David Bowie's STATION TO STATION

At Christmas dinner, I was talking to my cousin Matt and he said Station to Station is his favorite Bowie album. Thought I would finally check it out, plus I could get high-quality versions of "Golden Years" and "TVC15" (the versions on my computer are from an old Fame and Fashion cassette, from the '80s). Should've stuck with my gut. Besides the two aforementioned songs, I kept the title track and "Stay"; the former I completely fade out at 3:20 so it's an instrumental, and the latter I only kept because I had it on a singles playlist — cool guitar riff.

I heard Bowie's drug use was at its peak during the making of this album that he had no memory of making it. Maybe that's why it's so weak. Weird how it's held in such high regard. . . .

Dropkick Murphys: THE WARRIOR CODE

John Williams and Howard Shore are my favorite film composers. I noticed the latter did the score for The Departed, and the Dropkick Murphys had a song in that Martin Scorsese flick. "I'm Shipping Up to Boston" is really catchy. I was hesitant to pick up the album it's on, The Warrior Code, because I only like the first 2 tracks on their debut album, Do or Die ("Cadence to Arms" and "Do or Die"), and I only kept 4 of the 12 songs on Signed and Sealed in Blood ("The Boys Are Back", "Prisoner's Song", "The Season's Upon Us", and "Don't Tear Us Apart").

It's good to be wrong!

The Warrior Code is amazing. Out of 14 songs I'm keeping 11 (dissing the two traditional Irish songs and "Tessie", the last one is so tacky). But those other 11 songs are addictive. More punk than the hokey Celtic chords the Murphy's are famous for. Too bad my iPod won't let me play "Wicked Sensitive Crew" or "I'm Shipping Up to Boston" because "This song is not currently available in your country or region." Kinda cool in a way — forces me to listen to one of the more than dozen audiobooks on my Audible account. I can still blare the 29 minutes of Celtic punk rock when working out!

FOR ALL MANKIND, season 2

I was looking forward to the second season of this show for two reasons:

1. The first season was so great.
2. The second season is set in the 80s, which I grew up in as a teenager.

Unfortunately, this season really jumped the shark. It was more drama than sci-fi. A slog to get through. Most of the action occurred in the last two episodes.

I didn't like a lot of the character development, such as Aleida Rosales being a neurotic mess, Gordo trying to win back Tracie, Molly's eye issues, and Karen hooking up with a college-age kid she used to babysit.

I dunno, I would've liked it better if they had more new characters instead of mostly the same cast from season one.

But the last two episodes were so good, I may just have to check out season three, even though I swore to write off the show halfway through the second season.

Alright, now to finally finish watching the second season of Ted Lasso. I've been stuck on episode five for about six weeks now. What is it with Apple TV shows having stellar first seasons, then dropping in quality in the second seasons?

POWERS AND THRONES by Dan Jones

I give Powers and Thrones: A New History of the Middle Ages four stars out of five.

It is a cliché much repeated by historians that the medieval world was made up of three groups of people: those who prayed, those who fought, and those who worked.

-- Chapter 10, MERCHANTS, p. 354

Cruelty and inhumanity were the handmaidens of imperial expansion.

-- Chapter 15, NAVIGATORS, Christopher Columbus, p. 535

The Expanse

Stayed up late last night to watch the last episode of The Expanse. Pretty meh, I say. I loved the first two seasons (even bought them on DVD), but it seemed to get weaker with each season, though there were bright spots, like Marco Inaros, his son, and Drummer. I dunno, it just seemed rushed how they ended the series. The sixth season was only six episodes, and the pacing seemed to quicken in the last two episodes. I didn't like how all of the heroes lived, and they had this one subplot where a kid is brought back from the dead but they left it totally open-ended . . . what was the point, then? Oh, and the annoying James Holden, the knight in Caucasian armor, doesn't kill Marcos in episode 4 or 5, but he has no problem doing the deed in the last episode? And would've been nice if Thomas Jane had a cameo in the last episode. Really disappointing. Now I kinda regret signing up for Amazon Prime just to watch it. Oh, well, back to another sci-fi letdown: the second season of For All Mankind.

Quip #12

Pet peeve #45: People who use the word agnostic outside of a religious context, as in: "When it comes to Russiagate, I'm agnostic."

Quip #11

A country of contrarians.

