Pop Culture

Most people are quick to discard pop music as devoid of all merit. One can say catchy tunes are frivolous, but it's not easy to craft a song that will make the masses smile.  If it were, everyone would do it and make a zillion dollars. 


Sure mediocre artists become popular with hit songs that are slick and polished sounding, but that's because the real talent is working behind the scenes.  There are an army of gifted songwriters, musicians, engineers and producers making sure that what you hear will stick in your head on repeat until you want to bite your own ears off.  It's usually the person performing the pop music who is vapid. (e.g. Britney Spears) 

Even though she's a bonehead, I am able to recognize that the songwriting doesn't totally suck. There is something going on, when it comes to the structure and execution of her music.  People gravitate to her songs because of the well crafted design, whether they know it or not.  Britney, thankfully, has nothing to do with that aspect of her career.  She's too busy staying famous for all the wrong reasons.  


There often isn't enough credit given to music that is readily accessible.  I say to you, dear readers, that quality and mass appeal are mutually exclusive.  You can have one without the other, and yes, sometimes you can even have both!


The Beatles were the poppiest of pop bands back in the day, yet they always had a level of quality that they upheld.  I'm not sure anyone would argue that a song like Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen, is anything but a musical triumph.  That very song was able to climb the charts 2 times in a span of 15 years because of its ability to capture the listener. 

Frank Zappa never enjoyed popular success, but churned out quality while staying under the radar.  Artists like Pitbull release dog shit by the heap, yet remain at the top of the charts.    

I am a fan of good music, regardless of genre.  I will always give a song a chance, no matter how popular or obscure.  There are some songs that slay me on an emotional level, and there are some songs that challenge my intellect lyrically/musically.  There will always be songs that are just there for fun and amusement.

Having been a professional musician for some time now, I've run into this issue on the creative side.  I like to write every song that comes to mind. The process is like fishing, some days you cast out your line and get nothing.  Other days, you get a few nibbles, you start to reel it in, but then it falls off your line. Then there are those days where you catch a whopper, despite a huge drawn out fight.


Once you've caught this musical fish, you say to yourself "do I want to record this song and put it out for people to purchase and support my career?"  This is an important question for every artist to ask if you want to continue making music for a living.  All bands have to make concessions at some point and realize that it's not an entirely self indulgent endeavor.  If you've done good, you've created a song that you like, and think others will like too.  


I often have arguments with musicians who say that they aren't in a band to make music that sells.  To them I say, have fun with your hobby band, because the longer you remain an elitist, the less likely you'll gather an audience.  Music is an inclusive artform.  It is the immediate, visceral translation of a sound into emotion, and vice versa.  Anything that is published must first go through a process of editing.  Unless you're Jack Kerouac - whom you are not.


Being a music snob must be exhausting.  The equivalent would be like eating filet mignon every single night.  Sure it's totally yummers, but every now and then, it's nice to have In 'N' Out Burger.

I Ain't Mad At Alien³

I frequently have obsessions with subjects of arbitrary interest. The spells usually last a fortnight. For instance, last year, all I could think about for 2 solid weeks was the band Journey. I became completely obsessed with the big hooks, hilarious haircuts, and awful music videos; most notably the awesomely bad video for "Separate Ways (Worlds Apart)."

These last 2 weeks, I just haven't been able to shake the Alien movie legacy from my microcosmic mental zeitgeist. What I did to alleviate this geek pressure was to go into a full on onanistic viewing of the Director's cut of Alien (Dir. Ridley Scott), Extended version of Aliens (Dir. James Cameron), and the Assembly cut of Alien³ (Dir. David Fincher), just to gain additional perspective and to follow up on my glowing review of Prometheus. 

