Twin Cities local music samples, news, articles, links, and more(!!!):
- First up, the City Pages announced their 2009 “Picked to Click” winners yesterday. A two-piece band from Minneapolis – big surprise – called theRed Penswon out with nearly double the amount of votes of the second and third bands (Zoo Animaland Moonstone - not to be confused with THIS chick -, respectively). They’re kind of Dinosaur Jr.-esque, at least the guitar playing is. It’s a couple named Laura and Howard who are madly in love with both the music they’re creating together and one another; how unbelievably awesome for them! I can’t imagine the feeling. That’s something special. You can hear it in the songs, too. They’ve got a chemistry unlike any platonic working relationship. Head over to that City Pages link to read more about the band and their relationship (it’s also written 12 times better than it would be here). The Top 2 bands both borrow from “Shoegaze”: Red Pens in a more fuzz/grunge way, Zoo Animals in a more minimalistic way. Possibly a new sound emerging from the Twin Cities? Keep your ears peeled. RED PENS:
- If there’s a local Rock & Roll band I like to pimp out more than the Fuck Knights, I’d like to hear ‘em. On their MySpace, they’re linking visitors to a compilation of live performances from here, Detroit, Chicago, and more. Here’s a track:
The album is 12 tracks long, several of which ask the audience for a ride to the next city (the songs are fairly low quality, but that don’t make ‘em any less fun to listen to). The trio’s being hosted by the Ceder Ave. South dive bar Palmer’sfor a month long, every Saturday residency. FuKn (as the cool kids write it) start around 10 each show. Worth checking them out at least once. Then, in November, the band’s playing a big show at the Triple Rock(on Saturday the 14th) with Minnepolitan legends Kill The Vultures who’s newest album can be found HERE.
- Brother Ali’s newest album is getting pretty good reviews, both locally and nationally. His new website – click his name – is designed as a sort of fan community/speak your mind forum which works very well for both promotional and fan interaction purposes. Goers follow Ali on Twitter and become members at the site to become part of the “US” community. The album itself, changed to “Us” from former “Street Preacher”, is probably the best Hip-Hop album of the year. When it comes to lyrics and delivery, this is perhaps Ali’s Citizen Kane. I’m REALLY glad he didn’t go with “Street Preacher” because he isn’t talking down to ANYONE on this album; even if he could, and he can, talk down to 80% of rappers in the biz. “The Travelers” continues his explorations of race, identity, nationalism, and coming to grips with history. It’s a sad, dark song, and there are times where the pain in his voice hurts to hear. But not everything’s dark. The single “Fresh Air” is all about how much Ali loves his life, how he’s the “luckiest son of a bitch that ever lived”. Honestly, there isn’t a bad song about it, and it probably deserves a full review from me. Antcontinues to differentiate his Ali-DJ persona from his Atmosphere-DJ persona, and it’s a pleasure to hear.
I’m not hating on anyone else I should be mentioning – MANY – just tired of writing…
How’s about something goofy and nerdy then, eh? I completely lifted this from Super Punch. I normally wouldn’t have, if this wasn’t the mostBADASS STAR WARS T-SHIRT EVER. (click that to buy it, by the way; though it links to Tee Fury, who specialize in one shirt per day, so it might be gone by now; I’m an idiot: LINK to the archived shirt)
I already heard the rain. Somehow. I remember a city – old town, historic, crackling – on the verge of all out lawlessness. Like a present day Constantinople, complete with abandoned federal projects and business districts, it was a gateway to another place. A foreign land which isn’t so far away: a sea, a river, even a bridge or a fence of separation. She wasn’t ready for modern warfare. IED’s obliterating the stone footings of buildings in seconds, not to mention people. Thousands of marching steel toed boots crumbling cobblestone and sidewalk. Bullet holes decorating places of worship from centuries ago. Shop keeps, fishermen, parents with children in arms flee maniacally out of the city’s fish market. The sound of the tide mixes with yelling, screaming, explosions, and gunfire. There were two factions without much difference, far as I could tell. It didn’t matter what they were fighting, slaughtering, warring over, just that they were. To the Northeast one pushed downward, clearing out building by building while shelling the town square. I saw it all with clarity from the sky: transparent rooftops and tracked five or six man squads. Rain became louder, more clear, though I didn’t see it. The city was dry as a bone. Across the way, flak jackets pushed straight through in lines of hundreds. They’d grenade ahead and move rhythmically. I heard a bang, a crack, that wasn’t an explosive. More rain, with wind this time. Pandemonium erupted below me in bursts of violence and fear. It all spun into a cataclysm as I rolled and opened my eyes to flashes of light through pulled black shades.
