best music news came in

best!  because elvis costello is my favorite artist and tied for my favorite albums of his is King of America, the one made with T-Bone Burnett.

best because it's got another song with the lovely Emmylou Harris

best! because my favorite elvis costello songs are the ballads and this one's "all acoustic."

full details and tons of errors are on billboard.  FULL OF ERRORS ERROR SENTENCE HERE:

"...two of the album's tracks -- 'Hidden Same' and 'Boom Chicka Boom -- were originally written by Costello for Johnny Cash."

Here are my corrections:

-the first song is called "Hidden Shame."

-the other song is called "Complicated Shadows."  the Johnny Cash ALBUM was called Boom Chicka Boom.

-there should be an end quote there after Boom Chicka Boom.

but anyway, this is exciting.  EC has re-recorded those two songs already on All This Useless Beauty (and its corresponding bonus tracks) and his versions are awesome.  Cash never recorded Complicated Shadows.  I wish he had, it is a dark song.

Yeah the album is called Secret, Profane & Sugarcane (if billboard is to be trusted!!) and it's supposedly his return to American roots music.  We haven't heard that from him since his last album!  Or maybe The Delivery Man.  

Also the vinyl has two bonus tracks because elvis costello is AWESOME THAT WAY.  One is a song you may have heard if you watched his show Spectacle with Lou Reed...a cover of "Femme Fatale."

album out june 2 on hear music (starbucks? what happened to lost highway?) and then some tour dates with The Sugarcanes (EC's band for this album featuring some bluegrass & traditional country musicians)

you might not understand but this album sounds like a DREAM to me.

oh, here's a better source.  an official source.  obviously the source billboard took from and copied and pasted from.  man, billboard sucks.  SOURCE.

more on virgin

seriously is this the plot to empire records?  i've been reading more about the whole thing with virgin megastores closing, and basically the stores are still profitable, but the real estate company that bought them just wanted the real estate and basically just bought them out for the locations so other stores can open up.  what??

damn the man! save the empire!!

we still have indie shops here in denver.  we still have places much, much better.  i just hope we always have them because virgin has always been my backup plan in case the fantastic indie shops go under.  i will not participate in the non-physical release of music.  f that.

here is a story that starts with "Interested in picking up a new CD during your lunch break downtowm?  Soon your options for where to do that will go from one to zero."  While this is technically true, just wait until after work and drive out to Colfax & University.  I do think it's sad that there won't be a store DOWNTOWN, but there are still stores in town, quite nearby.  0

i was also reading this story from the denver post (by the way, how horrible is it that the rocky mountain news went under?  somebody needs to fix this economy thing), and there were some quotes that baffled me.  just baffled me.  i hope this isn't a reflection of general denver.  i think it's mostly a reflection of the folks that do the majority of their music buying at virgin.  which is a weird concept to me, but...here are the quotes:

-23 year old said "I always buy CDs.  This is a one-stop shop.  I guess I'll go to Best Buy or an independent record shop."  At least the idea is in his head that independent record shops are an option.  But first, he mentioned BEST BUY first.  They have the selection of a best buy.  Second, he said "I guess."  As if it's such an inconvenience, or such a downer to walk into twist & shout, where everybody is super nice, where there is heart, where the selection is probably BETTER than virgin, where you're supporting the local DENVER ECONOMY, where there is plentiful free parking, where they have a fantastic vinyl selection, where you're not in downtown.  Oh man, i guess i will have to settle with the indies.  

-the other wasn't a quote, so my quote is of the article: (26-year-old) "said her music comes equally from a store in CD format and online via iTunes.  When Virgin closes, she'll just stick with online, she said."  DENVER.  PLEASE.  why is the closing of ONE store, one of your MANY options, the thing that kicks you off of cds?  I know itunes is easy but shoot.  The quality of those mp3s is horrible.  and DRM!  

I guess that's just what happens when you do a story about virgin megastore by interviewing people at virgin megastore.  And the responses I'd like to hear are the ones they'd get asking Wax Trax customers what they thought of Virgin closing.  Or if they asked me.

But the underlying PROBLEM here is that the mainstream isn't even these two people they interviewed for this story.  The mainstream actually probably gets the majority of their music from best buy or target or itunes.  The mainstream probably doesn't even go to Virgin.

I just hope the man bringing down the Empire helps out the indies.  I hope that 23-year-old wanders into Twist & Shout and is their newest loyal customer.  I hope if he goes to Best Buy he realizes they don't have what he needs.  I hope there are more people they didn't interview that would have shrugged and said "I'll just go to the local independent store."  I hope that's the case for all the cities that are losing their precious virgins.

more and more and more

here are some more things i've been meaning to blog about over the past couple days.  it's a shame i didn't have internet during the oscars, or when all those great movies were coming out.  now it would be pretty irrelevant to discuss them.  but i think i'll do a tuesday tomorrow thing also (another entry) just because so many of them are coming out on dvd/blu ray this week.

