brainsplotch

Day 23 of the "post-a-day" marathon. I'll give everyone a temporary respite from 1984 albums. Just spent an hour or so watching the show Better Call Saul (the prequel to Breaking Bad , duscussed over a decade ago in this blog), as older son is making his way through the series. Damn, I almost forgot how intense the show is: in particular the episode arc I which Saul Goodman collects a drop of seven million dollars in the New Mexico desert to bail Lalo Salamanca out of jail, and nearly dies in the process. (Lalo is one of the scariest television villains I've ever seen. He is both charming and terrifying at the same time. Actor Tony Dalton should have been nominated for an Emmy or two). Lalo Salamanca (portrayed by Tony Dalton) Now we are on the episode in which Lalo, having threatened Saul and Saul's wife Kim (in a super tense scene), splits from Albuquerque and Saul and Kim sequester themselves in a hotel to avoid Lalo's associates. Okay, back to...

I am currently reading Alex Van Halen's memoir Brothers , so I have VAN HALEN on the brain right now. And guess who released an album in the year of our lord 1984? And not only released an album that year, but actually named it 1984 ? Yep, that would be Van Halen. How do I approach writing about an album that sold over ten million copies, peaked at #2 on the Billboard charts, and produced a massive #1 single in "Jump"? I'll just start off with a personal approach. It's impossible to over estimate what a big deal Van Halen was in the early and mid 1980s, especially if one attended a small town Midwestern high school like I did. VH was voted favorite band by my 1986 senior class. (I voted for U2). If all or most of the kids in my school liked something, I was naturally skeptical, and Van Halen seemed a bit dim and dumb. A lot of flash with no substance. I mean, U2 was an "important" and "serious" band. They'd played at Live Aid an...

Older son is home and we just spend about an hour this morning watching a YouTube video about comically bad AI depictions of Jesus. This is the type of content I'd never see if he wasn't home. This post will just be a potpourri of different subjects. On a whim, I checked out of the library Alex Van Halen's new memoir Brothers , which is primarily about his relationship with his kid brother Eddie Van Halen. Perhaps you've heard of him. I am only about 1/4 of the way through the book, but am enjoying it so far. Alex, along with bassist Michael Anthony, always seemed like the quiet guys in Van Halen (the band), so I didn't know what to expect from this book (though I had heard Alex Van Halen interviewed on NPR's Fresh Air and I found him pretty engaging. He comes across as thoughtful and conversational in the book, and clearly loved his little brother. Expect a "1984 albums in review" about Van Halen's appropriately titled 1984. I will try to get that...

Former Replacements guitarist Bob "Slim" Dunlap died on December 18 after many years of ill health. Though Slim didn't join the Replacements (aka the 'Mats) until 1987, this seems the perfect time to write about the band's 1984 album Let It Be , and thus continue with this little series on 1984 long players. Let's rewind to that magical year of 1986, the year I have rhapsodized about so often in this blog. I don't remember exactly how this happened, but sometime in autumn '86, Ron P.--an older guy who lived on my dorm floor--let me borrow his vinyl copy of Let It Be . I assume this has to do with the R.E.M. factor. Ron may have thought that Let It Be was similar enough to R.E.M. that I'd like it, and maybe it also had to do with R.E.M.'s Peter Buck being guest guitarist on the opening track, "I Will Dare." (All roads lead back to R.E.M.). Allow me to digress for a moment and say a retrospective "thank you" to all the peop...

From San Pedro, California, we now travel across the continental United States, fly over the Atlantic Ocean, and make a stop in Basildon, England. The next album in my yearlong looks at '84 releases is from the pride of Basildon: Depeche Mode, and their 1984 LP, Some Great Reward . Depeche Mode were among a crop of "synthesizer bands" that emerged, mainly from the UK, in the early '80s. This includes Human League, Tears For Fears, Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark (OMD), Talk Talk, and Yazoo (to name a few). I'm sure scholarly works have been wriiten discussing this phenomenon, so I won't delve into that here, and in any case, I'm not educated enough in the subject to take a stab at it. Of all the so-called "synth bands" of the '80s, Depeche Mode is the one that has evolved, thrived, and soldiered on to the present day. They have released consistently good-to-great material every other year or so since 1981, and not taken decade-long breaks. ...

