I have been wanting to talk about this new album from Gravenhurst for over a month now. It seems like it has taken forever for this album to come out. The album is brilliant and I have been obsessed with it ever since I first heard it. I really liked their last album "Fires in Distant Buildings" from 2005. But this new one is so much better. It is called "Western Lands" and it comes out today. I don't even know where to begin. I just want everyone to go out and buy it and love it. Gravenhurst comes from that great country that I love so much. They are from Bristol, England and have been putting out albums since 2001. But it seems they have been a bit secretive about it. I didn't really hear about them until 2005 when they released an album on Warp Records. The album is really easy to get addicted to. So I would just like to warn you to be ready for that. Gravenhurst are great because they are one of those
bands that sort of combines lots of different genres and styles into one brilliant style that is all their own. It is like they have taken bits and pieces of all my favorite bands and put them into one brilliant album. They are very dreamy and ethereal but also very accessible. They really combine a lot of shoegaze style music with a more folky musical style. Imagine Elliott Smith combined with My Bloody Valentine. Nick Drake with Joy Division. Flying Saucer Attack with Piano Magic. Pale Saints with Pentangle. It really is something magical. They released "Trust" as the first single from 
the new album. But I am not really sure why. The second single will be "Hollow Men," which is so much better. It reminds me of some song from My Bloody Valentine's album "Isn't Anything." It really is that good. It is virtually impossible for anybody to not like this song. It is very catchy. But not in any normal pop song kind of way. It's also a nice little video.
I remember when I was like 13 some friends of mine rented "Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex (But Were Afraid to Ask)" by Woody Allen. They were really disappointed and told me not to bother watching it. I think they thought it was really gonna be all the things they always wanted to know and I am sure they were not familiar with the humor of Woody Allen. I sort of think music and its history is sort of like sex. Everyone pretends to know everything about it and nobody ever wants to ask questions about it. So they remain in the dark about certain bands or styles of music simply because they are afraid to ask
about it. I have always been the opposite of this. I love asking people about music and I don't pretend to know about things I do not know about it. I feel like Heart is also one of those bands that most people secretly like. Or maybe I just love them so much that I assume everyone likes them at least a little bit. The great Ann Wilson (who is the lead singer of Heart) has just released a solo album this week. This is her first solo album! It is called "Hope & Glory." It is all covers and features a lot of guests on the album. Nancy Wilson, Wynonna Judd, Alison Krauss, Rufus Wainwright, Elton John, K.D. Lang, & Gretchen Wilson all appear on the album. She covers songs by Pink Floyd, The Animals, Led Zeppelin, Creedence, Neil Young, Bob Dylan, and John Lennon. It is for sure worth a listen. I am not really saying you won't ever want to take it out of your CD player and you probably will not even want to put it on your IPOD. But the girl deserves your love and respect. This lady has been at it for a long time now and has had a quite a musical career. So I thought I would break down all the Ann Wilson and Heart albums for you. Just in case you were afraid to ask...
Tonight was the broadcast of the MTV video music awards. I grew up loving MTV and I loved watching the music videos of my favorite new bands. I was introduced to a lot of new music by seeing their videos for the first time on MTV. I didn't even have cable for years, but I would watch MTV whenever I got a chance at a friends house or my grandparent's house. I even watched that first little reality show called "The Real World" when if first aired. Back when it was one of the only non music video related shows. The times they have changed on MTV. This is the schedule for MTV tomorrow. 
So in one 24 hour period on MTV there are only 6 1/2 hours devoted to anything that is remotely related to music videos. Of the remaining 17 1/2 hours, only one show has anything remotely to do with music or music videos. The other shows really have no place on a show calling itself "Music Television." This is seriously a typical day for MTV. The only difference this year is that in order to try and get better ratings for the live airing of the awards show, they decided to not repeat the show over and over again the next day. I can think of countless shows they could have on MTV that would actually fit into a station supposedly devoted to music videos. They should obviously play more videos. Even Justin Timberlake realized this. He
made a little shout out against MTV when he won his awards tonight, begging them to play more videos and less reality shows. There are so many interesting people in the music business. They could have hours and hours of interesting documentaries on so many different musicians. There are also so many amazing videos that they could still show. They could have hour long shows devoted to old 80s and 90s videos or have shows that showed artists earlier videos. They could have great themed video hours. Indie (alternative) videos, metal videos, hip hop videos, r & b videos, electronica vidoes. They did have shows like this before. Alternative Nation, Yo! MTV raps, and Headbangers Ball were on every single day. 120 minutes was on every Sunday and always showed some amazing videos that did not usually get shown on MTV. They did have a game show called remote control, and a couple cartoons like beavis & buthead, daria and aeon flux. But even Beavis & Buthead showed music videos. And these shows never took over the programming. There was always more than just a couple hours of videos. I know that MTV now has MTV2 and some other shows on the higher up cable packages. But the original MTV should still have music as their focus. If they really feel that people need reality shows or fake reality shows, they could at least try and make them about music.
I have been obsessed with Halloween and the Halloween movies for as long as I can remember. This holiday and the original 1978 film will forever be intertwined together in my memory. John Carpenter is absolutely without a doubt a genius. He created the most successful independent film of all time with his original Halloween. This movies remains brilliant to this day and still manages to be scary. It really reinvented the horror movie and sort of set up the rules for the horror movies of the 80's. The second Halloween film was almost as good but the following sequels became worse as time went on. I saw every one and quickly realized the franchise was getting ridiculous with the last couple films. I remained loyal but it was really time for the series to be reinvented. They needed to go back and start all over again. But before the original even started. Similar things have been happening with other film franchises lately. Both the Batman and Superman movies had become ridiculous. Really only the first couple of both were
good. Both Batman and Superman were reinvented in the last couple years. It worked amazingly well with the Batman franchise and "Batman Begins." The film gave a completely new look to the series with a great new storyline. It kept what was good about the story and just built on that. This did not work so well for "Superman Returns." I am still waiting for the deluxe version of the entire Halloween series to be released on DVD like they did with Nightmare On Elm Street and Friday the 13th. There is a box available as an import but nothing yet domestically. 
Many horror films have also been remade in the last couple years. It seems to never work. These original films, The Omen, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Wax Museum, etc., hold such importance in our eyes as horror movie fans. We grew up with these films and have every detail about them memorized. It is a hard task for a director to go into such sacred ground and try and update and reinterpret these original films. Horror movies have never been the same lately. Never as good. Never as
scary as they once were. So when I heard that Halloween was getting remade this year, I was very excited but also very worried. I thought Rob Zombie was the perfect director to try and reinterpret this brilliant original film. But I was also worried for him and the response he would get from those crazy dedicated horror fans. The movie opened over labor day weekend as the most successful movie for that weekend ever. But of course many fans are really upset that Rob Zombie has ruined their Halloween. But I wonder how many of these people have actually seen the movie. I saw it on Monday and I was more than impressed. And it was scarier than anything I have seen in the theater in a long while.