Welcome to Al on the Arts. I’m Al Fridgett with your entertainment report.
We start with music and the new entry from death metal band Insouciant Demoralizer, Blood for Blood for Blood for Blood for Meat, released on Feline Leukemia Records. Playing their guitars completely out of tune, Farting Sam and Vomiting Tim create a palate of noise that rivals four jet engines red lining inside a nuclear reactor. Lyrically the songs form a pattern of blistering political takes on the current situation in Mongolia, ancestral home of singer and chief song writer Slobbering Jerry. The aggregate score from online music critics give Blood for Blood for Blood for Blood for Meat a score of 6 out of 100.
Also, out today from new label Bedpans, Inc. is the debut release for 19-year-old ingenue Sally Sally Surfbomb called Songs the Label Made Me Record. Famed reviewer Ryan Fizz had this to say about Surfbomb’s recording: “To announce that these songs have anything to say would be an insult to banality. They are, however, the most danceable tracks I’ve heard since The Disco Fever Five in the late 1970s.”
Our last release for this week is from 1960s folk pioneer Lance Chance LeFrance. Born on an air boat in the swamps of Louisiana, LeFrance made a name for himself on the folk circuit in 1964 with songs like War Has Stolen my Shoe; There are Too Many Roads, I’m Lost; and How Many People Have to Get Arrested Before They Get to Me? He has remained a stalwart touring performer but has not recorded any new material since his controversial 1987 release Get a Piece of Peace Unless You’re a Commie Rat.
LeFrance’s new collection, Let’s Get This War Started, contains 12 new tracks with the singular theme of his recent arrest for protesting the closing of his favorite Starbuck’s store. It was released on LeFrance’s own Hippy Dippy Doodle Rock label.
Now let’s talk movies. Three new features open this week at Darin’ Dave’s Cinema Fantastique and Indoor Dinosaur Water Park. First, we have the new comedy from writer/director Chazz, Holy Holy! It’s the comic story of a priest who adopts two meddling orphans. As they fight for control of the home, the Pope decrees the adoption null and void which prompts a hilarious plane ride to Vatican City where the hi jinks never stop. The movie stars Neil Van Der Hoganstoppenfliegen as Father Murphy and Harald Groo as the pope. It currently stands on Rotten Tomatoes with a score of -6 with the critics and with a 114 audience score.
In limited release, there is indie favorite Gladys Minken’s new drama, The Lost Flowers of Sante Fe. Minken plays young widow Alice McAllister who embarks on a life-affirming journey to New Mexico after the death of her husband. Along the way she meets a part-time viola player and his wife, the captain of a failing fishing boat, and gets lost in a hallucinogenic haze when they feed her mescaline-laced shepherd’s pie. Over the next hour Alice meets her dead husband, her husband from the future and the husband she didn’t know existed leading to an existential crisis deepened by her love of shepherd’s pie.
Another October brings another new horror movie from shock director Blaze Hellhound. This week’s offering, entitled Where is My Knife, I Need to Kill, stars famed television actor Rance Roobet as the loving father of 3 boys, who metamorphizes into a giant Panda with the face of Charles Manson. The boys hide their father’s knife collection after he goes on a murderous rampage and he must learn a new way to kill while his sons struggle to grow enough bamboo to satisfy their father’s appetite.
For the book lovers among you we present several new releases this week. First is the new medical thriller, The Spastic Colon Killer. It is the 9th consecutive best seller for author Kelly Ann Boatanchor, a former surgeon who infuses her books with so much technical jargon the plots become convoluted morasses from which there is no escape. At 915 pages, The Spastic Colon Killer is no exception with the main culprit being a 203-page description of a bowel irrigation that has nothing to do with the main story.
On the literary side yesterday saw the release of Mary O’Hoolihan’s first novel in 15 years, Mr. Grubb Buys a Newspaper. As usual, O’Hoolihan delves into her main character’s psyche with such depth it’s like reading a financial report. Famed literary critic Helen Halen says “Mr. Grubb Buys a Newspaper buries the reader in the minutia of the dying newspaper industry leading to the titular character’s actual purchase of a paper. This is O’Hoolihan’s least dull novel to date and it is exceptionally boring.”
For a local flavor, Buckshot County’s own Florence Goobler has self-published a collection of poetry called I Wrote These, They’re Mine, Hands Off, I Won’t Warn You Again. As a sample, we reprint, with Florence’s permission, this short piece entitled I Love Chicken:
Chicken, chicken
I love chicken,
good for poppin’
good for pickin,
keep your hands
off my chicken,
don’t be flickin’,
the clocks tickin’,
stay away from my chicken.
That’s it from the art scene for this week. Until then I’m off to listen to my new vinyl record I bought at our sponsor, The Municipal Railway Record Exchange, the world’s only music store inside of an operating railroad station. My purchase this week is a re-release of the Dancing Fever Dreams’ 1967 classic, Oh My God What are We Singing About?
I’m Al Fridgett and I’ll be back in two weeks with all the information you’ll need to know about new music, books and movies.
————
Christopher Hivner resides in south central Pennsylvania with too many books and an out-of-control vinyl record collection. His collection of horror/dark fantasy poems Dark Oceans of Divinity is available from Cyberwit.net.