Young Thug

I totally slept on this one from Mr Thug in 2017. He still has greatness within him. I mean, I quite like the new album he's done with Future Super Slimey and now I'm going back to Beautiful Thugger Girls, which is sounding better by the minute. Not that I ever gave that album much of a chance. While he's not as astonishingly surprising, as he was say four or five years ago, he's still remarkably unique. Young Thug is probably for me the best thing vocally in the 2010s. Someone asked a question a while ago, at maybe Dissensus, on who is the most innovative musician of the the 2010s and I had a few ideas but this guy is surely the most idiosyncratic vocal talent of the last five or six years.

An amazing thing is that nobody's come up with a literary way to describe what it is (as far as I know), which is good. I'm actually trying not to come up with an easily describable term for what he does because then he will just become describable by that little phrase that someone comes up with. I do half wish I could put it all into words but it's a struggle. I find writing about music, sonics and their evocative nature comes a lot easier. There was someone who once wrote about Bob Dylan and all his vocal changes over the years, maybe they could do it. I kinda can't see an old Rolling Stone/Creem type of writer being seduced by Young Thug but you never know though. One thing is that Young Thug's vocal science is all organic as opposed to fucked with in the studio or by a computer/phone/autotune. Does this make him some sort of roots artist? Sure his voice has also been fucked with by technology too but he could survive without it. Thug has invented a whole new language/syntax in vocals and singing. At this moment he is just mercurial....

Super Slimey - Future & Young Thug

This actually has me excited about music in 2017. I hope it lives up to at least half of it's potential. I love this years records from The Residents, Laurel Halo and Rangers. Only two other LPs have had me in as much excited anticipation as this recently announced collaboration between Future & Young Thug though. They were the 2017 releases from Ekoplekz and Ariel Pink and I just haven't ended up in the blissful places that I thought they might take me (yet). So hopefully this combination of the worlds two best rappers will come through with the goods. It's a gutsy move from Future though, as Young Thug usually upstages all in his path. Thugger lifts his game on collaborations (ie. Rich Gang & Black Portland)! On an initial listen it sounds really fucking good. Way better than Beautiful Thugger Girls and perhaps as good as HNDRXX.

Mike Will Made This....

Rabbit Hole Part 2 Featuring Michael Hutchence, Flame Fortune, Troy Davies etc.

Now Flame Fortune is a forgotten footnote in Aussie Pop Music history. I always thought writing a book or at least a long form article on her life would be an interesting prospect. She was from LA and the above tune was produced by Michael Hutchence. Sex Symbol was recorded with an amazing Australian supergroup that included members of INXS, The Models, The Divinyls, Australian Crawl and The Angels. You would have thought 'How could this not be a hit with that kind of hit making pedigree behind her in the studio?' She appeared on the cover of Countdown magazine sometime in 1985 (I had that issue) when this single was released. Strangely enough the dude in the video is Troy Davies, the subject of the previous post. So it turns out he was everywhere in my pop cultural 80s but I just wasn't aware of who he was. It's kinda funny how not raunchy she is in this video compared to say Madonna or Vanity and later sex pots Britney, Beyonce & Nicky. I guess it's closer to new wave-y like maybe Berlin than those recent absurdly sexually athletic stars who are quite often not sexy at all.

So it turns out that Fortune was supposedly only 14 or 15 in the Sex Symbol video which was directed by Richard Lowenstein (Of Dogs In Space and Autoluminescent fame). This is definitely not true. She wasn't actually born in 1971 and was born in either 1969 or most likely in 1962 (as some articles state). I have a recollection that her and Michael Hutchence had a fling, maybe that was just a rumour.

Anyway to a 14 year old me, I thought she was pretty weird because she had this whole God/Sex dichotomy thing going on. I wasn't really aware that this was a staple personality trait in pop ala Little Richard, Al Green, Prince etc., at that stage of my life. The single flopped and as far as I can tell there was no follow up album. Fortune soon disappeared from the pop universe without becoming the star she thought she should have been. Six years later she was allegedly  murdered back in LA. Some information claims she may have committed suicide. It's all a bit sketchy. I can find little more information than this about her tragic life.

*Someone with time and money to do the research into this mysterious story will now have a fantastic Rolling Stone or weekend supplement article to write. Or if someone wants to make me an offer feel free to leave your details.

Rabbit Hole Featuring Michael Hutchence, Richard Lowenstein, Troy Davies etc.

There was a documentary on Michael Hutchence last night on telly. It led me down this strange rabbit hole of half remembered videos and collaborations. I have a vague memory that perhaps Speed Kills was in conjunction with Cold Chisel's Don Walker for some kind of soundtrack which appears to be the 1982 Australian flick Freedom. What about that fabulous hair?

