KBBBLOG MIX EIGHT!
Birthdays, This Mix Has a lot of Covers, Grease in a parking lot, My old apartment in Omaha! The Chair! Val Kilmer and more!
Hey! Happy Monday! I had a birthday a few days ago and so did Hank (he’s the day before me) but now things are back to normal, though Hank still thinks that the mail is going to deliver him Marble Run™ packages on the daily like it did for those two amazing days that apparently will never be forgotten.
For my birthday, I watched the 1978 musical classic GREASE in a very hot Expo Center parking lot with my mom and my sister and ate a terribly greasy slice of Expo Center cheese pizza in my mom’s very warm Subaru Forester. Just like Rizzo would have wanted. I have always loved watching this movie, but this time around I was reminded of how much I love the opening credits.
They have a total Mad Magazine vibe which I will always love, but boy did they do Rizzo dirty with her opening credit illustration. This poor 33 year old teenager just can’t catch a break! If you want more Grease title thoughts, the excellent Art of the Title does a super deep dive on these iconic credits.
Speaking of high school, the above linked video was how I was introduced to New Order. Yes, it’s the 1994 cover of Bizarre Love Triangle by the Australian group Frente! I clearly remember transcribing the lyrics with my pen in my high school bedroom and then committing them to memory as one did in pre-internet days when you wanted to learn the lyrics of a song and you didn’t the liner notes handy. Covers sometimes get a bad rap, but covers are also sort of magical in the way they can bring a song to an audience that wouldn’t normally hear it. As a small town Missouri teenager in 1994, it would have been rare to have heard New Order on the two radio stations that I listened to, but this folksy and more palatable cover of Bizarre Love Triangle reached me in my bedroom. I then got the CD and then that lead me to New Order. Voila! The magic of a cover. This week’s mix is unintentionally filled with quite a few covers (Mates of State does Belle and Sebastian! Pavement does Echo and the Bunnymen! Angel Olsen does Billy Idol!) Here’s to COVERS!
In 2000 I was 23 and my first apartment was on the second floor of an old four square house in Omaha, Nebraska. Up until a few days ago, I thought it had been torn down, but my friend Zach (who grew up in Omaha) was back visiting family and he texted me a photo of my old apartment and it’s very much still standing. My next door neighbor was a guy named Koly who was a few years old than me. He loved baseball and playing the drums and he taught history at a nearby junior high. He also had an incredible record collection and shared my love for R.E.M.. He was the reason that I purchased a *NEW* record player at the Nebraska Furniture Mart.
Even though we don’t live next door to each other anymore, he’s still teaching me things about music. He linked up a song by the early 80’s North Carolina jangle pop group Let’s Active and this sent me down the rabbit hole learning more about their lead singer Mitch Easter who freaking produced and engineered the first two R.E.M albums. I had no idea. Let’s Active didn’t have that much popularity, but Mitch Easter produced some of my favorite music including Pavement’s Slanted and Enchanted. I feel idiotic for not knowing about him, but I am very glad that Koly brought him to my attention even if it was by clicking on a facebook link instead of him frantically knocking at my apartment door to share the news. Also, I am really glad that my old apartment is still standing.
This Mitch Easter deep dive also sent me to a rewatching of what ranks as one of my favorite music moments: R.E.M.’s first appearance on TV. They played on David Letterman. It’s 1983. I was five. I have watched this probably 50 times. They played THREE songs! Michael Stipe was too shy to talk! David Letterman was a charming dork who seemed to actually like them! But listening to Let’s Action and then watching this clip really showed how much influence Mitch Easter had on their sound. THANK YOU MITCH! Also, this playlist of the old MTV IRS’ The Cutting Edge is a great one to lose yourself in if you are looking to lose yourself for awhile.
Some other notable viewing from the last few days include this 2021 BBC Documentary on The New Romantics. Tons of tremendously decadent, synth pop goodness and its drenched with sublime footage of this fashionable musical era. They also talk about the beginnings of I-D and The Face which this magazine lover truly appreciated. God, I love magazines.
Also, THE CHAIR. HOLY WOW. I watched this six episode documentary about academia in two sittings. Okay, it’s not a documentary, but as someone who has worked full time in academia for the last almost 20 years, it’s pretty spot on–except their facilities are nicer and there was no mention of adjuncts who make up about 70% of most departments. Sandra Oh is a GIFT. Holland Taylor a QUEEN. And I hate how much I like Jay Duplass and his character Bill. There have been a lot of hot takes on twitter and reading them make me feel like I am in an actual faculty meeting, so I stopped and I just enjoyed the show. Also, if anyone wants to help me develop a script about a public university art school in the pacific northwest, LEMME KNOW. I HAVE MATERIAL.
Last night I watched VAL. It’s currently streaming on Amazon and I will admit I have a soft spot for anyone who obsessively documents their life through writing, drawing, photographs, moving images or a combination of them all like Val Kilmer has done with his life since he was a teenager making movies with his little brother who tragically died when he was 15. It’s a sweet and sometimes bittersweet tale, narrated by his son Jake who steps in as the voice of Val because of the cancer that impaired his voice several years ago. I liked it in the way that I also liked Kid90 which was a behind the scenes look at Soleil Moon Frye’s obsessive video documentation when she was a teen. Both Val and Soleil recorded moments at the time when recording your life was a novel thing to do. Both are good watches and I never thought that I would be writing about both Val Kilmer and Soleil Moon Frye in the same paragraph, but here we are!
VAL’S closing credits end with Palace Brothers I Am a Cinematographer which just kicked me in the gut. So here I am kicking you all in the gut too. Happy Monday!
KBB
the Let's Active video where they are singing to puppies - wow! Also, the Let's Active drummer is the sister of Dex Romweber? This is news I can use.