I'm steadily working on something that I hope will be entertaining, but I won't have it finished tonight. I am so close, though. In the meantime, I"ll shoot off this missive for the obligatory daily post. 

The worst part of this "31 posts in 31 days blog-as-advent-calendar" approach is that some days, I got nothin'. Well, I don't have anything too interesting, anyway. It was just a bland day at work, followed by a trip to Home Depot (or "Home Despot," as I like to call it) to pick up patching caulk and mollies for some home fix-it. Then I was home to bring in the trash and recycling bins, cursing that it's pitch black outside by 5:30 PM. I watched college basketball from 7-9 PM, and then worked on another 1984 album revisitation that I hope to post  in the next few days. No spoilers, but they are nice British lads. And now, I have to check and see if my FitBit is recharged because I have to get my 10,000 steps in.

I saw the movies Wicked and Blitz  over the weekend, so it was quite a few days of one-word movie titles. I went in to Wicked with no expectations. I have not read the 1995 book or seen the musical. About all I knew about it is that it's about the Wicked Witch of the West (aka Elphaba) and her complicated relationship with Glinda the Good Witch. (Apologies to any and all Wicked fans if I screw up any of the details). The bottom line is that I enjoyed it. Both of the co-leads (Cynthia Erivo/Elphaba) and Ariana Grande/Glinda) are good. I especially enjoyed the humor that Grande brought to her performance. It's crazy to think I've been aware of her since 2010, when she was an 18-year-old on the Nickelodeon kids' show VicTORIous and played Cat Valentine, the airheaded friend of the show's main character Tori Vega (Victoria Justice). The show was apparently a star vehicle for Victoria Justice, but it is Ariana Grande--who was just a small part of the ensemble cast--w...

This will be a "stuff I did today" post. My BiL M. had an extra ticket for today's Michigan State women's basketball game, so I went. I think this was my first time back at Breslin Center since the Covid pandemic started in March 2020, but I could be wrong. Maybe I'm misremembering. In any case, the game was exciting and the Spartans did just enough to win, 68-66, over Iowa. (This is an Iowa program that played in the national championship game last year, but is now without all-world superstar player Caitlin Clark). This is probably something more for my MSU sports-related blog (which I have largely abandoned because I simply have not felt motivated to write in it for about six years), but this MSU women's team is relentless and hustles on every play. The future looks bright. After the game, we had beers at Harrison Roadhouse, and that was great fun sitting at the bar and just shooting the shit for a few hours. I got home in time to see the Detroit Lions/Buffa...

Last night, I finally got around to watching Yacht Rock: a Dockumentary (and, yes, the misspelling in documentary was intentional. Pretty punny, eh!). I'd heard good buzz about the documentary, so I had it on the short list of movies to watch. However, I don't have a lot of love or nostalgia for yacht rock. It was like musical wallpaper when I was a kid. It was everywhere. It was ubiquitous. I can hear Christopher Cross's "Sailing" or the Doobie Brothers' "What a Fool Believes" without picturing myself driving with my mom in our 1975 Plymouth Valiant, on our way to a dentist appointment or a shopping excursion (or both on the same day). So, though I don't necessarily hate this music, I don't particularly enjoy it, either.  It's perfectly pleasant if bland aural wallpaper. That said, I enjoyed watching this film and hearing the perspectives of the musicians who created what we now call yacht rock (but was simply "top 40 radio" ba...

