Tower Records…

March 11th, 2009

Back in the early 90s I worked at the Paramus, NJ Tower Records…

It was right when Nirvana was just breaking… I remember that place was always PACKED!! It was a happening place, and it was hard to get a job there too… so many people wanted to work there.. I got in because I KNEW about music.. they actually asked you questions about your knowledge before they hired you.. 

Completely different time… People totally cared about music… they bought tons of it.. loved it.. asked questions… the business was always strong..

I was on my feet all day long putting cds away… making new cards.. they STILL came in the long boxes at that time…

I gotta say I learned about a ton of music during my year or so there.. got some cool stuff.. always first in line for every concert that came out… had a couple of really great friends there too…

I used the money that I made, which was next to nothing, on demos (remember demos?  you’d actually go into a studio, buy actual reel-to-reel TAPE and record stuff) and cds..

Looking back on it, it was a real interesting time..

The reason Im thinking about this now is because on Facebook there is this Tower Records, Paramus Alumni Group that I was told about from one of the people who worked there.. and there were all these pictures from that time.. looking back on all those faces was totally weird.. I cant believe how many of them I remember.. the styles were so early 90s… meaning FUCKING HORRIBLE.. just godawful styles.. exactly like its been described here.. heavy fabrics.. pleated jeans.. everyone looked uncomfortable and bloated..

The things is some of the peple looked younger than I thought but most looked exactly as how I remembered them.. Jersey people.. guys in bands that were trying to make it (and never did).. that weary look.. girls that drank too much beer and fucked the guys n the bands that never made it..

I was the ONLY one who broke out of that and actually made it to the next level..

…only to not make it in the end.. but still..

I don’t have the nagging feeling of never having made it… or got a shot.. My talent was validated..

It must be a terrible feeling to not have that if your life’s passion is playing music.. it must take a huge toll.. I see it in all their faces..

Looking through all those pictures and going over the memories left me with a tremendous feeling of ambivalence and yearning..

In honour of those days.. my song of the day is “You Brains” by Chris Harford… I loved the song at the time and always thought he shouldve had more of a career

Yeah.. Tower…

There was something special about that place back in the day.. now this is all that’s left..

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It’s been a while..

March 9th, 2009

Well.. It’s been a while since I posted here… or did much of anything at Walrus for that matter..

I dunno..

I just got in the habit of not doing anything.. uninspired.. bored.. tired.. cold.. Just had no drive at all to work on this.. It’s gone on for so long that I figured I’ll try to break the cycle and come up with something/ANYTHING to put up that’s new..

As I discussed in the messageboard, I think the whole thing started when I caved in took off the “Guess the Rack” feature on the website.. Not that I was that attached to it.. It’s just that I’m a creature of habit.. It broke a small part of the routine.. and it didn’t feel right afterwards..  Plus, I got into a busy stretch at work and I just didn’t have the time.. Plus it’s all fucking irrelevant anyway..

Anyway…

This weekend.. what did I do?

*sigh*..

I dunno, I went downtown.. hung out with my brother and his girlfriend.. paid too much for a few lps at Academy ( I should be cutting down in this economy, yet I feel like I’m paying MORE)…

I also bought MLB  2K9 for my Xbox360… which has gotten horrific reviews everywhere.. I’m sorry but I don’t think it’s that bad.. pretty enjoyable for me..  but apparently there’s another baseball game on the PS3 (can’t afford it so it doesn’t matter) called MLB: The Show that is supposed to be the ultimate baseball game ever made…  *sigh*…

Whatever.. can’t afford to buy a PS3 for one lousy game.. even though I’ve been searching for the perfect baseball game for about 20 years..

What else?

Was talking to with a couple last night… educated people..  in academic jobs.. I asked them what country out of all the countries in the world has the most interesting history?  The woman said France…  I said, REALLY?  Over America?  She asked Why America?  I gave a a few reasons.. I even mentioned that France based it’s entire revolution on ours…  then she said.. “No it was the OTHER WAY AROUND… France had it’s revolution prior to the US”…. Of course I set her straight.. she went on to say that this was what she was taught as I child.. I think she’s from Chile..

Now… these are “educated” people.. with high paying academic jobs.. and they don’t fucking KNOW that the American Revolution set the bar for ALL revolutions.. This was the blue print.. and the IDEAL..  Supposedly she said she was taught this..I can’t see how this is possible..  

Anyway.. so much for the educated people of the world..  

What else?

Saw Apocalypse Now: Redux the other day.. The film to me has aged very well.. and I find it more interesting NOW than I ever did.. visually it’s brilliant.. some iconic scenes in it.. However the Redux is nowhere as good as the original.. I fucking HATE that added scene with this unbelievably ANNOYING opium smoking french woman in it.. the most horrifically bad performance adn voice..  I mean, Coppola obviously cut it out for a reason originally.. One should never go back and re-do what came out originally.. it’s never better… INCLUDING Blade Runner.. I LIKE the fucking VOICE OVER!!

