MEDIA ROOTS – ATOP’s new DJ set invokes the feelings of youth: stressless times, happy summers and less responsibilities. This is a mix of tunes that have changed the lives of many–perfect for the season.
Love,
ATOP Akkad the Orphic Priest
All the featured music on the mix can be found through searching discogs.com or by emailing me: [email protected].
Track Listing:
Led Zeppelin – How Many More Times The Doors – When the Music’s Over Jane’s Addiction – 1% Nirvana – Aneurysm Nine Inch Nails – We’re in this Together Brian Eno – Energy Fools the Magician David Bowie – Oh! You Pretty Things Yeah Yeah Yeahs – Softshock White Denim – Say Whay You Want Bibio – Take Off Your Shirt Mice Parade – Out of the Freedom World
MEDIA ROOTS — Despite reticent airplay from corporate rock stations around the S.F. Bay Area, radio stations which tend to stick to the band’s older hits squeezed into their ultra-commercial agenda, modern rock band Radiohead continues to maintain its popularity for decades, playing a sold-out show yesterday in San Jose’s Shark Tank, or Corporation A Pavilion, in support of its newest album “The King of Limbs.” (See complete set list below.)
In fact, the band is more popular than ever, despite lacklustre support from the corporate broadcasters controlling modern rock radio. Virtually, the entire “King of Limbs” Tour around the world is completely sold out. Radiohead will next travel south down California to Santa Barbara before playing Coachella, then Mexico, then Coachella again, before continuing on its world tour.
The opening band from Stillwater, Oklahoma, Other Lives, opened promptly at 7:30 pm, Wednesday night, April 11, 2012, kicking off the concert with ambitious and cinematic music, which clearly paid deep homage to the headlining band, reflecting some influence. I should probably know who the band was, but I haven’t been listening to an excessive amount of new music lately, I’ll admit. At first, I wondered if they were not foreign by their musical style of modern rock. Some people I spoke with at the concession stands noted, yeah, this does kind of sound like Radiohead. But this band, new to me, seemed to possess an interesting character of its own. Other Lives has been recording for years and has been featured on TV show soundtracks and will join Radiohead in playing this year’s Coachella music festival.
When Radiohead took to the stage after a 45-minute intermission (plenty of time for the captive audience to consume calories, pints of ale, or Radiohead KOL Tour swag), opening with “Bloom,” the packed stadium was fully primed for the rhythmic meditations—absolutely brilliant and intense, cathartic. From our vantage point, quite close to the lower edge of the balcony seats, billows of herbal smoke dotted the stadium audience, as the band tore it up. Unfortunately, for our section, our nearest usher was determined to uphold all security codes and came up to where we were seated to scold a girl behind us firing up some ganja. As the opening King of Limbs track, “Bloom” was an appropriate opener for the “King of Limbs” concert.
Later, frontman Thom Yorke would offer the receptive audience some honest observations in between numbers. It’s always nice to see such humanity. At one point, after tearing through “The National Anthem,” Thom Yorke prefaced the next song, helping Radiohead students poring over their lyrics, by commenting on the economic “bullshit” and “…all the people’s money and investigate all that bullshit. And all that Silicon Valley bullshit.” Thom Yorke continued, “And then you forgot about it. And then they called us up at rehearsal and we decided that we should do this song. So, help me out.“
Radiohead then shuffled into a B-side to “Pyramid Song,” released in May of 2001 and which notably foreshadows the future economic calamity of banks’ collapse/looting, “The Amazing Sounds of Orgy“:
“I want to see you smile again, Like diamonds in the dust, The amazing sound of the killing hordes,
The day the banks collapse on us,
Cease this endless chattering, Like everything is fine,
When sorry is not good enough,
Sit in the back while no one drives,
I’m so glad you’re mine.”
Taking the audience through In Rainbows space, the second number of the night had the audience fully enthralled. “15 Step” with its instantly recognisable a capella opening and bare drum ryhthms reinforced the vibe we’d cultivated en route to the show. And it reminded the audience of the band’s recent material. The first two numbers were the first tracks off of their last two albums. And the night was young.