As a singular moment in cinema (to quote myself) Alien stands alone in its majesty. It's dark, it's scary, it's xenoclaustrophobialicious. James Cameron expanded the battlefield and peppered it with even more aliens, which by all accounts, reduces the terror factor of being stalked by a single creature and frankly dilutes the xenomorph's ferocity when you're mowing them down with phase plasma pulse rifles, RPGs, flame throwers and sonic electronic ball breakers. But hey, it's so damn fun to watch! Cameron shifted gears and jumped genres from Scott's dark sci-fi space horror to an action adventure, subterranean warfare movie.  

So why are people so angry with Alien³? I believe it's because audiences were expecting to see a rehash of Cameron's vision, though we did not take into account that there was no precedent set for that. There was no reason that the third installment should just be Aliens 2. These movies should be viewed as 3 distinct visions, all with the central characters of Sigourney Weaver (Ripley), and the demon that haunts her fate. It is evident that Fincher's intention was to interpret this dynamic through his own lens, just as Cameron and Scott did before him. 

At the end of Aliens, Ripley, Newt, Corporal Hicks and the android Bishop are the only remaining characters. They all go into cryosleep after successfully ejecting the queen alien into space, in an epic final battle. Alien³ immediately follows with their ship experiencing an onboard fire and is forced to launch an escape pod. We see an x-ray of a face hugger attached to one of the crew members as the onboard scanner monitors their vitals. The pod then crashes on Fiorina 'Fury' 161, A planet populated by only a couple dozen residual XYY chromosome prisoners who have turned to religion, but aren't any less dangerous. The 10 year old Newt is killed in the crash, along with Corporal Hicks and Bishop is destroyed beyond repair. Ripley somehow manages to escape death, is rescued by the prisoners and is forced to shave her head due of the lice infestation. Hardly the manace they are all about to encounter.

Let's stop here for a second. Fans could not get past the fact that Ripley was the only surviving character from the preceding movie, which retroactively renders Aliens anticlimactic. So what's wrong with that? It's not a very Hollywood path to take, nor was it at all what audiences were wishing for, but it's not an entirely unreasonable scenario, even though it feels like a kick in the balls. Their deaths feel arbitrary, but this movie is an illustration of how life/fate can be downright cruel. There is genuine grief that the fans felt for these characters, which conveniently dovetails into the melancholic, nihilistic world that Fincher creates in his installment of the franchise.


It just so happens that a couple of stow away face huggers respectively impregnate Ripley and a local Ox (or a dog, depending on which version you watch) with the alien embryos of a queen and drone. You may ask; "Hey, how did these dang eggs get there?" This was a source of controversy for many fans, but I'm happy to answer that with sci-fi logic; Presumably by the egg laying queen at the end of Aliens. I mean her job is laying eggs, right?  Those alien buggers are so flippin' sneaky!  Perhaps before the crew went to sleep, they should have done a final sweep to check for any left over Xenos, just for good measure. But ultimately, I ain't mad at that point of contention.

Hardly a shot is fired in Alien³, as a main plot points is there are no weapons of any kind on the entire planet. This is a bit of a leap in the opposite direction of Cameron's bang bang, shoot'em up world. It's a smart way to go if you want humans to be the helpless underdog in your story as there are no worldly possessions among this monastic community. It is a true showdown of Woman v Nature. Did we really want to watch another 2 hours of bullets vs acid blood? Maybe... but that's why they made Alien: Resurrection, which is decidedly stupid and a complete waste of time.



Like Prometheus, there is an element of religion in Alien³, though in this film it mainly serves as a pacifier for the troubled convicts who are terminally criminal and knowingly beyond retribution. They use religion as a crutch, and don't seem to have genuine faith. Charles S. Dutton deftly plays the angst ridden Dillon, the religious leader of these societal outcasts. There is a well orchestrated undercurrent of cynicism throughout. Dillon redeems himself, in one scene by saving Ripley from being raped by inmates, and finally by luring the alien into the lead pit to take it on Mano a Xeno. An illustration of how, regardless of religious distractions, humans are the moral animal.

