#don’t even get me started that majority of her album is dedicated to that racist rat she dated for a like 2 months

[blues-valentine]

Don’t get me wrong because I genuinely think Taylor Swift is a talented lyricist but she really has not artistic growth… She has written the same exact songs four hundred times but now she just puts a random words generator. Like, some of those lyrics sound AI generated. And she’s 34 years old but her albums still speak on the same things. There’s zero evolution. Some of those lyrics feel targeted to a 19 years old that is in her “indie aesthetically bad boys that get high and I think I can fix phase” which is basically the same as her old material but way more cringey for some reason. And I’m not trying to compare but Beyoncé at that age was making Lemonade. It’s hard to think this is the biggest pop star the world has to offer us. This is white mediocrity. The songs are fun to edit over fictional characters but when you put into perspective her whole work is so lackluster. So utterly boring and predictable. Maybe she needs to take a break (?). And somehow, people and white music critics will pretend this album is comparable to the likes of Cowboy Carter.

[grimelords]

My August playlist is finished and while it does unfortunately begin with Tool it also has two of Elvis’ gospel songs on it so please believe me when I say it takes a turn! Everything you could ever want over three hours of music from 70s christian hippie cult music to a funky remix of Also Sprach Zarathustra to Ante Up.

If you’re interested in getting these emailed to you instead of having them mysteriously appear and clog up your dash, I’ve started a tinyletter you can subscrine to at tinyletter.com/grimelords

but in the meantime,

listen here

Lateralus - Tool: Tool is on streaming now and they've got a new album out and so it's a very nice time to reinterrogate a band that meant a lot to teenaged me that i have almost completely exorcised from my life since. What's interesting firstly is how much better it is to consume their music digitally than it ever was in any physical format. They apparently resisted making it available for so long for nebulous reasons of artistic control and intention, wanting a say in how their music is listened to - they design these long and overwrought albums to be experienced as a whole. My contention is that as a whole album, start-to-finish, is one of the worst ways to listen to this band. Tool have maybe 12 great songs across four albums and every single album is around 70-80 minutes, pushing the limit of the CD. Which means for every great song there's at least two ambient interludes, Bill Hicks samples, 90s alt comedy bits (Die Eir Von Satan is just menacing music and a menacing voice reading out a weed cookie recipe in german, now that's what I call comedy) that really add nothing to the experience of the album on a casual listen. Being actually able to listen to these songs on their own, and playlist them and pull them apart from the mire is so refreshing and makes experiencing this extremely exhausting band actually pleasant for once. That's not to say ambient interludes and sketches and whatever aren't worth it, I absolutely love that shit and a lot of my favourite albums are absolutely chock full of that sort of thing - just like, don't make me do it every time. Their new album seems to reflect this at least a little bit, with the more overarching themes and arcs of the previous albums replaced by more singular and self-contained long songs interspersed with dedicated 2 minute interlude tracks. The runtime blows out to an hour and a half unrestrained by physical limits but it seems to contain more actual music and less funny than any other Tool album which is a welcome change. I'm still lukewarm on the album itself, it seems to just be a complete rehashing of the ideas on 10,000 Days (to the point of almost note-for-note repetition of some old riffs and themes) which is a bit disappointing considering how long they've apparently been working on it. I'll give it more time because Tool albums always unfold over multiple listens but for now they kind of just sound like the dad-rock version of a once extremely edgy 90s band - which I guess they are now so that makes sense. As for Lateralus, I think it's their best song. The perfect combination of Joe Rogan spirit science woo-woo sacred geometry fibonacci sequence 'open your mind' bullshit and good old fashioned riffs, it's the best of both halves of Tool and great starting point if you've never listened to this band and are interested in becoming insufferable.

Mars For The Rich - King Gizzard And The Lizard Wizard: This album is so good and it's finally converted me to being a full time King Gizz guy so look out for a lot more of that in the future. It's a thrash metal concept album about ecological collapse forcing the rich to flee to mars and the poor to flee to venus where they lose their minds and fly into the fire. I spent a little while the other day obsessing over the insane vocal leap in this absolutely incredible song when he jumps down an 11th on 'mars for the riiiiiiich' somehow effortlessly.

