I wanna mock

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• Lord Henry says:

  June 13, 2012 at 9:27 pm

  Is it just me, or does Russell Brand look like Pierre Clementi?
  I’m on a Clementi kick at the moment – BELLE DE JOUR (mas­ter­piece), THE CONFORMIST (mas­ter­piece), and I was halfway through THE DESIGNATED VICTIM (hmm) before the bour­bon took hold and I snoozed off. Going to try to fin­ish it tomor­row night.
  PARTNER? Caught a few of the old Bertoluccis at the NFT recently, but could­n’t make this one. Thought BEFORE THE REVOLUTION was over­rated, and THE GRIM REAPER under-.
  Also, off-topic, just wanted to give a big thanks to the people who recom­men­ded the vari­ous Parker nov­els here a while back. Went through nearly all of them, just BUTCHER’S MOON left. Cheers!

• Lex says:

  June 14, 2012 at 4:34 am

  I enjoyed the GK review, but take issue with his besmirch­ing of THE CRUE. As a total child of the late ’80s-early ’90s who saw every godaw­ful Mr Big, Tesla, Slaughter, Firehouse, Jackyl, solo Vince Neil, Def Leppard in the round tour that came thru town and had all this shit on cas­sette, I acknow­ledge the era was cheesy, but it was­n’t at all the cheese this movie seems to prom­ise. Why is Hough act­ing all wide-eyed and like Sandy from Grease… What role was there, really, for women, in this scene, bey­ond groupies?
  There was Lita Ford and Vixxxen, and oth­er­wise this GOOFY light-musical char­ac­ter would­n’t just be strip­ping, she’d be shoot­ing up Nikki Sixx inside of a week and tak­ing on six guys at a time… On what PLANET was there was equal-opportunity cute-chick Mormon girl hold­ing her own on stage with Axl or Vince or Sebastian or Dee or who­ever the sam hell she’s sup­posed to be playing?
  Glenn is one of those dyed-in-the-wool punk guys who prob­ably still listens to some hor­rible FEAR albums and would rather get hit by a bus than bow to the CRUE, but even before Bob Rock, espe­cially on their first two albums, they had TONS of awe­some songs, like “Toast of the Town,” “Black Widow,” “Piece of the Action,” “Looks that Kills,” all of which were bet­ter than punk bull­shit (except Misfits), and you know what?
  This idea that CRUE was cheesy until “Feelgood” (and even that would be argued by music snobs), but this MYTH that GNR was some Sex Pistols-type rev­el­a­tion that blew the hair rock out of the ground… eh, a bit exag­ger­ated. Anyone who reads my Twitter (good idea) knows I’m CAPTAIN GNR, but really, “Appetite for Destruction” is JUST as cheesy as Poison or The Crue, both of whom I’d argue are a lot more fun and amus­ingly sleazy than the COWBELL O’CLOCK first over­rated GNR record. “Rocket Queen” is the one true mas­ter­piece from APPETITE out­side of the way over­played singles, but this idea that GNR was some DANGEROUS SHIT– like Nikki Sixx COMING BACK FROM THE FUCKING DEAD or Vince Neil’s debauched antics or whatever wer­en’t sleaz­i­er and as “on the edge” as GNR?
  If it wer­en’t for GOD AXL’s awe­some nar­ciss­ism and ego­mania, you’re left with Slash’s STUDIO SESSION GUITARIST LICKS… I prefer Guns just because of Axl’s crazy ambi­tion and indul­gence, but MUSIC WISE? Crue had a tight­er sound, a raw­er sound, and most of Appetite and a good HALF of the Illusion albums sound like some embar­rass­ing Sunset/Gardner jam ses­sion with HARMONICAS and COWBELL and dorky blues licks and bad lyr­ics. Crue were MUCH more bad-ass, oth­er than Axl.
  All tak­ing it back to this movie, I don’t even know what world they’re recre­at­ing here; REO, Foreigner and Journey were main­stream pop-lite-rock AM acts from five years earli­er, more akin to an early ’80s ver­sion of Boston and Kansas than HAIR METAL… Bön Jovi was its own thing… the Warrant and Winger and Poison scene on the Strip SEEMS to be what’s being homaged here, but to any­one who knows any­thing about the era, these are wildly dis­par­ate scenes and styles, and the fact that Cruise seems to be a mashup of like Axl, Vince Neil, Brett Michaels, and Bön Jovi, four dudes with NOTHING in com­mon… I give up.

