'Aftermath'

A fantastic Rolling Stones record. I'd daresay, it is the best of their earlier recordings and showed a lot of maturing both as songwriters and musicians.

Aftermath is noted for its experimentation despite it being a pretty straight forward rock record. Still, it was released in 1966, the same time The Beatles were releasing Revolver and Sgt. Pepper ..., two highly experimental records that signified a change of typical guitar rock to studio wizardry.

The Beatles were changing the rules of the game and being progressive. The Stones were not, however, that doesn't (or shouldn't) take away from the majesty of Aftermath.

If nothing else, it is representative of Brian Jones' abilities and contributions to the band, and a glowing example of why I consider him the most important member of that group. His versitility is something you can't buy. Currently reading a book on The Beatles and the author goes into the first meeting between the supergroups. Noting Jones' ability to play multiple instruments, John Lennon told Jones that he really played the harmonica while he (Lennon) would "suck and blow."

Case in point: Jones played the marimba on "Under My Thumb," the sitar on "Paint It Black," the dulcimer on "Lady Jane," the koto on "Take It Or Leave It," in addition to his duties on guitar, backing vocals, harmonica and percussion.

You can't tell me he wasn't the guy pushing along the Rolling Stones machine.

'Hotel California'

I know I've discussed this part of my life before (probably with ABBA), but when I was a young teen, before I was able to drive or with a destination in which to drive to, I'd stay at home over the summer with littler more than a yen for music, a beginning foray into guitars and a lot of idle time.

Much of my time was spent at home where I'd watch music videos. Oddly, we didn't have MTV or VH1. Instead, I was stuck with MTV's kid brother The Box and a station where you could order records over the phone.

It was a TV Columbia House. They'd show a full list of CDs on the left hand side while showing a music video in the rest of the screen. You could then get a sample of the artist's music before you ordered it. It's one of the only reasons I like ABBA and how I first heard the scorching guitar solos from Don Felder and Joe Walsh on "Hotel California."

It was a concert performance of their hit song. Don Henley was behind the drums, singing with that goofy afro. That's all I remember outside of the guitar playing. I don't remember Glenn Frey or Randy Meisner (I assume) on bass.

Got to admit, it's still one of my favorite all-time guitar solos. To me it encapsulates everything I love about crisp guitar playing with lots of tone and body. There's a syncopation and building as it crescendos with the main riff.

I'd later learn to hate the album, Hotel California. As I listened to earlier Eagles, I saw them for what they were: A country band. As they grew older and certain influences remained absent from the group, they turned into a rock band. Of course, one of my favorite songs, "New Kid in Town," from Hotel California wound up charting on the Country and Western charts.

'Black Holes And Revelations'

In an article, one of the guys in the band Muse said that the band was influenced by Depeche Mode, Millionaire, Lightning Bolt, Sly and the Family Stone and music from southern Italy. (I assume that two of those groups are simply made up.)

Problem is, this album sounds like a bunch of rehashed U2 riffs, a couple of Rush lyrics and enough production to choke a donkey. Southern Italy. That alone signifies how retarded the guys in this band really are.

They started in 1994 and this is their fourth album. I remember last summer I saw that they were performing at an outdoor music festival that I was attending. I noticed their crowd was huge (they were second or third on the bill for the night. I kept wondering how did this band get so popular without me even hearing on them on some level.

It's not surprising, however, that they are popular. Like I said, they are cut from the same cloth as modern U2 and Coldplay. Pop music is popular. It's also derivative as shit.

'Doggystyle'

I listened to Snoop Doggy Dogg's debut album for the first time in about 15 years and I swear that it sounded as fresh and cool and funky as the day I first saw the the music video for "Who Am I (What's My Name)?"

Outside of the vernacular, nothing dates it outside of maybe the G Funk bass that seemingly defined so much of 1990s hip-hop. Still, the sound itself is as fresh as it can possibly get.

I've not quit playing it over and over the past two weeks and I doubt it'll stop for another couple until I get this all out of my system.

