) I ended up seeing a few minutes of Primus, and a few minutes of The Smashing Pumpkins, both of whom were playing the Pavilion inside of the park. I overcame my fear of rollercoasters, by having to stick my arm and leg out of one near the top of the thing. (What? I'm still alive. And I was doing it on the orders of my boss, who was up there with me. We were attempting to get the car unstuck. We ended up doing this a dozen times. Yes, I'm aware how wildly unsafe this is now, but back then, I was young and invincible, at my first job, and scared shitless that if I didn't do what my boss told me to, I'd get fired.) I ended up not doing a whole lot and not getting paid a whole lot to do it, but it kept me busy for the summer.

But the guy who was my boss ended up lending me a tape from this band I'd never heard of called Buffalo Tom. The album was "Let Me Come Over." There were a number of great songs on "Let Me Come Over," including the song "Taillights Fade" which made it on one out of every four mix tapes I made until I was out of college, but the album had a number of songs on it that just didn't connect with me. That would all get fixed with "[big red letter day]," the follow-up album.



"Sodajerk" was the first single off of it, and apparently a lot of people ended up hearing it on the show "My So-Called Life," which I never watched. The album is a lot more varied than "Let Me Come Over," shifting from rock to melancholy and back. It was an album that was best listened to on summer evenings, right as the sun had disappeared beyond the horizon, but the orange glow was still lingering in the clouds overhead. It's an album where I love all the songs on it, and that's certainly saying something.

Bloc Party - Silent Alarm - 2005

Debut albums can be tricky things to crack. Some people make explosive debuts and never do anything good again. Some people make terrible debuts and then get it right in their third or fourth try. Some people make debut albums that establish a sound they never veer from. Some people make debut albums and immediately change tact on their next one. And some people win giant accolades with their first album, then try and make sure they don't fall apart. Bloc Party mostly just made a great first album that people in England went nuts over, and only made a minor splash here.

"Silent Alarm" is Bloc Party's first album, and the band has gone through a number of rough patches since then, with an extended hiatus as the lead singer, Kele Okereke, putting out a solo album. There were even rumors that he was being replaced by the rest of the band, although those rumors never turned into something tangible. They put out "Four" in 2012 and then apparently decided to go back onto indefinite hiatus. They seem to be a band that teeters on the edge of implosion at any moment.

My first exposure to Bloc Party was season 1 finale of "How I Met Your Mother." That show just ended last night, after a 9 season run, and the ending was pretty divisive, but I really liked it. They've always had a good sense of music placement. Here's that scene from the end of season 1 for you, to remind you.


That's "This Modern Love" in the background. After watching it, I immediately went to the internet to find out who had made such a gorgeous guitar melody. And then I bought "Silent Alarm" immediately after.  And I've been listening to them since.

Bloc Party make angular rock, semi-post punk, with jittery guitar lines, and sometimes they write songs on the verge of heartbreak, and others on the verge of righteous anger. Softer songs like "This Modern Love" and "So Here We Are" stand in sharp contrast to the blasts of "Banquet" or "Helicopter."



They've made great albums with lots of amazing songs, but none of them have been as consistently amazing as "Silent Alarm." If you only get one Bloc Party album, start here.

Night Watch - 2004, Day Watch - 2006

Even if director Timur Bekmambetov never returns to finish this trilogy, "Night Watch" and its sequel "Day Watch," are two of the most visually arresting urban fantasy-horror films ever made, and they launched a director whose talent cannot be ignored (even if he sometimes slums it with things like "Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter").

You've never really seen anything like Night Watch before - it's almost as though Tony Scott and Tim Burton had a directing child. Bekmambetov paints in gorgeous colors, brilliant and vivid, lush gardens of visual delight, but also moves through them with a stop-start rhythm that can be a little jolting your first time through. The two films are a mix of fantasy and horror, stories set in modern Russia. And the special effects, oh lord, the special effects.

See, Bekmambetov wanted to do special effects, but he wanted to do them his way, so he actually founded a special effects company in Russia, to set the tone and do the primary visual effects for his stuff. (He started as a commercial director, like many amazing directors.) So you will see things in Night Watch that you have never seen before. Like someone's head turning transparent and leaving only the veins and arteries visible inside of it. Seriously, this is the kind of thing he does.

