Road to the Oscars 2010!

With this Sunday's telecast of the Oscars just around the corner, I am really excited. It is just a great time to honor a year in art, performance, film and above all else creativity. This year is a David Vs. Goliath battle between big budget films Vs. small scale story-telling with films like Avatar, Up, Inglorious Basterds going against art house films like The Hurt Locker, Precious, An Education and many others. It will be interesting to watch and see who takes what. After viewing 99% of all the films, here is my list for 10 Best Films of 2009 as well as some of my Oscar picks. The Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin hosted Oscars can be seen Sunday at 7pm on ABC.

10 BEST FILMS OF 2009

1- The Hurt Locker
2- An Education
3- Star Trek
4- The Fantastic Mr. Fox
5- District 9
6- (500) Days of Summer
7- Moon
8- Precious
9- Up in the Air
10- Inglorious Basterds

**A special nod to James Cameron and Avatar, you cant have a film list from last year without mentioning it. The 3-D experience was one of the greatest I have ever had and was one of the greatest movie going experiences anyone could have. However, when the effects are gone, I felt it doesn't hold what these films did.

My Oscar Picks for 10 Categories:

Best Picture:
The Hurt Locker

Best Actor:
Jeff Bridges

Best Actress:
Sandra Bullock (though I really feel Carey Mulligan or Gabourey Sidibe deserve this)

Best Supporting Actor:
Christoph Waltz

Best Supporting Actress:
Mo'Nique

Best Director:
Kathryn Bigelow

Best Cinematography:
Mauro Fiore (Avatar)

Best Screenplay (Original):
Inglorious Basterds

Best Screenplay (Adapted):
Up in the Air

Best Original Song:
"The Weary Kind (Theme from Crazy Heart)" - T. Bone Burnett & Ryan Bingham

Erykah Badu w/ The Roots on Fallon!

R&B Queen Erykah Badu swung by Jimmy Fallon yesterday to showcase her latest single "Window Seat," off her latest Amerykah Part Two: Return of the Ankh. Badu got some support from long time friends The Roots as her backing band, check it out!

Quick News

My Chemical Romance drummer Bob Bryar has left the band. The band issued a statement on their website and did not state the reason for Bryar's departure and who a replacement will be. My Chem is expected to have a new album out later this year.

Gang Starr member Guru had suffered a heart attack that put the legendary emcee in a coma. After a successful surgery earlier this week, Guru is recovering and issused a statement to Allhiphop.com saying “I am doing fine and I am recovering! I’m weak though.” We wish Guru a nice recovery.

After rejoining his band exactly two years ago, bassist Eric Avery has left Jane's Addiction. Avery rejoined the California Alternative band he founded in 2008 at NME Awards. After recording and touring with his former band, Avery, who just got back from a tour of Oceania with Jane's tweeted "That’s it. With equal parts regret and relief, the Jane’s Addiction experiment is at an end.” I had seen Jane's Addiction twice before Avery rejoined in 2001 & 2003, I had the chance to catch the original line-up of the seminal band with Avery this past summer, take a look at that review HERE.

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers are set to release their first album of new material in four years, the follow up to 2006's Highway Companion, Mojo will arrive in May. Petty is set to hit the road this summer in support of his latest effort.

LCD Soundsystem's James Murphy is a busy man. Not only has he scored the latest Noah Baumbach film, Greenberg (due later this month), he finished his latest LCD record. The still untitled album will arrive May 18, take a look at the track listing below.

Dance Yrself Clean
Drunk Girls
One Touch
All I Want
Change
Hit
Pow Pow
Somebody's Calling Me
What You Need

Audio Bullys Cover & Tracklisting

Banging Euro DJ's Audio Bully's return with their first record in four years, High than the Eiffel on March 29. Take a look at the cover and track listing below.

Drums (On With The Story)
Only Man
Daisy Chains
Feel Alright
Twist Me Up
Dynamite
Drained Out
London Dreamer
The Future Belongs To Us
Shotgun
Dragging Me Down
Smiling Faces
Kiss The Sky
Goodbye

RISING ARTIST EXCLUSIVE! Rebecca Hart INTV!

In a male dominated genre, it is always refreshing to hear a strong, powerful and poetic woman. For New York's Rebecca Hart, she is just that. Sometimes playing with her band The Sexy Children, Hart is a show stopper and will have your eyes locked in on her beauty but ears opening to her amazing sound and voice. Think of her as a cross between the aggression of Patti Smith and the tenderness of Tori Amos. Whether she is fronting a band or just by herself, this artist knows how to get the attention of a room. I had the opportunity to speak to Rebecca about what its like coming from New York, her influences and style. Take a look at someone who could be your new favorite artist, Rebecca Hart.

