Rolling Stones: Early 60's

I found this article on the early years of the Rolling Stones. It is a fantastic read if you're into the band or want to know more about them. There is also an interesting arguement of who was better, the Beatles or the Rolling Stones.

band of the decade

I’ll sound like one of them NME junkies when I say this but....

I miss the Libertines.

The band that best defines the 00's. They changed my life, and changed the british music culture forever.

The magic is when you were together.

Brick- film of the year?

I finally got to see Rian Johnson’s debut film Brick today. It is an acclaimed detective story about a man who must find out who murdered the girl he loved. The twist is that it’s set in an American high school with its own lingo.

I’d heard great things about it and previously mentioned it on my blog back in April and planned to see it at the cinema but it didn’t come out anywhere near me and at the time I had no car.

Criticisms of the film have been the use of lingo like ‘duck soup’ which means easy pickings and other words which makes the dialogue hard to follow. I was well prepared for this but still found the dialogue a little hard to follow especially when it’s so important to following the story. But it didn’t take me out of the film but instead made me concentrate a lot more. I felt immediately engaged in the world the director has created wasn’t affected by the fact that its set in a high school, in fact it just made it more interesting.

I thought the characters were well established and the acting was overall excellent from the rising stars. I especially liked the protagonist that had a bit of Bogart about him at times.

The DVD comes out Monday.

Newsweek review

As a Beatles fan and for any excuse just to mention them on this blog I have included Newsweek's first review on the band. Its funny reading this now but they did not get the love and respect that they would get only years after their first shows. Newsweek once said this about the Fab 4:

"Visually they are a nightmare: tight, dandified, Edwardian-Beatnik suits and great pudding bowls of hair. Musically they are a near-disaster: guitars and drums slamming out a merciless beat that does away with secondary rhythms, harmony, and melody. Their lyrics (punctuated by nutty shouts of "yeah, yeah, yeah!") are a catastrophe, a preposterous farrago of Valentine-card romantic sentiments."

They really didn’t get it at all and especially when they predicted that:

“The odds are that they will fade away, as most adults confidently predict."

9/11

It is the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks where nearly 3,000 lives were lost. There are plans for silent reflection and fresh mourning.