Night Watch is based on a series of Russian urban fantasy novels from Sergei Lukyanenko, with the first movie fairly closely lining up with the first two parts of the first novel and the second movie Day Watch actually being based on the third act of the first novel as well. The novel series is a pentalogy and the fifth book, "New Watch," is actually coming out here in the states this month. (The books, in order, by the way, are "Night Watch," "Day Watch," "Twilight Watch," "The Last Watch," and "New Watch.") Keep in mind, the movie does take some liberties with the source material, but that's par for the course for Bekmambetov's adaptations. He changed so much of "Wanted" from the graphic novel to the film that the two aren't even in the same state, much less the ballpark. And there's talk of a Wanted sequel, although it seems like that project is in the are-they-or-aren't-they state more often than a Schrodinger cat.

The premise of Night Watch is that in ancient times, a group known as The Others (who are sometimes interpreted as angels and demons) cause a great battle with man caught in the middle. Eventually, a truce is struck and both sides form their own special army to keep an eye on the other. The light side forms the Night Watch and the dark side forms the Day Watch. And that balance has held for centuries, but now things are going to get complicated. The story features witches, shapeshifters, vampires, curses and more...

Make no mistakes about it, Night Watch and Day Watch can be somewhat convoluted. The stories are full of twists and turns, there's a lot of characters, and while you should be watching it subtitled, there's a lot going on at any given moment, so you may need to watch some scene multiple times, to pick up everything that's going on.

You probably should watch the two of them as a pair, as they really are two halves of one film. I was originally just going to write about Night Watch today, and then I realized the more I thought about it, the more sense it made to just treat the two pieces as one whole (like Tarantino's "Kill Bill" for example) because either half by itself will leave you a little unfulfilled, but watching the two will give you a full sense of the whole story.

I leave you with the two trailers, Night Watch and Day Watch. (Oh, also starting this week, I'm going to just be doing this blog five days a week - I'm going to take Saturdays and Sundays off so I can get ahead a little bit, and not be scrambling so much. I figure it'll still give you an endless cavalcade of things to be getting your enjoyment on with.)

City On Fire - 1987

Not a lot of people stateside have seen "City On Fire," the 1987 film from Ringo Lam starring Chow Yun-Fat, which is a pity. I've often been surprised that Ringo Lam's movies haven't gotten more recognition over here, especially the ones starring Chow Yun-Fat, but in particular, I've always been especially astonished that more people haven't seen City On Fire, because most people I know have seen the film it "inspired" - Quentin Tarantino's "Reservoir Dogs."

Don't get me wrong - I love Reservoir Dogs as a film, but after seeing City On Fire (which I did see after Dogs), I was a little astonished how much of the movie is lifted wholesale. Let me tell you the basic plot of City On Fire and see if it sounds at all familiar.

Chow Yun-Fat is a cop, who is tasked with infiltrating a bunch of jewel thieves. He's been chased by cops, most of whom don't know he's an undercover cop. And he starts to bond with the very gang of thieves he's meant to be infiltrating. Then things go horribly awry.

There are a lot of differences between the two movies, but the two are alike enough that a guy on YouTube created a 10 minute film called "Who Do You Think You're Fooling?" which shows how strikingly similar the two movies are, down to overlaying large swaths of Dogs' dialogue over City On Fire. In fact, it's almost as if the two movies fold together to make one big movie. (A lot of the things that are related in Dogs are the events that actually happen in City.) But both films eventually come to the entire same last act - a bunch of criminals attempting to figure out what went wrong, and who the cop that's infiltrated their group is.

Regardless of how much of the movie is lifted wholesale, City On Fire is a great Hong Kong film that isn't from John Woo (but still stars Chow Yun Fat, who is one of those actors I will watch in just about anything...) and is absolutely worth your time.

Toy Soldiers - 1991

There are a number of movies in this blog that I talk about that aren't necessarily great films, but they're fun movies. "Toy Soldiers" is one of those movies.

