LP's
I started posting about important artifacts called albums. No one asked me to, but I did anyway.
My favorite records. I mostly never think about why I like certain things. I don't care what genre or category things fall under. They all have that certain something!
Miguel's Favorite Albums Day 7! Legend- original score by Jerry Goldsmith. This is also my very favorite vinyl release. Whenever I feel down and never an artist, I play this and it reminds me of when you can't stop writing or you will burst into flames. I became so blissfully maniacal when I was browsing Amoeba records and then there it was, a thick double album heavy vinyl release with perfect art work. JG is my favorite composer. He was the best composer who ever lived. I grew up listening to him. He is like the mentor I never met. His style had a powerful dual nature, a dialectic of tonality counterpointed with modern 12 tone dodecaphony, or midway-there impressionism as if the normal order of perception expressed as tonal romanticism, and melody and perfection of line, inevitably is disrupted by chaotic forces or (in many science fiction and supernatural scenarios) the bleed-through of otherly worlds into this one. The known and unknown, and that mysterious comprehension of a great artist ineluctably drawn to the forbidden areas of existence, because that's where the drama is. The editor of the magazine I wrote for, Lukas, once said he was the Brando of film music and I know what he meant. Goldsmith was like method acting and expressed pure values and danger, all together. But he filtered it through the Apollonian sensibility of mental perception wherein the intellect guides emotion. Legend, from 1985, is one of my favorite movies. I have an irrational love of this film and this score. It was one of the greatest rejected scores in history, because the studio was afraid it was too old fashioned, so ordered an electronic 80s score to replace it, and I don't care about it or the euro artists who made it. The symphonic style ultimately holds up while 80s synths are dated. JG also incorporated synths but used them as parts of the orchestra. I had the European cut on laserdisc with a messed up version of the orig score but it was almost inaudible. JG was so mad and burned twice by Ridley Scott (the first time being Alien) he only spoke of it on record once, and said it was his best work. I am not even sure why I love the film, I never even put words together, it just is. Maybe it’s like how people obsess over Labyrinth- Triggered! I had the UK one sheet poster (that still said “music by Jerry Goldsmith”). Also I had the original uk private Moment100 vinyl pressing, that I searched long and far via mail order to obtain. Later the complete score was issued on cd by silva, and then two years ago I got the newly reissued complete version on vinyl. It is Mr. Goldsmith at his finest, possibly one of the last three scores (the others being Total Recall and Basic Instinct) in which he treated it purely artistically with that Brando-like immersion in pure freedom of expression distilling the film's deep symbology and meaning in human expressive or emotional terms. The movie is not necessarily accessible but Goldsmith made it so. (If you want to look at it, there's enough to see the mystery school like arcane symbolism built in to the story, the templars' green man, the young lovers and the separate gender initiation into primordial fertility rites, the girl touches the unicorn which gets its pointy horn chopped off and kept by the demon Darkness who seduces the girl into the dark side and blood sacrifices, while the male has to replace the horn- osiris and his phallus lol- and face his fears to become the adult archetype restoring order to the life cycle of the forest, which being a symbol of tons of more stuff that only people in Sir Ridley Scott's circle of peers would bother to recognise- um, it's as dense as Boorman's Excalibur but none of it mattered to any audience on earth)- Jerry made it all human. He located the pulse, and the conflicted feelings of fear and desire (Cocteau was a big inspiration to the film), and made the concupiscence-tinged love theme a force of light against Stravinksy-esque jagged brutality and danger. Innocence and concupiscence are provocatively treated as the same while the darkness themes are the pit of material death and envy. He wrote stunning self contained passages such as the dance waltz, (and the cut from the film cue for the death dance that has a manic fiddle theme that is undercut with this terrifying french horn figure coming up like all the serpents in the universe) that sonically sets the film ablaze. See, I never think of all this. It just plays as is. And I love the score above every Goldsmith score. It doesn't need a film. These soaring string passages, in a simulated english folk idiom grounded in Ravel-like impressionism, the thunderous low brass and primordial fiery exclamations, the most beautiful open fourths and fifths in history, and the soaring strings again in Jerry’s very best melodic inspirations- just perfect. It is the most perfect music ever.
