I Watched Mission Impossible 4: Ghost Protocol

Last Wednesday I went to go see MI:4. I found it to be an alright action packed ham sandwich of a film.

Apparently, Tom Cruise is the kind of guy who likes to drink one beer and then leave the room.

Russians appear to be lacking in curiosity and will do whatever it takes to not follow up on weird sounds emanating from a hallway that is normally very quiet. 

One of the co-stars, Paula Patton, is very beautiful, but looks like she could break you in half. She may be Lyle Alzado reincarnated as a black supermodel. That or Rashida Jones on mega-steroids. Mr. Cruise may have been wearing 5 inch lifts in his loafers. 

Simon Pegg appears as a "nerd" and one that will not shut his pie chute. Jeremy Renner almost gets baked by a microchip.

Some of the stunts are great and the CGI is generally very good. The situations these people find themselves in though are beyond improbable and they never could arrive in time to do any of the things they do without the use of a time travel machine or a Jetta that travels at the speed of light. 

A lingering question: If Tom Cruise is so ripped and ready to kick ass, why can't he kick the ass of a dude that looks like he is in his late 50's, early 60's? I think there may be several nuclear briefcase to the face and nuts fight sequences in this. I cannot be sure. The stunt on the Dubai tower though is pretty amazing. Also, parking is completely fucked up in that country.

In other news, I am a proponent of these things. Can't live without them. Good for clearing out remnants of...

you guessed it: STRING BEANS.

Prancin' Paul says "Merry Christmas to all!!! AAAhhh...Yeaaaayy!!!"

This arrived in my mail yesterday. A real fine surprise (thanks SR). Just what the Hell is Paul prancin' about this time?

I WISH YOU A HAPPY HOLIDAY SEASON!

MAY ALL YOUR DREAMS COME TRUE IN THE NEW YEAR!

What If There Wasn't Any Beer?

ZIMA

   

 The answer to this question would have been "Zima"? Really, this is what would have been created? Where's the goddamned foam? I tried this stuff once and it tasted like lemonade. I would suggest that it doesn't taste too different from those Smirnoff ICE or Bacardi things. The problem is that you've had 4 of these by the time you've realized it. And then there was this alternative... 

 Anybody remember Pina Colada Malt Liquor? Gurgle. Ice Cube escapes in his car to visit the loneliest fridge in the world.

 

Bacon Ray- The Swab

Taking a break from recording "The Swab" 1998-Georgia Street Studios
Left to Right: Bruce, Merlin, Brent, Mike
Center: Taco Maker

The link to the Zip file is after my long winded history lesson at the bottom of the post.

An interesting story...about 6 months ago I spoke with Merlin Mann about trying to post our catalog for Bacon Ray  and possibly remixing "The Swab". I have been in the process of going through master tapes to try to find and salvage some of them as they've all been subject to less than ideal storage conditions including several flooding incidents. The mold is a-growin'. Merlin was game so I went about trying to find the tapes. I have not located them as of yet and in my busy schedule I kind of gave up for the time being. Oh, I am sure they're down there in one of the 8 huge bins of ADAT master tapes (cringe!!!). I'm just not so sure they will be playable.

Out of nowhere and in a stroke of luck/coincidence I saw a post by Dave Murphy on Facebook about how he was remastering this cd. A more accurate depiction would be "Mastering". Thanks also to Pete Butler for caring enough to get this to Dave.

Recorded mainly in '97-'98, "The Swab" was an album released alongside the implosion of Bacon Ray. We worked really hard on this record, but it was recorded in a rather arduous process as Georgia Street Studios was in the midst of falling apart, band members were going through troubling times and the end was nigh for the band. So we were unable to give a proper mix and mastering job to this album as opposed to "The Golden Master" which was a mammoth project that we spent a lot of time and effort putting together. We did this one mostly ourselves with some tracking and mixdown assistance from Tommy Hamilton and some guest spots on keys and sax from Afshin Beheshti. Because of these situations, some indifference to the end and my inexperience and tin ears for monitor mixes, it turned out kind of thin sounding and the levels from song to song were really all over the place. We ended up pressing maybe a few hundred cds on the cheap and doing a black and white cover.

Dave Murphy...we owe you big time. You have really done a great job remastering this.

Honestly, I have not listened to this record much past it's original date. I had to go back and relearn some stuff from it when Bacon Ray did a great reunion gig at the Down Under about 6 or 7 years ago (it's been that long!?) and at that time I was less than happy with how it sounded, but I thought the material was good.

What struck me was that this record was pretty dark in spots and I think the people that were into us thought of us as kind of a goofy bunch of dudes writing songs about Metal Magicians and Pantsmen. Stuff like that was still part of our overall approach, but something darker was brewing in this batch.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy it. Hard to believe this album is 12 years old! The link is below.

The Swab.zip

I Didn't Care for This Guy.

What a douche.

Time to get Il.

Rock and Roll Rot Gut

This is the lamest...is this what killed Bon Scott? I don't understand this new trend. 

Pairs well with formaldehyde.
I recommend a penicillin chaser
Killed by death.

The lunatic is on the crapper. Don't give me that goody good bullshit.

Pairs well with Cheetos.

With bonus existential horror.

Hints of Tawny Kitaen, hair spray and bologna.

The Pete Townshend/Alex Van Halen String Bean Connection

Growing up and dreaming of being a musician/rock God enabled me to read a lot of shitty music magazines. I was fascinated by some of the hair metal mags such as Circus and Hit Parader. They weren't always promoting RATT and bands of their ilk when they started, but that's about all they had in their pages in the early to mid-80's. Pasty coked out morons with pointy guitars singing about dealin' with the Devil and shoveling as much of the aforementioned Dark Lord's dandruff up their hoovers adorned the pages of these magazines. Everybody looked like they were packing a Vlasic in their spandex. Spinal Tap in the extreme.

The antithesis to these magazines  in my small universe were OPTION and MUSICIAN. I found out about both The Replacements and Husker DU through Musician and they usually had some pretty good interviews. OPTION gave me Sonic Youth around their "Bad Moon Rising" period. After all Musician gave us the immortal review of GTR's first album which read simply "SHT". Whatever happened to Max Bacon?

I hear he's toiling in a GTR tribute band as Max Bacos. Get it?

To put a meandering story to bed....

I was reading in Musician a  SERIOUS story about Van Halen where Alex Van Halen was asked about hearing loss.

He said he never wanted to get as bad as Pete Townshend. He said you could walk up to Townshend and say "Hey Pete, I'm fucking your wife" to which Townshend would respond "I like string beans".

The end. 

Maybe this never happened, but that article has haunted me for over 25 years so please wear your earplugs.