Takes me back though. NWA and all that I never got. Dr. Dre and Snoop are guys I could wrap my rural, white brain around. Completely unaware of what "indo" was, how you made a gin and juice and ... well, the sexual innuendo was like Greek.

However, there's little denying that no one's ever quite made a debut like Snoop and we'd be hard pressed to find another in the future.

'Deliverance'

I was prompted to re-watch and give this film the ol' review after a friend's wife watched it while on vacation and she decided to type up her own review.

She overrated it, I think, because she has an unhealthly affinity for Burt Reynolds. I've never liked this film, this being about the third time I've seen it all the way through.

I think its a train wreck from the beginning. I think the casting sucks and the complete lack of character development despite it being nearly a two-hour film is horrifying. We are given the bare minimum of information (that the river is being flooded, that Bobby and Drew are green) in the opening credits as the crew are driving to their destination. We later find out that Bobby and Drew and Lewis are barely acquianted.

All of this information should matter and is important when you give it thought. Instead, we are transfixed with Bobby getting anally raped by the hillbilly and Drew -- for whatever reason -- having his guitar out and having impeccable chemistry with a narrowed-eyed hill people youth despite neither of them learning to chord an actual guitar or banjo.

The film lacked focus. It's not an adventure flick. It turns into a backwoods version of Crime and Punshment as the four address the horrors of taking a life and the argument of keeping it a secret. Burt Reynolds is essentially taken out of the film for the final 40 minutes and we are stuck with Bobby and Ed (Ned Beatty, Jon Voight) trudge along despite having zero chemistry.

The best part, by far, is Drew getting shot.

'Soft Bulletin'

This Flaming Lips album was released in 1999, three years before their magnum opus, Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots.

And it is their ninth album. Yes, there are eight other Flaming Lips albums that I know next to nothing about. Yes, it's insane to me that a band could be so prolific in a genre of music that I enjoy and yet there's a lot I still don't know about them. It's almost like finding out a good friend as a second family in Topeka, Kan.

Soft Bulletin is melodic and good. I wouldn't say it's better than Yoshimi ..., but you could find a billion worse records in this world and most of them would be from 1999, a cesspool of music.

A few fun facts: The Lips recorded this album in the hippie commune of Cassadaga, New York where they'd record their next two albums and where other artists have gone. The album cover was taken in the 1960s for a TIME magazine article on LSD. It is a shot of Neal Cassady, the beat writer and bud of Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg.

'Talking Heads: 77'

This is the Talking Heads' first album. It was released, as you can guess, in 1977, two years after the band formally started performing under this name.

Their first four albums would all make the 1,001 list and it's tough as shit to find them in used CD bins.

Talking Heads fit into that category of band that I completely missed largely because I was born too late to necessarily get into them and I wouldn't exactly call their music "popular" in a way that would have forced them on me due to radio play. Looking back now, I should have been listening to them, Blondie, Roxy Music, Sonic Youth and others instead of the junk that I was filling my head with.

Talking Heads are considered "new wave," a genre of music that sprouted in the 1970s and became insanely popular in the 1980s. In fact, you would probably just call it pop music at a certain point. The music is defined by ... well, the music. Use of electronic noise and instruments including the synthesizer gave the genre its signature sound. As the synthesizer gained in popularity so did the genre. This is rather unusual. The electric guitar and its popularity did not ebb and wan with rock music or its popularity. The electric guitar was used by jazz musicians. You could probably say that rock music would've been just as popular with Elvis' swiveling hips or Chuck Berry's duck walk as it was with the electric guitar.

Fact is, new wave began in the clubs and dingy apartments in London and New York by the likes of the Talking Heads, Blondie, Elvis Costello, some punk bands, some ska bands and a whole host of people that were probably ignored by people going to Cyndi Lauper concerts. Unlike country, new wave got cool and it got huge. All thanks to a dumb band from New York City made up of art school kids.

'Janet Jackson's Rhythm Nation 1814'

Where is Rhythm Nation located? Is it a member or OPEC or the United Nations? Was it an Allied power during World War II?