Pattern Walks - Cloud Nothings: The interplay between Cloud Nothings second and third albums is something I think about a lot. Attack On Memory is a visceral experience of depression and living in your own head where Here And Nowhere Else is about being able to finally move past it, and living with it. There's a good quote from the singer on the Genius page for this song where he says "It was almost a response to “Wasted Days” on the last record. It ends with “I thought I would be more than this” over and over and this one ends with “I thought” over a beautiful bit of music which is an easy way to explain the way I was thinking when I was writing this record. I wasn’t as depressed as I was when I was making the last album. Before, I felt like nobody liked the band and I was doing it for three years. I was not in a good place. Now, I had more time to think about why I felt that way. It’s a positive song."

M.E. - Metz: Metz put out a B-sides and rarities album a couple of weeks ago and then they put out this Gary Numan cover on it's own for some reason. It's very very good! I love just putting a generally harder edge on it without taking anything away from the spirit of the original. I also, somehow, didn't realise that Where's Your Head At by Basement Jaxx was a Gary Numan sample until I heard this cover so we're all learning every day.

The Ocean And The  Sun - The Sound Of Animals Fighting: Here's what's good: having the last third of your song just be a monotone voice reading from a CrimethInc anarchist zine over swirling guitar ambience. The drums are so good in this, Chris Tsagakis makes me want to muscle through the ska and listen to RX Bandits more, he’s just that good. The extremely crunchy part in the chorus especially, it switches through like three different distortions and sounds absolutely great. I’m a big fan of anyone that can make a very straightforward groove like the main one here really work just by absolutely leaning into it.

Uzbekistan - The Sound Of Animals Fighting: Uzbekistan is the most out-there and wild song on this album which was sort of mostly a way back into post-hardcore for TSOAF after Lover, The Lord Has Left Us.. which was perhaps a little too-out there for most. (seven minute closing track of a guy singing John Cage's Experimental Music essay over formless tabla and mandolin). The drums alone in this are worth it. The way they transition in and out of the super distorted electronic parts is so good. This song fortunately also has a section where someone recites poetry over electronic noise and a second voice whispers 'who holds your strings? wake up..." over the top near the end. I will love and defend dum-dum pretentious music until the day I die.

Gangsta - Tune-Yards: I love Tune-Yards and I'm incredibly interested in the way she interrogates whiteness. It's a complicated thing to get into in this playlist post but when she first turned up, a lot of people assumed she was african american just by the sound of her voice and music - it reaches and pulls from a lot of african music in a very postmodern sort of way and when people found out she was white, straight, cis and from New England it kind of felt like a betrayal for some people. On her 2018 album I Can Feel You Creep Into My Private Life she digs into it a lot in a way that becomes almost uncomfortable for what is ostensibly a pop album. An NPR article about it at the time said "Ever the student, the Smith-educated Garbus, who writes most of Tune-Yards' lyrics, designed an anti-racist curriculum for herself. She attended a six-month anti-racist workshop at the East Bay Meditation Center. She read the work of noted anti-racist educator Tim Wise and explored the activism of Standing Up for Racial Justice, a nationwide, progressive activism network dedicated to "moving white people to act as part of a multi-racial majority.". That's a lot. This song, Gangsta, from her 2011 album when all the hype was fresh feels like a pretty early look into the mindset she'd later fully fledge out of interrogating white identity and cultural appropriation while also participating in it. The lyrics are simple but they get to a simple point, "What's a boy to do if he'll never be a rasta?" is basically making the same point as Ras Trent by The Lonely Island except it's asking where else does Ras Trent fit? Can a white guy participate in anything like that in a way that's not cultural appropriation, and how can a culture like that participate in the larger world without being appropriated? It's 2013 tumblr discourse but it's still churning for a reason I suppose.

