Month: November 2023

Musk: the movie

Yeah, things just get stupider and stupider. I’m having flashbacks to when The Social Network was announced, cos that confused me terribly back then… the idea of a film about Facebook to be made by David Fincher struck me then as being as silly and perplexing as the idea of a film about Oolong Husk to be made by Darren Aronofsky… and I can’t escape the feeling the Oolong film will turn out to be much like the Zuck film, albeit probably without the critical plaudits the latter somehow earned; it’ll be perfectly well made but all the characters will be shit, especially the lead one. Indeed, in the review I wrote of it many years ago, I actually said this:

The film suddenly tries to humanise him near the end, but it rings false, as up to then we’ve only seen him as, basically, a charmless, graceless prick who’s kind of ultimately driven by spite over being dumped by a girl.

And I already feel that if I ever watch this putative film I will be able to use that exact same sentence in a review of it at some point.

In other news, Oolong has unveiled the, er, corporate logo for Cybertruck:

Spotted on Bluesky, with the poster brilliantly describing it as “almost wholly illegible and looks like it was scratched on a wall by a tweaker”. Oof. But then someone else also noticed you can read the logo another way:

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOH. Once you know, it’s impossible not to see the KKK in there. Oof again, and then some.

The Red and the Blue

So a few weeks ago I heard there was some Beatles reissues news, and was, frankly, unexcited by the news that it was going to be these two. These were both released in 1973 to counter some pirated best-of that was circulating, and I never felt much need for them… if you had the albums and Past Masters like I did, they weren’t really necessary. So I didn’t see much point to these new editions, but then they said 1) this will have “Now and Then” if you don’t want to pay the extortionate vinyl release prices and 2) a bunch of songs not on the original versions in new mixes. With that in mind, I downloaded the things tonight to satisfy curiosity. (The Fabs have had enough of my money over the years; I’ve got both the stereo and mono boxes from 2009 plus several of the albums that I’d bought separately before those came out *and* Abbey Road on vinyl—a weird Australian pressing without “Her Majesty”—and there’s only so much duplication of contents I’ll pay for.)

And, I must concede, having listened only to the red album thus far, I’m actually kind of impressed. They’re using the anniversary remixes made over the last however many years for the later stuff (and I’m not always happy with some of the judgement calls made in those cases), but the pre-Revolver material hasn’t had the Giles Martin treatment yet and hearing that’s been interesting. I said a while ago that if you’re listening to music recorded before about 1969 on less than 8-track you’re usually better listening to it in mono rather than stereo, but I will confess to finding the remix results here interesting, especially on the really early songs that weren’t even done on 4-track.

Did a proper headphones listen, which I’ve never really done with the Beatles before, so maybe up close all these details have always been discernible, but on listening tonight, wow. Lots of little parts and bits that, like I say, were already there but I’ve never picked up on them. Now they’re unburied and separated out. Haven’t played the blue album yet, but I was greatly amused by part of the tracklisting… I could criticise some of the song choices among the many additions to the original compilations, but I am intrigued that they’ve picked some rather less obvious and perhaps slightly more out there titles, the red album now finishes with “Tomorrow Never Knows”, and the blue album now has “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” on it.

I have mentioned this song on here before, it’s one of my favourite Fabs songs, but it’s a different experience depending on how you listen to it. On vinyl, as the end of side one of Abbey Road*, it’s one thing. You have to then pick the record up and flip it over to hear the rest of the album, with side 2 beginning with “Here Comes the Sun” as a bit of a relief. On CD, it just goes straight into “Here Comes the Sun” like some sort of weird, sick joke. It’s just… really something else when you play the album like that. But now it’s on the blue album, too, where it’s followed by “Let It Be”. Of all the songs that could’ve followed it. That is FUCKING HILARIOUS. I mean, THE RIFF has just built up and built up over the previous three minutes and achieved critical mass and it comes to its famously cut-off end and then it’s the big piano and mother Mary. Amazing.

