Since it’s Halloween and the last day of “Spooky Month”, I thought I’d put together a list of Halloween/horror related links for you to enjoy.
The 20 Best ’80s Horror Movies Ranked (Slash Film) – David Court put together this neat little 80s horror film list with a mix of classics and more niche picks. I was glad to see my favourite was in the list (The Thing) but the #1 choice might not be what you think it’ll be
Do Vampires Really Exist? (JSTOR Daily) – Matthew Wills briefly examined the history of vampires and whether they’re real (and how they might be real).
The Clown Motel in Tonopah, Nevada (Atlas Obscura) – Clowns can be very scary but a clown motel. Nah, you can keep that. Worst still, this one is on the edge of the Nevada desert right next to an abandoned graveyard.
I’ve been waiting months for this and it’s finally here. So sad that it’s the last one but what a send-off.
For those who don’t know, Demi Adejuyigbe has been making videos to commemorate 21st September, the date Earth, Wind & Fire sang about in ‘September‘, and to donate to various charities over the years. They’ve become more elaborate as time has gone on and today’s was his last.
This year’s charities are
West Fund – a west Texas abortion fund that uses collective resources to uplift border communities.
(from left to right) Shoes from Prince’s 2004 Musicology Live 4ever Tour; the Batman Era; around the mid-90s
The Beautiful Collection opened on 9th July 2021 for fans to view over 300 pairs of Prince’s shoes and the stories behind them. The exhibition will be on for a limited time as part of the Paisley Park tour and will also include video interviews from Prince’s design partners and content about Prince’s influence on fashion and gender.
Julia Stiles: After The Bourne Ultimatum came out, there was a premiere in London. Prince actually came to it, then got tickets for the cast to come see him [perform]. We were summoned into a room to meet him [after the show]. Matt said, “So you live in Minnesota? I hear you live in Minnesota.”
Damon: Prince said, “I live inside my own heart, Matt Damon.”
I’d like to take a moment to praise the title of the piece I quoted:
Prince Had No Time for Matt Damon’s Pedestrian Small Talk
And that, my friends, is why I don’t do small talk.
Green is the colour of Kermit the Frog, Mike Wazowski, and two-thirds of Nigeria’s national flag. It’s associated with nature, fertility, tranquillity, money, good luck, health, movement, and ecology. It can also signify illness and envy. Grass is green, the Chicago River is green once a year for St. Patrick’s Day, many political parties are green. Great gardeners have green fingers, inexperienced ones might be greenhorns, and jealous ones might be green-eyed monsters.
Green is my second favourite colour behind red (sorry, blue, you’re in 3rd place now!) thanks to Sporting CP. Green is also a traditional colour in Islam, associated with paradise in the Quran.
A passage from the Quran describes paradise as a place where people “will wear green garments of fine silk.” One hadith, or teaching, says, “When Allah’s Apostle died, he was covered with a Hibra Burd,” which is a green square garment. As a result, you’ll see green used to color the binding of Qurans, the domes of mosques, and, yes, campaign materials.
J. Milton Hayes’s “Yellow God” had a green eye (likely an emerald), Andrew Marvell’s “The Garden” said “No white nor red was ever seen / So am’rous as this lovely green.”, and D. H. Lawrence said the dawn was “apple-green”. Aliens are often green, little, and men for some reason.
The green room is where performers wait before they go on stage, there are at least 250 films in Letterboxd with “green” in the title including Green Book, Green Lantern, The Green Hornet, The Green Mile, and 17 films simply called Green.
Green and gold go together perfectly in a room and green Victorian tiles adorn many London Underground corridors (but not Green Park’s for some reason).
Judy Horacek and Mem Fox asked “Where Is The Green Sheep?“, Dr. Seuss wrote about Green Eggs and Ham, and Hemingway talked about the Green Hills of Africa (specifically East Africa). Kermit sang it ain’t easy being green, Tom Jones sang about the green green grass of home and Beyoncé gave us the green light (as did John Legend).
Monocle visited two companies finding unique ways to promote their products to ever-changing audiences: Transhelvetica, a Swiss magazine, and Spiritland, a London-based hospitality and audio venture. Both are shaping the media landscape for the better.
Back story – while listening to Gabriel Garzón-Montano’s Bombo Fabrika yesterday and one of the lines reminded me of something:
Oh my God, prophecy upon the bones
It was the “oh my god” part. But I couldn’t remember exactly what it reminded me of. The problem was the last time I heard it, I knew what it was. All I could muster from the depths of my memory was that it came from a song and it was something funny. Then it hit me 5 minutes ago:
“Oh my God, I was wrong!”
So I Googled that line and… I found it—Troy McClure’s rendition of Monkey Out of Me from his role in Stop the Planet of the Apes, I Want to Get Off! in S07E19 of The Simpsons. This won’t mean anything to anyone else but I wanted to put it on the site for posterity and in case I forgot again.
Acclaimed composer Danny Elfman was a guest on the Premier Guitar podcast where he opened up about the Batman (1989) score and his displeasure at how it turned out.
“I was terribly unhappy with the dub in Batman,” Elfman said. “They did it in the old-school way where you do the score and turn it into the ‘professionals’ who turn the nobs and dub it in. And dubbing had gotten really wonky in those years. We recorded [multi-channel recording on] three channels — right, center, left, — and basically, they took the center channel out of the music completely.”
Nothing worse than people fiddling with your work when you had it just so. Now I’d love to hear Elfman’s original.
In the meantime, check out this suite of the Batman soundtrack, conducted by Shirley Walker and performed by the Sinfonia Of London.
