So I got this new Led Zeppelin three CD thing, How The West Was Won… it’s loud. I mean… Bonham plays fargle-bargle LOUD. It’s a great live set, although 25 minute versions of “Whole Lotta Love” and “Dazed and Confused” are a bit much. There’s supposedly a DVD out too, but I didn’t see it at the sto’.

I can’t really talk about Led Zeppelin without a brief nod to the weird Tolkien lyrics and Crowley mysticism, so I will segue to local zine Arthur, which has a big feature on comic writer Alan Moore and his musings on magic and art. There’s also a great little tour journal about the Black Keys and their west coast touring stint for Sleater-Kinney. Fun anecdotes about both bands abound, and it is a must read for Janet Weiss fans (did ya know she’s related to Harry Houdini?) The entire issue is downloadable in PDF format.

It’s hard to talk about zines, Houdini and Arthur without a teeny plug for Platform, Elizabeth Genco’s quarterly zine about busking on NYC subway platforms. She’s got a breezy, conversational writing style covering her adventures playing fiddle for spare change as well as longer articles about Irish folk music (I learned the difference between a reel, a jig and a slip jig!). Her site has lots of sample articles and if you dig it you should drop a few bucks and get the full issues. While her web presence is pretty solid, I like the fact that Platform is still a paper product. I can carry it in my messenger bag and read it or whack people on the head with it. Can’t do that with a webpage.

It’s hard to talk about folk music and jigs and reels for me without briefly mentioning Richard Thompson, my single favorite folk artist. He just put out a pretty interesting record called “1000 Years of Popular Music,” where he covers… well, a 1000 years of popular music. Here’s his liner notes to this bizarre mixtape, which includes the oldest known English round and Britney Spears. I have it on order, I’ll get a full review once I get my dirty paws on it.

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DJ Z-Trip. Mixmaster Mike. Free.

Shows don’t really get much better than that, do they? UCLA put on a free show at Ackerman Grand Ballroom on Friday night featuring those two plus Grandwizzard Theodore, the actual inventor of the scratch technique. Theodore went on first, warming up the crowd with a good, if not mindblowing, set. He definitely got the least love of the three performers, even though the MCs and DJs were trying hard to give him his due respect for being one of the original innovators.

Z-Trip came on to the stage to a sound snippet from The Warriors dropping directly into the opening guitar chimes of “Paradise City.” Z-Trip’s made his name being able to rock a party using played out arena rock riffs and recontextualizing them into something thrilling. After listening to him seamlessly lock up Jurassic 5′s “Quality Control” to Oasis’ “Wonderwall,” or combo Outkast’s “Bombs over Baghdad” and Tool’s “Sober” or “Billy Jean” alongside Rage’s “Testify”, it’s hard not to be a believer. By the end of the night he’d run through Run DMC, Elvis, Public Enemy, Nirvana, Rush, Metallica… even a lounge version of Mystikal. When Z-Trip’s got his mojo working, there’s a tangible anticipation in the air as the crowd awaits the next record to start and a cathartic release when the hooks first kick in. “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” for instance, blew the place up. Z-Trip’s supposed to put out a record soon, but apparently he’s getting beat up trying to get his samples cleared. Does Kansas really think “Dust In The Wind” sounds better without that huge backbeat? Please.

Mixmaster Mike came on shortly afterwards and KILLED it. If Z-Trip’s the guy that makes you want to buy a pair of Technics, then Mixmaster Mike’s the guy that makes you wonder what the point of even trying is. His virtuoso skill on the decks is obvious to anyone that watches, because hands aren’t supposed to move that fast, blurring on screen and vibrating so hard that they look that they’ll burrow straight through the turntable. He’s able to mutate the music so much that it’s almost all new melodies and beats, barely recognizable from their origins and yet mesmerizing in their own right. The sickest part is that he plays most of the tracks at a higher speed, to allow the music to catch up to his intentions. Did you ever think that “Immigrant Song” or “Block Rockin’ Beats” needed to play FASTER? He didn’t even rest at any point during the set… it was an hour set run at a sprinter’s pace. I got carpal tunnel syndrome just watching the dude and spent most of the set with my jaw on the floor.

Not to let anyone down, Mike and Z-Trip finished off with a 10 minute freestyle for the encore. Did I mention this was free? Unreal.