Miguel's Favourite Albums Day 5! Totally unsolicited mini essays day 5. Doors L.A. Woman. This album was the pinnacle of the doors. I loved the doors. There was no rock act above the doors. I felt the wafts of identification as many did. There was always a sense of something within, an unspoken reality in humanity. Since I was trained to look for things and examined every side, Morrison's ethos was perfect. Of course later you know it was a poor trade off, even spoken to by the artist- sell out, sell soul, all the same, the youthful 1967 breaking through just met up with depression and dissolution, wins are even huger losses.
I saw JIm as a huge warning and giant gorilla of alcoholism and addiction. LA Woman was an extirpation of Los Angeles, sunny good vibes and lurking manson-ey menace, underlayers of pure evil, the occult symbology thankfully blathered so blatantly instead of pretentiously (see the eagles) or preciously like the wachoski's use of kenneth grant theosophical bullshit, it made it like the excuses of drunks. Of course many call it the blues, but to me its self pity and limbic screeching, not high art, even though many times such music has real feeling you know up close aka via empathy. LA Woman is like that to me, the mental imagery gives the crying and self justification the grace of literary indulgence, good or bad doesn't matter. I see the anger steaming from the songs as signaling the destruction of human impulses and celebration of reptoid ones. Less love as it wanes into anger and sorrow, but the poetic wafts of a tragic mind gone awry fade out with the last song as a beautiful homeric idyll.
Day 6 of Miguel's Favourite Albums! That no one asked or cares about lol. INXS- X (1990). I have always felt this band was, albeit very mega famous, still very underrated and underexamined. The musicianship is brilliant, almost so good it lacks the need to say so. The forms were simple and didn't need to add to the essence. For me MH was the greatest rock singer, so full throated and nuanced it was the next instrument in the mix, what I thought a vocal should be, less the person but the sound. I don't really care about the visual imagery or the persona but those should have presentation. Though actually whether it's the production or the sound recording or the booze, the voice is mellower in this record and got softer til the end. The words were always perfect, not even especially complicated just saying what the moment or the song asked for. I never knew how to write like that, effortless catchy SYLLABLES that conveyed the image with elan. MH played Shelley the poet the year before X in Roger Corman's Frankenstein Unbound, and the sinewy silvery line seemed to infect his lyrics - "you drivin all over town in your big car windows down, the sweet perfume trails behind." The album style was funkish and non-taxing, but the entertainment value was everything. Like INXS was the Tony Bennett of rock. Clashing discords in the heart and a gritty romance to the horizons of experience. Bitter tears after. I loved it. The last album in 1997 was Hollywood vampiric darkness and depression clouding the intent, though with some of INXS's best songs, but it wasn't taking over yet. I miss Mike still. So yes I tend to only know about big music acts and not the local and indie level, but I'm not the most nuanced of listeners, you gotta go big or I won't notice? "The passion lives to keep your faith
Though all are different, all are great
Climbing as we fall
We dare… "
Miguel's favorite albums day 3. L'arc en ciel. REAL. The only vinyl album I have. L'arc will always be number one forever. Splintered souls hurtling through space. Sometimes our sibs are far away and never meet. Sometimes they wear the same shell, a different octave. Oh well. Get rid of your notions/
haven't you realized yet.
Day 2 of My favorite Albums. JOHN MORRIS 1926-2018. I did not know that John Morris had passed this year. Mr. Morris was the composer for the majority of Mel Brooks' greatest films, and past master at enobling and deeply haunting melodies and thematic shades that enlivened his films from within. I know he never achieved the heights of fame that other composers of his stature had but I doubt that he would have cared. I am forever in his debt for the privilege of knowing one of the greatest pieces of music of the 20th Century, for David Lynch's THE ELEPHANT MAN-- a shattering work of compassion and dignity you will remember for all of your life. Morris wrote many transparent scores and often disappeared within them, creating empathy with almost subliminal snatches of melody and harmonic progressions that seemed to be speaking to the characters inner lives. Ironweed, containing Nicholson's and Streep's finest moments of their careers, was a score barely 7 minutes long but enlivened a sense of compassion for those who desperately needed it most, for themselves lost in depression and aching memories of life choices. Young Frankenstein was perhaps the most memorable, for which he wrote a theme that avoided being comedic but was a romantic melody that seemed to emanate from the creature's past, establishing empathy and humanity, which made the comedic elements sing that much louder. Morris retired decades ago and unfortunately had a falling out with Brooks after Life Stinks. Brooks' films were never as great after that. I have known Morris works most of my life. I hope he made it, he has been and wil be missed, but the immense soulfulness of his sound exists forever.
