'TBH Politoons'
Baron Dave Romm
Folk UnderGround and Urban
Tapestry
By Baron Dave Romm
When we last heard from Folk UnderGround, their debut album Buried Things had just been released. Here it is a year or so later, and their second CD is now available: Get Y'er Hands Off 'Me Booty!
Booty is recorded live; a bit of a disappointment since I was expecting them to be recorded dead. They play with the Celtic Folk/Rock tradition and have a great deal of fun along the way. I suppose you can think of Folk UnderGround as a morbid version of The Chieftans or a bouncy verson of Marilyn Manson, but that's probably not a good idea. They do a lot of instrumentals and a few of their trademark dark but bouncy songs. My favorites on the CD are Kickerbocker Line/Drowsy Maggie and their cover with instrumental lead-in O'Sullivan's March/Let Your Love Flow. It's a CD that will cement their reputation as a dance band, not a novelty act.
I'd still recommend Buried Things to introduce the band to a new audience, but Get Y'er Hands Off 'Me Booty! is a good sophomore effort.
Urban Tapestry has been a favorite for a long time on the strength of their first CD, Myths and Urban Legends. The three women who sing "filk and folk music with a quirky twist" proclaim their love for a geek in Technonerdboy, go online (and this was in 1997) with Web Surfin'. Sex and Chocolate is a cappella advice on how to live a long and happy life. I still get requests to play Starsoul, a haunting spacefaring ballad. One of the mainstays of my filk collection.
Urban Tapestry's second CD is Sushi and High Tea, cuts from three concerts in the UK and California. Like the first CD, much of their music is a cappella with the occasional instrument or Xena Yell added to the mix. Friendship Song, about the stupid things you can do and still be a friend, is hilarious and touching at the same time. A bit dated now, Waiting For Frodo, about waiting in line for The Lord of the Rings movie, will still hit home with fans. They pay tribute to The X Files, Jean-Luc Picard, Susan Cooper and spicy food.
I'm moderately amused that two bands' second CDs are live recordings. Back in the day (ie a long time ago when it was expensive to produce and distribute a record), commercial bands' second albums used to have songs complaining about high taxes and how hard it was to be on the road. Science fiction fans just like to sing for their friends. Both Folk UnderGround and Urban Tapestry are highly recommended, and are good in concert too!
Aside: I've succumbed to the dark side of the net and am on Live Journal as barondave.
Baron Dave Romm is a conceptual artist and a noble of Ladonia with a radio show, a very weird CD collection and an ever growing list of political links. He reviews things at random for obscure web sites. You can read all his music recommendations from Bartcop-E here.
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Recommended Reading
from Bruce
David Podvin: Corporate Assassin (Make Them Accountable)
George W. Bush is a murderer, and a prolific one at that.
Most Reverend Bruce J. Simpson, Benedictine Order of St. John the Beloved: The legacy of John Paul II (The Advocate)
The first "television pope" helped to defeat Communism and to inspire a new generation of Catholics. But this pope also ignored an epidemic of pedophilia while giving prominent attention to the vilification of God's gay and lesbian children. We can only hope the next pope will be more compassionate.
Joe MacLeod: Bloody Valentine (City Paper)
Brace Yourself For a Mesmerizingly Cool, Breathtakingly Violent Trip to Sin City
Kurt Vonnegut: Dear Mr. Vonnegut (In These Times, from 2003)
"If you still doubt that we are demons in Hell, Devon, which I guess you don't, please read 'The Mysterious Stranger' or your morning paper. Never mind what paper. Never mind what date." - Kurt
Bart's Laws
Political Cartoons: DeFreitas
Political Cartoons: Pablo on Politics
Reader Comment
'Spring' In PA
Purple Gene Reviews
'Grand Theft Parsons'
Purple Genes' review of the movie "Grand Theft Parsons" (2003) Directed by David Caffrey:
I've had a lot of people die on me lately…and it seems like a fascination with death is all over the front page and FOX……Terry Schaivo, Tom Delays' Dad, the Pope and Graham Parsons….well Graham is old news….but in every case there is a death pact either with the husband, the family, the church or in Graham Parsons case…his road manager and drinking buddy Phil Kaufman……You see….just like Michael Schaivo honored the wishes of his beautiful brain dead wife….Phil and Graham had a PACT that who ever died first, the other would take him out to the desert and "Set his spirit Free" with a fire under the stars at Joshua Tree National Monument….Well it just so happened that Graham died first of a Morphine overdose….and Phil Kaufman was gonna keep up his end of the deal…………
Graham Parsons was an incredibly influential song writer from back in the late sixties and early seventies. He was singing with Emmy Lou Harris, Linda Ronstadt, the Birds…he formed the Flying Burrito Brothers….wrotes some amazing song and as a result almost personally created "Country Rock" (this is all before the Eagles Hit it big).
