The Automatik

El Matador
February 9, 2002

If you notice, I did not include the name of the opening band. That is because I never caught it. They said it several times, it was even printed on a flyer, but it was long and it was some sort of bizarre Spanglish and I just didn’t feel like writing it down. After BJM, nothing else seemed to matter anyway.
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Kenny’s Key West
February 10, 2002

“The more you drink, the better we sound!”
-Vanilla Ice, Lundi Gras 2002
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The Shim Sham Club
February 2, 2002

Yet another one of my “I’m not that big of a fan but I know I can’t miss this” shows. Seems like those are all the shows I go to lately. But they all turn out to be pretty interesting and mostly enjoyable, at least.
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The Shim Sham Club
January 18, 2002

Jim Carroll is a legend, but my friends, I was a Jim Carroll virgin. Sure, I’ve seen The Basketball Diaries and even heard some of his “hits,” but never read any of his poetry or heard any of his more recent music, spoken word or otherwise.
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“If any of us write a song that’s negative towards a person or subject, Chris automatically thinks we’re singing about him,” claims Ferguson.

“Like ‘Good In Everyone’,” argues Murphy.

“It has nothing to do with you,” explains songwriter Pentland.

“It’s sarcastic about me,” contends Murphy.

“Holy cow,” sighs Pentland, “it’s so not about you.”
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Frank Sinatra called, he wants his movie back.

I don’t regret that I’ve never seen the original version of this film. Although a movie with Peter Lawford and Sammy Davis, Jr. does sound appealing, I don’t think I could stomach Ol’ Blue Eyes for two solid hours. In these times of fervent, almost paranoid nationalism, I will stand proudly by my statement that I do not like Frank Sinatra. I never have and probably never will.
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It’s oh so fine getting out of your mind as long as you can find your way back in.

Pulp was one of my favorite bands for four entire years; I scarcely listened to anything else from 1996 to 1999. Then they took several years to work on the follow up to This is Hardcore and I got tired of waiting; they basically disappeared from my radar. Yet as the release date of We Love Life approached, I grew rabidly anxious. This Is Hardcore, while featuring such excellent tunes as “Help The Aged,” “Party Hard” and the title track, was rather an anomaly in the Pulp catalogue, even more than the stratospherically popular Different Class, so I was hoping for a return to old skool Pulp (like my favorite album of theirs, His ?n’ Hers).
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The Shim Sham Club
November 29, 2001

I’ve seen El Vez and his Memphis Mariachi and El Vettes so many times, I can’t even remember how many. He always puts on a good show and I am always entertained, delighted, and frequently thrilled.
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The first time I saw this movie, I hated it. I hated the flat, emotionless voice over and the faux-Film Noir stylings. I loathed this movie for the next four years and dreaded the idea of having to analyze it for my Science Fiction Cinema class when I was a junior in college. After I watched it, though, I did a Pauline Kael and realized that it was truly amazing. I loved it even more when the Director’s Cut was released a few years later without all that ridiculous voice-over rubbish.
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The Shim Sham Club
November 24, 2001

One of the great things about club shows is that they’re relatively inexpensive ($8 to $15) so if the band sucks, you don’t feel like you got ripped off. Ironically, this was one of the better shows I’ve seen by a band I’d never heard before and I didn’t even have to pay! My friend Laura, who was working with the promoters, put me on her “plus one” list. Yay!
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