My Amazon Reviews: A-Ha "Scoundrel Days"

The Band That Cried Wolf

4 Out of 5 Stars

I have a feeling that the suits at Warner Brothers probably had to take some stomach settlers after A-Ha delivered "Scoundrel Days," their second album. "Where's the "Take on Me" hit," they probably whimpered? Because unlike the sugary Duran Duran pop that A-Ha's first big hit delivered, "Scoundrel Days" was dark, menacing pop, and while the video that made the band stars dressed them up as pretty boys, this album made them look thoughtful and more than a little dark.

That change-up was something I really enjoyed about this album. A-Ha may have come from a power-pop start, but they evolved quickly into a pop band with a dark center. Even with the crystalline falsetto of Morton Harkett, the band could not disguise the anguish of the title track or the atmospheric dread of "Cry Wolf." They also sound more mature. "The Swing of Things" has smooth glide to it, and should have been the first single. "Soft Rains of April" is a gorgeous waltz that closes the album with a soft goodbye. I enjoyed the first a-ha album, but songs like the ones on "Scoundrel Days" made me a fan.

PS: The bonus tracks are OK; other than the live tracks on disc 2 and the extended versions on disc on, they're negligible. (Caveat; I'm not a big fan of demo-versions.)

  

My Amazon Reviews: "Idiocracy" DVD

Keeping America Stupid: The End Result - 4 out of 5 Stars

There was once a Saturday Night Live skit where Steve Martin and Bill Murray played a pair of cavemen. Martin was the brainy one, Murray the muscle lug. Martin would get Murray to do all the tasks while insisting that they worked best because "You're the strongest, and I'm the smartest!" At the end of the skit, Murray picks up a boulder and crushes Martin with it...proclaiming "Now I'm the strongest AND the smartest."

"Idiocracy" brought that sketch to mind as Joe Bauers (a slacker Luke Wilson) and a Rita, a prostitute played by SNL's Maya Rudolph are thrown 500 years into a future where mad rabbit breeding by trailer-trashers has led to a massive outnumbering of smart people, who held their family growth in check. Ultimately, the only thing left is a populous of monosyllabic mouth breathers who sit on chairs that double as toilets, suck junk food from tubes and have made "Ow My Balls" the highest rated show on TV. Imagine Beavis and Butthead as a live action show, and you've got "Idiocracy."

When Joe and Rita discover that, even as average as they are, they're now the smartest people on the planet, the comedy kicks in. The humor is blacker than black, and it seems more than a little prophetic. In 2006, it's alleged Fox dumped this movie as quickly as they could to perform a contractual obligation to director/writer Mike Judge before throwing it to the DVD market. The story went that Fox wasn't too keen on the vicious anti-consumer message (Fox News in 2500 is being delivered by a naked man and a buxom woman, Starbucks is now a sex parlor and Latte is a euphemism for "hand-job"). But seeing the "town halls" that erupted in 2009, with "common people" on a rampage about birth certificates and death panels makes me wonder if Judge hadn't discovered the "time masheen" in his movie and taken a quickie trip forward. The scene in the hospital where patients are playing slot machines for a chance at health care would be funnier if it didn't seem so much like current affairs.

"Idiocracy" isn't for everyone. The dark humor is more than stabbing, and often cruel. But if you ever worried that Brave New World was going to be more Beavis and Butthead than Star Trek, you should get a look at this timely and nasty satire.

My Amazon Reviews: The Fools "Sold Out/Heavy Mental"

More than just local talent, September 23, 2009
By Tim Brough "author and music buff" (Springfield, PA United States) - See all my reviews

There will always be rock and roll royalty, but what we really need are more fools. These Fools in particular came out of Boston during the new wave splash of the early 80's, and these two albums were the sum of their EMI/Capitol output. They were probably to kooky for their own good (missing from this is their notorious Talking Heads parody single, "Psycho Chicken"), but they still had terrific energetic musicianship and enough sense to make their straight-up cover a version of Roy Orbison's "Running Scared."

"Running Scared" actually cracked the top 50, while the single from "Sold Out," "It's A Night For Beautiful Girls" (a terrific single reminiscent of early Joe Jackson) became a cult fave on modern rock radio. There's plenty of evidence here that The Fools could have gotten bigger; while "Sold Out" was an obvious attempt at EMI trying to hitch them to acts like The Knack, "Heavy Mental" found the band opening for the likes of Van Halen. (Hey, Blotto used to open for Blue Öyster Cult.) The Fools were solid enough to bridge both crowds, but like so many bands of that period, they got lost in the crowd.

Even if they couldn't break out of their northeastern fan base (they still gig and record in New England), songs like "Local Talent," "Sad Story" "What I Tell Myself" and a rave up cover of "I Won't Grow Up," prove The Fools were smarter than most people let on. Great to find this out from the American Beat label.