I didn’t want to do a “Best of” list, since that would seem somewhat pompous of me (and it’s really just a matter of personal preference anyway). So instead I just compiled a list of my favorites of the year, and aptly titled it my “Top 20″ instead.

Ok, enough yapping. I hereby present to you, in no particular order (other than the order you should listen)… My personal top 20 of 2010:

Beach House – Norway

Dr. Dog – Shadow People

The Tallest Man On Earth – Love is All

Beach Fossils – Daydream

The Morning Benders – Excuses

Sufjan Stevens – Vesuvius

Gil Scott-Heron – New York Is Killing Me

Four Tet – Love Cry

Bonobo – Kong

Caribou – Odessa

LCD Soundsystem – I Can Change

Gorillaz – On Melancholy Hill

Twin Shadow – Slow

The Bird And The Bee – Private Eyes

Two Door Cinema Club - Something Good Can Work (The Twelves Remix)

Jamaica - I Think I Like U 2 (Breakbot Remix)

Bullion – Say Goodbye To What

The Roots – Right On (ft. Joanna Newsom & STS)

Cee Lo Green – F**k You

Antoine Dodson & The Gregory Brothers - Bed Intruder Song (ft. Kelly Dodson)


P.S. If you happen to be in NYC tonight for the NYE celebration, please come by and say hello!

Cheers to new beginnings and new music in 2011. And screw resolutions, just make sure you enjoy life while it lasts… and never regret a moment of it. Happy New Year, y’all!

WHY HELLO, BIG MISTAKE.

The first film board I perused was for a quirky and highly entertaining “based on a true story” film that is a brilliant hybrid of a RomCom and a Dark Comedy. I hadn’t heard much about it until seeing it, and after viewing the comments posted about it… now I see why it wasn’t so widely promoted. It’s not that the film isn’t fantastic, and it’s not that the performances of Carrey and McGregor weren’t Oscar worthy. No no no, it’s because the characters are that big, bad “G” word. What is that word, you ask? Well, I’ll probably be swiftly stoned by the religious nutjobs for even mentioning the word… but, psst… they’re GAY.

The film is ‘I Love You, Phillip Morris‘. And no, there’s no relation to the tobacco king, Philip Morris. (Believe it or not, that was an actual complaint on the IMDB board.) It’s about the true – even if it does seem exaggerated - story of Steven Jay Russell, a flamboyant personality and genius con artist who embarrassingly duped the correctional system in the state of Texas several times. But the film concentrates more on his constant motivator, his love for an inmate met while incarcerated. It made me laugh, and it even made this asshole tear up a little. It’s a fascinating story, and a true example of what crazy things the heart can make you do.

But these bigots who troll the IMDB message boards have obviously never felt that kind of love, because even without actually SEEING the film, they feel a need to bomb the board with their messages of religious intolerance and sinners burning in Hell. Well guess what, idiots? If there’s a Hell, we’re in it. And if there’s a Satan, the sum of you is him. Stop spreading your whackjob hatred on IMDB and go join up with the Westboro Baptist Church, where your services are obviously needed. And stop picking and choosing which parts you want to follow of that loosely-translated and archaic book you hold so dearly. I thought a big part of that shit was loving each other. Apparently Tammy Faye is the only one who got that part.

So it’s to you, hateful bigots, that I dedicate this song (from the soundtrack of that film you love so much):

(Download MP3)

Moving on, and in such a profound way, I saw another film that I loved so much… I watched it twice in the same day. And it’s only merely a coinkydink that the film happens to involve Christian Crusaders who murder those who don’t convert to what they believe. Oh, the things that make you go hmm.

‘Valhalla Rising‘ is an intense film, but not the type of film you go into just expecting a bloodbath. It’s intense in the way that it takes you somewhere else, somewhere strange and eerie… and it just leaves you there, abandoned and confused. And you’re not going to like it if you’re just looking for another ’300′ or ‘Gladiator’. But if you’re anything like me, and you love a film that gives you an otherworldly feel and leaves you searching for answers, you need to see this. It’s not meant to be a Viking film, and it’s not supposed to be factual. But it does touch a little on Norse mythology and the Pagans, as well as the history of Christian Crusaders, giving it a slight sense of reality amongst the supernatural aura.