In the mirror I was worn, as if I’d aged five years since falling asleep and waking in the middle of the night. It didn’t help that I hadn’t shaved or showered in days. I stumbled through the dark to the sink for a glass of water. The cabin seemed to be swaying. I moved to a window, waited for a flash of lightning. With the sound of thunder the forest ignited hot; the trees were nearly horizontal, the cabin cast it’s shadow into the wilderness obtusely. I finally heard the wind howl while throwing on my coat and opening the back porch door directly into the eye. The screened and covered porch faced North, at the storm above the lake. Rain carried in almost sideways, but fell short of my feet by an arms reach. I sat and drank with images of the dream still fresh in my head. It scared me. Somehow the vivid imagined violence and the darkened thunderstorm in front of me seemed connected. I rubbed my hands, chest, head. The bolts shot down onto the lake, the islands, the pines. A rock pile a hundred yards out or so, where the eagles kill and feed (they call it “Alcatraz”), revealed sopping wet fish guts. With a squint I saw red and orange entrails slip into the rocky water. A tree branch tumbled down to the dock and rested heavy, wet pine cones blew off and scampered in the darkness. Each yellow flash revealed white capped waves, rolling over themselves at me with speed. The wind inflated my jacket, I put my hands in the pockets. The clouds swirled outward to the East, each dancing – or maybe fighting – with the last. Hand over fist. The in-cloud lightning turned pockets of the system to glowing mist. I wanted to reach up with a mason jar and capture some. The storm moved steadily towards me and to the East. Looming large. I sat and watched in awe until I couldn’t anymore.
Searching for the perfect “I’ll be gone for 4 days” picture made me stumble across a 1997 film that I only vauguely remember as a pile of garbage: Joe Pesci and Danny Glover’s Gone Fishin. Even a cameo by Willie Nelson can’t save this movie… wait, cameos from Willie normally result in box office poison anyways, right [see: the awful Dukes remake]? To be fair, the director’s other famous flicks include Young Guns and the sequel to Karate Kid (that’s right, he didn’t even get the original). Anyways, if it wasn’t obvious by all my First Avenue ramblings, I’m a Minnesotan. We fish up here. A LOT. I don’t that much, but WE do. We’ve officially got about 12,000 lakes, according to the last census. Our over-simplified slogan is deceiving: only ten thousand my ass! My goal is to eat me a Walleye I bagged personally; taste the prisoner on my tongue, lips, as sweet as the Lake herself; down it with some whiskey, bask in the flavor of the enemy. SO – in the spirit of my weird fishing fantasies, and cause I may never get to do this as Sonny Wilkins again, I’m leaving a post-it note:
I was going to write about the new Brother Ali, Pearl Jam, Alchemist, Q-Tip (well, a re-issue from 2000-ish “new”), possibly Rain Machine, possibly the new underwhelming Muse release, and possibly the severe lack of Blues albums (generally speaking) so far in 2009. But I’m just one man. Ali’s album though – changed to the title “Us” from the original “Street Preacher” – is lyrically striking; it’s almost his perfect album. Onto why I’m REALLY here…
Along with my regular, monthly, comic reads, I’ve rented some trades from the public library this week. One is the infamous Preacherfrom the 90s, which – like Ali’s album – doesn’t really “preach”. At all. Garth Ennis is one sick fuck, in fact, not preachy. Clever, witty, entertaining, but sick (and I mean that in the best of ways). Preacher serves up obscure bible references (which only those who’d never lay their fingers on this book could understand; I’ll give that a 9.6 on the irony scale), demonic/satanic coolness, black humor with subtle grace, ultra-violence (if Alex and his droogs got a hold of this book they’d probably try to act it out), and a constant level of weird which might out weird Pyramid Head. For Ennis’ latest blood bath, look to Avatar’s CROSSED.
