#Another famous song that describes their dynamic early on

[cookie4hope]

Rin: Wer will challenge each other on the world stage!

Haru: Speak for yourself.

Part 3 Round 1 Match 7

Rin and Haru vs Maxie and Archie

Rin Matsuoka and Haru Nanase from Free! Iwatobi Swim Club.

Maxie and Archie from Pokemon.

[warningsine]

Now that we’ve gotten to the end of Girls5eva season three, there’s just 6 much we’ve seen the girl group sing about: the hotness of boys in space, UTIs, knee surgery. But in the quest to be famous 5eva, one song has to be No. 1. Using a highly scientific process known as “listening to my own taste,” I ranked the output of Girls5eva thus far, focusing both on whether the songs are good as stand-alone songs and whether they are actually funny. For the sake of clarity, I stuck to the music available on the show’s official cast recordings, which does leave off several gems we only hear for a few seconds onscreen. (Why didn’t we get a studio version of Dawn’s song where she uses every possible definition of the word “set”? This is a question I can only yell fruitlessly at the screen and hope for a response.) Until then, we will make do with this list of the excellent Girls5eva material that is available on a music-streaming service near you.

32) “U Ready?” A filler song that is itself a joke about filler songs, you have to admire the number of ways the Girls5eva writers have the group stall for time. The delivery is very funny, and we get all the girls (including Ashley Park) doing their best ready-for-MTV voices to confirm they are, indeed, “in the house” and “ready.” However, the concept is better as an elaborate joke than a song, per se. Best line: “If you’re ready, could you say ‘ready’? Because you could be ‘in the house’ and not ‘ready.’”

31) “Home Alone Doorknob” This is barely a song, but man, it’s a funny metaphor for what happens to your clitoris when you get horny. Best line: “It’s gonna get sexy, so watch out, Joe Pesci!”

30) “The Splingee” Another exercise in specific girl-group humor, Girls5eva describes how to do a “dope” dance move that is supposedly taking the world by storm. It involves whipping your hair, doing figure eights with your waist, blinking with two eyes, and getting all shy like you want to cry. The instructions end with the note that “the only thing left to do is repeat it two more times to make one complete splingee.” Honestly, it sounds like a home workout I should try. Best line: “Grind up on a ghost, then shake it out.”

29) “Who U Know” A solo performance by Jeremiah Craft’s Lil Stinker (who later gets canceled and rebrands as a country act), this is a send-up of name-dropping rap singles, with Stinker just listing everyone he knows, from his mom to his friend’s mom to Alfre Woodard. Best line: “From Zendaya to Zen-die-a!”

28) “No Strings” Gloria spends season three trying to hook up with every type of woman, but realizes that she’s a romantic after all. Here, she’s trying to embrace a no-strings-attached dynamic through a nonsensical folk tune that’s about a couple chasing the moon in an airplane powered by love. Best line: “A morning that never came until the coroner said to the wizard ‘time of death,’ the same.”

27) “Line Up” ”This is the song that launches Girls5eva’s comeback, since Lil Stinker samples “Famous 5eva” on it. We’ll get to their original hit later on, but the Stinker side of it is pretty generic as a placeholder for the kind of song that might sample something from the early 2000s. Best line: “I know you wanna light up, forever 5eva enough.”

26) “Thinking About Myself” One of Dawn’s stabs at songwriting early in season two, this is a fairly direct ballad about self-involvement. It does have some great zealous grandstanding vocals from Renée Elise Goldsberry, though. Best line: “Crying harder than anyone at a funeral for a great-uncle I barely knew.”

25) “Space Boys” In the chronicles of Girls5eva’s adventures in dating, here we have them going on an interstellar boy-kissing mission. Sadly they don’t have a TARS to keep them company, but after checking every planet they can (including “the stars”) they find some space boys (“more exotic than a waiter from France!”). On the show, the song accompanies some flashbacks to a young Gloria trying to avoid making out with actual boys, but solely as music, it’s just a low-key sci-fi jam. Best line: “We found a planet full of girls, but we left!”

24) “Later” An empowerment song in the genre of “Brave,” sung of course by Sara Bareilles, but about procrastination. The drum and piano orchestrations are so inspiring it’s easy to ignore that the message is that you really don’t need to do anything right now. Best line: “Now’s the not the right time, let’s aim for next year when we’ll have no fear, maybe by then the problems got solved by themselves all on their own.”

23) “Boyz Next Door (Puber-Dude)” To match the queasy sexualization of the Girls5eva, this number offers up the chance to objectify the just-recently pubescent members of Boyz Next Door, who have become the “hottest boys in the cul-de-sac” with a “Backstreet’s Back”–style anthem of their own. Who could resist their thin little mustaches, awkward growth spurts, and bland conversation? Best line: “Floppy hair, greasy brow, Adam’s apple going pow-pow-pow.”

22) “Sweet’N Low Daddy” Another vault track: In season three, the adult members of Girls5eva are pretty embarrassed by the message of their old hit about the benefits of dating an older man, but man, it’s pretty catchy, so you can understand why Cat Cohen’s character took it as gospel. Their ideal daddy has parents you never need to meet because they died during Nixon, and, of course, the song ends with the crucial question: “Real talk, when are you going to die?” Best line: “Don’t need to graduate, because we’re elder bait!”

21) “Can’t Wait 2 Wait” Back in the day, Busy Phillips’s Summer and Andrew Rannells’s Kev collabed on this break-out Christian-pop single about the joys of not having sex yet. Its fun hook and a peppy atmosphere bely the sheer grossness of the overall message. Best line: “Premarital urges aren’t itches to be scratched, so look up medical oddities until those feelings pass.”

20) “Daughter Hero” Renée Elise Goldsberry gets to do a groovy ’90s ballad with Wickie in celebration of her own generosity to her mother, never mind the fact that she comes from a solidly upper-middle-class family. She buys her mom a house, a house that’s significantly less nice than the one she already has! Best line: “Daughter hero, like if Jesus had a sister!”

19) “New York City Moms” An obvious sequel to “New York Lonely Boy” (more on that below), this song brings on Ingrid Michaelson(!) to perform an ode to the women of the city who have chosen to wait to have kids. A celebration of the moms who have “bumps poking out of Eileen Fisher” and are “judged by their husband’s out-of-town sister,” the Girls5eva writers can riff endlessly on very niche New York micro-communities, and bless them for that. Best line: “Spent their 20s in a disco, still younger than moms in San Francisco.”

18) “Summer Brings the Fall” Kev’s best attempt at a torch song involves an increasingly convoluted series of attempts at wordplay that I can’t help but respect. It starts out with “thought you were for ev, thought you were for Kev, you were like whatev, now I pray to heav … for strength” and just gets more forced from there. Best line: “Thought I was your male, cause you’re my holy grail.”

17) “Is There a Me?” Season three brought Busy Philipps a short but sweet bit of soul-searching in which Summer questions if she has any identity of her own, or if her personality has just been a series of attempts to please guys. Points for Philipps showing off some vocal training, deductions for the amount of Netflix cross-marketing involved. Best line: “Do I even like The Witcher, or is it just to please a mister? And what is The Witcher? I watched 40 minutes and I’m still not sure!”

16) “Inside My Sweater” Girls5eva’s music industry gets awfully specific with its parody of a Harry Styles–type sensitive boy hounded by mobs of fans named Gray Holland, played by Gossip Girl alum Thomas Doherty (he also played a similar role on the late, lamented High Fidelity Hulu reboot). As far as sound-alikes go, this Harry–slash–Shawn Mendes low-key bob is eerily accurate but also somehow a successful earworm, especially in the way Doherty refuses to ever pronounce the “r” in “sweater.” Best line: “Come dance and cook and make sweet love with me, inside my sweater!”

15) “Welcome to Now” Doherty’s soft-boy star Gray Holland returns, against his own will, in a pop hit constructed by his label “because Clause 46B, Paragraph Q of the artist’s contract grants the company use of postmortem generative voice cloning.” It’s the funnier of the two Gray Holland songs, and the beat’s so sensual you may miss that it quickly becomes an ad for the deals available at Best Buy. Best line: “Best Buy, Best Buy, Gray Holland loves Best Buy. Tablets, projectors, and more. You’re the best, bye!”

14) “Larry’s Song” The girls get their Taylor’s Version moment with this kiss off to their former manager that references many of the show’s recurring jokes about the indignities of early aughts fame, including him promising a steak knife to whoever seduces Carson Daly. The twist by the end is that they’ve finally gotten some financial and personal control, and thus, “everything we do belongs to us.” Best line: “Only let us eat crab, cause you can’t get fat from food that’s so damn hard to get at.”

13) “At the Beep” No, you’re tearing up thinking about a fictional character who died in an infinity-pool accident. In this episode, Gloria finally gives up on her conspiracy theories about Ashley’s death and accepts that she might really be gone. (I do wonder if Ashley Park would’ve been available for a longer run in season two if Emily in Paris hadn’t gotten so big.) This results in a somber number where girls say good-bye to Ashley through her still-active (because Gloria has been paying) answering-machine service. Best line: “It should have been me.” “I did a lot of cocaine, so much cocaine.”

12) “Get It Off Your Chest” In a moment of confession and healing in season three, the women of Girls5eva share their darker secrets with each other and their audience. The result is a series of tightly written jokes from the show’s writing staff: Wickie only likes people who “like me,” “but be careful, if you like me too much, it has the opposite effect and I find you desperate,” Gloria doesn’t trust stand-up comics who are too in shape, Summer hasn’t listened to a voice-mail since 2015, and finally, Dawn delivers my favorite … Best line: “Every year when my son’s school sends out the class list with parents’ names, the first thing I do is Google them to see what they paid for their apartments.”

11) “Momentum” Starting off season two, the girls have got momentum, yeah, um, it’s their moment (bless you, Jeff Richmond) with a song that’s relatively straightforward within the Girls5eva canon but is also a solid earworm. I have to respect that groovy baseline, too. Best line: “Unstoppable, this unst-unst ain’t toppable.”

10) “Tap Into Your (Fort) Worth” A canny marketing move: The girls of 5Eva plot a way to secure a captive audience by writing a song about an American city nobody else has written a song about. The result is a clever ode to Dallas’s overlooked sister, declaring that “cow town is a wild town with a walkable downtown” and trumpeting the fact that the Trinity River is, in some places, now actually swimmable. It’s enough to make you want to consider booking a flight to DFW, maybe just as a connection, but still. Best line: “Some say Omaha Zoo is second-best, but that’s a lie because their red panda is always inside. It’s never out on the tree, yeah!”

9) “I’m Afraid (Dawn’s Song of Fears)” Sometimes you just have to let Sara Bareilles loose with a piano and sing like she’s performing “Gravity.” Here, Dawn’s attempt to write a song on her own ends with her just listing things she’s afraid of, from the fact that she might thrive under Scientology to her fear that she’ll text a pic of her vagina to her dad. There’s something very funny to me about the way Bareilles says “my hummus is fungus” and I have to own that. Best line: “I’m afraid that the second I leave town I’ll get a UTI. Why can’t they sell those pills over the counter? I don’t need a doctor, I know exactly what it is.”

8) “Yesternights” Finally, a full taste of Wickie’s solo album, a work absolutely choked by melisma and sung impeccably by Renée Elise Goldsberry. It’s, as she sings, “gorgeous and sensual” and also “life fancy,” and also “dancing, yearning.” You could probably slip it on a sex playlist and nobody would notice, and frankly, we need an eight-minute version. Best line: “But tonight, there is no night or tomorrow night / Or any future night / ’Cause you’re only in my yesternight of nights.”

7) “The Medium Time” Sara Bareilles wrote the Girls5eva’s season-three finale hit song, which is about being inspired not to aim for immense fame, but a reasonable, medium level of attention. Bareilles is so good at selling the earnest, heartfelt feeling behind the song that you may forget that the wise man who told her this advice, in the universe of the show, was actually Richard Kind. Best line: “The middle is the riddle of it all, and the medium time is just fine for now.”

6) “Dream Girlfriends” The satire of Girls5eva cuts deepest here, in this song from their original run about all the ways they’d be willing to debase themselves to appeal to men. The list includes the fact that their dads are dead, that their moms are overtired so there’ll be no pushback, that they want to watch you play darts and love watching stand-up (but not by women). “Dream Girlfriends” cuts both ways, managing to make the men it’s supposed to appeal to sound pathetic as well. The girls are short so they don’t know you’re bald! Best line: “Tell me again why Tarantino’s a genius.”

5) “Bend Not Break” Near the end of season two, the women of Girls5eva realize their best song is actually about Gloria’s knee surgery. Metaphorically, it’s really about how they have to learn to compromise and acknowledge each other’s weaknesses to support their success, but there is also literally a joke about how she uses a cane. Anyway, it’s got a groove that’s hard to shake and does really make you want to dance (carefully, in a way that doesn’t risk further knee injury). Best line: “We got our secret weapon already, and it’s got eight legs, four smiles, and a cane.”

4) “Famous 5eva” Perhaps the best theme song in the vast universe of television today, here Girls5eva embraces the joys of counting by promising they’ll be famous 5eva — ’cuz 4eva’s too short. Those synths have an addictive crunch, and there’s something about the way they describe the series of cars they’re driving in (first a Lexus, then a Mercedes and then a Maserati) that’s gleefully ridiculous. The show has to make you believe the girls really are talented, and that there’s something joyful about watching them perform. This does both. Best line: “We’re Girls5eva, could we get a high SIX?”

3) “B.P.E.” Put your hands together for a “We Are the Champions”–style celebration of big pussy energy. Girl5eva’s absurdist answer to “WAP” celebrates their “Vitamin P” with some gospel-choir-esque harmonies. And the remix, which outdoes the original, adds in some church bells to heighten the energy. It will make you tap into whatever B.P.E. you have of your own. Best line: “Square feet, I’m going for miles, upgrade, taking up the aisles, open up those classified files from the Department of Treasury.”

2) “New York Lonely Boy” The best of the Girls5eva songs in terms of straight joke-writing, “New York Lonely Boy” applies a Simon and Garfunkel sensibility to the tales of hyperarticulate soft boys who know too much about mixing plaids and the dangers of restaurants on the corner (they just try too hard). Its comedy is sort of tangential from Girls5eva’s overall focus on the music industry, but it’s so perfectly realized that it doesn’t matter. Any show that can deliver such a specific encapsulation of a type — to the extent that I now think of various former St. Anne’s students who’ve became indie celebrities (okay, just Lucas Hedges) as New York Lonely Boys — deserves to run forever. Best line: “His playground is the lobby, has a palate for wasabi.”

1) “Four Stars” If “Famous 5eva” had to establish Girls5eva as it was, then “Four Stars” has to do the work of making you believe the second iteration of the group has come into its own. It does this delightfully well, with an anthem about embracing your imperfections that includes plenty of tossed-off jokes from each of the band members. (I’m particularly fond of “women are an ocean of secrets!”) Plus there’s something great about the harmonies of everyone singing “four stars” together. I have put this on exercise playlists, and it works! Best line: “The best things in life are free, that’s why rich people never carry wallets.”

[oumaheroes]

Since the new canon season had the industrial revolution as a recurring theme, do you have any headcanons for that era?

Gosh anon, you had me thinking in all kinda ways. I do have headcanons for this era (too many) so I’m gonna break it down a little.

Of course, if I am to talk about the industrial revolution, I must start off with the goblin man that is England. The industrial revolution started with him, after all, and this is a fact that England is very, very proud of. For a hot minute, Great Britain was the workshop of the world and utterly dominated everything, not only in physical items that were outputted, but also by international perception and industrial change. I could go into the historical implications of this and how it affected real people (a fuck tonne man, a fuck tonne), but for England himself this time is one that he looks back on with a sort of pompous pride.

He was known. His products were sought after, his productions were the quickest and the smoothest, and his people were making great strides across all industries and changing them according to a new, British standard. For a nation, a creature that exists to represent a collective group of people and fades when the memory of them is forgotten, this is probably a pinnacle of achievement.

It is one thing to conquer and influence lands by force and might, armies and guns and swords that push their way in and change an existing power dynamic by force. It is quite another to win it smoothly, a silky slipping into a different way of things and a sly, cunning domination of the markets. Britain was everywhere and these products were wanted everywhere.

It is so hard for me to describe how impactful the industrial revolution was using just a grumpy anime man- this event was quite literally earth shatteringly cataclysmic in how peoples’ lives changed as well as how fast this change was. It happened so quickly that even people of the time recognised and lamented the losses the progress would bring (William Blank, a famous English poet, being a notable example).

Our modern understanding of ‘work life’, capitalism, social structure, fashion, food, everything was touched by the invention of mass-produced machines and this… this also makes England conflicted.

He is conflicted because suddenly the world has changed and it has done so, in a large part, because of him. And he is happy about this, he is, but things are always lost when others are gained and the industrialisation of his lands brings with it a loss of a more traditional way of life.

I like to see nations as nostalgic things. If we take away the immortal aspect, the fact that these are creatures that push to keep their people heard and relevant and make sure that they do not disappear into time, they are also beings that silently stay and watch. They see the changing tides of time wash away the past and they alone remain to remember it.

This process is smooth, usually; this process is lonely but natural and slow. Life didn’t really change much from century to century- fashions changed and food evolved, as did the language and the law, etc. But, overall, it didn’t. The life of the everyday man and woman mainly remained unchanged for centuries, generation to generation and decade to decade seeing very little change in the day to day working of things. The industrial revolution though utterly blew up every aspect of human life. If previously change was a slow erosion and evolution, the industrial revolution was a mega flood, ripping apart the earth underneath and receding to reveal a whole different landscape underneath.

Again, I’m not going to go into historical detail too much about how many things were affected but it was many. For nations, then, this would have been an utterly baffling and potentially even slightly horrifying experience, but maybe only something they clocked onto years into it.

England himself wouldn’t have noticed for a while. He would have been riding too much on his high, revelling in his position at the top with his pride pushed higher than it had ever been. But then, eventually, he would have twigged.

Does no one dance that dance, anymore? Does no one sing that old song? That story he loved to hear from the travelling minstrels, when was the last time he’d heard it spoken? Or even seen one of those men about? What was that myth from the town down the road, really does no one know? Is there no one left to remember with him?

This realisation would have been hard to contend with and would have been, and still is, something that he struggles with. The industrial revolution was good after all, and it was something he was and still is so damn proud of that it’s hard for him to accept that he regrets it, even a tiny bit. Especially after his boasting and crowing, especially after strutting about parading his achievements and showing off his fancy new wares and processes. England couldn’t admit, even to himself, for a long time, that maybe, actually, he didn’t quite like it.

He liked what it brought, he liked how it made him feel and he liked that he was, indisputably, at the top of his game and a trendsetter in every sense. But as soon as he first felt that flicker of loss it never quite went away and he could never again feel the full and shiny affects of the first few years. Instead, the feeling of loss grew and pulsed with the passing of each generation as more and more of his old way of life slipped away, leaving him truly an island amongst a sea of the new and the strange.

Other nations feel similarly, but without the smug superiority that came from being the instigator of this madness. The new inventions helped their people and boosted their economies too, so even if they weren’t the inventor of them, and even if England did have a stupidly large monopoly on the industries he’d created out of thin air, they understood intrinsically that this revolution of change was one for the better.

But, like England, they saw and felt the rumbles of change wiping away an old, reliable existence. Unlike England, they weren’t clouded with pride and a superiority complex about the whole thing. They could see the impact this would have early on and they had more time to make peace with it.

