Pistol Opera (2001), Samurai Fiction (1998)

Speaking of watching really terrible and definitely outrageous foreign films and thinking they were brilliant, “Pistol Opera” is a movie I found in my early days of discovering Netflix. I had rented this awesome movie called “Samurai Fiction” (it’s named a samurai movie for the MTV generation). I think it was made in the late ’90s, but anyhoo, It was a REALLY cool, funny, and hip movie, I thought. Especially because I saw it with my older aunt and her cool hip friends I was like, soooo cool for laughing at the same parts and stuff. AND for reading subtitles. I was so legit.

Anyway, attached to that film was the trailer for “Pistol Opera”. As you can tell from watching the trailer below, it is the most artistic piece of nonsense ever. I thought it was really beautiful and SO Important and stuff. And this was before my philosophic and existential meanderings of community college. But yeah! This trailer definitely reminds me of my pseudo-pretentious art film phase. I actually rented it, and was HORRIFIED out how awful it was. It might have been a joke it was so bad. Maybe I just didn’t get it, but the characters would inexplicably pose and speak in haikus and kill each other and my 14 year old self was just terribly confused.

It temporarily brought me out of my pretentious movie phase. I think I might need to watch it again, just to see if the same view holds. Oh gawd, it was so bad. I still love the trailer though. I think the movie was just raw footage for someone to make the best trailer ever.

Fiona

Because I’m an angsty teenage girl. Damn skippy!

Also, both of these songs mention clouds. In “Sleep to Dream” we get: You got your head in the clouds/And you’re not at all what you seem.

In “Shadowboxer” we have Oh, you creep up like the clouds/And you set my soul at ease/Then you let your love abound/And you bring me to my knees.

…and that’s all I got. One song’s attitude is bitter about how his “head is in the clouds”, while the other song’s tone is reeling and recovering and reduced to strategizing about the sneaking and conquering quality of his lovin’. So from this we get that (love) clouds are frustratingly intangible and not based in the real world, so prone to flights of fantasy. Clouds make for good songs, but not for good lovers. Damn!! I hate that my literary education has reduced me to finding meaning in songs that are arguably as uncategorizable as clouds.

mp3: Fiona Apple, “Sleep to Dream“
mp3: Fiona Apple, “Shadowboxer“

“I’ve liked you for a thousand years, a thousand years”

I love how the girls of Plumtree all resemble Michael Cera. Apparently, Scott Pilgrim the character was inspired by Scott Pilgrim the song. So addictive, so repetitive, so sweet, and so much longing. It clearly fits in with my love for the early ’90s girl-rock-groups, and yet it leans more towards the pop end, which I always love. It has a lazy excitement, with disconnected melodies, but it can’t help but be sweet. It’s really cute. It ties in with my previous post, it should be like… a Crushin’ Mix.

mp3: Plumtree, “Scott Pilgrim“

Watch out where the huskies go!

That’s me. I’m a bear. Or maybe it’s wishful thinking. Things have been getting a bit heady lately. Shout out to my homegirl for keeping it real, and for posting this jam. Jam on it!

Any ways, I haven’t been updating this shiz lately. Like I said, it’s been getting kind of heady and busy. I have a shit ton million and a half things to do before the semester is up. But I don’t have much sense of urgency. This will be my downfall. So.

Here’s some Frank Zappa for y’all, in addition to the Queen up there. I recommend listening to Zappa first, and then when he says “Good moooorning your highness”, pop in for QL’s response. Love ya!

mp3: Frank Zappa “Don’t Eat the Yellow Snow (Single Version)“

Bjork, Classic & Fiery

“I don’t know my future/after this weekend/and I don’t want to”

I first started paying attention to Bjork when I was 13 years old, I was about to be a freshman and I remember going down to the (now defunct) Penny Lane on Main Street in Alhambra, and buying her Greatest Hits CD. I had always seen her videos on MTV–Human Behavior, Army of Me, It’s Oh So Quiet–and I admired her from afar, but then I actually sat down and listened. Very quickly, after having the CD on repeat for several months, I started digging deep and found some of her earlier work. I saw the development and maturation from Debut to Post to Homogenic, from an explosion of youth in The Sugarcubes–my favorite song is Regina!!–to the orchestrated and even indulgent works of Vespertine and Medulla. It’s not that she tamed the wildness of her past, it now seems more directed, more controlled, but still as ferocious.

