Miriam Black knows when and how you’re going to die. She’s a beautifully scummy woman resigned to edge-living and stealing from the dead…until she meets a trucker named Louis. For a gutter punk Dead Zone with a strong, but not infallible female lead, try Chuck Wendig’s Blackbirds.
“Write this down, and don’t forget, that the best of times ain’t happened yet,” sings William Elliott Whitmore in the title track from his latest album, Field Songs. Whitmore is a one man folk band whose well-worn voice carries the ambitions, longing, and occasional anger of the working class man.
Patty of Fiction/AV/Teen Services recommends How to Suppress Women’s Writing by Joanna Russ:
“She didn’t write it. She wrote it, but she shouldn’t have. She wrote it, but look what she wrote about. She wrote it, but she wrote only one of it. She wrote it, but she isn’t really an artist, and it isn’t really art. She wrote it, but she had help. She wrote it, but she’s an anomaly.” This is the quote on the front of Joanna Russ’ quick-reading, landmark feminist essay collection, How to Suppress Women’s Writing. In this sobering, yet often times humorous work, Russ outlines the ways in which patriarchal societies overtly or inadvertently devalue and censor women’s writing.
There’s more to Albert King than “Born Under a Bad Sign”, though that’s the song that has been covered by everyone from Cream to Homer Simpson. If you like your blues with a groove, try the album King of the Blues Guitar.
William Miller just got his big break writing a cover story for Rolling Stone. Lester Bangs warns William not to make friends with the band, but William does and that’s when everything goes to heck. Almost Famous is a rock and roll coming of age story all music lovers should see.
Don’t walk home after dark if you live in the London projects. You might get mugged. Street toughs don’t get much of Sam’s money before they’re interrupted by…AN ALIEN! Attack the Block is a British sci-fi comedy where the inner city battles outer space and bad seeds get second chances.
A pimp, a DJ and an Italian tourist escape from prison, only to get lost in the Louisiana swampland surrounding it. Jim Jarmusch’s minimalist portrayal of the down-and-out is at its best in Down by Law. How could it go wrong? It stars Tom Waits, Roberto Benigni and John Lurie.
In a theater converted into a recording studio, Stax Records laid down such legends as Otis Redding, The Staple Singers, Sam and Dave, Booker T &the MGs and Isaac Hayes. Watch the rise and fall of Motown’s biggest rival in, Respect Yourself: The Stax Records Story.
Have you ever wondered what the Beach Boys would’ve sounded like if they were into heavy metal? Do you crave spaghetti western, circus music? What about sci-fi, funk, doo wop? California, the third album by the experimental, avant-garde enthusiasts Mr. Bungle, is for you.
Ryan Gosling’s heart of hearts is filled with dancing skeletons, expansive melodies, butterfly knives and a children’s choir. I know this from listening to his (and Zach Shields’) first self titled album, Dead Man’s Bones. Don’t think gothic, camp showtunes are your thing? Maybe a video will turn your mood…
