Tempter

Ever since I first heard it, Refried Ectoplasm [Switched On Volume 2], a collection of singles and rarities by Stereolab, has been my favourite album by that band. On all their many great recordings of space station lounge English/French rock ’n’ roll jammers, Stereolab routinely cover that terrain like no other or others before or since. Highlights from Refried Ectoplasm include “Harmonium,” “French Disko,” and “John Cage Bubblegum,” but the big, stunning showstopper is “Tempter,” the closing track. I think it is the best song in the whole of the Stereolob repertoire. In season four of Better Call Saul the powers that be decided to use “Tempter” in an episode called “Coushatta.” I don’t think I watched Better Call Saul as far as season four, but that’s pretty cool all the same!    

Stereolab, "Tempter"

Five Great 21st Century Punk Records [in Chronological Order]

 

Punk rock music almost universally involves about three chords and rapid repetition. It’s the musical genre that taught me for good that uptempo music is the most fun kind, great for parties and dances. Since it is only working with a few chords and conducting its basic business around cascading riffs, punk rock wants to be loud, visceral, and ever on the verge of ecstatic collapse. The personal imprint of the individual players becomes important and noticeable. For the guitarists and bassists, sometimes even better results can be achieved with an amplifier that has been damaged in some way. 

Without further ado...

Bassholes, Bassholes, 2005

The Intelligence, Deuteronomy, 2007

King Khan and the Shrines, The Supreme Genius of King Khan and the Shrines, 2008

Iceage, You’re Nothing, 2013

Tyvek, Origin of What, 2016

The Intelligence, "Block of Ice"

King Khan & the Shrines, "Land of the Freak" 
[Official Video]

Iceage, "Morals" 
[Live from a studio in Copenhagen]

Alexander

 

Bob le flambeur (Jean-Pierre Melville, 1956)

The Criminal (Joseph Losey, 1960)

My name is Alexander Andreevich Alexandrov and I am, like my father before me, a confirmed sinner. This is hardly merely a matter of a shared ardour for vodka, though that is assuredly part of it. I’m a good guy and I’m a bad guy, but the face of evil I am not. I think my father believed that the balance of power was always somehow, somewhere out of whack. He grew cockeyed and dyspeptic. My sinful expenditures, usually fully conscious, are related to confidence connivances in which I artfully fleece everyday people of their hard-earned money and also a tendency to get habitually drunk, surly, and avoidant in my relationships with women, who are sometimes with some justification referred to as the fairer sex, these in my case tending to consist of exotic dancers, low-rent fashion models, and weary, crooked realtors or lawyers of sturdy stock. The case I want to make at the outset relates to the God of the Big Three Monotheisms. What monotheisms, you ask? Judaism, the Big Daddy, which began over three thousand years ago; Christianity, which began with rebellious itinerant Jews in Judea in the 1rst century CE (obviously); and good ol’ fanatical Islam, which began around 610 CE in Arabia after the Prophet Muhammad had visions and started telling folks about them. What we know about the God of the Big Three Monotheisms is  that He in His wily Omnipotence has a wild sense of humour while at the same time being a confirmed sadist of great vehemence  Which is to say: God is a good guy and a bad guy. This God does not hate sinners—the Christian version especially!—he hates evil (corporations, governments…serial killers), but at the same time He must to some extent sort of at least passively enjoy evil as a spectator sport—in His Omnipotence—or else how come He hasn’t vanquished it yet? I believe we can largely chalk it up to a strain of divine sadism.

Most of what I do for money is inherently criminal and touch-and-go, but I have always liked to team up for easy no-fuss jobs with lawyers, especially lady lawyers. What most people maybe don’t know or just casually forget is that lawyers act as intermediaries between power brokers from different strata of public life. They hear an awful lot and work at a cool veneer, intent to keep transactions active and ongoing. Even when everything is falling apart in front of you, you need to look like you know what you’re doing.    

Trudy is a certified attorney-at-law. Trudy is not her real name and she is from some hazy distant place that ain’t none of your business. I met her at a card table and she’s the kind of person who takes endless passing amusement at odd little details. I enjoy her recounting of any number of odd details; she’s good company and she’s savvy. Believe it or not, last night in my small apartment with the electrical air conditioner, Trudy said she’d been thinking of odd things pertaining to the Roman God Mercury. Not only was Mercury the God of commerce, eloquence, epistolary letters, travellers, sleight of hand, and thieves, she argued, he was also the God of the 24/7, unstinting flow of electronic capital and of network glitches too. I was in several senses compelled by this idea. I immediately had a picture in my imagination of the Milky Way Galaxy with all kinds of money flying around at the speed of light and small amounts of it disappearing now and then into obscured parcels of negative space. To Trudy I simply observed that the path from point A to point B hasn’t ever been straight. Maybe a letter gets intercepted, maybe your whole battalion does. On the way to the concrete realization of an idea we face the obstructions inherent to the idea itself. In trying to sell an idea to some other party—as though ourselves convinced—we face the basic roadblock of human communication. Travellers can find themselves in a predicament very quickly. People focus on the task and the goal, and their pockets are hanging there for the picking. 

