All posts by Chris

About Chris

Chris is a digital producer based in Toronto, but don't worry, he's American. He enjoys karaoke and video games that are old enough to cost under $20. He used to be a master of the pit and live shows but can hardly keep up with anything new nowadays, so he usually goes to his happy place of media from his wayward youth. Chris is still trying to figure out what to be when he grows up.

October Soundtracks: Until the End of the World

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Until the End of the WorldUntil the End of the World
1991
Buy the album on Amazon

It’s been a long time since I saw this movie, and I don’t really remember it at all (confirmed by just watching the trailer), but I do remember I really liked it. I might have seen it in the theater when it was first released, though 1991 – I may not have entered my big Wim Wenders phase by then, ignited by Wings of Desire. I think I probably had though, because I remember the soundtrack coming out, and though not all of the songs made an impression, there have been a few that have stood out ever since I first heard it.

Continue reading October Soundtracks: Until the End of the World →

Album of the Month: Girlfriend – Redux

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Girlfriend
Girlfriend

“Nothing Lasts”
by Matthew Sweet
from the album Girlfriend
1991
Buy the album on Amazon

When Lance wrote up this album last week, it was pretty spot on. I completely agree with him that it’s one of the rare albums with nary a skippable song. I associate this album most strongly with my high school friend Joel Robinson (not of MST3K fame), as we had a shared love of it from the time it first came out. It is indeed a perfect album. I don’t want to rehash what Lance went into, but just to expand on a couple of points (and I’m going to ramble here entirely too long to just add it as an article comment)…

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October Soundtracks: Romeo + Juliet

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Romeo + JulietRomeo + Juliet
1996
Buy the album on Amazon

I was a big fan of this movie when it came out and (though I still for some reason haven’t seen Strictly Ballroom) it made me an ongoing big fan of Baz Luhrman. It was the coolness and fun and frenetic energy of it, it was Leonardo DiCaprio, fresh from The Basketball Diaries, and the totally cute MSCL-era Claire Danes, and a great cast all around, like Harold Perrineau in drag and John Leguizamo being bad-ass, and it was the music (2 new Radiohead songs!), etc. On a personal level, I also really enjoyed it because in my sophomore year of high school, our theater department put on this play, and I was the Friar, and quite frankly, I didn’t really understand everything that I was saying. Seeing the masterful Pete Postlethwaite at work, it all became totally clear to me.

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Album of the Month: Kick

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Kick
Kick

Kick by INXS
1987
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Kick by Beck’s Record Club
2010
Download the album

Lance recently posted a full length cover version of this for #CoverFriday. Courtney Barnett’s version was respectable and a cool effort, but honestly didn’t do much for me. I finally finished listening to most of the rest of it this past weekend, and was watching it on YouTube, and then noticed the Beck’s Record Club full album cover version in the related videos. I liked it enough that I was considering just featuring it, but then decided it may be overkill to still do the real Kick later, so here we are. I also just learned on the Slicing Up Eyeballs Facebook page that the album was released yesterday in 1987, so the timing is fortuitous.

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Belly: “Feed the Tree”

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Star“Feed the Tree”
by Belly
from the album Star
1993
Buy the album on Amazon

I didn’t know much about Tanya Donnelly when this song came out. Throwing Muses had been in one Venn circles of the type of music I was mainly into, but I had never been that exposed or into them. I knew her more from being part of the Breeders’ first couple of albums. When this song came out, though, I got hooked, and got really into Belly and a lot of her later solo work (some day I’ll do a proper full album post of Star, which is a great album).

I even tried this once at karaoke because, well, yes I love it, but also because admittedly I really liked our friend Matt’s karaoke version of Lisa Loeb’s Stay, and was wondering if this song could match it. The song might, but my version was fairly horrible. I’m certainly not opposed to singing female songs, but wasn’t a match for this one.

October Soundtracks: The Doom Generation

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The Doom GenerationThe Doom Generation
1995
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There are entirely too many great soundtracks I’d like to post for this month’s theme. So either I have to start posting with a much higher frequency, or we’re going to need to have this theme another time in the future. Since I can barely handle once a week, I guess it will have to be the latter. Anyhoo, on to this week’s post.

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Orbital: “The Box”

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In Sides“The Box”
by Orbital
from the album In Sides
1996
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Short and sweet today, but time to share what’s probably my favorite music video ever (though that’s a short list – I can’t remember many off the top of my head). I used to live with a friend who was big into MTV’s Amp, which got me a little bit into it (the MTV’s Amp compilation album is a pretty good mix), and I’m pretty sure that’s when I first saw this. It’s just delightfully weird and Tilda Swinton is awesomely quirky and odd as ever. This also came out when i was an animation student, so seeing a cool live action iteration of techniques probably made this stick with me as well.

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October Soundtracks: Twin Peaks and Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me

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Twin Peaks“Twin Peaks”
by Angelo Badalamenti
from the album Music from Twin Peaks
1990
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“Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me”
by Angelo Badalamenti
from the album Music from Twin Peaks
1992
Buy the album on Amazon

Lance mentioned that Monday was craptastic in his last post, and I would upgrade that to the entire week shaping up to being pretty crapperific, However, the best thing I’ve heard all week was the reboot of Twin Peaks. Hell. Yes. That made me so happy. So then made me realize these two albums would make great entries for this month’s theme. Not entirely in the MNP vein (not that that’s ever stopped me) but they came out in the exact same formative time as most the other things we post here.

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Cover: “House of Pain”

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Californication: Happy Endings“House of Pain”
by The White Buffalo (originally by Faster Pussycat)
from the album Happy Endings: Music from the Showtime Series Californication)
2014
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I got here in a roundabout way. I was watching an episode of Californication this morning and it ended with a different song which I was going to post, but looking into it opened a Pandora’s Box, so I’ll save that for another time. Looking into that got me to this EP, and this song stuck out for me as well.

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