Is Margaritaville or Suffragette City located in Rhythm Nation? Is its main export "danceable beats?" Does it import Swiss cuckoo clocks, South American rubber, Chinese children's toys or Japanese VCRs? Does it have a debt, a democratic government, a legislature, a national bird?

Clearly, its president is Ms. Janet Jackson. Judging from her outfit, it was a military dictatorship. It's national anthem is "Escapade." And its past time is getting down.

God bless Rhythm Nation.

****
If I can go back in the time machine, Rhythm Nation has a little bit of history for me. Listening to it now, I realize what shitty pop music we had to choose from back in the day.

Rhythm Nation was released in 1989. I was nine years old. This was the peak of my pop music days. I had just received for a birthday a smallish tape deck/radio. Small but servicable. Nowhere near a "boombox" it was more like a squeak box. My first tape -- received that same birthday -- was a copy of The Beach Boys' Greatest Hits Vol II. To this date, I've never seen Vol. I.

I remember sitting next to my little radio with a blank tape inside listening to top 40 radio for hours on end. Once they played a song I like (Jackson, Milli Vanilli, Jon Secada, Madonna, Bonnie Raitt, Bobby Brown, Bell Biv Devoe ... to name a few) and I'd quickly hit the "record" and "play" buttons simutaneously. I became an expert in identifying songs by the first five seconds of the song as the disc jockey talked over it.

I'd have tape after tape just chockful of pop songs. I dreamed of owning them on tape or ... gulp! ... compact disc like my older sister.

I'd also watch "America's Top 10," a music video show hosted by Casey Kasem on Saturday mornings. The show was later hosted -- to my delight -- by Tommy Puett, who portrayed Tyler Benchfield in the Sunday night dramedy with a retarded kid, Life Goes On. He was the mulleted, good-looking stud, who inexplicably is interested in the homely Kelly Martin.

'Document'

Document is REM's first album with Scott Litt producing.

Litt probably doesn't move the needle for most people and that includes those that probably follow rock music relatively closely.

Litt produced Document. Then he produced Green, Out of Time, Automatic for People and New Adventures in Hi-Fi making REM a household name and helping create some of the biggest rock hits of the era.

Producers don't get enough credit in this world. Most are musicians and most have an ear for music that most others don't possess. A good producer can take a band and its music and turn it into something beyond special. Something that will not only exist forever, but be regarded for eternity as brilliance.

Litt will never get an article written about him. However, it's pretty clear that he helped steer one of the most successful rock bands of the 1980s and 1990s in the right direction.

'A Confederacy Of Dunces'

My friend -- my archnemesis -- gifted a copy of John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces in college. She dedicated it to me, Ignatious.

Since that moment, I've read the book at least six times in 10 years. It is one of the most remarkable novels I've ever read and one of the greatest in American literature, bar none.

If you don't know Toole's story, it's worth a healthy read over at Wikipedia. Born and raised in New Orleans, he went to Tulane and later Columbia. He was apparently a brilliant guy. He was an assistant professor at 22 years of age at the University of Southwestern Louisiana. He was allegedly extremely popular and quite the party animal.

It was at the university where he met Bob Bryne, a slobbish professor of English specializing in medieval thought and was prone to wear a green deerstalker and play the lute.

It was Ignatious J. Reilly. He just didn't know it yet.

During his time in the military, Toole began writing A Confederacy of Dunces. He wrote and began attempting to get it published. Rejection after rejection followed and the deaths of John F. Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe affected him greatly. He began drinking heavily in the military, too.

The depression and paranoia grew and Toole's life became incredibly unstable to the point that he lost his professorship and spent his last days taking trips to several sites in addition to Andalusia, the Georgia home of deceased Southern writer Flannery O'Connor. Toole committed suicide by running exhaust with a garden hose to the inside of his car.

His mother would fight her own demons, but kept fighting to get A Confederacy of Dunces published. She did and it became an everlasting cog in American literature.

'Short Cuts'

This Robert Altman flick is more than three hours long.

Instead of spending your time fighting through this so-called adaptation of nine Raymond Carver short stories and poetry, I would suggest an alternative route.

