February 17, 2005

any fifth number

After I made my big does-anybody-know-any-members-of request a while back, Stephen Maughan of Bulldozer Crash very kindly left a comment inviting me to post one of his old band's songs, which I'm pleased to do. Bulldozer Crash's "Today Will Be Yesterday So Soon" (MP3) was a single on Heaven Records back in 1993. (They also put out some singles on the similar American label Sunday.) Heaven openly idolized the Sarah Records aesthetic (and Bulldozer Crash's first single was called "Sarah Said"), but there's something not quite in the manner of that scene in this single--a little extra elbow grease, or some kind of a come-on. It actually reminds me a little of Dinosaur Jr.'s version of the Byrds' "Feel a Whole Lot Better" (without the silly voices): a certain amount of the distance between this and McGuinn-channels-Dylan is the guitar and vocal tone.

Finally saw the Metallica movie on DVD. I'm a sucker for movies about the creative process, and if this one's not quite as beautiful as Topsy-Turvy, it's more explicit about the state of being stuck--I wonder if the filmmakers actually picked out all the most papercut-like emotional moments, or if this was toned down from some even more agonizing potential version. The setup is that Metallica are trying to record a new album, and they're totally drained; they have no bass player, they have no songs, they have no lyrics, they have no sense of what they want it to sound like, they've got a full-time therapist who's starting to act like he's in the band, Lars Ulrich and James Hetfield are finding it almost impossible to bear working with each other, Kirk Hammett is just sitting there trying to crush his own ego so things don't get even worse, and Bob Rock is being supernaturally calm... and they hammer away at it for almost two years, and finally come up with something. Not something all that great, but something.

Pretty amazing that any band would have the guts to endorse a documentary about themselves as merciless as this one is--I really admire that, actually. Also, the scenes with Lars' ancient-elf-looking father (watch Lars' spirit crumple as dad tells him the new songs are awful) and Dave Mustaine (near tears as he tells Lars how much getting kicked out of Metallica 20 years ago hurt) are as amazing as everyone told me they were.

Posted by Douglas at February 17, 2005 10:41 PM | TrackBack
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