Didn’t see Watchmen.. I’m going to.. just didn’t weant to deal with the douchebag crowds..

Anything else?

I’ve started using this lightbox I got for this animation project Im working on, and it fucking works great.. and it was cheap too.. FINALLY.. a good deal and it works..

I’ve got so many ideas that are crowding my head and instead of tackling them I end up doing nothing.. I feel like Im going a hundred miles an hour in my brain.. Im cycling through all these thing and in the end I just opt to lie down on the couch and watch tv.. I gotta slow things down and start working on these things one by one..

I guess that’s what Im gonna do.. slowly get the Walrus site bacl to to speed..

Tonight, I’ll work on the Top 60s list.. which has fucking stumped me… I’ve made attempts but nothing has resonated with me.. but Ill try again..

Yeah.. this was a boring entry.. but I needed to put SOMETHING up just to break the cycle of nothing..

How about?

Trust Us by Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band.. Off their second album “Strictly Personal”… This song is a total mindfuck.. the whole album is actually.. Originally recorded as a more or less straight up blues (albeit Beefheart’s version of the blues) album.. the record company later on added a bunch of “Psychedelic” effects to make it more in vogue with what is going on.. the effect is totally bizarre, disjointed and really interesting.. It’s an essential album..

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Weekend wrap up…

February 2nd, 2009

This weekend seemed to’ve come and gone in a blink of an eye… Saturday, I slept most of the day… read another 100 pages or so of Naked and the Dead (almost done)… watched the Knicks beat the Pacers (we’re 9-7 in JANUARY!!)… and then Dave K. and J. Nora came by for a little get together with their women… we drank and talked into the night.. WAY into the night… the party wound down around 3:30 am… I woke up on Sunday at 9 am with no shred of a hangover… it was strange.. I started to feel that there was something wrong with me that I wasn’t sick… I went back to bed for a bit… and woke up again feeling out of sorts…

To add to my strange feeling, I watched parts of Ralph Bashki’s animated 1972 movie “Fritz the Cat”, based on R. Crumb’s famous feline hero… I gotta say I was totally blown away… I hadn’t seen it for years… it totally got to me… it was jazzy and philosophical and the animation was watercoloursy and melancholic…  

 

I gotta find the DVD of this…. pronto…

After that I finally watched the Coen Bros ‘Burn after Reading’ on my brother’s recommendation.. it was good.. a couple of great scenes in it.. but I wasn’t as blown away by it as he was… after that I got some new shoes… these colossal Swedish rubber jobs… called Tretorn Stralas… they’re nice and cozy.. and apparently 100% waterproof…

Pleased with myself.. later on I decided to try out my new nylon string I picked up a couple o weekends ago… and I noodled around..  and recorded it… this is what I came up with…

Yeah it’s messy… but fuggit… best I could do at that moment..

What else? 

I shaved my beard this weekend… first down to a moustache but it was annoying me so I shaved that off as well.. I feel better without it..  I was starting to feel like the Prisoner of Zenda with it suffocating my face…

BEARDLESS IN 09!!

Anyway, now Im fucking exhausted and I gotta get up early tomorrow..

So I’ll leave you with a song off the new Springsteen album, ‘Working on a Dream’, which has been stuck in my head all weekend… Outlaw Pete…

Can you hear me?

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Silent running…

January 27th, 2009

I ate too much japanese last night and was feeling restless and sick to my stomach…  couldn’t get to sleep.. felt lost and irrelevant.. so I decided to watch some netflix on the ole xbox360…

One of the movies on the queue caught my attention…. 1971’s “Silent Running” starring the great, great Bruce Dern… I started it up

This might be one of the saddest films I’ve ever seen in my entire life… and I’ve seen a few..

I’ve always heard about this flick but never got around to watching it… even though I love Bruce Dern in anything that he’s in.. I knew it was a sci-fi story with an ecology/conservation theme… but for some reason I thought that it was a cheesy movie or something… well.. it wasn’t.. it was beautiful and disturbing and heartbreaking and well done.. totally bizarre.. too.. I mean the soundtrack was done by Joan Baez!!  so strange…

The other thing about this movie that I noticed right off the bat was WALL-E WAS A COMPLETE RIPOFF OF THIS MOVIE!!  In fact, after watching it I immediately scanned the  internet to see if anyone else had made this connection as well and WHADDYA KNOW?  SOMEONE ELSE HAD

silent

The movie is set on a floating space spation (an American Airlines space staion with all the emblems on it and stuff)  in the middle of space and Bruce Dern is there with three other companions waiting to hear word that they can come back to earth to start to re-foliate it… sound familiar?  Well to add to that coincidence.. there are not one but THREE cute robots that are central to the story…  the quiet humanity in which these robots are protrayed is so well done.. I’ve never seen anything like it…

I mean this story is HEARTBREAKING… and Bruce Dern’s performance is just fucking stunning…  so moving…

Anyway… this space station is harboring a bunch of of geodomes that each contain a forest and little critters in it… Instead of asking them to come back to earth with the domes they get a message to scrap the whole forest project destroy the domes and head home.. 