This video appearance from Hutchence in Eccohomo's Motorcycle Baby was a late night staple of late 80s Aussie music tv. At the time I just assumed it was another Hutchence collaboration with Ollie Olsen. I think I was half right, but it's a Troy Davies project. He's the dude in the beanie and the woman on the back of Michael's motorbike. He was an actor, artist, Sharpie, drag queen, man, woman, some kind of performance artist and much more.

Admittedly I knew fuck all about Troy Davies until tonight but I think he makes an appearance in this film clip as well as being part of the film crew. He was a friend and a colleague of film and video clip director Richard Lowenstein. Talking To A Stranger is a 1982 Aussie post-punk classic from Hunters and Collectors. The Avalanches would remix this as Stalking To A Stranger 30 years later.

This sheds some light on Peter/Vanessa/Troy Davies.

More light shedding. Apparently there's a documentary on Davies, Ecco Homo, directed by Richard Lowenstein and Lynn-Maree Milburn. This was screened at the Melbourne International Film Festival in August 2015. Having moved away from Melbourne in 2013 I totally missed that. So while all this stuff is news to me tonight all you Melbourne hipsters probably know all about it, whatever. More info.

More On Movies

7 MELBOURNE FILMS
Dogs In Space (1986)
I resided in Richmond, where this picture was filmed, for many years. People still make pilgrimages to the Dogs In Space house. I drove past it once...er...it's just a house.

Malcolm (1986)
A whole lotta Melbourne in this one. Collingwood, Flemington, Kew, Thornbury, South Melbourne & The Central Business District. The titular character Malcolm works for Melbourne trams. I first saw this at that cinema in Balwyn when I was a kid visiting Melbourne.

Romper Stomper 1992)
All I can remember is Richmond Train station and scenes in Footscray but there's probably a few other locations.

Death In Brunswick (1991)
The old Bombay Rock Club in Sydney Road and that theatre in Coburg are the two locations I can recall. I lived in East Brunswick for almost a decade in the 90s before it got taken over by hipsters in the new millenium. The Lomond used to have lesbian country bands, The East Brunswick Hotel was v dodgy. There was a good video shop on the cnr. of Albert & Lygon. Maybe Mark Hartley worked there...is that right?

Chopper (2000)
Locations include Pentridge in Coburg which had closed down by then and Bojangles car park in St. Kilda which I'm sure didn't exist by that stage.

Patrick (1978)
Shot in East Melbourne, Brighton, Prahran, South Yarra and probably more. I used to know which number tram was in the film but I've forgotten.

Ghosts Of The Civil Dead (1988)
This was made in Melbourne but it was set in the middle of nowhere, adding to the eerie vibe. It's not for Melbourne-y location trainspotters really.

MOVIES I KNOW I'VE SEEN BUT CAN'T REMEMBER A SINGLE THING ABOUT THEM
Jaws (Well it had a shark)
The Babadook (Dunno what it had. I assume a babadook, whatever that is)
Subway
Friday The 13th
Serial Mom
The Parallax View (Well it had a Warren Beatty)
Shampoo (A Beatty, a Christie and a Hawn)
Donnie Brasco

FILMS I'VE NEVER SEEN
The Titanic (Do I need to see it? I hear it's not bad)
Beverly Hills Cop (As above)

GOOD OR BAD? I DUNNO
Eyes Wide Shut
Moulin Rouge
The King Of Marvin Gardens (Sometimes Jack Nicholson just gets on me tits!)
Death Wish
My Bloody Valentine
Barton Fink
In The Mouth Of Madness
Traffic
Death Bed
Spring Breakers

7 FROM THE 70s FROM ELLIOT GOULD. Surely he's THE ACTOR of the 1970s.
The Silent Partner (Perhaps the most underrated movie of the 70s)
California Split (Obv.)
The Long Goodbye (Obv.)
Little Murders (This has to be the weirdest film Gould ever did)
Busting (Gould stars alongside alleged non murderer Robert Blake)
Getting Straight (Best Gould Performance?)
The Lady Vanishes (Great chemistry between Gould and Cybil Shepherd)

RECENTLY WATCHED 
Night School (1981)
Pretty good. Sort of a Giallo made in America.

Death Wish (1974)
Did I need to be 14 to enjoy this or maybe another human entirely? Worth it for the wtf scene where someone spray paints a bare arse. A historic moment in cinema to be sure.

Popcorn (1991)
Good ideas and production values but not quite executed to its full potential. A definite curio though for people interested in the Slasher continuum.

