Screen Of Dreams >> See where it gets you

I can't believe it's still California Month, tremor #47:

Screen Of Dreams - "I Can't Remember"

(Horizontal Music, 1983)

Sometimes a song has one element that is just so cool that you immediately fall in love with it, and with song it's obviously the bassline.

This comes from what was apparently the band's only official release, a 12" EP on some label called Horizontal, which was probably their own label.  They allegedly also put out a demo cassette.  They were from San Francisco, which I now know had quite an impressive post-punk / goth scene going on.  Screen Of Dreams apparently broke up not long after this EP came out, which is probably a good thing for California's faultlines, considering how earth-shudderingly deep the aforementioned bassline was.  As for the vocals... Well, uh, you can't say they're not unique.  There are apparently no photos of this band on the net, so I'll post this great desktop wallpaper image I found this week.  There's a famous cheesecake photo of Sophie Marceau wringing out her wet shirt with a knowing smirk on her face, and someone named Al added a cuh-razy background to it:

I think Sophie would approve of this, knowing how she embraced her sex-symbol status in the '80s.  If this were a screensaver, you could call it a screensaver of dreams.

This insipid tool named Brett Ratner got fired from producing the Oscars because of an offhand gay slur.  His buddy Eddie Murphy was going to host.  All I can say is: http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=eddie+murphy+fag&aq=f  If you had told anyone back in the '80s that Eddie Murphy would be the half of a duo that was not fired for making a gay slur, people would have looked at you like you were out of your mind.  Murphy singlehandedly made it cool / glamorous to insult gay people back then, when he was the biggest comedian on earth.  How quickly people forget.  On a related note, I can say with 100% certainty that Ratner is gay, and that Murphy probably is.  As has been proven time and time again, i's always the gay-bashers who turn out to have been gay all along.

I saw an innovative sax player named Matana Roberts on Thursday; I had never heard of her until a few days beforehand.  Here's a clip:

She was very chatty and emotionally revealing while taking to the crowd during and after her set.  (I found out later that night on Wikipedia that she played on Godspeed You Black Emperor's last album and lots of other cool stuff.)  Afterwards, I went to see my favorite local jazz group, the Tarik Hassan ensemble, at Maison.  They played a new piece called "Arab Spring," which Hassan said was inspired by current events, as well as the slow and eerie "That Long Brown Hair" and the upbeat, somewhat forgettable "Mid Citizen."  Unfortunately, the group did not contain trumpeter Ashlin Parker, as it did the other time I saw it, in January; after I asked him about it, TH told me that was just a one-time thing.  I put $3 in their tip jar, which I think is a record high tip amount that I've given any band.  I got some chicken fingers, four for $7, which were more batter than chicken.

Yesterday I planted a small (about 4' tall) Carolina cherrylaurel (Prunus caroliniana) tree at Pelican Thrift on Tulane Ave.  I had grown it from a little seedling that I dug up three years ago, so it was nice to finally put it in the ground, though it took me an hour to dig a small hole, since the soil was essentially rocks, bricks, and other debris.  Kinda embarrassing.  I could've dug this hole in literally 1 minute in normal, non-compacted soil.  I was hoping no one was filming me to put on YouTube...  Then I saw Ray Nagin at the Home Depot on Carrolton.  (I thought he had self-exiled himself to Houston...)  Then I went to Rose Garden and bought a beautiful little Silken Pincushion cactus (Mammillaria bombycina) for $3 and a dwarf New Zealand Tea Tree (Leptospermum scoparium 'Nanu Rurum').

Puro Instinct's singer went as the BP oil spill for Halloween last year.  Piper for presi... er, head of the EPA!

Planets with similar climates - For Against - "Autocrat" (1985), The Sound - "Fatal Flaw" (1981), Bauhaus - "She's In Parties" (1983).


Currently eating or drinking: Dr. Oetker Ristorante Pizza Spinaci; Odwalla Mango Tango smoothie