Friday Random Ten

1. "Promo #2 - G-Force vs. Zoltar" - Hoyt Curtain - Battle of the Planets

30 second spot for the American animated series re-edited from a Japanese anime series. I loved this show in the 70s, but never caught how cool the music was. Here it's somewhat hidden under the voiceover actor (not Gary Owens, but an incredible simulation).


2. "I'm a Little Mixed Up" - Koko Taylor - What It Takes: The Chess Years

"Mixed up" seems an odd phrase to be sung with such passion by Koko in a hard-driving R&B song. In a song like this you're "messed up" maybe. "Mixed up" sounds oddly prissy. Lesley Gore gets "mixed up." Good song, still.


3. "Barbara's Dream" - Luciano Michelini - Isle of the Fishmen

Lovely harpsichord piece from the soundtrack to an awful, cheesy, Italian horror film. No matter what, no matter how terrible the film, Italian movies always have great cinematography and great music. I've probably got WAY too many Italian score tracks on the iPod now, but I whenever I listen to them to try and eliminate some, I can't do it - they're all SO good.


4. "Who'll Read the Will?" - The Lollipop Shoppe - Just Colour

American (despite the effete album-title spelling) garage-psychedelia band, late 60s. Very good. Like a lot of one-hit wonders you'd hear on Nuggets, but I don't think they ever had the hit. I used one of their songs in Temptation, and I haven't heard a clunker from this album yet.


5. "Born to Boogie" - T.Rex - History of T.Rex - The Singles Collection

Ah, a classic Bolan boogie. Yeah, a lot of T.Rex songs all slide together in my head, and I can't remember anything about them specifically unless I'm listening to them (except everything on Electric Warrior), but I love hearing them when they show up. T.Rex makes me smile. Always.


6. "Where You Stand" - Kingmaker - A World of Alternatives

Stock 90s alt-rock. I have a bit of affection for the style/sound, not really getting that heavy into it at the time - I didn't have the money/time to pursue it then, I was just doing theatre all the damned time. Pretty good time for rock, but Berit can't stand a lot of this, as it just sounds like every other song that came out when she was in high school. I think this is from a compilation she had that was put together by Doc Martens. You got it with a pair of boots or something. Okay, this DOES go on a bit long with a kind of attempted "anthemic" chorus that just don't cut it.


7. "Jagger" - Shawn Lee's Ping-Pong Orchestra - Ubiquity Studio Session Vol. 2 - Moods and Grooves

Faux 60s Brit-pop-instrumental-library track, very well done. Perfect spy/crime show feel. Someday I've got to put together a show using all this music, where we all get to be in some kind of Prisoner - Secret Agent - The Avengers - The Saint etc. landscape. Big swaths of primary colors. Giant props. Crisp suits and tight leather. Maybe that's more Jeff Lewonczyk's territory with the Bizarre Science Fantasy series, not so much mine.


8. "Where I Ought To Be" - Skeeter Davis - The Essential Skeeter Davis

Cry in your beer time, with sad pop-country music.


9. "Vulcanized Sneakers Commercial Intro" - Bob Perry - The Best of The National Lampoon Radio Hour

"Will the Lord Jesus be able to feed all those people with that single loaf of Wonder Bread and that half-a-can of tuna? We'll find out, just as soon as we take this break to hear all about how you can vulcanize your sneakers at home for just pennies per shoe!"


10. "Loveletters for Delinquents" - The Svengalis - downloaded from somewhere

Alt-rock. Good, with vague whiffs of the 80s and an overall power-pop feel, especially on the chorus. Unabashed use of a great, unfashionable keyboard sound. Vocal could be cleaner, more Paley Brothers-esque. Chorus really great the more you hear it. Really needs cleaner vocals, though.


Maybe cats later. Work proceeding apace on the scripts of Hamlet and Spell. Had a good lucid dream/meditation session last night that brought more clarity to Spell. Work to do.

Friday Cat Blogging

James Comtois has apparently been sneaking into Berit's and my home and taking photographs of our cats, if you believe his blog. I would not mind so much, but for the fact that he isn't sharing the shots with us, and we could use them.


Unfortunately, as a result, we have no recent, good shots of the fuzzy monsters. I have to grab a dsiposable camera, or borrow a friend's digital, soon, to get some shots of Hooker while he's still in the head cone. He'll be stuck there another couple of weeks, it seems.


Until I have those shots, here's three old ones:




Bappers, my mom and brother's cat in Portland, ME, is 13, and looks great for her age. Very active indoor/outdoor cat, too. Amazing she's lived this long. She used to disappear, sometimes for weeks at a time, but she's always come back. Her real name is "Sneakers," but "Bappers" stuck for reasons too long and silly to go into here.




Hooker is 5 1/2 and was rescued at the age of about 4 weeks from a deli at Houston and Eldridge Streets that my friend Michele was evicting. The deli owners cut out on the place, leaving the kitten behind, so Berit and I took him in. He is named for John Lee Hooker, who had died shortly before (and, secondly, for T.J. Hooker, who shall never die).




Simone (usually called "Moni," pronounced "moany") is probably about 3 1/2 years old. Berit found her, a tiny, emaciated stray, in front of our building. We figured she was about 4 months old, but she hasn't grown much since then - she was obviously malnourished on the street - so we really have no idea how old she was when we took her in. She's named for Nina Simone, who had died shortly before.


Back to work on the scripts; too much to do, too much to do . . .