Ante Up (feat. Busta Rhymes, Teflon & Remi Martin) - M.O.P: An all time great Violence Song, in the same genre as Knuck If Ya Buck and X Gon Give It To Ya. Opening with "'this shit feel like a whole entire world collapsed" is such an insane way to open a song but the absolute whirlwind of threats that follows makes it feel warranted. "Fuck hip-hop, rip pockets, snatch jewels" is sooo good. I don't even care about this song I am just straight up robbing you. The absolute power in the rhythm of the overlapping getemGETEMgetem hitemHITEMhitem part is just so, so strong. It's like a VR experience of being fucking robbed.

Awake (feat. JPEGMAFIA) - Tkay Maidza: It seems like Tkay is finally nailing down her sound and she’s absolutely killing it. She’s been through a few different styles since she started out and now she’s really hit on something that’s very distinctly her with this and her other new song Flexin and I cannot wait for the album.

Big Head - Ms. Jade: Ms Jade had one album in 2002 and then basically disappeared which is a shame because she's got a very interesting approach. The star of the show is as usual, Timbaland. The man is a singular voice somehow making the tabla and a wikiwiki noise his signature sound. I love the drone of the raps interspersed with the vocal spikes and I love the chorus as the gospel vocals surge up from underneath. This whole song is just completely bizzare in its construction in a way that works perfectly and feels strangely.

Titanium 2 Step - Battles: Battles are finally back and I’m fucking bouncing off the walls. They’re a two piece now and it does not seem to have slowed them down at all which is very exciting. I can’t think of any band that has ever continued with only half of their original members and also moved forward radically every time. Everything about this song is great: the super strength drums, the hypercolour guitar and the vocals that are just screaming absolutely whatever you like whenever you like. It feels closest to Ice Cream, and Gloss Drop in general more than La Di Da Di but i’m so excited to see how the new album sounds - and how they adapt their old material live now that there’s only two of them.

Dancing Is The Best Revenge - !!!: I’ve never actively listened to !!! for no good reason, but plenty of times in my life I’ve heard a song playing and been like damn what the FUCK is THIS?! and it always turns out to be !!!. This is yet another example.

Skitzo Dancer (Justice Remix) - Scenario Rock: The first clap in this is one of the best sounds ever. Right after 'so you think you've seen and heard it all' everything drops out of the mix for this one very comedy clap and it makes me smile every time. The rhythm of the Disco!... Disco! Disco! part near the end is one of those things that's just always playing in the back of my mind, which as far as constant reminders go it's not the worst. I've also over the last week or so been a big fan of this 11 year old youtube video I found of some guy covering the bass on this song. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0DLAUaV3f8

16:56 - Danger: Danger had a new album this year that I don't think I gave enough attention to because I relistened and it's very good. He spends the majority of it refining his original sound but it's such a distinct and original niche that it works out great. The songs are so densely layered and frankly just sound so beautiful! Which is a strange thing to say about 80s inspired electro but it just does. The strings and timpani in this about halfway through are just a gift as well, I love it.

Also Sprach Zarathustra - Deodato: As part of my ‘thinking about Elvis’ I was looking up a live album of his called Aloha From Hawaii Via Sattelite which has a very good cover which doubles as an illustration of how my proposed international peacekeeping satellite will function, projecting an immense Elvis themed blanket of darkness over ‘troublemaker’ regions to immerse them in an eternal freezing night until they’ve settled down. Anyway his entrance music for this this concert in Hawaii is Also Sprach Zarathustra, which is a very very funny thing to do and I think gives an appropriate measure of his status at the time. When I told my girlfriend about this she directed me to this bonkers jazz funk version of it by Deodato which deservingly won a grammy in 1974 for Best Pop Instrumental Performance.

Hollywood Forever Cemetary Sings - Father John Misty: I’ve resisted listening to Father John Misty for a long time because he just seems like a real asshole. A big brain man genius that saw what Lana Del Rey was doing and thought “what if.. me?”. But I can’t deny this song, it’s absolutely magical and as far as songs about fucking in a cemetery go it’s definitely one of the most singable.