It stars a bunch of people you've seen in lots of things - Sean Astin, Wil Wheaton, Denholm Elliot, Keith Coogan, Louis Gossett Jr., Mason Adams... hell, it's got R. Lee Ermey in it! (You'll remember him as the insane drill instructor from "Full Metal Jacket." Everyone does.)

The premise of the film is that terrorists take over a private boarding school full of the worst of the worst rejects, the people who've been kicked out of lots of other boarding schools.

They decide they're going to fight back.

Now, keep in mind, despite the semi-campy concept, this is a thriller. There are parts of it that can be lighthearted, but this is a film that isn't afraid to show people getting killed, and isn't afraid to shirk away from the consequences of people's actions. It's shot in that sort of minimalistic style of the late 1980s, which makes it funny that it came out in 1991. It's nothing to write home about visually. In fact, none of the pieces by themselves are really all that remarkable. The dialogue veers from good to cornball and back again on a dime. The actors are trying to make the hodgepodge of Ferris Bueller's Day Off meets Red Dawn work for them, and are mostly succeeding. The whole thing comes together into something that's better than it's parts.

(And it's another film that shows that Wil Wheaton really should be getting more acting roles.)

It seems like on paper that it shouldn't work, and yet, I watched this movie a number of times on HBO during the early 1990s. It would come on some Saturday afternoon and I'd sit and watch it all over again. Of course, no one had any idea how to market it, and it didn't get a big audience, but it's still worth a Saturday afternoon of yours, too.

The Cure - Disintegration - 1989

When I was in high school, I remember as a freshman I started getting into alternative music, and one of the bands I found early on was The Cure, mostly because of the song "Just Like Heaven" from "Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me." But around that time, the album "Wish" was coming out. Now a lot of people wouldn't get on board with "Wish" until "Friday I'm In Love" was a single, but I was hooked from the moment I heard the buzzing, twinkly guitars of "High," the first single. And I was in gym class talking about it with a guy named Dustin Sudduth, who told me that "Wish" was a great album, but it didn't compare to their last album, "Disintegration." I hadn't heard "Disintegration," so I picked up a copy. And to this day, I'm still not sure which is better. But today I want to talk about "Disintegration" because a) it was The Cure's best selling album, and b) it had the single that almost everyone's heard, "Lovesong."


The Cure have been around a long time, with 13 studio albums under their belts. They've also had something of a revolving door membership, with singer/guitarist/songwriter Robert Smith the only permanent fixture, although a number of band members have left and come back. When "Disintegration" was released in 1989, their label thought it was probably career suicide. What they'd hoped for was something poppier, to build off of the fans that "Just Like Heaven" had drawn in. Instead, what they got was one of the most hallucinogenic albums ever to be unleashed on the mainstream.

Full of heavy synths, dreamlike guitars, wall-of-sound effects and a gloomy yet fascinating song, it was almost as if Smith decided to take all of the goth things about the band and ratchet them up to the point where they didn't make sense any more. From the opening lush daybreak of "Plainsong" to the closing slow walk goodbye of "Untitled," everything about "Disintegration" is in the state of falling apart, just like the name. But amidst all of this, there's some amazing pop songs dancing among the brush - "Lovesong," obviously, but also the almost unbearably wounded heartbreak of "Pictures of You" or the spidery strings of "Lullabye" or the hypnotic sheen of "Fascination Street."


You could argue what the best Cure album is, but in the end, that's a personal question. For me, "Wish" is still going to be my favorite from them, but when I lived in Nebraska, at the first rain of autumn, I would always put on "Disintegration" and sit and watch the rain come down.

It's just that sort of record.

