The opening credit sequence to Tarsem Singh's The Fall looks like a Calvin Klein ad: shot in black & white, pretty and elliptical, a dead horse is pulled out of a river with a crane attached to railroad bridge.  And, boy howdy, the critics don't much like the film!  It received a 58/100 from both Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes.  Without exception, every negative review mentions the commercial and music video background of Tarsem (as he is credited). That's a cudgel that's been used on Ridley Scott, David Fincher and other directors coming out of the commercial video world, often with good reason.  For example, Se7en wasn't much more than an overly long Nine Inch Nails video. The problem isn't that commercial and video works lack craft or aestheticism (as they once did), but that their instrumental value as shills for products culturally diminishes any value they might otherwise have as art.  Iggy Pop once asked rhetorically what did it matter how he used his songs so long as he initially created them for himself.  Well, is it possible for anyone under 50 to watch Alain Resnais and Marguerite Duras' meditation of time and memory, Hiroshima mon amour:


Without having the experience diminished by having seen tons of Calvin Klein ads like the following?

Lots of good hip-hop flavored shows over the next few days in San Francisco including DJ, producer and musician RJD2 at the Independent on Divisidaro tomorrow night (Thursday, April 10) on a bill with Dalek and Happy Chichester - 9PM showtime. Also tomorrow is the Audiopharmacy Spring Harvest Tour with performances from the seven piece Audiopharmacy collective, the ten-piece Bayonics, the Duniya Dance Company, plus DJ sets from Ren the Vinyl Archeologist, DJ Coop D'ville, plus lots more. Showtime 9PM - 3AM at SF club Mighty on Utah. More details here. 

And this weekend at Amoeba Music on Haight Street, San Francisco there will be a free instore when DJ Sake1 Presents Fania on Saturday afternoon (April 12) at Amoeba SF. Note the early showtime of 2PM. Read details on Sake1 (pic left) on Amoeba.Com.

On TV an Interesting looking documentary airs tonight about the so-called "hate edge" offshoot group of the straight edge movement - the hardcore punk based anti drink, drugs, & sex movement inadvertently started by Ian MacKaye when he and Minor Threat recorded the song "Straight Edge" back in the early eighties. Inspired by MacKaye's beliefs, since then a whole hardcore punk-loving and clean living youth movement sprung up, calling itself "straight edge." But in recent years this well-meaning movement has reportedly bred some members who have remained clean but taken to vigilante violence against drug dealers and other (as they see it) bad apples in society. 

The winds came first … the neighbors tree falling came next, and when the haunted harmonica sounds of the wind blowing through my office door, (sounding like a Ennio Morricone soundtrack), started imitating an Armenian duduk, (the most beautiful sounding instrument on the face of the Earth), I knew I was going to find something sadder than usual in my morning New York Times.

Dave Havlicek, aka Dave Day, guitarist and banjo player for one of the most original, legendary  and enigmatic bands ever to grace a stage, The Monks, died last Thursday, January 10th. Day, who was born and lived in Renton just outside Seattle, Washington, suffered a stroke or a heart attack on the previous Sunday morning which left him on life support for a short time before he passed.

Many years ago, way too many to actually acknowledge, I used to work at the original Onyx Café when it was next door to the Vista Theater in East Hollywood. One evening a customer gave me a home made cassette tape of a band I had only vaguely ever heard of named The Monks, the record Black Monk Time.

I put on the tape. What I remember most are two distinctive reactions: mine of total amazement and awe, how the hell did I miss this band (I’m a record geek for chrissakes!), and the reaction of another customer saying almost the same thing. But his “what the hell is this?”  was followed by something like  “do you have to play this crap now!” 
 
The Monks were five American GIs stationed in Germany who billed themselves as the “Anti-Beatles”. They played it heavy, weren’t afraid of feedback or dissonance and Dave Day added to the mayhem and the whole crunching rhythmic sound by playing the hell out of the electric banjo. They shaved their heads into monks' tonsures, dressed in black monasterial robes, sometimes wearing nooses as neckties, mocked and rocked harder than any of their sixties counterparts while basically inventing what would become kraut rock, industrial, and punk music.  Am I overstating their importance in rock music history? No! Their nihilistic deconstruction of Rock and Roll, owing in part to the Dada Movement of the ‘20s, predated Punk’s similar efforts by a good ten years or more. The Monks were easily 30 years ahead of mainstream rock’s time.

One of the most damaging drugs of our age has to be crystal meth (aka Tina, Crank, Speed, Ice,  etc.) - which doesn't discriminate when it comes to those who get caught up and spun into its dangerously addictive web - attracting, and in turn addicting, members of every age, gender, race, economic background, and sexual orientation it can - if given half the chance.  However of all the groups that fall prey to the drug,  it seems that the urban gay communities are the most resourceful in their fight against meth or at least in disseminating useful  information about the drug's dangers. But others are active too including the infamous, sobering Multnomah County Oregon State campaign that shows the before-and-after pictures of meth abusers. -   the visually powerful project that began when a deputy in the Corrections Division Classification Unit put together mug shots of persons booked into Oregon's Multnomah County Detention Center - not pretty.   Although not one of these meth offenders booked into the North West detention center, Mark E. Smith of the Fall (right), who is an admitted longtime speed freak (inspiration for the Fall's classic "Totally Wired" came from somewhere), could easily qualify as a part of this shocking-but-effective anti-drug campaign. One of meth's side-effects is the awful damage it does to teeth.

The Los Angeles bus-stop poster (above) photographed directly outside Amoeba Music Hollywood about a month ago was sponsored by West Hollywood's weholife.org which is funded by the City of West Hollywood.  According to this organization and other US health groups, longterm and widespread methamphetamine abuse can lead to devastating medical, psychological, and social consequences. Its abuse can include such adverse health effects as memory loss, aggression, psychotic behavior, heart damage, malnutrition, and severe dental problems in addition to, according to one health care organization,  "contribute to increased transmission of infectious diseases, such as hepatitis and HIV/AIDS, and can infuse whole communities with new waves of crime, unemployment, child neglect or abuse, and other social ills."