SAVED_TM

A personal archive. Follow on Instagram at: SAVED_TM_MUSIC and SAVED_TM_MOVIES

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FILM POSTERS OF THE 60s: THE ESSENTIAL MOVIES OF THE DECADE from the Reel Poster Gallery Collection, Edited by Tony Nourmand and Graham Marsh | Most movie posters should burn. Especially since the appearance of Photoshop. Being able to use Photoshop hardly makes one a graphic designer; like how using your oven hardly makes you a chef. I feel that studios are starting to realize this, but for a while almost everything became giant floating heads, horrible lens flares, and tacky type built into formulaic 'art'. Still, barely any illustrators (traditional) are being put to work, almost nothing seems to really be designed but rather just sort of laid out, and the entire concept of 'concept' seems lost among many. If you want to see some of the greatest movie posters get any of the books (sorted by decade or genre) from London's Reel Poster Gallery who happen to have a staggering collection of well, real posters from the world over. This book focuses on the best of the 1960s. Pictured is a spread featuring three posters for a movie with one of the greatest car chase scenes of all time, 'Bullitt' (two from the USA, one from Italy), and a spread with a British poster for their very own James Bond in 'Goldfinger'. Classic. I still have it on VHS. Maybe it'll find its way into this feed.

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MINISTRY at Best Buy Theater (NYC, USA / June 23, 2012) | Four years ago today my buddy Dean took me as his guest to see one of the all-time greats, Ministry. I met up with him and some of the guys in the band at Carmine's before a few of us headed to the Royalton for pre-show drinks. (Not Al, of course.) On the way I thought back to their album The Mind is a Terrible Thing to Taste and how aggressive, abrasive, and abusive it was, yet there I was about 20 years later walking along 44th with some of the nicest guys whose smiles contradicted their sound. We remained friendly acquaintances from there on, even meeting up for dinner once at the Bird in Berlin—a nice surprise to be in the same city at the same time. It was there that I had the pleasure of getting to know Mike Scaccia before his untimely passing. They're still pressing on though. After all, Ministry endures.

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RADIOHEAD: JUST | I'm not into Radiohead the way I used to be, but from '93 through '03 I may've been borderline obsessive. My parents suffered Pablo Honey at 7:00 AM before school. Girls wound up with songs from The Bends on dedicated mixtapes. Friends finally conceded and said okay to OK Computer. The last half of their career—which I put at anything post Hail to the Thief—really didn't do anything for me, including the side projects that any of the members were part of. Boring. Seriously. I can't listen to any of that stuff and honestly say that it rocks (and I know that some of it's not supposed to), nor can I listen to any of it and say it's interesting. A) So what if it is. B) It's not. There was a time when they did both though. 'Just' is from that time. I love that era, and although I don't feel my anticipation build up to every new release like I once did, they're truly one of the greats, because like it or not even at their worst they've been better than most.

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GILDA | "Gilda, are you decent?" Rita Hayworth's entrance dropped me dead. The film itself solidified noir as my favorite genre. I began to actually study it, watching and reading as much as I could on the niche subject. In doing so I learned that there are three Ms to film noir: murder, mystery, and mayhem. But I say there are more. Ten more to be exact, because what seems to have been forgotten is mischievous manipulating misandrist molls mostly meeting misanthropic men missing money. That makes thirteen, see? There are thirteen Ms to film noir. Very unlucky.

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ERASURE at Terminal 5 (NYC, USA / September 14, 2011) | My buddy’s six-foot-six and plays in a popular industrial band. He’s covered in ink, wears all black unless it’s pink, has a penchant for unicorns, and loves Erasure. He hit me up a few days before this show saying “Guess what.” I didn’t know. “You like Erasure, right?!” Kinda. I told him that I liked some songs and that ‘Chains of Love’ and ‘A Little Respect’ are undeniable. Hashtag truth, as the kids say. “Well guess what. I got us tickets to see them! Happy belated birthday!” My birthday was two weeks previous to this call. It’s not a gift I would’ve chosen, but I was excited for it. Not so much to see Erasure but to see my friend at the show itself, jumping up and down doing a syncopated dance in what would possibly be the most glitter filled crowd I’d ever been a part of. It was. And he did not disappoint. Neither did the show. Afterwards we walked through Times Square and stopped at Europa Café to use the restroom. I stood outside of the window and took a pic of the growing line forming outside of the bathroom door—all female, about ten deep, and enough to make any man sweat, so I texted it to him while he was still on the throne. Not happy. Not. Happy. From there I raced to Murray Hill on the east side. I’d met this Dutch girl that was visiting New York a couple of nights beforehand and I was taking her out that night. (She’s rad. Still is.) We recited Step Brothers on Avenue B and some Mexican guy jumped out of a bodega and finished a scene for us. The remainder of the night provided one of my best memories ever, but I consider myself too much of a gentleman to write about it. Regardless, with that I’d come to the conclusion that if you want your night to be an unforgettable epic experience worthy of summer blockbuster trailer, make sure Erasure’s playing. All you need is just one song.

