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Saturday, June 06, 2009 ( 6/06/2009 03:52:00 PM ) Bill S. "THE NEW PHONE BOOK IS HERE! THE NEW PHONE BOOK IS HERE!" This afternoon, we received a box stamped "Media Mail" from our publisher, Pearlsong Press. Inside were ten copies of the Rebecca Fox & William Sherman romantic novel, Measure By Measure. First thought I had after scissoring open the box (careful, don't wanna cut into the book cover!), was "Funny, I thought the cover was gonna be a darker blue!" Second was, "Holy shit! I'm actually holding our novel in my hand!" I remember Neal Gaiman once writing about receiving author's copies of a new book: first page he opened to, he'd immediately light on a typo. I tried the same thing, but my bedazzled eyes were incapable of being so acute. The whole package looks pretty damn good to me. Excuse me while I continue to bask in the good feelings. . . (Oh yeah, and the Amazon link is over on the right column!) Labels: measure by measure # |( 6/06/2009 06:53:00 AM ) Bill S. WEEKEND PET PIC: Ziggy Stardust continues to keep two cautious eyes on the in-house herd.  THE USUAL NOTE: For more cool pics of companion animals, please check out Modulator's "Friday Ark." # | Friday, June 05, 2009 ( 6/05/2009 07:28:00 AM ) Bill S. CARRADINE: Like most movie lovers with an affinity for psychotronic cinema, I have an ongoing affection for David Carradine: the guy was in so many low-budget obscurities -- some great, many more dubious -- that you can't help but marvel at the man's career-long productivity. Wasn't personally much of a fan of Kung Fu, though I can understand how a younger generation than mine might've hooked into that teleseries. For me, the work I remember best (as from Kill Bill, of course) was from the drive-in: Death Race 2000, Deathsport and Q in the early eighties, though it's long amused me that Carradine also made The Serpent's Egg with Ingmar Bergman. Ain't a lot of actors who can claim both Bergman and Larry Cohen on their resume, but Carradine could. R.I.P., David. # | Wednesday, June 03, 2009 ( 6/03/2009 08:38:00 AM ) Bill S.  "SOONER OR LATER, WELL, ALL THE LIGHTS GET DARK." Though I hadn't known a thing about Tom Laverack before I unexpectedly received a copy of his newest CD, Cave Drawings (Sojourn Records), two facts about him immediately caught my fancy. First was his involvement in the soundtracks of two independent horror flicks, Wendigo and The Last Winter, the first of which I'd actually seen on Sundance Channel one late nite; second was the biographical detail that the man has made his living as a social worker in New York. Harder to gauge which is the more difficult avocation: laboring as a singer/songwriter or working in social services.Laverack's newest reportedly took over four years to complete and includes three tracks that appeared in the apocalyptic Winter. None too surprisingly, these three cuts ("Precious Little," "Running Out of Road," "No Shame") all share a fatalistic tone -- as do many of the other tracks, which tend toward rootsy mid-tempo rock or more mournful balladry with an occasional country soul lick tossed in for good measure. Listening to the mid-tempo opener, "Coney Island Heart," I found myself flashing on both Springsteen and Lou Reed, though Laverack's country-folkish delivery may get you thinking more of Steve Earle. To these ears, the more energetic tracks are the album's highpoints, though the insertion of soul sax by moviemaker Larry Fessenden on a track like "Running Out of Road" is a particularly neat touch. Most striking of the slow 'uns turns out to be "Dead Dog," wherein the singer comes upon a boy mourning over a dead pet hit by a truck. "I'd give it all up if I ever made it," Laverack sings, "just to save this dead dog," even if he knows he just singing into the wind. Laverack's lyrics can be merciless when considering the state of nation ("Blinded by our entitlement, our dollar signs read 'In God We Trust,'" he notes on the lopingly soulful "Precious Little"), but he can also be sharp on a self-castigating track like "Foolish Enough to Think," where he laments his inability to change his own self-destructive habits. This willingness to shift from the blisteringly social (check out his nursing home rant, "No Shame") to the equally self-critical proves one of Laverack's strengths as a lyricist. Laverack's back-up is provided by group of steady sidemen: Marc Shulman, who has worked with Suzanne Vega, and Joel Hoekstra on guitars; bassist Jeff Langston and label co-president Mark Ambrosino, who provides a suitably strong Max Weinberg-y beat to it all. Hoekstra's stinging work on "Foolish Enough to Think" is a particular stand-out, though his thoughtfully hooky licks on "Coney Island Heart" are also worth noting. "You don't know if you'll leave behind anything after you're gone," Laverack sings on the disc's title song, adding that he's content to leave little memories of "how this world did feel" for those who are willing to listen. After regular plays of this evocatively grown-up set of rootsy vignettes, count me among the willing. Labels: folk-pop # |( 6/03/2009 06:05:00 AM ) Bill S. "LAST NIGHT EVERYTHING BROKE." Reading that Exene Cervenka has been diagnosed with MS got me pulling out the old classic X albums this week. Here's a classic live performance from The Decline of Western Civilization, "We're Desperate," a song that could definitely be part of the soundtrack for today. # | |
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