A few sources, if anyone is interested in learning more historically accurate information:

Global Transformations of the Industrial Revolution

Cultural & Societal Changes of the Second Industrial Revolution

Wikipedia is also a good read!

[coke-and-candy]

Fashion Editorial Special: Audrey Bourgeois

Inspired by this post link by @purrincess-chat 

Lila put herself out there in the public domain, and just because Marinette’s class and teachers might be stupid enough to fall for her lies, doesn’t mean that there aren’t adults out there who are...

The question was who? Who is critical and vicious enough to do so and has a HUGE audience to say things to, and who works closely with the modeling and fashion worlds and actually knows what they’re talking about...? 

Why! Madame Audrey Bourgeois! The Queen of Fashion herself. So please put on your best Devil Wears Prada reading hats on and enjoy as Audrey takes no prisoners. 

------------

“Gabriel Agreste Losing His Mind and Sense of Taste”

By Audrey Bourgeois

Published: 9/15/20XX

It is no secret in the fashion world that since the mysterious disappearance of Emilie Agreste, famous Parisian actress, model, and wife of Gabriel Agreste—the man who had single handedly built the Gabriel brand from the ground up—the once envied designer had shut himself away from the world. Living the life of a recluse and refusing nearly any physical human interaction.

That is not to say that the man had lost his ability to design and to run his business, he just now does it all from the Agreste Manor in Paris, France. According to sources he now mostly conducts business meetings via videoconference calls and oversees the employees of this fashion empire via his ever-present and faithful assistant, Nathalie Sancoeur.  It was not until a little over a year after the disappearance of his beloved wife that Gabriel Agreste, at last, decided to grace the world with his presence. Appearing, for the first time in public, at the Gabriel Spring Fashion Show, where his own teenage son and Paris heartthrob, Adrien Agreste (age 15), was walking the catwalk modeling one of the newest spring suits and featuring a stylish bowler hat, designed by a talented and young up-in-coming designer, Marinette Dupain-Cheng (age 14).

Despite certain incidents that occurred on that day. Part of which was caused by the gross oversight Gabriel Agreste (a first sign to be sure). The show could still be considered a success and did showcase to the rest of the fashion world that Gabriel Agreste’s talent and designing abilities still reigned supreme and are still a force to be reckoned with, regardless of any personal issues he may be facing in private.

It seemed as if Gabriel was making small steps towards the acceptance in his single life.

Turns out this one moment of public interaction may have been the first cry for help.

His latest decisions in regards to just WHO represents his brand have been nothing but questionable and completely and ridiculous, utterly ridiculous.

This past season Gabriel had introduced a new face to its teen fashion line. One Lila Rossi (age 15).

At first it seemed as if this was simply a pity shoot for one of Adrien Agreste’s little schoolmates, as they both attend the same school and are in the same class.

But, alas, this was tragically not the case.

Despite her clear lack of ascetic taste, especially when it came to her own hair. Really, someone should tell that poor child that hanging two sausages on both sides of her face not onlyfails to come across as ‘trendy’ but it sends an ENTIRELY different message.

I’m both surprised and appalled her mother would leave the house with that style.

I certainly would never allow my own child to been seen like that in public.

Unfortunately, that first shoot was only the beginning as Ms. Rossi has appeared alongside fellow model, Adrien, in three more shoots and a commercial that pathetically tries, and monumentally fails, in portraying them as a young couple in love.

I have worked in fashion long enough to be able to spot what works and what does NOT a merely a glance. But one does not even need to be an INTERN to recognize that the dynamics between Adrien Agreste and Lila Rossi is so utterly ridiculous to the point a shutter of nausea courses through one’s body.

While Adrien continues to hold his own in the modeling world, despite the large shadows that both his parents cast, he is able to shine on his own merit and truly does have the looks and talent to model and act (no doubt traits he inherited from his mother). The same cannot be said for Lila Rossi.

Lila Rossi’s whole look (if you can call it that) is simply not genuine. I have worked in this industry long enough to be able to tell the diamonds apart from the rhinestones. Lila Rossi may want for people to believe that she is a diamond, but she is, without a doubt a rhinestone. Cheap, easy to produce, and a one in a billion find. Oh, sure she may have charm and charisma to carry some solo stock picture photo shoots but in order to make it in the Fashion World one requires to have a certain light and spark that stands on its own.

To put it simply, this girl has no discernable personality. Her expressions are stagnant, as if she had to practice being human, her posing leads me to believe she is merely trying to look good for the camera instead of working to display the clothing and products in their best light, and she has close to no versatility in any of the photo-shoots she has done as all of her pictures can be simply described as her in different outfits but using the exact same four expressions over and over again.

When I say the same expressions, I mean—THE EXACT SAME.

The Sophia robot emotes more human emotion than Rossi.

It is Adrien who carries the shoots and is doing the lion shares of the work while Lila Rossi does her best to APPEAR like a model. To put it simply—she is NOT.

Her hair is just one issue, but it her overall presence that just scream ‘Fake’.

A picture is worth a thousand words, and unfortunately, there are many pictures to choose from.

In the very first photo-shoot that was done with Adrien as her co-model you can easily see the disparity between the two. While Ms. Rossi seems more than happy to be in a loving embrace by one of Paris’ most eligible young bachelors, the same cannot be said for the young Agreste heir. There is an obvious tension in his body language that does not show in any of his other photo-shoots, including ones where he and another model were portraying romantic feelings for those ads. The untrained eye can see the slight curve of his spine, as if he wishes to get away but can’t, the small tension in his smile that screams, “I don’t want to be here but I have a job to do”.

My final verdict to the latest photo-shoot from the Gabriel name, that once more featured Adrien Agreste and Liar Rossi, was that is was ridiculous, completely and utterly ridiculous!

Inside sources on location where the two teens have modeled have also confirmed that there does not seem to be any natural chemistry between them and that Adrien had picked up a habit of making himself scarce until he is needed. Other sources verify that Lila Rossi seems to cling to him as much as possible. Perhaps, in the hopes that someone will confirm her own pathetic delusions of the possibly budding relationship between the two of them?

And my does this girl have a number of delusions.

Not counting the one where she THINKS she can model.

According to several interviews that this girl has given to the sub-par tabloid blog, TheLadyblog, she claims to be the best friend of the Parisian super-heroine, Ladybug. Claims to have connections to multiple high-profile celebrities such as Jagged Stone and Clara Nightingale. Going as far as to claim that Jagged Stone even wrote a song about her. Lets ignore the legal implications of a man in his early thirties writing a song about a child for a second and continue examining more of said child’s claims.

According to another interview she gave on the same trashy blog, she claimed to be involved in multiple charitable organizations and causes, citing different projects that she has ‘supposedly’ helped with and oh so humbly placed most of the successes of those projects on her shoulders.

An official statement from Gabriel has stated that the girl has multiple health issues as well and is an inspiration on her abilities to overcome those obstacles in order to model and her other so-called various charitable actions. Very, well we won’t pry into a minor’s personal health.

Her public life, however, now that she is in the public domain is fair game.

It did not take even twenty minutes of searching to find absolutely NO validity to any of her claims.

Her claims of being a close personal friend of Ladybug: FALSE

-      The timeline does not match her arrival to Paris with her family. Nor does allow for ample time to establish any sort of close friendship.

-      Ladybug herself has the sense to never reveal anything about her personal life, but a little nobody is more than happy to broadcast their ‘supposed’ friendship on a blog that could once claim to be the best source for information on Paris’ two heroes? I think not.

-      Eyewitnesses from when the girl was Akumatized into Chameleon and subsequently defeated on the Eiffel Tower stated that Lila Rossi seemed to hold animosity towards the red clad heroine.

-      Ladybug has made no statements in knowing Lila Rossi and there has been no photo documentation of the two seen together, even though Ladybug can be seen almost daily swinging around and running along Paris’ rooftops with Chat Noir.

Her claims about Jagged Stone writing a song about her because she saved his kitten on airport runway: FALSE

-      Jagged Stone has never owned a kitten according to his personal assistant, Penny Rolling, and his exclusive interview with La Mode three years ago that revealed that the only pet he ever had other than his current pet crocodile, Fang, was a dog as a child in the States.

-      A quick Internet search also reveals that Jagged Stone and Lila Rossi have never even been in the same country together until four months ago. The rock star was still on tour in America while Ms. Rossi was in Paris, France.  The date of the Ladybloginterview is time stamped long before then.

Her claims to helping inspire and help co-write Clara Nightingale’s last album: FALSE

-      Countless interviews with the pop singer, and official statements upon the release of her album, Heart of Gold, will reveal that the inspiration for said album was her grandmother in her native home country of Brazil.

-      This was also the first album that Clara had written completely on her own in order to establish her own unique flair.  

-      I personally reached out to Clara herself and confirmed that she has never, met or even HEARD of a Lila Rossi. Strange? One would think that such collaboration would ensure that one of the parties involved would at least remember the other’s name?

Her claims to travel with Prince Ali of the Kingdom of Achu for environmental charitable work: FALSE

-      Again, a quick Internet search of the Prince’s official website and bio lists all of the organizations he is involved with. All of which focus primarily on children such as the International Coalition for Equal Opportunities, the World Health Organizations vaccinations drive, and the Refugee Children’s Fund to name a few.

-      A quick call to the royal family’s publicity affairs office confirmed that Prince Ali had never been in contact with Lila Rossi and are now looking into the matter for themselves. After all, an unknown person cozying themselves up to the second in line to the throne is matter of GREAT interest to the Royal Head of Security.

Her other claims of travel to international destinations in the middle of the school year: FALSE

-      According to the Italian Embassy’s official website Mademoiselle Maria Rossi had been stationed in Paris since her arrival almost a year ago and has not left the country, other than for a few short trips back to Italy to visit family members.

Her claims in having trained in gymnastics, ballet, and figure skating and even going so far as medal in gold in all three at major competitions in Italy: FALSE

-      Again, a quick Internet search reveals all winners of the top twenty major competitions in Italy for the past fifteen years. Names, age, date, and location of the competitions are easily and readily available to the public. NOTHING about Lila Rossi winning gold in any sort of athletic competition.

Her claims of being invited to have tea with her Royal Majesty, the Queen of England: FALSE

-      Any and all of the Queen o England’s engagements are public records as well as very well documented. Surprise, surprise there is NOTHING about a Lila Rossi mentioned in any credible new source, or even a single tabloid blurb. The only thing to sustain such a claim is the word a child who actually believes that her jacket looks good in light of day.

Honestly, I could go on and on and even be able to write a whole book. This girl has told so many tall tales she makes elected officials seem honest.

So let this be clear to the world of Fashion.

Lila Rossi is nothing more than a liar.

A liar who had only as gotten as far as she did because she was lucky enough to find someone with a decent online following that was both gullible and stupid enough to post those interviews online without ever once providing additional sources to verify them or double checking those claims. It was not that difficult disclaim every single one of those interviews.

I timed myself and it did not even take me my lunch break to do so.

The very fact that this girl is supposed to be the lead female teen face of Gabriel makes me question Gabriel Agreste’s sanity. Does he honestly think that having Rossi represent his brand is the smartest thing to do?

There clearly must be something in the water in Paris if Gabriel Agreste had not even bother to run a simple background check on the girl in order to ensure that there were no skeletons in the closet that would haunt his brand. Turns out she did not have any, but she sure did purposely create them.

I have to congratulate Monsieur Agreste on this achievement though.

Never have I seen the credibility of a designer go from as set in stone, to as questionable as a ‘designer gown’ bought in a Sale-Mart so quickly. What other decisions is he making behind the scenes that will further clue us in to his mental decline. Will the next Gabriel Show feature plaid parachute pants with matching toucan bird print dress shirts?

Yes, it seems as though grief has finally come to claim another once brilliant designer if he is unable to see past the paper-thin façade that Lila Rossi believes will be able to get her through this world. All the signs are there in same hideous orange Rossi insists on wearing.

Clue number one should have been her clear lack of any substance, versatility, and talent after the first photo-shoot she appeared in. The transparent aversion his own son has shown towards a fellow classmate should have been clue number two. And finally, clue number three should have been that this girls climb to fame was all due to a tabloid blog, TheLadyblog, run by the amateur journalist of all amateurs journalists that could not even be bothered to check their sources.

Or Google for that matter…

Gabriel has been known to take certain risks in the past, but the decision to hire Lila Rossi is nothing more than a mistake.

For the sake of all of our ocular senses, both Gabriel Agreste and Lila Rossi are clearly in need of psychiatric help.

The sooner, the better.

-----

Yay, nay? What did you guys think of this little Fashion Editorial by the Queen of Fashion of the Miraculous universe. Any thoughts. This was just so much fun to write I am so doing a follow-up to this. 

[passionate-reply]

In this installment of Great Albums, we’re back to talking about albums nobody’s ever heard of! You might not know who Zaine Griff is, but you’ve probably heard of a guy called Hans Zimmer, and Zimmer is the real mastermind of this record: a masterpiece of New Romantic synth-pop made long before he made his name composing for the big screen! Not to mention contributions from Ultravox’s Warren Cann, YMO’s Yukihiro Takahashi, and even Kate Bush. Find out all about it by watching this video, or reading the full transcript below the break!

Welcome to Passionate Reply, and welcome to Great Albums! Today’s installment is going to feature an album that is most definitely towards the obscure side--but, like most of the more obscure artists and albums I’ve talked about, I think this one is every bit as good as the classics. Zaine Griff’s Figures is not only a forgotten album that I think deserves more acclaim, but also an album that, in many ways, feels like it could have been a huge success in its own time.

Zaine Griff grew up in New Zealand, and moved to Great Britain in the 1970s in the hopes of pursuing a career in music. His debut LP, 1980’s Ashes & Diamonds, would mark him as one of the many artists straddling the musical landscape in the aftermath of glam, in the long shadow of David Bowie. With keen visual panache, a suave way of slurring when he sang, and the requisite killer cheekbones, Griff fit in perfectly with the so-called “New Romantics,” as stylish and sophisticated as Visage, Ultravox, or Japan.

Music: “Ashes & Diamonds”

The real turning point in Griff’s career was his being “discovered,” so to speak, by Hans Zimmer and Warren Cann. Cann had already become a figure of some renown, as the percussionist for the aforementioned Ultravox. Despite his tremendous fame today, Zimmer actually had much less to show for himself at this point, aside from a somewhat dodgy stint in the Buggles. While geniuses in their own ways, neither of them were necessarily natural frontmen, and Zaine Griff seemed like the perfect missing piece to fit into their pop ambitions.

Even setting aside Zimmer and Cann, Figures is actually full of recognizable talent, and I think it may have the single most stacked list of album credits I’ve ever seen in my life! You’ll also hear contributions from Yellow Magic Orchestra’s Yukihiro Takahashi, backing vocals from Linda Jardim, who was also the soprano on the Buggles’ famous “Video Killed the Radio Star,” and a guest appearance by none other than Kate Bush. That’s really a lot of clout going around, which is one of the reasons I’m so surprised this album went nowhere. Anyway, that aside, the most dominant sonic footprint on display here is certainly that of Hans Zimmer. Zimmer is credited with producing the album, and his dynamic, expressive, perhaps “cinematic” work with digital synthesisers is surely the driving force behind Figures’s sound.

Music: “Fahrenheit 451”

It’s easy to imagine “Fahrenheit 451” is the thumping theme to some delightfully 80s adaptation of Ray Bradbury’s classic novel. Its theme of lustful but dangerous romance is a constant throughout the album, most notably on tracks like “Hot” and the haunting closer, “The Beating of Wings.” The song’s tense and dramatic mood is well bolstered by those soaring synths, courtesy of the Fairlight CMI. One of the most distinctive sounds of mid-80s synth-pop, the soft, breathy tones of the Fairlight hadn’t yet reached full saturation when Figures was made--Zimmer was an early adopter of this particular musical revolution. You might be surprised to learn that “Fahrenheit 451” only saw minor distribution as a single, exclusively for the French and Belgian markets. I think that sort of mismanagement on behalf of Polydor really shafted this album. Its lead single was actually its title track.

Music: “Figures”

The title track of Figures isn’t the worst song I’ve ever heard, but I do think it just might be the worst song on this album. With a strident, stabbing synth riff and a somewhat sparse and anemic soundstage, the title track is not particularly exciting, and also not particularly representative of what the rest of the album sounds like, with no indication of the lush and vibrant textures that dominate tracks like “Fahrenheit 451.” It also has less lyrics than the other tracks, and offers Griff little opportunity to demonstrate his pipes. Thematically, though, its imagery of wispy and mysterious personas, flitting in and out of substance in a world where appearance and identity are trifling and ephemeral, is something that resonates strongly with the album as a whole, as one might surmise from its title also being used for the album. “The Vanishing Men,” another song that easily feels like a better single than “Figures,” handles the same sort of subject in a more playful and upbeat manner.

Music: “The Vanishing Men”

The titular “vanishing men” are quite clearly the life of the party here, and in the world of this track, the insignificance of true identity is portrayed as an invitation to experiment and have fun with it--though not without a slight hint of danger as well. Perhaps it’s a good metaphor for the curated aestheticism of the New Romantic movement, decried by some as “style over substance.” New Romanticism really didn’t have much time left by the time *Figures* came out, being so strongly associated with trends in fashion that were on their way out by this point. Even Ultravox would find themselves pivoting towards more of a pop rock-oriented sound for their final classic lineup LP, 1984’s Lament. I can’t help but think that the changing landscape of musical trends is part of the poor reception of Figures, which is such a consummate New Romantic album, which basks in the full flush of the movement’s prior penetration into the mainstream. As stated above, “The Vanishing Men” is all about the glamour of mutable identity, but other tracks on the album seem to assign this theme a bit more weight, as in “The Stranger.”

Music: “The Stranger”

The titular character of “The Stranger” is described as “a stranger to himself,” but also “no stranger to anyone else.” This track seems to be more focused on the negative aspects of fashionable persona-play: losing the dignity and security of a true form, the people around you seeing through your charades, and becoming trapped in an existence defined by arbitrariness and artificiality. I’d also be remiss not to mention this track’s winsome pentatonic synth riff, which helps create a mercurial and ambiguous mood. It might be interpreted as a nod towards the rampant Orientalism of New Romantic music, which ran with the early 80s verve for all things Asian, and wasn’t shy about appropriating “Asiatic” musical motives like pentatonic scales to evoke mystery and wonder. Griff and friends’ use of such here is relatively subtle, though, and perhaps a bit more tactful than how many of their contemporaries approached other musical ideas associated with the East.

The unforgettable cover of Figures is as dramatic and infused with capital-R Romantic sentiment as the music contained within. Above the text relating the artist and title, which uses a V for a U for a touch of the classical, we see Griff splayed dramatically in a pond of lilies. With sharp makeup that emphasizes his lips, and a diaphanous, blousy top that turns translucent in the water, he seems to be the perfect tragic hero of some lost work of Shakespeare’s--complete with another flower stylishly pinned to his chest. As I mentioned before, Figures is an album that rides the wave of New Romanticism particularly hard, and I think its cover is yet another symptom of those sensibilities.