But don’t tell Warren Ellis that. Over on Rich Johnston’s newest website BleedingCool.com, Rich claims Ellis is trying to “out Ennis Garth Ennis” with the end of No Hero. Speaking of the two, Bleeding Cool’s also featuring the 17th chapter of Ellis’ Do Anything. (I’ve also rented he and John Cassaday’s Planetaryfrom my local library) Not to be out done in the messed-up-beyond-belief category, Ellis has crafted a book of sheer psychedelic horrors in the pages of No Hero. I’ve yet to get issue 7, which came out yesterday; but I’m going in with a cleansed pallet after the final splash page of #6 featured the horrifying “spine cock” (just a brief description since I can’t find the page online and I’m too lazy to whip out my issue and scan the page: the supposed “good guy” of the book, the main character, to a psychotic turn last issue; he killed almost everyone including a guy named “Ben”; he beat Ben to a pulp, but not quite dead, threw him face down at his feet, dug into his back, ripped out his spine with his bare hands, and corralled it into the front of his pants in a very phallic manner; Lord).
Of course, there’s always good clean super-hero fun SOMEWHERE, right? Right. Even if it is a tiny, tiny, bit messed up [see: Professor Pyg's disco dance from Hell/pedophilia in issue #3], the supposed “flagship” Batman titleBatman & Robin offers this. It began as a Morrison/Quietly collaboration (the team who previously took “super-hero fun” to an extreme with All Star Superman, or even New X-Men). It was old-school: chase scenes, flying cars, wack’ed out super-villains, side-kicks, armies of masked followers. And it was fun. The newest artist – for issues 4 through 6 – is Phillip Tan and he’s getting not so much love from reviewers. They’re even claiming he’s dragging Morrison down the tubes with him; they are wrong. Tan’s art is nothing to splurge one’s fan-boy pants over, but it works. And the series is still making cool, fun, wacky Dark Knight action as it was before. Don’t listen to the haters, they’re probably just pissed because they never broke into the industry as an artist, instead filling in as “reviewers” and schlubbing sandwiches at the local deli. I’d love to see Morrison return to X-Men…
The X-Menare one of the most beloved team’s in comics history and for good reason. In those pages, not so much currently, you’ll get that super-hero fun I mentioned, and you’ll get intellectual/philosophical discussion which pisses all over any cable news program of today. That’s why when I saw The Dark Phoenix Sagastaring at me at the library, I had to take (also, I’d never read it in its entirety). When Jean Grey, tricked into seeing herself as a 1800s woman living on a Southern plantation, sees her former teammates as three Northern freedom fighters (Cyke, Collossus, Nightcrawler) and one owned slave (creepily in the case of Storm), those intellectual wheels start churning. There’s mixed meanings – weather meant or not – in this. It’s also mentioned in that same issue how Storm’s “the only black X-Man”; could her image as a slave mean more than simple political/sociological overtones? This run, from the legends Claremont and Byrne, also has some the most legendary comic covers of all time [see: here, here, HERE especially, and here].