This post a day thing is sort of kicking my ass, but I'm determined to do it. This post is a potpourri or grab bag of random thoughts. Something I didn't mention yesterday in my Redd Kross post is their appearance in the cheap indie 1984 movie  Desperate Teenage Lovedolls . I wonder now how it's possible I didn't even know this existed until about a month ago. I started watching it on YouTube and it's entertaining so far. It's about an all-girl teenage rock band. I'll have more about  this later. I was listening to a podcast ( The Press Box ) and the subject of old magazines came up, specifically National Lampoon. The host of the pod talked about ordering a 1980 National Lampoon issue with John Hughes' short story Christmas ' 59 , which was the inspiration for the movie Christmas Vacation. The podcast was more about the experience of reading and flipping through the vintage mag more than the Hughes story. It took me back to being a kid in the earl...

 Last night, I finally finished reading Now You're One of Us: The Incredible Story of Redd Kross. A few days ago, in my Minutemen post, I talked about how that band had its own world. I'd say it's a similar situation with Redd Kross (coincidentally, another Los Angeles-based band). Just as the Minutemen were primarily the vision of two extremely close friends (who could be classified as "brothers from another mother") in D. Boon and Mike Watt, Redd Kross are the vision of two actual brothers (Jeff and Steven McDonald). Jeff and Steven were obsessed with music from an early age. In 1970, When Jeff was seven years old and Steven only three years old, they pooled their money to buy a copy of the Beatles' "White Album." Their musical precociousness was off the charts throughout their youth. While other kids in the '70s were obsessed with say, Star Wars , baseball cards, or comic books, Jeff and Steven were obsessed with the Beatles, David Bowie, T. ...

Former major league baseball great Rocky Colavito died yesterday at the age of 91. Along with Norm Cash, he was my dad's favorite baseball player as a kid. The Rock was a little before my time (he played from 1955-1968), but I grew up hearing about him and his exploits, and I poured over my dad's 1961 Detroit Tigers yearbook which featured a two-page spread dedicated to Colavito and his famous pre-batting ritual of dramatic stretching and calisthenics with the bat, followed by him entering the batter's box and menacingly pointing the bat directly at the pitcher. He seemed liked a total badass then (before that term was in my vocabulary). It didn't hurt that he had matinee idol good looks and that his wife--also pictured in the yearbook--was quite stunning. He seemed like just about the coolest baseball player ever and I wished that I could go back in time to see him play. Needless to say, as a young baseball/softball player, I attempted to emulate Colavito's warm-up...

In trying to get a post in every day this month, which at this point has become a Brainsplotch yearly tradition since, uh, 2022, inevitably there'll be some days in which the content kinda sucks. Today might be one of those days. When I say, "suck," I don't mean "sad," I just mean "inconsequential," "mundane," "dull as fuck," "exciting as watching paint dry." So, here's the deal. It's a little past 11 o'clock and I'd like to get some reading in before I go to bed. I am almost done with the Redd Kross book, Now You're One of Us . I am enjoying it quite a bit and maybe will write about it a bit in here. On a whim, we started watching an old British sitcom from the early aughts called Black Books. It's about a rundown, disorganized bookshop in London called...you guessed it...Black Books. The store is run by a misanthrope named...you guessed it again...Black (Bernard Black, to be precise). The ...

"We don't write songs, we write rivers"--Mike Watt Minutemen bassist Watt nails it with this quote, and who--outside of his bandmate/soulmate D. Boon--would know better. This band from San Pedro, California never wrote conventional songs. Their songs are like brief journal entries put to music. Sometimes they are more like disjointed thoughts put to music. And sometimes, the instrumental interplay between Mike Watt's active and bouncing bass, D. Boon's jagged guitar stabs and beat poet-like vocals, and George Hurley's jazzy, syncopated drumming are enough to make the lyrics inconsequential. As Watt said in the above quote, the Minutemen's songs are best described as rivers: they start from a little trickle, twist and turn in unexpected directions before spilling out into a larger body of water. Then they start all over again, only to take a completely different direction The Minutemen created their own little world with their own private language, and they...

