I put American Football's sole album in my Blu ray/DVD/CD player this morning while attempting to go to sleep. I fell asleep before it was over but what I did consciously hear of it was perfect. It was about 9am. The glow of the sunlight was perfect. I could feel images of winter in my head. This is precisely why I love that album. I don't know what the connection is. Someone on Amazon, a customer publishing his 2cents on the matter, said the music is reminiscent of childhood. He described actives that sound like what I imagine a child experiencing life in the '50s-'70s -- before video games & MTV -- would have engaged in. I did go outside and explore etc. I had a grasshopper collection. I even had a "pet lizard" that I found in the yard one time and stayed in the yard for the longest time (my mother theorizes it got ate by a bird...which does seem to me like is a definite possibility...I do wonder why it stayed in the yard so long...maybe that question suddenly occurred to the lizard too?) But I was kind of an odd kid (and now an odd overall human being). I ultimately enjoyed watching movies/tv and browsing the cover-art of movies at the video store. It's strange how a lot of really crappy movies from the mid-1980s up to the early 1990s had really awesome cover-art. I think it was around the mid 90's when they started putting butt ugly cover-art on movies. CUJO (1983) was the worst offender. They finally re-issued it on blu ray with the original VHS cover-art. There's an older blu ray edition that has OK cover-art that seems modeled after the cover design of the original hardcover book it was based on. the second worst offender was HALLOWEEN II (1981). The original cover-art featured a freaky-ass pumpkin with what looked like very real teeth. The pumpkin was included in a mid-90's re-issue of the movie, but it was part of that whole "ensemble" look that seems to be popular with the audiences to this day still. The BD/DVD and standalone DVD release of TERMINATOR: GENYSIS has the same problem. There's like 6 characters in the film that are highlighted in the trailer and every one of them is on the front cover of the BD/DVD combo and standalone DVD. Is that really necessary? The 3D Blu ray release has a better design. If the price goes down $10++, I might buy it. First I should probably watch the movie though. I didn't get around to seeing it in theaters.
But anyway; I guess movies in the 80's and early 90's were what you might call "falsely advertised". The movie adaptation for Stephen King's short story GRAVEYARD SHIFT was mostly boring. The cover graphics spoke volumes of the contrary. As if that wasn't bad enough, they typed on some b.s. about how the film was scarier than Pet Semetary and The Shining combined or something like that. Of course, there was no quotation marks on that statement, nor was there a critics name beside it. Thank GOD! Any respectable critic should be fired from his job for making a statement like that! Of course, these days there's all kinds of online blogger-types who review movies, and crappy movies will include their praises on the DVD cover-art. I don't subscribe to any of the online movie critic bloggers. Some of them may be trustworthy. I almost rented this movie called LIVE ANIMALS from a few years back. The average customer rating last I looked at Amazon was like 1.5 out of 5 stars. Some of the claims against the movie were rather severe. I don't remember which online movie critics are guilty of giving the movie undo credit, but I do remember there were at least 3 different movie critic websites that were featured/included on the cover and some of them at least I'd actually heard of/seen mentioned before. So I've decided instead of making a hitlist, I'll stick to critics that have something to lose (i.e.: their job). People on the internet who rely on advertising from Adsense and the like will always generate revenue from the millions of people out there who blindly take to heart everything they read.
Anyway.
I started listening to Jackson Browne's "Running on Empty" which I don't generally think highly of, but I was scrambling all over the internet trying to find Browne's live rendition of "For A Dancer" that was included on a tribute to Nicolette Larson from 1998. I'd heard it on Pandora, but I can't find it anywhere. I know iTunes has it, but I don't think very kindly of a company that requires its users to download software to get the job done. Also -- the software is ginormous! The installation file itself is 160MB!
But as I was saying, while attempting to listen to that song at Slacker Radio's website, I accidentally created a Jackson Browne radio station via Slacker Radio's proprietary modern day hyrogliphics (sp???) and "Running On Empty" played and suddenly I remembered why I like THE NEXT VOICE YOU HEAR: THE BEST OF JACKSON BROWNE. I even found myself drawn to the opening track "Doctor My Eyes" which I've often felt sickened by while listening to it, like something was horribly wrong here. The album is a very autumn one. Very much like autumn itself, you can't force it. You just gotta wait for the right time. I thought maybe I'd have to wait 'til next year to enjoy AMERICAN FOOTBALL, since usually I start digging it a bit sooner (at least I thought) and there have been years where I didn't enjoy listening to it at all. Going two years without listening to a CD isn't that bad, really. It may be abnormal and it may make the price of the album seem that much more expensive for someone like me that shouldn't even have money to spend on music, but those times when I'm able to enjoy it are priceless.
No comments:
Post a Comment