Speaking of Shakespeare, I can’t help but want to compare this image with a famous painting of one of Shakespeare’s best-known characters: Ophelia, by Sir John Everett Millais. Painted in the early 1850s, Millais’s Ophelia depicts the moment where Ophelia, driven mad by Hamlet’s romantic rejection of her, drowns herself in a river. It’s exactly the kind of story of wild, passionate, and doomed love portrayed on tracks like “Fahrenheit 451.” Ophelia is also associated strongly with flowers in the text, and features in a particularly memorable scene where she doles out various symbolic blossoms to members of the royal court. Besides the affinity of subject matter, even the composition of Millais’s work resembles the cover of Figures, contrasting its subject’s pale skin with the dark and murky natural surrounds, and emphasizing the drapery of their wettened attire. Ophelia is often considered the definitive masterpiece of the short-lived art movement, the “Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood,” who, as their name implies, sought to recapture the intuitive, colourful, and emotive power of art created prior to the High Renaissance. Not unlike New Romanticism, the Pre-Raphaelite movement would crumble after only a few years, but not without leaving behind a trail of masterpieces that would continue to inspire future artists and admirers, far removed from their own time.

After the release of Figures, Zaine Griff remained involved with Hans Zimmer and Warren Cann, and, as the supergroup “Helden,” they embarked on an even more ambitious musical opus together: Spies, a sort of synth-pop oratorio about immortal Nazi super-spies falling in love in a futuristic dystopia. Spies is about as out-there as it sounds, and brings the flamboyant musical excess of Figures into a suitably theatrical setting. It’s also got nearly as star-studded of a cast as Figures, featuring not only Zimmer, Cann, and Jardim again, but also Eddie Maelov of Eddie & Sunshine as a mad scientist, and the enigmatic French electro-cabaret chanteuse Ronny, in the role of a super-computer with a sultry female voice. Griff portrays one of the titular immortal spies, known only as “The Stranger”--which, of course, begs comparison to the track of the same name on Figures, and prompts the question, to what extent was Spies already in the works when *Figures* was being written and recorded?

Music: “The Ball”

We all know the rest of the story for Hans Zimmer, who began working with music for film in the mid-1980s, such as the queer cult classic My Beautiful Laundrette. But Zaine Griff obviously never became a household name. Despite being finished in 1983, Spies never got to see an official release, as it was a bit too out there for a label to take a chance on at the time, and it would probably be lost media today if it weren’t for a vinyl bootleg that’s thankfully fairly easy to find online. Griff decided to retire from music shortly after this, and recounts a story of having walked past an extremely talented street musician, and having a sort of epiphany about just how hard it was to make it in music. After all, if a true virtuoso could end up busking on the street, how fair and rewarding could the industry possibly be? Disillusioned with the world of pop, Griff returned to his native New Zealand and got a day job as a golf instructor. More recently, though, he’s also released several new solo albums in the 2010s, surprisingly enough, and attempted to push forward into some very contemporary-sounding pop rock. The world is, of course, a very different place nowadays than it was in the 20th Century, and particularly in the world of music distribution, so perhaps it makes sense that our brave new world has room in it for someone like Zaine Griff to return.

My overall favourite track on Figures is probably “Time Stands Still,” which I think is perhaps the most accessible, pop-friendly track to be had on the album, and the one I would’ve released as the lead single had I worked for Polydor. With a big hook and simple, repetitive lyrics, it’s a true pop song through and through--though, if an artist releases a commercial-sounding album in the woods, and nobody is around to buy it, is it still really “pop?” Anyway, I also love this track’s delightful outro, imitating a skipping record to represent a freeze in the flow of time...though I admit it’s a lot less harrowing to hear when listening digitally! That’s all I have for today--thanks for listening.

Music: “Time Stands Still”

[taffysannotatedsonichu]

CWC Rockin’ 4 Way

CHANDLER, Christopher Christian Christine “Ricardo” Weston Chandler - CWCRockin4Way.jpg, marker on paper, 2009

Chris’s second most famous (and less controversial) Rule 34 drawing, imagines Chris as a world famous rockstar, free to have sex with whatever groupie he so chooses. CWCRockin4Way.jpg is also known by the mangled French phrase “MenajAQuad.jpg”, trying to expand the phrase “menage a trois”, meaning a sexual encounter with three participants, possibly conflating “menage” with the surname of rapper Nicki Minaj (which itself is a mangling of “menage”, albeit a more deliberate one), and affixing the Latin prefix “Quad-”, as opposed to the more grammatically accurate “menage a quatre”. Drawn to help prove Chris’s heterosexuality, it shows him penetrating a woman of mixed white and black ancestry, according to other drawings she’s named Zuri Alryte, while using one hand a piece to finger a white woman, Kiera Bei, with his left hand and a black woman, Jody Zimmerman, with his right. They are, respectively, the singer, bassist, and drummer for Chris’s Guitar Hero band, Chris himself being the guitarist (obviously).

This image was leaked by Bryan Bash in September 2009, then Chris acknowledged it in a video from that October. Unlike SheCameForCWC, it is unknown what became of the original image, whether or not it survived the 2014 house fire like SheCameForCWC. Chris, in an edit to the CWCki, described the sexual encounter as “chocolate vanilla swirls”, but it’s unknown whether that refers to the half-black-half-white Zuri being a chocolate vanilla swirl, or the fact that Chris is simultaneously banging a black woman, a white woman, and a woman that’s a mix of both.

This image breaks Chris’s long standing sexual distaste for women of color, as he is actively enjoying the china of a mixed-race woman and performing other sexual acts with a black woman. In the past, he’d said that he couldn’t marry a non-white woman because his future daughter Crystal appeared in a dream to him, and seeing as she was white and not mixed race her mother must have also been white, but here, since Zuri and Jody seemingly aren’t Crystal’s fated mother, Chris is more than happy to break his rule for a casual hookup with them. Clearly, this is a win for diversity.

It has long been noted that, like his last porn drawing, there is much wrong with it anatomically - specifically, Zuri seems to be sitting in front of Chris, yet he is still somehow reaching her china with his pickle. She’s meant to be sitting on his lap not in front of it, but that’s not how it’s drawn, and thus is horribly anatomically incorrect. Chris is yet again wearing a Sonichu medallion, and Jody is wearing a gold choker in both this image and her clothed portrait.

Little is known about these three fictional women aside from their names and their band roles, and it’s likely Chris never gave any of them more thought than this image or the individual portraits of them he drew. Zuri has a yellow lightning bolt tattoo across her right arm (visible in both this picture and the portrait), likely done in tribute to her lover’s most famous creation. Bizarrely, her breasts are censored by her long red hair. Kiera seems to be a bit like late ‘90’s-early 2000’s era Britney Spears, and her fashion in her clothed drawing seems inspired by her. Jody, in her clothed portrait, is dressed very androgynously, to the point that this image of her in the nude is the only confirmation we have that she doesn’t have a pickle. She is doing the devil fingers with her right hand, possibly trying to communicate to the audience that making love to Christian is satanic. It’s possible these three were only on Chris’s mind a brief period in 2009, as they’ve made no lasting impact on him. Their only other appearance was from a contemporaneous video of him playing, on Guitar Hero, Bob Seger’s 1978 rock classic “Old Time Rock and Roll” while using a Guitar Hero guitar painted in the colors of Meatwad’s guitar from Aqua Teen Hunger Force. I think we can infer from that video that Zuri is a dead vocal ringer for Bob Seger.

The background behind our lovers is much more detailed and dynamic in this drawing than SheCameForCWC. To the back right is what I assumed to be a stage door, since this orgy is presumably happening in one of their dressing rooms behind a stage they’re playing at, but, given its three handles, might be a dresser of some kind instead. To the bottom left is what appears to be Jody’s drumkit, and scattered around are Chris’s “Gitar of Fail”, not the same one from the “Old Time Rock and Roll” video but another Guitar Hero guitar, and what might be a microphone Chris used during the SingStar challenge, which, as the CWCki notes, “are not, strictly speaking, essential sex toys.” Three pictures on the wall, framed by lights, are a starfish (???), the word “score” (which may or may not be a pun) with the “o” replaced by a circle or swirl, this might be a Guitar Hero reference I don’t get, and, lastly, a portrait of Britney Spears herself, reading “Oops!” This starkly contrasts with the hard core rock and roll look Chris was trying to go for. Despite reading “Oops!”, seemingly a reference to Britney’s second album Oops… I Did It Again and its titular song, the picture is of her first album, …Baby One More Time.

[littlequeenies]

BEBE BUELL: MUSING ON MUSES AND OTHER FANS

📷BEBE BUELLJUNE 17, 2020

Before embarking on a musical career of her own, Bebe Buell was a much in-demand model but was most often seen as the second fiddle to the famous rock musicians she was dating. She, however, saw herself as the Muse to these musicians, inspiring and sharing ideas with them. Inevitably, the term “groupie” would arise. As she says, “I’m not opposed to ‘groupies,’ per se. I just don’t like being called a name or being tagged like a sheep to slaughter’. Bebe elaborates on this idea for PKM.

I remember the first time I saw a photograph of Oscar Wilde. I was five and it was Easter. We were at the Virginia Beach home of my mother’s friends, Poppy and Tilly, who were hosting a Sunday get together. We were dressed in our pastels and frills and the candy and food was flowing. It was an adult affair and, being the only child there, I wandered off to explore while the grown-ups enjoyed their martinis and snacks. I found myself in a living room study area and on the table was a big book filled with photos of poets, painters, sculptors and scholars. I was immediately drawn to an image of Oscar draped on a chair like a velvet throw! It stuck with me and when I got older I looked him up in the school library. At the age of twelve I read The Picture Of Dorian Gray, but my main interest was in Oscar Wilde, the man and his story. I felt an instant connection, just as I have with all the great inspirations in my life. In 1978, when I was living between NYC, Maine and LA, before finishing the year in London, I never missed one episode of Masterpiece Theatre and their 13 episodes of Lillie about the life of Lillie Langtry, played brilliantly by Francesca Annis. To my delight, it explored in great depth the relationship/friendship between Oscar and Lillie, and I became obsessed with knowing everything and anything I could about their dynamic. I was intrigued, too, by the descriptions of Mrs. Langtry in the press at that time in England and the U.S. She was often called a “Professional Beauty” or “The Jersey Lily” because she was born on Jersey, the largest of the Channel Islands off the coast of Normandy. She was also one of the most featured women in advertising; her face was everywhere. She was the image for Pears Soap and the most respected painters of the day stood in line just to have a sitting with her. In 1877, she met Edward, Prince of Wales, later King Edward VII, and became his first publicly acknowledged mistress.

One of my favorite quotes was attributed to her from her conversations with Wilde: “They saw me, those reckless seekers of beauty, and in a night I was famous.” This reminded me of the back room at Max’s Kansas City, the temple of cool when I arrived in New York during the era of everything! It was this platonic duo that introduced me to the role of the “Muse”—that is the Artist and the Muse. Throughout history and especially in the arts, there seems to always be a driving force that brings the flora. In the series Lillie, they emphasized how Oscar would repeat Lillie���s quips and observations in his writing. Their banter with one another fascinated me and I often envisioned myself as a “Patron of The Arts”, in a sense, as I’ve always promoted and sang the praises of those whose work I liked. I felt an affinity with that spirit—the gift of inspiring and sharing special ideas with an artist I admired. It wasn’t just music. I adored musing with photographers, writers, film directors and designers, too. Creative energies have always fed my soul. The first time I referenced the term “muse” was in a 1981 interview I did with the Emmy-winning writer Stephen Demorest for the edgy publication Oui. Its sister magazine in France was called Lui. Playboy had taken over ownership of Oui so it was a glossy, classy, European-style men’s delight, targeting a younger demographic. When Stephen approached me about the piece, he showed me a couple other interviews with “It Girls” that had been published.

One was with Patti D’Arbanville, the inspiration for some of Cat Stevens’ biggest hits. He even used her last name in one of the songs, “Lady D’Arbanville”. I knew Patti from the early 70s and, in fact, it was she who introduced me to Jimmy Page in 1973 on a night out dancing with her in NYC. It was a quick meeting, as I was eager to get home to my boyfriend at the time, Todd Rundgren. A year later, I would run into Mr. Page again and the rest is the stuff of rock tales.

I adored Patti so knowing that both she and Jerry Hall had done this particular interview sealed the deal. Like Patti Boyd, Jane Asher, Linda Eastman, Maureen Van Zandt, Sara Dylan, to name a few, the musical muse is the most often of the muses referenced. I recall how so many people wanted to know my viewpoints and opinions about the word “muse” and why I preferred it to the term “groupie”.

Even in Cameron Crowe’s Almost Famous, his beloved character Penny Lane’s first words on screen are, “We are not groupies. We inspire the music- we are bandaids!”. The film was Cameron’s love letter to women and how even at that time a stigma was attached to calling a woman a groupie; it was not necessarily a compliment. It was almost like a dismissive jab, on par with “she’s such a slut” or “whore”. Another scene in Almost Famous has all of the members of the fictitious band Stillwater squeezed onto a small plane that, they thought, was about to crash. Secrets were spilled and fingers were pointed. In one of the most moving moments, the William character defends Penny when she is described as “that groupie” by one of the band members. William nails it when he points out who and “what” she really is- a bright light and cherished fan. Someone who loved them all and for all the right reasons.

I feel that women have been unfairly branded and labeled without cause. I’ve often said that I’m not opposed to “groupies,” per se. I just don’t like being called a name or being tagged like a sheep to slaughter. Summing me up for the life I’ve lived, seen through someone else’s eyes or, worse, exaggerating the truth. I didn’t want those I’ve truly loved or the relationships I’ve had to be considered less sincere because of the visibility of my partner.

Certainly loving music or dating musicians is not derogatory. Isn’t it logical, then, that birds of a feather flock together? Like-minded tribes mate or unite because of chemistry? Rock boys and models have been drawn to each other since forever! In the Netflix series Hollywood, you find that sex and sexual favors were the core of the industry. Several of the movie stars everyone loved on screen had started out as rent boys or nude models to make ends meet. Who decides why someone can give a blow job to the “right” person and get a starring role in a movie and another blow job by an aspiring talent gets tossed into the trash can of regret.

Why, after having four children with Mick Jagger, a successful modeling career and now being Mrs. Rupert Murdoch, would anyone refer to Jerry Hall as a groupie? Or gold digger, another favorite term used to describe women who marry well. Or Marianne Faithfull, Anita Pallenberg or Winona Ryder, for heaven’s sake? These are the questions I’ve always had and one of the main reason why I have rejected the term groupie in the press. It’s not a personal attack on those who identify with the moniker. It’s my own rebellion against being labeled and frowned on for the relationships I’ve had.

I’ve taken this stand for a long time, even though it’s also caused some judgement and negativity towards me from other women. It’s almost as if they think I see myself as better than them. Or that I’m not being honest when I don’t just call myself a full-on groupie, and own it. My closest friends tell me it’s just jealousy but that doesn’t make it any less hurtful to have tales and lies circulated about you by people you barely know or those who don’t know me at all. Or to have relationships that lasted for years being reduced to a laundry list of “conquests.”

This is nothing new, of course. Catherine The Great‘s enemies within the Emperor’s Court turned on her and started rumors that she was a sex fiend who had intercourse with horses. That stuck with her throughout her life and even in the museums of Russia, the tale has echoed although it’s completely untrue. Cleopatra and Anne Boleyn were also targeted. Ruining reputations was the way people got their revenge in days of yore. Or in some cases, the reason why some lost their heads to the guillotine. Why is it that women who have power or beauty have been subjected to crazy accusations of sexual voracity or deviance? Eve takes the blame for the banishment from Eden and although she was supposedly created from Adam’s rib, she is seen as a temptress and Adam as her victim.

I believe every woman should identify by how she feels comfortable and for the work she does. I personally prefer to be known for what I do, my accomplishments, my career. However, dating a rock star or an actor should not merit a nasty quip or name calling fest. It becomes unbalanced when just because someone gets famous as, say, a model or an actress and then dates a rock star, that she should get called anything other than what she does to earn a living. I’m not sure “groupie” falls under the umbrella of job occupation. I’d file it under pastime, hobby, passion, or fetish.

The origins of the groupie started with nothing more than a desire to be close to the band—the guys who made the music. Or in some cases, the women. The term came into use in the mid-1960s as slang for women who liked to hang out with musicians. It’s fair to say that not all “groupies” are the same. There are many tiers and pecking orders when narrowing it down. Certainly not every girl who dreams of being with a rock star will waltz backstage and demand sex or give oral gratification. That’s the image I despise and wish would not tarnish the entire viewpoint to the outside world. Some of the girls on the scene want to take the word “groupie” back, to personify what it meant in the ‘60s and early ‘70s. It became something entirely different when the ‘80s rolled around. Bands born out of the LA scene liked a different kind of arm candy than the Rolling Stones or the Beatles. They preferred exotic dancers and porn stars, the girls du jour of the time. Just as music changes with each era, so do the kinds of women who pursue the bands. But, more importantly, what kind of women the bands seek out. One man’s status is another man’s yen.

And then there are those who look at being a groupie as a form of prostitution. I’ve never understood that one because most girls who live that lifestyle don’t charge money to be with their favorite rock god or even their crew. It’s a thrill to be with the band, but it seems the glamor that was once attached to that goal has changed. For me, it was a thrill to fight to say “I’m IN the band”… or even “I AM the band!”

When I was living with Todd, he produced one of the first all-female bands, Fanny. They were so great! June Millington could shred! I felt bewildered when I would hear snide remarks wondering if Todd was sleeping with one of them. I thought to myself that would have never been said or thought if they weren’t women.

The bottom line is preference. We all have a choice. And we all can be whatever we want. We can wear many hats. I see myself as a mother, wife, musician, singer, songwriter, writer, mentor, animal lover… many different things. What I do in my spare time is how I make my soul happy. Who I date is based on connections, fate and karma. We end up with who we’re meant to be with and the experiences we have are all meant to be. I’ve been with my husband Jim for twenty years now. Our 18th wedding anniversary is coming in August 2020. So, I’m writing this piece from the perspective of a wife, mother, working musician, writer and mentor. Not just a girl who had lots of suitors in her youth. Every single little thing is part of the journey.

The first time I saw a photo in Rolling Stone of what they called a “groupie”, I was 15 years old and in the 10th grade. It was 1969, and neither the image nor the word was at all something ugly to me. It just seemed exciting and cool. The girls were so outrageously dressed, and it reflected an almost innocent charm. I didn’t aspire to be a groupie but they seemed like they were the ones who made the guys in the band cool. They helped dress them, created make-up looks and spread the word all over town about how good they were. It didn’t seem to be so much about sex and backstage antics. Maybe I was too young to fully understand everything, especially from the pages of a magazine.

On my first trip to LA with Todd in 1973, when I finally did meet some real girls who liked to be called groupies, it still didn’t seem derogatory. I started to see how it was all just tossed together in some people’s minds. It’s a complex dance between an artist and his muse. None of it is something so vulgar or tainted as being only about sexual conquest. Maybe to some, it’s about that. But for me it was a series of fated encounters that have lasted throughout my life.

Some people see a groupie as a girl who will do anything, including have sex with a roadie, to get to the band. There is that element to the rock n’ roll lifestyle. But it’s not the entire package. Others see groupies as a vibe, the girls who are there when the band makes it, the girls that helped them make it, the on-the-road bestie, or the girls who get the bands drugs and food. Or even give them the clothes off their backs if the band is short a cool stage look. I often joke that that’s how wearing your lingerie out became a signature rock girl look- the band had taken her clothes to wear onstage!

