Pencilstorm Hall of Fame Nominee: Get The Knack by The Knack - Scott Carr

Click here for the complete nomination list for the 2016 Pencilstorm Hall of Fame. Winners announced April 14th at CD102 Big Room Bar.

When the idea of the Pencilstorm Hall of Fame was first hatched and the nominating committee began bouncing ideas around, Get The Knack by The Knack was the first thing that I thought of.

Released at the tail end of the 70's , Get The Knack is possibly the best power pop debut album ever released. Actually, you could say best debut album from any genre. Comparisons to The Beatles were often mentioned in early reviews of the band but The Knack felt musically they had more in common with The Kinks and early Who. Listening to Get The Knack proves the band was more in touch than their critics.

"My Sharona" still stands as one of the best singles ever released. The guitar solo in "My Sharona" is worthy of it's own nomination in the Pencilstorm Hall of Fame...it's really that good.

Beyond "My Sharona" the album is loaded with great songs. I won't bore you with all the details but you can read my article I wrote about it last year on it's anniversary here..

While I respect Pencilstorm mastermind Colin G's choice of Paul Stanley's 1978 solo album being inducted this year. Paul's album has one major flaw: has anyone heard the song "Hold Me, Touch Me"?  It's a snoozefest. Get the Knack is 100% perfect start to finish. So, if we only induct one album into the hall this year it should without question be Get The Knack.

So I ask my fellow committee members to not "Nuke The Knack" and give this album some serious consideration for the 2016 class of the Pencilstorm Hall of Fame.

Listen to the "My Sharona" guitar solo in all it's glory.......

I don't own the rights of this piece of song; they belong to The Knack

One listen to Get The Knack and you'll agree it deserves a spot in the Pencilstorm Hall of Fame....

Vinyl

....and lastly check out the trailer for the new movie Everybody Wants Some!

Subscribe to TRAILERS: http://bit.ly/sxaw6h Subscribe to COMING SOON: http://bit.ly/H2vZUn Like us on FACEBOOK: http://goo.gl/dHs73 Follow us on TWITTER: http://bit.ly/1ghOWmt Everybody Wants Some Official Trailer #1 (2016) - Glen Powell, Tyler Hoechlin Comedy HD A group of college baseball players navigate their way through the freedoms and responsibilities of unsupervised adulthood.

Scott Carr is a guitarist who plays in the Columbus, OH  bands Radio Tramps and Returning April. Scott is also an avid collector of vinyl records and works at Lost Weekend Records. So...if you are looking for Scott....you'll either find him in a dimly lit bar playing his guitar or in a record store digging for the holy grail.

Pencilstorm Hall of Fame Nominee: "Thunderbird" by Terry Anderson and The OAK Team - Colin Gawel

Click here for the complete nomination list for the 2016 Pencilstorm Hall of Fame. Winners announced April 14th at CD102 Big Room Bar.

As the great sage Slim Dunlap (of The Replacements, among others) once told me, "Music gives you all kinds of gifts, you just have to look for, and appreciate them." Playing shows with and then becoming friends with Terry Anderson and The Olympic Ass-Kickin Team has been one of the great joys of my rock n roll life. 

Random Highlights Include:

- Terry calling me at home out of the blue one Sunday while traveling with The Yahoos, "Colin, it's Terry, we are driving near Columbus looking for a good place to drink tequila. Anything near I-70 and mile marker 134?". My wife was like, "Who's that?"  I covered up the phone with my hand and breathlessly whispered, "It's the real Terry Anderson. On the phone. With me. Right now!"  "Um, ok. Well, what does he want?" "He wants to know a place to drink tequila close to the highway! This is so cool!"

- Terry and The OAK Team backing up Erica Blinn on her very first recording.

- Letting me write up their set-list at a show at Slim's in Raleigh, NC.

- Hanging out with the guys at a Clippers baseball game at the old Cooper Stadium on Mound Street, along with my then 3 year old son Owen. "The Clippers Welcome Terry Anderson & The OAK Team " on the scoreboard. Thanks to my pal Mark Galuska for help on that one. 

BUT, the biggest highlight (and I think Ricki C. would agree with me) was one of the first shows Watershed opened for the OAK Team was at a club in Macon, Georgia. I was already a fan but I had never seen them do a full two-set, hell-raising rock show. Standing back by the merch table with Ricki C. I remember saying, "Is it me or is this band like 1,000 times better than NRBQ?" Ricki responded in an instant, "Absolutely. I saw NRBQ a bunch back in the day, and these guys are better."