But seeing Radiohead is truly a luxury, no less for a working-class observer, such as myself, often unable to traverse space and time to bridge the gulf between the San Joaquin Valley and Silicon Valley. When you’re broke and underemployed forever, you rarely leave the block, much less travel to the heart of Silicon Valley to catch Radiohead’s Bay Area stop on their “King of Limbs” world tour and congregate with the Bay Area’s petit bourgeois, with the Lefties and the Liberals, with the engaged and the disengaged. But there we were, driving westbound through verdant hills and wine country. My brother played M. Ward on the stereo—”Post-War.” He was exhausted from working hard labour all day and I don’t mind tying one on now and then. After all, anything worth doing is worth doing right.
We listened to King of Limbs, too, on the road. It’s quite a tranquil album. The first few tracks connected me to their past work in their own original way, but reflecting some continuity, very tranquil, reaching graceful dimensions of musical expression of emotion. It’s a rather hypnagogic album. A plane ascended overhead, as we approached the San Jose exit off of 280. A scene not unlike the cover of Radiohead’s classic OK Computer, or any metropolitan setting of modern bustle.
Parking was $20 bucks, so that sucked. But what are you gonna do? We could’ve parked on the street and walked for miles, but then you miss the tail-gate parties. Indeed, as we pulled up our neighbours enjoyed themselves at their tail-gate, as security guards chatted down yonder unconcerned. “The security guards aren’t sweatin’ you guys?” my brother asked. “We’re about to find out,” said our Euroamerican neighbours. My brother wasn’t feeling quite as entitled. “Let’s get out of here, man.” We did, after a few rounds to save on the Shark Tank bar tab.
In logical succession, the third number was “Morning Mr. Magpie,” track two from The King of Limbs. This track sounds simple, but is anything but, with its complex layering of agile rhythms, sublime drumming, and muted and delayed guitar playing and sporadic bursts of bass playing. If there is anything worth fighting for, or dying for, or living for, Radiohead’s musicianship and lyricism were articulating it last night.
“You stole it all,
Give it back…“
The Shark Tank stage almost seemed like an optical illusion, with its two drum kits on stage with identically head-shaven drummers emanating layered drum rhythms and syncopation. Bloody hell, I thought. Is that really two drummers? Or mirrors and shit? Indeed. I was not seeing double. Not yet, anyway. This was only the third number. The band seemed to enjoy the same configuration from every time I’ve seen them live, except for the addition of a second drummer, with Ed O’Brien playing guitar to the audience’s left and Jonny Greenwood with his musical arsenal on the right. And Colin Greenwood unassumingly layin’ back on bass.
“Thank you,” said Thom Yorke, going into the fourth track. They say in journo school, one is to report the story, not be the story. But I’ve always been thankful some, such as Hunter S. Thompson, never gave a shit. How much humanity is allowed in public human expression or communication? I gave my best howl, during one of those opportunistic moments when the venue quiets and one’s howl can travel the furthest: “Fucken Thom!!!” Thom Yorke seemed to respond, “Wow!” But my brother insists we were way too far for it to have been audible. My vox was shot for days afterward.
No matter. The warmth of electronic tones then enveloped us into “Kid A.” The band have previously described their love of Warp Records and such around the period when Kid A was released. Thom Yorke pulled out some sick ass synth thing and started to rock out with it and synthesised vocalisations.
Then more obscure track “Staircase” was followed by “The Gloaming (Softly Open Our Mouths in the Cold).”
When I see a band, like Radiohead, like one of my favourite living recording artists, like Morrissey, like Andre Nickatina, like Bjork, like KRS-ONE, like Shellac, like Scratch Acid, like Dinosaur, Jr., I am thankful. Other favourites, like The Jesus Lizard or Amy Winehouse or Nirvana or The Doors or Big Black weren’t meant to last. The artistic entity that is the soft animal centre of any worthwhile musical project is something that doesn’t always enjoy longevity. But some do; and here we have the beauty of Radiohead still going strong.
Radiohead’s music often helped me, and, doubtless, others, reflect on the themes of freedom and humanity and suffering and the human condition—and human triumph. The ripping opening chords and vocal wails to “The Bends,” were one such musical moment.