I recall reading where Pamela Des Barres said she was still a virgin when she first discovered her teenage heart being drawn to rock boys. It felt sexual to her and it was also just youthful and sweet. Not a salacious sexual quest. More a desire to be near the music and the men who made it. That’s perhaps what one would define as a “classic groupie”. Or, in some circles, “fan” is the preferred analogy. I can relate to that myself as I knew when I was ten years old, I would hang out with Mick Jagger one day. I knew those were my people… my kind.

Pamela has made a career out of her life as a proud groupie. But certainly she has a right to claim the term because she helped invent it! She now calls it her “groupie heart” and that is something anyone who’s ever had a crush on someone or loved someone’s music so much that it altered your DNA can relate to. Hasn’t everyone felt that way? Every guy or gal who picks up a guitar or slings a mic stand had to have been dazzled by their inspiration or felt a need to pursue that for their own futures. So, my point is this- none of it is negative nor should one word hold so much power that when it’s flung at a woman, she’ll feel shamed or scorned.

When I started to get a bit of fame, the media seemed to want to call me anything but “groupie”. It was “Friend Of The Stars”, “Queen Of The Rock Chicks”, “Leggy Model”, “The Mother Of All Rock Chicks”, “It Girl”… so when the internet entered our lives, I began to see just how judgmental and downright mean people were about the women who hung out with the bands. It started to become something so dirty and taboo that I wanted no part of that term. It’s a thin line, a hard one to walk. Personally, I feel loving music and being attracted to musicians is as natural as doctors and nurses getting along. Humans are drawn to their soul tribe. Music, musicians and all art forms attract me. I’m the moth to that flame.

As an entertainer myself, it always hurt me when what I actually do for my job was ignored or not taken seriously because of the famous names I’ve been attached to. It’s so one-sided to only put that burden on women. It has been the norm for men to be patted on the back and admired for their taste in women and especially if they were able to appeal to many and have tons of sexual experiences. Even in the animal kingdom, the male peacock has the massive plume bloom to attract as many lovers as he can. A male lion can rule the pride with his sexual domination. A male celebrity only becomes more famous if he’s got a beautiful model or actress on his arm. Whereas a woman who’s dance card is busy or even full is often ridiculed or bashed. Branded with the scarlet letter of infamy.

It started to get under my skin when I saw myself defined only by who I’d dated or had close friendships with. It’s the luck of the draw. Some women who are in the public eye can date and marry a celeb several times and be embraced for it. They use it to further their already visible life. They are proud and exploit all their lovers as the playthings that they’ve become. Some have become famous by leaking a porno or being on a reality show. What was once a limited field has become wide open with lots of branches of thought and assumption. I knew it wasn’t going to be easy for me to fight for my image… my persona… my legacy. But I did fight. I turned down almost every request I was presented to be interviewed for groupie documentaries or sensationalized TV shows. Sometimes turning down large sums of money. But I wanted to work hard and felt if I worked hard enough one day I’d be thought of for what I did on a stage, in front of the lens of a camera, as a mother and at times even a manager, more than who I shared my life with. Dare I use the “R” word? I wanted RESPECT.

There’s lots of contrast in the definition of groupie or muse but what about “partners”… the duos who took the world by storm. Sonny & Cher, Karen & Richard Carpenter, Debbie Harry & Chris Stein, Jack & Meg White, Jane Birkin & Serge Gainsbourg, Stevie Nicks & Lindsey Buckingham, Annie Lennox & Dave Stewart, Kim Gordon & Thurston Moore, etc… Or Chrissie Hynde and Courtney Love, who both married musicians. There’s a kaleidoscope of ways women are seen. It all depends on how you are first perceived. The general public seem to hold on to how they first heard of you even if you go on to do many different things in your life. Marianne Faithfull is a perfect example of someone who has been able to transcend her detractors and carry on like the warrior she is. But it baffles my mind how anyone could call her or Anita Pallenberg anything but tastemakers and trendsetters. They were the women I would stare at for hours as a young girl. They fascinated me almost more than the guys they hung out with. Yet I still hear them sometimes referred to as groupies.

Like any entertainer, I have an overwhelming need to be loved and to give love and positive energy to others. That’s why I crave being onstage. The connection with the audience is almost like having the best sex in the world. Or at minimum, a great, soulful hug that sends sparks through your body. I’ve been doing this since 1980, in public anyway. This is my life… not the talented, special men I dated in my youth. That’s part of my story and I will never regret a single heartbreak nor will I ever regret loving to the point of forgetting myself and my own pursuits. But I want to be remembered for more than my dates or suitors. I gave birth to a child who grew up to become a superstar so the role of nurturer has followed me throughout my life. I’ve accepted the fact that my fate is to be a vessel for talent and to enrich those who possess it. It’s become who I am- all the parts and pieces of my karma rolled into one big bang! My artistic side occupies just as much space as my musing side- equal parts love and creative energy.

Things come full circle especially when I get approached after one of my shows by young girls that call me “High Priestress” or tell me that they are my “groupies”. When I hear the words “Bebe, Im your biggest groupie!”, my heart swells but I also like to immediately remind them that I do what I do onstage because of them. Because of the exchange being a performer gives to my being. It’s like fuel… hors d’oeuvres for the soul.

One morning in 2009, I got a call from an old industry friend who had landed at Interscope Records. I was awoken with, “Bebe, you’ve been touted in a song produced by Pharrell Williams called ‘Bebe Buell’ by a young band from Boston called Chester French.” I remember thinking “wow, that’s a nice compliment” because the gist of the song was that someone like me or Pamela Anderson Lee were the creme de la creme of rock-boy desire. There’s a clothing line called ‘Muse & Lyrics‘ that has a blouse/top called “The Bebe” and the brand ‘I’m With The Band’ has named their leopard scarfs and headbands the “Bebe”. There’s even a cocktail called “The Bebe Buell”.

But I think one of the coolest things was having Cameron Crowe name the lead singer in Stillwater Jeff Bebe. He gave me the original T-shirt that was used in the movie, too, and boy do I treasure it! Cameron sprinkled all kinds of little clues and messages throughout Almost Famous. I was especially touched by the Jeff Bebe nod because he knew how much I wanted to be a singer in a band. I remember him once saying to me that I should just go for it. At that point, people only knew me as a model and Todd Rundgren’s girlfriend. I hadn’t even done Playboy yet, so I was still trying to figure out who I was and how to do it. I finally did but it took me six more years to get in the studio and front a band!

It’s moving to be honored and it’s also nice to be appreciated by the younger generation of pop culture lovers. The first time my name was in a song, I was excited by it. My old friend G.E. Smith had a line on his solo album that was about coming to visit “Bebe and Liz”… he came over to my best friend Liz Derringer’s house to play it for us. We were elated… it was cool. I would never be so bold as to sit here and make a list of my lovers or the songs they wrote for me because it seems so long ago. I’d rather leave that up to the fans of the music to decipher and besides not all songs written for others are acknowledged as such. I’ve had several songs given to me as gifts or written to me in letters.

Sometimes the authors don’t admit it because their feelings change and they don’t want to upset their new love interest. Didn’t Bob Dylan write “Leopard Skin Pill Box Hat”, “Just Like A Woman”, “Fourth Time Around” and “Like A Rolling Stone” about Edie Sedgwick, only to later deny it? I know the feeling because it’s happened to me. So, at this point in my life, I just cherish the letters (yes, I still have them so one day when we’re all gone they will maybe solve the puzzles) and I respect and allow artistic license to have its day. It’s an artist’s prerogative to change their minds so I hold no hurt feelings. Music buffs are pretty smart anyway and they usually know the truth, so it matters little unless it’s blatant. The one topic that irks me is that I claimed This Year’s Model was about me. Well, that’s impossible because I didn’t meet and start to date Elvis Costello until he was well into Armed Forces. I was living with him in London when he recorded it in the fall of 1978. He included a couple of lyrics from songs on Armed Forces in letters to me but I can say with certainty that “Party Girl” wasn’t one of them. I guess it was the timing of the release that made people speculate I was the subject, but I wasn’t and never claimed to be. He didn’t even know me when he wrote those records. Why this is disputed has always been a mystery to me. The songs Mr. Costello sent me in letters were from later albums, starting with Get Happy. I will always wonder too why he would say something so false and perpetuate a rumor twenty years later in the liner notes of a re-issue.  Here’s to hoping it is finally put to rest. And even with the shame and pain I felt at the time, I feel no regret or ill will toward anyone. To me the truth is pretty obvious. Remember the story I told earlier about Catherine The Great? Revenge is often used when hearts are hurt, and it is very common in the entertainment industry.

In summing up my thoughts on the topic, I feel it’s time in our culture to appreciate the roles women have played in art since the beginning of time. Dali had his Gala, Picasso would hide the initials of his mistresses in his paintings and secretly tell them so they would know it was for them, Clapton immortalized his love and lust for Patti Boyd with the ultimate ode in “Layla” and John Lennon may have written the most beautiful love song of all for Yoko in “Woman”. Or was it Paul McCartney with “The Long And Winding Road” about Jane Asher or “Maybe I’m Amazed” about the spectacular Linda Eastman McCartney?

We can’t leave out the spirited and unique George Sand whose given name was Aurore Dupin. She was born in Paris on July 1, 1804 and adopted the name “George” because women couldn’t write professionally with the freedom of men in those days. She became one of the most popular writers in Europe during her lifetime- one of the most notable writers of the European Romantic era. She would wear male attire in public saying it was easier and more affordable than women’s garb. She was a confidant to Franz Liszt and lover and muse to Chopin. She would lie beneath the piano while Chopin composed, saying it sent the music through her entire body instead of just her ears.

Music is primal and it gets into our bloodstream. It’s easy to see why young girls get crushes on their idols and some even grow up to marry their dream man. But the days of defining women by their sexual desires or “conquests” should be on the wane. I never looked at the men I dated or loved as conquests. Humans aren’t territories to be battled over or ceded to. The human connection is divine. Each and every person we cross paths with is part of our magical life story.  So, whatever you identify yourself as is fine. That is your privilege and judgement should not follow even if the choices aren’t the norm. As Oscar Wilde said, “Be yourself. Everyone else is taken.”

*Closing side note* As I was finishing this essay, I was doodling with a People magazine crossword puzzle and one of the clues was “GROUPIE”. Guess what the answer was… “FAN”. The timing was uncanny!

[uzuuzuking]

so this started out as just a general post about why i like cinderella adaptations, but slowly spiraled into a ranking/review of all the cinderella adaptations i’ve seen in my short, young life. so strap in for possibly the longest post i’ve ever made on this blog. (look, i never know how much i have to say about something until i really get going lmao)

idk why i like cinderella adaptations/remakes/spinoffs so much? most of them are garbage (especially the ones within the last 10 years don’t @ me) but fuck it i like this brand of garbage. it’s fun to watch these movies and rework the bad plotlines and dialogue in my head as i go along.

i guess i like the source material and some of the aspects of all the different adaptations, but honestly i just like re-imagining them because there’s only so much cringey script-written-for-teens-but-clearly-written-by-40-year-old-adults-who-have-no-idea-how-teens-or-even-people-for-that-matter-actually-talk-and-interact i can take in one excruciating sitting.

anyway here’s my personal ranking of all the cinderella adaptations i’ve seen that no one asked for. (not including stage productions because i haven’t seen any and have no opinion of them. also not including into the woods because that’s not just cinderella, but a spectacular amalgamation of fairytale mishap and shenanigan.) and reviews because apparently i had more to say than i originally thought when i first started constructing this list:

cinderella (1997) - the absolute best cinderella adaptation of all time, hands down, this is non-negotiable. this movie has it all: an excellent and diverse cast, gorgeous costume design, beautiful sets, some of the most dazzling dance numbers i ever witnessed when i first watched it at the wee age of 4, and a positive, progressive message that was accurate for its time yet also so ahead of its time. i cannot praise this version of cinderella enough, it is my all time favorite and one of my top 3 feel-good movies. if you watched it today, the effects might not be as magical compared to what we have now, but keep in mind it was released in 1997. anyway, the cast is truly amazing and so effortlessly inclusive (and honestly the fact that the prince was asian with a black mother and white father and they literally never addressed it was such a power move). i could go on about this movie forever (i’ll probably make a whole post dedicated to it in the future) and what it meant to me and many others as young, impressionable poc. in conclusion, this movie set an exceedingly high standard for me and destroyed the chances of any other cinderella adaptation even hoping to live up to that. i love it! so! much!

ever after: a cinderella story (1998) - tbh i never saw this until i was in college but i immediately fell in love. i love the flow of the story as a whole - i never felt like anything was missing. i love the costumes and i especially love how danielle and henry’s relationship progressed throughout the film. slow-burn comes to mind when i watch their interactions and we all love a sweet, sweet slow-burn. it’s romance babes! it’s Dramatic in a few scenes and all i can say is that it really works because drew barrymore’s performance is exceptional, fantastic, engaging, more adjectives to describe how enthralled by her i was. above all, her character is compassionate - she uses her voice to speak in support for those who are suppressed by the flawed government systems and law enforcers, and influences the prince to use his status and power to better his people who lack the privileges of the nobility. she’s such a strong female lead (emotionally and physically - she literally fireman carries her love interest, who is taller than her and definitely exceeds her own bodyweight) and truly the mvp of this adaptation. watch it. watch it for Her.

enchanted (2007) - amy adams and idina menzel - ‘nuff said. okay but for real this one is so unique with its transition from classic d*sney 2D animation style to the real three-dimensional world and i adore it to the ends of the earth. the music? slaps! the story? slaps! the development of the main character? slaps!! she’s so princess-y and d*sney cartoon-y and struggles in the real world, but she adapts at a good pace and i love that she learns to be realistic while also keeping hope and love close to her heart. also her mother figure / daughter figure bond with morgan is so so precious. the only constructive criticism i have for this movie is the fact that we were robbed of idina menzel singing!!! did they know all along she was destined to play the frozen queen years in the future and decided against her singing in this one?? is that it? ridiculous. it’s been over a decade and i’m still seething over this. other than that this movie is *chef’s kiss*

ella enchanted (2004) - anne hathaway’s back must still be hurting from carrying this film. (no shade to the other cast members, they’re good, but anne is a queen and i forever love her.) this is another childhood favorite of mine. the story itself is a refreshing take - hats off to gail carson levine for the source material! i’ve talked about the differences between the movie and book before in the midst of my reread of the book a few months ago, but i don’t remember how much i focused on the movie. it’s so different from the book that it might as well be its own thing. on its own, the movie is pretty decent! again, mostly because of anne. it’s funny, it’s sad (especially that scene towards the beginning between ella and areida, i’m in stupid tears every time), and it gets weird but it’s a fun time. the chemistry between char and ella is so zesty i can feel it through the screen, i swoon over both of them. tbh i probably wouldn’t like this movie so much if not for the fact that anne hathaway is truly talented and i spend most of my time watching it just looking at her. 

cinderella 3: a twist in time (2007) - i genuinely enjoyed and appreciated how the characters were written in this one. they all had clear motives and became much more dynamic through their lines and actions (drizella is arguably the most static character here but she still amuses me so it’s fine i guess). cinderella has more agency since the stakes are higher. prince charming actually has a gotdamn personality and has some of the funniest scenes and dialogue. good for him. i was kind of sad that anastasia’s story with the sweet baker boy was thanos snapped by the stepmother, but she and baker boy get a cute credits illustration together so it’s still canon! maybe i’m more biased on this one because i grew up rewatching it A Lot, but i definitely prefer it to the first and second movies.

cinderella (2000) - this one is kind of weird but i like it? the film has a really interesting vibe that i’m still trying to figure out how to describe even after seeing it like 5 times. wikipedia refers to the aesthetic style as “the glamour of the 1950s” which just might be as close as we can get. it follows the general guidelines of the cinderella plot, but the main differences were: zezolla (cinderella) was already helping with the chores before her father remarried, claudette (stepmother) was actively trying to murder zezolla’s father during their marriage, the stepsisters were much more violent and crass (they hunted zezolla’s beloved farm animals for sport and talked about getting “a man in [their] bed”), zezolla’s father was manipulated by everything claudette did and said and treated his own daughter poorly as a result, and prince valiant is honestly kind of a douchebag but seems willing to improve himself after meeting zezolla (basically his vibes are iffy but he’s willing to learn). this whole movie is pretty niche and i have yet to interact with someone who’s also seen it. and the only reason i’ve seen it so many times is because i just like listening to how the dialogue is delivered. (except for prince valiant’s random song at the ball, i kind of hated that and i skip through it every time lol).

a cinderella story (2004) - the classic hilary duff version. very cliche early 2000s high school romance, but it works for the cinderella narrative. not particularly diverse. a classic nonetheless. in my mind this is the pinnacle of the “modern cinderella movie” type. this is one of the most iconic movies for us zillennials and i’d like to think it’s known well enough for me to not go into a lot of detail about it. basically it was fresh and new for its time, had plenty of memorable scenes, and did i mention hilary duff? the film kind of plays into the “not like other girls” trope - as do a couple of the movies i listed above - but i’m just going to acknowledge that the early 2000s were Wack and simply move on. all in all, i like this movie for the nostalgia, iconic scenes, and hilary duff. also jennifer coolidge is pretty funny as the stepmother.

another cinderella story (2008) - again, an early 2000s classic, but this time with selena gomez. i liked the dancing in this one. i like selena’s quiet, somewhat timid characterization of her character, mary. and jane lynch in the stepmother role is perfection. she’s so fun to watch and is always hilarious. the story is nothing remarkable, but it’s okay and i liked it as a kid. after the hilary duff version, this one still managed to feel fresh because, though it was similar in its modern era approach, it focused more on the performing arts and dance. “cinderella” is an aspiring dancer, rather than the 2004 aspiring scholar. the “prince” is a famous popstar, not a football player. the stepmother is an outdated popstar desperate to stay Hip and Relevant with the kids, not a cranky botox lady. honestly i just love watching this one for the dancing, mary’s genuine and innocent love for the “prince”, and literally everything that comes out of jane lynch’s mouth. that woman is a dialogue gold mine.

a cinderella story: once upon a song (2011) - lucy hale is good. missi pyle is good. they play their roles and lines that they’re given fairly well. over all, it’s entertaining. lucy, of course, has them Pipes and i do like the songs in this movie. the only major downside for me was the “token best friend of color” trope. lucy’s best friend is an asian girl who’s good at sports and is there for one liners and support. the prince charming character’s best friend is a black guy who he only knew for probably a month at the most. he can beatbox, sing, and dj. basically he’s also just there as support. they really don’t do much for the plot but they’re there for diversity and whatnot. this movie is.. fine.

cinderella (1950) - the only reason this ranks so low for me is because i watched it a lot as a child when it was on vhs and it always felt like a fever dream to me. i was just really young and didn’t feel invested in any of the characters. it is a classic, though, and i would watch it again and be able to enjoy it.

cinderella 2: dreams come true (2002) - i liked cinderella’s and anastasia’s stories from this one. jaq’s was meh. it was fine.

dj cinderella or cinderella pop (2019) - netflix knows i like cinderella adaptations so, naturally, they shoved this into my recommended and, naturally, i watched it. twice. which is more than i can say for the following review... so this movie is brazillian and is pretty much the cut & mold of modern cinderella movies. but she wants to be a dj. she stars out living a perfect life as a wealthy girl with a loving family, but turns out her dad is cheating on her mom with his secretary. that’s when she “stops believing in love”. which is actually valid bc if i saw one of my parental figures cheating on the other, i honestly wouldn’t know what to believe in anymore. anyway, cíntia dorella (yes. that’s her full name.) and her mom move into her aunt’s place. a year or so passes. stepmother/secretary/cheating lady is throwing an extravagant birthday party for her daughters and hires freddy prince, a popular musician who cíntia doesn’t really like. meanwhile, cíntia gets a dj gig she’s excited for until she finds out she’s the opener for freddy prince at her stepsisters’ party. she ends up disguising herself as “dj cinderella” and freddy is super into her. it’s pretty generic from there but i was entertained enough to watch it twice. take from that what you will.