Get Out (2017)
??? ZZZZZZ

IT (2017)
Pretty good. The kids in the cinema seemed to like it, it's a kids film innit?

Gerald's Game (2017)
Such a naff ending it ruined the rest of the film which was probably only a 5 out of 10 anyway. Don't waste your time on this one.

I THOUGHT THEY WERE DEAD, BUT THEY'RE NOT
Peter Fonda
Tippi Hedren
Gena Rowlands
Kirk Douglas (Surely that is not correct)

Gabba

I was thinking the other day 'We've been waiting for some kind of gabber recommencement since 2016 flipped into 2017 but nothing's happened.' I guess the scene has probably continued on in the same way that drum'n'bass still exists. What I really mean is that gabber/doomcore/gloomcore godfather and legend Marc Arcardipane hasn't resurfaced as far as I can tell (not that I've really looked). In the 90s Arardipane had this logo on many of his releases See You In 2017. 

Here are some dudes (below) with the historical knowledge of gabber giving it a retro-gabba crack (Via Energy Flash).



I wish this lecture (above) was real and was going to continue on for another 45 minutes. The track by DJ Balli & Giacomo Bella ChickenFIAT that was posted at Energy Flash is fun but hardly revelatory, hey what is these days?



God I love that thick squally synth sound! Rotterdam Terror Corps were mentioned in that above trailer.



Hardcore



70s rock (Queen samples, traces of Sabbath riffage in the synth) influences in 90s Hardcore!





A Cold Rush. Atmos-Fear was recorded several years earlier than the other above tunes. This is Marc Arcardipane & Marc Arcardipane ie. he is The Mover & The Rave Creator. This is the true soundtrack for 2017.

It's 2017?
Where are you Marc?

Nadir

I took a screen shot of this from maybe pitchfork a month or two back because I thought it was hilarious and depressing. I'd rather hear The Venetians cover Noiseworks. It's really hard to come up with a combo that is worse. Suggestions most welcome.

I Love/Hate Movies

Here's some movie lists I've put together after listening to a lot of movie podcasts and looking at my favourite films list on my blog profile. That's an off the cuff list written in like half an hour. Many films are not included because I haven't re-watched a lot of those old favourites (listed below). My brain also doesn't feel the need to have rigid rankings for things anymore. I would have once had strict well thought out lists for the top twenty movies of all time, the top ten films set in Melbourne, top seven Scorsese movies, top five worst actors etc. I could probably add to my favourite films list a few more Italian, Polish, South Korean, Japanese, Czech, French and German films, horror movies, film-noir, documentaries and a few more from Robert Altman,  John Cassavetes, John Huston, Woody Allen and a bunch of directors I've never heard of......

*Disclaimer

*These lists are by no means comprehensive, just what I came up with one night when I couldn't sleep. I didn't get out me Leonard Maltin or do any research, otherwise this post would then have taken up the entire internet.

**I didn't have a vcr until 1986 or 87 (my mid teens) plus had boringly strict catholic parents so I missed a whole lotta horror/trash/comedy/action stuff from the 80s. I was not an 80s teenage video shop nerd. I didn't love Joe Dante, John Hughes or teen tits and arse sex comedies. I've never seen a Charles Bronson movie, Troll 2 or Labyrinth. I've actually never seen Porky's from beginning to end but I do remember seeing Recruits. I have no interest in kids or teen films now. I think a lot of people's love for those genres comes from nostalgia ie. seeing them at the right age. By the time The Goonies came out I was too old for it but people just a couple of years younger than me cherish it. I went straight from Temple Of Doom, Back To The Future and Aliens to being obsessed with David Lynch, Wim Wenders and Peter Greenaway. I now find that hilarious and so pretentious.

I'd love to be into just one genre like Westerns, Krimi, Nunsploitation, Gialli, Turkish Rip-offs, Czech New Wave, Made For TV Horror, Rape Revenge, Hospital Horror or Blaxploitation. Being middle aged I've come to terms with the fact that I'm a middlebrow dilettante though. If I find a film I like, I haven't found a tribe - I've found a movie I dig. The films I like/dislike don't define me (Insert quote from Groucho Marx "I don't want to belong to any club...."). I've lost interest in sci-fi. My patience for slow films has dwindled. I've forgotten a lot of (pre 60s) old hollywood classics, musicals, comedies, monster movies, British films etc. that I once saw on telly and liked. I've also forgotten a lot of the names of avant-garde, arty and foreign films that I liked and would have seen at the Melbourne Cinematheque, arthouse/cult-y theatres and The Melbourne International Film Festival. Remember The Carlton Moviehouse, The Valhalla, The Lumiere, The Panorama (that was in Brunswick St. for like 10 minutes during 1993), The Astor, that one that was in Swanston Street?.... I've probably forgotten a few others too.