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REPULSION | While in college I had some crappy five-dollar version of this on VHS. I watched it all the time. Even with the volume off I'd just let it run in the background while I did other things in my home with some music on. I continue to do so with this copy I got a decade ago. It just looks great, and honestly I can probably watch Catherine Deneuve all day. Even when she's a frigid and delusional man-killer. Actually, maybe especially when she's a frigid and delusional man-killer. Criminally gorgeous she's always been my French femme fatale.

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DURAN DURAN: RIO | If you don't like this album, you're wrong. If you don't like Duran Duran, we can't be friends. Sorry. This is ABBA level perfection here and you have shitty taste in music. My guess is that you have shitty taste in just about everything. Especially food since that's solely about taste. Do you even like pizza? Pizza's the best. And even though I refrain from eating it outside of a 100 mile radius of NYC (or basically not north of New Haven, not south of Philly, and as close to the Atlantic as possible), it's still the best. Across continents and cultures it's become synonymous with a good time. It's simple, digestible, and makes you feel good. It is pop culture defined by way of food. Just a few innocuous ingredients put together to make something so simple and excellent that its crafted nuance is taken for granted. This is Duran Duran. Duran Duran is pizza. Rio is the special slice and I'm hungry like the wolf. Why settle for anything less? Have you ever had pizza in Pittsburgh? It's a fucking nightmare.

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TOUCHING FROM A DISTANCE: IAN CURTIS AND JOY DIVISION by Deborah Curtis | About ten years ago I realized that I'd read more about Joy Division than I did about Ian Curtis himself. All I knew was what just about any fan knew—he was from England, he was in a band that made music we loved, he was adored by goths and punks alike… and he hung himself. End of story. A horrible one that most of us had only learned through hearsay and articles that were verging myth. But the story of Touching from a Distance was written by Deborah, Ian's widow. And it's within this context that the inclusion of Ian's lyrics provide an abstract sense of Ian writing it along with her. (Maybe that's a romanticized view, but you wouldn't be reading it if you weren't a romantic to begin with.) If you want to delve into what's probably the most intimate account of Ian Curtis then read Touching from a Distance, and hope that it's the closest you ever get to that kind of life.

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BAND OF OUTSIDERS | I used to have a membership to the Film Forum, a theatre where I was able to go watch old films and rare prints whenever I wanted. One day I grabbed this postcard advertising an upcoming run of one of my favorite movies of all time, Band of Outsiders. It must've been 15 years ago, back in 2001. A few days later than the date printed on the card I was sitting in that theatre reading subtitles for the next hour and a half. I'd wanted to see this movie ever since I first saw a still of Anna Karina dancing in the café. If I ever had my own café I'd project that scene against a wall and just let it loop. It'd be life size so that people could dance along, inserting themselves into the movie right beside Anna and her thieving friends, becoming a café of co-conspirators. I need investors.

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FUGAZI: REPEATER | In 1993 my buddy had this piece of shit Buick Skylark. It was grey, the brakes sucked, and the car stereo hung by a wire off the ashtray filled with used up crooked Camels. Whenever we’d insert a cassette it kind of swung a bit and jumped around on bumpy roads and hard turns. This is where I first heard Repeater and for a long while it had hardly left the deck. This was our introduction to Fugazi. Not just for me and my bud, but for most, if not all of our peers. We worked backwards from there, picking up Margin Walker or 13 Songs, and caught up with Steady Diet of Nothing and In on the Kill Taker. We sought out more Ian MacKaye projects, and although they weren’t exactly hardcore, we became curious about the scene down in Washington, DC. However, as much of it as I was able to experience during my pre-Internet teens, nothing from that scene came close to touching Fugazi. They brought an intelligence to music that was fresh to my ears, where compositions took unexpected twists, faking you out like the first time you saw an M. Night Shyamalan flick. Their sound also prepared me for when I eventually moved to New York three years later—only a 40 mile distance and less than an hour away, but an entirely different world—easing me into the angular art-rock of the late ‘70s and ‘80s that the East Village and LES had never (thankfully) let go of. Listening to Fugazi truly felt like an education in music, and I recommend learning this album.

