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Archive for the ‘Film & TV’ Category

Tom Perrotta–The Abstinence Teacher (2007)

Posted in Election, Guns n' Roses, Marriage Trouble, Nick Hornby, Pearl Jam, Politicians, Religion, Set at School, Set in New Jersey!, Singles, The Believer, Tom Perotta, Tom Petty on January 23, 2008| Leave a Comment »

abstinence.jpgSOUNDTRACK: PEARL JAM-Live at the Gorge 05/06 (2007).

gorge.jpgPROLOGUE: When Guns N’ Roses’ Appetite for Destruction came out, it galvanized the three friends I had with the most disparate musical tastes. I knew an indie rock guy, a metalhead, and an industrial/goth guy, and all three of them loved Appetite for Destruction. It was the only record that they all agreed on. I thought the same would happen with Pearl Jam’s Ten. But, the goth guy didn’t think it was dark and sleazy enough (like GnR) and the indie guy found it too commercial. And, actually, I only talk to one of the three of them these days anyhow.

I’m usually pretty cynical about celebrities. And, I know well enough that rock stars who say “We love you” and “Hello, Cleveland” are, at best, pandering to us. And yet, there are some who seem sincere enough to be believed.

Eddie Vedder is one of those sincere fellows. Ever since Pearl Jam took on Ticketmaster, they seemed to be using their fame and influence for the good of the common man (or at least the common fan). Since then they have donated to various charities, thrown their support behind a (in hindsight, bad) politician (Ralph Nader, a guy whose idealism I supported, but whose reality was less than ideal), and tried their best to muckrake against the current administration. So, when he thanks the audience for letting him share music with them, when he says he’s genuinely glad to be there, and when he acts moved by the show, it all seems genuine. Again, maybe he’s a good actor (although I just watched Singles, for the first time in many years, and Eddie and some of the other PJ guys are in it, and he’s not exactly a scene stealer) but I believe him.

This is all a long set-up to review this recent live collection. It’s a collection of three shows: one set is 3 CDs the other two are 2 CDs each. The first show is from 2005 and the second and third are their tour-ending shows of 2006. All of these shows were performed at The Gorge amphitheater outside of Seattle. From the talking that Eddie does, the Gorge sounds like a great place to see a show, and it sounds like there is camping on the grounds. I only wish they included photos of the show, as I’d love to see it.

The 2005 show starts out with a disc of acoustic songs. The band appears to be in unplugged mode, chilling out before letting ‘er rip in the second half of the show. As with most of their shows, the set list is long and varied. Their shows often clock in at over two hours, with a break at about the midway point. There is a decent selection of tracks from throughout their career, as well as a couple of covers. The notable aspect of this show is that Tom Petty is performing on the following night, and Vedder vows to keep him awake all night. He gets the crowd to chant “Hello Tom, Come down, Tom,” which, sadly Tom never does. But Vedder does a rendition of “I Won’t Back Down.”

The two 2006 shows are back to back two nights in a row. It sounds as if people camped out overnight. And there is some good-natured banter between Vedder and the crowd. What is especially interesting to me about this two-night event is that they play 61 songs over the course of the two nights and the only ones they repeat are “Alive,” “Corduroy,” “Even Flow,” “Given to Fly,” “Life Wasted,” “Severed Hand,” “World Wide Suicide,” and “Yellow Ledbetter.” It’s quite apparent that the band knew there would be lots of folks for both shows and they designed a nicely diverse set list for both nights.

There’s also an interesting shout out to the previous year’s show. On the last night he mentions the Tom Petty taunting from last year, and a large portion of the audience begins the “Hello, Tom. Come down, Tom.” chant.

If you’ve been a big fan of Pearl Jam (as I am) you probably have this. But if you’ve been a mild fan of Pearl Jam over the years, this is a great set to get. You’ll get all of the hits, you’ll get a bunch of songs you’re unfamiliar with, and you’ll get a band playing at its peak. The live renditions of their songs are typically fast and furious. There’s also a lot of room for improvisation. And, it’s a chance to see the lighter side of such a “serious” band. A lot of people used to like Pearl Jam but feel their works since Ten have gone steadily downhill. I disagree, but I think that’s because listening to the live versions of the songs makes you appreciate them even more. So, check it out, it’s well worth it.

[READ: January 8, 2008] The Abstinence Teacher.

My first book finished in 2008! And, I can only hope that this is a good portent for future books this year. Wow, this book was great!

