https://open.spotify.com/track/23YJcuMxgFTDJxjWbwp9SD?si=ab10370f49c0407f
Recommended if you like The Who, The Killers, and …and you will know us by the Trail of Dead.
Tag Archives: disco
Introversion [2021)
Teenage Fanclub.
That glow in The World’s End.
But a sadness.
THE sadness.
Emily Dickinson.
Unrequited.
Unattainable.
My Bloody Valentine.
Sloshy grunge hats.
Edge echo.
Chris Bell.
I Am the Cosmos.
Yerself Is Steam.
Slowdive.
Rutti.
Brian Eno.
The disappearance of Madeleine McCann.
Tom Petty.
You don’t know how it feels.
J. Spaceman.
Abbey Road.
Air.
George Martin.
Beck.
Badfinger suicides.
Loser.
Spiritualized.
Royal Albert.
I can only give you everything.
Rick Danko.
Loping.
The Delgados.
Dave Fridmann.
Black magic warded off by honesty.
Good timing.
Divine.
Sigur Rós.
Nigel Godrich.
Pocket symphonies.
Charlotte Gainsbourg.
Serge on the way.
Lenny Bruce, even.
Hit to Death in the Future Head.
Wait at least until track three to break it down.
Southern Harmony and Musical Companion.
Gorecki.
Arvo Pärt.
Deserter’s Songs.
Absolutely.
The confusion of ridiculous counterpoint.
Aaron Copland.
Tonal, yet dissonant.
Thick Billy Corgan.
Siamese Dream.
Definitely a sadness here.
Dawn Upshaw.
Tabula rasa.
Death.
Immense Mellotron.
Tchaikovsky.
Abrupt modulation.
Sugar plum.
Lou Reed.
Ennio Morricone.
Cinema Paradiso.
All you need is hate.
Upstate.
Chaliapin.
Basso profundo.
Jussi Björling.
Dvořák.
Memorial day.
The Inflated Tear.
Columbus, Ohio with duct tape.
Debussy.
Posing with a bass clarinet.
Primal Scream.
Get Duffy.
Rock ferry.
Smokey Robinson.
Sad clown.
Dead clown.
Kinks.
Grasshopper.
Suzanne.
Woodwind quintet.
Did I ever write one?
Yes, I did.
César Franck.
Saint-Saëns.
Organ symphony.
Or is it contrabassoon?
Nadia Boulanger can tell you.
My teacher’s teacher (twice over).
The Left Banke.
LSD.
Herb Alpert?
Hummel.
Handel.
Strawberry fields.
Stereolab.
Unequivocally.
Transient Random-Noise Bursts with Announcements.
A little lo-fi.
Vocal doubled.
Vox continental.
Great hook.
Changes that pull at your heartstrings.
More melancholy.
A fucking marimba solo?!?
Are you kidding me???
Makes sense.
Pauly Deathwish collaboration with Gordon Gano of Violent Femmes.
Lost Bayou Ramblers.
Gordon knew him as Death.
I have become death.
96 Tears.
Farfisa.
Partials.
Tim Gane tone.
Faust IV.
Doogie Howser?
Scary.
Impending.
Suspense.
Rock bass.
Ozzy.
Black Sabbath.
Amazing Grace.
Pete Townshend.
Front.
Back to J. Spaceman.
Dirty ass rock and roll with pristine horns.
Expensive drugs.
Sophisticated changes.
Éminence grise?
Is this the artist we’ve been waiting for?
Rodriguez?
R. Stevie Moore?
Wesley Willis?
Sounds like Jack Nitzsche.
Major Velvet vibes.
Suck-ceed twice.
Dylan with P-bass.
Mick Taylor.
Too much attitude.
Keith Richards.
Let it Come Down.
Shakespeare.
Fucker kicked the bucket.
First to be vaxxed.
Maricopa.
First Suicide album.
Bossa nova.
The Soft Bulletin.
Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space.
Gimme some lovin’?
Steve Winwood?
How old?
La Monte Young.
Slow changes.
First rehearsal tapes.
Alan Vega.
Martin Rev.
New York City heroin.
Warhol Factory torn down.
Across from YMCA.
Trump dances.
Great throwaway lyrics.
George Harrison.
Sound of universe.
Spacemen 3.
Savage tone.
Revolution.
Direct into mixing console.
Fried signal.
White album.
Sonic Youth.
Derek Bailey.
Lou ecstacy.
Late Lou.
European son.
Blood pressure rising.
Brutal.
Frankie Teardrop.
I think I’m in love.
Dub bass.
Will the circle remain unbroken?
When I had dinner with Roky.
13th Floor.
First Velvets album.
Heroin.
Drug rush.
Invincible.
