Random Thoughts

1) Forgive me. I've been collecting alot of quotes lately, something I've always thought was a little hokey (anyone who's ever received an email with a Ghandi quote at the end knows exactly what I mean). But for some reason I find myself wanting to hold on to the funny, poignant, or just downright outrageous ones, so expect some of those to be archived here.

Life is like Sanskrit read to a pony.

-Lou Reed

2) Know that feeling when you realize that a band you like, or you think you might like, is responsible for a song you HATE? Case in point (and this isn't that strong an example): I'm seeing Primal Scream, thinking "man, this is so great" and then they go into "Get Your Rocks Off," from that one record I really want but can never bring myself to pay for, and all the corporate alterna-rockers in the crowd start dancing and singing along. No, this isn't quite HATE, but it certainly taints the experience. Anyways, something like that happened this morning while listening to my new Big Pink LP, when on comes "Dominoes," a song so atrocious on so many levels, that they just can't be forgiven. Of course, these are always the ones that get stuck in your head all day, taunting you like a motherfucker.

To wipe the pain away, here's the best song from that Primal Scream album. I won't even dignify the Big Pink with a good song of theirs, I'm so bitter.



3) Saw Burial last night, a German band playing "Burning Spirits" style Japcore ala Death Side, Tetsu Arrei, etc. Not bad, but I couldn't stop thinking about the absurdity of Germans playing a uniquely Japanese brand of music, which then got me thinking about the even weirder combo of Japanese bands playing black American R&B, like Blues Creation's "Mississippi Mountain Blues," or to a lesser degree, Stackwaddy (who are English) singing "I'm going to Kentucky... oh yeah... I'm going to Kentucky." Ridiculous, I tell you. RIDICULOUS. Anyways, this is an amusing video in that vein.

Hitched

Watched Scorcese's After Hours the other night and Terri Garr's appearance brought back distant memories of an adolescent crush on her (for some reason, maybe because we recorded it on BetaMax, I watched Mr. Mom like a million times as a kid).

So naturally, I Google image-searched her. It yielded plenty of crap, as well as some really great—though only tangentially-related—photos. (On a side note, this is one aspect of the internet and the search for knowledge as a whole that will forever amaze me: looking for one random fact inevitably leads to more. As John Muir more eloquently stated, "When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe.")

And now the fruits of my search. No story on this first one, I just found it striking:


This next one was taken by the late, great Dennis Hopper. "Legendary underground filmmaker Bruce Connor (A Movie) is in the tub, while Toni Basil (Easy Rider, singer of Hey Mickey You’re So Fine) and Terri Garr (Young Frankenstein, etc) get ready to go out on the town."


And my favorite, a still from a 1964 pop awards concert called Teenage Awards Music International, which featured all of the big acts of the day—the Beatles, Stones, Marvin Gaye, Chuck Berry, Smokey Robinson, Beach Boys, et al. This photo shows the Supremes and one of the go-go dancers, "a 17 year old Teri Garr who can be seen dancing her ass off almost the whole show." In another account, "the Rolling Stones almost backed out after learning they were going to follow (James) Brown." And rightly so I should say.