Remember / Medicine Man - Yma Sumac: In reading about the Hollywood Forever Cemetery and who was buried there, I learned about Yma Sumac. Yma Sumac was a Peruvian soprano with one of the most incredible voices I've ever heard who was an absolutely huge deal in the 50s when Americans were clamouring for the exotic, real or imagined. She made extremely good mambo music and claimed to be descended from the last Incan emperor. Her popularity faded after the 50s and then for an unknown reson in 1971, ten years since her last album, she made this rock album. It is insane. It's the best example of 'voice as an instrument' that I've ever heard. She is making every kind of sound possible with a human voice and her range seems completely limitless. She's just as comfortable in a piercingly high whistle register as she is in deep guttural growls. About 2 minutes into Remember she just straight up jumps four octaves in a row just to flex. She also sings in a way in the second verse of Medicine Man that I've never heard before that sounds like she's blowing out her cheeks and then singing with her mouth almost closed. It's absolutey bizzare and I love it so much.

This Thing - King Gizzard And The Lizard Wizard: Listening to the other album that King Gizzard put out this year is really making me appreciate how much of 180 Infest The Rats Nest was for them. This album is basically a Black Keys album of groovy fun songs about fishing for fishies with fantastic harmonica work and it makes it look even more like they just snapped when they did the next one.

The Warrior (feat. Patty Smyth) - Scandal: I've been very passively watching GLOW since the second half of season 2 and now I'm very passively watching season 3 and this song was the opening credits theme for the first episode. It fucking rocks I don't know why they don't just make it the theme song all the time. This sort of 80s hard-rock pop is very good when it's good and extremely bad when it's bad and I wonder if we'll ever see any sort of revival of it once 80s nostalgia nostalgia takes hold in 2030. Being a singer named Patty Smyth is very funny also. She's billed as a feature even though she was in the band because she left to try a solo career as soon as it was released, possibly even before. She is also John McEnroe's wife I just found out. What a life.

A Girl Called Johnny - The Waterboys: I found this song because I was googling to see if it's possibly to get a random album from spotify and instead foumd a guy on rateyourmusic who was generating random rym album pages and then listening to whatever came up if it was on spotify - which seems just as good. This was one of the albums he talked about and he seemed to like it so I listened and I did as well. Sometimes the best way to find new music is throw dice on the internet and see what comes up.

New Year's Eve - City Calm Down: The new City Calm Down is one hundred percent great and I have such admiration for them for making a complete left turn with their sound and sounding like a completely different band since their last album but being equally as great in both forms. It's very inspiring and it's also the second song of the month I've heard for the first time while walking around Richmond that's mentioned Richmond. Very spooky.

Cruel Summer - Taylor Swift: It's fucked up how good Lover is when ME! and You Need To Calm Down were so bad. It feels like they changed direction at the last minute and changed the tracklist dramatically because those two songs seem sort of wildly out of place, along with London Boy. It's so uneven it's basically two albums in one but when it's good it's extremely good. This song is fucking powerful. The way she straight up screams "he looks so pretty like a devil"? Amazing. What a crazy thing to shout. If you're interested I also resequenced Lover and took London Boy off it and it's a far better album in my opinion https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3LN1uAhp8BS8Ms4bgmHiVP

Kelly - Van She: I have no idea why but this is in the opening paragraph of Van She's wiki page: "Their label introduced them as a "new band from Sydney fresh on ideas, fresher than Flavor Flav, fresh like coriander, fresher than the Fresh Prince, fresher than fresh eggs."[2] Despite these claims, the band began with a sound very much rooted in the 1980s, heavy on synthesizer." which really makes me laugh. Van She had a very specific mid-2000s indietronica thing going that was really good as this song proves but they also did a bunch of remixes under the name Van She Tech that are very out there and completely different to the main band. Their remix of UFO by Sneaky Sound System I'm sure I've yelled about in these posts before, it's absolutely phenomenal. Anyway I guess what I'm saying is get you a band that can do both.

Shadow - Wild Nothing: Somehow I missed Wild Nothing back when they were a big thing and only listened to them this month. I listened to this whole album while I was doing housework and when it finished I though 'that was nice' and could not remember a single thing about it. That's the beauty of shoegaze! I had to listen to it about five more times for it to stick and now I'm getting more and more out of it every time, I love it.