Your style is so unique and fruitful. You combine so many different genres, who are some of your biggest influences?

RH: OK here goes. (with the usual caveat that "influences" doesn't necessarily mean "sounds like".

Suzanne Vega
Joni Mitchell (you gotta acknowledge Big Mama)
Rickie Lee Jones
Steely Dan
Jethro Tull
Paul Simon
Sting/The Police
Colin Hay
William Shakespeare
WB Yeats
Dr. Teeth & the Electric Mayhem

Theater has always played a major role in your live sets and music. Why is this?

RH: I was born into a theatre family and was in my first play at nine months old. My folks are both Theatre professors. I can't remember a time when I wasn't acting, when Theatre didn't seem like the most important thing in the world. I also can't remember a time when I wasn't making up songs and singing, though I didn't start on the guitar til I was 13. I've always been at home on stage (cue that Decemberists song), and probably because I was an actor first it's the live show that matters most to me when it comes to music.

Aside from making music, you act as well, which do you prefer more?

RH: If there was one I loved more, I'd have chosen it by now. I've always done both, and my life is sort of about living where the two intersect.

You have been releasing records on and off since 1996. How have you changed as an artist since your start?

RH: Musically I'd say the changes have been about paring away, stripping down. My first band came out of the "jam" scene in Providence RI and at that time it was all about playing as much! as many notes! which was how my writing style was then too. A million words, no space to breathe, a few different time signatures over the course of one song. Over time I began to ask myself, "What am I trying to say, and how can I just, you know, SAY it? How can I write poetry that's direct but still a lyric, not a conversation? How can I let a real Melody emerge and stand on its own?" That kind of thing. Also, I used to be too scared to talk to the audience at all!!
And now it's my favorite part almost.

How did you get linked up with The Sexy Children?

RH: In 2006..? I had just finished Crash & Strum with a bunch of sessions players and a hired producer and I wanted to play the songs out the way I heard them, with that full rock-band sound. I couldn't afford to hire "guns" to come in and do gigs consistently, and I also found that setup really demoralizing. What I wanted was a true collaboration with other artists, to create a sound WITH them. But, basically, I gave up on that and started doing mostly solo shows. Then there was one gig - ironically, for the mostly spoken-word series at Bar 13 (LouderARTS) - where I wanted a rhythm section. A friend referred me to drummer Dan Barman who he knew from the Drum & Bass Collective, and Dan suggested Matt Epstein on bass. We played in the corner of Bar 13 w/Dan on hand percussion. I liked them right away because they learned the
songs so fast! :-) and effortlessly and were fun, chill guys. We played more shows, then we formed a band with a guitarist from England for a while named Stuart Mason. He moved back to England and I went to Ireland for a month or so on tour. When I got back , Matt said, "I think my friend Dave Lott from my other band (LICORICE) should be our guitar player", and then he was. I really lucked out. It is true I think - it always happens when you stop looking. :-)

Your last record "Crash and Strum," was released in 2006, is a follow up in the works?

RH: Well, actually this year the Sexy Children and I put out a live EP called "Live at Joe's Pub" from our SOLD OUT debut show there in February 09. It's available on iTunes, from CDBaby, and at all shows. But we've also had an offer from a small startup label to start work on our first studio recording in spring 2010. (I'm spending Jan - March working on a play out of town!) We'll let you know ...

Over the past year or so, more people are starting to take notice to what you have been doing. Time Out New York mentioned "an impressively well-textured voice and a band that brings a potent dose of downtown NYC heat," how do you respond to this acclaim?

RH: By saying "YAY!!!" That writeup made us feel we were finally putting down roots in the NY scene. It was the same year we sold out Joes, that we played BAM, the Knitting Factory mainstage ,and Webster Hall (studio) for the first time. A good year.

Which song of yours means the most to you and why?

RH: I'd say "Planets" is pretty close to my heart because I feel that's where my writing style began to really 'turn' and mature. I feel it's a success in the "clean, direct, but still poetic" department. I like the phrasing; there's no loose ends or anything extra and I'm proud of that. And it's kinda
funny. :-)

For anyone that has never listened to you before, how would you describe your style and sound?

RH:Deeply poetic, funky, bluesy rock that doesn't take itself too seriously. It hangs out with the folk tradition sometimes but really doesn't live there anymore. I don't know. What would you say? I heard "Alt-Country" recently and it horrified me at first but then I was like, "that's cool."

