WILD MAN - NEW KATE BUSH SINGLE

Wild Man from Sky Vibes on Vimeo.

Kate's new album 50 Words for Snow comes out this week. Can't wait. She's so amazing. She always just makes the music she wants and it's fabulous.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Raymundo's attempt at 1950s horror movie scream. Trust me, it sounded awesome! Have a great Halloween!

IT'S ALL ABOUT PERSPECTIVE

So back on Friday the 13th 2011 (the one that happened in May) something shitty happened at work and I was feeling quite like this:

Yep that'd be me tied to the wall, being shot at by the clown, while observers viewed my plight from a minimum safe distance.

But then I came back to myself and remembered this:

And now I feel good again.

THE CARS: MY FIRST TRUE LOVE.

When you're a music nerd like I am, you have a first true love. It's kind of like normal people who have a first true love that is a human. Except for music nerds, your first true love is a music group or performer. It's usually chosen in the heat of raging hormones and pre-adolescent confusion. Here is the story of my first true love: The Cars.

Picture it: Orange County, California. 1978. The suburbs. It's exactly like a Steven Spielberg movie (ET / Poltergeist period). Ray Ray listens to AM radio a lot because in 1978, AM radio has several Top 40 stations to choose from. My favorite is called The Real 10Q. They keep playing these songs that I think are by Queen.

The story of my first true love really begins with Queen, who were not my first true love because they were established and of an older generation. But I dug them. Queen for me are like the hot babysitter you had but were too young to really know what you had until it was gone. The babysitter you fantasize about after the fact, pissed at yourself for letting that chance for some grade A nookie pass by, as if it ever would have really happened. News of the World is the first record that gave me chills: We Will Rock You, We Are the Champions. For the record, News of the World was not produced by Roy Thomas Baker. Also, the gay Freddy Mercury element never occurred to me. We were so naive back then. The Village People were "rumoured" to be gay. That's how lame we were. Queen was awesome, but music for grown-ups.

Enter the Cars in 1978. I'm 12. I keep hearing songs on the radio that I think are Queen. And for good reason. The Cars' debut album was produced by Roy Thomas Baker, who produced some of Queen's biggest albums (including the one that contains Bohemian Rhapsody). So there's lots of layered backing vocals, big beats, etc. I hear 3 songs by Queen, which turn out to be by the Cars, and I bust a music nut because I realize I've discovered a new band that totally rocks and is new and exciting and unlike ANYTHING I'VE EVER HEARD BEFORE. I buy the album. It doesn't disappoint. I'm infatuated. The Cars are the best band ever. They're new, young and fresh. They smell like bubblegum lip gloss when I kiss them. I am in love. The album is considered a classic, and for good reason. In 1979, Rolling Stone Magazine runs a teaser article about an upcoming Cars album. I'm shitting my pants in anticipation.

Candy-O drops on 6/13/79. I ride my bike to the record store and am knocked over by the cover. BOING! You can almost see her nipples, but not quite. Ditto her magic valley. I ride my bike home with my new record, stressing that it will warp in the sun. I put the record on and am transported into a world of cynical observations about sex and relationships, double entendres, synthesizers, obtuse lyrics about night life and mechanical sex. It's so glamorous and epic, so sarcastic and removed. I LOVE IT. I play the record to death, and then I play it some more. The Cars are my favorite band, my first true love. I discovered them. I am one of the only kids at school who knows or cares about them. They are somewhat cutting edge for Orange County at the time, at least for my age group. I feel superior and special and cool. Things are looking up and can only get better.

Then 1980 hits me like  a ton of bricks. It's not a bad year, but things start to change: I'm hairy, I'm zitty, my voice still hasn't changed, I'm trying to figure out girls and why I'm having so much trouble trying to care about getting into their pants. My fascination with boys lies dormant, waiting to pounce, its big moment just around the corner. Enter Panorama. It effectively kills my first love for me. Dark. Somber. Trying too hard to sound like Devo is what I recall thinking at the time. No female model on the cover. My dad also took me to see them live on the Panorama tour at the LA Sports Arena. Opening band was the Motels. The Cars just kind of stood there and played their instruments. It was disappointing. And in a fit of young arrogance, I dumped the Cars like a hot potato. It was over. I moved on to the B-52's, who I'd been having a thing with on the side for a while, and never looked back.

