Danzig Sings Elvis

Posted: 04 February 2021

Imported from substack so the formatting is messed up, it looks better on substack.

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Maybe a gigantic, enormous, way-too-big newsletter is what the people want.

It might be easier to read this in a web browser, which you can do by clicking the title of this post above (Danzig Sings Elvis).

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Index

Everything I really liked has a * in front of its name, everything else runs the gamut from stuff I like to stuff I don’t. Movie/book writing is spoiler-y.

Movies

* The Conversation (1974)
Mystery/Thriller

* Only Lovers Left Alive (2013)
Romance/Arthouse

Books

Mitch Albom - For One More Day (2006)
Psychological Fiction/Not a good book

Sandra Cisneros - My Wicked Wicked Ways (1987)
Poetry

Music

Miki Matsubara - Miki Matsubara Best Collection (2007)
Pop/80’s

Miki Matsubara - WINK (1988)
Pop/80’s

Lemuria - Get Better (2007)
Indie Rock

* Sonic Sea Turtles - Sound Pollution: Captain Spacey and His Search for a New Home (2019)
Post-Hardcore

Danzig - Danzig Sings Elvis (2020)
Elvis Covers

Ted Nguyent - Don’t Vote (2014)
Post-Hardcore/Noise

Lana Del Rey - Norman Fucking Rockwell (2019)
Alt Pop

* laura les - i just dont wanna name it anything with "beach" in the title (2017)
Electronic/Experimental Pop

* 100 gecs - 1000 gecs (2019)
Electronic/Experimental Pop

N0THANKY0U - To The Fairest (2019)
Electronic/Experimental/Punk

* Junglepussy - Jp4 (2020)
Hip Hop/R&B

Braid - Frame and Canvas (1998)
Emo/Post-Hardcore

* Braid - The Age of Octeen (1996)
Emo/Post-Hardcore

Battalion of Saints - Second Coming (1984)
Hardcore

Movies

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The Conversation

Somewhere in between Blow-Up and Le Samourai, a character study of an isolated man slowly realizing how little control he has over his own life. A movie about grief. I thought it was incredible. Hackman is excellent, portraying vulnerability and unease in a character who spends most of his time angry at, looking down on, or completely ignoring his friends and lovers. He is afraid to let anyone in, blaming himself for three deaths that likely resulted from his work: if he keeps himself isolated, he can control who gets hurt. Ideally, nobody ever again. But he is no god, he does not have this control. His friends and lovers feel alienated and unwanted. His worst fears about his work are validated in a way he did not - could not - predict.

The film ends with his total unwillingness to process what had occured, an attempt to suppress and to move on. He tries to return to his comfortable shell. An intrusive phone call reminds him that the world around him is not a dream, that his actions will always have consequences, no matter how much he may wish otherwise, no matter how small he tries to make himself. We end with a broken man playing the saxophone in a bare apartment.

Only Lovers Left Alive

Jim Jarmusch movies are all, in their own way, quiet meditations on beauty. Last Lovers Left Alive asks: What does love look like between two people who can live forever? What do they surround themselves with? What do they enjoy? Jarmusch’s 1984 Stranger than Paradise has its nihilistic protagonists muse: “You know, it's funny — you come to someplace new, and everything looks just the same.” Last Lovers Left Alive’s Adam and Eve have grown past this. They make a point to seek out the beautiful, to unearth the extraordinary, wherever they go. It’s a sweet movie, it’s a funny movie, it leaves you enchanted.

Books

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Mitch Albom - For One More Day

TW: Suicide

I picked this book up at a community library (leave a book take a book type situation at my local coffee shop) on a whim. It is a hardcover with no sleeve and there's something I really like about how minimal hardcover books look without a sleeve. Unfortunately, there’s not a lot to like about the contents of this one.

I guess this is Albom's deal: cheesy, moralizing stories about the importance of being good to the people you care about. This one's a worse Christmas Carol, if Scrooge was a failed baseball player. Wikipedia calls this a “philosophical novel,” presumably because half of it consists of vague statements about how you're going to regret not being nice to your mother. What a horrible little monster you are. How dare you ever have taken your mother for granted. And I mean, yeah, reading this made me think about calling my parents. But you don’t need an entire book to do that. There’s a whole cottage industry out there creating very high quality content like this:

Is the whole point to show how strong love can be between a mother and child? That’s a generous reading. Benetto's tale begins after he has finished hurting everyone in his life: his mother is dead, his wife divorced him, his daughter cut him out of her life. Attempting suicide, Benetto winds up in a limbo state, spending a day with his mother’s ghost and remembering the past. His mother, the saint, is only ever loving and caring, and he, a devil child, only has contempt for her. She sacrifices and struggles for him and he kicks dust in her face. This is the entirety of the book: Benetto laments over how wretched he is, how cruel his teenage self was, how inconsiderate to his poor mother. Having shown him an extended slideshow of how thankless he is, his loving mother tells him to keep living, and so he does.

Returned to the world of the living, what happens to Benetto? Surely, there must be more to this story? What changes does his mother’s love inspire in him? We don’t find out. The book ends after his revival. We don't get to see any self-reflection or growth, we never see him do any work, overcome any challenge. He says “I was bad, and now I want to be good,” and Albom, confident that he doesn’t need to write anything interesting, moves on to the victory lap of an epilogue. All of Benetto’s problems disappear, magicked away behind the scenes. He (somehow) repairs his relationships with his ex-wife and daughter. He (somehow) becomes a pillar of his community.

Maybe that’s my problem here: I’m thinking about this as literature, and it’s not. It’s that meme with the grandpa from above stretched out to 200 pages. The novel asks you to imagine an ideal mother, bearing no sins, and imagine what her relationship might be like with her children. OK. Then it repeats “look at how much this perfect mother loves her inconsiderate son” one million times before cutting to an epilogue: Everyone lives happily ever after. What? What’s the point of this? What is any reader possibly supposed to get out of this? There’s no subtlety. There’s no depth. It’s insulting.

Sandra Cisneros - My Wicked Wicked Ways

Solemn recollections of youth and past lovers. Cisneros has a very light touch - she presents us with memories, meaningful moments from her past, but doesn’t let us too far in. We get glimpses and abstractions before being whisked away to the next montage. She is honest, but coy, and amidst the whirlwind of people and places, we get some truly stunning passages:

I who arrive delibrate as Tuesday
without my hat and shoes
with one rude black tattoo
and purpose thick as pumpkin.

The preface is a beautiful poem, and I really like “In a redneck bar down the street.”

Music

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Miki Matsubara - Miki Matsubara Best Collection

Pop/80’s

The first few seconds of "Mayonaka No Door / Stay With Me" remind me of the Bee Gees. Obviously, I wanted more, which led me to this compilation album. The rest of the album is not as disco and gets hokey in some places but is fun and upbeat. Happy Thursday everyone.

Miki Matsubara - WINK

Pop/80’s

The two TV shows that I vividly remember seeing (but not quite watching) shortly after my family immigrated to the United States were Full House and some cartoon that had Birdman in it. I also remember seeing a lot of commercials for Space Ghost, and wanting to watch it (because it was a cartoon) but never being able to catch the actual show. I didn't really speak or understand English, so never seeing Space Ghost might have been for the best.

Not understanding English also kept me from really “getting” what was going on in Full House, which, language aside, I thought was a show for grown ups, because it was live action. There might be a lot I'm missing out on for never having understood Full House. Maybe if I knew enough English to "get" Full House as a child, I would now, as a fluent English-speaking adult, be better able to appreciate WINK, an album of 80's sitcom music.

Other things I don’t “get”: Full House leading man and notorious dirty comic Bob Saget released a comedy album in 2014 that was nominated for a Grammy Award. Jimmy Fallon won that award in 2013. I can only imagine the kind of person who decides they want to listen to a comedy album, and picks based on the Grammy awards. Aziz Ansari released a comedy album in 2020, and it was a contender for the Grammy. I guess he is un-cancelled? He has finished doing his penance for being problematic, and taken time to reflect and grow or whatever he was doing?

It's also kind of interesting looking at which of these albums have their own articles and which don't. There's a bare-bones Wikipedia article for Lewis Black's 2006 grammy-winning album "The Carnegie Hall Performance". One of the two pieces of trivia that comprise the entirety of the article is about a hidden track that you can hear if you rewind the first track by eight minutes. Wikipedia does not say what is contained on the hidden track. Secret bonus jokes? A sincere message from the cold, bitter heart of Black himself? I had to look this up elsewhere, and found that it contains "pre-show backstage noises and talking."

The wikipedia article also has a section on personnel, which includes the producer and sound engineers who worked on the album, people who I do not think are included in many album articles. The section was added in 2019 by "one of the longest-serving administrators on English Wikipedia." He has the following blurbs, with images of the associated medals, spread throughout his Wikipedia profile page:

This editor is a Grandmaster Editor First-Class and is entitled to display this Mithril Editor Star with the Neutronium Superstar hologram.

