Author: Jason

Posted on

The Constant Bleeder Tries to Figure Out Anime #1: BUBBLEGUM CRISIS episode 1, “Tinsel City Rhapsody”

I don’t know shit about anime.

Never watched it much. Didn’t grow up on it. Never cared about it. I watched Voltron every now and then when I was in third grade, but that doesn’t count. Everybody watched Voltron back then. And besides there are no fetish-y schoolgirls in it.

Back in the video store days, I rented the early chapters of a few series here and there (can’t remember any of the titles) and the occasional feature, but nothing ever stuck with me. I remember I even found them confusing to watch. I never followed any series to the end. I never stayed the anime path. I was never a weeb, just your regular ol’ dweeb.

It has come to my attention though, as I sail the internet high seas and even talk to the occasional stinky real life person once every few months, that there are people out there who are OBSESSED with this junk. It’s all they watch. I run across these anime freaks all of the time. I trip over them every Saturday night on my way to the barn dance. I see this so often that I’m beginning to wonder if I’m missing out. Maybe this stuff is cool. Maybe I’d be into it if I put a little more time into it. Maybe I’ve been living my life all WRONG.

Continue reading “The Constant Bleeder Tries to Figure Out Anime #1: BUBBLEGUM CRISIS episode 1, “Tinsel City Rhapsody””

Posted on

Robert Pollard-Mania! #28: CUT-OUT WITCH

Guided by Voices
Cut-Out Witch
1996, Matador Records

The only Guided by Voices picture disc, as of this writing, and like most picture discs, it’s inessential. Audio dorks say that they inherently have worse sound quality than regular records, but a slob like me wouldn’t know anything about that. This one sounds fine, I guess.

But it is pretty much a trinket, a bauble. Something for the nerds. If you have this, you’re a nerd.

Not that there’s anything wrong with the music on it (in my nerd opinion, at least). On the A-side are two fine album tracks from Under the Bushes Under the Stars and the B-side offers two fine performances live in the studio for WHFS in Washington DC for rock critic Dave Marsh’s “Inside Dave’s Garage” radio show, recorded in August 1995.

Continue reading “Robert Pollard-Mania! #28: CUT-OUT WITCH”

Posted on

Robert Pollard-Mania! #27: UNDER THE BUSHES UNDER THE STARS

Guided by Voices
Under the Bushes Under the Stars
1996, Matador Records

In music, even a well-liked band runs the risk of nobody talking about them anymore in a few years. Whatever charms they may have had at their peak fade away for audiences and critics. Maybe the music business itself kicks them around so hard that they lose their drive. Maybe they coasted on an exciting new movement and then slipped everyone’s mind when everyone got over it. And that’s just off the top of my head. There are as many ways for today’s music sensations to become tomorrow’s nobodies as there are ways to die.

That wasn’t going to happen to Guided by Voices. This was their ninth album (tenth if you count King Shit and the Golden Boys). By this point, Robert Pollard was playing the long game and in the long game you can’t be lo-fi forever.

Continue reading “Robert Pollard-Mania! #27: UNDER THE BUSHES UNDER THE STARS”

Posted on

Things I Will Keep #12: TANGERINE DREAM, Thief (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)

Tangerine Dream
THIEF
1981, Elektra/Asylum

When director Michael Mann decided that his first feature would be the story of a burned-out career criminal on the mean streets of Chicago, he somehow figured that German progressive instrumental group Tangerine Dream were the perfect ones to score it.

Thief is a story that we’ve seen before. Chicago is a setting that we’ve seen before. But this time, it was going to be a bleak, but day-glo, dream in a luminous night world and a new take on noir for the 1980s.  It would be gritty and grimy, but also oddly beautiful. Its style wouldn’t be outlandish; rather, it would be a kind of hyper-reality. Every last light bulb and every shadow would be as vital as the pages of the script.

And it would all move to the zero-gravity swirl of Edgar Froese and company’s synthesizers.

It’s been a controversial decision ever since.

The Golden Raspberry Awards (the informal, smarmy anti-Oscars) nominated it as the Worst Music Score of 1981.

Even Michael Mann himself has said in recent years that he’s still not sure if he made the right choice when it came to the music (see the supplements on the Criterion Collection disc of the film).

Meanwhile, here I am still taking this album’s ride in 2019 to places far out where none of that matters.

Continue reading “Things I Will Keep #12: TANGERINE DREAM, Thief (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)”

Posted on

Robert Pollard-Mania! #26: THE OFFICIAL IRONMEN RALLY SONG

Guided by Voices
“The Official Ironmen Rally Song”
1996, Matador Records

I don’t have ONE favorite Guided by Voices song. I’m also not one to make lists of favorites. If you ask nicely, I could cough up a list for you, but when left to my own devices, I’m not a big list-maker. I think that the guy from High Fidelity is deranged.