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Liner Notes:

1) Fire/Sign – Movement – The Gossip

2) Thickfreakness – Thickfreakness – The Black Keys

3) No Fun/Push It – Radio Soulwax, Vol. 2 – Two Many DJs

4) You – Playing With A Different Sex – The Au Pairs

5) No, Not Now – Make Up The Breakdown – Hot Hot Heat

6) Bridges, Squares – Heart of Oak – Ted Leo / Pharmacists

7) Everlasting Scream – Creatures – Elf Power

8) Let’s Get Ready To Crumble – Let’s Get Ready To Crumble – Russian Futurists

9) All For Swinging You Around – Electric Version – The New Pornographers

10) Falling Away – I Like The Like EP2 – The Like

11) The Rifleman – Let The War Against Music Begin – The Minus 5

12) Death on the Stairs – Up The Bracket – The Libertines

13) The Bitterest Pill – Snap! – The Jam

14) Maps – Fever To Tell – Yeah Yeah Yeahs

15) All World Cowboy Romance – Signals, Calls and Marches – Mission of Burma

Posted in Mixtape 1 Comment »

One of the great toys of recent invention have to be the Hulk Hands with Electronic Sounds available at toy stores across America. Basically, they’re giant oversized hulk gloves that you wear and they make noises when you hit stuff with them. Think about that. Drunken fun for hours, yah?

I’ve been tempted by these for many months, and it seems they’ve become quite popular. Kelly Sue has a collection of pictures of people with Hulk Hands. Hulk Hand porn is certainly right around the corner.

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I was watching “Almost Famous” a while ago, and there was a little thing during the commentary where Cameron Crowe mentioned that he made himself a mixtape every month for many, many years, and just tossed them in a shoebox.

This is just retarded enough to be interesting, so I’m going to try and start making one mix CD (viva technology) per month, for as long as I don’t hate myself. If I did this while I was younger, I could go into my magical shoebox and pick out, let’s say, April 1989, and realize that I was still listening to NKOTB and Lisa Lisa with maybe a smidgen of Audio Two (Giz is chillin! Milk is Chillin!). As embarrassing as this project may be in a few years, I find the possibilities fascinating. Yeah, I’m an idiot. I know.

One mix tape per month until I go crazy. Coming soon, HQD 05/03. Bring it on.

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I’m not sure how I got convinced that standing 2 hours out in the rain for X2 was a good idea, but considering I had to battle every other nerd for a spot on Friday night in Westwood, I guess I didn’t have too much of a choice. Luckily, there was a double digit party with me to keep me occupied in line. I’m not about to say X2 was worth a 2 hour wait in line, but as I left the theater, I certainly wasn’t bitching and whining about my miserable condition, which was a good thing.

X2 is pretty much everything X-Men was, taken to the next level (for better or worse). With all the setup taken care of in the first movie, X2 gets to let the returning characters run free, pretty much from the start. The increased budget seemed entirely for the special effects, as almost every scene has someone using wacky mutant powers. Which is a good thing.

Hugh Jackman is essentially the main character, finally getting to cut loose with the Wolverine character a little bit. Credit to Jackman for remaining charismatic and cool with the single worst haircut in movie history. Alan Cumming’s Nightcrawler has a great introduction and some tidy character development throughout. Rogue isn’t given much to do, but setting up Iceman and Pyro as competitors and opposites parallels nicely with Magneto and Xavier’s relationship. Once again, Ian McKellen is so effortlessly regal in his portrayal of Magneto it makes everyone else look bad. He only has a three or four key scenes, but he just exudes the right amount of menace. Halle Berry’s Storm is duller than dirt, Oscar or no. The laughable wig doesn’t help (actually, there’s a lot of bad hair in this flick). In general, everyone has their own featured scene, and as a collection of bits, the movie’s really enjoyable.

Really, the main problem is that there are just too many characters and plots going on simultaneously, and nobody gets enough screen time, and there’s no big climax to the movie. You just end up bouncing back and forth between stories, with the bare minimum of a real plot. I didn’t have much of a problem, having read X-Men religiously all the way up until high school, but there’s a lot that needs to be filled in here to be considered a real movie.

In particular, the love triangle between Jean Grey, Cyclops and Wolverine is given so little time that none of it really makes sense. This is exacerbated by James Marsden’s complete lack of screen presence, to the point where nobody understands why Jean even gives Cyclops the time of day. Jean’s increasing power potential throughout the movie isn’t really explained either (I know what it is, but anyone that hasn’t read the comics or watched the cartoons probably won’t).

The last hour of the film just seems to go on and on, with seemingly nine endings (one for each character), and yet it constantly restarts. It’s a frustrating way to finish off what’s a fairly decent movie. Still, the film remains satisfying overall, especially to anyone that dug on the first movie or the comics. I think everyone I was with liked it, and most of them only had the first film as reference.

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