But you gotta buy it.
Dirty Baltimore.
Cop shoot cop.
Cheree.
On the jukebox.
Eat at the gas station.
On tour.
First time in Texas.
American Supreme.
Iceland.
13 Angels.
It’s definitely Bowie.
New career.
Same town.
New old.
Old is new again.
Mercury Rev.
Savvy programming.
Dynamics.
Break beat.
A fuck ton of flutes.
Flute loops literally.
Bowie sax.
Little fluffy clouds.
Every drop.
Gay glam chorus.
Tony Visconti.
Don’t underestimate.
Pere Ubu.
First album.
Méliès.
Boys peel out.
Boces.
Inspector Clouseau.
Phone.
French ambulance.
Pants.
Gives me pants.
Videogames.
Cutting hole.
Pink Panther.
Herbert Lom.
A Shot in the Dark.
Grandaddy.
Under the Western Freeway.
Weeping willow.
Under that.
With Sean Mackowiak.
Square waves.
WarGames.
Tympani.
Rollerskate Skinny.
Dublin.
Kevin Shields.
Comes back loud.
One song mastered soft.
Definitely Low.
The main influence of Pauly Deathwish’s debut album.
Honegger.
Pacific 231.
Chariots of fire.
Vangelis.
Such a groove.
Nancarrow.
Polyrhythm.
Immense sadness.
By the side of a freeway.
Under an underpass.
Not like RHCP.
Much darker.
Like Godspeed.
Philip Glass.
Eno.
Blackstar.
How did a Trump supporter make this album?!?
I thought all Trump supporters were redneck morons???
This is way fucking better than Ariel Pink’s dabblings.
This sounds like a debut album.
Songs saved up.
Like The Strokes.
Cinematic as fuck.
Glitch Radiohead.
Trail of Dead.
Makes sense.
Because Pauly wrote the string arrangement on IX.
Dark.
Killers.
Disco compression.
Distressed.
These lyrics!
Johnny Rotten.
Trump 2021.
Snot on the crowd.
Arcade Fire.
Makes sense.
Lost Bayou Ramblers lost sessions.
Montreal studio.
This was all made on an iPhone?!?
Guy Debord.
Aladdin Sane.
Time.
Rick Wakeman?
Olivier Messiaen.
Major 7ths in uppermost range of piano.
Almost indistinguishable from octaves.
Eerie.
Slight.
Only for the sensuous ear.
The Wall.
Waters delayed bass.
No nonsense drums.
Humble Pie reference?!?
Ha!
Great lyrics!!
Predating new Bob Dylan album.
Check SoundCloud timestamp.
This is definitely the QAnon anthem.
This hook should be on a million conspiracy videos.
“10 Days of Darkness”.
Tell ’em Large Marge sent ya!
My end is my beginning is my end.
Grinderman.
No pussy.
Early-’90s.
Nirvana’s wake.
Finnegans Wake.
Great debut album (if I do say so myself).
Usual suspects.
Spotify.
iTunes.
Pauly Deathwish.
-PD
Saturday Night Fever [1977)
Shitty night.
Sickness.
Hard.
Lonely.
Engaged.
Up all night.
No one.
Misery.
Travolta is magnificent here.
Great direction by John Badham.
With very few caveats.
Badham went on to direct another great film: WarGames.
Donna Pescow was way hotter than Karen Lynn Gorney.
Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge.
Stephanie says.
Good acting by Martin Shakar as Frank Jr.
His odd blandness inside the 2001 Odyssey discotheque.
Weird dichotomy of the religious life and the nightclub scene.
And of course West Side Story.
Robert Stigwood and rock music.
Here disco.
Fantastic Bee Gees!
Real shit.
Weak ending.
But this is an excellent film.
It is, in its own way, of a fabric that includes grit like Dirty Harry and Death Wish.
This is an essential film.
-PD
Blondie’s New York [2014)
Man…
So much I could say about this one.
But it’s one of the few times where I can say, “I worked with that person.”
Clem Burke.
Probably wouldn’t piss on me if I was on fire.
Now.
Because I’m a Trump supporter.
But he was the best drummer I was ever in the same room with.
And drumming was the longest “career” I ever had.
I’ve played drums since I was a kid.
All of them.
The set.
“Traps” 🙂
Orchestral snare drum.
Marimba.
The whole 4-mallet thing.
Jazz vibraphone.
But when I worked with Clem, I was a bass player.
That day.
That year.
For awhile.
It was the bass that took me to England.
To Scotland.
And to Spain.
And it was the bass that first took me to Los Angeles.
But this is about Blondie.
The band.
And what a band!
Based on my own experiences just mentioned, I can attest to the extremely high musicianship of Clem Burke.
