1001 Albums: 0491 - 500 - Yes 500 Down!

I shaved my head. Right down to the skin. I'm not an outdoors guy, but I now have a ridiculous head tan line thing going that makes it look like my face was grafted onto my head. Lesson learned!

But that's not what this is about! This is about music, the 1001 Albums you should listen to before you die. I'm not dead yet, and I'm now basically half way through it. How has it been? Read the past posts lazy bones! Actually it's been surprisingly good. I've largely been ambivalent to most of the music, wonderfully surprised by many, and amazingly only flat out hated a few. That's not bad!

Here's the albums fleshing out the top 500. If this was the Rolling Stone Magazine list, I'd be done. As it is, I probably got at least another year of doing this.

Shit.



0491 Bauhaus – Mask - I was looking forward to this one since I think these are the guys who did that song Bela Lugosi's Dead. That songs not all that great, and it isn’t on this album. A song titled “X: The Man With X-Ray Eyes” is on this album, but it’s not that great either. It’s named after one of my favourite movies, and that movie is great. So basically, skip this album and get that X: The Man With X-Ray Eye movie since it’s awesome.



0492 Bobby Womack – The Poet - A pretty lame soul album. I fear that the 80’s is the decade where soul music goes into the shitter.



0493 Tom Tom Club – Tom Tom Club (1st Album) - The name of this band kind of sinks it since it's silly, but it’s surprisingly good! A peppy pop album with a taste of rap.



0494 Rush – Moving Pictures - Being Canadian means that I love Rush even though I’ve never bought one of their albums. It’s just the way it is. This one is great. They tone down the prog rock stuff and replace it with a near perfect album. The opening song Tom Sawyer is on the best opening songs on a record, period. PERIOD! Man, I love that song! It gives me chills and the rest of the album is just as good.



0495 ABBA – The Visitors - I’ve already mentioned that I was never much of an Abba fan, and that hasn’t really changed. I did enjoy this one though. It’s their final album, and there’s a seriousness to it that is much more appealing to me then their other albums.



0496 ABC – Lexicon of Love - A poppy album that again surprised me that I actually liked it. I typically don’t care for this type of stuff, but this was really well done with some pretty good songs.



0497 Prince – 1999 - Prince makes his debut with a dead solid album that featuring the title track and "Little Red Corvette" that will become big video hits when “Purple Rain” comes out. At least that’s when I first remember hearing about them. Prince simply didn’t exist until that point for me. Anyways, the rest of the album is just as good. Well done Prince!



0498 Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five – The Message - Raps big coming out party, The Message is a legendary song. The album though... meh. It’s mostly lame R&B, full on R&B as opposed to rap in The Message vein. That’s how it goes with the ground-breakers I guess.



0499 Elvis Costello – Imperial Bedroom - Elvis puts out a flat out mature album that’s full of pop perfection. I liked it though I found it not exceptionally memorable.



0500 The Cure – Pornography - The landmark 500th spot is filled by landmark goths The Cure with their landmark album Pornography! It was good, better then the previous one, and still not all that gothy and sad. That’s how it is with The Cure.

There it is. Sadly not a mind blowing group. The Rush album was awesome, but I had heard it before. I actually own it for Rock Band. The surprisingly good pop albums where alright but not entering into my regular rotation. Harumph. Oh well, let's see how the next 500 plus 1 go!

Do You Have A Spare Toilet?

Scavenger Hunt (1979)

Ah the scavenger hunt movie. Is there anything better then packing in a bunch of celebrities into a comedy and have them race about trying to win a prize or get some treasure? The answer is “yes” as pretty near all these movies aren’t very good. From the It’s A Mad Mad Mad Mad World to Rat Race, Hollywood is always putting out a film like this. In the late 70’s, early eighties, there were a bunch of these, culminating in the fan fave The Cannonball Run (directed by Hal Needham, who you will remember from The Villain).

It is in this genre that we find the movie of today, Scavenger Hunt. The basic plot is a game manufacturer played by the great Vincent Price kicks off and states in his will that the winner of a scavenger hunt will win his inheritance. The rest of the movie is the madcap, wacky scavenger hunt as the mostly b-list/non-celebs run about trying to win. It has a nice message in the end and it’s all very boring. All the actors are doing their best with the material, and some like Scatman Crothers and Roddy McDowell are genuinely likeable. Others like Richard Mulligan and his Marx Brothers type impression just grate on you. The script eventually sinks it. It kind of wants to be an edgy Animal House type of comedy but within a PG rating so it never works. It’s too broad, too annoying and in the end, too cheap and a waste of time. Maybe with bigger names it would work as a curiosity. As it is, it just doesn't work.