Thats when everything starts going wrong.. and Im not going to get into it any further cause you have to see this movie if you haven’t…  all I can say is it’s a fucking tearjerker.. and still completely relevant.. AND the special effects are fucking great for the time… and talk about a YEARNING vibe… yearning for DAYS….

I’m shocked by how good and unique this film is… I feel like an asshole for not having seen it up until now…  you MUST SEE IT Walrus readers!!

silenposter

Anyway… after that I couldn’t sleep so I watched a long documentary on Les Paul and was once again blown away by how beautiful his recordings that he made with Mary Ford were… so I’ll leave you with his signature tune… How High the Moon…which totally fit in somehow with Silent Running..  Those AAAAAAHHHHS in it never fail to blow me away.. and that guitar solo.. FUGGEDABOUTIT!!

 

Man… I’m GOOD and depressed now..

…night night…

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State of Walrus Union… You Can’t Please Everyone, So You Got To Please Yourself

January 23rd, 2009

So the last week or so has been pretty eventful in Walrus land….  Starting with the launching of our messageboard (which is doing quite nicely and provingo to be full of interesting conversation) and now most recently with the addition of two new features:  David Zapanta’s excellent new strip Melancholy Squared and our new lifestyle blog The Frugal Materialist…

Apparently, however, you can never win with some people… Awaiting for me in the Walrus mailbox when I got home from work was a nasty letter from a disgruntled “former Walrus fan” who complained at great length how I have destroyed the site with the addition of the messageboard and our decision to remove the “Guess the Rack” feature off our front page among other various grievances… I will not reproduce the letter here but suffice it to say the main gist was that Walrus Comix had sold out… that we don’t offer any art or music anymore (which is patently untrue) and that we have forsaken good writing for mundane threads about how cold the weather is….  and that the original vision had been lost in an effort to gain readership… and a desparate sense of putting together a community…

Well, all I can say is this person has completely missed the point… and if anyone should know what the original vision or this site was it would be ME… 

The EXACT POINT of creating the Walrus Comix Website was to BRING TOGETHER A COMMUNITY… one that embraces art and music and commentary… Our messageboard is completely in line with this spirit and I’m damn proud of it and look forward to hearing from everyone every day… The members are all terrific, unique people with something to real to offer the world… and if all this person got out of visiting the forums was the thread on how cold it was then that’s his problem… not mine…

On that note I dedicate the following song to our former fan…

“Garden Party” by Ricky Nelson…
NOTE: listen carefully to the beginning of the second verse… TOO PERFECT.

ANYWAY…Let me end this post on a LIGHTER NOTE… I did get a very nice email from the proprietors of the delicious eatery Jimmy Buffs  thanking us for promoting their establishment on Walrus… Thank YOU Jimmy!!  Your grub is TOP NOTCH!!

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My Aching Back is KILLING ME!

January 21st, 2009

So I was up all night working on my top 300 list and I noticed my back was staring to hurt a little.. When I woke up this morning I felt like I was in fucking traction!!  I could barely move.. and I had to rush to work on top of it.. In the word of Ratso Rizzo from Midnight Cowboy… “IM DYIN’ OVAH HEEERE!!”

 I gotta say, hanging out on the WC Messageboard is so fucking great… all the people are intelligent and interesting.. it’s such a goddamn pleasure to be part of that community over there.. So if you haven’t registered do so.. It’s shaping to be the best messageboard goin’!!

Anyway, Im in too much pain now to think of anything to say so I’ll just leave you with the song of the day… “She’s Falling Apart” by the Flamin’ Groovies off their tremendous “Flamingo” LP…

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Bye Bye BUSH!

January 20th, 2009

Here’s a little music for the occasion!!

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Weekend Recap

January 19th, 2009

Im mentally and physically exhausted… I’ve had a too-full last few days or so.. Beginning with setting up Walrus’ Messageboard and ending with working on this semi-animated short film for my brother…

Where do I begin?  It was too fucking cold out to do anything on Saturday.. so I basically stayed in and worked on this above-mentioned film… The project took shape a couple of weeks ago when my brother’s boss asked him if he wanted to do a short film with me and him acting in it for this project theyre working on… they had seen the trailer for a short movie me and my brother did a year and a half ago called “Falling Off the Table” and they wanted something like that….