MOVIES I ONCE LIKED BUT CAN'T IMAGINE LIKING NOW (But you never know though)
Trust
Dazed & Confused
Chasing Amy
Reality Bites
American Beauty
There Will Be Blood
Stalker
Donnie Darko
Badlands
New York, New York
Leaving Las Vegas
Spirits (of The Air Gremlins Of The Clouds)
Fear & Loathing In Las Vegas
Betty Blue
Hiding Out
Buffalo 66
Faster Pussycat Kill Kill (Probably couldn't sit through this without being wasted man)
The Trip
Suspiria
Rolling Thunder
Wings Of Desire
Kiss Of The Spider Woman
Sex & Zen
Dead Man
Jean De Florrette
Manon De Sources
The Lover
Down by Law
Thelma & Louise
Unbearable Lightness Of Being
Better Off Dead (Actually watched this the other day too, pretty naff and oh so quirky. Maybe kids would like it, probably not. I mean this was great for an 80s fourteen year old me. Now all I see is that John Cusack's really fucking annoying)
Simple Men
Two Hands
Bad Lieutenant (Watched this the other day. Keitel was wavering between utter shite and really convincing as a depraved cop. Then came the whining/wailing scenes towards the end. That tipped an already ordinary and obvious film into total nonsense for me. Being young and impressionable makes you like strange things. Bad Lieutenant has put me off watching any of the other films in this particular list because I've proved myself correct twice)
Ferris Bueller's Day Off
Hot Fuzz
The Holy Mountain (I'm sure if I smoked a holy mountain of weed I'd like it)
Shine
Surviving Desire
Magnolia
Fellini films
Bergman films

MOVIES I ONCE LOVED BUT HAVEN'T SEEN FOR OVER 15 YEARS (So who knows? But I reckon I might still like 'em. Middlebrow alert!)
My Life As A Dog
Brazil
Sex, Lies & Videotape
Bad Boy Bubby
Love Serenade
Naked
Bliss
La Haine
Millers Crossing
Midnight Express
Angel Heart
3 Women
Stop Making Sense
The Elephant Man
Hana-Bi
End Of The Century
A Better Tomorrow
Paris Texas
Scanners
Deathdream
The Man Who Fell To Earth
The Living End
Pure Shit
Stone
Hardboiled
The Filth & The Fury
Drugstore Cowboy
Delicatessen
Tokyo Drifter (Watched this after I put up this blog post. Classic)
Fresh
To Die For
Proof
Rain
Targets
Race With The Devil
Marathon Man
The Getaway
Performance
Re-Animator
If
Stroszeck
Night Of The Creeps
Lenny
Raiders Of The Lost Ark
The Temple Of Doom
Woyzeck
The Ice Storm
Eating Raoul
Shock Corridor
Deep End (A 70s British film with a Polish director and Can on the soundtrack. How could you go wrong?)
Melvin and Howard
Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf
Three Colours Trilogy
Breaking The Waves
Mulholland Drive
Last Temptation Of Christ
Secretary
Day Of The Dead
Akira
Pink Flamingoes
Branded To Kill
Le Samourai
Shaft
Truck Turner
The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover
The Comfort Of Strangers
Nil By Mouth
Fun
Gas Food Lodging
Sexy Beast
The Fourth Man (Nobody ever talks about this film. It was directed by Paul Verhoeven in 1983 before he moved to Hollywood. It's his best film, I reckon.....although I only saw it once, maybe 28 years ago. John Hinde presented it on ABC TV)
Going Down
Death In Brunswick
Romper Stomper
Bachelor Party
Lantana
The Boys
Chunking Express
Do The Right Thing
Repo Man
Predator
Family Plot
Trees Lounge
Colors
My Beautiful Laundrette
Meantime
Living In Oblivion
The Age Of Innocence
Roadside Prophets
Route 66
Those 80s and early 90s Jon Jost films I saw, maybe at the Melbourne Cinematheque.