Dimestore Haloes: SINGLES GOING UNSTEADY (1996​-​2001)

Back in the '90s, when I was doing music reviews, the magazine I freelanced for sent me Dimestore Haloes' Thrill City Crime Control, which caught my eye because it came out on Joey Vindictive's — of The Vindictives fame — label, VML Records. And if memory serves, he produced it as well. Thrill City was on the glam side but pretty good. I kept 5 of the 12 songs and still listen to it every once in a while, with "Stiletto Baby" still pumping me up. (Sadly, on Bandcamp the excellent cover of "Your Cheating' Heart" is missing. I guess they're afraid of litigation from Hank Williams, Sr.'s estate.)

Anyway, I picked up Singles Going Unsteady (1996​-​2001) last month. Sounds like it's a 10-song comp put together for Bandcamp. The first 7 tracks are really good; the last 3 tracks really drop in production quality, so I'm not keeping them; the first of the triad, "Hate My Generation", sounds so much better on Thrill City Crime Control, I'm not sure why the Haloes' Chaz Matthews put the 7" version on this comp . . . maybe happy memories from the recording process?

The first 7 tracks from Singles Going Unsteady clocks in at 18 minutes. Will make good listening in the car when I'm running to the store.

Duran Duran's RIO

Stop me before I buy again!

Over the holiday weekend I was cleaning up my playlists (taking screenshots of them before deleting them from my iTunes library) and I noticed on my Rain playlist, Duran Duran's "Hold Back the Rain" was missing. I never cared for the 6:30 version on my vinyl and I noticed the original UK pressing had a runtime of under 4:00 minutes; plus, I was never too cracked up with the extended version of "Hungry Like the Wolf". So I downloaded the 2001 remaster (I was hemming and hawing between that and the 2009 remaster), which is based off the original UK pressing. What's also cool about it is that "Lonely in Your Nightmare" is shorter too. Though I think I prefer "My Own Way" on my old vinyl — that one clocks in at 4:31, while the MP3 I downloaded yesterday is 4:51. Sounds like side two of the album is the same on both editions.

Interview with the Vampire

Because Anne Rice died recently, I thought I would rent this flick. I read the novel back in the '90s but never saw the movie. I'm still not into the story. Just don't get it. I'm confused why it's so popular. However, Kirsten Dunst was awesome! Tom Cruise was OK, but Brad Pitt couldn't act, though he was good in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. To be fair, the story is campy, it's hard for anyone to pull it off. Makes me admire Buffy the Vampire Slayer TV show even more now Oh well, at least it took my mind off the (probably COVID) headache on a Saturday night.

Quip #10

Welcome to the year of Catch-22!

Sun and the Moon

Piggybacking on my other post about Duran Duran's Notorious, this morning I download The Sun and the Moon's "Peace in Our Time" and "The Price of Grain". The MP3 versions I had ripped from vinyl finally got on my nerves, especially with the latter song, where it skipped a couple times. I don't mind intermittent crackling and hissing, but skipping pisses me off.

Interestingly, the original album was self-titled, now it's called The Great Escape, with a bunch of B-sides and outtakes. The two songs I downloaded weren't cheap: close to $5; but I never cared for the rest of the album . . . a pale shadow of the vocalist/bassist and drummer's old band, Chameleons UK. The same formula with different guitarists just didn't work. Ya can't substitute chemistry!

Why am I on a music-buying binge (I also bought The Dimestore Haloes' Singles Going Unsteady)? Probably because on Xmas I was around my cousin Michael and his daughter Sara, both who, around 36 hours later on Monday morning, woke up with COVID. I got my booster 11 days before Xmas, so I think I'm fine, though I have had an occasional headache, but I think that's more with anxiety, plus it's been slow this week at work, I've been sleeping restlessly, and I haven't been exercising much, though I plan on correcting that with this three-day weekend.

Duran Duran: NOTORIOUS

I finally got sick of the old MP3s that I ripped from my Notorious LP (I had bought the album when it first came out in '86); a couple tracks skipped at the most inopportune of times. I downloaded the regular version of the album, not the remastered deluxe version. I'm wondering if I made a mistake. In the car it didn't sound that high quality, though now on my MacBook Air, it sounds fine.

Anyway, I may remove "Skin Trade" from my iTunes library. Always hated that song. Lyrically and musically, it's the worst representation of the '80s. Still can't believe they released it as the second single. I may also get rid of "So Misled" — just never did it for me. Overall, though, good album. Before they started to suck!

THE STAGES OF MEDITATION by The Dalai Lama

Took me two-and-a-half months to listen to this audiobook. Pretty pathetic, since it's only three hours and thirty-nine minutes. Just couldn't get into it. A similar thing happened when I read Thomas Merton's The Seven Storey Mountain. I've moved on from a religious mindset, that when I read something spiritual, it's like listening to some crazy guy on a city street corner — they have has no basis in reality. I dunno, maybe I'm too tethered to this world and lack imagination or a higher state of consciousness. I give The Stages of Meditation two stars.

RAISING HELL by Run-DMC

For some reason, recently, Run-DMC's "It's Tricky" was stuck in my head. I had on an old zip drive with "Peter Piper", "It's Tricky", and "You Be Illin'", so I decided to pick up the whole album. Good stuff. Nice companion piece to The Beastie Boys' License to Ill. Though I removed Run-DMC's "Dumb Girl" from my iPod because it's slightly misogynist. And I like the extended version of "Walk This Way"; the 45 I bought as a teenager didn't have Joe Perry's impressive guitar work at the end . . . forgot what a great guitarist he is, since he's overshadowed by Steven Tyler and Eddie Van Halen.

THE LIAR'S DICTIONARY by Eley Williams

I gave up on this novel after about 40 pages. The introduction/prologue was way overwritten. And I have the habit of looking up words up I don't know — I was doing that at least five times a page . . . got old after a while. Also, I have average intelligence, and this book seems like light reading for graduate students.

THE PERFECT NANNY by Leïla Slimani

Philistine I am, I only recently heard of the Prix Goncourt, apparently France's most prestigious literary award. Unfortunately, the novel by this year's winner, Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, isn't out in English yet, so I picked up from my library the 2016 winner, Leïla Slimani's The Perfect Nanny. I give it 2.5 out of 5 stars. Her writing style reminded me of Amélie Nothomb: relative short chapters. Thankfully, The Perfect Nanny is a pretty quick read at around 200 pages. I didn't find the characters very believable. My sense is that Slimani was more concerned with examining class that focusing on plotting. Hopefully the other Prix Goncourt winner I reserved at my library, Hervé Le Tellier's The Anomaly, is better.

YOURS CRUELLY, ELVIRA by Cassandra Peterson

I picked this memoir up as a lark at my local library. Figured it would be light reading, and that it is. I give it 3 out of 5 stars. She does a good job with pacing in telling the story of her 70 years. I can't believe she's made a living off of one character. Wow, America's a crazy place. And, of course, the socialist in me got turned off by all the commercials and licensing she's done with her Elvira character. Kind of crazy both of her sisters died relatively young because of substance health issues; that coupled with Cassandra's pursuit of fame makes me wonder what type of house of horrors she grew up in.

Oak Ridge Boys

Back when I was 12 or 13, I dug the Oak Ridge Boys' "Elvira", so for my birthday I asked for one of their albums. My Aunt Maryann got me, I believe, The Best Of The Oak Ridge Boys. I remember being completely disappointed. Even though I was still a good Catholic boy, I couldn't believe the quartet I heard on the radio and probably saw on Solid Gold was a gospel group.

Anyway, I've been reading Cassandra Peterson's memoir, Yours Cruelly, Elvira, so the Oak Ridge Boys' "Elvira" has been on my mind, therefore I picked up one their greatest hits, 20th Century Masters: The Millennium Collection. It covers their golden period, from the late '70s to the mid-'80s. Pretty good. I was going to very selective but decided to keep all but the last track (had no heart) because I'll probably never buy anything else by them. Fortunately, there are no gospel tracks on there.

For All Mankind

* * * CONTAINS SPOILERS * * *

Finished watching the first season last night. Wow! Much better than The Expanse. Pitch perfect. I like how they set up that Wayne Cobb basically becomes Karen Baldwin's therapist, and how she starts to change but not completely when she comforts Marge Slayton after the news of Deke's death (her husband). That scene got me a little verklempt. It reminded me why I enjoy TV series so much. You have at least a handful of episodes to get to know the characters, and when an emotional scene like that comes up, if acted and written well, it just blows you away and stays on your mind for days. Something, I find, films fail to do because they only have two hours to work with.

Can't wait for the second season!