A to Z: A is for…

Things are now really going to get very and totally random on my blog now with this intro post of my A to Z type of list thing! Yet another series, if I don’t have too much stuff going on already, here’s even more! I’ve seen other bloggers doing this type of series, the last one was Tatterhood. She does blog 365 days of the year and her very cool blog is linked here.

So I’d started with just going to be another music list type of A to Z with naming one fave artist and then something kind-of top half a dozen songs of each letter of the alphabet with little explaining but very quickly has moved into books and movies without out thinking about it! Which off course turning the whole thing a very long blog post!

“A” artist is… Adam Ant real or birth name is Stuart Leslie Goddard who most likely my first real music hero! Well, that should be Adam & The Ants and here’s a funny story! About how when I was a little kid my mother told me I was could buy my very first record at age, who knows? I picked out Kings Of The Wild Frontier by Adam and the Adams but the catch was, this album was supposed to be for my father b’day so I somehow I convinced her that he really did like Adam which off course was lies because my dad totally disliked him! Wrapping them up and everything and mum only found out when he opening it on the morning thinking he was getting Eric Clapton or Jimmy Barnes or something he did really like after complaining what he did got! Because not only did he did get Adam but I also got my younger sister in on my plan. So I convicted her to buy her fave singers album at the time which was First Offense by Corey Hart because of the hit single she loved Sunglasses At Night. I figured mum would ask her about dad liking Adam and mum would ask me about dad also liking Corey so both bases were covered and she couldn’t ask him because it was a secret until the morning of dad’s b’day. Then we both grabbed each of the records and ran of to the record player to finally play our records. Off course, why didn’t she know in the first place? I don’t know? Anyway it was only in 2017 I got to Adam Ant live with an Aussie tour of Kings Of The Wild Frontier played in full, I did blog that show linked here too!

I’ve never posted the song Sunglasses At Night before here on my blog and because it goes with that story. Sorry, I’m already getting sided-tracked on the very first letter.

 Anything We Want by Fiona Apple (2012) That’s a male “A” what about female, who would be that be? I think Fiona Apple because an ex-gf once told me: “Your like Fiona Apple in a relationship” which was suppose be an insult but silly me, I put it on that on it’s head and taken it as a complement so after that we broken-up, off course! So the second last song on her last album The Idler Wheel Is Wiser Than The Driver of The Screw And Whipping Cords Will Serve You More Than Ropes Will Ever Do is:

Abattoir Blues by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds (2004) I could easy just turn this into A to Z of Cave songs but I will try to limit myself to just some of his music but I just have to included this one. Easy got to be one of my most fave of all his songs:

Australian Winter by Sun Kil Moon (2010) once again like just above, this really could turn into just an endless Koz tracks type of blog posting but will try a limit myself. But because it’s winter here in Oz right now and this just one of my all-time fave SKM song ever it’s appearing today:

Also Sprach The King Of Euro-Disco by Ed Kuepper (1986) I love this track so much, it was one of my very first blog posts back in 2015, it’s reappear countless times on my blog since then but I don’t I’ve blogged it lately and it’s just got to be in my kind-of top five “A” songs post, should I link that old post or not?

Atlanta Strut by Blind Willie McTell (1929) in a little over three minutes with the greatest or best guitar player of all-time, this song is just the most insane bit of guitar playing ever put on tape which was recorded in late 1920’s! It’s at less is my all-time fave and it does blow my mind every single time I hear it but sorry to all the electric guitar players that came after McTell, they have nothing compared to this:

Antmusic by Adam & the Ants (1980) on that Kings Of The Wild Frontier album from my little story above buy my first record, I think I have told that little story but a long time ago:

What about just naming fave “A” books and movies? Why not!

And the Ass Saw the Angel by Nick Cave (1989) I don’t know if it’s my all-time fave but it’s the novel but I’ve had more than a few copy’s like when I was younger with share houses it’s most def the book that when missing the most in that time but I would buy another copy etc. until now where I live alone and have the same copy since. Cave recently this year’s conversation tour said he wish he’d set in Australia not America. I kind-of always think all of Cave’s southern Gothic America as a metaphor for his own Aussie small town that he grew-up in. Here’s a live reading with Captain Beefheart’s guitar player Gary Lucas:

The Air-Conditioned Nightmare by Henry Miller (1945) on return home to America after living oversea for years, Miller goes across the country on road trip so this book is not as well known as some other books written like that. To quote Miller this book would be like “a loaded gun to the head of America” but off course no body at the time, couldn’t care less. For me it was so very easy translated when I’d first read it in the 90’s in Australia but if you don’t know? Aussies have always be like “all the way with LBJ” or want to be some kind-of mini-me America. Re-reading bits in 2019 he’s even more right  it’s scary! Mike Patton’s Mr. Bungle on their final album in 1999 had a song named after it because Patton is a Miller fan:

Antichrist (2009) directed by Lars von Trier, starring Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg. After Kingdom and Dancer is Lars’ third greatest work in my opinion and most likely the best 2000’s horror movie but most viewers get side-tracked with all the religion, depression, mental illness, sex and even the great outdoors itself. Von Trier began writing Antichrist in 2006 while being hospitalised for depression himself so as in the movie business you hammer ideas to dead and this was the first of his so-called depression trilogy. I would call his latest movie The House That Jack Built (2018) his most depressing and bad film even if it’s just suppose to be a straight up serial killer movie meaning I find it by far his worst or just as bad as Nymphomaniac Volume I & Volume II making two/three in a role awful films. Kristian Eidnes & Lars Von Trier soundscape soundtrack score which included internal human body recordings:

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007) directed by Andrew Dominik, starring Brad Pitt and Casey Affleck. Unknown fun fact is that it was Aussie guitar player Rowland S. Howard who gave the directer Domink the idea even handing him the score materiel the fiction novel by Ron Hansen based on known history because he didn’t known know what to do after his debut feature film. Then Dominik hired both Nick Cave & Warren Ellis to do the movie score which was recorded before he started filming but keep sending them back to do it again because he wasn’t happy with what they were giving him. Brad Pitt has said more than once it’s his personal favorite movie that he has acted in also once signing the deal for the lead his contract stated that the movie’s very long name could not or never be changed at any point down the line. You can now buy that score on whiskey coloured vinyl, linked here. Not on the soundtrack album but in the film is Nick Cave cameo singing The Ballad of Jesse James:

Apocalypse Now (1979) directed by Francis Ford Coppola, starring Martin Sheen and Marlon Brando.

Kilgore : Smell that? You smell that?

Lance : What?

Kilgore : Napalm, son. Nothing else in the world smells like that.

[kneels]

Kilgore : I love the smell of napalm in the morning. You know, one time we had a hill bombed, for 12 hours. When it was all over, I walked up. We didn’t find one of ’em, not one stinkin’ dink body. The smell, you know that gasoline smell, the whole hill. Smelled like

[sniffing, pondering]

Kilgore : victory. Someday this war’s gonna end…

[suddenly walks off]

Number one letter “A” movie is off course this because it’s insanely at it’s highest level but in reality this war when on for years and years but then when it was finally over, no body involved learned a single thing! Anyway the napalm loving morning song is Richard Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries:

After doing/typing that all above, I’m already wondering why I decide to do it like this?

Adam Ant at home in London in 2012.

Anyone wanna share your own “A” artist/s, song/s, book/s, movie/s now? Or why not blog it yourself?

Cheers 🙂

 

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