Mallrats - 1995

I've always thought that Mallrats, Kevin Smith's second film, gets an unfair bad rep. So here's the story - Kevin Smith makes Clerks. Clerks turns out to be wild runaway hit, especially considering the less-than-nothing budget it was made on. Universal offers Smith a bunch of money for his next project. Smith decides he wants to make, what is in essence, Clerks meets a Jonathan Silverman movie, and makes Mallrats. (I think they were calling it "a Porky's for the 90s.") The studio doesn't have any idea what to do with Mallrats once they get it. It's not as edgy as Clerks, nor anywhere near as indie. They float it to test audiences, and audiences aren't quite sure what to make of it either. People who don't know Smith at all don't like it because it's either too filthy or too pop culture. People who do know Smith don't like it because it isn't more of Clerks, and feels too, well, 1980s. On the whole audiences just can't seem to connect with the film. It opens. It doesn't do well. Smith goes back to Miramax, and makes Chasing Amy, which is closer to his Clerks roots and does better. (Also, is his best film end-to-end.) And Mallrats gets, well, not quite disowned, but let's just say a lot of people prefer to overlook it.

Those folks are wrong.

See, Mallrats very much is a Porky's for the 90s (although it's a little light on the nudity for that). It could've starred Jonathan Silverman (best known for Weekend At Bernie's) if he'd been age appropriate. It is a screwball suburban comedy with a rebellious streak a mile wide. It's also a lot better than people give it credit for. It's a film about that awkward transition between high school and post-high school, when people are struggling to figure themselves out, trying to figure out what they want to do and how they want to do. And it's a film that is 100% completely and totally about malls.

Mallrats is the story of two different young men, Brodie and T.S., attempting to get their relationships back on track after tumultuous snafus in the opening, and attempting to figure out what's wrong with themselves and where they were. It's got appearances from Jay & Silent Bob, features a topless psychic, has Michael Rooker playing the heavy (because Michael Rooker defaults to playing a heavy - I think he's contractually obligated to be a heavy in 80% of his movies), and features Stan Lee offering life advice.

As long as you know what you're getting into, Mallrats is a great summer afternoon film...

Too Much Joy - Mutiny - 1992

"Mutiny" should've been Too Much Joy's big break. The band had been building a solid fanbase for a while, and the song "Crush Story" from "Cereal Killers" had been getting college radio play. So what happened? A couple of things. First and foremost, Giant Records didn't really know what to do with the band. They weren't quite punk, weren't quite pop, weren't quite rock, and Giant didn't really have any idea where to put the band. Beyond that, "Mutiny" represented a step forward for the band, but one that tended to put a few people on edge, because the album had a certain more mature flair to it, with lyrics that were introspective and layered, so some of the initial fanbase felt a bit edged out. (Keep in mind, Too Much Joy's first album was called "Green Eggs and Crack.")

Too Much Joy didn't do anything the way bands are supposed to. The video for the single from "Mutiny," the insanely catchy "Donna Everywhere," had a video directed by Penn of Penn & Teller, and showed how the band was spending the budget of their video in a mall, getting instruments, food, pets, etc. They had KRS-One rapping on a song on "Cereal Killers." They covered LL Cool J's "That's A Lie" on "Son Of Sam I Am." They played 2 Live Crew songs in Florida, specifically to get arrested on that state's obscenity laws. They were sued by Bozo the Clown for an unauthorized sample. They didn't even retire, just sort of go on a hiatus they come on and off from. I saw them live on tour for "...finally" and got to interview Tim Quirk for the Daily Nebraskan. I even got the band to sign my CD booklet for "...finally," to my enjoyment.

They were always a catchy band, full of enthusiasm. Hell, they even have their own theme song, called, appropriately "Theme Song," from "Cereal Killers," that contains the closing refrain of the majority of their shows "To create, you must destroy, smash a glass and cry, Too Much Joy!" But the band ran its course, and around 2001, they semi-packed it in. They haven't put out anything new since, and they've only played a couple of live gigs here and there. Tim (the vocalist) and Jay (the guitarist) put together a side project called Wonderlick that's put out a few good albums.

"Mutiny" really is the crown jewel of a great collection of albums, though, full of killer songs, from the song "Donna Everywhere" (written about Tim's meeting of his wife), to the castrato of "Just Like A Man," to the shrieks of "What It Is," to the drowning dreams of "Starry Eyes," to the murderous lyrics of "Sort Of Haunted House," to the quiet, simple melody of "Unbeautiful."

I love this album, nay this band, and you should too.

