BOREDOMS Super Roots 9

My review of the much anticipated new Boredoms release will probably not settle with a lot of people, but I don't really give a shit. In short it's better than "Seadrum/House of Sun", but not much. There just isn't a whole lot to chew on here, it just seems like a drum practice with EYE fucking around over top of it, it doesn't really go in many interesting directions.

There's a lot of people who fucking worship this band, no matter what they do, and I don't understand why. The Boredoms used to FUCKING ROCK, but they seem to have lost their burn, with their peak being Super AE. I remember seeing them in June 1999 in Vancouver and that show was unforgettable. Let's hope some of the old shows will get a proper release someday

First of all. Great artwork. Packaging is nothing special though, like liquid filled puffy cases or deluxe screen printed jewel cases with cool inserts. The booklet is just loose inside an oversize jewel box, so the booklet slides around, which is kind of gay. Don't quite understand the reason for this. it just looks like a big mistake.

Anyway, this was recorded on Christmas Eve live at Roppongi in Tokyo. Opens up with Christmas bells, then goes into a keyboard drone that sounds like a chorus from a Christmas carol with more layered Christmas bells and cymbals washing over it. This builds for about 4 or 5 minutes with the kick drums coming in gradually faster and faster. Around the 6 minute mark, the drums really start to kick in, building to a nice tempo, very reminiscent of "Shine In Shine On" from Super AE. The drumming is awesome, but I don't know, the Boredoms just ain't the Boredoms without the presence of Seichi Yamamoto's guitar, I guess that's why they changed their name to Voordoms. Duh!!! Anyway, the keyboards are pretty cheesy and they actually get on my nerves after awhile.

After around the 13-minute mark, the tempo changes and EYE starts screaming a bunch of shit with a lot of echo on it. Things start getting a little more interesting from here on in, with EYE doing some DJ-ing over the drums. Note, I said a "little" more interesting, not that much. It slows down, it speeds up, pretty much keeping the same keyboard progression throughout. The last 10 minutes builds to a somewhat unsatisfying climax, kind of like when you're jerking off sometimes, and you don't shoot it very far, it just sort of dribbles out or just hits your belly button.

Final verdict: The new Boredoms is pretty BORING overall. Don't waste your money, go grab Super Roots 3, 5 or Super AE, or anything for that matter, pre-Super AE. Or better yet, if you want to hear some real heavy psych rock, grab Mainliner's "Mellow Out" or some early Fushitsusha, the 4 albums on the Tokuma label being my favorites.

My introduction to the strange and wonderful world of Dusan Makavejev

I'd never heard of Yugoslavian director Dusan Makavejev until I heard that Criterion is going to be releasing 2 of his films, "WC: Mysteries of the Organism" from 1971 and "Sweet Movie" from 1975. After reading the descriptions and reading a few mixed reviews, I have to say I was pretty curious so I thought I'd see if I could find any torrents of his stuff and luckily I found 3 of his films, the 2 mentioned above and another titled "Man is Not A Bird" from 1966.

I'll start with MAN IS NOT A BIRD which is Makavejev's 1st feature film. The title refers to a hypnotist who makes people act like birds. The plot centers around an engineer named Jan (Janez Vrhovec), who travels to eastern Serbia to help out in a copper factory on some expert job. He falls in love with a young hairdresser in whose house he is boarding. As you will find out, the consequences of that relationship become very dire, especially after her parents catch them after being away from the house for a week. To make things even more complicated, Raika hooks up with a scummy truck driver dude while Jan is accepting an award for his stellar work ethic, angering Jan, her parents, and just about everyone. I've read that a lot of people find this "slow-going" or "boring" One of the reasons I love it is because of the dark and gloomy atmosphere it creates of the desolate Yugoslav world which is very, especially significant since the destruction of that world. In some ways this reminds me of Tarkovsky's "The steamroller and the violin" in atmosphere, I don't know why.

Next up is SWEET MOVIE, definitely my favorite film of the 3. It's kind of an inter-cut story of two women: a nearly-mute beauty queen who descends into withdrawal and madness, and another who captains a ship laden with candy and sugar, luring men and boys aboard for sex, death, and revolutionary talk. The beauty queen passes from a wealthy (and crazy) husband whose honeymoon delight is to urinate on her, to a muscular keeper who punches her, stows her in a suitcase, and ships her to Paris, to a lip-synching rock idol with whom she has a love spasm, to an Austrian commune complete with a banquet of vomit, urine, feces, chopped dildos, and wet nurses. Some of the antics are just retarded and you can't help but laugh at the ridiculousness of it all. By the end of the movie, the girl who almost has a nervous breakdown does a fucked-up ad for a chocolate company (????) which is one of the sexiest scenes in the film, she's basically swimming in the shit. If you like "GREASER'S PALACE" by Robert Downey Senior, you should watch this. I gotta comment on the music. Some of it's quite strange, some indeed interesting, but all of it very pleasant. Without it the film wouldn't work half as well. I'd like to seek out the soundtrack for this actually.