I particularly loved Medulla, because it was my first “new Bjork experience”, meaning, I had discovered it along with the rest of the world. Kind of like when you’re watching a TV show well into it’s 4th season, and you’re catching up with the past seasons on DVD. When the 5th season finally starts, you’re on a level playing ground with everybody else–the only thing is, you don’t get that sense of appreciation, that your patience has been rewarded, because it’s still all so fresh and new to you. Also, the private experience you had, of discovering this great artist after (seemingly) everybody else already has, is gone. It’s a mixed bag.

Anyhoo, right off the bat, the first song to strike me was “Human Behaviour”. I imagine it’s an alien’s second anthropological voyage to Earth, trying to warn or inform other aliens of the lack of “logic to human behavior”. But, it’s a warning, because “to get involved in the exchange of human emotion is ever so, ever so satisfying”. It’s my introduction to Bjork, and one of my favorite features of her music are the incoherent lyrics she sings–that may or may not be Icelandic. Whatever it is, it keeps you from fully understanding her, but it probably makes it even more appealing.

“Big Time Sensuality” is a big flower that is about to, is already in the process of blooming. Plain and simple. For me, this song came at the right time. It’s a promise of something so big and exciting, it’s scary, but it takes courage! It’s your first love. It’s your future. It’s budding sexuality. It’s the big time. Whatever it is, Bjork captures it in the big time sensuality of New York City, in her debut, her music video from Debut, with her barely-contained enthusiasm. It actually looks kind of funny, how unguarded she is, but it’s the same way you feel, when you can’t control such big feelings inside of you.

 

mp3: Bjork, “Human Behaviour“
mp3: Bjork, “Big Time Sensuality (Fluke Minimix)”

Stereolab & Atlas Sound

I found this song lying around the internets. It’s a live version of “Light That Will Cease to Fail”, performed by Stereolab at the Great American Music Hall, in San Francisco, CA, on 11/24/97. I don’t know much about Stereolab, unfortunately, other than this being a very pretty song. But like, a really, really pretty song! It’s another one of those songs that you listen to driving in your car, blasting it, and singing along. It’s almost like a lullaby I heard in another life. It’s layers of grace upon tranquility upon buzzy guitars and drums that push along through the splendors and squalor of life. It’s the light that will cease to fail!

Laetitia Sadier from Stereolab just recently appeared on Atlas Sound’s new album “Logos”, which is Bradford Cox’s (from Deerhunter) solo project. She takes over the song “Quick Canal”–it’s a sprawling and ethereal song that hangs in the atmosphere, until the bass and beat come in, along with Sadier’s voice, that drives the song home along an imaginary highway . Again, it’s a very pretty song that shows Stereolab and Sadier’s influence on Cox’s music, as well as a mutual respect that each artist has for one another. The first song on “Logos” is called “The Light That Failed”, which is perhaps, an answer or compliment to the Stereolab song. Love it!

mp3: Stereolab, The Light That Will Cease To Fail (Live 11/24/97)

mp3: Atlas Sound featuring Laetitia Sadier, Quick Canal

The Breeders

I love the Breeders. They fucking rock! I really don’t know what else to say. There is so much raw energy in their music, and I like their approach: it’s honest, it’s rough around the edges, it’s a good time . They have a lot of fun doing it, and I have a lot of fun listening to it. I’m really sad that I just got into them last year, I could have had so much more Breeders time. I also wish that I was a teenager during the early ’90s–life would have been so much better with them as my teenage soundtrack. I’m so glad that they are still making music and touring, and I can’t wait until they hit the LA area to perform. I’m there!

“Saints“–from Last Splash. It was the song of my summer, because it encapsulated my attitude about the whole sweaty, listless, stagnant, emerged-in-the-mundane-with-nothing-to-do affair. My last summer as a teenager sucked–I couldn’t get a job, I was broke, I had a suspended license so I was stranded, I just did nothing:”Walking around, going nowhere”. But I had my music, and this song was my theme. “Summer is ready when you are” was like, the piece of advice that I didn’t take. Whenever I was in the deepest muck of restlessness, the chorus would chime in and I thought about feeling better! I didn’t feel better, but I thought about it.

“Huffer“, from Title TK, is just plain fun. This is the epitome of what I like about the Breeders–reckless, short, and sweet. It doesn’t even need lyrics–it’s like Kim Deal is saying words just through her demeanor. You get the message. It’s addicting too, you listen to it, and find yourself singing it for the rest of the week. There’s even an outtake that they kept in, a stray expletive. See if you catch it! And not to mention, it’s just a straightforward rock song. Love it.