Special thanks to Rebecca and Allison Prouty for the interview. For more info on Rebecca Hart check out http://www.rebeccahart.net/

From the Muddy Banks of the Gowanas

From the Muddy Banks of the Gowanas
Is Brooklyn the New Seattle?
By Bill Reese, infrequent contributor to OfficiallyAYuppie.com

INTRODUCTION

Vienna, 1780s. New Orleans, 1900s. Harlem, 1920s. Memphis, 1957. England, 1962. San Francisco, 1967. Detroit, 1968. Bronx, 1977. Athens, Georgia 1983. Compton/Long Beach, 1989. Seattle, 1991. Omaha, 2002. Montreal, 2005. Brooklyn, 2009?

This thesis asks the question of whether or not the current Brooklyn music scene is on par with the musical scene in Seattle in the early 1990s. The answer is complicated, somewhat contradictory, and surely to rile up emotions that need not be further stoked by this analysis.

In order to determine if Brooklyn is a “Seattle,” we must first describe what exactly a “Seattle” is. I have come up with several criteria that a scene must possess in order to qualify for “Seattle” status. I will also compare Brooklyn’s hipster renaissance to the other musical movements of the last century to establish a pattern of boomtowns and boomsounds.

PART ONE: Frances Farmer Will Have Her Revenge on Bushwick

CRITERIA #1:
The Leaders and the Pioneers

In each of the musical scenes listed above, there is at least one—and in some cases, seven or eight—artists or bands who are forever associated with the scene in which they emerge from. It can—at times—pigeonhole a group, forever associating them with other artists whose only commonality is their hometown.

It starts innocently enough. Some promising young artists begin playing shows with the same group of bands and for the same group of fans. There is typically one talent who excels above the rest, (Mozart in Vienna, Ellington in Harlem, N.W.A. in Compton) and that talent either inspires the other acts to want to be greater, or it inspires enough jealousy and resentment that their contemporaries attempt to one-up the competition.

Before long, you have a groundswell of talent. The scene begins to operate in a manner similar to a sports league. Each band competes against each other for influence, fan base, dominance, and of course, cash; while simultaneously promoting the entire scene as a whole. They work with and against one another.

It didn’t begin with Alice in Chains, Nirvana and Pearl Jam, there were pioneers and unsung heroes of the Seattle grunge scene that allowed those groups to stand on the shoulders of giants and achieve mainstream success. A scene also needs these pioneers to provide a foundation. The foundation establishes the scene as a true culture, not just a fad. They promote the core philosophy of the genre and represent the music in its most basic and unadulterated form. Once the genre goes mainstream, the cynics will point to groups like Mother Love Bone, Tad, The Melvins, Screaming Trees, or Mudhoney as the true pioneers. This helps if the pioneers never achieve anything similar to the mainstream success of their protégés.

Eventually, one group pushes through the door to the mainstream, allowing others in the scene to sneak in—either on the merits of their music or by popular music’s tendency to latch onto a fad and promote any look-alike, sound-alike band and say “If you like X, you’re gonna love Y.”

What about Brooklyn?
So if a “Seattle” needs a Nirvana, who would the Brooklyn equivalent be? MGMT? The Hold Steady? TV on the Radio? Those three answers say a lot about the scene because all three could be argued to be the borough’s leader, yet all three are vastly different in what kind of music they make. One is synth-pop, one is bar rock, one is post-punk. Now, you could argue that Alice in Chains, Pearl Jam and Soundgarden have big differences between in their sounds. But even if they aren’t from the same species, they are certainly from the same genus. (grungus pearjamus) Now, having multiple stars in different musical genres is not a bad thing, Los Angeles has been producing pop stars, rock bands and rappers simultaneously for two decades, but L.A. is not a “Seattle,” mostly because it’s not a place where people are “from,” it’s a place where people venture to in order to achieve fame. (We’ll touch more on this in Criteria #4).

CRITERIA #2:
The Label

When Nirvana, Pearl Jam and Soundgarden broke into the mainstream, Nevermind was released on Geffen, Ten on Epic, Louder than Love on A&M. But one of the key components to the scene was a leading label. Sub Pop signed Soundgarden, Mudhoney, and most notably Nirvana, (and even received royalties for Nevermind after Cobain and Co. left for Geffen/DGC). There were dozens of micro and indie labels that propelled the scene, but Sub Pop has often been credited for being the one stamp that moved it to a new level. In order for a new scene to be on par with a “Seattle,” you need a label like this. There was a Sub Pop in Seattle, a Motown in Detroit, a Saddle Creek in Omaha, a Death Row in L.A., a Sun in Memphis, a Def Jam in New York, an IRS in Athens.