Sugar - Copper Blue - 1992

I'd dabbled a bit with Hüsker Dü in 1991, but I'd found that a lot of their songs were a little too abrasive for me, so Sugar wasn't really on my radar when their first album came out, but I was hanging out at the Antequarium in downtown Omaha one Saturday and "A Good Idea" was playing in the record shop downstairs. I asked the guy behind the counter and he told me it was a band called Sugar, from their first album, "Copper Blue," which had just come out. No mention of Hüsker Dü, and I didn't make the connection of the vocals. Then the song appeared on stalwart 120 Minutes, and the second time around was enough to convince me I was interested. We were at Westroads Mall on Monday after school so I swung into a music store and picked up a copy of the album, and for the next few months, I think I played that CD a lot more than I should've.

Sugar was formed by singer/guitarist Bob Mould after Hüsker Dü broke up. And the story of Hüsker Dü's collapse is too complicated for me to get into here, so you can go look that up on your own. After Hüsker Dü, Bob decided he wanted another band, so he got a new bassist and a new drummer and formed Sugar. Sugar didn't veer too far from Hüsker Dü, but it polished some of the harsher edges off and tried to glaze a layer of pop sheen over them. Critics of the time called it "grunge-pop," "noise-pop," and, most stickingly, "power pop." It's easy to see why the power pop label stuck - the album is full of big, buzzy guitars, but the songs are catchy, accessible and stick in the brain, with great hooks. It was a great change of pace in a time when it felt like everyone was trying to be a Seattle band - Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Alice In Chains were all big draws, and it seemed like lots of bands wanted to jump in on that bandwagon, but Sugar were going the other direction. Instead of gloom and doom, Sugar wanted as much sunlight as they could get. Even the slightly depressing songs were uptempo.

Given the sort of tumultuous nature of Bob Mould, it wasn't really any surprise that Sugar only made it to two albums (the second being the less-great-but-still-great "File Under: Easy Listening"), although this was mostly due to the bassist, David Barbe, wanting to spend more time with his family. Since that time, Bob Mould's mostly been going it alone, although in 2012 he did a tour replaying "Copper Blue" in its entirety for it's 20th anniversary. I'm still sad I missed that. I leave you with the crown jewel of the album, "If I Can't Change Your Mind."

F/X - 1986, F/X2 - 1991

F/X is one of those films that isn't a masterpiece, but was a whole hell of a lot of fun, and seems to have gotten lost in the annuls of time for no good reason. I suspect it's just because it was a film from the 1980s, and it seems like if it wasn't a megalithic hit in the 80s, it's often forgotten, which is a shame. I remember catching this film on cable at some point when I was in high school, showing back-to-back with the sequel, F/X2, and thinking that this was a fun film to catch.

Rollie Tyler is a special effects man who's cut his teeth on films such as "I Dismember Mama," and he's hired on by the Department of Justice to help fake a murder for someone about to go into the witness protection program. And that's about the end of what I want to tell you about the plot.

It's fun to see a movie about movie making that isn't, well, Robert Altman's "The Player." F/X takes the special effects business as a springboard to leap into a fairly fun and sophisticated thriller, despite the quasi-low budget feel the whole film has. It's got a cast of people you've mostly never heard of (except Brian Dennehy! Who's awesome! Because he's Brian Dennehy!), you don't know the director, you don't know the writers, but it's still a fun little Saturday afternoon film, assuming you can get past the 1980s made-on-the-cheap feel. The film is even subtitled "Murder By Illusion!" And the second one was subtitled "The Deadly Art Of Illusion." So here you go - your next Saturday afternoon double header. F/X and F/X2. (There was also apparently a TV series for a couple of seasons, but I never saw that, so I can't speak to its quality.)

Fightstar - One Day Son, This Will All Be Yours - 2007

The story of Fightstar is an amusing one. See, Fightstar's front man, Charlie Simpson, was best known in England for being a member of a boy band called Busted. After two albums, Simpson was feeling musically unsatisfied, and started playing with guitarist Alex Westaway and drummer Omar Abidi at a party. A few days later, they started practicing together at Simpson's house, and Fightstar was born. In fact, rumor has it that Fightstar was what caused Simpson to part ways with Busted in the first place. (Fun fact: Busted is best known over here because two of their songs were covered by the Jonas Brothers, who had a big hit here with one of them.)