I have two minutes to get a post out. Had no time to write today. I'm sorry. It was a relaxed day. The big highlight: Hot Frosty on Netflix. This is a movie about a ridiculously handsome and chiseled (more than one meaning in that word) ice sculpture who magically comes to live. Zaniness ensues. Yes, it's as dumb as it sounds...but pretty damned enjoyable.

We just got home from seeing the Jeff Daniels play (with the long, ungainly title of) Office Christmas Party : Grinch in Fight With Rudolph , Police Called . It was at the Purple Rose Theatre in Chelsea, a venue I'd never been to before. It only took me 34 years to see a performance here, which is how long it's been in operation. I should make it clear that though Jeff Daniels wrote the play, he doesn't act in it or direct. I'll cut to the chase by saying the play is quite funny. It would take too long to explain the zany plot. I'll leave that to you.  The Purple Rose Theatre is much smaller and more intimate than I expected. It only seats about 168 and there are only about five rows on three sides that surround the performance area. When we arrived in Chelsea, unbeknownst to us, it was just as their Holiday parade was starting and we were terrified we wouldn't find a place to park or eat (but amazingly, we grabbed a spot in the public parking lot next to...

I am plopped on my couch with a cat and am seriously concerned I might fall asleep before I can do a blog entry. I stayed up too late last night, which is a real hazard when the Lions play a night game. It's a few hours later and somehow, I'm still awake, but probably not for long. We got a second wind and watched the new episodes of Abbott Elementary and Silo, but now I'm back to being exhausted and ready for bed.

I have about fifteen minutes to get in this post. I have spent the last 3 1/2 hours watching the Detroit Lions beat the hated Green Bay Packers in a huge game.  The Lions' depleted but still tough defense holds the Packers to a game-tying field goal, but the Lions have plenty of time to march down field on the ensuing possession and kick the game-winning field goal on the final play of the game. 34-31 win for Detroit.  As for me, I turned the sound down on the TV and spent most of the second half standing, pacing, or sprawled on the floor in front of the television. I managed not to yell so as not to wake up any people or animals. Onward and upward, Lions!

Happy Spotify Wrapped Day for all who celebrate. 'Tis the day when we irritate the fuck out of all our friends and acquaintances with the results of the Spotify overlords tabulations of our year-long listening habits. Who am I kidding? I actually kinda look forward to this, and with the country descending into the inevitable chaos of another Trump administration, I look for any entertaining distraction I can find. Unsurprisingly, Redd Kross is my top Spotify musical listen of 2024. With a new album, tour, documentary, and book out this year, it has been a big year for them and I have been right on board.

L. and I just got home from Wharton Center, where we saw the multi-talented Ana Gasteyer perform, along with her excellent jazz combo, a selection of Holiday songs. They were mainly Christmas songs of the secular variety, as Ana pointed out--with one Hanukkah song in the mix.  The show was much more than just music, because Ana Gasteyer is hilarious. She has a long career on stage, film, and television. She was a cast member of Saturday Night Live  and has starred in television shows such as Suburgatory, The Goldbergs, and American Auto to name just a few. Go to her IMDb page or Wikipedia to see everything she's done. She acts, she does comedy, and she has an incredible singing voice. In this evening's show, she riffed on subjects ranging from making Christmas cards, Black Friday frenzy, post-election self-care purchases, wanting to get her song "Sugar & Booze" in a commercial--preferably a pharmaceutical commercial, and that led into a hilarious d...

I finally got around to firing up Disney+ and watching the recently released Beatles ' 64 documentary. It's always fun to see footage of the Beatles, and there is plenty of this Maysles brothers stuff (which comprises a bulk of this new film) that I had never seen before. I fact, I've never seen the Maysles' 1964 documentary, What's Happening! The Beatles in the U.S.A .  This 2024 documentary includes talking heads discussing their Beatles memories and attempts to contextualize the band's arrival in the U.S. Did the Beatles help America heal after the JFK assassination? Perhaps? They certainly created a much needed distraction--for both kids AND many adults. The kids fell in love with the Fab Four while the adults seemed to be--by and large--bemused by the phenomenon. For me, the highlight of the "talking heads" portion of the film was music producer Jack Douglas telling his story of traveling to Liverpool with a buddy during the height of Beatlemani...

It's December, which means it's my last month of the year "post a day" effort. It's my own "advent calendar," in blog form, in which I crawl up my own butt every day for your entertainment. Well, "entertainment" might be a stretch. I still have several 1984 albums I want to write about, so expect more of those. Some of them will be "quick hits," in which I just offer short observations. Maybe I'll finally talk about how despondent I am about the election and the feeling that everything I've tried to stand for in my life doesn't seem to matter to most Americans.  I'm currently reading the book Now You're One of Us about the band Redd Kross, so I can guarantee there'll be something about that in this blog. And that's all I have for now. See you tomorrow.

"Oy, Wanker, Bloke, Telly"  This is a descriptive term, for a certain strand of Britpop, that I recently heard podcaster Yasi Salek use on the most recent episode of Bandsplain (about the band Blur--who, coincidentally, I love). It made me laugh out loud, because this is just the sort of British pop music I tend to gravitate towards. It's the sort of music that wears its Britishness proudly on its Union Jacked sleeve. While the subject of this post, The Smiths, aren't of the 1990s Britpop movement, the music they made in the 1980s certainly helped pave the way. Now, let's take the time machine back to that magical year of 1986 that I have discussed so much in this blog: Sometime during the first week of college freshman year, a particularly outgoing floormate--I can't remember exactly who this was--knocked on my door and introduced himself. (The irony of me forgetting who this kid was is not lost on me. I think it might have been Bob D., but I'm just guess...

The day after the Drive-By Truckers show, feeling numb and emotionally drained from the election results, we left Detroit (after a much needed and good breakfast in the Shinola Hotel restaurant) for Metro Airport. From Metro Airport, we flew to Washington, DC. Being consistently nervous about ever getting to the airport too late, we made it through TSA and then "set up camp" at our gate a good three hours before our plane departed. Almost everyone on our plane was watching live coverage of Kamala Harris's speech at Howard University. I initially wanted nothing to do with it, but did end up changing my mind and watching about half of it. It didn't make me feel any less depressed. From there, I watched the first half of a documentary called 26.2 to Life , about a group of San Quentin inmates who train to run a marathon, which is comprised of over 100 laps around the perimeter of the prison yard. It was just the sort of life-affirming, positive content I needed at that m...

I saw Drive-By Truckers perform at Saint Andrews Hall in Detroit on election night. As I wrote on social media, "if I'm gonna stress out about the election anywhere, I may as well do it here with Drive-By Truckers. The whole evening had an eerie feel to it. I was too worried about the election to completely lose myself in the show, which is a shame because the band was absolutely cooking all night. It seemed that Patterson Hood in particularly was full of nervous energy. I know Hood's political leanings and I know he was likely worried about the election as much as I was, but was channeling all of this anxiety into his performance. Of the four times I've seen DBT, this was without a doubt the most incendiary show I'd ever seen. There were people in the crowd who were looking at their phones at election results. I didn't want to know, though I looked at these folks--most of them middle-aged white people--and tried to surmise who they were rooting for. Though mos...

It was all because of a girl I met... That's how I became a U2 fan. To be clear, that's how I learned about the very existence of U2. In the summer of 1985, almost a full year after The Unforgettable Fire 's release, I attended a summer camp at Olivet College. This camp was patterned after Boys or Girls State, but was sort of a low-rent version of that. We were supposed to learn about how the legislative and executive branches of government ran by participating in mock campaigns and elections--or at least I think. I really don't remember much of anything we did at this camp, but I do remember this particular girl. She liked me, I liked her (probably because she liked me) and the most memorable parts of this summer camp were the evening dances in the Olivet cafeteria, hanging out with this girl (I'll call her "Janine"--not her real name), and her telling me about this band called U2 that her college-age brother hipped her to. When the camp ended--which had ...