Well Graham hung out with Elvis and the Stones and used a lot of drugs and alcohol….and one day he died……….This movie is about body snatching his casket at the LA airport and fulfilling his final wishes…..
Phil Kaufman (Johnny Knoxville - "Coyote Ugly" - "Dukes of Hazzard") wakes up one morning to a phone call….."Graham's DEAD"…..he scratches his gin soaked head and tells the voice to call the police and get out of there……The news hits the papers and the body goes to the morgue. Phil remembers his deal with Graham and calls up a hippie Hearse driver to help him go pick up the body. Well of course Phils' girlfriend Susie (Marley Shelton - "Sin City" - "Nixon" - "Pleasantville") wants to go along for the ride…but she has to stay behind and deal with Grahams' greedy EX girlfriend Barbara (Christina Applegate - "Grace Kelly" - "Mars Attacks!" - "Wonderland") who wants Grahams' guitar and record tapes to sell. And of course Grahams' dad Stanley (Robert Forster - "Banyon" - "Jackie Brown" - "Karen Sisco") shows up at the airport to take his son back to New Orleans and the family PLOT !
This movie could have also been called the "Flying Casket Brothers Last Ride"…..We have the Cops, Dad, the Girlfriend, the EX girlfriend and more cops chasing a yellow flower covered Cadillac hearse from LAX to Joshua Tree National Monument…..What is a true to life body snatching buddy movie becomes a burlesque buffoonery of bizarre proportions….I think I would rather have had the rumors left in my mind than this Keystone Kop Kar chase to the funeral Pyre under the full moon in the desert disaster!
Everything that happens in this flick is TRUE…and it may be worth seeing just for the music…but the music is abbreviated as well…….Good Story…Bad Job !
Purple Gene gives the movie "Grand Theft Parsons" 3 matches that light up the dead body out of 10 for not being that HOT !
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Partly sunny, partly cloudy.
Getting tired of all the Pope poop.
He's still dead. If he gets up & walks - that's news.
Libraries in Steinbeck Hometown Endangered
Salinas, CA
More than a hundred supporters turned out Sunday for the end of a 24-hour "read-in" to help save the libraries in John Steinbeck's hometown.
People gathered to hear writers, actors, musicians and activists read passages from their favorites works outside Cesar Chavez library, one of the Salinas libraries facing closure.
Facing record deficits, the City Council voted in December to shut all three libraries in the city memorialized in Steinbeck's 1952 novel "East of Eden."
If they close, the blue-collar town of 150,000 could become the most populous U.S. city without a public library.
Salinas, CA
Partner for Summer Tour
Mellencamp & Fogerty
John Mellencamp will follow up a successful spring run in primarily secondary markets with a summer amphitheater tour with John Fogerty, Billboard has learned.
The two rock artists' approximately 40-date trek begins June 14 in West Palm Beach, Fla., and runs through Sept. 3 in Charlotte, N.C. Tickets for the summer tour go on sale April 23.
Mellencamp's spring run, which featured Donovan as support, wraps April 17 in Louisville.
Mellencamp & Fogerty
Home Sold on EBay
'A Christmas Story'
The home where the classic holiday movie "A Christmas Story" was filmed has been purchased on eBay by a California man for $150,000. Brian Jones could not resist when his wife told him eBay was offering the Cleveland home where the film family lived in the 1940s and the main character, a boy named Ralphie, daydreamed of shooting bad guys with a BB gun he hoped to get for Christmas.
Jones, 29, of San Diego, plans to restore the home's exterior to the deep yellow with green-trimmed windows it had in the movie and revamp the interior to resemble its movie appearance.
He also wants to create a museum in the home and open a gift store selling items linked to the movie, including Ovaltine, Little Orphan Annie decoder rings and "leg lamps" like the one Ralphie's father proudly displayed in the front window of his family's house.
'A Christmas Story'
'Imaginary Witness: Hollywood and the Holocaust'
American Movie Classics
Hollywood threw its talents into War World II, eagerly churning out patriotic combat films. But the industry was reluctant to peer into the darkness of the Holocaust and anti-Semitism, according to a new documentary that examines the few films that were made.