Not everything has to involve shudder inducing tights, however. Two of my favorite on-goings involve neither tights nor “super-hero fun”: the zombie apocalypse ongoing epic Walking Deadand the Sioux inspired, FBI entangled Scalped. In the first, Robert Kirkman and the underrated Charlie Adlard (probably underrated because he isn’t issued color and/or a colorist) are still working brilliantly together after years. It didn’t even cross my mind the “Hunters” arc was already on the second to last issue until I finished it. What we know now is that cannibalism exists – probably more than we think – in this world, Dale’s been bitten and slowly turning, Michonne’s still a badass, and Carl – along with any child who grows up in this world – will most likely evolve into a psycho-path as an adult. What’s great about Scalped, and Walking Dead too, is that no one’s really that “good” in the book. Sure, there are character’s who are clearly “bad”, but no one’s all “good”. It’s no wonder Jason Aaron was plucked up by Marvel to write for them, currently on Weapon X, he’s a brilliant writer. Not only does he infuse tones and concepts on an adult level (Scalped proves this with its characters, and reservation itself, searching for a lost Native American identity in a modern, post-Indian Wars world), he’s also just a damn fine pacer, laying out pieces of a narrative clearly but never obviously (Scalped jumps back in forth through time marvelously; both to tell the story, and to represent his over-arching themes above).
(I’ve also finished some amazing novels recently, which I should review, don’t think I’m a comics-only schmuck)
I never knew or heard of this before (maybe I’m not very trivia savvy when it comes to dead musicians): I recently discovered via an article on the William Burroughs site RealityStudio.org, that Kurt Cobain was a gigantic fan of the Iconoclast’s works. Cobain sent Burroughs a letter, in 93 I think, asking him to be the main character for his “Heart Shaped Box” video. Knowing he’d likely decline due to, well, being way to Burroughsian to appear in a music video, Kurt offered a deal to blur his face so that only the director, key grips, and Cobain himself (apparently Dave and Kris would never know either) would know which old man was actually behind the blur. Burroughs declined. Cobain’s friends, and probably Cobain himself, also wanted Burroughs in the “In Bloom” video years before, though never had the gall to ask the man. I thought this was interesting at the very least (though the writer, a Cobain bio writer – one of hundreds -, surely is biased in this case; and I don’t like the idea of him putting thoughts in Burroughs’ head):
“In Lawrence, meanwhile, William Burroughs sat poring over the lyric sheet of In Utero. There was surely poignancy in the sight of the eighty-year-old author, himself no stranger to tragedy, scouring Cobain’s songs for clues to his suicide. In the event he found only the “general despair” he had already noted during their one meeting. “The thing I remember about him is the deathly grey complexion of his cheeks. It wasn’t an act of will for Kurt to kill himself. As far as I was concerned, he was dead already.” Burroughs is one of those who feel Cobain “let down his family” and “demoralized the fans” by committing suicide.”
- Christopher Sandford, Kurt Cobain
Burroughs and Cobain actually worked together at one time. Though, from reading the article linked above, it’s clear they did this over many miles from their homes, and never met at this point. Strange they’d work together first, meet one another second. The project was a short EP called “The ‘Priest’ They Call Him” (with a quotation’ed “Priest”). It was a reading Burroughs did at his home in Kansas. The tapes and written content were shipped to Cobain in Washington, where he created eerie guitar accompaniment for the spoken word. Here’s a YouTube version, I couldn’t find an MP3 to stream.
And here’s a picture of Burroughs’ meeting with Cobain. Also: just 2 months before Kurt’s death, Burroughs sent him a letter and collage/mixed-media painting with a picture of Kurt in the middle.