“I wish it was the ’60s, I wish we could be happy, I wish that something would happen…”
Such angst and eagerness for progressive change in humanity in our society was heard in popular music in the ’90s. Rock and roll has often been the stomping grounds of rebels, except when the musical form has been coopted and cloned by corporations eager to promote sterilised radio-friendly unit shifters. Two decades later, the struggle continues. For someone aging from the generation of Radiohead itself, I knew, of course, The Bends wasn’t going to be the focal point of this show. Radiohead’s 2008 DVD, “In Rainbows From The Basement” and The King of Limbs were our reference points for last night’s “King of Limbs” set-list.
“The National Anthem” was almost too familiar and almost seemed too easy as an audience-pleaser, as if the song, having been given sufficient time, had been fully embraced by the audience. Radiohead’s music definitely takes some time for people to catch up with. But then, “The National Anthem” did elicit an almost identically enthusiastic appreciation when they performed it at the Shoreline Amphitheatre (in Mountain View, CA) years before.
After Thom Yorke commented on the 1% making money, as economic “bullshit” goes down, and they played “The Amazing Sounds of Orgy,” Thom Yorke cheekily announced the “intermission“: The epic “Climbing Up the Walls” from OK Computer sounded in during a foray into their classic album. “Karma Police” followed, with Jonny Greenwood on piano, Thom Yorke on the mic with acoustic guitar, and Ed O’Brien on electric guitar and back-up vocals. This was an extremely, basic, if dutiful, rendition. But the tune is just such an effective number, one can hardly help singing along at full tilt. I was in the piano practice rooms of the local community college just the other day trying to sort out the precise voicing to the C-D-G-F# chord sequence to the tune’s pre-chorus. Some may argue Radiohead songs like these are played out. But it would be one’s own fault to try and play out such remarkable work. For me, and evidently last night’s audience, it’s a timeless tune. I’ll never forget seeing the condescending slap on Thom Yorke’s shoulder from David Letterman when the band played the song on his TV show, “You alright?” asked the smug host, almost offended by the song’s sincerity. Some people feel popular music is not meant to be so meaningful. More recently, David Letterman pulled the same thing on Julian Casablancas when they performed their brilliant number “Taken For A Fool.”
“It’s gonna rain,” said Thom Yorke. “This is freely available on YouTube, as are many things.” Then Radiohead played the new song “Identikit,” which seems to have lifted its title from the 1974 film.
Next, “Lotus Flower” gyrated swiftly through the air in an amped up delivery, yet meditative like much of the vibe of The King of Limbs and In Rainbows, incredibly emotive. By various accounts, this is one of the standout tracks so far off of King of Limbs.
The musical progression between the recent sounds on King of Limbs and In Rainbows was connected in last night’s set to the earlier more rock guitar-laden sounds of OK Computer by sounds from Hail to the Thief, from which came the next track—”There There.”
“In pitch dark I go walking in your landscape, Broken branches trip me as I speak,
Just ‘cos you feel it doesn’t mean it’s there…”
The set-list was a smart blend of more recent material and select tracks from earlier albums. “Feral” is a particurly tasty track with its oscillating synth sounds and snaking basslines.
“This song is called ‘Little By Little,’ announced Thom Yorke, introducing the third track from King of Limbs. It was another of the various songs last night, which would utilise the full complexity of interplay involving two drummers. And my brother noted Andre Nickatina having sampled this track.
“Reckoner,” with its incredibly emotional tapestries of introspection and global meditations closed out the set, Thom Yorke’s haunting falsetto wailing and whispering.
“Thank you, San Jose,” said Thom Yorke, returning to the stage. I was feasting on some concession stand calories, as my brother went for a smoke break and Radiohead returned to the stage for an encore with “Separator.” This is the closing track from King of Limbs. But the night was not complete without a Radiohead classic or two.
During the band’s first encore, it launched into the pre-9/11 era classic from 2001’s Amnesiac, “I Might Be Wrong,” before a reinvigorated audience. At this point, the epic human communion was undeniable.