* “I Want You” was, of course, nearly the end of side two until, at the end of proceedings, they decided to flip the album sides so that the album now ended with “the long one” and “Her Majesty” (except, as mentioned, on my copy). Just imagine if the record had ended with “I Want You” instead? What a fuck-off ending to the album and, effectively, to their recording career as a whole that would’ve been…

“Now and Then”, again

So the official video for “Now and Then” got released a day or so after the song was finally unveiled:

…and… fuck. The whole thing with the SAG-AFTRA strike in the US over the last few months and the union’s fear of actors being exploited by the studios using AI-generated copies of them makes a LOT of sense after seeing this. Peter Jackson made the video using archival footage of the Fabs, and it’s the way he uses some of that footage, particularly the stuff from the “Hello Goodbye” film shoot, that suddenly made me realise just why the union is wary of this shit. It’s come a long way from Laurence Olivier in Sky Captain. Still maybe some way to go, in that the 60s film footage of John and George doesn’t quite gel with the new HD video footage of Paul and Ringo, but the bit where John “conducts” the string players just leapt out and slapped me in the face somehow…

Anyway, now the song’s out there’s also a bunch of YT videos about it too, and this is my favourite now:

Amazing. The song’s actually growing on me the more I hear it, but I still feel like it’s not a “real” Beatles song somehow. It’s the sort of song that you’d put somewhere in the middle of side two of the album, if that makes sense as a description. This, on the other hand, DAMN. It’s one guy doing a cover the way the Beatles might’ve done it in their early style (with an amusing parody of John & George’s appearances in the official video), and though he doesn’t sound vocally like John as such, and “Paul” plays right-handed for some reason, he still nails the overall sound and feel of 1964-era Fabs, the vocal harmonising… it almost feels more like the Beatles than their own version does.

It’s been a (Lot) Long time

So a mystery I didn’t realise was a mystery has been solved:

A man depicted on the album cover of Led Zeppelin IV has been revealed as a 19th Century thatcher.
The figure is most likely Lot Long from Mere in Wiltshire, photographed by Ernest Farmer.
Brian Edwards, from the University of the West of England (UWE), found the original picture when looking through a photograph album for other research.
“I instantly recognised the man with the sticks – he’s often called the stick man,” he said.
A long-time fan of British rock band Led Zeppelin, he told BBC Radio Wiltshire “it was quite a revelation”.

I’ll bet it was. Apparently the picture as it appeared on the album was thought to be a photo of a painting when the band discovered it (and apparently it’s since vanished, too), but it was actually a coloured version of this photo:

Which then begs the question… where did the coloured version come from and who made it? The photographer is evidently one Ernest Farmer and the photo itself was found in an album he gave to his aunt… how, then, did it travel beyond the confines of that album, as it clearly did for Led Zeppelin to make use of another copy of it, and indeed why did it do so? Did Ernest do it himself? I feel like it’s only opened up more questions… Anyway, a tip of the hat to Lot Long, who I feel certain would never have even heard recorded music (or known that such a thing existed even in 1892), let alone thought he would achieve immortality on an album cover or even conceived of what those words might mean…

Butchered at book

I don’t know what’s funnier about this story: the fact that CANNIBAL CORPSE have produced A COLOURING BOOK, or that it’s already been banned in Germany:

The book – which the band claim is “the first colouring book in history” to come with a Parental Advisory warning – features some of the band’s most infamous and gory artwork, designed by artist Vincent Locke.
The book – like much of Cannibal Corpse’s earlier albums – has been banned for sale in Germany over explicit content and graphic imagery. An official comment on the Eyesore Merch site reads: “This product is not available for sale in Germany. Any orders to German addresses will be refunded. We apologize for any inconvenience caused, but this release is subject to German law and regulations.”

Amazing. I remember them being banned here in the 90s, too, they only became available again around 2006 when they’d all been rated and labelled as not for sale to people under 18… given that even this situation seems to have lightened over the years (the new album is openly available uncensored from JB Hifi), I wonder how the current censorship board feels about this book.

Jerusalem Post Syndrome

Saw this on Bluesky, and thought it had to be some sort of horrible fake or something… but no, that’s an actual article in the Jerusalem Post. Dr Raz Hagoel is a specialist in obesity and weight loss, from what I gather, and possibly a sociopath as well. Cos, frankly, losing weight due to the stress of the Israel business would be one of the last things I’d be thinking of if I were a normal person…