Category Archives: Music

Film, Music

Explosivo!

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Today was the D-Line.

When I got the Orange Wednesday text in after a hard day’s, erm, rockin’, I was pretty psyched. Very few people I know showed any sign of enthusiasm, mild interest, or even moderate contempt at seeing this film: even my most juvenile friends thought it would be rubbish. Naysayers. They didn’t bother me. Patty Y joined me for what was possibly the cinematic experience of the century (according to the trailer).

It was Destiny.

The movie is exactly as good as it should be. Completely true to everything that is the D: fast paced, funny, coherent in a trippy sort of way, and definitely rocking. Man, does this movie rock. And whilst it plays to the conventions very well… it does some things differently. Sometimes when you expect it to rock… it rolls. And when you’re expecting a patronising speech… you get a bizarre lesson about Satan being in everyone’s heart.

I am not sure that non-fans, or the weak of spirit, will really get this film. I mean, if you don’t like swearing, then you can ******* **** right off. If you don’t like rocking, well, you too, buddy. So I don’t know if I can, in good conscience, recommend it to everyone. But if you’ve ever chuckled at *any* of Jack Black’s songs, go see Tenacious D and the Pick of Destiny, on a disappointingly limited release in the UK right now. It won’t make you laugh as much as Borat did, but it will make you laugh.

Oh, and that couple that was making out in the front of the cinema at the Trocadero? What was that all about? Mind you, I suspect the D would approve…

Aside: my ultimate team-up right now. For a band, project, comic book, whatever:

Jables & Cage
Kevin Smith
Neil Gaiman
John Cusack
Matt Stone & Trey Parker
Scarlett Johannson (because she should be in everything)

That would be great.

Music, Technology

iTunes 7.0.2 – not totally sucky

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Ok, the latest release of iTunes seems to have fixed some of the performance issues with v7 I blogged about recently. Skipping is greatly reduced, but the whole app still seems bloated and memory dependent. Maybe they should take a leaf out of Nullsoft‘s book and release ‘lite’ versions of the player…

If you haven’t let iTunes auto-update, I recommend you do so. Unless you’re using version 6, in which case, stick with that for the moment…!

Film, Music, Personal

Tenacious D and the Pick of Destiny (CD)

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My CD arrived.

Whoa.

It is a thing of awesome beauty and power.

On first listening, I wasn’t sure if they’d tried too hard with the whole comedy thing. I mean, there are some kickass funny tunes on there. But I was looking for music that rocked so hard that it would literally blow my mind. And a few listens in, I’ve realised that this is it. From the tuneful lyrical genius of ‘Dude I totally miss you’ to the adrenaline fuelled ‘Storm the gates’ to the final battle with Satan in ‘Beazleboss’… It’s all awesome. And there’s everything good about the eponymous track, too (video below).

This is truly the greatest rock band in all of human history. Jables is on my list of people I want to be like (alongside Neil Gaiman, Douglas Adams, Kevin Smith, Carl Sagan and John Cusack).

Music

David Armand

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It is a source of some angst to me that people don’t believe my name is Armand David. I’m aware that I have two first names, and either could go in either place. But they don’t. My name is Armand. My surname is David.

Unfortunately, Google Blogsearch is now making the same mistake most people I meet make. It sent me to the below video, which is actually from the Anti-Brother. Check it out – he’s clearly gone further in life than me; I, sadly, never get to be on stage with Natalie Imbruglia.

Music, Observational

Christmas en route

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I normally get a bit frustrated with the commercialisation of Christmas; carols playing in September, lights up from August, freelance Santa Clauses job-hunting from June… but this year, due to my ongoing refusal to shop on any high street, I’ve not really noticed anything.

In part to help recover from post-holiday anticlimaxia (a well known condition), I have bought the Barenaked Ladies holiday album, which I listened to on the way in to work this morning.

Made me smile.

Of course, I then noticed the second Christmas thing of the season… An Ann Summers windowfront with a Sexy Santarina in it. It seemed somehow apt.

Music, Travel

Cubaton

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Inspired by being made to listen to loads of Raggaton by Damo in Cuba (which I quite enjoyed) I’ve tried to write a rap rendition of our holiday. I will never perform this, so don’t ask, but you can feel free to make a recording if you’re so inclined. More interesting and articulate impressions of Cuba will follow.

Even though, Damo took a head blow
Even so, Damo lost his passpo’
And yet we made it to Havana
To have a week of resting and relax, ya

Quoting, Borat & Talledega
Making Ricky Bobby eat his shame, yeah
Matt to the T, R to the B, D & A to the O
We had a tonne, a tonne of mojitos

From Havana, to the slums of Varadero
A crappy all-inclusive Soviet hole on the north coast
Trippin’ on el ron, pollo y muro arroz
We made it to el casa palladeros

From the 50s Tryp Habana Libre
We were somewhere more hospitable, yay
Spanish casa, with very high ceilings
And many hosts with very dodgy dealings

Venison? Cigars? Anything you want
They offered and then delivered on that
We took it, took it ran
Took in in a Lada, and made it on the Lam

And of course, we went to see the dancers
At the awesome Casa de la Musica
All the girls, who tried to get our money
But we steered well clear of those honeys

As for culture, we did some of that
Museum of Revolucion, Havana Club Bar is where its at
Meeting foreign Tourists, drinks at Ambos Mundos
Chatting over even more mojitos

…and that’s all. I’m thinking this may not make sense to anyone but Matt, Damo and Ricky Bobby, so hope you guys at least enjoy. It is a lot harder to rap when you can’t just make words end in -ito, -ero, – asa, etc. I need to learn Spanish!

Music

The Saints

No idea how I missed this song when it came out. I mean, it was a little optimistic (but what are musicians for?) — but is very moving. Have also just seen Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth (well, I guess it’s everyone’s Inconvenient Truth) and got some (remote) sense of the scale of the problems from that (yes, yes, I know 650,000 years isn’t a very long time in geological terms, but I believe we’re having an impact on the planet nonetheless).

Oh – its Green Day and U2 performing a song call ‘The Saints are Coming’ — in the video troops return from Iraq to help the Katrina victims.

Who says you don’t learn anything when you spend a few evenings too tired to do anything but ‘channel surf’ on YouTube….

Internet, Music

Understanding Myspace

Getting into Myspace a little now. Don’t know many people who use it but the fact that Weezer and Weird Al, as well as Ben Folds and a few others, are on The Public Betas friends list is fairly awesome. I mean, I doubt they pay all that much attention to us, but how cool is it that they’re on there? And you do feel ‘connected’ in some way to the band, even if it is just the bands’ interns frantically clicking ‘accept’ on every friend invitation they receive.

Still, I’d say it was at least 6.5 cool.