Heaven's On Fire - The Radio Dept.: Years ago when I was having a major 'depressive episode' for about a fucking year I listened to this album Constantly and as a result for a very long time I couldn't listen to it without inviting megawatts of bad vibes back into my brain. Thankfully through hard work and time passing it appears I've fully healed my assosciations with this album which is fantastic news because it is delightful start to finish and worth getting obsessed with again.

Crystalised - The xx: It's nice to see news articles posted almost every day about which albums are turning ten years old. It makes me feel one million years old and viewing the world from a television in my hermit's cave. It feels hard to overstate just how much quiet influence the xx have had over the music landscape since 2009. Without The xx we don't have Royals and without Royals we don't have You Need To Calm Down, so. Something beautiful of theirs that I think is sad hasn't caught on in the intervening years is the idea of writing romantic duets when duets had been out of fashion for so long. They wrote a whole album of them and continue to! There's a beautiful contextual depth to it, in that it's two queer people singing not exactly to each other but with each other. In an interview they've called it 'singing past each other' which is a very nice way to put it.

Aspirin - Tropical Fuck Storm: I really appreciate the continual development of the guitars in Tropical Fuck Storm where they sound so pencil-necked and reedy in these angular little melodies and then sometimes explode into thick cacophanous howls, but what's especially good is in songs like this when they don't explode and instead just sort of sprout tendrils and crawl around each other. They're really drilling down on a very singular and very unsettling sound and I really love it. It is also a very interesting feeling to be walking around Richmond listening to this album for the first time and having him mention Richmond. Spooky even.

Pasta - Angie McMahon: "My bedroom is a disaster / my dog has got kidney failure" is an all-time great opening lyric for me. I love the way this song kicks up from the doldrums, like forcing yourself to do something just so you've done something today. Angie McMahon is so great and I'm getting more and more out of her album every time.

If I Had A Hammer - Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash: The way this song is performed here is so fucking cool. The guitar tone, June's voice and the general energy of it is just absolutely electric. It feels like Highway 61 Bob Dylan where it's still folk but it's got this massive power in it. The solo fucking rips in that very old fashioned way and when it finishes and that riff comes back in by itself it's just great.

Elvis Presley Blues - Gillian Welch: I was thinking about this song because I too was thinking about Elvis. I thought for a long time that the lyrics to this were ‘didn’t he die?’ and not ‘day that he died’ and I think I prefer mine more. Idly thinking about Elvis like “whatever happened to that guy? Must be old now. Wait, didn't he die? No way to know I suppose.”

Everything Is Free - Sylvan Esso: Rolling Stone had a very good article and interview about how this song about napster has had a resurgence and remained relevant through the streaming era which is a very good read. I love the original and really this version is very similar except for the one key difference where they really dig into the anger and frustration at the heart of it in the 'fucking sing it yourself' line.  https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/gillian-welch-everything-is-free-courtney-barnett-father-john-misty-725135/

It's Nice To Have A Friend - Taylor Swift: This is the strangest song on Lover and one of the best, I absolutely love it. It's a very old fashioned kind of Taylor Swift Love Story type song but it also has a a fucking trumpet reveille in the middle, so that really spices it up a bit. I also keep accidentally listening to this backwards - there's a few phrases like when she sings 'it's nice to have a friend' where the 'friend' lands on the offbeat but is accented like it should be ON the beat and because of the way the music is in this where it's just the steady pulse it's hard to tell whether the chime is supposed to be on the beat or on the offbeat. It feels like it sort of slides back and forth throughout the song depending on what everything else is doing around it. I don't know if that's intentional or not but it's a very interesting effect. This song is also, in my estimation, about a woman and is detailing a fantasy Taylor Swift is having where she can come out to the world with no fuss and enjoy a simple fairytale love story as a gay woman.