What about Brooklyn?
It’s hard to blame BK for this one, especially because the last decade has seen the complete disintegration of the once-mighty record industry. There used to be five major labels, now there are just two (essentially, just one). Whereas labels like Saddle Creek and Sub Pop led their respective cities and scenes, Brooklyn is the home to dozens, if not hundreds of indies and micros—and in this case—this criteria is rendered bogus. Brooklyn’s music scene does not flounder for lacking a scene-leading label, it excels because individual members of the scene have the power to build a basement studio in their Park Slope brownstone and make records that sound indistinguishable from ones made at the now-defunct Hit Factory on 54th Street in Manhattan.


CRITERIA #3:
Synonymous

1990s Seattle—more so than any of the other scenes—is synonymous with grunge. It happened there, and no place else. The city owns the genre—and if possible—would trademark it (as it has the Space Needle). So, if any scene is going to be comparable to Seattle’s grunge, the genre of music they develop must be absolutely synonymous with the town. It needs to be their chief export, like champagne from the Champagne region of France—anything called by that name not from France is just sparkling white wine. None of the other cities mentioned earlier have such synonymous correlations. Detroit in the 1960s is just as synonymous with cars and riots as it is with Motown. L.A. in the early-1990s is just as synonymous with Bloods and Crips as it is with Dre and Snoop. San Francisco in the 1960s comes close, but the culture on Haight/Ashbury in the summer of love was much bigger than just the music.

What about Brooklyn?
Brooklyn has a scene, and it’s a potent one at that. But in no way is its music synonymous with its location. It’s just been around too long—nearly 400 years—and to say that it’s synonymous with indie-hipster rock would be ignoring a significant portion of its history. Does the city’s name evoke Kyp Malone’s beard, or does it evoke visions of a stony bridge so well built that its cables never needed to be replaced? Does it evoke Technicolor memories of a Dan Deacon show at the McCarren Pool or black and white footage of Jackie Robinson slugging his way through baseball’s color barrier with courage and class? Is it home of famous actors or Nathan’s Famous? Do you think of skinny jeans or Biggie Smalls?

CRITERIA #4:
From the Muddy Banks

Once the scene breaks into the mainstream—or sometimes even before it breaks— there is a migration of artists to the epicenter of the burgeoning scene. This happened in the 1920s during the exodus. Jazz musicians like Louie Armstrong ended up in Chicago, later in New York. There was a big scene and big money to be made playing jazz there. There was no reason for anyone to move to Omaha in the mid 2000s, except for the fact that a label called Saddle Creek—run by a couple of friends of Bright Eyes’ Conor Oberst—were in the middle of a short-lived indie revolution. It happened in Seattle, just in unexpected ways. Being from Seattle allowed other bands to pile into the grunge vehicle like clowns in a circus car. The unintended consequence is that it took several years for Seattle bands to shed the stigma of Criteria #3, the synonymous nature of grunge and Seattle. It took nearly a decade for a new crop of groups, most notably Death Cab for Cutie (Bellingham, WA) and Modest Mouse (Issaquah, WA), to break through and not be known simply for being “Seattle bands.”

What about Brooklyn:
Brooklyn—and New York City as a whole by extension—is just too big, vast, complex, and old to let anything new dominate it. Big things happen here and big people come here, but that’s been happening since 1607 and we’re kind of used to it. Just like the inscription on the base of that green lady in the harbor reads: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” We want them all. We will lure in the highest priced free-agent centerfielder and we will lure in the most shy, misunderstood musical genius from Iowa who has the next big idea and doesn’t think he can be taken seriously anywhere else.

PART TWO: Shame on a Hipster who try to run game on a Hipster

New York was Seattle in the 1990s. It had the big-name acts. It had the label. It was synonymous with the scene—shit, it invented the scene. It started there, then spread outward.

New York’s grunge was hip-hop—the biggest musical renaissance of our time—one that has had a larger global effect than any other form of music since the birth of rock n’ roll. There is hip-hop in Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, Latin America, and if they had a club somewhere in Antarctica, DJ Penguin would be spinning there.