At the end of the film, Lance Henrickson makes an appearance as Michael Bishop (Bishop II), and is purportedly the human who designed the Bishop android in his likeness.  This is where the religious imagery starts to get heavy.  Bishop II claims to be Ripley's savior, but he is really just a chess piece (pun intended) for Weyland Corp.  He is a false prophet, and we never really know whether or not he's another synthetic human even after getting whacked on the head with a pipe. Surely no human could withstand that abuse and maintain consciousness, but he is clearly bleeding red blood. He seems more annoyed than in pain. This is a great artistic stroke on the behalf of the filmmakers. Ripley proves to be the one true savior of mankind and knowing that she is carrying the alien queen embryo, plunges herself into the furnace below in a Jesus Christ pose.

This film is about sacrifice and was meant to be the end of a trilogy. It may not be what the fans wanted, but it does bring a sense of closure to the purgatorial struggles that Ripley withstands in these movies. It is she who becomes the eventual master of her own destiny and the savior of humankind.

In a vacuum, Fincher's filmic vision is a magnificent, artsy effort in its own right. Even though most involved with the picture felt they were being pulled in all directions, this flick is still hinged on a good script and a good director, which yielded a good bit of cinema. As a sequel, it struggles to compete with expectations. It's overall tenor of despair, hopelessness and genuine terror hit a lot of the right, albeit dour notes, but audience expectations were simply unmet and that's why it gets a bum rap.

Blowmetheus

Hollywood has gotten fat, lazy and super stupid.  The American public is in lockstep with the dumbing down of the deep space genre that was legitimized by the likes of Stanley Kubrick (2001: A Space Odyssey), and perpetuated by none other than Ridley Scott (Alien) himself.  

Though I did not completely despise Prometheus, my problems with the film are aplenty.  I caught the midnight premiere of the much anticipated and long awaited nerd-a-thon, with my trusty 3D goggles in tow.  This film marks Ridley Scott's "triumphant" return to the dorktastic Sci-Fi genre, though a triumph it is not.  After watching this movie, I get the feeling that Scott jumped back into the space game because it was a sure thing regarding revenue, and not because he was passionate about the project.

(Paging George Lucas!)

The movie opens magnificently with a humanoid alien "Engineer," who looks much like an ancient Greek or Roman statue, standing atop a waterfall on primordial Earth.  He sacrifices himself in order to seed our planet with the molecular ingredients for life. I immediately saw this as a religious ceremony, as in; "Oh, I get it, they created us, so they are the gods of man, but who do they worship?"  I thought this was a great concept and hasn't really been represented in a major hollywood film before. (Well not since Zemeckis' adapation of Sagan's Contact anyway...)  

What I LOVE are the overarching themes, such as the creation and eventual (self)destruction of mankind.  The literal Prometheus allusion being that once man is given the privilege of fire, he is unworthy of its power.  This, I think, is the string that connects all of these movies together in that the pursuit of obtaining the unobtainable will forever tantalize humanity and all its hubris.  

The film goes right in its absolutely awe inspiring spectacle and there are quite a few redeemable elements.  One of which being Michael Fassbender's uncanny portrayal of David 8, a synthetic human developed by the Weyland corporation.  For his Peter O'Toole invoking performance alone, the movie is worth seeing. But sadly, breathtaking CGI and a single actor's talents, does not a movie make.   

There is a great parallel between Weyland Corp. and the Alien Engineers in their mutual terraforming pursuits.  Weyland Corp. creates synthetic humans, the Engineers create human beings.  Who created the Engineers?  It's a fun dynamic that is looped and played around with as David is aware of his creators, while we are in search of ours.  I also like the speculation that Theron's character may in fact be an android herself, but it just so happens that she's David's human sister; hence their rivalry.  Well played.

