Switchblade Comb

The Heights Theatre just announced two new screenings of some classic Hollywood productions.

Gold Diggers of 1933
Saturday, March 27
2:00 PM l $6

A special fundraiser for the continued restoration of the Piano action of the Heights Theater organ! Gold Diggers of 1933 is pre-code cinema at it’s best, with lots of sexy dialogue and plenty of innuendo. Throw in BUSBY BERKELEY’S kaleidoscope choreography, a great Warren and Dubin score, and a socially realist plot that is as contemporary today as it was in 1933 and you get one great movie!

Love Me or Leave Me
Saturday, April 3
1:30 PM l $10

It’s a Doris Day Birthday celebration! Doris Day portrays singing great Ruth Etting in Love Me or Leave Me, which costars the great James Cagney. The film tells the story of Etting’s rise to fame in the 1920s and her association and marriage to Marty “The Gimp” Snyder, a Chicago gangster. This CINEMASCOPE and EASTMANCOLOR classic features Doris singing 18 great roaring 20’s standards, including MEAN TO ME, TEN CENTS A DANCE and of course LOVE ME OR LEAVE ME.

Love Me or Leave Me – Trailer

The sample is from the Peggy Lee classic, “Why Don’t You Do Right?”, snappy in’t it!

Friday, June 4
7th St Entry
9 PM | $14 | 18+

Friday, May 14

As if this movie couldn’t get any more anticipated . . .

Tran Anh Hung’s Norwegian Wood, based on the excellent Haruki Murakami novel and starring Rinko Kikuchi, is now set to be scored by Radiohead’s Johnny Greenwood, who some might remember also providing one of the greatest modern movie scores in There Will Be Blood.

The pieces will be based on “Dogwood,” which Greenwood wrote for the BBC Concert Orchestra. This will play on BBC Radio 3 on Friday, March 19 at 2:00 PM.

Interesting side-note: in Tran Anh Hung’s best film Cyclo, he used Radiohead’s “Creep” to its greatest potential. Except for THIS, I guess.

Norwegian Wood opens in Japan this December.

Cyclo – “Creep”

A weekly look at the Minnesota concert calendar from your friends at Switchblade Comb. The full list can be viewed HERE.

Minnesota Shows List:

08 – Koo Koo Kanga Roo (7th St)
09 – We Were Promised Jetpacks (Varsity)
10 – Howie Day (Fine Line)
11 – GZA (Triple Rock)
13 – Afrika Bambaataa (Epic)
13 – The Aquabats + Koo Koo Kangaroo (Triple Rock)
14 – Kreator + Voivod (Station 4)

Band: Descendents
Album: I Don’t Wanna Grow Up
Label: New Alliance
Year: 1985

The mid-eighties were not a very good time for punk rock. There were some cool things happening in Berkeley with the Gilman scene, and New York hardcore was finally breaking out of the shadow of its West Coast contemporaries but that was about it. By 1986 the majority of the old guard had either broken up (Dead Kennedys, Black Flag), went new wave (T.S.O.L., Youth Brigade, 7 Seconds), or became metal bands (Suicidal Tendencies, D.R.I.). All that would change in 1988 when Bad Religion would release Suffer and pop-punk would be on its way to becoming the biggest thing in the world. That was still a few years off though so thankfully this was the time that the Descendents decided to release one of the best albums of their career and lay the groundwork for the upcoming pop-punk revolution.

I Don’t Wanna Grow Up starts off as a musical continuation of the previous album, Milo Goes to College, with a combination of catchy punk and almost hardcore sounding compositions. It’s a solid first side featuring classic Descendents tracks like “Descendents”, “Pervert”, and “GCF” (Good Clean Fun). Side two is where the whole game changes though. This is the first time we really get see that this is not only a great punk band but a great band period. All the jokey elements of the songwriting are gone and in their place you have five incredibly earnest, catchy, and at times almost dark love songs. There was always an obvious underlying Beach Boys influence with the Descendents and that sense of melody really shines on this album. The guitars have a very heavy surf rock sound with minimal distortion and the vocal harmonies are understated but pronounced enough to give the songs an almost timeless feel. You could very easily see “Christmas Vacation” being on the radio in 1965 and not sounding out of place.

In my opinion this album is right up there with anything by The Beatles or Beach Boys in terms of classic “pop” records. It’s a shame they don’t get more credit outside of the punk rock community.

Crucial Track: “Silly Girl”

Dance party tonight at 7th St Entry courteous of our friends in Koo Koo Kanga Roo.

Sparklehorse played an enormous part in my serious introduction into music, right around 2001, and since then Mark Linkous has been one of my deeply treasured artists. It’s a Wonderful life remains one of my all-time favorite albums that really helped shape my tastes, and as a blogger who’s read by more than three people, I feel it’s my duty to eloquently state that this just fucking sucks.

You will be missed, sir.

“It’s a Wonderful Life”

“Apple Bed”

“Sea of Teeth”

Fisher Stevens worked on The Cove? That’s awesome. Hackers is awesome.

Hackers – Trailer

It’s bothered me for years that when everyone brought up female directors not given their due in the filmmaking world, they’d bring up the likes of Jane Campion, who was responsible for creating the most insultingly weak female character of 2009. However, they’d never utter the name of Kathryn Bigelow, because she was off doing ‘genre’ films important people aren’t supposed to care about like Strange Days, Near Dark, and Point Break.

Well, fuck that. Kathryn Bigelow is the best. And now she has an Oscar. Congratulations, madame.

There’s a million people that guest on the new solo album by Slash and most of them are terrible. There are a few awesome people like Lemmy, and Dave Grohl that play on it but would have been better is if he just took the following people who have guest spots and just made a whole album with them instead.

Drums: Steven Adler
Bass: Duff McKagan
Rhythm Guitar: Izzy Stradlin
Vocals: Iggy Pop

It’s not the original Guns N’ Roses but it’s pretty damn close.