Heroes and innovators? The list runs as long as an uptown #4 train. If Seattle had Mudhoney and Mother Love Bone, hip-hop in New York had Grandmaster Flash, The Sugar Hill Gang, Afrika Bambaataa, RUN-DMC, and—if the author is allowed to begrudgingly extend the territory to include his birthplace of Long Island—Public Enemy, De La Soul and Eric B and Rakim, amongst others. If Seattle had Nirvana and Pearl Jam, then New York produced The Notorious B.I.G., A Tribe Called Quest, Nas, Beastie Boys, Wu Tang Clan (and eventually the spin-offs of RZA, GZA, Method Man, Ghostface Killah, and most importantly Ol’ Dirty Bastard), Jay-Z, and about a dozen more.

It’s label? Def Jam started in 1984, and caught the attention of future producer-extraordinaire Rick Rubin, who was living in an NYU dorm. Rubin partnered with hip-hop godfather Russell Simmons and the duo created more than just a label that produced rap music. They created a global empire. Def Jam went national, then international, and it took hip-hop with it all the way. While Def Jam isn’t uniquely or exclusively a New York label, one of its early successes was propelling a home-grown product—Public Enemy—to notoriety and critical acclaim, especially with 1988’s It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold us Back and 1990s Fear of a Black Planet. Def Jam was eventually incorporated within the umbrellas of Polygram and Universal. It was helmed by Jay-Z during his brief “retirement” in the mid-2000s.

Hip-hop was as synonymous with the South Bronx in the late-1970s and much of the 1980s as it was with crime, graffiti, burning buildings and break dancing. Sometimes the best cultural and artistic movements are born in eras of great turmoil. It wasn’t until the early 1990s when hip-hop began to expand westward and evolve with Tupac, Snoop, Dre, N.W.A. (and its various offshoots Eazy-E, Ice Cube, etc.) in the gangsta rap movement. That still gave the five boroughs and Long Island exclusive ownership of the genre for a solid decade. It only took two years for pseudo-grunge bands to begin emanating from Los Angeles and London (::cough:: Gavin Rossdale). Unlike grunge—which was quickly accepted by throngs of young, disillusioned white kids—hip-hop was slowly co-opted into the culture, an Aerosmith duet here, a Blondie song there. It survived through Senate subcommittee hearings, “Parents Just Don’t Understand,” (a song which Professor James E. McElwaine once said “set hip-hop back 10 years.”), and the pointless blood feud that brought down icons on both East and West coasts. In contrast, grunge was pretty much dead the moment Cobain pulled the trigger on that April morning in his Seattle greenhouse.

New York didn’t need to attract rising talent to join its burgeoning hip-hop scene. That’s some Hollywood bullshit. New York no longer has the biggest rap stars, but it is still the unquestioned birthplace of the genre. It provided a home base, a headquarters where its identity could be forged, then reflected. Hip-hop moved outward, first in L.A. in the early 1990s, then in Atlanta and the south in the 2000s, and—as stated earlier—there is a hip-hop presence in just about every corner of the globe. Being from New York means nothing in hip-hop anymore, (though, count the Yankee hats in an hour of “Sucker Free Sunday” and tell me otherwise.

CONCLUSION

Brooklyn is not the new Seattle. It can’t be.

For one, New Yorkers are by no means modest. This is the city that dubbed itself “The Greatest City in the World” without conducting a thorough poll. (Though, to date, it has never failed to defend its title when challenged, be it by terrorist attack or flock of geese.) The fact that Brooklyn is a part of New York means that any scene that’s booming here will be blown out of proportion like a Mike Piazza/Sam Champion gay sex rumor.

Seattle, in contrast, is a big city, but it prides itself on being a hidden gem. The locals scare away scenesters with stories of how much rain the city gets, (though anyone from the area will tell you that Seattle does get lots of rain, but it doesn’t rain with sudden, torrential downpours every afternoon in the summer, as my beloved metropolis does.) New York simply cannot have a true underground scene because anything remotely avant-garde and experimental gets exposed before the scene has a chance to grow, causing its development to be stunted by the corroding gaze of the media spotlight. Brooklyn—and for that matter, any future music movement in The United States from now until the end of the empire—cannot be a true subterranean movement because Rolling Stone and Spin are like headphone-clad hawks, circling above the musical landscape, waiting for a young, vulnerable scene to appear, just so that they can swoop down and corrupt it.

Brooklyn’s indie scene does not have a central sound, a central leader, a central label or an overwhelming attitude besides the general attitude of elitism, pretentiousness and the idea that they are cool because they live where the cool people live. Nobody wanted to live in the Pacific Northwest in the 1980s, or Liverpool in the 1950s, but Nirvana and The Beatles emerged from those places and used their feelings of isolation and desertion to create their iconic sounds. Most people from Brooklyn grew up in someplace other than Brooklyn.