(more…)

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The 12 Discs of Christmas

Posted in Barenaked Ladies, Death Cab For Cutie, It's a Wonderful Life, Nada Surf, The Alarm on January 9, 2008| Leave a Comment »

This Christmas, I decided to list my 12 favorite Christmas albums. I have a rocky past with Christmas songs. Like every good Christian kid, I grew up singing Christmas songs. Then, as I grew a distaste for organized everything, for the commercialization of Christmas, and frankly, the astonishing disregard of Thanksgiving, I really started to rebel against them.

Plus, as everyone knows, you start to hear Christmas songs in November for crying out loud. I also worked a job where the only music we were allowed to play during the holiday was Christmas music. It was actually during this fallow period that I found out that there were some great alternatives to the standards.

Since that time, I have gotten married and I have two kids, and I really enjoy the feelings of hearth and home, and I want to share the joy of Christmas (and hopefully avoid the icky parts).

More back story: I grew up listening to big band music. My parents were just old enough that they didn’t really like rock n roll, so I got to listen to swing and big band and horns, horns, horns. I never really rebelled against that because it was pretty innocuous, but I did really start to miss it as I got older. And, what I found is that the Christmas songs that I like are the traditional ones sung by big band leaders. It was the “rock n roll” Christmas songs and some of the novelty songs that I really didn’t like. So, I try to avoid those as best I can, and I stick with the classics and some of these fun alternatives. (more…)

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Mark Z. Danielewski–Only Revolutions (2006)

Posted in Barenaked Ladies, Batman, Big Books, Brian Wilson, Canadian Music, Christmas Album, Funky Web Sites, Funny (strange), Jacques Derrida, James Joyce, Laurence Sterne, Mark Z. Danielewski, Meta, South Park, Sufjan Stevens, Synesthesia, Technology, Unreliable narrator on December 26, 2007| 1 Comment »

onlyrev.jpgSOUNDTRACK: BARENAKED LADIES-Everything to Everyone (2003) & Barenaked for the Holidays (2004).

bnl-every.jpgEverything to Everyone. I was pretty down on this album when it first came out. I remember being rather disappointed in it because BNL had, gasp, matured somewhat, and were making more “serious,” less “wacky” songs. To me, the whole CD was somewhat flat. But, after a recent listen (possibly the first time in 4 years) and expecting the worst, I was pleasantly surprised by the record.

“Celebrity” is a decent start off, although it breaks from their standard set up of rollicking lead off tracks. “Maybe Katie” is a somewhat disappointing track 2 (a track that seems to produce great results for them)…. It seems to be so close to a single, yet it just misses. There is a somewhat zany song “Shopping,” which sets off a run of three or four good songs. It also ends on a pretty high note with, “Have You Seen My Love?” being a slow, but, sensibly, short song, so it doesn’t just drag on.

The noteworthy thing about this album, is what its title alludes to: everything for everyone. It seems like this album has fifteen different styles at work. There’s an Irish jig type song, a crazy rocking song, a soft ballad, a salsa beat. Basically everything is on here. It’s either crassly commercial or (more likely) a funny jab at their complex styles.

The overall sound of the album is definitely more mellow and “mature” than their earlier ones. There’s not a lot of outright silliness involved, and the tunes themselves have certainly calmed down a lot. If you’re not expecting the zany BNL of old, then the album works pretty well. Just don’t have high hopes for “If I Had $1,000,000.”

bnl-holiday.jpgBarenaked for the Holidays. This has become one of my favorite Christmas/holiday records (and it’s a good time of year to be writing about it.) It ranks up there with Brave Combo’s It’s Christmas, Man, brave.jpg South Park’s Mr. Hankey’s Christmas Classics, hankey.jpg Sufjan Steven’s great boxed set Presents Songs for Christmas, sufjan.jpg and Brian Wilson’s What I Really Want for Christmas, wilson.jpg which has also quickly jumped to the top of my Xmas list.

BNL’s is definitely silly, but it is also somewhat reverential for the time of year. They mix classics with originals (and if Jews don’t adopt “Hanukkah Blessings” as an official Hanukkah song, then they have no taste!).