Fightstar's been good for Simpson. They've put out three albums thusfar, and each of them have been good-to-great. They went on hiatus while Simpson put together his second solo album, but they should be back in the studio shortly. They're post-hardcore, which means not quite metal, not quite punk, not quite emo. They have nice elaborate guitar structures, soaring melodies, introspective lyrics and good interplay between the instruments.

I think I chose to write about "One Day Son, This Will All Be Yours," the band's second album, for two reasons. First, you have to love that title. Second, my favorite song from the band, "I Am The Message," is on this album. The funny thing about Fightstar is that I find about 3-5 songs per album that I really love, 3-4 songs that I like but don't find myself seeking out, and 1-2 songs that generally just kind of bore me (or still contain Cookie Monster Vocals, one of the musical tics that sends me up the backside of the wall).



"I Am The Message"moves along at a good clip, with hopping guitar lines and a steady quickstep bass line that dances with some fancy drumming. It's typical of the sort of tones and styles you'll find on "One Day Son." It's not the only great song, by any means. I also put "Floods," "We Apologize For Nothing" and the melancholy "Unfamiliar Ceilings" into the playlist of songs I think people would like.

Krull - 1983

Krull isn't exactly what I would call a great film, but it's a fun film with imagination to spare, and any time there is sci-fi or fantasy that is even half-way decent, I feel the need to support it. Krull exists in the sort of Flash Gordon world of something that isn't quite camp, isn't quite nostalgia and isn't quite retro, but certainly isn't modern. It's a film that doesn't sit squarely in any camp, and that made it something of an odd man out, but no less worthy of your attention.

It's hard to say which half is stronger - the fantasy or the sci-fi. The core conceit is very fantasy: a princess and a prince are scheduled to be married to form an alliance between two rival kingdoms, so that those two can unite against a greater foe. The wedding is attacked (by said greater foe, naturally - the ominously named Beast and his army of Slayers) before it is completed, the princess is kidnapped and the prince is the only survivor. As the hero recovers, he learns he must seek out a mystical weapon known as "the Glaive" and travel to the Black Fortress, a mysterious building that moves every day at sunrise.

All very fantasy, right? Well, check out what one of the Slayers looks like. That armor, that sort of insectoid approach... it's all very alien. They have laser weapons! And yet they still ride horses! Talk about your odd mishmashes!

I can't tell you that Krull is a great film, because I'd be stretching the truth there, but it is a fun film, filled with imagination that is bursting out of the seams at every opportunity, and it also includes a very young Liam Neeson as one of the bandits who helps the prince along his quest. Critics didn't care for the film at all during it's time, calling it nonsensical and boring. While I can understand (and even agree with) the nonsensical, I certainly wouldn't call Krull boring. It strikes me as the kind of "well, why not" approach to storytelling that can make for some fun stories. The prince is a fun character and is going through the typical hero's journey, but the lack of distinction between the sci-fi elements and the fantasy elements tends to put people looking for their films to "make sense" off-guard. (Many of these people also don't really understand the appeal of "The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across The 8th Dimension," so what do we care what they think?) To me, this is the kind of over-the-top film that used to be standard Saturday afternoon fare, with larger-than-life heroes and villains. I think if they had stripped away either the sci-fi element, or the fantasy element, or both, this would've been better received, but it certainly would've also been a lot less memorable. If you can't turn off your need to question why things are the way they are, then Krull isn't for you, but for those of you who aren't afraid to dream big and don't mind things being a little silly along the way (and, y'know, watching films with 1980s-era special effects, which rarely age well), I think you'll find Krull has a big heart and great sense of wonder to it.