At the center of the story is the ever-so brutal and mute warrior, who is soon dubbed “One-Eye” by his young travel companion. And from the start, I felt bad for One-Eye. Held in captivity, forced to fight… but he ultimately frees himself from his captors (in a very brutal scene that I’ll admit I highly enjoyed) and stumbles on the Christian Crusaders, who offer him a free boat ride with them to Jerusalem in a mission to reclaim the ‘Holy Land’. From then on, it just turns into madness. And the score for the film by Peter Peter and Peter Kyed couldn’t be more perfect in setting you up for this madness.

(Download MP3)

If you have Netflix, you can see it right now on instant watching, and I highly recommend you do. But be warned… you will be left with questions about certain scenes in the film. If that happens, take a look at the wikipedia entry for the film, which helped answer a lot of WTFs for me. And don’t pay any attention to the idiots on IMDB who complain that the pacing was too slow, or that there wasn’t enough fighting. Those ADD imbeciles are the reason that Hollywood keeps churning out blockbusters with lots of exposions and blood to keep their interest, and films like this don’t get wide releases. This film is intelligently done, needs little dialogue, and yes, it is artsy. But it’s highly enjoyable once you take the dunce cap off your head.

Footnote: I just wanted to state here that I have nothing against Christianity, or religion in general… as long as it is peaceful, and it is not forced on others. My step-father is a wonderful Pastor, and a beautiful human being who expresses every sense of the term “true Christian”. And a lot of members of my family are devout Christians who are loving and accepting of my own independent thought. But it is those who choose to condemn others because they are different or believe in different things that I am in dislike with. And I am never one to keep my dislikes to myself, as hypocritical as that might sound. The difference in my hypocrisy and their hypocrisy is that I don’t go out trying to change the minds of others to think like I do. The simple fact is, if you yell at me… I’m going to yell back. So please stop yelling, don’t tell me what to do (I do what I want), and just learn to live side-by-side peacefully.

Roger (Ebert) that.

So in honor of this freaky obsession, I’ve put together a special playlist about murderers and murder, both real and fictional. And here it is… your Soundtrack For Murder:

Sufjan Stevens – John Wayne Gacy, Jr.

Woody Guthrie – Pretty Boy Floyd

Serge Gainsbourg & Brigitte Bardot – Bonnie And Clyde

The Lucksmiths – World Encyclopedia of Twentieth Century Murder

Talking Heads – Psycho Killer

Landscape – Norman Bates

The Police – Murder By Numbers

Greenskeepers – Lotion

Swans – Killing for Company

The Smiths – Suffer Little Children

Jane’s Addiction – Ted, Just Admit It…

Sonic Youth – Death Valley ’69 (with Lydia Lunch)

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds – The Curse of Millhaven

Johnny Cash – Folsom Prison Blues

The Beatles – Maxwell’s Silver Hammer

The Rolling Stones – Midnight Rambler

AC/DC – Night Prowler

Death In Vegas – Aisha (Feat. Iggy Pop)

Motorhead – Jack the Ripper

Slayer – Dead Skin Mask

Cannibal Corpse – Addicted to Vaginal Skin

Macabre – Mr. Albert Fish (was Children Your Favorite Dish)

I honestly couldn’t tell you much about Gay Marvine. From what I’ve gathered on the interwebs, it’s the musical moniker of Detroit-based DJ Chuck Hampton, and he has a Facebook page and a Discogs entry.

Gay Marvine – I Wish We All Were Nude (Prince Edit)

Gay Marvine – MJ Vocal Illness (Michael Jackson Edit)

Gay Marvine – To Hell With Cheap Wine (Gang Of Four Edit)

Gay Marvine – Runningupthatdub (Kate Bush Edit)

Just wanted to give you totally rad ladies and gents in NYC a heads up about the phat 90s party happening from 10PM-4AM tonight, DJed by iRockiRoll and yours truly. You can find out more details about tonight’s party on the 2-legit-2-quit Facebook event page –> right here.

In the meantime, here’s some songs I’ve been reminiscing with this past week to get you in the mood:

Primitive Radio Gods – Standing Outside A Broken Phone Booth With Money In My Hand

White Town – Your Woman

Stereo MC’s – Connected

Big Audio Dynamite – Rush

Lo Fidelity Allstars – Battle Flag

Get hypnotized by it below.

Curmudgeon? Sure. Asshole? Maybe. But PRUDE? Come on. You can’t be serious.

One thing I love about the act of cleaning (besides being an OCD nutjob) is that it gives me a moment of tranquility to really analyze things that I’m normally too distracted to think about. And during one of my daily cleanings of the apartment last week, I started to dig deep about why sex scenes in films tend to bother me so much. Why is it that I cheer when a zombie gets his head blown off, but have to look away when there’s on-screen boning? How come I can recite every dick and fart joke in the book, but a moan of sexual joy makes me shift uncomfortably in my seat?