MOVIES I ONCE LOVED BUT NOW HATE
Clerks
Wild At Heart
Raising Arizona
2001: A Space Odyssey (Maybe this just doesn't work on blu-ray/telly ie. not in a cinema. I originally saw it in the early 90s on a 70mm print in the best cinema in Melbourne and it blew me young little mind)

MOVIES I'M INDIFFERENT TO (AKA Meh...What's all the fuss?)
Kill Bill I & II
Heat
The Proposition
DIG
Vertigo
One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest
Lord Of The Ring Trilogy
The Departed
Scarface
Blade Runner
The Breakfast Club
The Big Lebowski
E.T.
The Graduate
Cinema Paradiso
The Princess Bride
Rocky
Marnie
Robocop
The Hateful Eight

MOVIES I NEVER LIKED (yeah I know)
Harold & Maude
The Life Aquatic
Last Tango In Paris
Angel Baby
Top Gun
Star Wars
Pretty Woman
Priscilla: Queen Of The Desert (One of my heroes, Philip Brophy, wrote a monograph on how much he hates this movie. What a legend!)
The Last Waltz
Shawshank Redemption
Schindler's List
Boondock Saints
Forest Gump
Fight Club
Silence Of The Lambs
The Green Mile
Gladiator
Japanese Story
Gangs Of New York
Memento
Snatch
Dead Poets Society
Chinatown
MASH
Easy Rider
Citizen Kane
Broken Flowers
Lost In Translation
The Castle
Pump Up The Volume
24 Hour Party People
Wonderland
Swingers
Before Sunrise
Inglorious Bastards
....and a million more

MOVIES I USED TO HATE BUT NOW QUITE LIKE
The Shining
The Godfather
Groundhog Day
Taxi Driver
Crocodile Dundee
Dirty Dancing
The Tenant
Psycho
A Clockwork Orange (Well half of it)
Rio Bravo
Zabriskie Point

LOVED IT, HATED IT, LOVED IT AGAIN
Dogs In Space

MOVIE DIRECTORS I CAN'T STAND
Todd Haynes
Wes Anderson
Terrence Malick
Michael Winterbottom

NEVER SEEN
Tootsie
It's A Wonderful Life
Razorback

THREE CLASSIC 70s FILMS I ONLY DISCOVERED IN 2017
Chilly Scenes Of Winter
Puzzle Of A Downfall Child
(Thanks to Bill Ackerman & Mike White for alerting me to those above two)
The Dion Brothers

(Discovered this on a very dodgy print at either youtube or a pirate-y site while I was having a Stacy Keach fest. Hey its got Margot Kidder as well. This film's also known as The Gravy Train. Funnily enough it's written by Terrence Malick. He also wrote the script to Pocket Money which I really like too. He seems a bit looser and just plain better when he's doin the script sans the directing gig)

93 Darkside/Jungle

This one goes into the category of 'Heard it but never knew what the fuck it was and jeez it's a hardcore bewdy!' More dark 93 bizniz, this time on a funky jungle tip.



This is from the same EP. Melodic rhythms, bleepedelia and trippy kindness, you know what I mean. Lovely but it also gets a bit dark (I always wondered where the Omni Trio acolytes were).



Not so lovely, this one. Fantastic euphoric gloom.  Get on a bad trip and send your brain down the gurgler. This one will make you see spiders on the wall,

The Hip Hop In 2017

A REALLY DEEP ANALYSIS OF RAP FROM A FAN LOSING INTEREST

I finally got the urge to play some rap for the first time this year. I had five albums waiting in the wings - Thugger, Migos, RJ and two from Future. After an initial listen to Thugger Girls I thought 'Hmmm.....I dunno....I think listening to Future's 2014 mixtape Monster sounds like a much better idea'. It was a great idea because it seems even better than it did three years ago. Monster was the first place Fuck Up Some Commas appeared and contains the two below classics.





I guess it's pretty easy to get overlooked if you're from LA as Kendrick is so ubiquitous, has anybody got any room for another LA rapper? Last year however there were two excellent LA albums Schoolboy Q's Blank Face and Still Brazy from YG. This year we've got RJ's proper debut album. He has made guest appearances on DJ Mustard's Ketchup (2013) & 10 Summers: The Mixtape (2015). RJ's done a handful of mixtapes but his best album so far is the collaboration he recorded with Choice Rich off Mackin. The new record MrLA, on initial listens, doesn't seem as effortless as that collab with Choice but it's better than anything that K Lamar has done since Good Kid...

Two hours plus of Future was a hell of a lot to take in. His two albums are the best of this bunch though. HNDRXX seems much stronger than than the self-titled effort....

Culture from Migos seemed ok, much better than Beautiful Thugger Girls anyway....

I dunno I guess I have to give all these albums more of a listen. Then there's Drake, Young MA, DJ Quik & Problem, Kehlani etc..... can I be bothered though?

Maybe if I still had an hour and half commute daily or drove a car I'd be more in the mood to be digging this stuff.