Personal tidbits ain’t interesting; I get it. Nevertheless: finally, FINALLY I’ll be jammin’ with my old drummer tomorrow sub-level under barely changing leaves and half gray skies. I don’t mean jazz either. Course, Roll & Roll wasn’t even born by the time my mind spun into blackness, a blurred Tony screamin’ for help. It’s funny, I know what my fingers and lips should be doing, I can picture it in my head, just can’t seem to make them do it. With a trumpet, I mean. This version of me don’t even have a trumpet anymore. Saw one last summer – the third summer? – at some giant church, the personal relationship with Jesus kind, sponsored flea market. A big white tent blanketed small piano’s, picture frames, lamps, chairs, “Polaroid” photo machines (one example, along with 8-tracks and video tapes and a million others, of an invention born post my death and obsolete pre my rebirth; try makin’ sense a that…), dolls, buttons, toys, pillows, etc. It was silver, not golden brass; a silver that would have represented a new beginning to ex-Sonny the trumpeteer. Probably a brand new sound too. Muffled, crisp but soulless. And I’d regret ever pickin’ it up to try again. No, this is Rock & Roll, wielded into noise through electricity and the new sax or trumpet, the jolted six string. If Robbie only knew. He don’t even need to sell his soul this time. For the devil, or what the devil might sound like rolled into crunchy, ear-piercing crescendo, resides in these tones. It strikes me as powerfully as brass once did. Perhaps more so. The raw power of it. The bloodied, crusted hands… Mmmnn. If only I could’a died by electrocution of the six string. Now that’d be a way to go…
I saw the Davis Guggenheim doc It Might Get Loudlast night with a friend. There are better documentaries – WAY better – and probably even better “music” documentaries out there (if you haven’t given The Devil and Daniel Johnstona chance, I highly recommend it; how come the devil is such a prominent figure in Rock?); that’s not to say, however, that I didn’t like it. It was charming, in its own way. If you’re at all like me, borderline obsessed with the instrument in question, you’ll like it, even with all its flaws. If you don’t already know, the “instrument in question” here is the GUITAR. In Loud’s case, the ELECTRIC guitar. Jimmy Page is right, though I can hear styles via acoustic as well: because of the amplification, mannerisms of all kinds microscope’d under electricity, you can pick out one player from another.
That’s really what It Might Get Loud is about: style. Philosophy is a big part of the film too, the way one approaches guitar playing, but Loud makes the case that philosophy is only a means to an end (style). Viewers are treated to, and asked to examine, the styles of three very different guitar players in the movie: The Edge (real name David Evans), Jack White (real name John Gillis), and the legendary Jimmy Page. To be fair, it’s a little UNFAIR to stack players like Edge and White – arguably novelty type players (and I don’t mean that in a bad way), who specialize in very specific sounds and rarely deviate from those sounds – against the likes of Jimmy f’ing Page. Page, to me, (although not my favorite guitarist) is probably the most versatile legendary guitarist of all time. He could knock your balls off with speed and precision, then knock your heart out with a slow, raw, winding solo ala “Babe I’m Gonna Leave You”. And Edge and White just can’t match up, they utterly pale in comparison.
That being said, I came out of the movie respecting both White and Edge more than when I went in. I also came out of the movie CRAVING one of my guitars. Things I learned from each player:
My STYLE is different from Jack White’s, but my PHILOSOPHY is very similar. There’s a scene in the movie where Jack White’s supposed to be teaching his chops to a younger version of himself (which didn’t really pan out). He throws down his plastic Silvertone (I think it’s a Silvertone), and tells lil’ Jack to step on it. “That’s it”, Jack instructs Jack, “pick a fight with it. Pick a fight with it, and win the fight”. I tend to have a similar love hate relationship with my guitars, and my white guitar still owes me a punch to the gut for shattering his spine. This philosophy of White’s can best be exemplified when his Gretsch finishes with blood, Jack’s blood, after a Racontuer’s show.
The Edge is better than his STYLE allows, he needs to trust himself more. I’m a hater at times. And without question, a pretty massive U2 and Edge hater. But It Might Get Loud features more than one scene where Edge plays an overdriven guitar with NO amount of effects, specifically Reverb, Delay, or Gates of any kind. And you know what? He ain’t half bad. The three play a version of the Zeppelin song “In My Time of Dying” (great song), all with slides, and take turns leading. Edge plays some pretty solid licks here that would be perfectly fine in most blues based Rock bands. Don’t get me wrong though, I still don’t like Edge (who NAMES themself “Edge”???) OR U2.
Jimmy Page knows what he’s doing. Oh wait – I already knew that going in….
Worth checking out, but your not going to get any amazing insights into the minds of legendary guitar players or the guitar itself from this movie. But, and I’m almost kind of glad about this, the movie isn’t really trying to do that. It’s almost a movie for guitar players themselves. I learned more about myself, and my guitar playing, than the musicians on the screen. I think seeing guitar players back to back, who are so completely different, shines the light back on the viewer (if he or she is indeed a guitar player) more than anything. And for me, that’s all any documentary needs to do to be good, force the viewer to examine themselves. Or, in Loud’s case, their guitar chops, style, and philosophy.