The recording is a mix of old and new tracks (“God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” was recorded almost ten years (more…)

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Douglas Coupland–The Gum Thief (2007)

Posted in "Weird Al" Yankovic, Canadian Content, Consumerism, Corporate skewering, Digression, Douglas Coupland, Edward Albee, Epistolary Novel, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Funky Web Sites, Funny (ha ha), Funny (strange), Marriage Trouble, Meta, Tom Petty, Unreliable narrator on December 12, 2007| Leave a Comment »

gum.jpgSOUNDTRACK: TOM PETTY AND THE HEARTBREAKERS-Anthology: Through the Years (2000).

petty.jpgTo me, Tom Petty suffers more than anyone else from egregious overexposure. I’m not sure if it’s just me who feels that way, but in my experience, “Free Fallin'” was utterly inescapable for what seemed like an eternity. And, geez, his mug was all over MTV when that album came out. It got so bad that I simply decided I was done with him.

Well, as it turns out, Sarah is a fan, so I decided to get her a greatest hits for her birthday. We’ve listened to it a few times, and it made me remember that, hey! I used to like this guy. In fact, disc one of this set is pretty darn great. There are about three songs that I didn’t recognize immediately, but otherwise I was singing along to all of his old classics.

There’s a great memory from Fast Times at Ridgemont High with “American Girl,” And there’s some songs that I forgot about like “Breakdown” and “Refugee.” However, I feel that the Tom Petty/Stevie Nicks duet “Stop Dragging My Heart Around” was the original overexposure video on MTV. I can’t decide how many times I saw that video when I was a young’un watching MTV in its nascent years. It was so ubiquitous that even Weird Al made a parody of it on his first album called “Stop Dragging My Car Around” (which was not terribly inspired, really).

Through much of the post-Dylan years people were described as the “next Dylan.” What really struck me, re-listening to Tom Petty is that, he seems to have misunderstood that they were speaking about his lyrics, not his voice. It’s bizarre how Dylanesque he sounds, especially on “Breakdown,” If not Dylanesque necessarily, he is at least very idiosyncratic in a way that Dylan made commercial.

Even the second disc (the overexposed era) holds up pretty well, and now, seventeen (!) years later, I can sing along to “Free Fallin'” without cringing. See that, Tom, all I needed was a decade away and now we can hang out again.

[READ: December 10, 2007] The Gum Thief.

An unusual title, The Gum Thief.

I’ve enjoyed Coupland’s work for many years now (see the JPod review), and I’m always excited to see a new book come out. I opted for the autographed box set from amazon.ca which actually turned out be pretty cheap at the time I ordered it. The box set contains Roger Thorpe’s book Glove Pond, (which will make sense in a few paragraphs) which I will be reviewing shortly.

[DIGRESSION]: Incidentally, amazon.ca is THE source for imported items from England. Most of the time, the imports on amazon.com are really expensive. But the retail price on amazon.ca for British imports is usually quite good. (This was even more true before the looney reached parity with our dollar…the exchange rate for awhile was practically half off list price!)

Back to The Gum Thief.

This is what’s called an epistolary novel, meaning it is written as a series of letters. This book varies the premise somewhat by having the letters written to each other in a diary. But it is not a series of diary entries; rather, Bethany discovers Roger’s diary and begins writing responses to his entries in it. It’s a very interesting conceit, and it plays very nicely with these characters, both of whom are completely antisocial. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Roger is an alcoholic, divorced father whose life has been generally going downhill; he more or less bottomed out with a job at a Vancouver Staples. Bethany is a post-high school goth whose life is stalling while she works at the same Vancouver Staples. Roger begins the book with some diary exercises in which he tries to get into the mind of Bethany. Bethany discovers the entries and is appalled and flattered at the same time. She writes back to Roger, telling him what he got right, but also emphatically insisting that they never acknowledge each other outside of the diary.

What Roger’s diary also contains is the beginning of his novel: Glove Pond. The box set I bought contains Glove Pond as a separate item as well, and I’ll review that next. But for now, I can say that Glove Pond is basically Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, in tone, mannerism and setup. [I rather hope this will get people to read the great Albee play]. It is about an older, long-married couple (he is a writer) who inadvertently invite a young, newly-married couple (he is a writer) over for dinner. The angry resentment between youth and age, success and failure and so many other things brews up into a heady mixture of Scotch and insults.

What makes the story even more meta- is that Kyle, the young writer in Glove Pond is writing his new novel, about an old, drunken man who works in an office superstore.

Surrounding the chapters of Glove Pond are the actual letters of the story. Primarily they are between Roger and Bethany, but they also include some correspondence with Bethany’s mom (whom Roger knew in high school), and, in a break from the “in Roger’s diary” aspect, some letters between other co-workers (who also discover Glove Pond, and do not share Bethany’s (genuine) enthusiasm for it).

Aside from all of the intricacies of the make-up of the story, what about the narrative? Well, the story is basically about a young girl–whose life had been full of close people dying–connecting to a frankly pathetic father-figure (but her own father is also out of the picture, so it’s understandable). It is at times very sad, especially as you watch these characters shut themselves down internally and externally.

Ultimately, Bethany tries to make a bold move outside of Staples, a risk that she didn’t think she was capable of. And Roger sets his sights on accomplishing at least one thing in his life, namely, finishing a book. You watch these characters slowly come alive until the last chapter, in which the meta- world comes crashing in on Roger and makes you rethink a lot of what you have just read.

As with most Coupland, the pop culture references, and corporate skewering, are fast and furious. And, as with most Coupland, just when you think the novel is going to be light and funny, weighty themes are opened and genuine sadness falls over these seemingly frozen people. What I think is particularly cool about this book is the way he is able to take a somewhat detached literary style like the epistolary novel and imbue some real passion into these shells of human beings. Obviously, diary entries tend to reveal impassioned thoughts by the writer, but in a series of letters written to two people who are not wooing each other, one wouldn’t expect high emotion. And yet it comes out, and it comes across very naturally.

And, as it turns out, stealing gum does play a pretty big role in both the novel and the novel within the novel, so the title does make sense.

Oh, and there’s also some cool videos available from Random House Canada. They are promotional shorts for The Gum Thief, and they’re available at Coupland’s My Space page as well as on You Tube, which is funny given the You Tube references in the book.

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Michael J. Nelson–Goth-Icky: A Macabre Menagerie of Morbid Monstrosities (2005) and Love Sick: A Smoldering Look at Love, Lust, and Marriage (2005)

Posted in Michael J. Nelson, MST3K, The Monkees on December 6, 2007| Leave a Comment »

goth.jpglove.jpgSOUNDTRACK: THE MONKEES: Best of the Monkees (2003).

monkees.jpgOne of my college roommates (a guy from Ireland) absolutely LOVED the Monkees (and he was from Ireland, which may not be that weird, but were the Monkees big in Ireland?). Anyhow, he not only had the boxed set that Rhino put out several years ago, but he actually owned all of their records. All of them! I didn’t even know they put out enough for a boxed set. (Evidently, they put out something like six, and then someone left the band and they kept going…what a sordid career!).

My wife, it turns out, also loved the Monkees, but that was when she was a kid, and she and her best friend watched them daily and knew all the songs. I recall watching the show myself, but when we Netflixed the first season I realized I didn’t remember anything about it. Oh, and that you really have to be in junior high to watch it, but I digress.

As a surprise I bought her the Best of the Monkees CD. She was thrilled to get it, and I’ve just been listening to it and realized that it’s a really great collection of songs. There is, of course, the argument that they didn’t play their own instruments, and this is true, somewhat. Although they did eventually start playing their own on later albums. But all that is just splitting hairs.

The album is certainly great. Wonderfully poppy songs, that are clearly from the late 60s/early 70s. Okay, so they didn’t write most of them, but who cares. Back then (as now of course) poppy bands didn’t write songs, they just sang them. I’m not sure if people know the Monkees anymore. I don’t know if the huge hits (“Last Train to Clarksville,” “I’m a Believer,” “Pleasant Valley Sunday”) are still familiar to people but man, they brought back fun memories. And, really, they hold up quite well as great little pop gems.

In addition to the poppy songs, there’s a few pretty ballads, a few all-out rockers, and, as befitting the trippiness of the show, some psychedelic freak-outs (check out “Randy Scouse Git” and “Porpoise Song”). It is nothing if not enjoyable. So put aside all the negative associations you may have with them, and cheer up, sleepy Jean. Oh what can it mean?

Oh yeah, and the CD comes with a 5 track bonus karaoke version of their biggest hits. Whoo hoo!

[READ: December 4, 2007] Goth-Icky & Love Sick

I discovered these books (and his other two in this series) when I was mooching around looking for information about Mystery Science Theater 3000. I learned that Mike Nelson had not only written some books, but that he got involved in this fun series of graphic heavy, silly confections. I bought one in the series, Happy Kitty Bunny Ponybecause how could you pass up a title like that? And, when Sarah looked at it, she discovered that the pictures in it would be make awesome decoupage. And, if you go to her Sew Buttons site, you’ll see some fabulous creations with some groovy pictures and instructions for how she did them.