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ROB ZOMBIE at Starland Ballroom (Sayreville, New Jersey, USA / June 6, 2015) | One year ago today I was at a venue in the middle of nowhere on some backroad surrounded by trees, dirt lots, old industrial buildings, and an audience that truly were the Devil’s rejects. I found some safety, and water, backstage for a short while but rushed out to claim a good spot with my camera. I snapped some pics for the first three songs and watched the rest of the set side-stage, smiling as wide as I did back in the days of White Zombie. Rob Zombie is a master of his craft. He’s the one that we wanted. He is the Superbeast.

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THE BREAKFAST CLUB | Fact: The only reason I ever owned an overcoat was because of Bender. Probable Facts: A) the only reason anyone knows 'Don't You (Forget About Me)' by Simple Minds is because of this movie, B) guys started wearing their girlfriends earrings after seeing it, C) Bart Simpson stole the "eat my shorts" line, and D) if you're a girl you tried to replicate Molly Ringwald's lipstick application scene, but if you're a guy that image went straight into 'the bank'. I probably revisit this movie every two or three years as it's undoubtedly my favorite flick featuring the Brat Pack, and because it focuses on the struggle of teenage identity it's possibly the most enduring of John Hughes films as well. (Aside from Ferris Bueller's Day Off, so calm down.) For as long as there's high school—full of its misunderstood miscreants, inebriated introverts, anxiety-ridden academics, joyless jocks, and ridiculed rich-girls—this movie will remain ageless.

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BLONDE REDHEAD: MELODY OF CERTAIN DAMAGED LEMONS | Whenever Kazu sings I think of Wendy, Shelley Duvall's character in The Shining. I imagine it's her band and that she's meekly dancing to her own awkward groove, hair flat in black greasy ribbons with her ears poking through, slightly swimming in ill fitting clothing just outside of cool. It's a terrific album. 

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VIDEODROME | Horrifying. Not for gore or cheap scare tactics, but because in 1983 David Cronenberg was able to prophecize where we would be today in regards to what we consider entertainment, and questioned to what extent would we tolerate our own perverted voyeurism. We now watch not actors, but real people being executed from our televisions as we eat our dinner; we scour the Internet in search of violence as we sit in our underwear; faceless organizations threaten via crafted sensationalism and we hit 'share'; and we can no longer take anything at face value, because for all we know it may not be real in the first place. This is Videodrome, and this is us. DOUBLE FEATURE: Watch this along with The Running Man (starring Arnold Schwarzenegger), a movie based off of a Stephen King story where people either survive or die on a popular game show. For our viewing pleasure, of course.

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CHEMICAL BROTHERS: EXIT PLANET DUST | This CD survived a crime. We’d driven all the way from Jersey to Toronto in my buddy’s filthy, red Honda Civic hatchback that only two hours in had its muffler drop out. We pulled over, walked back along the highway in the middle of the night, and picked it up. That became my pillow in the backseat (enter planet rust) and it set the tone for the next three days. My genius friend parked his ruby chariot behind some wall in the garage of the Days Inn Hotel where we were staying. It was the only spot not covered by surveillance cameras. The locks were popped, CD books were missing, and the stereo was ripped from the console, leaving a slick little shelf for us to place our maps as we navigated our way home. We called it “the map holder” and it was probably the most expensive map holder you’d ever seen. Maybe a thousand dollars. A thousand dollars is a lot of money for an empty space. Especially back in 1995. The only thing that wasn’t taken was a small black case placed under a seat that held 24 CDs. My CDs. The good ones. Including this this one, Exit Planet Dust. It made sense that the thieves had horrible taste. They broke into a Civic.

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CHEAP TRICK: HEAVEN TONIGHT | I’d be lying if I said that I’ve heard all of Cheap Trick’s albums, or that I’m even a huge fan. A huge fan knows much more about them than I do. However, I’m a huge fan of this particular record. Paula Scher co-designed the album, and honestly, that’s half the reason I got it. She taught at the School of Visual Arts where I was attending at the time. The other reason to have it was simply because just about every goddamn band that I dug had praised them as greats. They were right. ‘Surrender’, 'Auf Weidersehen’, and the title track 'Heaven Tonight’ are absolutely blow-away. Anyone should be so lucky to write such perfect rock. QUICK FACT: Producer Tom Werman also produced Mötley Crüe’s Shout at the Devil, Theatre of Pain, and Girls, Girls, Girls.

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A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS | This is not the first Spaghetti Western I’d ever seen. The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly was. Fistful of Dollars was the second. And that only seems right. How can one not be drawn to the origins of The Man with No Name after experiencing the end of his story? For a Few Dollars More soon followed, only to come full circle to TGTBATU. It’s really because of this trilogy—and not Sunday matinees—that I got into samurai films. Or Akira Kurosawa for that matter. Or Sergio Leone. Or Ennio Morricone. Or Clint Eastwood. I spend a significant amount of time in Berlin where I often pass a restaurant called Spaghetti Western. I gotta mosey on in next time.