Noomi Rapace plays, Elizabeth Shaw, the scientist who discovers where the engineer aliens have been hanging out.  She kinda looks like a stubby, baby version of Sigourney Weaver.  Her performance is okay, and kudos to her for managing to get the alien surgically removed from her womb on her own.  (Which, by the way, is a bit of a plot hole in that NOBODY tries to stop her, after she just ran away from 1 and a half people who were emphatically trying to stop her!) It's a very memorable scene, which showcases an automated surgery phone booth, but is blatantly telegraphed earlier in the movie when they essentially say "Hey, what is that surgery machine doing on board?!  Um, never mind that now, we'll get to that scene later."  Her baby alien squid wasn't all that scary, though it ultimately manages to grow to the size of the room it's trapped in without consuming any biomass whatsoever. Illogical, captain. 

This movie goes wrong, not in its connection to Alien, but with it's attempt to distance itself from the franchise.  It desperately introduces all sorts of random, biotech aliens which are no where near as creepy and vicerally repulsive as H.R. Giger's aesthetic provided.  There are also too many script problems, and nonsensical character motivations.  Why the heck would the two scientists who were scared shitless in a previous scene, all of a sudden want to pet the space cobra?  Why would you take your helmet off on an alien planet, when any number of bad things (the least of which would be an unbreathable atmosphere) could infect, poison, or spectacularly eviscerate you. After everyone on board has been violently killed, and even after the Engineer alien tries to kill Shaw (repeatedly), she immediately wants to go after them - on their home planet?  Really?  I don't buy it. I find that to be an insulting ploy to string us along for sequels, and it was one of the many movie moments that felt completely disingenuous.  

At one point the movie becomes John Carpenter's The Thing, and anything that comes in contact with the oozy space puke (i.e. mealworms, mediocre actors, etc.) turns into a belligerent asshole of a beast.  Just beating up and killing everything in their path.  Why?  I couldn't tell you.  It seemed perfectly obvious that the Xenomorph from the original Alien was such a dickface, because it was always so dang hangry (hungry + angry)... And humans indubitably look like a bunch of bacon cheeseburgers to a hangry xenomorph.  It stands to reason that it had to consume the Nostromo crew in order to have grown 10 feet tall in the 12 or so movie hours that it lurked upon the ship.  Fair attempt at space logic there, captain! 

I think the only reason why I keep watching Prometheus over and over (not through any illegal means, I assure you) is because it gives me that methadone equivalent to Alien's heroine. It's bits and pieces of something that I wanted for a long time, and if I keep going over those bits, I'll some how feel better.  But sadly, it hasn't been working. I still feel that the movie goes off in all sorts of misguided directions, throws in a few red herrings, and leaves me wanting less. 

It appears that being clever with the script has gone by the wayside when it comes to making a sci-fi space horror flick these days.  I love Ridley Scott's epic, visionary films, and Alien shall forever remain untouched as a singular moment in cinema. Prometheus was a bit too Hollywood, with a syrupy score and ideas too big for its britches. Perhaps the last 33 years wasn't a long enough period for Scott to find a better screenplay to work with.

Signs, Signs, Everywhere a Sign...

Tesla -- Not the rock group, but the man.  The myth. He was one of history's greatest inventors, but has faded into obscurity and cult status.  When people think of the light bulb, they think of Edison.  People don't realize that the method used to power that lightbulb today, and every other modern piece of electronic technology, for that matter, was devised by Nikola Tesla.

Why haven't we seen a movie about this man of extraordinary technological influence and intriguing mythos?  Over 100 years ago Tesla predicted a world integrated and powered by wireless electromagnetism. This is something that we are just getting a handle on today.  (i.e. cell phones, wifi, wireless charging)  

He originally came to America to work under Edison, but when his ideas were rejected, a rivalry was born. Tesla's ideas regarding practical use of electricity prevailed in the end (and persist to this day), but because he wasn't as business savvy as Edison, he ended up poor and raising pigeons. 