The Samples - No Room - 1992

Back in 1993, I was just a junior in high school, and my life was starting to get particularly complicated. The month was January, and I'd just gotten into my first real relationship, with a girl named Julie, who was a year younger than me. I'm not exactly sure how we met, but I think it was as part of one of the student plays. Before the school year ended, the relationship would be over and we would both go our separate ways. We wouldn't really talk much afterwards, and I've still been a bit unclear as to why the relationship ended, other than she wasn't happy. (To be fair, I was going through a number of personal problems myself, so it's entirely possible I was partially or even totally at fault. It was twenty years ago. I don't really know.) The last time I saw her was at my good friends' Chris and Kate's wedding a dozen or so years ago. I think we said all of a handful of words to each other. But Julie left three contributions in my life before we parted ways, and I want to talk about the first of them today. It's a band called The Samples.

The Samples are from Boulder, CO, and they've often been described as "the best band you've never heard of," but I like to think of them as the Midwestern band that just never moved much past the Midwest. Every region's got them - bands that are fantastic, but just never seem to gain a foothold in areas outside of their neck of the woods. West coast bands. East coast bands. Midwest bands. The Samples really are a sort of grass-roots band, not signing to a major label until they were on their fifth album (and they were summarily dropped from said label after that album). They've been compared to people like The Police, Blues Traveler and Phish, mostly because The Samples incorporate world beat and reggae influences into their folky guitar-pop.

In 1993, I was in the middle of listening to just about anything I could get my hands on, trying to find new things that I'd never heard of that I liked. It meant everything was fair game, and nothing should be discounted. Julie and I had been dating a few weeks when she handed me a CD and told me it was her favorite album. That album was "No Room." I asked her what she knew about the band, which wasn't a whole lot. They were from Colorado, she thought, and she loved the album. They were a pretty big eco-friendly band, and they toured endlessly. She wanted me to listen to it and see what I thought, so I did. It was definitely a different sound than much of what I'd heard before. I could see why people were making Police comparisons - the drumming was more jazz influenced, and the bass hopped along to beats that were akin to (but not derivative of) Sting's work in The Police. The lead singer was a bit more high pitched and nasally than I cared for, but there were a number of great standout songs on the album. I copied the whole thing to a tape then gave Julie back her CD. She was glad I liked it, although I think I tried to keep my criticisms to myself about the weaker songs on the CD, of which there were a few.


My favorite song on the album (and hers) was a song called "Nothing Lasts For Long," which I suppose should've been foreshadowing about her and I, but when you're young and in love, you don't tend to see that kind of writing on the wall. It's not a depressing song, more of a pensive one, asking about the value of holding onto things when there are no guarantees in life.

Of course, that wasn't the only great song on the CD. There were several others, like the much more energetic "When It's Raining," or "Taking Us Home," which always makes me think of a car ride home on a summer afternoon. The most rockish songs on the album are the kiss-off "Won't Be Back Again" or the borderline temper tantrum of "Seany Boy (Drop Out)."

The Samples have gone through some hard times as a band, with singer/guitarist Sean Kelly as the only member of the band who's been in every incarnation, losing members to solo projects, creative differences or even heroin addiction. There were a number of reports of bad financial troubles hitting Sean Kelly, who at one point was offering to play basically anywhere, as long as people were paying. For a long while, it looked like 2005's "Rehearsing For Life" was going to be the band's last album, which would've been a shame, because it wasn't a particularly strong album, certainly not compared to "No Room," the great follow ups "The Last Drag" and "Autopilot" or even their big label album "Outpost."  In fact, when people sort of want a "best of," I generally recommend they pick up "Transmissions From The Sea of Tranquility," which is mostly a live concert recording. The Samples have always been a jam band, and so the live versions of songs often have more room to breathe, and let the musicians develop the songs a bit more. (There is an official best-of, but it only goes up to 1994, and neglects a lot of the great songs they did later.) Thankfully, this story does have a happy ending. When I was researching this article (getting dates right and finding links for the albums on iTunes), I found out that The Samples had put out a brand new album on New Year's Day this year called "America." It's too early for me to pass a verdict on it (I've literally only listened to the first three songs as I write this), but it's good to see the band's still going. Maybe someday they'll be back to their hayday of the early 90s. (One of their opening bands from that time period? The Dave Matthews Band.) Until then, you should pick up some of their stuff. Start with either "No Room" or "Transmissions From The Sea of Tranquility," although really, you'll find stuff to love on pretty much any of their albums.