Movie of the Month: Part FiveA few weeks a-go, I re-viewed the fol-lowing DVD for Video Librarian, and thought the results were worth sharing. CAREFUL [***1/2](Guy Maddin, 1992, Canada, 100 mins.)For his third fantastical feature, Winnipeg iconoclast Guy Maddin added glorious color—in saturated shades of gold,sky blue, and violet—to his palette. Co-written with collabor-ator George Toles, this "remastered and repressed" version of1992's Careful pivots on the imaginary turn-of-the-centuryalpine town of Tolzbad, where any loud noise could cause anavalanche, so the villagers live their lives in virtual silence.For mother-obsessed butler brothers Johann (

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Hallowed GroundThe Curious Mystery, Rotting Slowly, K Records [5/19/09] Curious Mystery lays claim to the same sort of hallowedground carved out by David Roback's Opal and Mazzy Star. Morerecent practitioners of the narcotized proto-punk blues includeNina Nastasia, Cat Power, Scout Niblett, She Keeps Bees, and P.J.Harvey on To Bring You My Love. I'm a sucker for this kind ofthing, so Rotting Slowly is right up my...lonely avenue.Granted, it's a formula: smoky chanteuse, usually an alto, confes-ses her darkest secrets over slow-motion guitar (with slide inter-ludes), minimal bass, and jazzbo drums (heavy on the brushes),but like any formula, it only se

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Passion and PowerThe Tiptons Sax Quartet, Laws of Motion, Zipa!/Spoot Music "Our music is a high energy blend of 'twisted folk' with world music, second line, funk, jazz, and Eastern European influ-ences thrown into the mix of mainly original material."-- the Tiptons Sax QuartetFormerly known as the Billy Tipton Saxophone Quartet, thebi-coastal outfit returns in fine form on their eighth outing. Saxplayers Sue Orfield and Tina Richerson join co-founders Jessi-ca Lurie and Amy Denio and percussionist Chris Stromquist.For those unacquainted with the 20-year-old outfit, they de-fy classifications like pop and jazz, although both genres comeinto play, alo

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For God's Sake, Turn It Down!Sweet, Action: The Sweet Anthology, Shout Factory! [4/28/09]"Are you ready, Steve? Andy? Mick? All right, fellas, let's go!"-- "Ballroom Blitz"Between 1968-1973, my favorite songs were the Ohio Express's "Yummy, Yummy, Yummy" and Sweet's "Little Willy." Though the latter was a real band, the former was a faceless assemblage of session musicians (I'm sure they had actual faces; they just didn't show them to the public). Granted, Nicky Chinn and Mike Chapman wrote Sweet's early material, but that makes them no less authentic to me. They weren't auteurs, but the British quartet made each song their own through ace musicianshi

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When Tomor-row HitsSpectrum Meets Captain America, Indian Giver, Birdman [***1/2]"A meet-ing of the minds, a musical summit, staged in a sagging barn in North Mississippi." -- Andrea Lisle in the liner notes ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** *****Years ago, I interviewed Pete Kember, alias Sonic Boom, andasked why he chose to cover Elvis' sparse lament "Lonely Ave-nue" on his debut album, Spectrum. His answer was simple:he had a thing for songwriter Doc Pomus, i.e. it was more about Pomus than Presley (and Indian Giver's "Til Your Mainline Comes" even features a noirish "Lonely Avenue" bassline).So, it's not completely unexpected to find

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Sonic Boom's Revolu-tion: Part Five Click here for part fourMy '91 Wire interview with Pete "Sonic Boom" Kember concludes.***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** *****Wire: How do you know that "Jesus loves the Spacemen"?And doesn't that line come from the Jazz Butcher?Sonic: Almost certainly. I do have spiritual beliefs, but I don't believe in Jesus Christ as a person from Nazareth and...Wire: You do mention Jesus Christ a lot. Do you like the image...Sonic: Jesus, never Christ! Jesus is how I term the embodiment of what I believe in as well as the embodiment of my religious beliefs. In the same way, Lord is mentioned in quite a lot of the so

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Sonic Boom's Revolution:Part FourClick here for part threeMy '91 Wire in-terview with Pete "Sonic Boom" Kem-ber continues.***** ***** *****Wire: Is it true that Perfect Prescription is a concept album about drugs?Sonic: I think Spacemen 3 is a concept...Wire: About drugs?Sonic: [laughs] Yeah, well, my motto from the startwas "Taking drugs to make music to take drugs to."Wire: I've got the record with that title, the "demos" record.Sonic: Right, another bootleg.Wire: For a bootleg, the sound quality is actually very good.Sonic: That was the first thing...that was when Ichose to outline what we were—our manifesto. Wire: What can you tell me about your s

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Sonic Boom's Revolution: Part ThreeClick here for part twoMy '91 Wire interview with Pete "Sonic Boom" Kember continues.***** ***** *****Wire: Which is your favorite rec-ord of all the ones with which you've been involved?Sonic: My favorite track is probably something like "Ecstasy Symphony." My favorite LP is possibly either side one of the new one [his side] or Perfect Prescription. I like them all. They are all really great, so—I'm bad to say that, aren't I? [laughs] Wire: How will you make records in the future? Are you go-ing to continue to make one half and Jason the other or...Sonic: No, no. The band split up. Spacemen 3 split up.Wire: There h

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Sonic Boom's Revolu-tion: Part TwoClick here for part oneMy '91 Wire interview with Pete "Sonic Boom" Kember continues.***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** Wire: How come Spaceman 3's version of Mud-honey's "When Tomorrow Hits" never came out as a Sub Pop single as was originally intended?Sonic: Basically, because it was all talked about while I still believed Mudhoney were doing their version of "Revolution" [from Playing With Fire] as they had done it when they were touring around Europe at the beginning of '89, but I didn't know they were going to change the lyrics like that. See what they'd changed them to—which was basically a pisstake

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Sonic Boom's RevolutionAn Interviewwith Pete Kem-ber: Part OneIn honor of Sonic Boom's upcom-ing Seattle appear-ance, in his Spec-trum incarnation, here's an edited version of an interview which debuted in KCMU's Wire in 1991. Around the same time, I also interviewed Pete "Bassman" Bain and Jason "Spaceman" Pierce. The latter two had just left the "3" to form their own outfits: respectively, the Darkside and Spiritualized.***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** *****I discovered Spacemen 3 in 1988. It was at a time whenI hadn't come across anything new in a while that I foundparticularly original or exciting. Perfect Prescription was—ifyou'll

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Some-times in April These are the reviews and other pieces I'm working on this month. Amazon DVD: Crude Impact.Amazon Profiles: Peter Falk, Norman Jewison,and Sidney Lumet for Armchair Commentary.Amazon Theatricals: Hunger, acclaimed film about IRAleader Bobby Sands (with Michael Fassbender, above left), State of Play (remake of the British miniseries with Russell Crowe),and Lemon Tree (with the always amazing Hiam Abbass).Still playing (or yet to open): Confessions of a Shopaholic, Doubt, Gom-orrah, The Great Buck Howard, He's Just Not That into You, Milk, Rachel Get-ting Married, Sin Nombre, Sunshine Cleaning, Two Lovers, and Tyson. Seattle Internat

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