Blasphemy I know.  Don't get me wrong, NRBQ is a great band, but on this night, The OAK Team were better. In fact, every night I saw them, The Oak Team were better than NRBQ. They are just a better band with better songs. 

"It's like watching a cover band except it's all originals. Every song is so great. Everyone is so great. I don't know who to watch" I yelled in Ricki's ear. He nodded even though I'm not sure he heard me. Ricki's ears are sorta shot, though to be fair, it was loud.

Anyway, it's getting near last call, people are standing on tables, busting shit up, you know... when after telling a hilarious rap about digging around the fridge at a gas station, Terry starting singing...

"Why don't you come over here, and help me drink this Thunderbird / Why don't you come over here and help me drink this Thunderbird / Why don't you come over and help me drink this Thunderbird / Why don't you come over here and help me drink this Thunderbird"

I thought, "Oh no.. he..is..not..." That is the chorus. Read those words again. Try to imagine how that can work. Read them out loud. That CANNOT work. It's just the same lines. How can that work? How did he even show it to the band? That can't work.

Not only does it work, the hook gets drilled directly into your brain's hard drive and for the rest of your life you will find yourself singing it in some random moment. Like jogging in the park, driving in your car, or attending the funeral of a person you didn't know very well.

Writing serious songs is easy. The real trick is writing a fun song that the world never asked for but now we cannot imagine a world without. When questioned about my all-time favorite songwriters I tick them off real quick: Chuck Berry, Ray Davies, Paul Westerberg, Bruce Springsteen and...Terry Anderson.  The man is a songwriting genius and I'm sure people would argue he has 40 more deserving songs than this one. They might be right. But "they" aren't on the Hall of Fame committee and I am.  So....

I would like to ask my fellow committee members to support "Thunderbird" by Terry Anderson and The Olympic-Ass Kickin Team for inclusion in the 2016 Pencilstorm Hall of Fame. - Colin Gawel

Terry Anderson Thunderbird

The OAKTeam has been selected as finalists for the Great American Band Contest and we need your vote. Please go to: http://www.fox50.com/contests/8684162.html and vote for terry anderson and the oakteam... The band with the most online votes out of these 6 will go to vegas in the fall for the t.v.


Pencilstorm's Most Popular Stories - February 2016

Dan Baird and Homemade Sin Scheduled to Perform Hellraisin' Rock n Roll, Wednesday, March 2nd, in Wapakoneta, OH

We have all seen the movie Roadhouse like 50 times, right? Well, Route 33 Rhythm and Brews in Wapakoneta, OH has much in common with the Double Deuce. Granted, the bouncers are less attractive, but the levels of boozin' and hell-raisin' are just the same. They also throw a pretty mean rock n roll party once in awhile. 

On Wednesday, March 2nd, the great Dan Baird and Homemade Sin will be gracing the RT 33 stage as they tour America in support of their latest record, Get Loud! If you can get somebody to cover your shift Thursday morning, I highly recommend you Cbus folk make the short trip up RT 33 to Wapak to catch a small town rock n roll show that is sure to leave your big city slicker jaw agape.

Local celebrities Quinn Fallon (Dan produced some of his records) and Mike "Biggie" McDermott are rumored to be attending the show and spending the night at an undisclosed Indian Lake location.  

Click here for more info on tickets and RT 33 Rhythm and Brews

Click here for more info on Dan Baird and Homemade Sin. 

Click here for some recent setlists from Homemade Sin  

Dan Baird & Homemade Sin recorded at Akkurat in Sweden in May 2013. Dan Baird from Georgia Satellites and Warner E Hodges from Jason and the Scorchers on lead guitar. Mauro Magellan on drums and Keith Christopher on Bass. For more information about the band see http://danbairdandhomemadesin.com/ or...


Movie Day at Pencilstorm: Oscars 2016 Rundown - by Ricki C.

(Pencilstorm fully realizes that this kind of minute-to-minute review/recap the day after has been rendered somewhat redundant and obsolete by Twitter & Facebook postings, but we really don’t care.)


First off, my predecessor in the Watershed road crew – Rob Braithwaite – is the Pencilstorm contributor who SHOULD be penning this piece.  The guy is watching and reporting on 366 MOVIES this year, for Chrissakes.  (see next blog down)  But I’m the guy with the journalism background who’s supposed to be able to trot out prose at the drop of a hat without thinking, so here we go………

I particularly wanted to do the coverage this year because of all the “diversity/Oscars are racist/boycott” hoopla.  I wanted to do the report because of course the Oscars are racist, because our society – whether we wanna admit it or not, black President not withstanding – is racist.  But what I wanted to say is, I saw “To Kill A Mockingbird” the first time when I was 12 years old in 1964.  (It was released in 1962.)  I was raised in an Italian/Catholic family in the 1960’s, and – almost by definition, given that background – I was raised with any number of racist attitudes.  But when I went to see “To Kill A Mockingbird” and Gregory Peck revved up those courtroom scenes at the end, I remember specifically thinking, there in my seat in a darkened Ritz Theater on Sullivant Avenue, “What if EVERYTHING I have been taught in my life to this point is WRONG?”  And to me, that is the power of movies, just like it’s the power of rock & roll, or books, to teach us, “What if EVERYTHING we know is WRONG?”

Anyway, yeah, the Oscars are racist, our society is racist, but we’re the only ones who can do anything about it, so let’s not get our panties in a bunch about the Academy Awards.  Let’s change it by letting ‘em know with our ticket-buying dollars that in the words of The Who (or Twisted Sister): “We’re not gonna take it.”

Okay, soapbox over, let’s start badmouthing the Oscars…….


8:33 pm – Chris Rock knocks it out of the park with a searing opening monologue, going right at the Elephant In The Room, as I knew he would, and I think to myself, “I hope the The Oscars realize how lucky they are that they had Chris Rock already booked for this hosting gig before the diversity brouhaha blew up their world.”

9:03 pm – First Best Song nominee – “Writing’s On The Wall” by Sam Smith – is the worst kind of Typical Movie Dreck, and weak even by Bond Movie Theme standards.  (Best Bond Theme ever, IMHO, “Goldfinger” by Shirley Bassey.  McCartney’s “Live & Let Die,” weak.  Guns n’ Roses version even worse.)

9:19 pm – Cate Blanchett presents a Costume Design award while wearing a dress that looks like my laundry when I leave a Kleenex or two in the pockets of my jeans in the washer.  (My lovely wife Debbie reports that the dresses on the red carpet left her largely nonplussed.  No real disasters, no real knockouts.)

10:05 pm – Chris Rock hawks Girl Scout cookies on the telecast to rich Hollywood people.  Classic.  (He later reveals raising $65,000 for the Girl Scouts.  Good for him.)    

10:08 pm – Bear Story wins Best Animated Short Film, and so what?  It’s after 10 o’clock and we’re still handing out Nothing awards that Nobody cares about.  I realize that people work their whole lives to make these little movies, and it’s cool that they get some recognition (as Louis C.K. points out later in the show), but SOME of these awards HAVE to be given out in advance – off-camera – to get this telecast down to 2 (or even 2 & ½) hours, so that people might tune in.

10:15 pm – Weekend performs “Earned It” from Fifty Shades Of Gray.  Nice haircut.  A black man performing a song from a movie concerning white people in bondage; who says there’s no diversity in the Oscars?  Another terrible, typical movie dreck song.  Debbie comments that the stage production is like a cross between Cirque de Soleil and Cabaret.

10:56 pm – Dave Grohl performs The Beatles’ “Blackbird” for the In Memoriam section of the show and strives manfully to make a song with one verse and about 14 words stretch over four minutes of dead people’s photos.

11:12 pm – La Gaga belts out a typically overwrought “Til It Happens To You” from The Hunting Ground.  It’s a tie; by my count, all three nominated songs that were performed are horrible.  (But at least they get performed on the telecast.  Two others – “Manta Ray” and “Simple Song #3” – are simply completely ignored.)

11:20 pm – Pharrell Williams and Quincy Jones present the award for Best Original Score and it’s becoming difficult not to notice how many African-American presenters the Academy is trotting out. 

midnight – Morgan Freeman (who else?) presents Best Picture to Spotlight, and I’ve gotta say, “Good for the Academy.”  That movie is about my religion, but my religion is wrong.  And good for journalists at the Boston Globe.  Write on.


The wrap-up: I saw only two nominated Best Picture this year – Brooklyn and The Martian – my lowest count EVER.  I lost our annual Oscar Contest to my good friend Kyle by only 8 points this year; I could have pulled out a victory if The Revenant had won Best Picture.  Still, this is not bad.  I have lost other years by upwards of 25 points, even with changing the rules in the middle of the telecast to pad my score.  

The future: I fear a wave of minority performers in next year’s nominees to counter the backlash of this year’s controversy.  Tokenism does not correct racism; it only serves to make it more glaring.

And ending the telecast with Public Enemy’s fine, fine, superfine “Fight The Power”?  Come on, Academy, at least TRY to be a little less obvious and pandering. – Ricki C. / February 28th, 2016.            
    

         

Buggy Eyes and a Big Butt, part three: Movies 37-51

Q&A Intro, 1-17, 18-36, 37-51, 52-66, 67-74, 75-87, 88-103, 104-120, 121-131, 132-152, 153-173, 174-187, 188-221, 222-255, 256-287, 288-314, 315-341, 342-366, Index

Ratings key:
★ ★ ★ ★ ★ = I can’t see giving anything that I’ve seen once five stars
★ ★ ★ ★ = get to the theater / move it up in your queue
★ ★ ★ = “three stars is a recommendation” - The Empire [magazine] Podcast
★ ★ = if the remote is too far away, you could do worse
★ = if the remote is too far away, get someone to move it closer then throw it at the TV

037
Race (2016) ★ ★
stars: Stephan James, Jason Sudeikis, Jeremy Irons
director: Stephen Hopkins

The biopic of Jesse Owens and his participation in the 1936 Olympics.

If you didn’t know this was a true story, the bland, by-the-book presentation would be your first clue. A welcome subplot involving Leni Riefenstahl, the German director who filmed the games, received more screen time that I would have guessed.

watch Jesse Owens win the gold medal for the 100M dash instead

038
The Pawnbroker (1964) ★ ★ ★ ★
stars: Rod Steiger, Geraldine Fitzgerald, Brock Peters
director: Sidney Lumet

A Jewish pawnbroker in New York City, has repressed the horrors of the Nazi concentration camp and walled away everyone around him. Sooner or later, the pressure will be too much to ignore.

An amazing use of editing shows how everyday images trigger horrific memories. Steiger is great.

double feature pairing: Marathon Man

039
The Salvation (2014) ★ ★ ★
stars: Mads Mikkelsen, Eva Green, Jeffery Dean Morgan
director: Kristian Levring

A Dutchman is reunited after many years with his wife and kid in the old west. The wife and kid are almost immediately killed. Revenge! Then the bad guy’s kin wants revenge!

The movie looks great. A little heavy handed with the “It’s about oil!” subtext. Good performances. And it looks great. ★ ★ if it didn’t.

double feature pairing: High Plains Drifter

040
Silent Running (1972) ★ ★
stars: Bruce Dern, Cliff Potts, Ron Rifkin
director: Douglas Trumbull

Earth can’t sustain plant life anymore, so there are greenhouses flying around space. One of the botanists ignores the order to destroy everything and return to Earth.

Rated G, eh? So, a sweet, bio-friendly, space adventure with cute helper robots, then? There won’t be anything too... OH MY GOD! He just strangled that guy to death and blew up those other two guys!

I understood this to be one of the all-time classic sci-fi movies. It should be taken off the list. The lead character is more psychopath than ecological hero. He parades through his paradise, also filled with small animals, as a terrible song plays, invoking a live action Disney scene. He takes the time to catch an eagle on his arm.

watch Moon instead

041
Meru (2015) ★ ★ ★.5
stars: Conrad Anker, Jimmy Chin, Renan Ozturk
directors: Jimmy Chin, Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi

Climbing Mt. Everest is nothing compared to The Shark’s Fin of Mt. Meru. Three guys show you why.

Beautifully shot. I was surprised to learn that climbers have a following and work within mentor/mentee relationships. I thought they just gathered in groups of crazy. I’d like a climbing documentary to explain how these people make a living. Chin directs. What do the others do? And what’s wrong with a little more detail of climb strategies and technique?

double feature pairing: Cliffhanger

042 The Witch (2015) ★ ★ ★ ★
stars: Anya Taylor-Joy, Ralph Ineson, Kate Dickie
writer/director: Robert Eggers

The best acting by an animal since the dog in John Carpenter’s The Thing.

double feature pairing: Black Death

043
Futureworld (1976) ★.5
stars: Peter Fonda, Blythe Danner, John P. Ryan
director: Richard T. Heffron

Westworld was a hit. Here’s its sequel.

This movie is a bore that doesn’t know what it wants to be until it is almost over. Two reporters investigate a colleague's murder at Futureworld. What they learn is a great story that isn’t resolved. The ending is the equivalent of the Duke boys crossing the county line and the Hazzard police department slamming the brakes, shaking their fists and screaming, “We’ll get you next time!”

watch Westworld instead

044
Tell No One (2006) ★ ★ ★.5
stars: François Cluzet, Marie-Josée Croze, André Dussollier
director: Guillaume Canet

Eight years after Alexandre’s wife was murdered, she sends him a note.

