'Funeral'

I thought it was really great in 2005. Today, I think this is one of the best albums I've ever heard. It's probably definitely one of the best of the last decade.

I think it stems from watching the Arcade Fire live. It was surreal experience mainly because I've always wanted to categorize something as "surreal" and also because I never listened to "Funeral" or the Fire's follow-up, Neon Bible, as high-energy, face-burners that made me want to swing around a room like a pencostal preacher.

Seeing them live makes you realize what kind of energy the band exudes and after re-listening -- about another dozen times the last three months -- to "Funeral" I realize the energy was always there, but it needed to be place in some context that I could actualize that energy and tap into it.

One of my favorite all-time records.

'A Christmas Gift For You From Phil Spector'

I recently read Mick Brown's Spector biography, "Tearing Down the Wall of Sound." In it, he talks at length about this album.

He'd probably have to because in the grand scheme of things, for such a prolific producer, Spector really didn't do a ton of work. He had the Ronettes, Darlene Love, the Righteous Brothers and, later, the Beatles, George Harrison and John Lennon.

Considering that's the extent of his work covering four decades, it's not a lot.

Add in that it's really odd, to me, that Spector produced this Christmas album for his "fans" putting his name on it as if rock and roll fans bought albums because he produced them and not because people like the Ronettes.

Needless to say, the guy was delusional and that delusion included the ego the size of Asia. It's an ego unparalleled.

But to cut away from Spector, this is a really cool album. If you want to really get and insight as to what the Wall of Sound was, get this album or tune into an oldes station during the holidays. It's just choreographed, coordinated noise. Nothing steps outside of some arranged boundary.

It's lush and if you know what went into it, the music is really cool to listen to.

'It's A Wonderful Life'

"Are you real?"

(What George Bailey says to Mary when he returns home after his vision.)

My favorite scene is when George Bailey's spent the day looking for the $8,000 that Uncle Billy lost (or had stolen) while going to deposit it in the bank.

Distraught, knowing he could be imprisoned and lose everything, George goes home to his children and wife and bites their head off because he's so frustrated and desperate.

His youngest son pounces on George's lap and growls like a lion. After the second time, George in a fit of anxiety takes his young son in his arms and hugs him as tight as ever, as if it was the for last time.

Why this film is important and popular is scenes like that where the rawest of human emotions are exposed.

If you ever want to know what's it like to be a parent, check that scene out. That epitomizes parenthood.

'Pictures at an Exhibition'

Two reference points because I really don't like Emerson, Lake and Palmer and really have nothing to say about this album other than they did a "Nutcracker" thing at the end and called it "Nutrocker," which is amusing:

1. When I worked at a newspaper, there was a graphics/print guy named Randy. And he loved Emerson, Lake and Palmer.

2. My only knowledge of Emerson, Lake and Palmer is that during their heyday of touring, Carl Palmer -- the drummer -- would have this bit where at a certain point during their show, he would tilt his head back and yank with his teeth at this rope, which would ring a giant bell above him. All while playing the song. Kinda like Led Zeppelin and the gong.

The story is that at some point the drum tech began lowering Palmer's drum stool by small degrees each show so it took a little bit more stretching of the neck and torso to reach the string or rope.

It got to the point where Palmer couldn't reach without almost standing up. So he realizes what's happening and he gets pissed.

So the next show they shorten the string instead.

Get it? EL&P drum techs are rascals.

'The Captive'

This is a dumb film and any movie inspired by Proust is probably going to be some inane, wandering foreign film with no real plot, message or even if it has no point, it feels like it's trying to make a point without doing it. Like the film's too cool to make a point. But if it wanted to, it would.

Nothing against Proust, however. I just don't think everyone is John Grisham or Nick Hornby where you can just transcribe their words to film.

I love this quote from the film's IMDB page:

"This movie doesn't try to tell you what to think or feel about its characters; there is none of the contrivances so common in American movies, none of the manipulation."

Fucking Americans! With their contrivances of telling audiences what to think about their characters. As if in every American film there's a narrator. Like Morgan Freeman in "Shawshank Redemption" coming in and saying, "Oh, by the way, you like Andy Dufresne. He's really a good guy."

What a douchey, non-American thing to say. And to think that same person made the admission that he/she actually hadn't read Proust. Let me tell you something, you're not allowed to review films on IMDB, use the word "contrivance" or bash American filmmaking unless you've read Proust. Asshole. We were responsible for "BASEketball" for crying out loud!

'Spartacus'

My first recollection of a film named "Spartacus" was when I saw the film "That Thing You Do," a really smart, funny and original movie that chronicled the rise and fall of a fictional 1960s pop-rock band.

In it, the main character, Guy Patterson, attempts a Kirk Douglas impersonation and states, "I am Spartacus."

I assume he was trying to reference the end of this movie although I don't understand it's relation to the Patterson character and the leader of a rebel slave army and claiming to be someone your not in order to be sacrificed for some kind of principle.

I was slightly thankful that the allusion didn't make sense. As it turns out, I wasn't missing out on anything.

This movie is 69 percent better if you take out the love interest. Didn't need it. Tell us the history. Paint for us first century Roman empire.

'Last Broadcast' & 'Lost Souls'

It's odd to me that in this day and age of the Internet, MySpace, YouTube and iTunes that I could go these 29 years without knowing anything about Doves, a British band that apparently has created two separate albums that someone decided I should hear before I die.

I suspect two things are at play: They're British and were never big in the United States. And they group themselves with bands like Spiritualized, Muse and Sparklehorse.

These bands all came up and kinda peaked in the mid- or late-1990s and somehow collected some kind of fandom without me realizing it and then years later I turn around at a rock and roll festival and 3,000 bobbing heads are digging Sparklehorse.

I think these bands were probably very disintersting for my 16-year-old self
and by the time I was old enough to embrace bands like this they were still pretty disinteresting. Except Spiritualized. I like them.

Doves are very generic. Kind of a modern wall of sound with bare-minimum melodies and layers and layers of sound. Unless you go soft or heavy, you need to bring the melody or I'm out. Look at Oasis. They got it. They didn't want to be too loud or too soft, but what they brought had substance and goodness.

I really don't get bands like Doves. No doubt if they played a concert today in my backyard, there'd be thousands and thousands and people there. People that have listened to Doves for 15 years while I read every guitar magazine between the years of 1994-1999 and if they mentioned the band then I completley missed it.

They're just so generic. They're an independent rock band probably not making any money and collecting no real fame and yet they continued to record lousy, boring, uninspired music.