More Rock Band/Guitar Hero idiocy. The CEO of Guitar Hero, Inc. recently released a statement that the usage of a certain dead musicians likeness was perfectly legal. Let me back up. Months ago Nirvana fans – as well as Kris, Dave, and Miss Love – were outraged to find out that the newest version of Guitar Herofeatured the unlockable character/skin of the legendary Kurt Cobain. It didn’t take long for the ex-bandmates and ex-wife to threaten legal action. The trio claimed Guitar Hero had absolutely no right to use Cobain’s likeness and told the creators they should stop using the dead man’s likeness immediately (of course, sold copies would always have Mr. ‘Bain as a playable character… unfortunately). Guitar Hero refused. In a public statement, CEO Dan Rosenweig had this to say:
“I do know that there’s absolutely a contract, and we know that the check has been cashed. I can only deal with the facts. It’s very clear what the terms are. It’s really not ‘Guitar Hero’’s confusion. We went and spoke directly to the estate and made it crystal clear, got the rights, paid for the rights, and really we’ve done what we’ve always done. The fact that the rest of the band and the estate did not communicate – I’m not aware of those facts [about their communication].”
Well yeah, you dumb asshole, it’s maybe technically LEGAL (though it may not be), the problem is it’s extremely bad taste. Course, as long as there are dipshits spending enough money on the game – the same game it’s been since it’s original debut back in 2005 – they won’t change a goddamn thing.
More music news. Well, not really “news” per say… news to me! A band – “group”, what ever you wanna call it – debuted their debut album at a couple CD release shows this past weekend. So what’s the big deal right? Well, first of all they’re from my neck of the woods (specifically Minneapolis), and they’re also one of the most unique sounds to emerge out of any Hip-Hop scene possibly in the past few years, certainly THIS year at least. Is it truly “hip-hop”, though? I’ll let you decide. Generally Hip-Hop features turntables, sampling, more than a repeat/coda type lyrical scheme, and normally lacks the type of guitar you’ll hear here. OH – the name? Yes, yes. They’re called: NO BIRD SING. Get this, the singer/MC is studying creative writing at Hamline. His rapper name is “Eric Blair”, I know, I know, because it was the birth name of (I’m guessing) his favorite writer George Orwell. A guy named Robert Mulrennen is weilding the guitars in this band. And, to me, he really shines as the guy who’s differentiating the overall sound of the group, by adding a significant amount of color (even if those colors are grey, black, or any variation of the two), while drummer Graham O’Brian lends his simple but effective drums to the tracks. This is DARK music. MC/VL , for those of you living in Minne/Paul, No Bird Sing is not. But something tells me they’ll be playing First Ave. in the next year or two. Just watch.
Here’s their one and only single called “Ars Poetica” (which, according to Blair, “is dead”):
I’m kind of an asshole. I talk a whole ton of trash as Mr. Sonny Wilkins, sometimes I think I’m becoming the new voice of “no” (step aside all you _________s!!). But OH MY some news I heard today sparked in me a special craving to once again write about things that I absolutely love. PAVEMENT- the 90’s “alt” band who made “alt” music that was an actual alternative to the pop music most people, and radio stations, called “alt” at the time – is getting back together to play a at least one reunion show next year!! There’s a bazzillion links out there, but THIS oneexplains it pretty simply. One important part of the Pavement mythology is the fact that they never moved onto a major label throughout their somewhat successful careers. And I’ll be damned if Wowee Zoweeisn’t one of the best albums of the 90’s.
If you don’t know the band, or haven’t heard them in a while, here’s a taste (I was going to post an entire concert, but the MP3s have since been removed):
And here’s PAVEMENT on LastFMand Pandora Radiorespectively. “Half A Canyon” might bring you to your knees, listen with caution. Have fun, true believers.