The frenetic frenzy of “Myxomatosis” next kicked into gear. If the ending wasn’t big enough with “Everything In Its Right Place,” we were all blessed with a second encore. And the backbone of what really makes Radiohead such a strong band—stripped down brilliant songwriting at the core—shone through the building with “The Daily Mail“:
“The Moonies are up on the mountain The lunatics have taken over the asylum Waitin’ on the rapture
Singing, ‘We’re here to keep your prices down, We’ll feed you to the hounds, To the Daily Mail, together, together‘
You made a pig’s ear, you made a mistake Paid off security and got through the gate You got away with it but we lie in wait
Where’s the truth? What’s the use? I’m hanging around lost and found And when you’re here, innocent Fat chance, no plan No regard for human life
You’ll keep time, you’ve no right You’re fast and loose, you will lose You jumped the queue, you’re back again
President for life, lord of all The flies in the sky, the beasts of the earth The fish in the sea
You’ve lost command“
The penultimate song of the evening was a real crowd-pleaser, “Planet Telex,” from Radiohead’s second album, the ’90s-era classic, The Bends. “Planet Telex” sounded, as if the tempo was considerably slowed from its studio/album recording. But then that may have only been in contrast to the much more uptempo compositions Radiohead has recorded more recently for In Rainbows and King of Limbs. And it’s often the case when bands play older material, as with “Karma Police,” the tunes may sound a bit rough, as the musical vibe, is likely in a different aesthetic space. And, in this case, last night was apparently the first time Radiohead has played “Planet Telex” this tour and the first time it’s even played it live since 2009. But audiences, who’ve formed such strong bonds with those songs, are invariably audibly appreciative.
Rolling Stone has ranked The Bends#110 within their 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. I would probably place the album much higher in my personal list of greatest albums of all time, but then my music print, one’s personal collective memory of music, which shapes our musical tastes, was indelibly shaped during the ’90s when, at least for me, popular music seemed to convey some sense of rebellion and subversion. As for the ’90s, which for me was an incredibly rich musical decade, and for popular music was certainly dominated by post-punk bands, such as Nirvana, Radiohead ably filled the musical void left by the sudden demise of the post-punk legend of Nirvana.
And when so many bands like Silverchair and Bush were eagerly aping Nirvana’s aesthetics, Radiohead was able to celebrate the sound of heavily-distorted rock guitar sounds and the quiet-loud-quiet dynamics Nirvana, and The Pixies before them, had championed, but do it with originality and with prescient lyricism. Of the post-Nirvana mid-’90s, it’s hard for me to think of a song, which better captured the zeitgeist than “The Bends.”
“Where do we go from here? The words are coming out all weird Where are you now when I need you? Alone on an aeroplane Falling asleep against the windowpane My blood will thicken
I need to wash myself again To hide all the dirt and pain ‘Cos I’d be scared that there’s nothing underneath And who are my real friends? Have they all got the bends? Am I really sinking, this low?
My baby’s got the bends, oh no We don’t have any real friends; no, no, no
I’m just lying in a bar with my drip feed on Talking to my girlfiend Waiting for something to happen And I wish it was the ‘60s I wish we could be happy I wish, I wish, I wish That something would happen
Where do we go from here Tha planet is all gummed up in a sea of fear And where are you?
They’ve brought in the C.I.A. The tanks and the whole Marines to blow me away To blow me sky high
My baby’s got the bends, oh no We don’t have any real friends; no, no, no
I want to live and breathe I want to be a part of the human race I want to live and breathe I want to be a part of the human race, race, race
Where do we go from here? The words are coming out all weird Where are you now when I need you?“
SET LIST — RADIOHEAD @ SAN JOSE HP PAVILION, 11 APR 2012
1. Bloom
2. 15 Step
3. Morning Mr. Magpie
4. Kid A
5. Staircase
6. The Gloaming (Softly Open Our Mouths in the Cold)
7. The National Anthem
8. The Amazing Sounds of Orgy
9. Climbing Up the Walls
10. Karma Police
11. Identikit
12. Lotus Flower
13. There There
14. Feral
15. Little by Little
16. Reckoner
Encore
17. Separator
18. I Might Be Wrong [tour debut]
19. Myxamatosis
20. Everything In Its Right Place
Final Encore
21. The Daily Mail
22. Planet Telex [tour debut, first performance since 2009]
MEDIA ROOTS — Jason Forrest‘s name used to be synonymous with the electronic music genre breakcore and with expert remixing and plunderphonics under his own name as well as the alias, “Donna Summer” (possibly to confuse unsuspecting Donna Summer fans in record stores). For the last decade, Forrest has run his own record label ‘Cock Rock Disco.’ He now resides in Germany and has founded, and now maintains, with the help of many volunteer workers, the net’s best curated internet video repository, Network Awesome.
