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YOU OF ALL PEOPLE!
This is the first CD by a group I heard by accident at the Double Down Saloon here in Vegas. They were playing at a punk
wedding I stumbled into at this venerable dive and they got the place jumping.
The music is hard to describe, and that's what's cool about it -- alternative rock with power pop hooks and real edge.
Great musicality combined with driving energy and just enough lilt to get you up on your feet and bopping.
They financed the record themselves, to stay one step ahead of the vagina dentata that is the corporate music world --
so buy it, why don't you, so they can get some of their money back? Buy it right now. You'd be doing yourself a favor.
It can be had at the following link, along with their vlogs from the road last month -- all cool stuff:
Underwater City People
And for those of you in Vegas, they'll be playing the Double Down again on 3 December, so get ready.
The Underwater City People, live and on CD, rate a 10 (out of 10) on the coolometric scale.
PAUL COLLINS BEAT
This might be the best band you've never heard of -- sold alternative power-pop stuff. They've been around since the late
Seventies and have influenced a couple of generations of rockers -- especially those going for a neo-Brit-Invasion sound today.
They're still performing and recording, but check out their first albums, now reissued by Wounded Bird Records in the two-fors
above and below (with bonus tracks.)
It's not quite classic rock and roll but it's real rock and roll, still infectious and fresh -- sort of like the Ramones
without the sordid despair. (They used to open for the Ramones -- I guess to set up false expectations among the unwary.)
Rates a 9 (out of 10) on the coolometric scale.
You can buy the albums here (cheaper than on Amazon):
Wounded Bird Records
And Paul Collins has just released his first new solo album in twelve years.
On his web site he writes:
"Dear Friends, It´s been quite awhile since I have recorded an album. 'Flying High' represents 12 years of living and
songwriting. I recorded this record at home in my living room over the course of 4 days and I am very proud of how it came
out. It's my personal statement and I hope people see it as the quintessential Paul Collins record. For a limited time I will
be signing and sending this record directly to you. The Internet has enabled artists like myself to cut out the middleman
and offer our music directly to you, our fans. Since it'll be autographed by yours truly, it won't have the shrink wrap like
the ones sold in stores. As an added bonus, 'Flying High,' features an eight page full colour booklet with lyrics included.
"When you get a chance, check out the audio samples for a preview of songs from 'Flying High.' I hope you´ll like
it. Supplies are limited, so place your order today to secure your own autographed copy. Keep on rockin' and I'll see you
all on the road! Take care, Paul"
Listen to samples and buy it here:
Paul Collins
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| © David G. Schwartz |
CASINO CARPET GALLERY
David Schwartz, professor of gaming studies at UNLV and author of "Suburban Xanadu", has posted a section on his
web site devoted to photographs of casino carpets. For those who love casinos, the images can be strangely evocative, since
these are the magic carpets that transport one to realms of hope and desire and degradation, silently and largely unobserved.
They are busy, silly, slightly insane -- as befits the places they adorn.
I have never consciously noticed the design of the carpet from the El Cortez pictured above, but I know it subliminally
-- it brings back the smells of stale cigarette smoke and beer and well-handled coins that pervade the place, a place that
always makes me sad . . . but in a good way.
The mere image of the carpet almost brings a tear to my eye.
The pages, the pictures and the very idea of the casino carpet gallery all rate a 10 (out of 10) on the coolometric scale.
Check them out here:
CASINO CARPET GALLERY
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| CLICK ON PICTURE FOR A LARGER VIEW |
THE BUZZ RICKSON'S "PATTERN RECOGNITION" MA-1
In William Gibson's latest novel "Pattern Recognition", the heroine Cayce Pollard, a coolhunter, wears a reproduction
MA-1 flight jacket, 1957 pattern, made by Buzz Rickson's, which Gibson describes as a super authentic recreation of the original
-- in a sense MORE authentic than the original because of the fanatical devotion to detail by the manufacturer. He notes that
the uneven seams of the original, the result of sewing the new fabric nylon on machines made to stitch cotton, have been lovingly
copied, even exaggerated slightly, to make the homage that much clearer.
It turns out that Buzz Rickson's is a real company, based in Japan, and that it really does make such reproductions, hard
to find and insanely expensive, with the obsessiveness Gibson so admires.
But Gibson made a mistake. He described Pollard's jacket as black, whereas Rickson's only produced the jacket in green,
since that's the only way the Air Force ever issued it. When Rickson's learned about the mistake, it decided to issue a "Pattern
Recognition" edition of the jacket in black. Gibson's fantasy jacket has thus become real.
This is cool on one level -- not so cool on another. Gibson's failure to remember the color of the jacket was a betrayal
of the obsessiveness he so admires in Rickson's reproductions. In a sense it revealed Gibson as a consumer of Rickson's obsessiveness,
not a participant in it. The jacket figures largely in the novel, in practical as well as psychological ways -- it symbolizes
the heroine's own appreciation of the care devoted to its manufacture and the whole spiritual meaning of repro flight jackets.
"Pattern Recognition" is the most important book written in the 21st Century, bursting with ideas and insights
into the new culture coming into being. But Gibson glances over certain implications of this new culture, can't quite get
his mind -- or his plot -- around them. Somehow the coolness, and deep strangeness, of a Buzz Rickson's reproduction is acknowledged
without being fully appreciated.
It leaves us with a problem. Do we want to wear Cayce Pollard's black Rickson's MA-1, which is, in fact, unutterably cool-looking,
or do we want to wear the original Rickson's reproduction, which is what she and Gibson think she's wearing?
In the end, I opted for the black model, because of its unutterable coolness and as a tribute to Gibson's great book.
For me, the jacket rates a 10 (out of 10) on the coolometric scale. From a different perspective, hard-assed and uncompromising,
it might rate as low as a 3.
It's a question each man or woman must decide for his or her self.
Here's a link to the American distributor of Buzz Rickson's jackets -- all of which are quite amazing and quite expensive:
Buzz Rickson's
[Buzz Rickson, incidentally, is the name of the hero of John Hersey's "The War Lover", played in the movie by Steve
McQueen.]
"NO WOW" BY THE KILLS
The second album by another two-person (guy-girl) group like the White Stripes. Good, solid, stripped-down rock -- lyrics
weak at times, with a kind of shopworn left-over-from-the-20th-Century attitude . . . but the music is edgy and inventive
and exciting. Rates a 9 (out of 10) on the coolometric scale.
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