I Need More Catherine Wheel

For Record Store Day 2018, the lone Catherine Wheel compilation album "Like Cats And Dogs," originally released in 1996, was re-released on vinyl. Although I missed out on purchasing it on the actual Record Store Day that occured the day after Thanksgiving, a Christmas Elf delivered it to my door on December 24th by surprise. I'm already plotting a reciprocal shipment as a thank you to that Elf, and listening to this release elicited numerous reactions:

I've Run Out Of Words

The new Failure album is good. Very good. Really good. Really, really good. I mean, what am I supposed to say? After a nineteen year break, the band released The Heart Is A Monster in 2015. That was also really, really good. To people like myself, their 1996 album Fantastic Planet is a pillar, a decade best, genre defining widescreen epic of mind-bending muscle and delicate dissonance.

The Heart Is A Monster shouldn't have been as good as it was, that break should have dulled the hard edges, but the band took all the elements of their time away, and reconstituted with cunning and bombast. The Stockton to Malone like weave of Ken Andrews and Greg Edwards vocals, bass and guitar duties was a thing of beauty, never showy, but draw dropping nonetheless, backed by the primal thump not-so-secret weapon Kellii Scott.

Good Advice From Goodfellas: Positive Life Lessons From the Best Mob Movie

Good Advice From Goodfellas: Positive Life Lessons From the Best Mob Movie by D.X. Ferris
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I'll be honest that, while I've watched Goodfellas probably as much or more than any other movie, I never thought of it in the way DX Ferris interprets it. As it it laid out, Goodfellas is one choice after another, and DX does a great job of framing it for practical application in the real world. As someone who struggles mightily to navigate the corporate world and it's intricacies, I found this both refreshing and enlightening. It's also a helluva lot of fun.

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