I find it a tragic story of someone who clearly saw the future, being thwarted by greed and those in power.  These days, people don't need to have a good idea, they just need to have an idea... and If you're a Kardashian sister, you don't even have a clue!  Though somehow they are on TV every day influencing the next generation and spearheading the extraordinarily irritating vocal fry trend.  It's because they know how to brand.  They can sell their shitty brand to a public that doesn't even know what's best for them.  This is what Edison was good at.  He patented every single widget he could muster, so he could corner the market and edge out the competition.  


If ideas succeeded on the merit of their quality alone, we'd live in a utopian society with endless free energy, flying cars, and Ke$ha would be mopping floors.


It would be great to see a biopic chronicling his life... but Hollywood is as guilty as the investors from 100 years ago who didn't want to take a chance on Tesla's brilliant ideas.  His ideas are more relevant than ever!  I suppose in order to make a movie about his life, I'd have to figure in a few hot babes, a car chase and some vampires. 

New Tattoo

Call me mainstream, call me a sucker, call me a fanboy, but I really dig that new Van Halen song Tattoo.  Maybe it's because I'm in an LA mood and these kick-ass old school rockers smack of some local flavor.

Legendary guitarist, Eddie Van Halen, has the unique and profitable ability to combine musical virtuosity with catchy hooks along with infectious rhythms.  There may be an undeniable formula involved in their rock song alchemy, but it just seems to work so well every single time. 


Most hard rock bands fall into the common trap of shredding for the sake of shredding and completely miss the mark of musicality in their overly technical wank fests.  The concept of "serving the song" is not lost on EVH.  His recorded guitar parts, tasteful chord changes and solos are always well thought out and arranged to raise the interest of a section or increase the excitement of the moment.  He's groovy and flavorful, while periodically reminding the listener of how impossibly skilled he is with every last tap-tap-tap-wiedly.



When it comes to another element of the VH success story, I can only think of three words: David Lee Roth. He brings an increased level of pompousness and attitude, or what I like to call "pompitude" to his role as Van Halen frontman.  It ought to be noted that there is a distinct difference between "Lead Singer" and "Front Man."  I am a stickler when it comes to these terms as I consider a front man to be much more of a performer.


A frontman captivates audiences with his antics and generally carries the show with his personality. DLR fills this role perfectly as he is a complete jackass and the consumate showman.  Whereas a lead singer is generally in a band that carries them (i.e. Van Halen; Gary Cherone Era).

When it comes to DLR's vocals, he brings a campy playfulness to their songs while Eddie truly adds artistic depth to the music.  Think that's a stretch?  Listen to "Tattoo" a few more times and you'll hear that it goes beyond a superficial rock song about some Tramp Stamp Sally, but rather there is a blatant underlying self referential theme about Van Halen's ability to stick around.  These guys have such a long history with AND without each other, and are well aware that they are inextricably linked.

There is a dynamism and duality in the lyric vs the music in "Tattoo" which actually brings out a, dare I say it, significant range of emotion from pride, to humor, to nostalgia, to melancholia.

The music of Van Halen and their iconic imagery is etched in rock history. They remind us of this in the screaming pinched harmonics, blistering runs, swooshing dive bombs and half spoken jackassery in this latest tune in their 40 year old arselal of rock. 

Sci-Fi Boner.

When I saw the preview to Ridley Scott's upcoming flick "Prometheus," I couldn't help but get chills when I saw iconic imagery that was used in his 1979 film classic Alien.  The "derilict spacecraft" that the Nostromo crew first come upon, the alien "space jockey" skull and face hugging type creatures are all evident in the trailer.

Though Scott has strongly resisted characterizing this film as a prequel, I think he is setting out to right some things in the deep space, scifi thriller genre. The Alien franchise, with all of its potential, has gone awry in the last 15 years so it looks like Prometheus is a nice reboot or rebirth of something in the same vein.  Who better to redo than the man who started it all?  That's not really a question.

I'm hoping that this film ends up being what Scott calls a stand alone movie with it's own epic mythology... with obvious links to Alien. :)