Sometimes when I’ve had a good bit more to drink than could be considered reasonable and am therefore sloppy of demeanour, it is actually easier to run a sleight of hand trick on bar staff, like getting change back for a larger bill than I end up slipping them, because they simply are not expecting such hijinks from somebody in as unseemly a state as myself. It sounds simple and it is: sometimes the best way to avoid being noticed is to look like someone from whom your average person would be likely to avert their eyes. That’s right, just keep moving along. If you want to skim a little something extra off the surface it'll help if there isn’t anybody really looking. I guess it is toxic pride that makes me want to outsmart people, but deeper down within my fundamental character runs an enthusiast’s penchant for amateur playacting. Sometimes we amateur players can be reckless by nature or momentary inspiration, but it is always best to keep to those jobs you know you’ve got licked. It’s how one butters one’s bread.

In response to my recent musings on the liaison role played by attorneys, above board or not so much, Trudy pointed me to a quote from crime novelist and grift maven Jim Thompson’s autobiographical novel Bad Boy, which I confess I have not as yet had the opportunity to read in its entirety. Quoting at some length: “It was the bellboy who was always in closest contact with this hurly-burly world, a world always populated by strangers of unknown background and unpredictable behaviour. Alone and on his own, with no one to turn to for advice or help, he had to please and appease those strangers: the eccentric, the belligerent, the morbidly depressed. He had to spot the potential suicide and soothe the fighting drunk and satisfy the whims of those who were determined not to be satisfied. And always, no matter how he felt, he had to do those things swiftly and unobtrusively.” Jim Thompson was a hardcore drunk with lifelong emotional instability issues, often unproductive for long periods, but notably in 1953 and 1954 he published twelve of his best novels, a run the likes of which tawdry, angry, and cerebral paperback genre fiction won’t ever see again, you can count on that. If you pulled something like that in Vegas you’d be set for at least one lifetime. You would probably also be so stymied by righteous awe that you’d be too afraid to ever gamble again. As an old man Jim Thompson could mostly be found holding court at the legendary Musso & Frank on Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles. He can also be seen as the cuckolded older husband in the 1975 film version of Raymond Chandler’s Farewell, My Lovely starring Robert Mitchum.

I have never been one to engage in violent crime, I am not myself especially sadistic, but I’ll break up a fight if I have to. I don’t want to confront a living thing in pain. I went hunting with my father once and it was more than enough. The science fiction writer Isaac Asimov famously wrote that violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. He wrote that not too terribly long before Jim Thompson had his otherworldly run. That aphorism speaks loud and clear through the fog and blarney, requiring no fluff or finessing. The world is forever kneecapped by lobbyists acting on behalf of the munitions industry. When the American military blows off a whole hell of a lot of ordinance in some foreign land for no real tactical or strategic reason, just as a blind show of force, they call it a million dollar minute. Hardy har har. I couldn’t spend a million in a minute if I had a team of professionals at the ready. My grandparents fled atrocities and there is no end to my contempt for atrocities. Sometimes I think everyday life is an atrocity, but when I sober up I remember that this sort of thinking stems from self-pity, which nobody I’d want anything to do with finds attractive. I know I don’t. I never had to flee anywhere in a panic when it wasn’t my own fault. Once the bombardment starts you duck and cover, and that’s about the size of it. It might not be fair but if it’s real you have to deal with it anyway.

Earlier this evening Trudy and I were watching a 1080p porno clip on the Samsung LCD television in the bedroom. It featured three young women and a Slavic-looking guy posing in the role of lucky photographer. They shot it well and it was basically tasteful. At some point I realized that the three young women and the Slavic-looking guy all resembled different people I had known over the years, stretching back a long ways. I felt old in that moment. I think I see why those who have died briefly or come glancingly close report seeing their lives flash before their eyes. It’s like a backed-up drain. We are each of us for our contracted time in this baffling, plein air purgatory positively inundated with life.

Joseph Vitarelli, The Last Seduction [Film Score]

Farewell, My Lovely (Dick Richards, 1975)

* Jazz connoisseurs will note that in his wonderful and a propos score for The Last Seduction, a film in which Linda Fiorentino gives one of the strongest and most self-possessed performances I've ever seen anywhere, Joseph Vitarelli takes a good deal of direct inspiration from Miles Davis. You can go ahead and throw on Kind of Blue if you remain doubtful.