This editor is a Grand High Togneme Laureate and is entitled to display the Book of All Knowledge: 3rd Edition and attach the library barcode.

This editor is a Grandmaster Administrator First-Class and is entitled to display this Gold Service Badge and carry the Silver Keys to the Encyclopedia.

Lots to think about here. Perhaps one day I will also be entitled to carry the Silver Keys to the Encyclopedia.

Lemuria - Get Better

Indie Rock

Alex Kerns wrote most of the songs on this album after his father died. He was able to share them with his bandmates, and felt comfortable with Sheena Ozzella singing his songs about his father's death. What must that have been like for both of them? What was it like to be on a ten year reunion tour for the album? What is it like now?

Dog is a beautiful beautiful song.

Sonic Sea Turtles - Sound Pollution: Captain Spacey and His Search for a New Home

Post-Hardcore

This band is sick, their recent singles rule, great emo/screamo/post-hardcore out of Minneapolis, check ‘em out.

Danzig - Danzig Sings Elvis

Elvis Covers

There's this guy, Viktor Longo, who has been making music for at least the past 10 years, some of it under the name VIKING. My friend Max showed me the song "Thunder at Midnight" on Myspace when we were in High School. Last night for one reason or another I was on VIKING's bandcamp page, and the "If you like VIKING, you may also like" section included Danzig Sings Elvis. I'm not sure how they knew that I would be INCREDIBLY interested in Danzig Sings Elvis. But they knew.

Outside of the novelty of “Danzig Sings Elvis” (Such an incredible sequence of words. I’m in awe) I don't understand who this album is for. I'm sure Danzig had a lot of fun recording it. I don't think that Elvis songs lend themselves well to heavier rock arrangements, and Danzig himself sounds kind of scratchy. I always imagine his voice sounding deep and powerful in my head (MMMUHthaeaer). I think that's what he does best, and he sounds kind of frail here. I hope he’s doing okay health-wise.

To tie Danzig back into Longo, maybe it’s enough that Danzig had fun recording this album. I think about Thunder at Midnight by VIKING pretty often, and he’s not, and, to my knowledge, never has been, a particularly popular musician. Maybe it’s enough that 500 people watch one of your videos or listen to one of your songs if one of those people comes away from it with your creation seared into their brain. When I took a year to paint I worried about doing something meaningful with my art and was always surprised by what people liked and bought. It’s a good feeling to know that something you made inspired an emotional response in someone. That can’t mean nothing.

P.S. This album doesn’t have the best Elvis song, Return to Sender.

Ted Nguyent - Don’t Vote

Post-Hardcore/Noise

If you would like to know more about this band, listen to the song “Beach Anarchy” from this album, then check out these three things which cover everything else:

1. 

3. This website has a really good summary of this album under the section “Album”: link

Lana Del Rey - Norman Fucking Rockwell

Alt Pop

I don’t have a lot to say about this album, but I do have something to say about The Trial by Franz Kafka.

The Trial is a gem of a book; an unfinished novel, saved from destruction and published against the author's wishes. Thematically, its missing pieces only work in its favor. The protagonist, Josef K., is stuck in an infinite loop of escalating beaureocratic nonsense until he is suddenly and without warning executed. The unwritten part, the time between his ongoing trial and his execution, is totally indeterminable. It repeats forever, the specifics are irrelevant. It could be a day, it could be twenty years. We don't know the same way K. doesn't know.

Not many books are published this way - post-modern books get away with their glut of meta-text, but that's done with authorial intent. We have Kafka's unfinished chapters and deleted passages against his wishes. The one good print edition (that I've been able to find) by Schocken Books contains:

• Unfinished chapters

• Passages deleted by Kafka

• Excerpts from Kafka's diaries

• Post-scripts by Max Brod, the man willed to destroy this material which he instead preserved

Of particular interest to me is the "Original version of the last sentences in the penultimate paragraph":

...were there arguments in his favor that had been overlooked? Of course there must be. Logic is doubtless unshakable, but it cannot withstand a man who wants to go on living. Where was the Judge? Where was the High Court of Justice? I have something to say. I lift up my hands.

The canonical text at the end of the penultimate paragraph is:

...were there arguments in his favor that had been overlooked? Of course there must be. Logic is doubtless unshakable, but it cannot withstand a man who wants to go on living. Where was the Judge whom he had never seen? Where was the high Court, to which he had never penetrated? He raised his hands and spread out all his fingers.

This is so incredible. Kafka was sick and suffering from tuberculosis while writing The Trial. There's an element of the autobiographical in all of his work; here it can be Josef K. cast into a labyrinth of misery (tuberculosis) with no explanations for why or how to get out. There was nothing that could be done to treat tuberculosis at the time. Kafka lived with the specter of death hanging over his shoulder. He did not know what would tie the middle of his novel (life) to the end. The original version of the text quoted above is the only time in the entire novel that the narration shifts from third to first person. It is not Josef K. raising his hands - it is I. It is Kafka. He could not accept death - he had something to say. But life is cruel, and no amount of pleading is enough to overcome the crushing march of reality, ceaseless and uncaring.

laura les - i just dont wanna name it anything with "beach" in the title

Electronic/Experimental Pop

Sometimes you check the time and it’s 11:00 p.m. and sometimes you check the time and it’s 3:00 a.m.

100 gecs - 1000 gecs

Electronic/Experimental Pop

Here are (more or less) the first 26 soundcloud songs for the search “stupid horse”:

1. 100 gecs - stupid horse
   This is the original song

2. - your sunbae - STUPID HORSE!
   A slightly slowed down version of the original song with a ton of reverb

3. shell macintosh - STUPID HORSE - 100GECS (DOGWIVES BREAKNECK REMIX)
   Very cool remix with a wild second half

4. robert lilly - 100 Gecs x XIX [mashup] stupid horse/Bratz Doll
   Self explanatory

5. 100 gecs - stupid horse (Remix) [feat. GFOTY & Count Baldor]
   This is the official remix on the remix album

6. Lucina - Stupid? Horse? Stupid horse!
   Artist’s statement: “100 gecs anime premiere”

7. yung bruh discog 2 - SICKO LIL TRACY - STUPID POLITICS ( PROD. HORSE HEAD)
   Unrelated Lil Tracy song

8. Y2KDRACULA - STUPID HORSE ECST4SY REMIX (@y2kdracula)
   I don’t totally understand this one

9. J. Ka Ching - 100 gecs - stupid horse (J. Ka Ching Yee-Hawdcore Remix)
   Country/bluegrass remix

10. LABYRINTH OF GONAD - Stupid Horse
    This is a cover of The Beatles - Don’t Let Me Down

11. alfred - 100 gecs - stupid horse (Alfred English Remix)
    Rave piano rave piano

12. ozzienobody - stupid horse
    Nightcore remix of stupid horse (remix) [feat. GFOTY & Count Baldor]

13. duuzu - stupid horse town road
    Mashed up with old town road

14. KNECHTJONG - the quiet terror of existence (stupid horse - 100 gecs remix)
    The logical conclusion to the second half of the DOGWIVES BREAKNECK REMIX

15. kellbender - 100 gecs - stupid horse (kellbender remix)
    Movie soundtrack remix

16. DeBisco - 100 gecs - stupid horse (DeBisco Remix)
    Happy Hardcore remix (rave piano rave piano)

17. lucas - STUPID HORSE!!!!
    Cover that seems close to the original song

18. frostios - Stupid Horse
    Stupid horse sped up 2.5x

19. 100 gecs - stupid horse (HUSH remix)
    Justin Bieber vibes from this one

20. DORIAN ELECTRA - sorry stupid horse (i love you)
    Sorry stupid horse (i love you)

21. Sicko Tracy - STUPID POLITICS ( PROD HORSE HEAD)
    Another totally unrelated Lil Tracy song

22. done - stupid horse but its opposite day
    Another stupid horse - old town road mashup

23. tracey brakes - Stupid Horse (tracey brakes remix)
    No comment

24. amaqdrinker - Stupid Horse
    Totally unrelated ambient-ish song with really loud metronome sounds

25. melshi - 100gecs - stupid horse ELECTRO COUNTRY NIGHTCORE ???????
    Self explanatory

26. Haskell - Stupid horse
    This is just static/noise

N0THANKY0U - To The Fairest

Electronic/Experimental/Punk

There's an album somewhere out there of Japanese rave music where one of the songs is composed entirely of pitch shifted meows - like if the Nyan cat song had even more meowing. I found it when I was 12 on what I think was someone's personal website. It had a yellowish-beige background. Everything was in Japanese, which is not a language I know, and I don't remember how I got there. At this point, the website and artist are probably lost for good. A shame. There’s something I like about music which, in one way or another, is trying to kill me.

Junglepussy - Jp4

Hip Hop/R&B

What’s the right thing to do with your teeth when you sleep over at someone else’s place? If you’re planning on visiting someone who’s just a friend, maybe they live far away and you’ll be there for a few days, it makes sense to bring a toothbrush. That’s expected. If you’re seeing someone a bit more seriously you can just leave a toothbrush at their place. How about on a date? There’s no way you just casually haul a toothbrush around just in case. Toothbrush burning a hole in your pocket on a first date. Maybe this is just a problem for people who don’t normally carry a bag. Maybe everyone who has a bag they bring everywhere has an emergency toothbrush for situations like this. But I don’t. This is an important issue in my mind.

But ok, that covers two situations. How about if you’re seeing someone but it’s not very commital? I think it makes sense to bring a toothbrush - maybe it will raise an eyebrow, but I think it makes sense. But there’s no way you leave it there though, right? No way. That’s opening up a whole can of worms: WHAT can this MEAN?, etc. How commital are you willing to get? So now you’re hauling a toothbrush around. Maybe having a bag is more important than I thought.

But ok, let’s say you don’t want to bring a bag and you don’t want to haul a toothbrush back and forth. Certainly you at least rinse your mouth out with water - do you ask to borrow some floss? Just floss, maybe some mouthwash? Maybe brush your teeth with a finger and toothpaste? Just pop a little pea of toothpaste into your mouth and swish it around? Leave the other person with a big question mark: how was this toothpaste used? The great toothpaste mystery.

And on the other end of this entire hypothetical, should you just have spare toothbrushes around all the time? I don’t. It doesn’t seem that weird though, it seems considerate, maybe. “Hey, if you want to brush your teeth, I have spare toothbrushes.” Seems fine. “Hey, if you didn’t bring a toothbrush with you, would you mind at least flossing”? That is a bold statement.

I think the ultimate thing to say to someone in this sort of situation is: “Hey, you should use my toothbrush.”

Braid - Frame and Canvas

Emo/Post-Hardcore

FFO: The Promise Ring, Cap’n Jazz

Muted, melodic post-hardcore/emotive hardcore. It’s good, but isn’t my favorite direction that emo music can take. There isn’t too much variation between the choruses and verses, or even between songs. They seem to be sticking to a few familiar sounds and structures throughout. I don’t think that’s super interesting. Bands grow, bands change, sure, but the stuff they were doing before this seems more enthusiastic, more eager to try something new.

Braid - The Age of Octeen

Emo/Post-Hardcore

FFO: Sunny Day Real Estate, Unwound, Cap’n Jazz

This album is so sick. It has a post-rocky cadence to it, songs ebb and swell and crescendo, but they never overstay their welcome. It sounds just messy enough, just experimental enough that a lot of the sounds they make are interesting, but not alienating. They mumble, they sing, they scream, they’re disonnant and tense, they drone and make you anxious, they untie and let loose with punkier riffs and chords. A voice thirty seconds into the first track says “I can’t - I can’t do this.” They absolutely can.

Battalion of Saints - Second Coming

Hardcore

Finding a way to listen to this was tricky. Youtube searches mostly return the song “Second Coming” rather than the album, but there are some weird partial uploads of the album, that have, for example, the first five tracks. Very unclear why some uploaders decided to upload just part of the album. There’s a Complete Discography release, which happens to be on Spotify, but it’s not split up in any obvious way. I have learned from personal experience that listening to these discography releases is exhausting. Fortunately, the discography is well ordered. If you’d like to listen to this the way I did, this album comprises tracks 32 (on disc 1) through 10 (on disc 2) of the Complete Discography.

Second Coming is a good hardcore album! It doesn’t push any boundaries, but it’s consistent, relentless, and exactly what you have in mind whenever you think of hardcore punk. Listening to this got me wondering about what hardcore looks like in the present day; it doesn’t seem like it was a particularly long-lived genre. It was very much a movement: there was a community built up around it, it was political, it was cultural. Hardcore inspired music to move in dozens of new directions. Any hardcore music in the US today wouldn’t be the same. I will put this on my list of things to research.

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That’s the end! Thank you for reading! If you have any thoughts about any of this, you liked any of the stuff I liked, you think I have the most incorrect opinions humanly possible, you have something you would like to recommend: I would love to hear it. You can reply to this email, which will go directly to me, or you can leave a comment on the substack page.

Have a great day.