Psalm 42 / Chant For Pentecost - The Trees Community: I have a mental list of albums I google every few months to see if they've been added to streaming and by the grace of god one of them finally has been. Years ago I used to listen to this almost every night to fall asleep and I think it brainwashed me slightly in a delightful way, and now I finally have it back again! This is proper hippie music: a bunch of long haired new york christians who drove around the country in the early 70s in a school bus playing their elaborate and beautiful music for anyone who wanted to hear it. The multilayered, multi-movement construction of these songs is completely entrancing to me. It's not a hollow beauty, but one that brings new meaning to old words in the way they stretch and snap and waver throughout the song, moving past each other and through each other as it moves forward. I absolutey love it. Chant For Pentecost is a good illustration of the other side of them, a short song that starts sweet and turns almost maniacal. There's a wild-eyed feeling to the harmonies and the way this melody sits on a single tone for such long stretches before the frankly scary conclusion.

In My Father's House / Working On The Building - Elvis Presley: The backing vocals in these, and especially the bass vocals are so incredible. The way they work in the second verse of Working On The Building is so great, Elvis is the lead vocal but the middle harmony and somehow it just works perfectly. The harmonies is In My Father's House are amazing. The bass solo is mind blowing and the part about halfway through where Elvis swallows the mic and says "jesus died upon the cross [VRRMER] sorrow" is very funny. It's got it all.

The Greatest - Lana Del Rey: Norman Fucking Rockwell is an absolute masterpiece and this is the best song on it. Lana has always had a knack for this apocalyptic feeling but this is a whole other level.  https://www.stereogum.com/2056565/lana-del-rey-norman-fucking-rockwell-review/franchises/premature-evaluation/ The Stereogum writeup for this album was really great, and really nailed my opinion of her whole character thing as well, but he described this song as her version of that video that Ted Turner commissioned for CNN to play at the end of the world and it's really a perfect description. The part at the end where she says 'Kanye West is blonde and gone' is so chilling to me. Like Kanye losing the plot makes sense because he's only a few months ahead of the rest of us. He’s been a thought and culture leader for so long and it only makes sense that he’s spun off into space in these last days before it all wraps up.

listen here

[thatstanlife]

is stan culture toxic?

Often a fan can start to feel like they are entitled. Entitled to have some type of say in their favorite celebrity’s career and/or personal life. This aspect of stan culture can have a negative effect on a celebrity. 

Take Cardi B for an example. Frequently, the WAP rapper can be seen lashing out at fans on Twitter or Instagram. These occurrences happen due to fans asking questions about her personal life, giving their opinions about it, and/or wanting updates about her career. Back in October Cardi B deleted her Twitter account after her fans were inquiring why she would get back together with her husband, Offset, when he has cheated on her multiple times. Her fans, according to Cardi B, were also harassing Offset about his infidelity on social media. Before this, in September Cardi B had filed for divorce, so her fans were shocked to see that she was with The Migos member again. The deletion of her account was a response to her fans’ outrage. On Instagram Cardi B said, "A whole bunch of 15-year-olds telling me how to live my life like I'm mother f****ing Ariana Grande or something…Y'all want to call yourself fans, I don't give a f***. I'm tired of it." Further stating, "I do whatever the f*** I want to do. I love my fans and I'm grateful and thankful for what you do but some of y'all really be acting like I be sleeping with y'all." 

Although Cardi B could have handled confronting her fans differently, this situation shows how sometimes fans don’t understand when a celebrity’s private life starts. Since fans often spend a lot of time devoted to a celebrity and buying their merchandise, they feel like they should have some input on their lives. Not realizing how their input will affect their favorite celebrity. As I said earlier, they get a sense of entitlement.

Another aspect of how stan culture can be toxic is when an individual caters too much time to a celebrity. Dedicating every waking minute to them and not caring about themselves. This level of toxicity affects the fan more, rather than the celebrity.

Stan wars are a significant problem in stan culture. A stan war is when two or more fanbases are in an argument debating who’s celebrity is better.