Arnold has a very small roll, especially coming from the 3rd billing he had in the previous The Villain. He plays the owner of a gym who basically tortures and beats the shit out of Tony Randall who is there for a medicine ball for the hunt. It’s a small scene, but one of the better comedic bits in the film. Arnold does just fine with his first stab of broad comedy, looking very comfortable as the over-eager muscle guy. You kind of wish he had more to do. Sadly he doesn’t. Fortunately for us Arnie will have many attempts at family friendly comedies, but that is in the future, let us wait for those to come!

So basically this is another film to skip in the Arnold filmography, though it’s not really a proper Arnold movie of course, but a shit ensemble movie.

1001 Albums: 0481 - 0490 - No Sleepin'!

Been busy busy busy, but the project never sleeps! Here's an update! We are about to crush the top 500 albums. Be brave dear friends! We can do this! YES!


0481 The Go-Gos – Beauty & the Beat - It’s really hard not to love the Go-Gos. None of what they do is great, but it’s just so god damned much fun! And Belinda Carlisle is a total crush object, never mind Jane Wiedin. So yeah, this is a like, BUT MOSTLY FOR THE MUSIC! I am not a pig, thank you very much!


0482 Motörhead – No Sleep ‘Til Hammersmith - Jesus Christ, this was better then “Ace Of Spades”! Absolutely no complaints, this live offering might be the their best album.


0483 Soft Cell – Non Stop Erotic Cabaret - Probably best known for “Tainted Love”, because it’s one of the greatest songs to come out of the 80’s. While no other song on this album, or possible written since, is as irresistible as that song, the whole album is just as good and interesting. The songs are quite clever. This was good.


0484 Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark - Architecture & Morality - With all good synth-pop like Soft Cell, you must also take the bad, which is what I thought of this one. Just didn’t do a thing for me with it’s dreamy synths and kind of annoying sounds. Blech.


0485 Brian Eno & David Byrne – My Life in the Bush of Ghosts - I had high hopes for this one, and of course was disappointed. The idea of Byrne’s Talking Heads type cracked pop mixed with Eno’s own clever sounds is really intriguing. The result though was no pop and more of a sound collage type of bleepy music. It was boring.


0486 Black Flag – Damaged - This is the album that put Henry Rollins on the map. that might be a great thing or a terrible thing depending on your thoughts on Mr. Rollins. I’m a bit of a fan, but just a bit. This album though, is a bit mixed. There’s some great moments mixed with really juvenile moments. Which makes sense considering the age of this.


0487 X – Wild Gift - These guys are more legendary then I think they deserve to be. Not that I didn’t like this, I did, it just doesn’t seem as amazing as other things on this list. I’m being unfair.


0488 Psychedelic Furs – Talk, Talk, Talk - It should be apparent that I carry a lot of prejudice to my listening habit. I brought it to this one, figuring it would be awful. It was actually really good. More rock based then I thought it would be, and it has that “Pretty In Pink” song it’s the only Furs album you’ll ever need to own.


0489 Human League – Dare - Of course the Human League are brilliant because they invented music.


0490 Gun Club – Fire of Love - As of this writing, I don’t remember a thing about this.

Coming soon- The 500th Album Wham-Bam! It probably wont be as exciting as that last sentence. See you then!

Who's The Real Villain Here?

The Villain (1979)

In late 1977 a car movie debuted as a massive hit and boosted the careers of the stars Burt Reynolds and Sally Fields into the stratosphere while kick starting the CB radio/Trucker craze. That film was directed by Hal Needham, and it was called Smokey & The Bandit. It’s a pretty great car crash comedy, one of the best you’ll see. Needham, an ex-stuntman followed it up with a surprisingly good stuntman film called Hooper and clearly based on the success of these two movies Needham was given the keys to Hollywood to make any film he wanted. That next film was The Villain.

Ever wonder what a live action version of a Road Runner cartoon would be like? Well wonder no more, it would be pretty terrible, and this movie proves it. The amazing, legendary Kirk Douglas stars in the title roll of Cactus Jack ie- The Villain, a surrogate While E Coyote that is after the money that Anne Margaret it carrying. All the gags that you’ve seen in Loony Tunes Cartoons find there way into this in an incredibly terrible and painful to watch way. It just does not work at all. There’s not enough scenery for Douglas to chew, and Anne Margaret does her best to liven things up with her flirty sex appeal. It doesn’t really work either. Nothing works! Not even the stunts are worthwhile in this western spoof. It’s truly terrible! Why would they try to make this film?

Arnold Schwarzenegger fairs just as well as everyone else in his roll of Handsome Stranger. Yes, that is his characters name. He plays a naive, “Dudley Do-Right” type roll that is out to protect Anne Margaret and not realizing her advances. He does just fine in a roll that requires nothing from him in the acting department.

There’s nothing left to say. This isn’t a proper Arnie movie, it’s a terrible western spoof comedy that no one can redeem. It’s mostly sad, Douglas especially deserves better.