cinderella (2015) - ok so we been knew that d*sney’s live action remakes ain’t shit, and this one is no exception. d*sney within the last few years has been like 99% aesthetics and marketing. this movie was visually stunning, especially with the settings and costumes. those were the only 2 things i truly liked. everything else was forgettable. in its defense, i did read a post about the “have courage and be kind” message which is something wonderful to hold onto, especially for anyone in an abusive situation like ella. that’s valid and i respect that. i still lowkey hate this movie tho. i started getting a headache about 4 reviews ago, but remembering how much praise this movie got has reignited my fighting spirit. honestly if you like it, that’s good, you like what you like and that’s that. but this is my review and i hated how proper ella’s posture was (she’s been doing physical labor hunched on the floor for years now, how does she not slump around in exhaustion at the end of the day??), i hated how perfectly curated the whole thing was (again, that’s mostly because of d*sney and their aesthetics), and i hated how hollow everything felt. i can’t perfectly describe it, but i never felt emotionally invested in any of the characters. something about their performance was lacking and yet again i blame d*sney. i actually really like lily james, but something about the way she was directed left me devoid of emotional attachment to ella. i remember nothing about ella’s step family or the prince. that’s how much of an impact this adaptation had on me. also i just remembered the fairy godmother as i type this. i ADORE helena bonham carter, but this movie does a horrible disservice to her. if she liked working on this movie, then i’m happy for her, but even she wasn’t strong enough to sell this to me. i saw this movie in theaters and came out of it lamenting my waste of money that i could have spent on something i would have actually enjoyed. but the thing that enraged me the most, the thing i despised, i detested, the thing i seethed over and rant about to this day was the ONE (1) token black character. i don’t even know if he had a name but he was captain of the guard or some shit. if i remember correctly (but probably not tbh this movie was so forgettable), he was the one who heard ella singing and was the whole reason the prince was able to have her try on the glass slipper. this man, who had zero character development, zero relevance to the plot, an insignificant amount of screen time, is suddenly the reason the main character is able to finally connect with her love interest. um. What. i hate how the writers treated him and i will forever be filled with every last grain of salt over this. anyway he’s my favorite character and everyone else is just eh. to conclude this ungodly long review, i don’t like this movie. i tried to watch it again once but got so bored i quit 10 minutes in. do yourself a favor and watch cinderella (1997) instead. (the only reason this movie is ranked above the remaining 5 is the production quality. but i guess that’s unfair bc d*sney has the big bucks. and maybe i wouldn’t be so harsh if i weren’t sleep deprived and grumpy from a sugar-induced headache, but these feelings still come from my Chest so idk.)

a cinderella story: a christmas wish (2019) - i think we all secretly enjoy christmas-themed movies and this has got to be someone’s guilty pleasure. i was mildly entertained (but again with the cringey dialogue written by people clearly not in high school...) and i do like laura marano. but they autotuned her to hell and back - which i loathed - because the woman can actually sing and she has a lovely voice. she got to sing candidly one (1) time and i relished the experience. my ears thank her beautiful, un-autotuned voice. other than that it was.. fine. i didn’t hate it but i didn’t like it either. laura marano deserves better than this. (can’t say the same for the other actors tho because their roles were unmemorable.) also laura marano was super cute in her elf costume!

not cinderella’s type (2018) - i legit forgot about this one until after i compiled the entire list lol. i saw it on youtube and it was decent as far as i remember. it’s another modern day cinderella. i think the “prince” runs over “cinderella’s” cat or something?? i’m pretty sure it was her mom’s cat so now she has nothing left to remember her mom by. prince boy feels awful and tries to befriend her or do something to make it up to her, but she just doesn’t really like him. i think her aunt and uncle are emotionally abusive to her and prince boy does his best to be there for her without making things worse. if i remember correctly, i liked that aspect of the movie because it’s hard to be there for a victim of any kind of abuse if trying to help them could potentially hurt them more, especially minors still under the care of abusive guardians. anyway i think cinderella girl’s best friend is in love with her or something but she ends up not being into him and slowly gets together with prince boy. she eventually moves out of her guardians’ house and into the spare house at prince boy’s home (he’s rich or something). i need to rewatch this movie tbh i could be wrong about everything here lol.

rags (2012) - not amazing, definitely not memorable because i have nothing to say about its plot or writing, but it has keke palmer which is its one redeeming quality. also it’s the only one on this list where the male protagonist is the cinderella. so that’s solid i guess.

a cinderella story: if the shoe fits (2016) - this was a movie. it happened. i vaguely remember how ridiculous it was and sometimes i felt secondhand embarrassment. i don’t remember what about specifically, but i remember the emotion. sofia carson is a talented singer. i think she’s a decent actor but this script was Bad.

elle: a modern cinderella tale (2010) - i only watched this one because i was bored out of my damn mind and saw it on youtube. i felt bad for all the actors because this script was terrible. i don’t recommend this unless you’re about to sit down with your squad and make fun of it.

apparently descendants is on the “cinderella adaptations and references” list on imdb but i refuse to put it on my list because it’s not a cinderella-specific adaptation and i don’t like the descendants franchise. now, if we’re going to discuss a quality series about the children of fairytale characters, that would hands down be ever after high. but that’s a different topic for a different day.

thus concludes the ranking no one asked for but i felt compelled to make. thank you and goodnight

[queenarticlearchive]

Sophisticratic rock - Genevieve Hall gets a dressing down from Queen

Record Mirror

March 30, 1974

Genevieve Hall

Fire and brimstone, the gnashing of teeth and all of hell’s fury, is nothing compared to the anger and wrath of Queen.

It was the first journalist they’d encountered after having had their new album Queen II slagged off unmercifully in most of the music papers. Plus the fact that one particular journal had analytically delved into the depths of hype using Queen and Merlin as their prime examples.

So was it any wonder that all their embittered feelings of outrage, hurt, anger and frustration poured out like hot lava from an erupted volcano?

Lead guitarist Brian May picked up the paper and waves it under my nose. “This article is the biggest load of rubbish I’ve ever read in my life”, he declares vindictively.

“Look, there are people going to read this article - some of them won’t have heard of Merlin and some of them won’t know us. The headline screams out commercial pop. They’ve printed a very old picture of us, which we hate, looking extremely poppy, and underneath it is the word HYPE. The whole article says in a suggestive way that Queen are a hype.”

Hype

“To be honest it looks to us like a put-up job. They say we’re a put-up job. I say that’s a put-up job, and the reasons are that this paper completely ignored us all the time we were going around on the road building up a following. We draw about a minimum of a thousand people a night for the last God knows how many months and they all know where we’re at.

“This paper completely ignored us and so now that we’ve got to the position where our records are taking off and we’re in the public eye. Now we’ve got to that position without the help of the music papers, they can’t really admit that we’re good, they have to suggest we’re a hype or something.”

Is that how you really see it? I asked.

“That’s exactly how we think it is,” joined in their drummer Roger Taylor. “Supported by the fact that they’ve compared us to a totally new band who we’ve never even heard of. We don’t want to say anything against them, but, apparently they’re just a straight pop band. Whereas we’ve been playing and working up to this for years. Christ, I’m 24, Brian’s 25, Freddie is 27, John’s a bit younger 23. Plus the fact that we’re all intelligent enough not to want to be put across in that way. We want to put out music first.”

Is it coming first? I asked, we appear to be getting a giant-sized image with the music running a close second.

“That’s only ‘cos we want to put our music across in the most striking and entertaining way. We want to make an impact. Surely that’s what it’s all about - entertaining.

“And that’s another thing,” he continues, “They’ve given the impression that someone’s said to us, ‘here’s a load of money boys, go down to Carnaby Street and get yourselves some clothes.

“Freddie and I used to sell old clothes. In fact Freddie used to design and MAKE our stage costumes. We’ve always taken care to make sure that our clothes are just right and look good. Perhaps they’d prefer it if we went on in dirty jeans, but we don’t really think the public want to look at that. I think they’d rather see something that looks good.”

Their lead vocalist Freddie Mercury (the aristocratic one) reads aloud with indignation the parody of a hype lead singer, and comes to a part where it says that hype bands employ writers to pen their instant hit singles.

“Now how the hell do they think we fall into that category? They haven’t done any homework. They’ve even called John our bassist our drummer. They haven’t even bothered to find out what we’re really about.

“Everyone seems to object if you’re playing what you think is serious and the kids buy it, they can’t understand it.

“Well we’ve definitely had no Chinn and Chapman behind us,” Roger bursts out, “every song we’ve do is planned by us, including our album sleeves” (note the famous Queen crest designed by Freddie).

Uncontrolled

“We even have control on which tracks we want released. In fact out of all the bands, I think we’re the most uncontrolled.”

“Exactly,” says Freddie, “That’s why this article is a complete farce and nowhere near the truth.”

OK - so how come they’re able to obtain this uncontrolled freedom? It was Brian who answered. “Because the record companies desperately wanted us in the beginning. I know it sounds like blowing our own trumpet, but it’s true. We made demo tapes and everyone thought they were good and wanted us. They realised they were in competition with each other. So in the end we were able to settle for a deal which enabled us to dictate a bit.”

You can’t deny that you’ve been getting preferential treatment over a lot of equally good bands, I said glancing around at their specially provided de-luxe van, which had been given to them at the beginning of their British tour.

“Ah wait a minute,” says Roger. “It wasn’t until our record company realised we were succeeding before they started giving us the big treatment. At first EMI printed 5,000 copies of our first album and much to their surprise they had to reprint that number five times over. So naturally when we made our second album, they felt justified in a lot of work behind it. Which is really why there’s been enough copies in the shops to put it into the charts in the first week.”

“Yes, but any record company if they’ve got any sense is going to do that,” says Freddie, “it looks like we’re getting knocked for having the right people around us doing their jobs properly.”

Is that a large part of their success - having the right people doing the right job?

“No”, answered Roger, “that comes after. Our success is due to us being a bloody good band and also having common sense - ‘cos there a lot of bloody good bands around - to get things managed properly. But even so we wouldn’t have had the support of the people if they hadn’t believed in us in the first place.”

And now over to Freddie. “People think that if there’s a lot of money put behind a band and they seem to make it quicker than usual, then they’re a hype. But we’ve geared ourselves to jump a few hurdles and have benefited by doing so.” He glances down at his picture.

“Oh really,” he exclaims in disgust, “this paper has no flair - I mean to print this picture three times in succession … and just look at my arms!” He was horrified, “look at how fat they appear, now my arms aren’t like that at all - what do you think?”

He rolls up his sleeves for me to inspect and I’d like to state here and now that the poor dear’s arms are quite, quite slender!

Ripped-off

Phew! If after all that you think that the lads are hypersensitive to criticism and feel animosity towards their critics, then let Roger put you straight.

“No, we don’t hold grudges - we just go round and wrench people’s arms and legs off. Or send them bags of wet cement, nothing too violent!”

By this time John Deacon (who reminded me of the Alice’s doormouse) had woken from his slumbers (too many late nights and early mornings), he was reasonably cheerful for someone who had had his clothes ripped off the day before.

“By the law of averages,” he was saying, “it’s someone else’s turn to be ripped off today.”

You talk to him about the success of their Queen II album and he says, “It’s all our Mums and hype.” He’s a lot quieter than the other three, but can’t help warming to him as he’s completely unpretentious.

Freddie is a pretty dynamic character, he has an air of confidence which can sometimes be mistaken for arrogance. He has hair the colour of midnight, luminous brown eyes which he makes look evil with skillful use of make-up. He speaks ever so nicely (don’t you dear?) with the superfluous use of his hands, and commands attention rather than demands it.

Brian’s the tallest one and has a shock of dark curls which bring out the green flecks in his lucent grey eyes. He’s the thoughtful considerate one, and it’s a joy listening to him arguing with Roger.

And Roger - well he’s the pretty one with a sense of fun. He doesn’t look capable of busting a gut over a set of drums, but once he gets that adrenaline moving - the guy goes berserk.

Sucker

Music wise, Queen are a heavy electric rock band - but not raucous. There’s a fair amount of melodic structure incorporated in their material, which contains complex harmonies and could quite easily become messy was it not skillfully honed to precision. They’re exciting to listen to and watch, and have the good sense to capture rather than rupture the senses. The only word which describes their musical finesse is SOPHISTICATION.

After their British tour which climaxes at the Rainbow Theatre, Queen will take their ‘sophisticratic’ rock for a two-month stateside tour. Their opening night will be in Denver, Colorado, where they appear on the same bill as Mott the Hoople. I don’t know about the rest of you - but I’ve always been a right sucker for royalty.

[aion-rsa]

How The Haunting of Bly Manor Pays Tribute to 1961’s The Innocents

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The first day at work for The Haunting of Bly Manor’s writers started with a field trip. Mike Flanagan’s team went out to the Amblin Entertainment screening room to watch a movie. “We did the same thing in [The Haunting of Hill House] with Robert Wise’s The Haunting,” Flanagan tells Den of Geek and other press outlets. “It’s a great way to start … to put up a really beautifully realized adaptation of the same source material, and to start talking to the writers about the things that I love about it and hear the things they love about it.” 

For Bly Manor, the version of the same source material chosen was Jack Clayton’s The Innocents, released in 1961 and starring Deborah Kerr. It’s a film that Flanagan wanted to celebrate in his own adaptation of Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw. 

“It’s a movie, I think, that isn’t talked about for whatever reason,” says Flanagan. “It doesn’t come up as often as The Haunting does. Though it employs a lot of the same technique and came out two years prior. So, it’s one of those films that cinephiles love and horror fans love, but a lot of people don’t know it. We were actively always looking for ways to tip our hat to it.”

And they found plenty. Though The Innocents cleaves more closely to The Turn of the Screw than Flanagan’s version does (the Netflix series is a mini anthology of James’ work, blending two of the writer’s other stories in with the events of the novella), the 1961 film invented several elements that reappeared in Flanagan’s series. The first is its ‘O Willow Waly’ song motif. The Innocents memorably starts with an entirely dark screen as a child’s voice sings Paul Dehn’s lyrics to a melody by composer George Auric:

We lay my love and I beneath the weeping willow. But now alone I lie and weep beside the tree.

‘O Willow Waly’ does not feature in The Turn of the Screw and was composed for the 1961 film where it’s heard several times: hummed by young Flora (Pamela Franklin), played on the piano by Miles (Martin Stephens), and as the tune to which a toy ballerina dances inside a musical jewellery box. As a tribute to The Innocents, the Netflix series borrows the same motif. Its opening lines are recited as a poem by the narrator in the very first scene, it’s sung and hummed by Flora a number of times – including when she’s playing hide-and-seek in the attic in the company of one of the faceless ghosts – and is once again the tune to which the toy ballerina dances in Miss Jessel’s jewellery box. That jewellery box (see below), and the photograph of Peter Quint discovered inside it, is another invention of The Innocents borrowed for the Netflix show.

A major tribute comes in the name of Victoria Pedretti’s Bly Manor character. In James’ original novella, the young woman who takes the position at Bly is known only as ‘the Governess’. In The Innocents, the governess character played by Deborah Kerr is called Miss Giddens. And in The Haunting of Bly Manor, she’s Danielle Clayton – her surname a nod to the 1961 film’s director, Jack Clayton.

Flanagan tells press that the hat-tips were meant to go further than character names; he also wanted members of The Innocents cast to cameo in Bly Manor. It’s a trick the team pulled off in The Haunting of Hill House, when actor Russ Tamblyn (who played Luke Sanderson in 1963 film The Haunting) was hired to cameo as Nell Crain’s psychologist Dr Montague. 

“We didn’t have the benefit of being able to bring Russ Tamblyn in this time, but we went looking. We went looking for anyone on the cast that we could find from The Innocents to see if we could get them back.” Were they successful? Child actors Pamela Franklin and Mark Stephens appear to be the film’s only two surviving castmembers, the former now running a family-owned bookshop on Sunset Boulevard and the latter now a UK-based architect with his own Ted Talk. If you spot either of them in Bly Manor, be sure to let us know.

Read more

TV

The Haunting of Bly Manor: The Poignant Tale of Hannah Grose

By Louisa Mellor

TV

The Haunting of Bly Manor: Mike Flanagan Discusses Standout Eighth Episode

By Alec Bojalad

Castmembers notwithstanding, there are countless echoes of The Innocents across the Netflix show’s nine episodes. In the novella, the Governess is driven by coach to Bly’s front door, where she’s greeted by housekeeper Mrs Grose holding Flora’s hand. In The Innocents and Bly Manor, she asks the driver to stop early and let her walk the remainder of the way to the house, letting her drink in the paradisiacal grounds and stumble upon Flora playing by the lake. There are other shared links that don’t appear in the original story: The statue garden, Flora’s bath on Dani/Miss Giddens’ first night at Bly, the game of hide-and-seek, the children’s dress-up and ‘story time’ performance, Miles choking Dani/Miss Giddens, Miles killing a dove… (in The Innocents, he kills one of the birds he feeds on the tower and hides its under his pillow; in The Haunting of Bly Manor, he breaks the neck of his teacher’s classroom pet dove). And while it’s never confirmed how Miss Jessel died in The Turning of the Screw, the Netflix series adopts The Innocents’ explanation that she drowned in the house’s lake, following the death of her lover Peter Quint (the circumstances of which are quite different in the Netflix show). 

The design of the Netflix series also takes inspiration from The Innocents. In The Turn of the Screw, the Governess first sees the ghost of her predecessor Miss Jessel across the lake when she’s sitting on a bench, sewing, with Flora playing nearby. In the 1961 film, Miss Giddens is sitting in a lakeside Gothic folly when she sees the apparition, and a very similar Gothic folly appears in the Netflix series. 

The influence doesn’t stop at sets, props and plot points. The style of filmmaking is carried over from the film to the TV series. The Innocents’ director of photography Freddie Francis made clever use of the sides of the frame to show glimpses of the film’s ghosts. Francis used specially made lenses to blur the edge of shot, in some cases painting directly onto the lens to create a foggy effect with a channel of light in the centre. In this interview, Bly Manor cinematographer James Kniest tells Den of Geek he aimed for the same effect with the ghosts in the series. “They were always meant to be very subtle and not on the nose,” Kniest says. “And that was probably some of our biggest conversations, how bright to light the ghosts in the background and then how to deal with them in post. Sometimes they’re in reflections. Look in the dark corners.”

There are major differences too, of course. With almost nine hours of story versus The Innocents‘ 90 minutes, Bly Manor delves much deeper into Dani’s backstory, and fleshes out the barely mentioned characters of the Manor’s gardener and cook. While the ending of The Innocents is faithful to the final lines of the James story, Bly Manor goes in an altogether different direction. 

The chief difference though, is Bly Manor’s unambiguous stance on the haunting. There’s no question in the series that the ghosts are real, but Clayton’s film dances beautifully around the ambiguity that Flora and Miles’ possession might only be happening inside Miss Giddens’ head. Revisit the moments in the film in which Miss Giddens sees Quint and Jessell, and almost every time, we first see her face reacting before we see the ghost itself – a suggestion that they only exist in her imagination. Director Jack Clayton was intrigued by the argument made by literary critic Edmund Wilson in his now-famous 1934 essay ‘The Ambiguity of Henry James’ that the original story is not a ghostly tale at all, but a Freudian fantasy in which a frustrated governess projects her repressed sexuality onto the lurid story of two children possessed by lustful adults. According to film historian Sir Christopher Frayling, when Deborah Kerr asked her director if the hauntings were all in Miss Giddens’ head, she was told to make up her own mind.

The Innocents was not adapted directly from James’ novella, but instead from a 1950 stage play by William Archibald that shares the film’s title. Jack Clayton worked with Archibald on the screenplay, and then brought in the successive help of playwrights and screenwriters John Mortimer, Harold Pinter and Truman Capote (with whom Clayton had worked on 1953 John Huston movie Beat the Devil) to fine tune the screenplay. It was Capote who gave the script its Southern Gothic and Freudian elements, says Sir Christopher Frayling in this video essay. The spider eating a butterfly (like the one Miles tries to scare Miss Clayton with in episode one of the Netflix show), the beetle crawling from the mouth of a statue … Capote’s preoccupation in the script, says Frayling, was to reveal “the skull beneath the skin.” 

The result is both disturbing and beautiful. Clayton’s film is drenched in a Victorian horror of Peter Quint and Miss Jessel’s sexuality, and doesn’t shy from the novella’s unsettling hints towards the sexual dynamic between the adult Miss Giddens and the child-possessed-by-an-adult Miles. It’s a captivating, intense treatment of a story James himself described as a plaything, or an “amusette to catch those not easily caught”. French New Wave filmmaker Francois Truffaut was a fan, and according to one anecdote, praised The Innocents to its director as the greatest English film since Alfred Hitchcock’s 1938 The Lady Vanishes. 

As remarked by Frayling, Clayton coincidentally appears to pay tribute to Hitchcock in The Innocents, visually quoting from 1958’s Vertigo in his shot of the winding staircase leading up to the house’s haunted tower (see below). He also included a nod to Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane in the shot of Miss Giddens leaning over a jigsaw, swamped by the vast stately house, and saluted Jean Cocteau’s 1946 La Belle et la Bête in the house’s ghostly, billowing curtains. Tributes all to the work of filmmakers Clayton admired. 

Left: Vertigo (Hitchcock, 1958) Right: The Innocents (Clayton, 1961)

And so the game continues, with Bly Manor saluting Clayton’s work in turn. It’s a secret language, says Mike Flanagan. “One of the coolest things about being people who love movies is that we get to share that with each other, and there’s these little unspoken secret languages we develop just being fans of the same thing. … We’ve created telepathy, just based on our own shared love of something.”

“That to me is what an Easter egg is. It’s the opposite of a dog whistle. It’s a quiet and secret communication that’s meant to just awaken just a little moment of joy in people who see the same thing you see and like the same thing you like, and to invite other people into it.”

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The Haunting of Bly Manor is streaming now on Netflix.

The post How The Haunting of Bly Manor Pays Tribute to 1961’s The Innocents appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[blaugreen]

Nine Albums Later, Tegan and Sara Are Finally Ready to Discuss High School

In a new memoir and an album of songs they wrote as teenagers, the feminist pop stars look back at their traumas, triumphs and life as identical twins.

By Jenn Pelly and Liz Pelly Sept. 24, 2019 Updated 6:33 p.m. ET

To be a twin can be a psychological house of mirrors. And so where better to meet up with Tegan and Sara Quin — feminist pop heroes, freshly minted authors, and, like us, identical twins — than at a kaleidoscopic infinity room in Chelsea? As we left the small mirrored room at the kitschy Museum of Illusions, where our likenesses warped and refracted, we encountered a third set of twins. Reality grew ever more psychedelic, and we snapped a photograph of the six of us to commemorate it.

In their new memoir, “High School,” the Quin sisters alternate chapters to detail their teenage years. Growing up in Canada, they worshiped Nirvana, Green Day and the Smashing Pumpkins. They discovered and explored their sexuality. They sneaked out to raves, dropped acid, fought authority. When a classmate spewed homophobic statements during a lesson on STDs, Sara hurled a chair across the room. In the end, the twins competed in a life-changing battle of the bands. “If we don’t win tonight,” Tegan said onstage, “our mom is going to make us go to college.” They won.

While gathering their research for the book, Tegan and Sara found cassettes of some of their earliest songs. And so “High School” is accompanied by a new album, “Hey, I’m Just Like You,” featuring polished-up re-workings of those unearthed demos. Some of the songs evoke the ’90s indie pop of the band’s Lilith Fair era, while others could be the seeds of electronic-dance bangers. The connective thread is the unguarded emotionality of a teenage perspective.

This multimedia set is yet more experimentation from a band that, across nine albums, has moved from folky indie rock into synth-driven dance tracks and mainstream pop. Tegan and Sara sang “Everything Is Awesome” (“The Lego Movie” theme song) at the 2015 Oscars, and have performed with Taylor Swift. In 2016 they launched their Tegan and Sara Foundation, to benefit organizations committed to health, economic justice and representation for L.G.B.T.Q. girls and women.

During a conversation at a downtown cafe, Tegan was forthright and unapologetic, while Sara was analytical, using an app to astrologically survey our twin-by-twin dynamic. They frequently chipped at each other’s memories and perspectives to hone the truth and soon turned the questions on us: Did we feel ever competitive with each another, or encroached upon, as twins with the same career? These are excerpts from the conversation.

JENN PELLY As identical twins, we have strengths and weaknesses that are different but complementary. I often think: If you put us back together, we would be a perfect person. Do you relate?

TEGAN AND SARA QUIN 100 percent.

SARA I wouldn’t be as extreme, if Tegan wasn’t Tegan. I would have balanced myself differently. When Tegan would go through a dark stage, and be a little more chaotic, I would straighten up and be more disciplined. When Tegan went through a punk stage and started getting tattoos everywhere, I was like, I’m going to wear tailored clothing.

LIZ PELLY I think some twins learn early on that collaboration requires compromise and patience.

SARA A lot of people will say, “I have mommy issues” or “daddy issues.” I have Tegan issues. A lot of my hangups or dysfunctions in relationships are based on our primary relationship as children — what worked for us, what didn’t, how difficult it was to share the same face.

Most people sort of break up with their mom or their dad when they go out into the world and become adults. With us, it’s like we broke up, but decided to co-parent our music career.

TEGAN I believe there is a deep desire in Sara to define herself outside of this duo, like she’s cutting off an appendage. It’s not sad for me anymore, but it was at first. We are better together. Our songs are more developed together, and we stand out in a crowd together. It’s very complicated, to want to sever and tether at the same time, this mix of emotions that’s feuding inside of you at all times: We desperately want to be apart, and be our own people, but I need her to thrive and survive.

JENN Explain the mirror on the cover of “High School.”

TEGAN The mirror is distorted, and so is our perception of ourselves, and of the past, and of each other. In writing the book, it was like: That’s what you remember? That’s what you thought was happening? Over the years, I’ve realized there’s this unfair weight put on our shoulders to represent both of us. It’s a psychic burden; you’re responsible for each other.

JENN One passage that shocked me was when you discover you’ve both been playing music alone. Liz and I talk about cryptophasia a lot, a secret language that some twins share. Is that how it felt?

SARA When I discovered the guitar, I didn’t need to know Tegan was also discovering the guitar. When I figured out I was attracted to my best friend, I just assumed Tegan was figuring out she was attracted to her best friend. I assumed there was this parallel experience happening at all times.

TEGAN I was shocked you had been doing the same things.

SARA Discovering the guitar and writing songs felt like an epiphany, like a miracle. I had been so bad at so many things. This was the one time in my life I picked something up, and I knew how to do it. It felt like a gift, like it saved me. I wanted to protect that for a second, in that little tiny moment where I was doing it alone. But playing with Tegan, I knew it was bigger and better and more special and more seductive to people.

JENN You write about not fitting in with the punks, while also offending people in school because of the way you dressed, like outsiders among outsiders. Did you embolden each other?

SARA I felt alienated at punk shows. I walked in with that chip on my shoulder — “I don’t belong” — and Tegan threw her bag on the wall, walked into the pit, banged her head and thrashed.

TEGAN I always felt, if you want to be in that room, go in that room. If you want to be invited there, go. If you want to be a part of things, be a part.

JENN I wonder if some of this confidence comes from having a built in support system — the us against the world type thing.

TEGAN I never needed an external source to inspire me. It’s inside of me. I want to make my own rules. I don’t want to ask permission. There were long stretches of our career where I felt Sara dwelled on meaningless things. But she was finding a way to work through, and I worked my way around.

There were certain criticisms made of us, early on, that felt unfair. They did not feel like musical criticisms. They felt borderline or blatantly misogynist. My reaction was to design a T-shirt with all of the quotes — Spin magazine: “Wicca-folk nightmare.” Pitchfork: “Tampon rock.” I wanted to sell it on our website, and embrace the part of our history that made us as tough as we are now — not hardened, not bitter, but thrilled to be a part of this still. Because we got around it, and she got through it, and we’re still here.

SARA I always had a more institutional perspective. It wasn’t “tampon rock” that bothered me, it was sexism that bothered me. It was homophobia that bothered me.

The only reason I’m still making music, in this band, is because Tegan was championing me and cheering me on and trying to get me past these obstacles. But I didn’t feel sorry for myself. I felt furious at the industry, at the institutions that were inherently flawed and discriminatory. Even as a young person, I thought: If we’re the ones making it, and I feel this bad, Jesus, what does it feel like to be the artist that isn’t breaking through? I appreciated Tegan going around the obstacles, but I was like: I want to put dynamite under the obstacle and blow it up. We really have struggled with that dynamic.

A lot of that was planted early in our lives. Tegan’s coming out story is so different. She didn’t face the same type of homophobia. She didn’t have the same type of trauma as I did. Tegan holds her girlfriend’s hand on the street. I don’t. I’m afraid. I don’t care how big WorldPride is or how many cool new queer artists are on the covers of magazines. My experience informed how I react to the world. And that sometimes is hard to reconcile.

JENN I was thinking about your song “Nineteen” from “The Con,” which also describes your teenage years. Do you feel you’ve been reflecting on this part of your life for a while now?

TEGAN When we started talking about other songs that could be included [on our upcoming tour], the first song I thought of was “Nineteen.” I thought about how much of our music harkens back to that high school period. We’ve been diminished over and over throughout our careers for only writing love songs. But what we were really writing about was relationships, including the ones with ourselves — about family, friends, work. You talk about everything when you’re talking about relationships. There’s something about tethering the old songs to the modern age that becomes very cinematic for me. It starts to tell a bigger story.

LIZ You’ve described “You Go Away and I Don’t Mind,” from the new album, as being about the futility of fame. What is it like to reflect on that now that you are famous?

SARA I think that is the most strangely prophetic song. It was very surreal to read those lyrics all of these years later. Because for me, it’s very coherent. Since we were little, we had drawn undeserved or unearned attention. We would go to the mall as little kids and people would touch us. And that’s very disorienting and destabilizing as a young person. I think we did feel popular but it felt false. And in a lot of ways that echoes what it feels like to be famous or to be a celebrity in some ways. It can feel very empty.

JENN In part of the book, a friend’s brother asks you to jam, and you talk about how badly you wanted to be taken seriously. Was there a point in which you finally felt like you were taken seriously?

TEGAN To this day there’s a part of us that doesn’t feel like we’ve been taken that seriously, and I think all women probably feel that way. But we’ve now spent the majority of our adult life doing the thing we love, and we’re approached every day by people who are like, “I exist because of you.” Things like the Grammys become less important when you have an entire generation of people who are grateful you were bold and open about being gay before it was cool.

SARA We want journalists and fans, and culture at large, to reconcile how we see young women as artists — and when we begin seeing art as valuable. With our new songs, there are going to be people who say, “Oh, isn’t it cute? They released songs from when they were in high school.” But we want this music to be taken seriously. Not because we’re 38 years old and rerecording these songs, but because we were 15, 16 and 17 years old when we wrote them. And as 38-year-old women who have been around the world, who have experienced so much, I still think there is value in what I had to say. I went back and listened to that music and decided it is valuable.

TEGAN Actually I did first and then you did two months later.

SARA We are challenging people to see this work as sophisticated and mature and ahead of its time.

When we were teenagers, our music was written about as “rudimentary, but geez, there is something there.” It wasn’t rudimentary. There was something remarkable about what we were trying to say. There is something so profound about your first experiences. I fell in love multiple times. I was depressed. I was suicidal. I was passionate. I fought with my mother. I broke up with my sister. Those are some of the biggest moments of my life. How am I supposed to just write them off, like, “Oh who cares, I was a teenager.”

LIZ We’re taught that thinking in an emotionally-charged way is something for your teenage years. But actually, that sort of emotional intensity is powerful to carry with you throughout your life.

SARA I have a visceral memory of sitting down to write the song “Hello” at the end of grade 12. I had been devastated by this girl, Zoe, in the book — I loved her, and she was like, “I don’t like girls.” I was grappling with all of these big things. And I remember thinking, “I wish I was older. I wish I knew how to get through this.” I’m 38 years old, and every time I sing that line, I feel that right now. I wish I knew how to do this better. I don’t understand why I’m still suffering. I don’t understand why I’m still not better.

TEGAN It’s powerful to acknowledge that you don’t have all of the answers yet.

SARA When I sat down and listened to the demos, I just thought: I’m so glad little Tegan and Sara wrote all this music. They were better at addressing my feelings than I am right now.

[purplesurveys]

698

3 words that describe...

Your personality: (A bit) aloof, sensitive, and shy.

Your friends: Loud, laidback, cheeky.

Your family: Emotionally distant, (mostly) religious. I’m cheating so much on this looooool.

Your life: Right now? Put on hold. Thanks, coronavirus.

Your current mood: Hungry, and irritated eyes.

Your dreams/goals in life: Ok three words will be too short for this so I’ll just enumerate three whole phrases: I’d like to have a job that pays well, get a house that doesn’t have to be huge, but it has to come with features I’ve always wanted like cove lights and a yard for the kids and dog to play in, and get settled.

Your partner/boyfriend/girlfriend (if you have one): Funny, intelligent, courageous.

The person you last talked to: Brave, considerate, responsible.

The room that you are currently in: Comfortable, well-lit, homey.

The world in your perspective: Many stupid humans.

Yes/No questions...

Are you creative? Absolutely not. I like doing the logical/rational side of things... I let others take care of creative aspects, if they have to be present.

Do you like spending a sunny day outdoors? NO, unless I’m at the beach then sunny is the only way to go. Otherwise I’d rather be indoors or somewhere air-conditioned thx.

Do you get upset easily or over the littlest things? I can be. It’s usually when I’m already stressed/antsy enough, or if I’m on my period.

Do you dislike any of the people in charge of you (i.e: teachers, bosses)? I don’t particularly dislike my prof in my Rizal course but he sure teaches like he doesn’t want to be there. I just haven’t been getting the enthusiasm off of him, and that’s really important to me when it comes to being interested in my subjects. Oh but my PE coach this sem is a bitch - one time I forgot to wear the shirt color she demands us to follow and she ignored me for the entire period. Quickest way to make me feel shitty. So yeah. Probably her.

Do you like to read books/magazines/newspapers? I like books only if they’re non-fiction. I...don’t really read magazines anymore, and I kinda have to check into newspapers from time to time because I take up journalism.

Are you family-oriented? Towards my girlfriend’s family, yeah. I don’t really care about being family-oriented for my own.

Have you ever been friends with someone in the past out of sympathy? Yeah, this girl named MJ in Grade 7. She was a new-ish student then and no one was approaching her, so Gab and I tried to befriend her for a time. Didn’t really pan out that well - we just didn’t mesh - so we stopped talking not long after.

Do/did you ever get nervous around people you are/were crushing on? I still do.

Do you believe in global warming? Duh.

Are you happy with the way society/the world in general is? I’m typically pessimistic when it comes to people, so no not really. I just feel like the bad news always overweigh the good these days - and while good news can serve as rays of sunshine sometimes, I’d rather face reality than live in my own bubble and choose to be oblivious to all the shitstorms happening around me.

Do you ever question your own religion/beliefs? I did, as early as when I was 10. The Bible just didn’t make sense to me to my frustration, and I’ve always felt disgusted with my school guilt-tripping us to be good people because a man got crowned with thorns and nailed to a giant cross. I figured I can be good simply because I choose to, so I let go of my Catholic roots quickly after. Having no friends that time surely forced me to think hahahahahahaha jk 1/2

This/That...

Do you prefer today's trends/styles, or ones from the past? Both have awesome stuff, there’s no need to pick. I’m really into the mom jeans of the 90s, but I also like the yellow trend that’s been going on recently.

Being too cold or too hot? I’d rather be shivering but be comforted with a thick blanket, than sweat bullets and have absolutely no way to cool myself down.

Uploading music to your iPod, or buying CDs? Depends. I used to buy the CDs of my favorite artists then just download the other music I’m not as passionate about.

Fruits or vegitables? VEGETABLESSSSSSSSSSSS. I hate fruits.

Chocolate or vanilla? Chocolate, for the most part. Vanilla tastes like nothing to me. Baseball or football? I don’t watch either and I probably won’t enjoy either either lmao, but I have a bias towards football because my girlfriend’s sisters play the sport. The mall with a bunch of little stores, or one single, big store? Malls kinda work differently here... they’re all one big building with a bunch of restaurants, clothing shops, sports shops, novelty stores, etc. Rap music or rock and roll? Not a big fan of either but I’d go with rock and roll I guess. I like some rap but none of them make me feel things, which rock can sometimes do for me. Roller skates or roller blades? I owned a pair of roller blades when I was 10 and had fun memories with it even though I never did learn how to do it properly. Horror movies that give you nightmares, or romance that makes you vomit? Horror for sure. I don’t even like romance-only movies; they have to be laced with a lot of comedy in between for me to enjoy them. Making more friends or making more money? Making more money sorry LMAOOOOOO Living it up and being stupid, or being safe and never pay the price? I’d always rather be safe. I hate getting reprimanded or caught doing something bad or being punished. Doing more of the talking, or more of the listening in a conversation? Listening, please. I don’t like having the attention on me for too long. Giving or receiving? Giving I guess? I always have a pretty good sense of what my loved ones need, and it’s always nice to see how good they feel when I give it to them. Cats or dogs? Dogs. Playing on the swingsets or the slides (as a kid)? Swings. I was traumatized by one slide when I was 6 because it was apparently blistering hot when I slid down from it, and it almost burned my butt off lmao.

Would you rather...

Bolding these because I’m lazy.

Live off of just food for 2 days, or just beverage for 2 days?

Tell a lie and be believable, or tell the truth and still be blamed?

Die at 65 with the love of your life, or live to 85 being single?

Fart and be heard from far away or fart and be smelled from far away?

Be tickled for an hour straight or be woken up by a bucket of cold water?

Have a cabel snap while bunjee jumping or have the bar go up on a coaster?

Have a deadly plague or a nuclear bomb hit your country? (Don't get ideas!) < This is a sick question to ask these days lol. I’m not answering.

Lick a frozen telephone pole or stick your hand in dry ice? Be rejected by your favorite celebrity or by someone you secretly admire? Give up your favorite food for eternity or eat a bowl of dead spiders? Make a lot of money at a job you hate or little money at a job you love? Jump off a bridge or from a moving car? < Another sick question.

Favorites...

Color(s): Pink, sky blue, off-white.

Song(s): I don’t have one at the moment. I haven’t listened to any music in a while, save for lo-fi.

Artist(s): Beyoncé if we’re talking solo, Paramore if you mean bands.

Music genre: I don’t have a favorite one; my taste is pretty scattered.

Movie: Two for the Road or Good Will Hunting

TV show: Breaking Bad, Friends, BoJack Horseman, Queer Eye

Actor and actress: Gregory Peck; Audrey Hepburn or Kristen Stewart

Movie/TV genre: Romantic comedy or drama lmao, I’m a sappy bitch. Suspense and psychological horror are also cool.

Restarant: Yabu, Mendokoro Ramenba, or Silantro

Food: Sushi

Dessert: Macarons

Hobby: Going to museums! Or reading about the history of anything.

Activity to do out of boredom: Scroll my social media feeds orrrrrr do surveys, or watch cooking videos on YouTube heh.

Type of weather: Bleak, rainy, and chilly.

Book: I don’t have a favorite.

Subject in school: History

Item that you own: My car hahahaha

Pastime: Eating out and window shopping. Maybe I’m just saying these because I haven’t been to a mall in a while :/

Site: Palawan

Tourist attraction: I’ve always wanted to go to those towers that lets you go to the top floor and the floor is just literal glass. If I’m gonna be a tourist-y tourist, that’s the first place I’d go to haha.

Random questions in your own words...

If you could have any desired superpower, what would it be?

The history nerd in me would take up time travel in an instant. And I won’t even be using it as a superpower lmao, it’d be like a research pastime for me.

What would be your dream job?

If I wasn’t such an introvert and if I were a lot better in handling crowds, I really would have wanted to be a pro wrestler.

Descibe your dream date:

Museum in the day, cute dinner at night.

What was the best day of your life like?

I don’t know if that has happened yet.

What was the worst day of your life like?

So far my worst day was when I wasn’t accepted into my school paper in high school and I spent like 18 hours crying my eyes out. I liked writing and was accepted for my portfolio, but people thought I was too shy to fit the group’s dynamic and ended up getting booted. There are quiet writers too, assholes.

If you ever have kids one day, what you you name them?

Too early for this lol I’ve only had name picked out - Olivia.

What's one thing that will bring you out of your worst mood no matter what?

My dog. FOR SURE.

Who's the most annoying person you've ever encountered?

Jem, someone from my college who thinks she’s close with me but I really do not like her at all.

If you could grow up to be like anybody, who would it be?

I don’t believe in having role models. I just want to be the best version of myself.

If you could change something about yourself, what would it be?

My mental health could be mental healthier.

What's your favorite inspirational/famous quote? I don’t depend on these either. Describe your dream ice cream sundae (unlimited toppings): Meh, I don’t like sundaes. Just scoops would be fine with me. What comes to mind first when you think of your favorite color? I have no idea why this is what I remember, but it was the day I went shopping for school supplies and got myself a pink clipboard, pink pencil case, pink expander, and pink highlighters. I think it’s because it was that day where I had to acknowledge that pink was in fact, unironically, my favorite color HAHAHA What's something in your life that you once hated but came to like? ^ The color pink. And chicken curry. What's something in your life that you once liked but came to hate? Cooked salmon. There was one phase my mom made it almost everyday and I just got sick of it. I refuse to eat salmon to this day unless it’s sashimi or in sushi. If you could stop any chaos/problem in our world today, what would it be? This fucking pandemic. 2020 CAN’T CONTINUE BECAUSE OF YOU. What would be the best way to die, in your opinion? Peacefully, in sleep, with no pain. What would be the worst way to die? Falling off a cliff (or anywhere high) and landing on a boulder EUGH I cringe at it. Also getting impaled. AND plane crashes. If you could give your room a free makeover, what would you do to it? I’d make it look spacier by moving the bed to the wall so there’s a lot of free space in the middle. I’d also add a desk, work chair, and a lamp so I can study there. If you could have an unlimited amount of anything, what would it be? The number of years my dog would live. What's one thing that you like that would probably surprise your friends? They know I like punk rock in general but I haven’t shared any of the music with them. It would definitely surprise them. Out of everything in the world, what holds the most meaning to you? Stability.

[twopedalpushers]

Travel update #5

Ecuador

A lot of events have transpired since I last posted a blog update! I signed off my last post at the border between Colombia and Ecuador. There is a lot to get through and so without further ado, welcome to the fourth country of our travels so far - Ecuador. 

Normally at a border crossing the scenery subtly merged from one country to the next but upon arriving into El Ángel National Park at the Ecuadorian border, we were transported into another world. I don’t know how to describe El Ángel National Park as even the photos that I took are pale in comparison to the experience of being there. We were travelling through the park on a dirt track and there were frailjones (a specific type of Latin American sunflower) as far as the eye could see in every direction. We were the only souls along the entirety of this track and the only sounds were those of our tyres on the dirt. It was surreal. It felt like we were the only people on this strange, desolate new planet. 

We passed through a few different towns before we reached the famous Ottavalo Market. The market is known throughout South America for being the best place to buy alpaca wool goods handcrafted by the indigenous people of Ottavalo. The market was vast, bursting with piles of rugs, jumpers, gloves, hats, toys (to name a few) being sold by charming Ottovaleños. We both bought a jumper each and I’ve pretty much been living in it ever since. 

Probably the nicest thing about Ecuador is the amount of indigenous people wearing traditional dress. In Ecuador, 25% of people define themselves as indigenous - 22% more than in Colombia. More often than not in Ecuador, entire villages will be wearing their own cultural variation of the traditional dress. It was interesting to see how this changed as we crossed the country. Women in the North tended to wear long blue dresses, handmade blue sandals, a white blouse with an ornately embroidered belt. Men wore a blue poncho or shirt and a fedora. Once we travelled South, the women of the highlands now wore extremely bright coloured felt shawls held together with a brooch. They wore knee length bright skirts -usually in a contrasting colour to their shawl, wellington boots and a fedora. The men of the highlands wore striped ponchos and wellingtons. This was the first time I had ever seen so many people dressed traditionally throughout the entirely of a country and it was inspiring to see a culture so rich. 

The capital of Ecuador is in the North, so we reached Quito fairly early into our journey. Out of all of the Latin American capitals we had visited, Quito felt the most European. It had a really relaxed yet quiet and private vibe. People ran in the parks and took their dogs out for walks in the evening. It was extremely civilised but it seemed to lack the intensity, drama and disinhibition of cities in its neighbouring countries. 

The roads after Quito were beautiful. We were cycling through Ecuador’s Volcanic corridor, which took us around Cotopaxi Volcano and ended with the vast and breathtaking Quilatoa Lake. 

The scenery was spectacular but the cycling was becoming extremely difficult. The small roads that we usually cycled on were now cobbled instead of paved or dirt. We had to bump along up hills of extreme gradients. It was rainy season in Ecuador so we frequently found ourselves cycling in dense fog or rain all day. The dampness made cycling uphill on cobbles extremely slippery and dangerous to do, especially on a bike that weighed the same amount as I did! I found myself having to get off the saddle and push my bike up steep hill after steep hill, most of which only 4x4’s were able to drive up.

Ecuadorians seemed to prefer to build roads straight up the mountain rather than having the road switch back a few times to gradually take you up. Because of this, our progress became infuriatingly slow - down from 80km per day in Colombia to 40-50km in good weather. 

Ecuador took us to new heights. Most days we were at an altitude of 3000-4000m. Although thankfully neither of us got altitude sickness, doing such intense physical activity so far above sea level left me incredibly out of puff to the point that I would struggle to catch my breath. 

The picture painted of cycling through Ecuador online and on social media contrasted immensely with the reality of doing so. Cycle-touring blogs and Instagram accounts that I’ve been following whilst on the trip are endlessly positive highlight reels of what it’s like cycling on the best days. Nobody tells you that you will be woken up in the middle of the night with searing pain in your legs from the build up of lactic acid. Nobody tells you that on the worst day of your period you will be biking 2000m of elevation instead of running yourself a hot bath and stuffing your face with chocolate. 

After a while in Ecuador, I started to expect every day to be another bad day, which kickstarted a dangerous spiral of negativity. I would look at Max cycling ahead of me in the distance, conquering each hill much more easily and happily than I could, and I would wonder why I was not able to do the same. I was asking myself why on earth I was putting my mind and body through this every day. It was the first time on the trip that I truly missed home.

Ecuador uses the dollar and is much more expensive than Colombia. Because of this to save money we did a lot more camping than we usually would. However because of the persistent rain we found ourselves needing to camp under shelter, once taking refuge on a volleyball pitch next to the side of the road, other times in hostel courtyards. Not splashing out on a bed in a hostel very often meant that we were tackling the Andes on very little sleep for as long as ten days in a row without a break. 

This has been a pretty negative account (sorry!). However it was not totally miserable in Ecuador. On dry days, we got to camp in some of the most amazing, wild spots that have been better than anywhere else on the trip thus far. We spent time camping next to waterfalls and at the base of volcanoes. Between villages while cycling on dirt roads we were very often the only the people around. We saw lots of llamas and alpacas for the first time on the trip! 

However no amount of cute, fluffy llamas could make up for the difficulty of the cycling and unfortunately my morale was low. The strain of undertaking such an intense physical challenge and spending every minute of the day together began to take a toll on mine and Max’s relationship. We were exhausted and bickering with each other at every opportunity. I was falling out of love with the cycling and in the end we decided that it would be good to take a break from biking and spend some time apart. 

Max and his family were heading to visit him in the Galapagos for ten days, and although I was invited along too I decided to fly to Brazil instead. We were 5 months into the trip and halfway through our time on the continent so it felt like a good moment to rest our bodies and treat ourselves a little bit. 

Our cycle route down the Western side of South America doesn’t take us through Brazil and it has always been a country that I have wanted to visit. I booked my flights to Rio de Janeiro and found out a couple of days later that I was going to be there while it’s Carnival! I really needed to blow off some steam and now had the perfect opportunity to do so - it felt like the stars were aligning! 

So about a week ago, we both left our bikes behind and flew to completely different places. We are going to return to our bikes refreshed, rested and ready to take on the Peruvian section of the Andes! Other cyclists that we have met on this trip rave about Peru being one of the most beautiful countries to cycle through, so I’m pretty excited. More importantly others have said that Peru is far less steep than Ecuador because they thankfully build long, winding hairpins up the mountain at a gradual gradient when possible. Obviously, there will still be hills to climb but after a good rest I’ll be able to take them on with fresh legs and a positive attitude.

I landed in Rio de Janeiro a few days ago and Carnival is every bit as exciting, intense, raucous and dynamic as you would imagine it to be - just times by one hundred. I’ve been at some of the street parties (that seemingly have no start or end) for a few days now. I will save writing about my time in Brazil for my next update. 

Below I’ve posted the full video of our time cycling through Colombia. I’m in the process of putting together the Ecuador video and will upload it in a few days.

Here is the link to track our progress (although we won’t be cycling for a while so you won’t see a lot of progression!) 

http://share.garmin.com/DMB7R

Similarly to my previous post about reaching the end of Colombia, I thought I would write a list of all the interesting things that I noticed while travelling through Ecuador. Again, it’s lifted from my journal so it informally written.

Ice cream! Ice cream! Ice cream! For a country so cold it’s crazy to see how into ice cream the locals are. On every street there is an ice cream shop. In the North they cover ice cream in cheese (crazy combination I know...) I was intrigued by this but in the end I was too grossed out to give it a try. 

The possibility of taking a hot shower is back- for the first time on the entire trip! Ecuadorians mostly have warm showers, which is nice. They don’t have central heating in their buildings so they use propane tanks to heat their water. Every morning a truck selling gas canisters trawls around every neighbourhood, blaring a song sung by children with shrill voices. It’s the same song in every town we have visited. 

Ecuador has a strangely large amount of Chinese restaurants called “Chifas.”

They’re mad about topiary gardens. In the North every town square had shrubs with peoples faces and animals cut into them. 

Ecuadorians are very quiet, reserved, friendly and humble people.

A very large amount of people drive old school classic VW Beetles. It’s definitely the most common type of classic car you will see in Ecuador. 

[theperpetualnight]

My hella long review and thoughts on Avengers: Endgame (2019)

Warning – spoilers ahead.

For the past 11 years Marvel fans have grown up watching the mighty Avengers on screen together and apart. These films become more than just films when they come to an end, they become a part of our lives – they are a part of our lives, just as much as the cast and crew. Whether you were 12, 20 or even 32 when you went to the cinema in 2008 for the first MCU film, as the years went by you continued, and today you went for the final time.  These characters are not just some fictitious superheroes, they are our role models and people whom we looked up to and learnt from.  Steve Rogers taught us to never give up, Tony Stark taught us compassion, Thor Odinson taught us bravery, Natasha Romanoff taught us to be strong, Clint Barton taught us loyalty and Bruce Banner taught us to accept ourselves . So rarely do films have the opportunity have such a deep emotional connection with audiences. We know these characters, we know their stories and we experienced their journeys as we were growing and maturing. So it suffices to say the stakes were very high with this one. After 11 years we needed an ending which did justice to the characters, their stories and the challenge which has been building up for the past 11 years.

In Endgame we are drawn into the depressive state each Avenger is in after losing to Thanos and losing their loved ones. This immediately captures our Avengers in a new light, in a state of struggle unlike anything before and even hopelessness. Audiences here can sense the more serious tone of this film and even more so the finality of everything that is to come. Having decided to kill Thanos once and for all, the Avengers travel to find Thanos and within the first 10 minutes or so, Thor (having learnt from Infinity War) takes his hammer to Thanos’ head. This is the first act trigger a series of references to the previous films.

“I can do this all day”

After this moment we move five years forward. Whilst Tony is happily living his married life with Pepper and daughter Morgan, Thor is now overweight and hiding away playing Fortnight. Following the events of Ant-Man and the Wasp, Scott returns from the quantum realm to realise what has happened and from there hatches a plan – the Time Heist. Realising the Pym particles can in fact take the Avengers back in time, they decide to steal the infinity stones in the past before Thanos gets to them. This is the heart and soul of the film. The one thing missing from MCU is time travel. Time travel in film can go in two ways, either it will be a disaster or in the case of Endgame – poetic cinema.  The reason time travel works so well here is firstly because it is the natural progression for the film to take, and most importantly it gives each of the original six Avengers their moment. The stand out moments in particular are: Steve going back to 2012 Avengers where he’s having to fight himself saying the famous line “I can do this all day” to which present Steve replies “Yeah I know,” as you can imagine given the gravity of that line and situations in which we have heard this, here it was simply hilarious. This is how to add comedy elements to what is a gripping, emotional, action-packed drama. Another stand out scene is the homage to the iconic and I mean ICONIC Winter Soldier lift scene. As audiences eagerly anticipate another fight where Steve will diminish the Hydra agents – instead he simply whispers “hail hydra” and escapes with the mind infinity stone. This was again hilarious and pure genius. Bravo! As Tony and Scott lose the Teseract, Tony and Steve decide to go back to the 70s to retrieve it as well as the Pym particles. Here Tony finally comes face to face with his Father. After the father issues we see him go through in the early films and the father figure he has become to Peter Parker – these scenes provide a powerful moment as Tony comes to peace with his Father. In the meantime Steve accidentally ends up in none other than Peggy Carter’s office where he earnestly looks through some blinds, revealing Peggy herself. Endgame does not holdback in pleasing fans whilst successfully executing these emotional moments in such simplicity.

Over in Asgard, Thor is able to speak to his mother once more and retrieve the aether, though it is with Clint and Natasha, audiences will shed their first tear (or full blown cry if everything else already had them tearing as it did me) as they both go after the soul stone. Fans will recall from Infinity War to get the stone you need to give a soul – a simple exchange. As Clint and Natasha fight out who will be the one to sacrifice their life, ultimately it is Natasha who takes the fall – literally. And it is here audiences are left speechless as we see one of the first original six Avengers fall to their death. This was nothing short of heart-breaking, but yet so powerful given the history of the dynamic duo, there was no better way to close the arc of their friendship.

“There has not and perhaps never will be something of this magnitude ever again on screen.”

As the remaining Avengers return safely back to the current time, Thanos from the past finds out about their plans and invades the current time period. Each Avenger takes their stab at bringing Thanos down, but ultimately it is Steve and his half broken shield which stand alone facing Thanos and his vast army. Unlike most of the MCU films, Endgame should be appraised for its cinematography, one of the many beautiful shots include this scene. if anyone would have the guts to take this on by on their own, it would be Cap. But then we here “on your left,” revealing Sam and Bucky and then slowly all of our lost Avengers appear as Doctor Strange motions them to the war ground. In this moment Steve calls out “Avengers Assemble” – music to the ears of fans, at last we hear the phrase. This begins the most epic battle in cinematic history. It is exhilarating, it is breath taking, it is edge of your seat cinema, there has not and perhaps never will be something of this magnitude ever again on screen. The entire build up of the film makes this fight the spectacle that it always deserved to be.

Of all the brilliant moments during this battle, there is one which again will be historic in film forever. As Thor struggles with Thanos, we see his hammer rush to hit Thanos only to swing back past Thor and into the hands of… CAPTAIN AMERICA. Audience erupts, cheering, clapping. if MCU was building up to anything in the last 11 years it was this moment. Iconic and legendary. I had goosebumps watching this scene as Steve yields Thor’s hammer. There truly are some very special moments in cinema such as the “i am your father” from Star Wars – where something happens which no one expects, where your mind and body at once feel this rush of sensation, where the magic of cinema is truly felt – with Endgame we had the privilege of experiencing this. This is not something you will get on a second viewing. I think the sheer gravity of that has to be recognised and of course the brilliant execution of this entire scene. Fans have always known Steve is worthy and there are no words in the english language to describe what was felt by all to see this moment for the first time.

The battle comes to a close with Tony taking the infinity stones, “I am Iron Man” he says, as he snaps his fingers. The power of the infinity stones being unbearable leads us to the death of Tony Stark. As the character who is known to act in his own self-interest and is deemed to be selfish. Tony does the most selfless act bringing his arc to a successful close. There was no other way this could have panned out, this brings Tony’s character full circle, we see the growth and development throughout the years, and the empathetic, selfless man he has become. As the character who started this entire journey it is right for him to bring it to an end. Given all this, and the love fans have for Iron Man and Robert Downey Jr – this again is of course the tear jerking scene. Followed by his funeral which was executed with perfection, brining back Harley from Iron Man 3.

Though what is arguably one of the best character endings in any film franchise of this scale has to be given to Steve Rogers. The writers truly knew what they were doing with this one. As Steve prepares to go back into the past to return the infinity stones, he exchanges an all too familiar line with Bucky, “don’t do anything stupid until I get back” says Steve, to which Bucky replies “how can I, you’re taking all the stupid with you.”  Of course fans will be very aware of the role reversal since Captain America The First Avenger taking place here. As Steve travels to the past, everyone awaits for his quick return, though Steve has other plans. He does indeed return but having instead gone back lived his life with Peggy, he returns an old man. The film ends on Steve Rogers finally getting that dance with Peggy, with “It’s Been a Long, Long Time” playing over the scene. Marvel fans will know this is the exact same song which Fury plays in Steve’s apartment in Winter Solider. Being a fan of Marvel and in particular Captain America, this is the pièce de résistance of the film. Through every single film featuring Steve, we are constantly reminded of their tragic romance, and the dance they never shared, finally and I mean finally, Steve gets the ending he deserves. As the leader of the Avengers and the character who puts everything on the line for the greater good, there could not be a greater way to end his arc. This was perhaps the only part of the film where audiences would have cried out of joy, to see this iconic (I know i’ve used this word so many times) moment happening at last. And of course it was a brilliant ending to the entire film.

If I was to make any change however, to truly tie Cap’s story up in a bow, it would be to provide more screen time between him and Bucky. I think where this film fails is providing Bucky with justice. The relationship between Bucky and Steve is of paramount importance in all three Captain America films, we see how deeply connected these characters are. They are life long best friends and are willing to die and kill for each other. There is no other relationship of this magnitude in MCU (in my opinion anyway), they are a fan favourite and given the past films they are the dynamic duo with such a strong bond. There were moments in the film where light could have been shed to show us this beautiful friendship once more. Firstly, in the battle scene mentioned above, instead of Sam saying “on your left” I believe it would have been much more powerful to instead have Bucky entering saying “we’re with you until the end of the line.” This is undoubtedly one of the most crucial and memorable quotes from the entire MCU which was missed (though I have changed the “I” initially in the quote to “we”). Finally, and for this reason only am I prevented from giving this film a 10/10 is that, as Steve returns in his old age, it is Sam who has the finals words with Steve. Given the relationship with Bucky, it would have only been right for him to have the final words with Steve before the shield is passed to Sam. This would have been the ending Steve and Bucky deserved.

Ultimately, what has been achieved with this film is beyond brilliant. I am struggling to find the words to give the film justice. The level of attention to detail in this film is unlike any other I have ever seen. To be able to successfully, in almost every single scene pay homage and reference to the previous films was just remarkable. I really believe this is very difficult to do successfully, in a way in which not only brings audiences nostalgia but a new and fresh level of excitement. This coupled with the way in which Endgame mirrored Infinity War is what astonished and amazed me most about this film. And this is why I believe it is poetic cinema. Superbly structured into three acts, where not only do we see the characters we know and love having to push themselves one last time; we see them grow to their very best potential, their defining traits in the small moments, and their evolved relationships with each other. How such character development and nostalgic moments was married to a gripping and exhilarating narrative, which was equally character and story driven (not to forget the great score and cinematography) is an accomplishment in itself. Chris Evans, Robert Downey Jr, Scarlett Johansson, Chris Hemsworth, Jeremy Renner and Mark Ruffalo, all provided sensational performances. Arguably the best superhero performances we will see. This is their swan song, and had it been theatre I am sure every single member of the audience would provide them with a standing ovation.

“It was a rare cinematic experience, amplified by the fact that it was 11 years in the making. To be a part of that, is to be a part of film and cinema history.”

There are certain times in your life when you watch a film and it resonates so deeply with you, that when you leave the cinema it stays with you. It’s as though you have a chemical connection with the film, you are simply left in awe and wonder. I call it movie magic. So rarely do we get to experience this with a film, that when it does happen, we wish we could collect that moment into a snow globe and have the ability to dip inside and out of it, to feel all that again. And just when you think this may never happen again or when you have accepted the rarity of it, a film comes along and you are able to revel in that feeling once more. Avengers Endgame is that film. It was a rare cinematic experience, amplified by the fact that it was 11 years in the making. To be a part of that, is to be a part of film and cinema history.

Thank you to the Russo Brothers, to Chris Evans, Robert Downey Jr, Chris Hemsworth, Scarlett Johansson, Mark Ruffalo, Jeremy Renner and of course Marvel and all the cast and crew, for allowing us to be a part of this and for being a part of our childhood.

9/10

[grimelords]

My September playlist is here, 37 songs from opera to bossa nova to a song about marrying Tom Collins to thank him for the sips. I’m hopeful there’ll be at least one thing in here you’ll enjoy

Been Drinkin’ Water Out Of Hollow Log - Mississippi Fred McDowell: I love this song because every other version I’ve ever heard sings it as ‘I’ve been drinking muddy water, sleeping in a hollow log’, but straight up drinking out of the log sounds so much better. Also I just found out that this version I’ve loved for years was the original Alan Lomax recording and not a later one like I’d assumed, which is nice!

Tom Collins - The Sloppy Boys: I have not been able to get this song out of my head since I heard it. “I sent an edible arrangement to my travel agent because they had free booze on the carnival cruise” is a masterpiece of rhyme and the way he screams “hold him in my grips!” is just perfect.

What Means Of Witchery - Gospel: This is a perfect song. I think it’s criminal that Gospel aren’t more widely known and I think I’ve decided to make it my life mission to spread the word. The gospel of Gospel if you will. You don’t have to. I had a long daydream a little while ago about transcribing the drums in this song, which feels like an unresolved brain problem but exemplifies just how much I love it.

A Saint Among Madmen - Helen Of Troy: This is the band the drummer from Gospel was in before Gospel and they’re really really good. This sort of spoken word song is hard to pull off without sounding totally corny and I think him being so low in the mix really helps. It reminds me of some early At The Drive-In instrumental wise. The way it finally kicks off, and the sort of yelping desperate tone to the screams in the second half is just so satisfying.

shimripl casual - Autechre: Another cut I enjoyed from Autechre’s immense new album as I work on comprehending it. I like this song because it sounds like a field recording of a prototype mechanical swamp.

New Rules - Dua Lipa: This song feels like it deserves a marching band. There's just so much going on rhythmically, the dancehall rhythm at the centre of it is constantly augmented by all sorts of other percussion, the great snare work throughout, the perfectly formed tiny fill that introduces the chorus, it's just an absolute feast. I only found out the other day that the guy who produced this, Ian Kirkpatrick, also did Bad Liar - what a year for Ian!

My Girls - Tears For Fears: Hey Tears For Fears did a cover of My Girls by Animal Collective and this might be controversial but I think it's better than the original. It tightens up the structure and differentiates the sections a bit, so that it changes from a slow building jam into an odd pop song. They also draw out the harmonies more so that you really notice how funny it is to sing 'my father's graaave' over and over in a big bass under everything.

Crosses - Zero 7 and Jose Gonzales: Sia's career from before she was world-famous Sia is so interesting because she had like a full 15 years of being notable around the world in a bunch of different ways before it all coalesced into Big Sia. She was a backing vocalist in Jamiraquai's band for god's sake. She also was the de facto vocalist of this downtempo band Zero 7 for three albums, but she's not on this song but Jose Gonzales also sang on about half the songs on this album is! This is a remix/cover of his solo song Crosses but this version really shows the song in a whole different light to the original.

Napoleon Solo - At The Drive-In: Years ago in high school one of about 5 videos I had on my iPod was this version of Napoleon Solo from 2001 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Nlfmqsx1r0 and I would watch it over and over and over. It's also a good example of why Cedric's lyrics are like they are. He just talks like that. He says things like 'they had the acme weight dropped on them' to describe his friends who died in a car crash and you just have to go along with it.

Act Three: No. 27 - A Real Slow Drag - Scott Joplin: Did you know Scott Joplin, the man behind everyone's favourite song The Entertainer, wrote TWO operas?? Because I didn't. One of them is unfairly lost to history but the other, Treemonisha, was written in 1911 but not properly performed until the Joplin renaissance in 1972. This is the big finale and it's partly because of the performance but partly because of the way he wrote it but it feels a lot more modern than any other operas I've heard from the era. Even though it is mostly a march, it feels like melodically and structurally he's drawing on pre-blues and gospel music in a way that presages rock and roll and the influence it's had on all music since - it feels more like a musical than an opera.

Celia - Cults: Cults have a new EP and it's an entirely different sound for them. Pounding, dark, Ochestral Manouveurs In The Dark type synths under their best lyrics in a long time.

Sharp Dressed Man - Xiu Xiu: Xiu Xiu did this ZZ Top cover for The AV club and I absolutely love it. It sounds like Queens Of The Stone Age if Josh Homme’s charisma stat overflowed and reset back to 0. This recording they did later is is great but the original video is even better https://youtu.be/0SG6yDSbtxULazy 

Nina - Greg Phillinganes: This was a recommendation from my friend and yours @megapope and thank god he did because I've had it stuck in my head all month. Written by Donald Fagen from Steely Dan for Michael Jackson's keyboard player's solo album, a true behind-the-scenes hit.

Gobbledigook - Sigur Ros: I was thinking about how after Takk Sigur Ros got so big and famous and rich off advertising money for their beautiful music and then made the best move possible and pivoted abruptly away from ethereal graceful floating melodies hung from the moon by a gossamer string to good old fashioned stompers made of wood. This is another in my very short playlist of songs like this and The Dodos first album where the driving rhythm plus acoustic guitars are the centre of it all. A little genre that I think has a lot left in it to explore.

Betty Dreams Of Green Men - Guerilla Toss: This feels like the energy drink version of Aqua by Eurythmics from last month's playlist. This sounds like BATS to me and I'm excited because there's not enough music like this around. Extremely energetic power music about some kind of 1950s alien invasion.

#NeverUseTheInternetAgain - Homeboy Sandman and Edan: I love this song. It starts out with a sentiment everyone can agree on (facebook sucks, the internet is bad) and quickly veers into 50 year old man gripes (GPS has ruined everyone's sense of direction? you should order pizza over the phone? match.com??) but it's got such conviction in the hook that I'm sold anyway and have pledged to #neverusetheinternetagain.

Vanishing Hour - Helen Of Troy: This is another Helen Of Troy song but it basically sounds like an unheard Gospel song, which is incredible new for me; the guy who will never stop tracking down every cassette and live recording they ever did. I don't know how the membership of Helen Of Troy went beyond sharing a drummer but the vocalist of Gospel is unmistakably in the mix here and it sounds fantastic.

Canon x Love S.O.S. - Justice: Another great cut from Justice's new sort of live album. This whole album has really made me appreciate Love S.O.S. a lot more. It comes back two or three times and I'm grateful every time. It's a perfect glam rock sentiment. Sending a love ambulance because there's a love emergency happening.

Mariners Apartment Complex - Lana Del Rey: I feel like we don't deserve new Lana yet. I'm so grateful but I'm still getting over Lust For Life and she's going to do this to me? Amazing.

I Got Cash - Brooklyn Funk Essentials: Another @megapope find. Perhaps the most powerful song I've ever heard, in the sense that I feel like I'm being personally admonished throughout. The power structures at play here are towering and the beat.. it's funky.

Pray - Jungle: Jungle flat out released five (5) singles before their album came out and they were all so amazing that I was worried they wouldn't have anything left for the actual album but guess what: the whole thing is absolutely gold, and especially this last song Pray. The feeling I get from the hook into the big drop feels like being dropped bodily into a big tub of honey, if there was a way that that could feel good instead of terrifying. It’s just luscious.

Sad Rude Future Dude - Ball Park Music: I googled “haven’t had a friend in years” trying to remember what this song was called and became instantly suicidal at the sheer amount of reddit threads that phrase returned. Which is I suppose exactly what this song’s about: posting on reddit about how the internet has ruined my relationships and brain, but in a very upbeat, singalong way. This song is a good example of how a dynamic drummer can completely elevate a song to another level.

Knuck If You Buck - Crime Mobb: Knuckle up if you're buck wild it's Crime Mobb. The best named crew since Ruff Sqwad. The two women in this (Princess and Diamond) absolutely carry the whole song. Everyone else has got such a mopey boring flow but they both come in so lively and so aggressive you cannot get away from it. Is there a more powerful opener than "I come in the club, shaking my dreads, throwing these bows and busting these heads"? Is there a better line in general than "Crime Mob, it ain't no stopping, it be like Saddam Hussein, Hitler and Osama Bin Laden"?

Deixa - Toquinho: I'm quickly becoming one of these 'the end is near' sandwich board guys grabbing people on the street and yelling at them except about bossa nova. It is criminal how much this whole genre has been reduced to funny elevator music or The Girl From Ipanema as ironic intermission music when it has stuff like this to offer us. I really recommend this whole album, I've been obsessed with it over the last couple weeks and it's just breathtaking start to finish.

The Way - Friends: This band's spotify page is good because it's full of absolutely no-name recordings of Blank And Friends that have fucked up their tagging. Anyway I have never heard a song like this, and I didn't think it was possible to use big 80s pinch harmonic guitars like this but they pulled it off in an absolutely beautiful way.

Mass Grave - Health and Soccer Mommy: Corrin Roddick of Purity Ring produced this new Health song which brings the degrees of separation between Health and Katy Perry down to a thrilling 1 since Purity Ring did two songs on her new album. This really does sound like Health covering a Purity Ring song and that's excellent news in my book. I don't know much about Soccer Mommy but this song has definitely inspired me to check her out so I'll undoubtedly report back on that next month.

(two circles) - Boredoms: I only just made the connection that Yamantaka Eye from Boredoms is the same Eye from from Hanatarash who famously drove a bulldozer through the back wall of a venue as part of a performance. Which I mention only because it really exemplifies just how much of a change of direction Vision Creation Newsun is from all that, just ten years later he's in a totally different direction of building something beautiful instead of tearing music (and buildings) apart at the seams. Nobody knows how to describe this album, it's space rock it's post rock it's experimental but it has something that a lot of that music doesn't - positivity. This whole album is a sun-worshipping positive fever without ever feeling lost or meandering.

Centreline - Ava Luna: I'm mad at this song. At about 1:15 they do an extremely satisfying thing sing the 'line' in 'centre line' in a deep bass and it sounds great. Then every other time that section comes around they either don't sing it or there's something else going on that obscures it and it blueballs you for the whole rest of the song. Other than that it's good, but i'm at war with this song.

Venice Bitch - Lana Del Rey: I am so excited that Lana Del Rey is finally embracing the most often ignored part of americana and facilitating a jam band. This is the last thing I would expect from Jack Antonoff but he did amazingly. It sounds closer to Ultraviolence era than anything else she's done and I'm just plain excited to see what the album is going to be like if this is any indication.

Act 1 Scene 4: This Is Monstrous, Wozzeck! - Alban Berg: I found an english version of Wozzeck and it's one of the best opera recordings I've ever heard. It's just plain mixed and recorded well, which is a rarity when a lot of opera recordings seem like they just hung a single mic somewhere at the back of the theatre and pressed the button. Anyway here's the good bit from Wozzeck where Wozzeck goes to the doctor and the doctor yells at him for "Pissing! Pissing there on the pavement!" See, opera’s fun!

Pop Roll Flow - Clypso: I heard this song on Unearthed when they had Nick Littlemore from Pnau guest programming and I love it. It feels brand new and very familiar at the same time, every sound in it is in absolute hypercolour, and the verse vocal sounds like a cool insect is singing at me. What's not to love!

I Might Survive - Architecture In Helsinki: I always feel like Arcitechture In Helsinki are poised to make like Portugal The Man and have an international superhit off their seventh album. They have been consistently reinventing their brain of weirdo-pop every single album for 15 years now and it feels like they've still got so much more to give. This song especially deserved to be a hit in my opinion, it's pop perfection and I've come around from hating to completely loving the little 'than alive baby!' adlib near the end.

Angels - The xx: My two best friends got married to each other this month and it was beautiful. What's more, she picked the perfect song to walk down the aisle to. I'm so happy to see two of the people I love the most in love with each other, and also when I drove them to their suite after the reception my phone accidentally started playing Merzbow's new album which was good.

Jesus Was A Cross Maker - Judee Sill: I'm so glad I found out about this album. Judee Sill had a crazy life, and her wiki page is a ride but unlike a lot of musicians with a back story her music stand alone - unique, rich and beautiful. Tightly structured and thoughtfully composed for such hippy-dippy christian mythology themes, and melodically beautiful even when her voice isn't quite up to the task. It really does feel like the spirit was moving through her. This song in particular is amazing I have been straight up listening to it on repeat. The phrasing is insane, the self-harmonised vocals sound like they're phasing in a very cool way, the violins break into a Bach figure halfway through - it's just amazing. I cannot stop listening. I've also started a playlist of this, Jesus Is A Dying Bedmaker by John Fahey and Jesus Came To My Brithday Party by The Middle East so I'm absolutely 'on one' as the kids say.

Rappers Convention - Harlem World Crew: another thanks to @megapope for bringing this incredible moment to my attention. A very early rap song that was recorded in the middle of the Iranian hostage crisis and helpfully gives a complete breakdown of the situation in the opening verse before getting back to basics and detailing how much they love partying for the remaining 5 minutes. Music is truly incredible. 

I Need A Lover - John Mellencamp: I'm learning a lot about John Mellencamp this week. Apparently this song was originally on the album 'A Biography' in 78 that didn't get a release in the US because his first album did so badly, but I Need A Lover was a top ten hit here in Australia and was thusly included on his next album a year later and blew up in the US. The other surprising thing is the album version, this version, has a fully two minute long intro before it gets to the song.

High (feat. Elton John) - Young Thug: The Lil' Nutsack song that makes Dewey Cox famous again in Walk Hard is real now and it's good as fuck.​

listen here

[music2liveby]

DAY 173: Mouths Like Sidewinder Missles by The Fall of Troy

Album: Doppelgänger Release: August 16th, 2005 Genre: Prog Metal

Metal music is no stranger to the allusion and inclusion of historical references. The fury and intensity of events, battles, and wars make for great musical material that translates in metal to heroic riffs and charged up tempos that echo regimental structure. Although there are much more famous examples of history in music, one of my favorite examples of both naming and execution are prog rockers The Fall of Troy. The trio of high school boys used yet another trope in band naming that has seen popularity over the years: random selection from a dictionary or textbook. Historically, the Fall of Troy was an event towards the end of the ancient Trojan War, where the great city of Troy was infiltrated by the Greeks with the use of their patented Trojan Horse. In actuality, none of the band members knew what the event was, but their method of opening a history textbook and pointing out names that they liked worked well enough for founding member Thomas Erak in the past. The method inspired his previous band The 30 Years War, a group that disbanded early due to educational conflicts of some members but quickly carried on with its remaining members to form The Fall of Troy. Their first full-length album together was an eponymous release in 2003, laying the framework down for what to expect out of this new group. While The Fall of Troy has been described as an explosion of precision and energy, the band’s musical introduction seemed to leave a lot of that potential on the table with audiences wanting more. Aware of this missed opportunity, the group capitalized during the recording of their next album by rerecording four of the songs from their debut album for inclusion on their follow-up. Acknowledging this recycling of content, The Fall of Troy appropriately named their second outing Doppelgänger, a foreboding mirror image of oneself. One of the remixed tracks, F.C.P.R.E.M.I.X., was featured in the rhythm game Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock, my first introduction to the group way back in 2007. F.C.P.R.E.M.I.X. was all I ever knew of The Fall of Troy until about a decade later when I revisited the band’s material and found another of the remixed tracks, Mouths Like Sidewinder Missles. Although the difference in songs between albums is much less striking than the altogether face lift F.C.P.R.E.M.I.X. benefited from, there is enough to justify a rerelease of Mouths Like Sidewinder Missles. The Fall of Troy switches in between Thomas Erak’s cleaner vocals with a healthy dose of bassist Tim Ward’s screaming style, all while constantly laying down a grungy yet groovy back track that plays with time signature and dynamic range freely. This song is no exception, unloading a flurry of guitar licks to begin until transgressing into an instrumental breakdown that closes out the remaining half. Including a heroic and triumphant solo at the hands of Thomas Erak, the flow between strings and percussion in this section is never interrupted and provides for a satisfyingly thorough experience from start to finish.