Your humble servant here just wants to throw a bunch of records on the floor, open a bottle of wine and chill out. I don’t carve pronouncements onto stone tablets. I just drink too much and talk too much and if I like to spout off about history or analysis from time to time, I try to never stray far from the state of simply blissing out by the stereo, records tossed about like unswept confetti after a party.

What I’m trying to say is that we here at The Constant Bleeder are real INFORMAL. We’re loose and disheveled. We forget to put on pants before we answer the door. We don’t always get the wine and cheese pairing right. We’re stranded in the combat zone. We walk through Bedford-Stuy alone. We ride our motorcycle in the rain. We quote Billy Joel hits at odd times. We have a bad habit of referring to ourselves in the “editorial we” even though there’s zero reason for us to do that on our personal website in which we are the only writer.

I’m not organized enough to have a favorite GBV song, I guess. And my list of top ten GBV songs has about 127 songs on it that change daily depending on my mood and the direction of the wind and whether or not Venus is in Gemini.

However, if the Devil comes up to me one day and demands that I name one favorite GBV song or else I’ll be forced to watch every Logan Paul video on Youtube in an endless loop for all eternity (or some other cruel fate like that), I’d go with “The Official Ironmen Rally Song”.

Continue reading “Robert Pollard-Mania! #26: THE OFFICIAL IRONMEN RALLY SONG”

Posted on

A Laurel and Hardy Party #8: BLOTTO and LA VIDA NOCTURNA

(1930; director: James Parrott)

My favorite Laurel & Hardy situation is when they’re henpecked husbands. He’s a klutz. She’s an unpleasant harpy. Together they have a perfect marriage straight out of a nightmare. His idea of fun is going out with his buddy. Her idea of fun is squashing his fun.

Call it misogyny, I call it comedy. There are no good jokes to make about a happy marriage. Comedy is a crop that grows best in cold climates and these films are short enough that they end before it gets depressing.

Also, let’s just say that for some of us out here, this shit is highly relatable.

Continue reading “A Laurel and Hardy Party #8: BLOTTO and LA VIDA NOCTURNA”

Posted on

Robert Pollard-Mania! #25: BENEFIT FOR THE WINOS

Guided by Voices
Benefit for the WInos
1996, no label

With most bands, by the time you get to their twenty-fifth record, you might be done. Or at least almost done, even if you’re a maniac like me who counts EVERYTHING (singles, EPs, live records). Spring would turn into winter. They’d be well into their later years. Their State Fair years. Their Christmas album years. Their tell-all autobiography years. Their Celebrity Big Brother years. Their “arrested for drunk driving/ shoplifting/ domestic violence” years. Their “suing their old band mates” years. Their “getting into political arguments everyday on Twitter instead of working on new projects” years.

But this is Robert Pollard and Guided by Voices that we’re talking about and by THEIR twenty-fifth record, they were smack in the middle of their most celebrated period. I feel like I’m still only just beginning to talk about this man and this band and these records. We’re still in elementary school here. We’re still playing on the jungle gym. We’re still chewing on pencil erasers. We’re still awkward and farting in class while the other kids pick on us. We haven’t kissed a girl (or a boy, however you swing), yet. There’s still so much ahead and we don’t know shit.

So, it was June 2, 1995 and Guided by Voices were riding high. Every rock critic knew about them. Every insufferable indie rock dork had an opinion about them. Reviews might have been mixed here and there (as they always are for anything that’s interesting), but, overall, Guided by Voices were critical darlings.

EXCEPT in the band’s home town of Dayton, Ohio.

Continue reading “Robert Pollard-Mania! #25: BENEFIT FOR THE WINOS”

Posted on

Robert Pollard-Mania! #24: FOR ALL GOOD KIDS

Guided by Voices
For All Good Kids
1995, no label

Guided by Voices have a bunch of live albums, folks. And we’re going to talk about ALL OF THEM.

Because I’m very serious about my Robert Pollard survey. Also, I don’t have anything better to do.

Here’s one of the first things that you need to know: Despite what a lot of sources say, including virtually every music database website, NONE of them are bootlegs in the normal sense. None of them were put out by some scofflaw with a tape recorder up his ass. These are all official records that just LOOK like bootlegs–and sometimes sound like bootlegs. There’s usually no record company mentioned anywhere. The covers are crudely assembled. Photocopied sheets glued to plain white sleeves are common. I’m talkin’ very stark, simple presentations, often with no track list even. Vinyl only, sneaked into mid-90s era record stores under cover of night and shadow. If you stumbled upon one of these in the bins back then, you might have thought “What the fuck is this?”

Continue reading “Robert Pollard-Mania! #24: FOR ALL GOOD KIDS”