Well, let’s take a little trip into my bizarre psyche. Follow me.

Let me start by stating that it’s not the act of sex itself that bothers me so much. Sex is in our nature. We enjoy it. But the problem for me, personally, is that it’s so gratuitous in film and media. We’re living in a hypersexocracy, and you can’t watch TV or browse the internet without finding something sexual or subliminally sexual. Hell, there’s even sexual innuendos in children’s cartoons. To be quite frank, I’m just tired of being force-fed sex like we’re a bunch of animals who’s only purpose on earth is to procreate or reach the big O.

Now I will admit that I’ve watched porn a time or three. I don’t have a problem with pornography within the pornographic realm. But I don’t want porn invading my movies, and vice versa. If the sex isn’t relevant to the plot of the film, it doesn’t need to be thrown in for shock value or so-called artistic expression. (That is, unless it’s expected i.e. exploitation films.) But if it is necessary and relevant to the plot, it doesn’t need to go overboard. For example, I finally watched ‘Two Lovers‘ the other night, and guess what? There were sex scenes. But the sex scenes didn’t bother me. Know why? Simply because they didn’t expose a lot of skin, they weren’t hardcore, and they didn’t go on for a ridiculous amount of time. You don’t need  to see boobs bouncing around for 5 minutes to know that people are getting it on. So stop dumbing movies down, and stop selling sex in movies that aren’t about sex.

Alright, I’m getting scarily close to writing a book’s worth of ranting now. And the fact that I’m wearing a knitted cat hat, Grinch pajama pants, a fuzzy bathrobe and monkey slippers while I write this makes it even more looney. Basically what I’m trying to say is, I don’t think I’m necessarily a prude. Maybe I have old fashioned ways built into me due to my upbringing in the south, but I feel it’s more a matter of decency.  Do I sound crazy, or does anyone else feel the same way?

The Beatles – Dear Prudence

Siouxsie & The Banshees – Dear Prudence (Beatles Cover)

Well, the answer is… yes and no.

I miss writing. A LOT. And I miss being as passionate about music as I was when I started this blog in 2006. But I don’t want to be a music critic, and I’m not exactly happy about the current state of music. I don’t know if it’s just because I’m getting older (29 as of last month), or if music has actually been getting worse. This discussion has come up quite often lately with my friends and loved ones, and although the consensus is that quality music is on a steep decline, I have to wonder… is all this nostalgia just a side-effect of growing up?

Every generation has a past generation who doesn’t quite get what the new generation creates. But to my generation’s credit, we tend to have a better understanding and appreciation for both the past and present. Look at the top 5 of anyone my age, and you’re bound to find a song or 3 that their parents and/or grandparents listened to. And it isn’t just because we heard it growing up. Hell, I’ve surprised my parents with some of the things I know, and even taught them a thing or two about their own generation’s music. But I’m at a total loss when I try to comprehend the musical ignorance of today. (I can’t even count how many times at my day job that I’ve seen artists sample some pretty stellar classics, and then they don’t even have a clue of who they’re sampling.) It just feels like the heart and soul of music is fading, and this ass-shaking and gyrating mess that passes for music today is the unfortunate successor.

Christ, that last sentence did sound like an old person ranting, didn’t it? Well, nonetheless, I am getting older and (hopefully) wiser. But that’s not to say that the youth of today are entirely lost, and it doesn’t mean I’ve been rid of my love for music. This blog will continue on in the hopes of reaching both the youthful and jaded, and keeping on for the sake of keeping on. But as I’ve noted here, I really don’t want WNR to start feeling like a job again. So the new format is whatever… whenever. Whether it’s a new musical infatuation, what I’m thinking about, or a looped video of a dude getting whacked in the balls… I’m still here.

LB as JP

So what I’d like to know is, how do you feel? Do you think that the quality of music is in a recession? Are we just getting older and set in our ways? Or do you feel that music is fine in it’s current state? Voice your opinion in the comments, and please enjoy this playlist I’ve put together for you.

The 6ths – Falling Out Of Love With You

The Clean – Getting Older

The Verve – This Is Music

The Chameleons – Nostalgia

David Bowie – Changes

Violent Femmes – American Music

Dead Kennedys – Take This Job And Shove It

Tears For Fears – Change

The Doors – When The Music’s Over

The Who – Music Must Change

Love,
Lady Byrd