What’s happening is great, and you can hear that when you walk down Bedford Avenue in Williamsburg or spend a week at Bar 4 in Park Slope. What’s happening would be the perfect environment for the genesis of a true scene if we, as New Yorkers and we, as the music press, weren’t forced to write articles like this and jump the gun on these eggs before they hatch. When the next scene emerges, it’ll come out of nowhere. It’ll come from the persons we least expect. It’ll come with the force of a tornado, and it will flatten the shaky musical institutions that have served as our temporary living quarters while we wait for the new musical empire to be built.

Most importantly, I’ll know when the scene arrives. Like generations before me, I’ll hold my hands to my ears, furrow my brow, and shake my head with disgust and mutter, “What is it with you kids today and your loud music…?”


Bill Reese is an infrequent contributor to this blog and has written for Skope, Good Times, Prefix, Hello Stranger and The Purchase Independent. He is an editor with Playbill and has never been cool enough to live in Brooklyn, instead basking in the souvlaki decadence of Astoria, Queens.

Gogol Bordello Tracklisting

Just a couple days after I caught the Gypsy punkers at Tibet House concert alongside Regina Spektor, Patti Smith, Iggy Pop and others, Gogol Bordello announced the track listing and release date for their forthcoming Rick Rubin produced record, Trans-Continental Hustle. Eugine Huntz and Co. worked with Rubin as they recorded and relocated from Brooklyn to Sao Paulo, Brazil. Take a look at the track listing below, Trans-Continental Hustle arrives April 27.

1. Pala Tute
2. My Companjera
3. Sun Is On My Side
4. Rebellious Love
5. We Comin' Rougher (Immigraniada)
6. When Universes Collide
7. Uma Menina Uma Cigana
8. Raise The Knowledge
9. Last One Goes The Hope
10. To Rise Above
11. In The Meantime In Pernambuco
12. Break The Spell
13. Trans-Continental Hustle

NEW THOM YORKE!!!

Just days after announcing his new band's name Atoms for Peace, Radiohead singer Thom Yorke played a special charity solo concert for Cambridge Corn Exchange. During his set, he unleashed three new songs,"The Daily Mail", "Give Up the Ghost" and "Mouse Dog Bird". Take a look at brand new Thomas Yorke below..

Underated Classic - Radiohead "Pablo Honey"

For every great band, they have to start off somewhere, for Radiohead it was Pablo Honey. The record that arrived on store shelves in 1993 didn't make enough of a splash as the band may have liked, however, it set the style and sound as to what was to come or what people thought would come from the Oxford band. With it's title taken from an obscure Jerky Boys reference, the band that would change the sound scape of music for a generation released their debut to lukewarm reception worldwide. It would not be until years later with the release of their follow up records The Bends and especially OK Computer that would place Radiohead on the pedestal they are on now. On arrival no one was ready for Radiohead, in fact for every record it has been like that for these lads. The sound in 1993 was grunge and grunge rip-offs and gangster rap. However, for those that caught on they caught on early to something special, so fucking special, the single "Creep," was a major radio smash worldwide and helped get the name of the band out into the public. This of course would come way before bloggers and internet would allow. Their sound was a cross between early REM, U2, The Smiths and The Pixies, college radio stations ate this up but the mass market did not. It would not be until the band's re release of the album in 2008 by EMI when we would look back and re listen to the brilliance on the band's debut.

Movie of the Month - Dial M for Murder

Just two weeks out and Shutter Island has taken the box office by storm, it really is something that should come as no surprise as Scorsese teaming up with Leo again to tackle a thriller on an epic scale. For those that have seen Shutter Island knows that it does not have a Scorsese feel, instead it feels like a film by one of Marty's idols, Alfred Hitchcock. In this month, I am showcasing of one Hitchcock's finest thrillers, Dial M For Murder. The film which stars Grace Kelly, Ray Milland and Robert Cummings is one of the few Hitchcock films to take place in the directors native city of London. Set mainly in an apartment it tells the story of how a husband sets up his wife's murder, yet the killer botches the job and he ends up getting killed. If the plot sounds familiar Hollywood has done it over and over again, more recently in the 1999 Gwyneth Paltrow, Michael Douglas, Viggo Mortinson film A Perfect Murder. Yet, Dial M for Murder is the original stepping stone and Sir Alfred the master shows that you never really have to leave your location to tell a thrilling story.