Well, I wasn’t really into acting again… but I did suggest that we could do an animated short with a kind of a 70s vibe a la “The Point” and that famous Tootsie Roll Pop commercial that I would do all the artwork for if he wrote the script and then we could do the voice overs…  so we went over the approach a bit… and I came up with a bunch of drawings this weekend

Here’s a couple of screenshots from it:

 dinerscenesm

dinercloseupsm 

After that I worked on a portrait or my Songwriters series… watched the Knicks lose… hung out on the messageboard… read some more Naked & The Dead for our book club and eventually went to sleep….

The next day I was determined to get out and shop around for some LPs or something.. which I did.. I picked up a few things of interest… then I stopped into First Flight Guitars on 1st ave and impulse bought a nylon string guitar… it was only 85 bucks… and it has a pretty nice tone to it.. then I went to the new Kim’s on 2nd Ave.. which totally sucks compared to the old one.. depressing vibe in there and poorly stocked.. I don’t know how they’re gonna make it if they don’t shape up…  Anyway, they had the Fleet Foxes album on vinyl there for cheap ad I picked that up with a few DVDs… including Woody Allen’s latest film Vicky Christina Barcelona…

Got home and watched it.. well.. My initial reaction to it is it’s his most cohesive film since Deconstructing Harry.. well-written… and for the most part watchable… but overall just overlong and boring.. but not amateurish like his last films have been.. it was well made.. In fact, it wasn’t really Woody Allensy.. It was more like an Eric Rohmer film… definitely had a European vibe.. That’s exactly what it was like a really long Eric Rohmer film… I’m sure I would have appeciated it a bit more.. just a bit when I was younger.. but it just left me completely cold in the end…

What else?

Nothing much.. gonna go sleep… my back is killing me and tomorrow is another working day…

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Messageboardin’

January 16th, 2009

Well, as I mentioned in my previous blog I was thinking of starting a messageboard…  So I did!!

THE OFFICIAL WALRUS COMIX MESSAGEBOARD HATH ARRIVED!!

It all came together pretty quickly… and we already have 30 registered users so far,  lots of guests and one full day of robust conversation…  We’ve discussed everything from Disney to the SHAM WOW guy… Man it’s been fun so far.. exciting.. I love the process of thinking about something… going over it thoroughly in my head then setting about doing it… and coming up with something even better than I originally conceived..  Plus something like this is open-ended.. you never know how things are gonna look day to day.. It just tites into the original concept that we had for Walrus Comix in the frst place.. as a community…   

So get it on the experience and REGISTER Goddamnit!!

Anyway…

What else? 

I’m just about halfway through the Naked and the Dead for the WC Book Club… one of the most entertaining books I’ve read in a long time.. Not going to get into it here though.. It’s got its own thread on the messageboard…

They ran a bunch of Film Noirs on TCM last night… Killer’s Kiss, Double Indemnity, The Big Sleep..  I love film noirs.. something so comforting to my soul about them.. I dont know what.. but my father and brother share the same love of them… theyre great to relax to…

Nothing better than having a good sleep while the Big Sleep plays quietly in the background..

What else?

The media is literally frothing at the mouth over this crash landing yesterday.. they’re calling it “The MIRACLE ON THE HUDSON”… Can the media be anymore fucking gay?

I mean what the fuck with the word miracle?  It wasn’t a miracle.. it was a fucking lucky set of circumstances combined with a great pilot thinking on his feet… but NO the media has got to inject some kind of phony magic/religious undertone to it..  anything to keep the public in an unaware coma..

Fuggit..

Gonna go see what’s doin on the messageboard now..

See you there!

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Stuck in the Middle…

January 14th, 2009

I’ve been feeling stuck lately concerning the music list  I’ve been working on… I’ve reached the middle and I don’t know where to go from here..

I thought about it and realized that this list has become an analogy for my life… I’M stuck in the middle and don’t know where to go from here..

Sometimes, I just feel like packing it all in… the meaningless of it all really overwhelms me.. it goes on and on like ripples in a pond.. and on particularly bad days not only do I dwell on my own meaninglessness but I take on others as well.. I think about people I feel bad for and defenseless animals and on an on.. like ripples in a pond of liquid misery..

Still, I put one foot in front of the other despite the fact that it doesn’t make a bit of difference whether I do or don’t..

Anyway… what else is new?

Saw Cheech and Chong’s classic movie “Up in Smoke” last night.. It’s their best one by far.. It’s just got this real underground comix, hip vibe to it.. plus it’s funny as hell.. Cheech is genius in it.. felt better after watching it.. it set my mind right a bit..

cheechupinsmoke

Then I started thinking about setting up a messageboard on Walrus and my brain started taking on the problem of how I would go about it.. I feel better when I’m working out something in my head.. So with any luck that will be set up soon… so look out for it..

Didn’t have time to read any more of the Mailer book… as I was working on the list most of the night…    I’ll try to get around it tonight..

Going to lunch..

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