Author: Jason

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DISMEMBER THE ALAMO at the Richardson, TX Alamo Drafthouse, 10/27/18

You know what the weirdest thing is about sitting in a movie theater for nine hours to watch five horror films in a row?

When it’s over and your eyes feel like poached eggs and your ass is numb and your legs are stiff and you sorta zombie-walk back to your car and all of the popcorn, beer, milkshakes and pizza that you’ve taken in are starting to do weird things in your stomach… you kinda still want to sneak in one more movie. (Whether you prefer that sixth movie at home or in a theater depends, I guess, on your feelings about using public restrooms.)

It’s insane, but when the show is good and you lived through it, you become a proud weirdo.

And these Alamo Drafthouse bastards do this thing well.

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BUBBA AND THE COSMIC BLOOD-SUCKERS by Joe R. Lansdale

Joe R. Lansdale
Bubba and the Cosmic Blood-Suckers
2017, Subterranean Press

Joe R. Lansdale gave my favorite piece of writing advice ever when he said “Write like everyone you know is dead”.

Don’t have anything to prove. Don’t worry about what the people you know might think about you. None of that shit needs to be on your mind at all. No one can tell a writer how to be good, but you can tell them how to be free.

And clearly Lansdale follows his own advice because that’s the only way that a man in his 60s who’s been steadily publishing novels and short fiction since 1980 (if not a little earlier) plops out with a profane piece of pure nutzoid pulp like this.

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Robert Pollard-Mania! #15: BEE THOUSAND

Guided by Voices
Bee Thousand
1994, Scat Records

My favorite story about discovering Bee Thousand came from a guy who claimed that he hated it the first few times he listened to it. The lo-fi didn’t bother him. The songwriting simply didn’t hit the mark for his ears. Fair enough. This music isn’t for everybody. He wrote off the album and moseyed on his way. However, over the next week, he kept getting these catchy hooks stuck in his head and he couldn’t remember where they were from. He was your regular music geek, always picking up new stuff and wasn’t sure exacty where he heard lines like…

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Terry Southern’s THE MAGIC CHRISTIAN

Terry Southern
The Magic Christian
1959, Grove Press

I know that we’re all supposed to hate Louis CK now–and I certainly agree with anyone who says that his admitted exhibitionist masturbation fetish stuff isn’t much fun to think about–but none of that changes how funny he’s been before. One of my favorite old bits of his is the one in which he wonders why more billionaires don’t use their resources to prank everyone.

“Buy every baseball team and make them all wear dresses.” Open up the world’s worst pet store, where every can of food costs $1 million and where the groomers tell you point-blank that they will have sex with your pets, and keep it open for decades just to confuse people.

The first time I heard it, I hurt myself laughing and, because I’m perpetually behind on my reading, I didn’t realize until this week that Terry Southern had the exact same idea way back in the 1950s when he wrote this still-hilarious novel. It’s about Guy Grand, a perfectly nice and fabulously wealthy fella who has money to burn and so he burns it by relentlessly fucking with the world.

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Robert Pollard-Mania! #14: GUIDED BY VOICES / THE GRIFTERS Split 7″

Guided by Voices/The Grifters
1994, The Now Sound

The last time we discussed Robert Pollard here at The Constant Bleeder (or Da’ Bleeder, as the kids at the mall like to call it), it was for a fake split single; now on the table this time is a real split single.

The Grifters were one of the few relatively fresh indie rock bands at the time–and by “relatively fresh”, I mean they’d been making records for five years or so–who were about the same age as Guided by Voices. 30s, pushing 40, somewhere in that neighborhood. I don’t know their exact ages, but The Grifters were older than the average pipsqueak and were in the middle of putting out their two best albums of noisy jaded wooze, One Sock Missing and Crappin’ You Negative.

So, here you’ve got two sides of late-bloomer rock from a pair of bands who were in high cotton at the time. Sign me up.

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Things I Will Keep #6: MILLER, “Baby, I Got News for You”

Miller
Baby I Got News for You b/w The Girl With the Castle
1965, Columbia

Herman Melville once wrote “To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme. No great and enduring volume can ever be written on the flea, though many there be that have tried it.”

Melville died in 1891, well before rock ‘n’ roll and well before we figured out that, yeah, you can write something great on the flea as long as it rocks.

Enter Miller’s “Baby, I Got News for You”, a song so dumb that I must lose a hundred brain cells every time I hear it. Each spin of this 45 is a fresh concussion and I love it. It might be my favorite rock single of all time, or at least it has an easy spot in my top 10.

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Scratching Your Head with THE STAIRCASE on Netlflix

Because of Netflix true-crime documentaries, I’ve gotten rid of everything I ever owned that could be used as a lethal weapon. I’ve gone though the whole Clue game arsenal and tossed ’em all out. No lead pipes, candlesticks or rope in my home.

If I need to pound a nail, I go out and buy a hammer and then immediately throw it away.

All of my sharp kitchen supplies are now in the garbage. To be safe, I even got rid of my cast iron skillets. All I have now are butter knives, spoons, plastic forks, a few baking sheets and a small saucepan.

I also threw out all scissors and replaced them with those blunt Kindergarten scissors for five-year-olds.

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Robert Pollard-Mania! #13: LUCIFER’S ACHING REVOLVER b/w CRUISE

NIghtwalker/Freedom Cruise
“Lucifer’s Aching Revolver” b/w “Cruise”
1994, Simple Solution Records

Newcomers to Robert Pollard’s work–or fans who lead a more eventful life than I do and haven’t religiously kept up with it all–are inevitably confused by the side projects. It’s understandable. As of this writing, Pollard has recorded and released music under almost two dozen different names and with a variety of collaborators.

As I  make my way through his body of work and write way too many words about each record, I intend to explain every side project and tell you why each one is a little different. I will use my nerdiness to illuminate. I will use my geekiness to elucidate. Summoning the power of my autism, I will demystify and hopefully clarify.

Because I know everything. I am an armchair expert in all things Pollard. There’s not much that you can get by me.

Except for what the deal is with THIS record.

None of the books or interviews, as far as I know, tell the story of this fake split-single for two bands (Nightwalker and Freedom Cruise) who both are clearly Guided by Voices in disguise.

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