Go find or borrow Carver's What We Talk About When We Talk About Love and Where I'm Calling From and read them. In three hours of reading, you should be able to knock out at least 15 or more short stories and it'll be more edifying than viewing the 1990s train wreck that was the film.

Or maybe you like a bunch of females actresses that oddly look all the seame wearing flowing, ill-fitting shirts and dresses, bicycle shorts, men in ridiculous haircuts and children in brightly-colored clothing. If that's your thing, this is your Citizen Kane.

Altman is hit or miss. Tim Robbins is solid in anything. And we see Julianne Moore pantsless and Madeline Stowe topless. And we get over-the-top proof that Andie MacDowell is absolutely the worst actress ever.

'Heavenly Creatures'

I got about 20 minutes into this film wondering who the actress portraying Pauline Parker. I knew her from something. I had a hunch. I needed to clarify.

My hunch was right.

It was "Rose" from the sitcom "Two and a Half Men," which once featured the polarizing Charlie Sheen. It was Melanie Lynskey.

I've always found her rather attractive on the sitcom, but I knew next to nothing about her history or past. I didn't know she was from New Zealand or that she got the co-starring role in Peter Jackson's Heavenly Creatures after a casting director found the 17-year-old at a local high school. Pure luck.

Taking in her entire career, her sitcom career is kind of her second fiddle. She's had semi-big roles in a bunch of films with the best of the best in Hollywood. Her leading-lady days may never come, but she's probably most valuable in a supporting role.

Anyway, I absolutely loved this film. It didn't hurt having Kate Winslet acting like a complete nut, only overshadowed by Lynskey. I typically don't enjoy Peter Jackson films. I think he overdirects and is too self-involved. Unless you're Alfred Hitchcock, putting yourself into your own movies is pretty pretentious. I think everything he's done recently has been pretty awful if not too much. Doesn't know when to stop.

It appears he knew exactly when to stop pre-Lord of the Rings. Heavenly Creatures is about what is taken away from the audience. You leave it wanting more and you leave his later movies just wanting to leave. I doubt what Jackson does gets any better than this film.

'System Of The Down'

I'm happy to be finally writing about this album so I don't need to continue listening to it.

System of the Down are the biggest cartoon of a band of all time. This pseudo-political, morality bullshit while you have super-anti-establishment facial hair. Get real.

Excuse me while I ignore the ramblings and railings of a bunch of dumb metal musicians from Southern California.

'Dirt'

It's shocking how good this album is. It's shocking how chockful of hits this album is.

It's a what's what of 1990s alternative rock music. "Them Bones." "Would?" "Rooster." "Dam that River." All great songs and all of them sound incredibly fresh for being 20 years old.

This is a bit of a surprise because it's been probably 20 years since I listened to this album wholly, and I kind of veered away from Alice in Chains as I started growing up. I don't blame myself as much as I blame Alice in Chains. They were never the same after this album, for my money. Other albums just seemed to lack after a while, then they broke up.

In 2002, lead singer Layne Staley was found decomposing in his house after an overdose on heroin and cocaine. He -- like most musicians of that genre and era -- was an avid drug abuser. During the recording of Dirt, it was noted that he would shoot up heroin in front of the band. He apparently smoked crack and did heroin for much of his life. The rest of the band were no saints. Jerry Cantrell was on anti-depression medication and who knows what else. The drummer and bassist were alcoholics.

I firmly believe Dirt is as good as it is because of the drugs. Also, Staley is a corpse because of the drugs. Was that worth it? Do you look back and think "Man, he did about as much as he was going to do on this Earth and his living and dying were as interchangable as underwear.

Thinking about it, it's sort of shocking the band were able to keep things together to tour and record. Not like they were city councilmen to begin with. Throw in drugs and alcohol and it was probably like herding cats. At least we've got this great album.

'Things To Come'

Did people in the 1930s really have this messed up vision of the future or is H.G. Wells just a maniac?

Would someone in 1936 be completely shocked with 1995, 2001 or 2011?

This film is set in "Everytown" which is totally not unlike, say, London or another city in England. War breaks out and chaos ensues. This, clearly, mirrors World War II and the bombings in England.