Prince was quite a secretive person but you won’t be short of photographs of him. Picturing Prince: An Intimate Portrait will piece together never-before-seen photos of the late musician, taken by Steve Parke.
A new book from Cassell, Picturing Prince: An Intimate Portrait, out September 5, aims to add depth to Prince’s public persona; it features never-before-seen photographs by Steve Parke, the musician’s former art director at Paisley Park, including 16 pages of lost photographs from his extensive archive.
Along with those images are some hilarious anecdotes from Parke, revealing more about Prince than most fans would know. Stories include The Purple One renting out whole movie theatres at 4am, requests for exotic animals, and his love of basketball. Away from taking photos of Prince, Steve Parke also designed his album covers and merch before becoming the official Paisley Park art director. That’s a high accolade given Prince’s attention to detail and perfectionism when it came to his image.
This is a must-read for Prince fans and music lovers alike.
I don’t know who created this but it’s the perfect marriage (lol) of good music (pun intended) and classic Simpsons quotes. The title comes from S2 episode War of the Simpsons where Homer gets very drunk and asks Maud to get him some peanuts from the bottom of the dish so he can see her cleavage. Of course, Marge was watching in shock and disgust and they had to work on their marriage at a retreat. How their marriage is still together I don’t know.
And if you didn’t already know, the backing music comes from Gorillaz’s Feel Good Inc. A true animation mashup.
Set in a futuristic age besieged by corporate forces, Jet Set Radio (and its sequel Jet Set Radio Future), were the cell-shaded chronicles of the GG’s, a gang of rollerblading youths (or “rudies”). Their use of graffiti thwarted the evils of the “Rokkaku Group” and at the very core of the franchise lied two incredible soundtracks primarily composed by Hideki Naganuma. His compositions and others were spun in-game by “DJ Professor K”, who commandeered the titular “Jet Set Radio”, a pirate radio station our spray-paint wielding heroes regularly tune into, not only for dope tunes but also essential tips and mission information.
Considering JSR is my favourite video game franchise of all time, you can only imagine the joy that enveloped my soul when I stumbled upon JetSetRadio.Live. JetSetRadio.Live is the brainchild of Reddit user DJProfessor_K and greatly expands upon the in-game station. A vast majority of the OST is present, with a plethora of inspired songs added to the playlist. There are also selectable stations (themed after the various factions of rudies within the game), a chat room, JSRL TV (a playlist of intriguing videos played in a random order) and even an Android app!
JetSetRadio.Live is pure unadulterated awesomeness condensed into the form of an internet radio station and is one of the best love letters to a video game I have ever had the pleasure of coming across.
Although long rumoured to be a Michael Jackson creation, the song was, in fact, written by singer-songwriter Bryan Loren. The latter called the prolonged rumours a “thorn in his side” and advised:
“Along with me, Michael Jackson does sing backing vocals. And it WAS his idea to call the song, DTB. AND, he did insist I include his name in the lyric.”
Hardcore MJ fans like myself may already know Loren’s name as Michael sang backing vocals on one of his tracks, To Satisfy You (which is brilliant, I might add). This also wasn’t the only Michael Jackson/Simpsons collab either. Michael voiced the character of Leon Kompowsky (but not the singing voice; that was Kipp Lennon) in Stark Raving Dad as well as adding a clip of Homer and Bart at the end of his infamous Panther Dance.
De La Soul’s Plug 1 & Plug 2 present First Serve – Tennis
Jim Noir – Ping Pong Time Tennis
Pixel Perfect – Tennis Court
Telemachus – Tennis Season
Binge – “Grand Slam Man (Roger Federer)”
Indian Wells – Wimbledon 1980
Florent Campana – Roland Garros
Sasse – Flushing Meadows
The Herbaliser – Game Set and Match
Jackie McLean – Davis Cup
Yannick Noah – On court
The German Art Students – Bjorn Borg
Wyclef Jean – I’m Ready
Profesor Mercury – Astro-Música Rafa nadal Op. 350 -A-
Lorde – Tennis Court
Lilys – The Tennis System (And Its Stars)
Chris Rea – Tennis
The Bicycle Thief – Tennis Shoes
Pernice Brothers – The Ballad of Bjorn Borg
Half Man Half Biscuit – Outbreak of Vitas Gerulatis
Frank Turner – Love Forty Down
Wimbledon is drawing to a close, with all the remaining finals being played this weekend. To mark the end of those two weeks of tennis court action, here is a selection of tracks about tennis (in one way or another). I couldn’t believe some of the titles and artist names when I was spot-digging for songs. It just so happens I’m working on a Federer-themed album but it hasn’t left the idea stage yet.
Some of the tracks are obviously tennis-related, like Pixel Perfect’s Tennis Court and Indian Wells’s Wimbledon 1980. But some are coincidental like Jackie McLean’s Davis Cup. Wyclef Jean’s I’m Ready is the most tenuously linked song; a nod to players telling their opponents that they’re ready to receive serve.
Of course, tennis is for life not just for the Wimbledon Championships, so enjoy this playlist all year round.
Update: Thanks to His Top Ten for finding even more songs I didn’t know about.
It’s not going to happen but her influence in pop culture is strong enough to warrant emulation. This admiration hasn’t gone unnoticed, however, as Madison Moore, a postdoctoral research associate from King’s College London, has started a public seminar entitled “How to be Beyoncé”. Moore gives tips on how to replicate Beyoncé’s success and delves into her stance within pop culture alongside Moore’s own research.
“I’m all about taking popular culture seriously,” he said. “I believe you can take any pop cultural text and open it up and see what’s happening on the inside.”