Jason Forrest: “Network Awesome is a website that broadcasts six video programs a day. These programs can be collections of music based on a theme, or whole movies, or documentaries, or anything else. All the shows then go into an archive that’s organized by theme, type, style, etcetera. Or, in other words, we’re like a TV station, but online, free, and damn good.”
MR: “I heard of you in the form of ‘Donna Summer’ when I first visited New York. I asked the store clerk at Kim’s Video if they carried any really good local electronic music and she handed me a copy of your CD—”This Needs To Be Your Style.”
Jason Forrest: “Wow! That’s so cool to hear! I don’t think I ever really got any love from those guys before, so that feels nice!”
MR: “Since then you’ve been running a record label, Cock Rock Disco, and continuing with your own musical projects.
“Most recently, I have been seeing a lot about Network Awesome and watching it myself, without realizing it was ran by none other than Jason Forrest.
“How did Network Awesome start? Was it a gradual build or was there a lot of pre-planning involved?”
Jason Forrest: “I started thinking about what was to become Network Awesome back in the summer of 2010. After doing a lot of research on both broadcast TV Networks and also investigating a lot of online video sites (especially what works and what doesn’t work), I reached out to a friend, Greg Sadetsky, to develop the idea. Then, in a mad flurry, we built the basic version of the site in about five weeks and launched it on January 1st, 2011. For the first few months we were both doing a lot of other stuff, but around May of last year we started to really focus on the site. And since then it’s been one exciting thing after another!”
MR: “At first glance Network Awesome seems like a really sophisticated Youtube playlist; what makes it different than a playlist?”
Jason Forrest: “It’s more like a library filled with books and each book is made of lists. We currently have over 4,200 shows that extend in pretty much all areas of culture and entertainment.”
MR: “Was your history as a crate-digger/sample-sleuth valuable for scouring the internet for obscure content?”
Jason Forrest: “Great question, it actually didn’t dawn on me until a few months into the project that Network Awesome acts very much in the same way that my previous music did. But while we do play a lot of lesser-known media, I know that it is not our agenda at Network Awesome to be obscure.”
Jason Forrest: “Some were, like the Awesome Drummers show. But Network Awesome actually has something like 148 volunteers who work on the site. So, there’s so many ideas flying around that I can’t claim them all! Haha!”
MR: “You just answered one of my next questions. I imagine if you would do it yourself it would be a full-time job to find constant content. Any obstacles when having that much content coming in?”
Jason Forrest: “Network Awesome is getting to the point where we have so much great content that it’s become a problem to organize and present it efficiently to the viewer. We just made a major design update, which has made the site so much better to stumble upon great stuff, but it’s possible to improve still.”
MR: “With the introduction of high end consumer multimedia, Blueray and other media players and Apple TV that have access to Netflix, Vudu, Amazon, do you think there is a place for Network Awesome in this arena? A lot of these players come with Youtube built in, but the navigation to different videos is cumbersome.”
Jason Forrest: “‘Cumbersome‘ – haha! I think of Youtube as an unbelievable public database, and while their search functions are very good, it’s not an enjoyable experience. I think Network Awesome can be both compatible and competition to the sites you mentioned. And, if we continue to grow at this rate, we’ll also become a force for a better quality of content as well.”
MR: “By cumbersome, I was referring to the way wireless network-capable TVs and DVD players now commonly have a Youtube feature that requires a numerical remote control to search through it.
“It feels ‘half-hearted’ because it’s far easier to just search for a video on your computer with a alphabetical keyboard. If someone just simply had a ‘Network Awesome‘ button on this interface it would make the experience 100 times more enjoyable.
“Do you ever ponder the idea that Network Awesome is such a good concept, a big company may base a commercial product off of it?”