The war, however, continues for decades and humanity is thwarted back centuries and are forced into a series of city-states where martial law rules and civilizations are thrust back into the Dark Ages.

Eventually, society comes back to a modern age and the film culiminates when the people begin to reject the race toward modern living and two youngsters take a haphazard trip into space before the public can destroy the ship.

It's a relatively ridiculous film, if not borderline humorous. The visions of the initial war is a bit despairing and that's a good thing.

I would bet people of the 1930s got a supreme kick out of this film. I'm sure it was a real hoot. I'm sure they would be floored by the modern age. The Internet alone would cause their brains to absolutely ooze out of their ears. It would be the singular hardest thing to explain to a citizen of the age.

However, isn't it more interesting to think about all the things that people of the 1930s thought would be phased out with technology, but are still here. Like pencils. Toilet paper. Coats. Trains. Cigarettes. Glasses.

I guarantee you that if you transplanted a 50-year-old man in 1936 to today, it would shock him more to see how life is very much the same aside from a cacophony of conveniences that he'd just find annoying.

'Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon'

It's funny that Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was a gigantic success in the United States; however, it was considered just another high-flying ninja movie in Asia (the Asians apparently had a huge issue with the actors' accents being wrong).

Foreign-language karate films had not been popular in the United States for the previous 30 years and I am not including The Karate Kid or the Jonathan Brandis vehicle, Sidekicks.

This film comes out and it knocks everyone's socks off because it featured stunts and choreography that Americans had never seen.

It is super smooth choreography. I like the way the actors would fight with grace and the least amount of effort. Fighting was like standing up or stretching. Nothing that resulted power or strength or brutality.

Overall, I didn't like this film for a couple of reasons. First of all, I didn't get the flying. Crazy, insane fighting and unbelievable moves are one thing. Flying is another.

Two, I hated that nobody ever killed each other. The police officer there around the beginning was killed, but the rest of the film was everyone pointing swords at each other's necks and either too scared or bold to finish the job.

Also, I hated the story. Foreign-language ninja movies typically have a really good story. Look back at all the old Japanese and Chinese films from the 1950s and 1960s. I never really minded Bruce Lee's films and their story lines. They don't need to be complicated. Just something beyond nothing.

'Fantastic Planet'

Although it was directed by a Frenchman and finished in a Paris studio, this brilliant animated feature is actually quite Czechslovakian and is considered an allegory for the Russian occupation of the country.

Following Nazi occupation through May 1945, Czechslovakia underwent a coup amidst its government when the communist party gained power and effectively took over and thus Russia was brought in as sort of the ruling sovereign state. Basically, it's a a big land grab as everyone took sides in the Cold War.

The country's assets were nationalized: Heavy industrialization took place and farming wasn't forsaken, but it was severely mistreated as it was slowly weeded out as far as the country's vision was and what Russia needed.

This history is a big mess. There is no story here of millions of Czechs dying in the fields or Stalin doing away with its entire population. But, from 1948 to 1989, the Czech people probably felt a lot like the Oms, helpless against the giant Draags. I would gather that this settlement between the countries was a bit troubling because so many Czechs lost their lives in the two world wars and then to have Russia with their greedy paws in their cookie jar had to be a tad demeaning.

Following a reform in the 1960s, censorship was tightened up in Czechslovakia and thus the finishing of Fantastic Planet was moved to Paris to avoid the censors.

'Crash'

What a disgusting piece of shit. To rhapsodize and preach about racism and present it as some sort of cartoon or caricature of real life is insulting to those of us open minded enough not to be bigots and to every step human beings have taken the last 300 or 50 or 10 years Crash is a slap in the face.

In Paul Haggis' mind, he wants to remind us all just how real racism is. He also wants to remind us all just how real stereotypes are. He might as well put Ludacris and Larenz Tate in black face. Those two were made to look ridiculous. Confronting actual stereotypes by being those very stereotypes (being dangerous). There's the hurtful Sandra Bullock as the untrusting rich lady, who'll have to look long and hard for a locksmith in Los Angeles that isn't Hispanic.