• J. Priest says:

  June 14, 2012 at 8:47 am

  Rock music and broad­way theat­er will nev­er work well togeth­er. I like them both, I think one can suc­cess­fully incor­por­ate ele­ments of the oth­er, but when it comes to a full-blown fusion of the two, I’ve nev­er been a fan of it. Not “Hair,” not “Grease,” not any­thing by Andrew Lloyd Webber and not even “Rent” much less this. Something about it is nev­er con­vin­cing to me, regard­less of wheth­er it’s sin­cere or it’s tongue-in-cheek.

• J. Priest says:

  June 14, 2012 at 8:48 am

  (Actually, that should be “music­al theat­er” and I really ought to cap­it­al­ize “Broadway.”)

• Glenn Kenny says:

  June 14, 2012 at 9:50 am

  Lex, I appre­ci­ate the Crue love. I have to admit to a HUGe amount of chau­vin­ism here, both in terms of region­al bias and taste, going all the way back to the notorious/hilarious Deborah Frost account of the Crue in the (effete, snotty, etc.) Village Voice back in the day. I also thought it was kinda tacky of the guys to write songs diss­ing their deal­er twenty minutes after check­ing out of rehab. It’s abso­lutely true that “The Dirt” is one of the great rock and roll doc­u­ments of our time. You almost have me con­vinced to re-check out their “early” “work.”
  For the record, I nev­er got into Fear. My favored L.A. punk bands WERE very usual-suspectish, though—Black Flag and the Minutemen, etc.. As for the Misfits, I actu­ally saw their FIRST gig­ging lineup at the Show Place in Dover New Jersey in 1978, not far from their home base of, yes, Lodi. I will admit that at the time I was WAY too much of a pseud snot to appre­ci­ate them. In fact I dis­tinctly recall look­ing at Jerry Only and think­ing “Mesh t‑shirts were so 1976” or some­thing to that effect. Jesus. I do like their latest record quite a bit even if Dez Cadena did break Allison Grace’s heart. I see now I’m going on a bit of a tangent…
  Anyway, your point about Cruise chan­nel­ing four guys with noth­ing in com­mon is spot on, really.

• Peter Labuza says:

  June 17, 2012 at 10:19 pm

  @ J. Priest
  “Next to Normal,” des­pite hav­ing a some what ludicrous/melodramatic story more fit for Lifetime, was expertly com­posed rock and roll music for music­al theater.

• Henry Holland says:

  July 1, 2012 at 4:36 pm

  Longtime lurk­er here, I wanted to sur­face so that I can encour­age Mr. Kenny to nev­er, ever give in to a Chuck Klosterman-esque fit of nos­tal­gia for the LA hair met­al bands. They were and are hor­rible, includ­ing Motley Crue.
  I was a strug­gling musi­cian on the LA club cir­cuit dur­ing the 80’s and my friends and I could­n’t believe that guys like the dudes in Poison were selling mil­lions while great bands around us like the awe­some Minutemen (RIP D. Boon) struggled to get people to buy their records and come to gigs. Yes, it’s always been that way, but still.
  If Nirvana nev­er did any­thing else, “Nevermind” put­ting the hair met­al bands out of busi­ness almost overnight would still make them Rock Gods.
  Stay strong, Glen, don’t let your guard down in a moment of iron­ic “they’re so bad they’re good” weakness.

• J. Priest says:

  July 1, 2012 at 6:05 pm

  Not a fan either. I like the singles off of “Appetite for Destruction,” and some of the stuff Van Halen did with David Lee Roth is pretty fun, but that’s about it. I am glad that ‘Rock of Ages’ kept their hands off of Black Flag, the Minutemen et al…
  @Peter Labuza, I’ll have to check out that soundtrack. I can for­give the ludicrous nar­rat­ives if the music holds up.