My least favorite of the 3 films is MYSTERIES OF THE ORGANISM. Like SWEET MOVIE, this is indeed also a very dense film that cuts up footage of a primary plot of two young Yugoslavian girls, one a politico and the other a sexpot, and an affair with a visiting Russian skater. Mixing metaphors of Russia's relationship with Yugoslavia, intercut with footage and interviews with Wilhelm Reich and Al Goldstein of Screw magazine. The film applies Reich's theories of Orgone energy and analogies of Stalinism as a form of Freudian sexual repression. This was banned in Yugoslavia shortly after it was made. I don't know much about Dr. Wilhelm Reich or the subject of "Orgone Energy" or am I very interested in the theories to begin with and maybe that's why I didn't enjoy this film as much as the others. Reich was regarded by many as a "mad scientist" who died in prison for what he believed in. His ideas are too heavy on the psycho-sociological aspects and way too scientific at times so they are pretty hard for a dumb NB white boy like me to grasp. Regardless, this is still a very visually interesting film and I recommend giving it a view.

I look forward to seeing more...

Fuck You, You Fuckin Fuck!

Many of you probably already know that Michael Jackson lost his fucking mind many years ago. I don't have to tell you about all the strange things he's pulled in the last few years. Does he fuck kids? I don't know, I wouldn't doubt it though. Actually I don't really care. What you may NOT know however is that quite a number of his Japanese fans paid 400,000 yen just to go to an lavish event in Tokyo last week. The 400 snicker dicks who showed up were mainly diehard fans, and a bunch of orphans and gimps who were invited free. All this included was a buffet dinner, a show featuring several Japanese Michael Jackson impersonators and a chance to meet, greet and take photos with the ugly fuck. He didn't even perform.

OK, you tell me. Is that not fucking crazy? The people that paid that much money for that should be force-fed their own shit for a week straight, then have Michael's plastic surgeon have a crack at them. OK. Thriller's a great fucking pop record, but who wants to have anything to do with this smurf fucker now? Forget Michael. He's dead.

EVIL MOISTURE/HANATARASH - Fatanarchy On Airtube

Wow! You don't know how heppy I am to see this finally released. This is the long-awaited collaboration between Yamatsuka EYE and Evil Moisture, who I've never heard before, but from checking out the website, it looks like very early EYE-inspired fuckery. Forget picking up the OOIOO remix crap. This is the old EYE that I love delivering the noise and fuckedness, reminds me very much of Hanatarash 2.

I couldn't find a jpg of the cover,so I just stole some artwork from the Evil Moisture site which will give you an idea of how messed up it is. It's very similiar to EYE's older collage work. Check out the site here.

All I gotta say is go get it. It's limited to 500 copies. It's worth the price of admission just to hear their rendition of Survivor's Eye of the Tiger.

Here's the track titles, which are gold:

1. Atomichy in the LSD
2. Sleepwalking guaide book at Ohio
3. Antatack for sexpeople
4. Punk Yappie cutting tree
5. Fuckzotika
6. Ongaloo trackin'
7. Musica Club
8. Green Egg and Yellow Ham
9. Subatomic Party
10. UFOFF
11. Eat 'em used gum
12. Bonus Beats by DJ 100% Off
13. Bar Time with Eno
14. Fingertip Believer
15. Ever Mind the Overdosing
16. Plactice Youth
17. Fatanarchy on Airtube
18. Espimo
19. Bank Punks/Noise Bank
20. DJ Save Ear 50% Of21.My Superzone
21. Sonic Bonus
22. Bunch of Flash Food
23. Be Airport
24. Box Rok
25. Alphabetical Ray
26. Ultra Choice
27. Jawwalkin'
28. Eye of the Hanatarash
29. Banky Atmosphere

TOP 10 Snacks of all Time

1. Bits n Bites (the fucking boo yah)
2. Humpty Dumpty Party Mix
3. Frito's BBQ Corn Chips
4. Kara Mucho (from Japan)
5. Dorito's (any flavor, but cheese is still my fave)
6. Blue Diamond Smokehouse almonds
7. Cheez-It Snack Mix
8. Snyder's Pretzels
9. Ringolos (any flavor)
10. Sour Cream and Chives Crackers

FAST FOOD NATION (the movie)

What can I say? I had high expectations for this film, but it was one of the most boring films I've ever seen. I usually love Richard Linklater, especially SLACKER and DAZED AND CONFUSED, but this just sucks. If you've seen the trailer, you've seen the whole fucking film, so save your money.

There is no plot, just lots of crap info that I already know. The movie only has two ideas really. One is that Mexican immigrants are being injured, sexually harassed and otherwise mistreated in meatpacking plants (though the movie points out that they're getting paid 30 times what they'd earn back home, where working conditions are less safe).Boo Hoo, it's nothing I don't already know.

The other is that traces of shit can get end up getting mixed in with our burgers. "We all have to eat a little s - - t from time to time," is how Bruce Willis puts it. But about halfway through, the movie loses interest in that subject, since the bacteria are killed in the cooking process. And what are we supposed to eat if we don't want E. coli in our food - spinach? If you eat, you eat germs. No big fucking deal. If you don't like fast food, don't fucking eat it.

The film begins with Greg Kinnear (an actor I've never really liked) as an exec at the fast food chain "Mickey's" who wanders around Colorado asking questions about where his burgers are coming from. There's quite a few famous actors including Bruce Willis, Ethan Hawke, Kris Kristofferson but they just do a few stupid cameos.

I can't imagine author Eric Schlosser approving this film. I know it's based very loosely on the book of the same name, but don't bother with the movie, just read the book. The book is great.