Most offensive was Jennifer Espisito's "Ria" who begins the film on an awful foot by going off on some "Asian people can't drive" comments. Nice. Low-hanging fruit, assholes. Surprised they didn't comment at the Hispanic "Ria" wasn't taking some hard-working white person's job because she'll work for less.

"Ria" continues her assault. After an aborted love-making session with Don Cheadle, the pair go on a self-righteous and completely unbelievable rant about how she's from Puerto Rico or something.

The problem with this film is that it attempts to take a very real problem and insert into a fantasty land where daughters put blanks in their father's guns and cops randomly finger bang hot women while their dash camera is picking all of this up, and the couple feel "helpless" in doing anything about it.

Problem is, cops get fired ALL THE TIME for doing bullshit things to people, nobody turns racist when they're about to get laid, no one would put up with "Ria" because she ain't that good looking and a vast, vast majority of us completely distrust people of another race. If we did, nothing would ever get done. What kills most people isn't that there are minority of people holding real racist bias, but that a majority of us could give a shit anymore.

'The Deer Hunter'

The 1970s. What are you going to do? It's like the dead-ball era in baseball for pitchers. If you were lucky enough to be born in a certain era and work in a certain industry, there were a lot of factors going your way.

I can't figure out exactly what was going on in the 1970s. My friends say that directors were allowed to make whatever movies they wanted. Probably this is true. But we still have good movies today. Full Metal Jacket was made in the 1980s. The Deer Hunter isn't especially graphic (disturbing, yes; graphic, no). Outside of it being four hours long, the makers of The Deer Hunter didn't get away with anything, per se.

I think there are many other factors. First, the audience. Filmgoers today demand a certain amount of simplicity. They want filmmakers to meet them halfway when they go to the cinema. In the 1970s, films like The Godfather, The Deer Hunter, Apocalypse Now, One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest and Chinatown were not only making money, but turning the heads of critics. Today's film fans can't stand sitting in on a three-hour movie unless it has killer design or CGI.

With that, you had actors and directors that could do these insanely awesome films because they were making money and winning awards. These days, serious actors must make the money-making film before they can do the thought-provoking indie flick.

Once they got Robert De Niro involved, it all clicked. Meryl Streep was brought in. John Cazale (who didn't live long enough to see the film as a finished product) followed. You had a really good core to go with. Adding Christopher Walken and others was just icing on the cake. Those people wanted to make important films. I can just imagine all of them hanging out together between filmings talking about what they are going to do next. How each will take their occupation to the next level. It was exciting not necessarily because of the actors or directors. But everyone -- investors, fans, critics -- were all pulling the same way.

'The Incredible Shrinking Man'

This is an interesting film. What would you do if you shrunk to the size of a few inches.

I would honestly make the most out of it. I think I'd want to be alone. I couldn't stand being around my wife and family -- all scary giants -- as they looked down (literally) on me and felt sorry for me. I'm already two inches tall. There are worse things. I don't need to feel bad.

Generally, there are accomodations are inch-tall people. A crust from a slice of bread will last you six months. A drop of water is your supply for the day. Indoor plumbing would be a problem, but general access to food water and the basics is there because of the lack of need on a daily basis.

I'd live in a dollhouse and just chill out. Problem is, they don't make tiny books or tiny TVs. It might geting boring. If I were educated enough, I'd attempt to build a camera and take photographs and make films from my perspective and somehow have them transferred to a regular-sized format. People can see Earth from the tiniest of perspective.

I'd also fight a bunch of spiders and poison the cat.

'Sideways'

Ohhhhhhh. I get it.

Paul Giamatti's character is the pinot noir grape: Fragile, thin-skinned and in need of constant attention. However, if he ... err, the grape receives that attention, then he ... ummm, it is possible of great things.

Meanwhile, Thomas Haden Church's character is the cabernet grape. Tough. Works with anything, anywhere.

I love thinly-veiled metaphors in film. Often, they are buried so deep in the narrative that they are lost. I appreciate a director that'll serve it up on a silver platter.

Fun fact: Sales of merlot wine dropped in the United States while sales of pinot noir increased by 16 percent following the release of this film.