I have personally experienced many stan wars as I was apart of the One Direction fandom, Directioners. One instance was when One Direction was releasing their fifth studio album, Made In The A.M., which happened to be on the same day as Justin Bieber’s release of his Purpose album. This obviously led to many arguments on Twitter over who’s album was going to reach number one on the Billboard 200 chart. This event created a lot of unnecessary hatred toward One Direction and Justin Bieber. All because their fanbases were at war. In the end, Justin Bieber got the number one, and I was truly devastated back in 2015. It’s funny and not at the same time looking back at how invested many other people, including myself, were with these celebrities’ careers and/or personal lives. After learning about celebrity worship syndrome, I was able to get some understanding as to why we were. (See post to about celebrity worship syndrome) 

Fans of celebrities can also be enablers for them. Since fans love their chosen celebrity so much, they will never call them out on their bad behavior and will constantly make excuses for them no matter the issue. 

This behavior can be seen when a celebrity’s past comments or actions come to light. An example of this would be when pop singer Camila Cabello’s racist posts that she made on Tumblr resurfaced on social media in 2019. Before the singer could even say if the posts were real or fake, her fans immediately started to defend her. Saying that the posts were fake or that if they were real, she was young. When Cabello made her apology post (see image below) majority of her fans instantly forgave her.  

It’s worth noting how defensive/protective fans can be over their beloved celebrity’s work as well.

Say you are doing your job, reviewing an album unbiasedly, and in your opinion, the album is a 5/10. That musician’s fans will unapologetically attack you online because of your unfavorable opinion of their precious celeb's work. This again goes along with celebrity worship syndrome, intense-personal.  

[amplesalty]

Christmas 2019: Day 5 - A Christmas Story Live! (2017)

On the fifth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me...

Five golden (chocolate) coins!

Look, I know it doesn’t fit but the closest I could get to rings would involve being massively racist so...

There’s just something about this year and musicals apparently. Maybe that’s a good thing though, I mean, I have been listening to the soundtrack of Anna and the Apocalypse pretty much on repeat since I watched it. Whilst we’re on the subject, let me just say I didn’t show nearly enough (or any really) appreciation for ‘Give Them a Show’ during the Anna/Mr Savage showdown. It’s arguably Anna’s best vocal performance in the movie, has a campiness in Savage’s performance to match the on screen performance that’s playing out during the song and evokes this feeling of a grand crescendo, not just to the movie but perhaps even to life itself. The lyrical material is perhaps a little lacking, bettered in tracks like Break Away and suffers from repetition but as a total package, I just love the song.

But even the zombies in Anna couldn’t match the horror that this special has...

Matthew Broderick. There’s just something really annoying about him, maybe it’s his voice or his face...I can’t quite put my finger on it but God I want to punch him.

This is an adaption of a musical which was an adaptation of the original movie so of course Broderick is in familiar territory here. He serves as the narrator who actually has a physical presence here, mooching around in the background of most scenes. He’ll even step in along the way to hold doors, take pots and pans, that kinda thing.

I wonder if the other characters noticed his footsteps in the soot left by the Old Man’s battle with the furnace? I’m not sure either if his stumbling over his lines amongst the sound of the Old Man’s cursing is intentional or a flub but if it’s the latter, it lends some charm to the occasion. There’s a moment later on as well when the Old Man is trying to sneak some turkey and Mr’s Parker has a bit of a spoonerism that causes her and her co-star to crack up.

The production in general took a little bit of getting used to early on, this one camera approach sweeping through the Parker house, almost had me a little a little motion sick? I don’t know what you’d call it, I think people get that sometimes from TV or games. It’s good otherwise though, all these costume and set changes. There’s one moment where they spin the camera around from this fantasy game show sequence and move back to the Parker house, only to keep the camera spinning round so we get a full shot of the room and the game show set is no longer there. They have to deal with losing the light on the exterior shots and the story is paced so a lot of the night scenes are taking place later on so it’s not really a factor, like going out to dinner or to the Christmas tree lot. It gets a little strange to see the street lights still on on what is meant to be Christmas morning but otherwise it wasn’t really noticeable.

The aforementioned game show scene is one of the Old Man’s flights of fancy in which he imagines himself winning the show thanks to his amazing general knowledge that is going to help him win the crossword puzzle contest and that $50,000 grand prize. Of course, we all know that’s not exactly what he gets. This whole Broadway production feel really lends itself to those fantasy sequences which were obviously so prevalent in the original movie. There’s others like the Parker house turning into some sort of nightmarish horror movie after Ralphie drops the F bomb (not fudge) or Miss Shields being the star of some sort of nightclub filled with pinstripe wearing gangster kids like Bugsy Malone or The Bluetones ‘After Hours’.