-ok, i read another review of watchmen and i forgot about one more complaint about the movie.  the needless violence.  it was basically more of that 2008-style-moviemaking point i was getting at, but man.  you don't have to show so much.  just sayin.

-i am a little sad about virgin megastore closing.  see, i have a strange relationship with that store.  i kinda consider it a corporate as hell media store...but it does have a fantastic selection for a corporate as hell store.  and they always had a different batch of cds and dvds for $10 (or sometimes $8 or even $5) each out of which i'd always find a handfull of stuff i wanted.  i was looking forward to, one day, blu rays being $10 there.  it was basically the relationship i had with tower records before they went out of business.  i always was kinda expecting virgin to go under, but i hoped it had a couple more years in it.  it's not nearly as bad as when my haven wax trax of boulder went out of business, and god forbid wax trax denver or twist & shout should go under (that would make me very very sad).  but still, i was hoping to continue to beef up my collection before they left.  and now i'll be getting tons of clearance items, as i always do when this happens (like how it just happened with circuit city!), but it just makes me a little sad.

-guys guys guys girls and guys and everybody.  very few, if any, readers will like this band but my god am i obsessed with mi ami.  go to their blog for a free mp3.  if you remember black eyes, that crazy dischord band with two drummers and a saxophone, mi ami includes former members of black eyes.  the last black eyes album is one of my favorites, even though very few of my friends appreciate its particular brand of free-jazz-core-deconstructionalism.  so this album basically takes up where that album (cough) left off.  that wasn't a cough, that's the title of the album.  it's shrill, it's obnoxious, it's loud, and it makes me feel alive to listen to it.  

-the strangest thing of all, though, is how off i was on my first impression of an older gentleman (probably in his late 50s) at wax trax when i was buying above album.  i saw him wandering around the new rock section, thinking, man, he should probably go to the used section because here most of the new rock is hardcore and punk and weird stuff.  just thinking stuff like that.  then he saw me with the mi ami album in my hand and he walked up to me, asked if that was the mi ami album, and said that it was, so far, his number one album of 2009.  seriously.  and he was describing it and why he loves it, and man, he is the coolest guy ever.  anyone that age that can appreciate such radically strange music of 2009 is ok in my book.  i hope i'm like that when i'm that age, if i'm that age.

-i am sad that the first season of spectacle, the elvis costello series on sundance channel, has ended.  i do hope a second season is made.  it was the best show for anyone that loves music.

-hey!@! i just found out the dana carvey show is coming out on dvd!!! in may, so not in time for my birthday!

-actually i'll just do a mini tuesday-tomorrow thing.  

music:

*cursive - mama, i'm swollen (note: vinyl doesn't come out until may 19.  however, if you pre-order the vinyl from the saddle creek webstore you get a download instantly! mine is downloading right now!) 

*bishop allen - grrr...

*propagandhi - supporting caste

*handsome furs - face control

movies:

*milk

*rachel getting married

*synechdoche, ny

*howard the duck

*let the right one in

*cadillac records

*battle in seattle

*another day in paradise (blu-ray)

and that's it for the first 10 pages of amazon.  seriously though, i am getting the cursive album legit RIGHT NOW.  i wonder when they started, because i just checked.  watch for a review soon, maybe.

watchmen

So everybody I've talked to seems to have hated this movie.  Which almost makes me want to defend it.  Which I don't really want to do.  I just don't think it was that bad.  But it was fundamentally flawed.  It was trying too hard to appease the graphic novel's fan base.  The filmmaking itself didn't seem original at all.  It seemed like a film made in 2008 using all of 2008's language (I'm talking about filmmaking language).  Including elements that made such failures as Southland Tales and The Fountain.  Learn from those mistakes, man!

The graphic novel, on the other hand was ahead of its time for 1985 and even though I just read it this month I found it very original.  Turning the whole idea of super heroes on its head.  Taking a common concept and looking at it from a different angle.  The movie took it head on.  Incredibly faithful adaptations that were almost too faithful.

However, the casting was brilliant and most of the actors were perfect.  Kudos to all of them.

But when a philosophical monolog/journal entry is good and captivating when you're READING it, it gets tedious and boring when you're listening to someone recite it, word for word.  Especially in an annoying voice.  No offense, Rorschach, but you sounded a lot better being read than being heard.

Listen, being a film fan first above other media of storytelling, it is my first instinct to defend film adaptations of stories.  Because much of the time, people's complaints are about how something wasn't faithful enough, how they changed this plot point, how they didn't include this scene, whatever.  Most of the time, I have to explain that film is a different medium, that when  a change is made to the story, it generally has a very good reason.  But in the case of Watchmen, I can't defend it using that line of thinking.  I think, for me, the perfect film adaptation of the story would piss off all the fans of the graphic novel.

So I guess that's it.  I have no need to see the movie again but I don't feel I wasted an evening or money.  It was fun enough to see the story played out, and I liked the acting.  Oh, but I hated the makeup work.  What the hell was that?  All the people made up to look old just looked...like they were made up to look old.  Anyway, I also liked the small but significant change that was made with the ending.  I just wish they had taken more liberties than that.