And watching this relatively-short documentary (an hour) convinces me of just how special each of the band members were/are.
But perhaps my favorite part is seeing Mike Chapman work.
The record producer.
What a talent!
It was my dream to be a record producer.
Didn’t really work out 🙂
Tough business.
Maybe you fuck up.
Or maybe no one helps you.
Or maybe you get one chance. And only one chance.
But that’s ok.
Because life goes on.
Marilyn Monroe aged.
Lou Reed sang about it on the Velvets’ “New Age”.
And Godard wrote about it.
The aging of Marilyn Monroe must have been a traumatic phenomenon for the first generation of movie goers.
The first generation with that color reality.
And with the television buttress.
And Marilyn…
Even Elton John, a homosexual man, was in love with Marilyn…in a sort of way.
“Candle in the Wind”
Which brings us to Debbie Harry.
The former cocktail waitress from Max’s Kansas City.
Chickpeas and lobster.
Park Avenue South.
And brings us to the album Parallel Lines.
This documentary is almost strictly about that album.
About Blondie’s breakthrough into the mainstream.
Yeah, they were punk…
Had the street cred.
But they transcended.
Mostly due to musicianship.
A bit like the Talking Heads.
The other bands were hopelessly arty.
Of this scene.
My favorite, Suicide.
[R.I.P. Alan Vega]
I met Alan once.
Changed my life.
But Suicide never really had a hit.
[Nooo…you don’t say?!?]
Yeah.
The name.
Whoa mama!
But that was punk.
And my whole mission is a bit of a punk mission.
Pauly Deathwish.
Uh huh.
Not a name I came up with.
But given to me.
I remember that day.
And the personages.
But my mission is also a bit like the mission of Greil Marcus.
And Lipstick Traces.
Now I’d just prefer to read Debord.
Or read Len Bracken on the Situationists.
But Greil tries (valiantly!) to pull it all together.
And I’m a bit like that kind of wanker.
Just hoping to SOUND like I know it all.
And someday have Harvard written on my spine.
But we’ve hardly discussed Blondie.
Or this excellent little film.
Which is currently streaming on Netflix in the U.S.
Again Kino Lorber’s marketing team (?) seems to be absent behind this release.
There’s no Wikipedia page.
And the iMDB page lists the title of this made-for-TV-affair as Blondie’s New York and the Making of Parallel Lines.
Ok, so it’s not Citizen Kane.
But it’s well worth watching!
Directed by Alan Ravenscroft.
He does a fine job here.
It really is a magical story.
Punk.
New York City.
CBGB-OMFUG.
The Fugs! 🙂
New York, a magical place.
Hell, even mayor Ed Koch is in this.
And he’s much easier to stomach than Bill Clinton.
I don’t care…liberal, conservative…whatever.
Just don’t be a dick!
And if you’re a dick, have the schtick down!!
Like Trump.
He has the schtick down.
He’s learned to lie.
In his many years.
“The babies, the beautiful babies…the innocent babies”…
There were no babies, my friends.
There was no chemical attack.
That footage was in the can for some time.
But it’s a white lie in the world of geopolitics.
It’s like telling your kids that Santa Claus delivered the presents.
There’s no way to explain, “I’ve gotta bomb Syria to make an impression on China. And the bombing has to happen almost simultaneously with dinner…at Mar-a-Lago.”
And McMaster must be lying too.
That’s ok.
Just don’t make a habit of it.
Because then you’re CIA.
And that’s a dark road.
To get wrapped up in lies.
But the white lies are synthetic terror where nobody dies.
Even the Russian/Syrian body count.
Likely false.
Especially the “four kids” detail.
Pithy.
Icy.
The Democrats are really (I mean it, unfortunately) exceptionally dumb.
They only sense the general outline of the conspiracy.
Russia’s faux indignation.
But they don’t understand that their infantile foreign policy made such machinations necessary.
Blondie 🙂
And Quintilian.
See the documentary.
Forget about North Korea for a moment.
By all means, don’t watch inferior propaganda.
The Propaganda Game?
Great film.
Songs from the North?
Cinematic equivalent of toilet paper.
The Cinémathèque Française knew the value of propaganda films.
Henri Langlois.
Back when they were educating “the five” (Godard, Truffaut, Chabrol, Rivette, and Rohmer).
And Godard understood the importance of “good”, well-crafted, persuasive propaganda.
As Jacques Ellul wrote in 1962, “Ineffective propaganda is no propaganda.”
In other words, it has no business calling itself propaganda.
It’s less-than-worthless.
But kick back with some Machiavelli.
And The Art of the Deal.
And remember the unholy marriage of art and commerce that is and was Blondie.
-PD
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