Miguel's Favourite Albums Day 4! The Fantasy Film World of Bernard Herrmann. BH conducting the National Philharmonic. I found this lp when I was 18. I would sit there immersed in it sometimes doing homework and then the sheer power and resplendent shimmery reveries would take over and a compleat world view in sound and vision would demand total attention. Herrmann was one of the greatest composers of the 20th century whose gifts reached their heights in film as a cinema dramatist very unlike every composer before him or after. His stye was based in Romantic tonality but his sensibility was defiant 20th century fragmentation and recollection of human experience following the greatest cataclysm in human memory of World War 2. He was said to have sculpted in sound, against blackness of the human subconcious he swathed huge silvery symbols of pure light and meaning. A bit of a manic depressive, and a chain smoking unyielding type A whose heart disease destroyed him early, he went for yearning emotion and the fire which inevitably leads to heartbreak and violent expression of regret found its greatest fulfilment in Hitchcock's psychotic MPD thrillers. Herrmann was also the favorite composer of animator Ray Harryhausen and responded to the freedom of the fantasy elements with a psychological penetration of human yearnings and symbolic musicology that treated forms (Rimsky-Korsakov, any number of obscure classical and pre-classical models for 3 Worlds of Gulliver) as a means to convey a facinorous sense of wonderment, and both physical (in sound, chords, intervals, colors, melody) and internal forces (the emotional affect of such) galvanised to evoke actual experience; you respond to the perils and pitfalls identified with his characters facing the gamut of emotions and problem solvings to achieve a hard won reward, the sheer power of being alive. The Fantasy Film World lp was among a series of lp's Herrmann recorded near the end consisting of suites from his best scores (often criticised for slow tempi attributed in hindsight to his diabetes and heart disease), and they make up a survey of film music delvings that will never be matched in film music again. I will never forget these recordings even if this current time era is totally indifferent to this type of soulful and powerfully expressive musicology. I don't really go back to these scores much now, I mostly have my memories to rummage through, and as communication becomes even more limited to pre-specified patterns and things we must have "in common" with each other, the old world has to be placed in the past. So, my memories and me. A wonderful album I cherished in my youth.
Day 9 Miguel's Favorite albums! Dexter Gordon Both Sides of Midnight. This and Ballads get a lot of play on my devices. It could be any of them. Round Midnight is one of my favorite films. I love Dexter Gordon. There is something deeply off kilter and it isn't because he is behind the beat. I love behind the beat. Time is a prison. Mr. Gordon battled alcoholism and everything that accompanies, but not as severely as some others. There was an escape hatch created every time. It was like a vortex of blissful apprehension of the world beyond time, even a few dangerous slashings coming at it couldn't penetrate it. It skims over the world and finds deeper value in the shadows. Dexter reminds me of my favorite photographer Daido Moriyama. Not many humans on the mortal coil have mental toughness. They give in. I think Gordon might have too but he went into his 70s. The escape hatch was not really escape, just a way to process things. The attitude matters not the problems or even the solutions.