It feels like months – probably about right – since I’ve done a piece in the [I'm] So Sick Of… category of posts. Apparently the last two I’ve turned into the teacher’s tray bitched about Pitchfork Mediaand Twitter, the former listed with a June 28th posted date. (Before I get waist deep into the ocean of cultural chastising I wanna say it’s been a while since I’ve posted. A long while. So I’m going to try to get back to a daily schedule. Shut up you asshole, no one cares.) In today’s edition of “Hey, Pop Culture! I Think It’s Run Its Course Already!!”, an uninspired form of comedy finally gets its due, in a bad way, from a guy who thinks he was once a traveling trumpet player. Sheesh. Talk about f’ed up…
It’s been around for ages; or, at least that’s what it feels like. No punchlines, no play on words, no envelope pushing, not even a dick or fart joke. It wanders in the most centralized section of the next town over called “Mediocrity”, no one thinks to call it out. It isn’t high brow, though it certainly isn’t low brow, and somehow it’s more annoying that the HIGHEST high brow and the LOWEST low brow of humors. Yeah people, I’m talkin’ about Awkward Moment Humor. Now, “awkward moment humor” (or, AM-Humor) is NOT the same as “awkward humor”. Awkward humor is when George creates the most miserable social situation for himself in the pages (pages? It isn’t a damn comic book), sorry.. in the frames of the legendary Seinfeld. Or when Larry David does… well, anything on the tube in Curb. I LIKE awkward humor. I just don’t like the format of: “line by a jackass type character”… PAUSE… PAUSE… “likable character says nothing”… PAUSE… PAUSE… SCENE.
When the American version of The Officedebuted back in 2005, right of the bat I didn’t like it. I didn’t HATE it. I didn’t DESPISE it. But I thought back then the same way I do now: isn’t this just the same shit over and over and over again?? Sure I’d seen Ricky Gervais in the original (British) version of the show once or twice, but I honestly don’t think that effected my dislike for the Carell version at all. The truth is I didn’t necessarily like it when it was a British show; but hey, at least it was a fucking original for fuck’s sake, right? The problem with the show – for both versions, though the American version leans on this crutch FAR more than the British version ever did – is that awkward moment humor represents about 90% of the comedic material. The other 10%? British version: situational humor. American version: slapstick.
What happens is the viewer gets lulled into this mode of couch complacency because the first time you see Steve Carell make an ass out of himself, and an awkward moment follows, you laugh. Cause at first – and if they didn’t over do it like a mother fucker – it’s funny. Okay? So Raiiiin Wilson, or however the fuck he spells his name, looks over at Jim or John with a “did he just say that in front of the entire office” or “wow our boss is such an ass” look. “Hahahahahaha”, it’s all fun and games. But goddamn if that show, and that brand of recyclable, hackney, downright LAZY, humor has run it’s fucking course.
But NBC doesn’t seem to think so. Oh no. In fact, they’ve developed a clone, a mirror image, that looks, feels, even smells so much like the American version of The Office I’m about to boycott the network completely (let’s face it, Heroes has blown for the past 2 seasons; thank God for Conan and football season, NBC). I’m sure ya’ll have seen the ads for this Amy Poehler (when will this bitch go away… and take Jimmy Fallon with you, PLEASE; you two can go laugh at your own jokes on some other planet where hidden egos are cool and not disguised as “cute”) show called Parks and Recreation. Talk about a desperate cash in on these poor saps who watch The Office religiously and don’t realize how repetitive it is. Not only that, but this show is a copy of a copy. It’s a take off a rip off. How utterly pathetic. And how do I know, besides how terribly obvious it is EXACTLY like the Office in every single way even if you spare yourself the horror of watching two scenes? Same writers, same creative team, same “mockumentary” style, one single camera, off action “interviews”, and a whole assload, a TRUCKLOAD of awkward moment humor.
Can’t we just hang it up for now, popular culture? TV? Are you there? Please don’t make anymore of this crap. Perhaps AM-Humor can have a strong resurgence in the 2000-teens? Just make it go away. Because it’s beginning to turn into this time’s version of 90’s sitcom overkill, or 2000’s reality TV overkill. And that isn’t a good thing.