"Imaginary Witness: Hollywood and the Holocaust," debuting 9 p.m. EDT Tuesday on AMC and narrated by Gene Hackman, recounts how ambivalence limited the number of such movies over the decades and the stories they told.
For example, movies made shortly after the war that addressed anti-Semitism, such as 1947's "Gentleman's Agreement," omitted mention of the concentration camp slaughter of Jews and others that had occurred a short time before.
Later films, including Steven Spielberg's "Schindler's List," offered more artistry and realism but with elements - and shortcomings - that "Imaginary Witness" filmmaker Daniel Anker argues reflect the era in which they were made.
American Movie Classics
No Laughing Matter
TV Comedies
Pronouncements about the woebegone state of comedy in primetime are coming so frequently these days that they barely merit a headline anymore.
But it is nonetheless staggering to peruse the raw numbers from this season. It's not only the freshman series that are floundering; even such stalwarts as "The Simpsons," "Will & Grace" and "My Wife & Kids" have taken a beating this season.
CBS' sophomore star "Two and a Half Men" is the only sitcom to buck the downtrend so far this season by growing 6% in total viewers and in the key adults 18-49 demographic compared with its averages for the 2003-04 season.
The 2004-05 season is set to go down in the Nielsen annals without a single comedy cracking the top 10 in adults 18-49; "Raymond" and "Men" at present rank No. 17 among all primetime series in that demo. In viewers, "Raymond" just makes the grade at No. 9 (though that could change if the finale is mega-mega big), followed by "Men" at No. 12.
TV Comedies
As A Career Choice
Prostitution
A Diploma in Sex Trade? That will be among the several qualifications on offer when a government-sponsored school for prostitutes opens in the capital on Friday.
The move to encourage sex workers who are fully trained in their craft comes just days after the US threatened to impose sanctions unless the administration did something to regulate the flesh trade in the country.
Giving details of the scheme, Kamal Kishore, spokesperson for the Ministry of Human Resource & Development says only those who received training at the Institute for Carnal Studies (ICS) would be granted a license to operate legally. The government, he claims, would be providing the best infrastructure possible at the Institute.
While the Institute will offer a basic two-year degree programme for just Rs 2000, there will be advanced courses for those wishing to specialise as high-society call girls. With a growing demand for same-sex partners, ICS also has an option six-month crash course in 'Lesbian Relationships and Practices.' Special classes for gigolos could begin as early as next year.
Application forms will be available from April 10 at select government offices. The forms can be also be downloaded from the ICS website.
Prostitution
Falls Out of Favor As Teacher's Choice
Red
Of all the things that can make a person see red, school principal Gail Karwoski was not expecting parents to get huffy about, well, seeing red. At Daniels Farm Elementary School in Trumbull, Conn., Karwoski's teachers grade papers by giving examples of better answers for those students who make mistakes. But that approach meant the kids often found their work covered in red, the color that teachers long have used to grade work.
Parents objected. Red writing, they said, was "stressful." The principal said teachers were just giving constructive advice and the color of ink used to convey that message should not matter. But some parents could not let it go.
So the school put red on the blacklist. Blue and other colors are in.
In many other schools, it's black and white when it comes to red. The color has become so symbolic of negativity that some principals and teachers will not touch it.
Red
Missing Prince Charles' Wedding
Princess Victoria
Sweden's Crown Princess Victoria will give a miss to the wedding of Britain's Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles, in order to open an IKEA store in Japan, according to a British report.
The News of the World tabloid said 27-year-old Victoria, daughter of King Carl XVI Gustaf, was among a long list of European royals expected to miss the wedding next Friday.
The only royal household sending a "suitable" guest, the tabloid said, was Norway, which will be represented by 31-year-old Crown Prince Haakon.
Princess Victoria
Get Broadband
Giant Pandas
Calling all tech-savvy pandas -- China's biggest nature reserve in the foggy mountains of southwest Sichuan province is now wired for broadband.
Some might argue that the Wolong Giant Panda Nature Reserve, China's largest, is now ready for the world's first panda internet cafe, but the great digital leap forward is aimed more at panda protection.
Researchers are able to process real-time data on the pandas, including photos and video signals, around the clock at any given corner of the nature reserve, or observe giant panda cubs on a daily basis without having to step out of their offices," Xinhua said.
Giant Pandas