It’s a decent thriller. The kind of thriller where the main character, and the audience, are completely in the dark, so there’s a long scene at the end explaining it all. Early on we meet an acquaintance of Alexandre’s. We know he’s street because he has The Godfather logo tattooed on his shoulder. I can’t decide if it’s a worse if it’s real or if someone from the production decided that’s what the tattoo would be.

double feature pairing: The Vanishing

045
Charley Varrick (1973) ★ ★ ★.5
stars: Walter Matthau, Joe Don Baker, Felicia Farr
director: Don Siegel

A gang of small-time bank robbers accidentally steal from the mob.

A good low stakes crime movie. A small strike against it for a tone deaf scene in which Varrick becomes a sex pot out of the blue, clearly thrown in because someone thought the genre demands it.

double feature pairing: Disorganized Crime

046
The Hitch-Hiker (1953) ★ ★ ★
stars: Edmond O’Brien, Frank Lovejoy, William Talman
director: Ida Lupino

Escaped prisoner Emmett Myers hitchhikes and murders his way from capture.

The movie warns at the onset that this is a true story and could happen to me, and if not me then the nice couple sitting across the aisle. But there wasn’t an aisle nor a couple, so that means it’s going to happen to me? Old movies can be very confusing.

A montage of Myers killing the passengers of his two previous rides before finding the ride that will take him into Mexico is artful. There are a few scenes spoken in Spanish without subtitles. Nothing is lost; the content is easily discernible. It’s a little surprising that a movie of that time would trust the audience in that way.

The You Must Remember This podcast profiled Ida Lupino. It’s a worthy listen.

double feature pairing: A Perfect World

047
Greased Lightning (1977) ★ ★ ★.5
stars: Richard Pryor, Cleavon Little, Pam Grier
director: Michael Schultz

Based on the life of Wendell Scott, the first African-American to win a race in NASCAR’s Grand National Series.

All the clunky dialogue of a biopic is here. But there is also the talent of Pryor and Little rising above it. I wish those two had made more movies together. A buddy comedy would have been great. The final race is thrilling.

double feature pairing: Stroker Ace

048
Vanishing Point (1971) ★ ★ ★ 
stars: Barry Newman, Cleavon Little, 1970 Dodge Challenger
director: Richard C. Sarafian

A guy just wants to perform his job of transporting cars from Colorado to California as fast as he can. Why won’t The Man let him?

Amazing driving and photography. Like The Pawnbroker, flashbacks are triggered by reminders. Even though they aren’t as powerful, they still make the driver a character rather than Guy Driving Fast.

double feature pairing: The Hitcher

049
Seven Days in May (1964) ★ ★ ★ ★
stars: Burt Lancaster, Kirk Douglas, Fredric March
director: John Frankenheimer
screenwriter: Rod Serling

The nuclear disarmament treaty between the United States and Soviet Russia provokes a U.S. general to organize a coup.

A solid political thriller full of meaty speeches that are performed to perfection.

double feature pairing: The Conversation

050
Steve Jobs (2015) ★ ★ ★.5
stars: Michael Fassbender, Kate Winslet, Seth Rogen
director: Danny Boyle
screenwriter: Aaron Sorkin

What makes this biopic unique is how many of the events are talked about in the aftermath rather than a literal presentation of them, allowing more personality and character to come through.

double feature pairing: Love & Mercy

051
Don’t Look Now (1973) ★ ★ ★.5
stars: Donald Sutherland, Julie Christie
director: Nicolas Roeg

The accidental death of their daughter leads John and Laura to send their son to boarding school while they, well, John takes a job in Venice. Not sure what she’s doing there, really. I guess it’s to meet the psychic.

Much of the story is expressed though a visual grammar. It’s uneasy tone and connection of images builds as patience is tested, looking for meaning and wondering if time would be better served doing something else.

There is a lot to chew on. There’s no way to fully appreciate it in one viewing. It’s a movie worth studying. ...I won’t, but there is a lot to think about.

Maybe those people who classify this as a horror movie, a stretch of the conventional meaning, could also tell me why it shouldn’t be recalled to the title factory. Don't Step There would make as much sense.

double feature pairing: Valhalla Rising

Counters:
51/366 movies (nine movies off pace)
9/52 movies directed by women

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