 

Eternity Jam: Dream Baby Dream

terre inconnue

A large part of who each of us is has been etched piecemeal by popular song and such remains the case whether any given one of us likes it that way or not. In the early days of popular recorded music, songs meant to be released on 78rpm shellac to a mass buying public seldom came in at over three minutes, as with the slammin’ bangers of our current times, whether we’re talking about the Carter Family warbling away at “Keep on the Sunny Side” or Robert Johnson running the devil’s own extended technique on “Hell Hound on My Trail.” A popular tune is finessed real slick so that is can be palatable to the majority even if its every last detail has been fussed over by ace players and technicians. An earworm can crawl inside the whole wide world and eat its damn brains. When it dropped as though hot in the year 2000, “Who Let the Dogs Out” by Baha Men seemed to be playing in every public place I happened to visit, including in the infamously snooty town of Montreal, and that raucous and idiotic tune never ceased to amuse and delight me even though I sure as fuck wasn’t about to go buy anything by Baha Men. This may be a controversial sentiment, but I believe, having grown up in the golden age of music videos, that commercial music that has been packaged adroitly can be very, very special. As a kid, I had no interest in the music-qua-music of King of Pop Michael Jackson, and yet the legendary videos for both “Thriller” and “Bad” revamped everything I believed and indeed was quite comprehensively. (It was only later that I would properly discover and go all gaga over the unimpeachable musical genius of the Jackson 5.) People who act like they are above popular music are like grumpy naysayers at a party. They have all the charm of Jordan Peterson with his endless whiny Kermit the Frog-sounding lamentations. I would pick “Hey Ya!” by Outkast over this year’s Booker Prize winner any day of the week…even if it is almost four minutes long. When I was young people were always trash-talking Spice Girls and Backstreet Boys and I was always like: Oh yeah? Then why am I tapping my foot, fool? Backstreet's back, alright?  

Neneh Cherry & The Thing
"Dream Baby Dream"
Live in Ljubljana

Ramones, "Have You Ever Seen the Rain?"
[Creedence Clearwater Revival Cover]

Top-Shelf Soul Jazz Gold Sounds

Soul Jazz is a London, England-based record label whose longstanding curatorial vision remains second to none.

Gipsy Rhumba:
The Original Rhythm of Gipsy Rhumba in Spain 1965-74
[Full Album]

First of the Month Physical Media Roundup

It’s all design and opportunity with me, as it is with you.
- James Ellroy, Widespread Panic

With the Ellroy and the Whitehead, both summer 2026 hardback releases, the two best literary crime series in living memory hit third gear! No doubt they'll leave permanent tread marks! Jazzed to finally have my copies!

Blu-ray satori! If you can't take my word for it just ask Wyatt Fuckin' Earp!

Keeping a record of EVERY DAMN THING! [L'amour fou.]

The Animals, "Bo Diddly"

[Live at Club A-Go-Go, 1963]

Paracelsus [Doublet]

 
They live in the four elements: the Nymphse in the element of water, the Sylphes in that of the air, the Pigmies in the earth, and the Salamanders in fire. They are also called Undinse, Sylvestres, Gnomi, Vulcani, etc. Each species moves only in the element to which it belongs, and neither of them can go out of its appropriate element, which is to them as the air is to us, or the water to fishes, and none of them can live in the element belonging to another class. To each elemental being the element in which it lives is transparent, invisible, and respirable, as the atmosphere is to ourselves.
- Paracelsus

The Age of the Medici (Roberto Rossellini, 1973)

The Idiots (Lars von Trier, 1998)

Founded in 1995 by Lars von Trier (an intermittently great film director) and Thomas Vinterberg (a consummately poor one), the Dogme 95 movement began as a thought experiment and rapidly became an oddly serious and even Calvinistic attempt to bring filmmaking back to its basics in an era when even the festival circuit seemed to be inundated with fatuous, overblown productions with multimillion-dollar budgets. The movement as such was announced publicly on March 13, 1995 at a Paris conference celebrating cinema’s centenary, when the sometimes flamboyant and ever-troubled von Trier threw conspicuously red Dogme pamphlets into the audience. At the heart of the Dogme 95 movement were ten commandments or “vows of chastity,” primarily relating to total renunciation of specialized lighting rigs, fake sets, props introduced to and therefore not found at locations as they naturally existed, tripods and dollies, or non-diagetic sound/music of any kind. As far as breaking the vows of chastity or transgressing against them, von Trier would go on to say that neither he, with his sublime The Idiots (which the great Jean-Luc Godard at the time said was the only good von Trier film), nor any of the other directors who made or attempted to make actual Dogme 95 films had been able to avoid breaching the basic prohibitions periodically. “We must conclude,” he went on to aver, “that the genuine Dogme film has not been made.” Well, authenticity is a Heideggerian concept and it’s as overrated as champagne or caviar. The only American to attempt to make a Dogme 95 film, in the form of Julien Donkey-Boy, Harmony Korine flagrantly broke the rules throughout the production of that estimable work of rough-and-tumble renegade videography. Korine would later defend himself by saying that though the exercise helped him to discover a more elemental or even religious idea of cinema’s properties and capabilities, “as when I was a child, the temptation to sin was always a romantic option.”   

Portrait of a Gentleman in His Study
Lorenzo Lotto 
1527
[Late Renaissance and the Birth of Mannerism]