Jason Forrest: “That’s what we’re actively working towards, but we also have the belief that it’s possible to make a profitable company that also supports interesting content. I think the idea that advertisers are only interested in the broadest definition of the mass market is not really true anymore. We’re already starting to produce original content in collaboration with sponsors, so we feel there’s a lot of potential there!”
MR: “Network Awesome caused me to have a paradigm shift where I first saw the ideal use of ‘on demand’ content; in the right hands, it can be an extremely powerful cultural tool. Do you agree that Network Awesome, even though it doesn’t host new mainstream reality TV episodes (why would it), is one of the best curated and most complete ‘niche’ streaming video databases on the entire internet?
If you are too humble about the word ‘best,’ how would you describe it yourself?”
Jason Forrest: “It’s funny; even though I started Network Awesome, I don’t see it as an extension of my ego. So, I’m happy to tell people how great we are! Haha! If you take a look at the quality of what we show every day – and you compare it to the absolutely horrible state of much of broadcast TV and the many sites that focus exclusively on viral videos, then you might say we’re the best thing on the internet. I mean, I like it. Haha.”
While you wait for Breaking Bad to come back on the air, you try to fill the ‘TV-show void’ with things like Enlightened, The Walking Dead, Californication, or even Dexter (this is one I’m embarrassed to say I did). In modern TV show canon, Breaking Bad is unparalleled in its caliber of acting, characters, and writing. Dare we say it, perhaps the greatest TV show ever (besides The Wire)? The genius behind Breaking Bad is Vince Gilligan. Vince grew up in Richmond, Virginia, bringing his southern charm to the medium. He tells dark tales that remind one of the Coen brothers (Fargo, No Country for Old Men) and Joe Dante (Gremlins, The ‘Burbs), effortlessly mixing together comedy, horror, and thriller while not seeming like a trite mixture of the three.
A perfect example of these sensibilities is when in Episode 2 of Breaking Bad, Jesse and Walt have to dispose of a body. Walt suggests using acid that eats through flesh and bone but not a particular kind of plastic barrel, he sends Jesse to the store, but Jesse gives up after a cursory search for said barrel. While in the midst of a meth bender, Jesse decides to use the upstairs aluminum bathtub instead; and you can probably guess the rest. Before Breaking Bad, Vince Gilligan was responsible for some of the more strange, gory, and borderline-funny episodes of The X-Files, which if you look closely contain some of the kernels that would later be used as the groundwork for Bad.
Vince Gilligan’s X-Files Work
Pusher Season 3’s “Pusher” pitted Mulder and Scully against a ‘mentalist’ who could convince another person to commit suicide simply by whispering in his ear. This killer is tracked down via a classified advertisement he places in a mercenary magazine offering his services. Gilligan showed his affinity here for the expert criminal mastermind ‘hiding in plain sight,’ much like Gus in Breaking Bad. One notable scene involves a SWAT team going after the Pusher, only to find one SWAT member returning covered in gasoline and holding a lighter, mumbling incomprehensibly before setting himself ablaze.
Leonard Betts Even before ‘Bad you can see that Gilligan was interested in pushing the censorship boundaries. Season 4’s ‘Leonard Betts’ that singlehandedly pushed the limits of what you could show on network television. The episode opens up with a pair of paramedics on an ambulance helping a man who’s dying of an unknown illness (Leonard knows simply by touching the man that he has cancer). The ambulance crashes in a high speed collision. At the scene of the accident you see Leonard’s severed head lying on the street. Later you find out that he can ‘grow’ another head (which they show you with no cut away) because you see he is part Lizard, oh and eats cancer to survive.
Bad Blood “Bad Blood” from Season 5 (where Vince Gilligan and the show itself really hit it’s stride), follows the team to a remote trailer park in the south where a vampire is drugging people unconscious and sucking their blood. The episode starts with Mulder using a piece of a broken wooden chair to kill what appears to be a child; Mulder in fervor thinks he just killed a vampire. He pulls out of the kids mouth a pair of fake sharpened vampire teeth and exclaims, ‘Oh, … Shiii’ interrupted by the X-files theme. Again, the hiding in plain sight theme is present with vampires sleeping in coffins inside their RVs. Could this scenario have been inspired by Vince’s affinity for the trailer park meth underworld?