The best though is the Old Man imagining his receipt of the major award being a lavish, red carpeted awards ceremony with it’s own little leg lamp statuette prizes and a stage surrounded by inverted leg lamps forming the set.

He’s even joined by a cabaret troupe decked out in lampshades for dresses!

Some of these musical numbers though, boy do they drag on. Some will last a while and then break off for a dance sequence before going back to the song, which will then transition into another song like it’s a medley and then the original song is brought back again. Songs like ‘It All Comes Down to Christmas’ and ‘Red Ryder Carbine Action BB Gun’ are reprised numerous times throughout the whole show. It feels like it’s hard to tell sometimes where one song ends and another begins. It’s hard as well to appreciate some of the songs as there’s no time for things to just settle and appreciate because they’ll just move right into the next song straight away. Talk about songs dragging on, really the whole thing drags on, 2 hrs 11 minutes but if you were watching it live with commercials then it went a whole 3 hours.

Including a whole live broadcast of a song and dance number from The Greatest Showman which whoever captured this broadcast chose to keep in. Seems like an odd choice to advertise a much better musical during your own but whatever. I say that based on general critical reception, I haven’t seen Greatest Showman but I probably should at some point if I’m on a musical kick. A lot of that soundtrack did seep out into general culture and some of those I really enjoy like ‘This is Me’ and ‘Rewrite the Stars’. Oddly though, I think I prefer Anne-Marie’s vocals from that Reimagined album over Zendaya’s. Put Anne-Marie’s vocals with Zac Efron’s and that’s my ideal version.

There’s a few interesting choices throughout that the troll in me wants to paint as some sort of pro SJW agenda. Mr’s Parker has a quick line at the start whilst she’s trying to get the boys ready to go Higbee’s Christmas display. Ralphie says he’s too busy reading Boy’s World, to which Randy asks his mother if there’s a girl’s world. She replies that there isn’t and we have to put up with boy’s world.

Then there’s Flick suddenly being recast with a black actor and a whole song dedicated to the act of being Jewish, led by the previously unseen Mrs Schwartz. At least she’s not just a disconnected series of screams on the other end of a telephone this time, give it a few more remakes and we might even see Schwartz’s old man.

At least they redeem the waiters at the Chinese waiters by not making them into caricatures this time with their ‘fahrahrahrahrahrah’ singing. Ken Jeong’s character wears many hats in this town though, he sells cars, Christmas trees and he operates a restaurant. Lousy immigrants, coming over here and taking our jobs. Not just one job either, he took three of them! What does he think this is, the land of opportunity?

The original Christmas Story is something that I probably only saw for the first time at some point in the last 10 years or so and to be honest, I kinda got a little burnt out rewatching it year after year following that. I can’t remember when I last saw it and, at first, I thought this might add to that. It can feel a little rushed at times, possibly that’s because it’s live and there’s a bit nerves amongst the actors. For all the singing that Ralphie does, he’s unfortunately not that great at it. It just comes across as shouting and is a bit obnoxious. The kids as an ensemble though do provide some of the better songs in the movie like ‘When You’re a Wimp’ and ‘Somewhere Hovering Over Indiana’. Plus there’s something amusing about Flick trying to join in all the singing in ‘Sticky Situation’ whilst his tongue is stuck to the flag pole. The Old Man’s songs are good to but on the whole it’s a fairly mixed bag. Just the sheer number of them, they don’t really sink in so I’m not sure if I’ll be binging on this soundtrack in the coming days.

I was a little sceptical at first but I think this grew on me as it played out. If they’d trimmed it down a bit I would have liked it more but for the first hour or so I was experiencing time dilation not felt since that dreadful animated Mariah Carey special last Christmas. Apparently a lot of people didn’t like this because of the way it took this simple, family story and made it into this grand, theatrical show but I kinda like it because of it. If you’re going to re-do something then do something different with it, why not make it this big, over the top affair with dancing lampshades?!