(more…)

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Michael J. Nelson–Mike Nelson’s Movie Megacheese (2000)

Posted in Boston, MA, Essays, Film & TV, Michael J. Nelson, MST3K, Spoon, Wilco on November 10, 2007| Leave a Comment »

megacheese.jpgSOUNDTRACK: SPOON-Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga (2007).

gagaga.jpgThis record was heralded as the greatest thing ever when it was released. Every review I read tried to outdo the other reviews with praise for this record. I can be swayed by reviews, especially if everyone is in consensus of a CD. And, I had put Spoon on my short list of bands to check out, so why not check out the best record of the year?

Well, as it turned out I was really unimpressed with it when I put it on. The first song, “Don’t Make Me a Target” was really solid, but the rest sort of drifted away into a mist of meaninglessness. In fact, the repetitive riff of “The Ghost of You Lingers” made it impossible for me to think of anything but Bon Jovi’s “Runaway,” and I will forever curse them for that.

Usually, if I’m not that impressed with an album, I don’t listen to it that much. I try to give everything 3 or 4 listens to make sure, but if nothing clicks, then that’s it. For reasons that I won’t go into, Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga got multiple airings in my house, and then, sometime around the 12th listen, it really clicked, and I got it. What’s especially weird about this is that it’s not even a very complicated album (usually some of those prog rock records take lots of listens to really get it), in fact many of the songs are downright minimalist. So what was the hold up? I have no idea.

I’m not willing to say it’s the best record of the year, or even that it’s my favorite recent record. But now that I found the key to it, I really do enjoy it, and I’m listening to it with new ears. It reminds me of a more commercial Wilco (the harder, rockier Wilco of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot). So if you’ve been put off by the hype of this record and aren’t impressed, let it sink in, maybe you’ll find it enjoyable too.

[READ: November 8, 2007] Movie Megacheese.

The most exciting thing that happened to me when I went to Boston College was that my cable TV selection improved vastly. I was exposed to the Comedy Channel or Ha! or whatever it was called before it turned into Comedy Central. And the best thing I had ever seen was Mystery Science Theater 3000. It had everything–cheesy movies, snarky comments, puppets, a silhouette on the bottom of the screen! It was amazing. My only regret was that I had missed so many seasons of it. Well, of course, silly me, Comedy Central is king of the reruns and soon, I too was circulating the tapes with the rest of them. (more…)

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Benjamin Percy–“So Far from Anything” (Esquire, Oct 2007)

Posted in Adventure, Benjamin Percy, Esquire, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Short Story, The Cars on October 11, 2007| Leave a Comment »

esquire.jpgSOUNDTRACK: THE CARS-Greatest Hits (2002).

cars.jpgFor the longest time I didn’t like The Cars. I got really sick of them, especially around the time of “You Might Think.” I guess I was watching a lot of MTV, because I just couldn’t seem to get Rik Ocasek’s face out of my head (your sympathy is appreciated). Anyhow, Sarah had said something about getting their Greatest Hits; so we did. And I’m glad.

The first ten or so songs on this thing are really great, it’s practically their entire first album, and it’s a bounty of new-wave delights from just before they got really commercial. Of course, the commercial songs are also here, but after all of these years, the commercial songs sound pretty good too. For me the best thing about the record is that it conatins “Moving in Stereo” the song that will make any red blooded young lad of around my age immediately envision Phoebe Cates climbing out of a swimming pool and…. Doesn’t anybody fucking knock anymore?

[READ: October 10, 2007] “So Far from Anything.”

