Pop Culture Petri Dish

Perfect records do not grow on trees, friends. Contrary to the carping of a lot of wags, you can still find the sugar rush of a perfect three-minute pop song with some frequency (if you know where to look), but a 100% perfect full-length album stands as a true rarity in this age of instant and empty musical calories. I'm not just talking about a disc that's chock-a-block with great songs. There are other significant X factors involved: it takes a clarity of purpose, a vibe of consistency to convert that collection of songs into a cohesive work of art. A lot of new music crossed these ears last year--good, bad, and indifferent--but I only heard one completely and utterly perfect release in all of 2005. That record was Coles Corner (out on Mute Records), the most recent release by Englishman Richard Hawley . Like a lot of perfect records, Coles Corner seems an unlikely candidate for such lofty praise, if only because it's so traditional on the surface. Sinatra-style balladr...

Mother Mary in bib overalls, it's been a long time since I've weighed in. I've been far from idle, but the most writeable thing to occur in the last four (yikes!) weeks will take me more time to relate than I have right now. So, what to blather about... The Final Chapter on the Hollywood Trip? Soon, I promise, but not tonight. How 'bout the Oscar results? Well, the missus smoked me in a five-person mini-Oscar pool--She came in first, and I came in third (I was, however, the only bloke in the mini-pool to accurately predict the 7-10 split on Director and Actor trophies). No, I still haven't seen any of the Best Picture nominees. Hey! Why don't we kibbitz about a crappy Italian horror movie? BINGO! To extend the 'selling the sizzle not the steak' metaphor, Media Blasters/Shock Show's two disc DVD of Joe D'Amato's infamous 1980 shocker Anthropophagus immerses a pretty unremarkable piece of gristle-laden meat in an incredibly nifty, flavorful, e...