Subsequent releases aren't worth getting into. I had fond memories of the Cars, but no regrets. They continued to get bigger and bigger, and less and less interesting as far as I was concerned. Shake It Up was an obvious apology for Panorama, but too little too late. In the mid-80s they hit it huge with Heartbeat City and won the VMA for video of the year. I was happy for them but kind of perturbed that they were being rewarded for being so mainstream, while the B-52's were creating such fantastic music and being ignored.

Well, their last album tanked, and then they broke up, years later one of them passed away, and I would sometimes get wistful about them, now that they were most definitely gone. But then, out of the blue...

What can I say. In this age of Facebook and reconnecting with just about everyone you've ever crossed paths with, it turns out the Cars had another album left in them. Move Like This dropped last week. It's been wonderful! A tumble in the sheets with my first love, years later, after I've gained all this life experience, perspective, maturity, and SKILLS baby. You don't live this long without gaining them, if you're worth anything. We both still look good, too, good enough to make a tumble fun. Takes work. Earns respect. The Cars no longer taste like bubblegum lip gloss, and good thing, because EW that would be creepy. But Move Like This is an awesome cd, with 5 GREAT songs, 5 GOOD songs, and 0 SUCKY songs. Which, after all these years, is a damn good achievement. Now...back to real life.

GREEN BEANS FROM OUR BACKYARD GARDEN.

A few months back OC & I planted a vegetable garden in the back yard. It's a plot of dirt about 3' x 6' where a bush used to be underneath the guest bedroom window. So far the heartiest of the plants is the Juliet Tomatoes but the first to provide bounty is the green bean plant. The beans actually have a slightly furry feel to them, which I did not know. We are keeping an eye on the tomatoes because there are several of each kind (we planted 3 different types of tomato plants) but they are still green. One of them is orange. We're also getting some yellow pears. It's a lot of fun and I can't wait to eat them. This summer we're going to build a planter for fruit and vegetable plants.

WHAT WOULD JUSTIN DO?

WWJD if a middle-aged gay man won this contest and invited all his friends? I must say, I do appreciate the ad’s use of a gender-neutral possessive adjective.


Now that I think of it, the bigger question is: how on Earth was I targeted with this email?

FROM RAY RAY WITH LOVE.

In our quest to watch the James Bond series from beginning to end, OC and I recently viewed Bond Film #2: From Russia With Love. It was EXCELLENT! Whereas Dr. No (Bond Film #1) suffered from what I consider clunky pacing and a sense of not quite being sure what kind of feeling it was trying to achieve, From Russia With Love was streamlined, action-packed, funny and unapologetically sexy. The violence was at times severe, but tongue in cheek when it needed to be. The final fight scene between Bond and the villain sent to assassinate him was awesome. I can totally see this flick as a prototype for the Bourne films.

They did a better job with the Bond girl this time out as well. Ursula Andress from Dr. No was fine, but she was kind of an accident. This time, the Bond girl serves a purpose other than pleasing James Bond. The sexual banter was hilarious. Sample exchange between Bond and Tatiana Romanova, the Russian pawn being used to lure him to his death:

Bond: You're one of the most beautiful girls I've ever seen.
Tatiana: Thank you, but I think my mouth is too big.
Bond (Offscreen while we see a close up of Tatiana's mouth, lips parted as she runs her tongue across the back of her teeth): No, it's the right size.

I don't remember what happened right after that because for about the next hour or so I was totally envisioning Sean Connery's dick and not much else. :)

So, this being 1963, and Bond being the stud that he is, Tatiana falls madly in love with him on the Orient Express and prepares to be his wife once they reach...wherever it is they're going (I can't remember). Tatiana has a great sense of style, and while her role as female protagonist is quite dated, it's still fun to watch.

While Bond was being stalked by his would-be assassin, I had the strange feeling I'd seen this set up before:

It's a very clever scene with Bond walking alongside the train, while the assassin follows him from behind the windows of the train. Where had I seen this before?

Why, could it actually be? There is a Bond/Jason Voorhees connection! In Friday the 13th Part 6: Jason Lives! Jason stalks his victim in the same exact manner and in obvious "homage" to the similar scene in From Russia With Love.

I guess the opening credits of F13th 6 might have been a tip off that the director was a fan of Bond films...

From Russia With Love was fantastic! My favorite so far. Awesome set pieces and fight scenes, provocative sexuality, nasty villains, amazing action from beginning to end. I will definitely buy this blu-ray for repeated viewings. Next up: Goldfinger!