Miguel's favorite cD covers or albums or whatever they're supposed to be.. Day 10 I think. I love Kat-tun. Kat-tun is a Johnny's Jpop outfit. Johnny's is a company made by a horrid abuser and yakuza who churns out male idols until they age out and are thrown away unless they act or have tv shows to keep the money going. Kat-tun is special. The members even though only 3 are left are extremely gifted artists. Their vocals are weird, none of them individually would stand up but somehow all work perfectly in context. The song writers chosen for them are always the best (Steven Lee) and the surface of rhythm, glitz and genre typical uplifty messagey songs are powered by lyric strength and a uniquely weird edge in idol terms, often pushing self reliance and self belief in the midst of darkness. Kat-tun are often used to subvert masonic symbology, as if they are the anti-katy perry. Dont believe me, who cares. The 2010 live tour always started with an illuminist pyramid exploding. Kat-tun is the stanley kubrick of jpop. Go two humans and a hybrid. I just made all this up. Nihilist.
Since I didnt do day 11 yesterday I will do two album covers today! Day 12 Miguel's favorite albums. Basil Poledouris was my second favorite composer. Jerry was first. They were yin and yang. There was nothing more captivating or enthralling in 20th century music. No one else spoke to me as clearly. I miss them both terribly. Basil's gutsy, expansively emotional sound blasted out from the soul. Not many film composers understood a physical life, or could fully write meaningfully about surfing, or living as martial warriors, with inner understanding of what that life entails, but Basil could, and he did it big. He had a compelling physicality to his style, primal and full of power but also full of a deep feeling of love and kinship. He was for real as an artist and human being. In Los angeles that's saying a lot. Robocop is not my favorite Basil score, but I haven't been able to articulate the one that is just yet. He did his greatest work for his friend John Milius. His second best work was done for Paul Verhoeven and Robocop encapsulates a huge ideal. The slashing dischords and apocalyptic sense of annihilation of the police state world are set as the context from which the protagonist's broken, fragmented humanity spirals out against, in big sweeping gestures, pumping rhythmic statements like the orchestra is punk rock old school from when the purpose was to subvert the old world order. In the film Murphy is sort of a christ figure so the impulse of his human feeling lives on inside a cyborg technological ghost in the shell reality. Basil assembled fragments of melody and yearning (the dream sequence), that became the lost memories of the protagonist spurring his awakening. So it was empathy and integrity and compassion battling against total nihilism. Wonderful tension and ferocity. It's a classic score from the 80s when great scores were avalanching out every year. I miss Basil every single day.
My favorite records. I mostly never think about why I like certain things. I don't care what genre or category things fall under. They all have that certain something!
Miguel's Favorite Albums Day 7! Legend- original score by Jerry Goldsmith. This is also my very favorite vinyl release. Whenever I feel down and never an artist, I play this and it reminds me of when you can't stop writing or you will burst into flames. I became so blissfully maniacal when I was browsing Amoeba records and then there it was, a thick double album heavy vinyl release with perfect art work. JG is my favorite composer. He was the best composer who ever lived. I grew up listening to him. He is like the mentor I never met. His style had a powerful dual nature, a dialectic of tonality counterpointed with modern 12 tone dodecaphony, or midway-there impressionism as if the normal order of perception expressed as tonal romanticism, and melody and perfection of line, inevitably is disrupted by chaotic forces or (in many science fiction and supernatural scenarios) the bleed-through of otherly worlds into this one. The known and unknown, and that mysterious comprehension of a great artist ineluctably drawn to the forbidden areas of existence, because that's where the drama is. The editor of the magazine I wrote for, Lukas, once said he was the Brando of film music and I know what he meant. Goldsmith was like method acting and expressed pure values and danger, all together. But he filtered it through the Apollonian sensibility of mental perception wherein the intellect guides emotion. Legend, from 1985, is one of my favorite movies. I have an irrational love of this film and this score. It was one of the greatest rejected scores in history, because the studio was afraid it was too old fashioned, so ordered an electronic 80s score to replace it, and I don't care about it or the euro artists who made it. The symphonic style ultimately holds up while 80s synths are dated. JG also incorporated synths but used them as parts of the orchestra. I had the European cut on laserdisc with a messed up version of the orig score but it was almost inaudible. JG was so mad and burned twice by Ridley Scott (the first time being Alien) he only spoke of it on record once, and said it was his best work. I am not even sure why I love the film, I never even put words together, it just is. Maybe it’s like how people obsess over Labyrinth- Triggered! I had the UK one sheet poster (that still said “music by Jerry Goldsmith”). Also I had the original uk private Moment100 vinyl pressing, that I searched long and far via mail order to obtain. Later the complete score was issued on cd by silva, and then two years ago I got the newly reissued complete version on vinyl. It is Mr. Goldsmith at his finest, possibly one of the last three scores (the others being Total Recall and Basic Instinct) in which he treated it purely artistically with that Brando-like immersion in pure freedom of expression distilling the film's deep symbology and meaning in human expressive or emotional terms. The movie is not necessarily accessible but Goldsmith made it so. (If you want to look at it, there's enough to see the mystery school like arcane symbolism built in to the story, the templars' green man, the young lovers and the separate gender initiation into primordial fertility rites, the girl touches the unicorn which gets its pointy horn chopped off and kept by the demon Darkness who seduces the girl into the dark side and blood sacrifices, while the male has to replace the horn- osiris and his phallus lol- and face his fears to become the adult archetype restoring order to the life cycle of the forest, which being a symbol of tons of more stuff that only people in Sir Ridley Scott's circle of peers would bother to recognise- um, it's as dense as Boorman's Excalibur but none of it mattered to any audience on earth)- Jerry made it all human. He located the pulse, and the conflicted feelings of fear and desire (Cocteau was a big inspiration to the film), and made the concupiscence-tinged love theme a force of light against Stravinksy-esque jagged brutality and danger. Innocence and concupiscence are provocatively treated as the same while the darkness themes are the pit of material death and envy. He wrote stunning self contained passages such as the dance waltz, (and the cut from the film cue for the death dance that has a manic fiddle theme that is undercut with this terrifying french horn figure coming up like all the serpents in the universe) that sonically sets the film ablaze. See, I never think of all this. It just plays as is. And I love the score above every Goldsmith score. It doesn't need a film. These soaring string passages, in a simulated english folk idiom grounded in Ravel-like impressionism, the thunderous low brass and primordial fiery exclamations, the most beautiful open fourths and fifths in history, and the soaring strings again in Jerry’s very best melodic inspirations- just perfect. It is the most perfect music ever.
Miguel's Favourite Albums Day 5! Totally unsolicited mini essays day 5. Doors L.A. Woman. This album was the pinnacle of the doors. I loved the doors. There was no rock act above the doors. I felt the wafts of identification as many did. There was always a sense of something within, an unspoken reality in humanity. Since I was trained to look for things and examined every side, Morrison's ethos was perfect. Of course later you know it was a poor trade off, even spoken to by the artist- sell out, sell soul, all the same, the youthful 1967 breaking through just met up with depression and dissolution, wins are even huger losses.
I saw JIm as a huge warning and giant gorilla of alcoholism and addiction. LA Woman was an extirpation of Los Angeles, sunny good vibes and lurking manson-ey menace, underlayers of pure evil, the occult symbology thankfully blathered so blatantly instead of pretentiously (see the eagles) or preciously like the wachoski's use of kenneth grant theosophical bullshit, it made it like the excuses of drunks. Of course many call it the blues, but to me its self pity and limbic screeching, not high art, even though many times such music has real feeling you know up close aka via empathy. LA Woman is like that to me, the mental imagery gives the crying and self justification the grace of literary indulgence, good or bad doesn't matter. I see the anger steaming from the songs as signaling the destruction of human impulses and celebration of reptoid ones. Less love as it wanes into anger and sorrow, but the poetic wafts of a tragic mind gone awry fade out with the last song as a beautiful homeric idyll.
Day 6 of Miguel's Favourite Albums! That no one asked or cares about lol. INXS- X (1990). I have always felt this band was, albeit very mega famous, still very underrated and underexamined. The musicianship is brilliant, almost so good it lacks the need to say so. The forms were simple and didn't need to add to the essence. For me MH was the greatest rock singer, so full throated and nuanced it was the next instrument in the mix, what I thought a vocal should be, less the person but the sound. I don't really care about the visual imagery or the persona but those should have presentation. Though actually whether it's the production or the sound recording or the booze, the voice is mellower in this record and got softer til the end. The words were always perfect, not even especially complicated just saying what the moment or the song asked for. I never knew how to write like that, effortless catchy SYLLABLES that conveyed the image with elan. MH played Shelley the poet the year before X in Roger Corman's Frankenstein Unbound, and the sinewy silvery line seemed to infect his lyrics - "you drivin all over town in your big car windows down, the sweet perfume trails behind." The album style was funkish and non-taxing, but the entertainment value was everything. Like INXS was the Tony Bennett of rock. Clashing discords in the heart and a gritty romance to the horizons of experience. Bitter tears after. I loved it. The last album in 1997 was Hollywood vampiric darkness and depression clouding the intent, though with some of INXS's best songs, but it wasn't taking over yet. I miss Mike still. So yes I tend to only know about big music acts and not the local and indie level, but I'm not the most nuanced of listeners, you gotta go big or I won't notice? "The passion lives to keep your faith
Though all are different, all are great
Climbing as we fall
We dare… "
Miguel's favorite albums day 3. L'arc en ciel. REAL. The only vinyl album I have. L'arc will always be number one forever. Splintered souls hurtling through space. Sometimes our sibs are far away and never meet. Sometimes they wear the same shell, a different octave. Oh well. Get rid of your notions/
haven't you realized yet.
Day 2 of My favorite Albums. JOHN MORRIS 1926-2018. I did not know that John Morris had passed this year. Mr. Morris was the composer for the majority of Mel Brooks' greatest films, and past master at enobling and deeply haunting melodies and thematic shades that enlivened his films from within. I know he never achieved the heights of fame that other composers of his stature had but I doubt that he would have cared. I am forever in his debt for the privilege of knowing one of the greatest pieces of music of the 20th Century, for David Lynch's THE ELEPHANT MAN-- a shattering work of compassion and dignity you will remember for all of your life. Morris wrote many transparent scores and often disappeared within them, creating empathy with almost subliminal snatches of melody and harmonic progressions that seemed to be speaking to the characters inner lives. Ironweed, containing Nicholson's and Streep's finest moments of their careers, was a score barely 7 minutes long but enlivened a sense of compassion for those who desperately needed it most, for themselves lost in depression and aching memories of life choices. Young Frankenstein was perhaps the most memorable, for which he wrote a theme that avoided being comedic but was a romantic melody that seemed to emanate from the creature's past, establishing empathy and humanity, which made the comedic elements sing that much louder. Morris retired decades ago and unfortunately had a falling out with Brooks after Life Stinks. Brooks' films were never as great after that. I have known Morris works most of my life. I hope he made it, he has been and wil be missed, but the immense soulfulness of his sound exists forever.
Miguel's Favourite Albums Day 4! The Fantasy Film World of Bernard Herrmann. BH conducting the National Philharmonic. I found this lp when I was 18. I would sit there immersed in it sometimes doing homework and then the sheer power and resplendent shimmery reveries would take over and a compleat world view in sound and vision would demand total attention. Herrmann was one of the greatest composers of the 20th century whose gifts reached their heights in film as a cinema dramatist very unlike every composer before him or after. His stye was based in Romantic tonality but his sensibility was defiant 20th century fragmentation and recollection of human experience following the greatest cataclysm in human memory of World War 2. He was said to have sculpted in sound, against blackness of the human subconcious he swathed huge silvery symbols of pure light and meaning. A bit of a manic depressive, and a chain smoking unyielding type A whose heart disease destroyed him early, he went for yearning emotion and the fire which inevitably leads to heartbreak and violent expression of regret found its greatest fulfilment in Hitchcock's psychotic MPD thrillers. Herrmann was also the favorite composer of animator Ray Harryhausen and responded to the freedom of the fantasy elements with a psychological penetration of human yearnings and symbolic musicology that treated forms (Rimsky-Korsakov, any number of obscure classical and pre-classical models for 3 Worlds of Gulliver) as a means to convey a facinorous sense of wonderment, and both physical (in sound, chords, intervals, colors, melody) and internal forces (the emotional affect of such) galvanised to evoke actual experience; you respond to the perils and pitfalls identified with his characters facing the gamut of emotions and problem solvings to achieve a hard won reward, the sheer power of being alive. The Fantasy Film World lp was among a series of lp's Herrmann recorded near the end consisting of suites from his best scores (often criticised for slow tempi attributed in hindsight to his diabetes and heart disease), and they make up a survey of film music delvings that will never be matched in film music again. I will never forget these recordings even if this current time era is totally indifferent to this type of soulful and powerfully expressive musicology. I don't really go back to these scores much now, I mostly have my memories to rummage through, and as communication becomes even more limited to pre-specified patterns and things we must have "in common" with each other, the old world has to be placed in the past. So, my memories and me. A wonderful album I cherished in my youth.
Day 9 Miguel's Favorite albums! Dexter Gordon Both Sides of Midnight. This and Ballads get a lot of play on my devices. It could be any of them. Round Midnight is one of my favorite films. I love Dexter Gordon. There is something deeply off kilter and it isn't because he is behind the beat. I love behind the beat. Time is a prison. Mr. Gordon battled alcoholism and everything that accompanies, but not as severely as some others. There was an escape hatch created every time. It was like a vortex of blissful apprehension of the world beyond time, even a few dangerous slashings coming at it couldn't penetrate it. It skims over the world and finds deeper value in the shadows. Dexter reminds me of my favorite photographer Daido Moriyama. Not many humans on the mortal coil have mental toughness. They give in. I think Gordon might have too but he went into his 70s. The escape hatch was not really escape, just a way to process things. The attitude matters not the problems or even the solutions.
Miguel's favorite cD covers or albums or whatever they're supposed to be.. Day 10 I think. I love Kat-tun. Kat-tun is a Johnny's Jpop outfit. Johnny's is a company made by a horrid abuser and yakuza who churns out male idols until they age out and are thrown away unless they act or have tv shows to keep the money going. Kat-tun is special. The members even though only 3 are left are extremely gifted artists. Their vocals are weird, none of them individually would stand up but somehow all work perfectly in context. The song writers chosen for them are always the best (Steven Lee) and the surface of rhythm, glitz and genre typical uplifty messagey songs are powered by lyric strength and a uniquely weird edge in idol terms, often pushing self reliance and self belief in the midst of darkness. Kat-tun are often used to subvert masonic symbology, as if they are the anti-katy perry. Dont believe me, who cares. The 2010 live tour always started with an illuminist pyramid exploding. Kat-tun is the stanley kubrick of jpop. Go two humans and a hybrid. I just made all this up. Nihilist.
Since I didnt do day 11 yesterday I will do two album covers today! Day 12 Miguel's favorite albums. Basil Poledouris was my second favorite composer. Jerry was first. They were yin and yang. There was nothing more captivating or enthralling in 20th century music. No one else spoke to me as clearly. I miss them both terribly. Basil's gutsy, expansively emotional sound blasted out from the soul. Not many film composers understood a physical life, or could fully write meaningfully about surfing, or living as martial warriors, with inner understanding of what that life entails, but Basil could, and he did it big. He had a compelling physicality to his style, primal and full of power but also full of a deep feeling of love and kinship. He was for real as an artist and human being. In Los angeles that's saying a lot. Robocop is not my favorite Basil score, but I haven't been able to articulate the one that is just yet. He did his greatest work for his friend John Milius. His second best work was done for Paul Verhoeven and Robocop encapsulates a huge ideal. The slashing dischords and apocalyptic sense of annihilation of the police state world are set as the context from which the protagonist's broken, fragmented humanity spirals out against, in big sweeping gestures, pumping rhythmic statements like the orchestra is punk rock old school from when the purpose was to subvert the old world order. In the film Murphy is sort of a christ figure so the impulse of his human feeling lives on inside a cyborg technological ghost in the shell reality. Basil assembled fragments of melody and yearning (the dream sequence), that became the lost memories of the protagonist spurring his awakening. So it was empathy and integrity and compassion battling against total nihilism. Wonderful tension and ferocity. It's a classic score from the 80s when great scores were avalanching out every year. I miss Basil every single day.