Folie A Deux Using the background of a cold call in center for an employee going postal, but not because he’s depressed, but because his boss is a insect hybrid who creates human zombies out of his own employees by injecting them through the neck with poison fangs. In the episode, Mulder finds the clue ‘hiding in the light’ linking back to an old case about a shape-shifter who appears normal until seen in the dark. We don’t want to be redundant, but Vince seems to really like this theme.
Hungry Alan Moore likes to deconstruct and flip upside-down super-hero tropes with Watchmen, where super heroes are portrayed as flawed destructive human beings. Vince takes the X-files trope of ‘monster of the week’ and shows us the inverse effect. What if you were a cannibal mutant working at a shitty fast food restaurant but were also a nice guy? The entire episode revolves around the monster this time instead of Mulder and Scully.
Other Notable Gilligan Episodes “Field Trip,” Season 6 “Dreamland,” Season 6
Vince Gilligan’s Film Work
Vince Gilligan has also taken a stab at full length movies, not just writing scripts, but also directing his own material. His first film was Wilder Napalm that he wrote, but not directed—a very uneven first theatrical film attempt starring Dennis Quaid about two life-long best friends with supernatural powers to manifest fire. Mixing a love triangle romantic comedy with some really dark and strange subject matter, the movie never quite coheres. Some parts work, like the idea of portraying grown men who have god-like powers in shitty jobs like a circus clown. The full movie is viewable on YouTube.
Home Fries, the first film Gilligan directed. The marketing for this film was completely wrong, giving the impression it was a throw-away romantic comedy when, in fact, it was a movie about a very dysfunctional family whose matriarchal mother, through passive-aggressive behavior and coercion, gets her two grown military sons to commit murder for her. In the opening scene Luke Wilson plays opposite Jake Busey who chases down a man leaving a fast food drive-thru with an attack helicopter. They fire at him when he tries to surrender. They just wanted to ‘scare him’ by using blanks, but the man has a heart attack.
It turns out this man was their stepfather who was caught cheating by their mother.
The mother won’t let it end there, however, and sends her boys out on a scouting mission to find out who the woman is. Luke Wilson’s character quickly discovers it’s a totally innocent fast-food employee played by Drew Barrymore. The rest of the movie involves him trying to misdirect Busey’s character into getting closer to assassinating her. It has its flaws but the plot and acting is top tier and there aren’t very many if any movies like it. Catherine O’Hara as the psychotic mother should have garnered an Oscar nomination. Home Fries may be viewed in it’s entirety on YouTube.
Hancock, a more recent film starring Will Smith as a drunk, abusive, and destructive super hero was by all accounts a misfire. Directed not by Gilligan, but by Peter Berg (who can’t direct his way out of a paper bag) and based on a script by Gilligan. Some decent ideas thrown into the mix but has a third act, which completely ruins the entire film.
So, while you have your Gilligan withdrawals try some of those in the meantime (and go here if you need even more). After all Breaking Bad’s 5th will be its final season. In many interviews, Gilligan has said that his goal from the very beginning was to turn ‘Mr Chips into Scarface,’ in reference to Walt. If you have watched Breaking Bad up until its most recent conclusion, and you are familiar with Scarface, short of trying his own product and shooting a family member dead, Walt has pretty much surpassed Scarface. I, for one, am excited to see where this man’s mind takes us next; maybe somebody will see his value as a filmmaker, similar to how studios plucked J.J. Abrams from TV. Let’s hope, for his next project, he’s not as prescient as he was in The Lone Gunman pilot.
MEDIA ROOTS – This set is dedicated to the people of Syria. May the Syrian citizenry be able to reach a more peaceful climate and the senseless bloodshed be over.
Love,
ATOP Akkad the Orphic Priest
All the featured music on the mix can be found through searching discogs.com or by emailing me: [email protected].
MEDIA ROOTS – ATOP’s new DJ set invokes the feelings of youth: stressless times, happy summers and less responsibilities. This is a mix of tunes that have changed the lives of many–perfect for the season.
MEDIA ROOTS — Despite reticent airplay from corporate rock stations around the S.F. Bay Area, radio stations which tend to stick to the band’s older hits squeezed into their ultra-commercial agenda, modern rock band 
MEDIA ROOTS — 
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While you wait for 
Artist List: