Fun RVA throwback, Direct From Hollywood Cemetery always delivered live. Here’s a just-released, 3-song studio recording from ~2006. It’s a fun listen.
Direct From Hollywood Cemetery
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Monthly Archives: June 2018
Black Thought – “Streams of Thought Vol. 1”
Streams of Thought Vol. 1 is a new solo ep from Black Thought, the MC from The Roots. His 10-minute freestyle on Flex in the Morning was one of my favorite things in 2017. This ep is more of the same and I am into it. I especially love some of the lyrical throwbacks he drops. We’re the same age, so I know that he was listening to some of the same hip hop records that I was when he was 14,15,16. It’s cool to share some frame of reference with him that I can recognize in his work.
I also just really like his flow. I don’t know that it’s because he’s an older head, but the way he does it sounds good to my ears. I’m kind of a curmudgeon about rappers, I know.
Pocket Run (iOS game)
Pocket Run is a new arcade-style billiards game for iOS. I’ve been having a lot of fun with it the last week or two. Zach Gage is the developer behind Type Shift, a game I played to pieces last year.
I really like the rotating score value for the pockets as you sink balls. It makes you look for shots you wouldn’t normally take. Same for the challenge modes in there. They keep the game interesting where a flat, one-player billiard sim might get boring.
A couple of control quibbles aside, I can heartily recommend Pocket Run as a fun arcade-y pool game.
Barry
Barry is an HBO series that recently finished its 8-episode 1st season. It’s great.
Barry is a dark comedy starring Bill Hader as a depressed, low-rent hitman from the Midwest. Lonely and dissatisfied in his life, he reluctantly travels to Los Angeles to execute a hit on an aspiring actor. Barry follows his “mark” into an acting class and ends up finding an accepting community in a group of eager hopefuls within the LA theater scene. He wants to start a new life as an actor, but his criminal past won’t let him walk away —can he find a way to balance both worlds?
I’m predisposed to liking Bill Hader and Henry Winkler, but this show is excellent otherwise. Stephen Root is great as Hader’s handler. Anthony Carrigan is hysterical as a deeply, deeply weird Chechen mobster. Paula Newsome does a ton of heavy lifting as a detective who keeps getting close to uncovering Barry’s secret.
It is also a really violent show, fyi. Barry’s a hitman and he kills a lot of people and none of the killing is “cool”. This isn’t John Wick. The killing in Barry carries a real weight that builds over the course of the season.
Another thing I enjoyed was the exploration of entry-level acting in LA. Here’s a good video of series co-creators Alec Berg and Bill Hader talking about that:
Bill Simmons’ interview with Charles Oakley
While I could entertain the argument that maybe the 90’s Knicks didn’t play the most beautiful basketball, they’re still my favorite NBA team of all time. Charles Oakley was my favorite player on those Knicks teams so I am contractually obligated to share the above interview.
It’s a good one. He has lots of good stories and lots of cranky old man opinions about the modern game. I loved it.
SaMcast Episode 85 – “YUGGHCK”
This week the Mike and Adam link minds, sharing a pick and then each bringing rap and videogames:
- (3:23) Follow Up
- (14:29) BARRY
- (21:22) Pocket Run Pool
- (25:36) Pusha T – DAYTONA
- (36:23) Black Thought – Streams of Thought Vol. 1
- (40:23) God of War
Footnotes/Follow Up
Lifting diary, 3.
More band work this week. Bad camera placement but you can get the gist of what’s happening. Same as with the bench the other week, the assisting bands let you have the full weight out of the rack and at the top of the movement but give you a little help out of the hole at the bottom.
This was the first time in a couple of weeks I was able to squat without pain. It turns out that my form had been off and I was adding load to my knees that shouldn’t have been there. It’s the damnedest thing, the movements don’t hurt when you do them the right way!
Since it didn’t hurt I went a little heavier than I planned. I paid for it this morning. All of my squat muscles are super-sore.
“Ideal Home” by Near Future
A collaboration between Blancmange’s Neil Arthur and solo electronic artist Bernholz (who also performs live as part of Gazelle Twin).
Files were swapped, sounds and lyrics re-wired, and debut LP ‘Ideal Home’ is the gloriously minimal result.
It’s got a nice goth-y vibe to it. Not deathrock and not darkwave, but maybe darkwave adjacent? It’s a good listen.
A Lost John Coltrane album?!?
Holy mackerel. From the New York Times:
In the years leading up to “A Love Supreme,” his explosive 1965 magnum opus, Coltrane produced eight albums for Impulse! Records featuring the members of his so-called classic quartet — the bassist Jimmy Garrison, the drummer Elvin Jones and the pianist McCoy Tyner — but only two of those, “Coltrane” and “Crescent,” were earnest studio efforts aimed at distilling the band’s live ethic.
But now that story needs a major footnote.
On Friday, Impulse! will announce the June 29 release of “Both Directions at Once: The Lost Album,” a full set of material recorded by the quartet on a single day in March 1963, then eventually stashed away and lost. The family of Coltrane’s first wife, Juanita Naima Coltrane, recently discovered his personal copy of the recordings, which she had saved, and brought it to the label’s attention.
I spent months in my 20’s trying to get my head around A Love Supreme. I don’t think I ever cracked the code but it was my entry into jazz and I love it. The John Coltrane catalog just before A Love Supreme is some of my favorite music ever. And now I get a whole new album of it? In and in.
D for Effort: The Numero Guide to Slowcore
Freaking Numero. They just don’t miss.
Please enjoy this playlist of slowcore bands. (Slowcore = “generally characterized by bleak lyrics, downbeat melodies, slower tempos and minimalist arrangements.“)
It’s 4+ hours!