This story has a gimmick. Although it is a publishing gimmick and not a story gimmick. The gimmick according to Esquire is this: The story is such a page turner, that we are going to print it along the bottom of every page of the magazine (about fifteen words per page). (more…)

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McSweeney’s #24 [ “Trouble” and “Come Back, Donald Barthelme”] (2007)

Posted in Batman, Brazil, Corporate skewering, Donald Barthelme, Essays, Flann O'Brien, Funny (strange), Guided By Voices, Jacques Derrida, Marriage Trouble, McSweeney's, Samuel Beckett, Short Story, The Kids in the Hall on October 3, 2007| 1 Comment »

mcs24.jpgSOUNDTRACK: GUIDED BY VOICES-Universal Truths and Cycles (2002).

gbv.jpg

I like Guided By Voices more in theory than in actuality. In theory, Robert Pollard is a songwriting maniac who has released hundreds of songs that are all snappy, catchy and brilliant. In practice, Robert Pollard is a songwriting maniac who has released hundreds of songs that he puts out whether they are finished or not. A vast quantity of GBV output is about a minute long. And for the most part the songs feel like fragments, rather than real songs. Nevertheless, I find that just about everything he writes is catchy and quite good, it’s just that so much of it is so forgettable.

Despite that, they have several songs that are fantastic. I could easily make a greatest hits record of GBV songs that I think are fabulous, and it would probably have 20 songs on it. The only problem is Pollard has released probably a thousand songs, so that’s not such great average.

I received this copy of Universal Truths and Cycles as a promotional copy many years ago. I had really enjoyed Do the Collapse, and so I grabbed this CD, and much like my assessment above, I find that there’s nothing I really dislike about the album although at 4:59, almost three times longer than a typical GBV song, “Storm Vibrations” tends to drag, but overall there’s not that much that’s memorable. Of course, “Everywhere with Helicopters” is fantastic and “Christian Animation Torch Characters” is also pretty wonderful. I could pick maybe 3 of the 19 songs here to go on my hits collection, but overall, the album is typical GBV, a little weird, but very catchy.

[READ: October 2, 2007] McSweeney’s #24.

I just flew through this latest issue of McSweeney’s. It was a real treat to read. The packaging was another one of their fun covers. It is designed in two parts, with a gatefold type of sleeve that reveals a full nighttime scene if you open it all the way. These guys have so much fun with their design, I’m surprised they’re not noted more for that.

Anyhow, the contents: the one side is a selection of six short stories, they all seem to feature guns, and they’re not afraid to use them. The other side is a symposium of reasonably famous authors writing tributes about Donald Barthelme, and two short stories by Barthelme himself. It also comes with an excerpt from Millard Kaufman’s Bowl of Cherries, which I have not yet read, but if it’s good I will get the book and review it later. (more…)

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Buzz Cola & Reese’s Peanut Butter and Banana Creme Limited Edition Elvis Cups

Posted in Food, Reese's, The Simpsons on September 19, 2007| Leave a Comment »

buzz1.jpgBuzz Cola was a tie-in to the Simpsons Movie. I love the Simpsons, and although I gave up on trying to keep up with their merchandising machine (geez, how could ANYONE keep up with that?) I figured I could take a stab at a fun, cheap item). But, when I saw these at the 7-11, I bought one to taste and one to save. Well, it tastes awful. It’s a very cheap tasting cola, worse than even supermarket brands. But it’s a nice souvenir!

reeses-peanut-butter-banana-creme.jpg

Don’t worry, I’m not turning into Junk Food Blog!

But I felt compelled to document this experiment since I can no longer recall my thoughts of New Coke, Pepsi Clear, or OK Soda. (more…)

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Jancee Dunn–But Enough About Me: How a Small-Town Girl Went from Shag Carpet to the Red Carpet OR But Enough About Me: A Jersey Girl’s Unlikely Adventures Among the Absurdly Famous [prepub] (2006)

Posted in Essays, Jancee Dunn, Memoirs, Rolling Stone, Rush, Set in New Jersey!, Team America: World Police on September 10, 2007| Leave a Comment »

but-enough.jpgSOUNDTRACK: RUSH-Snakes and Arrows (2007).

snakes.jpg

I’ve been a Rush fan since Moving Pictures, back in 1980. Some of my 8th grade classmates had made a parody of the song “Tom Sawyer” called “Father Sawyer,” (hilarious Catholic school humor!) and I thought it was funny, and that’s how I learned about Rush. In high school, my best friend was a big Rush fan as well; and then in college, my best friend and eventual roommate was a huge Rush fan too. After college, there was no one for me to hang out and talk Rush with (aside from these old friends, of course, but I wasn’t seeing them every day anymore), so I still bought the albums, but I wasn’t quite the maniac I was back in the day.

Rush went on hiatus for a few years. They came back with the fabulous, rocking Vapor Trails, and followed that up with an excellent concert tour. They seemed revitalized. And their latest, Snakes and Arrows, continues in this strong, rocking format. (more…)

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