Kazhes pierakstu burtnīca

I`m not quite so sure why but this is my favourite album by John Lennon. Probably because it doesn`t have any songs with the word "Yoko" for its title. Probably, because there`s a whole lot of magnificient compositions that would make me cry if I was even more of a sissy than I feel like right now. There`s the fast rocking opening "Titan Ass" which sounds as if it was written by Chuck Berry but updated for early Seventies. The next song is "Mind Games" - the most famous of songs on this album. "We`re playing those mind games together - pushing the barrier, planting the seed". It`s psychedelic, it`s very sad and it`s very beautiful. Just like a really good film. "Aisumasen (I`m Sorry)" is just a beautiful ballad. "One day (At a time)" is the perfect love song, sung by a perfect John Lennon. "Bring on the Lucie (Freeda people)" is one of Lennon`s freedom songs with a very catchy chorus. "Nutopian national anthem" is a song that goes for 6 seconds and sounds like silence. The second part of the disc isn`t quite as good as the first one, yet it has another freedom song called "Only People" which once again is undeniably catchy. The disc closes with "Meat City" - another good old fashioned hard rockin` song. And as a whole it makes one hell of a record and one of the best records by any ex-Beatle. Update: I`ll have to relisten to "Plastic Ono Band" before stating that this is the best Lennon`s album once again.

FF bring forth their second album so we`d remember that they exist. Some signs say that it`s better than their first, while most say it`s worse. On some songs they do sound like the Beatles rip-offs, "Eleanor Put your boots one" is one of those tracks. Sure they don`t have the harmonies the Beatles had, probably it`d be better to associate them with John Lennon`s solo work. My favourite song on the album surely is the opening "The Fallen" with its catchy riff and it`s "i don`t give a damn attitude". "This boy" is also cool, a bit like early Brian Eno (circa 1973). If this record has one problem is the lack of diversity - a FF song always sounds like a FF song. "Walk away" sounds as if it was lifted off a Paul McCartney album in the verse and as a typical FF song in the chorus. "Evil and Heathen" is a good nice rocking song sounding a bit like "This fire". Oh, I`ve got to correct myself "Do you want to" is This Fire Part II. It`s got the same disco beat, yet it`s good. Basically I don`t have anything in particular against this record but it isn`t daring enough to become a classic.

Tim Burton asked Johnny Depp to star in his latest film. They had already worked together in "Edward Scissorhands" so Johnny probably thought this could be a perfect opportunity to gain good reviews from the critics and also it was his best chance to impersonate Michael Jackson. He doesn`t succeed 100% for he has a nose way too big in order to be mistaken for Michael Jackson.

This wasn`t one of the books I had on my A list for reading. No, Sir! I had a lot of better things to do than reading Arthur Hailey. Not that I knew anything about the author. But I was asked to read it. My girlfriend had to read it for some psychiatry course but she asked be - you do it! So I did. I was told this was supposed to be a horror book. Since I never had read a horror novel... well not never but rarely. Yet it wasn`t a horror novel really. If you ask me the genre of this book I`d say it`s a script for a suspence film, for a thriller. There`s a whole lot of different characters, including Mel Bakersfield who runs an airport, his brother - a guy who`s guiding airplanes at landing and taking off. Then there`s Mel`s wife, some foxy lawyer, a guy named Joe Patroni who can solve almost every problem, a crazy fellow named D.O. Guerrero who wants to blow up an airplane so his family would get his insurance money. Mostly it`s Guerrero who made me read this book - for he`s the only really psychic character. Many people don`t consider Hailey a real writer - I`d rather say he`s a workingman than an artist. Without a doubt this book is perfectly suited for becoming a film for it doesn`t have too much literary value but it has a lot of things going on in it. The ending was crappy as you`d expect from a book that has "bestseller" written all over it (not on my copy, of course, for it was issued in the USSR).

This album is considered either a silly excourse the Stones did in 1967 just for fun, a terrible record that doesn`t make sense, a "Sergeant Pepper`s" ripp-off, or the most underrated rock album of all time. After having been listening for it for some 3-4 hours I gotta say that this surely ain`t my favourite record from the Stones. The opening "Sing this song all together" bugs me a lot and I don`t think that the kind of psychedelic junk suits me fine. "Citadel" is much better. "She`s a rainbow" and "The lantern" are good, but I still prefer "2000 light years from home". To my book there`s a bit too much goofy experimentation on this album sometimes making it close to unlistenable and the Stones aren`t certainly known for being unaccessible as the Residents.

Having already talked about both this groups albums on my site I have to mention a gig of theirs I went to. It probably wasn`t the best concert of my life, especially since I wasn`t feeling very well and spend the next week after the concert at home with influenza, but it`s surely my fault and not the fault of the band. The opening act was quite intollerable and I never managed to get its name but the central band played quite a decent show. There wasn`t a single song on the set which I didn`t know - that means that the group doesn`t have a lot of new material, but it didn`t bug me at all for I`d never seen them on stage before. The lead singers did quite a good job, and even the sound mix was ok, which is a rare thing in Latvia. The band didn`t rely only on it`s "greatest hits" (as if any of their songs were hits as you understand the meaning of the word) but that was also ok. "The cat", "The heart", "Birds fly away" were my favourites of the night. A good show for a Latvian band, probably a bit too much trying to sound as in the studio but that`s alright with me.

A film about football hooligans. Man, are those people stupid. They don`t care about the team who`s supporters they supposedly are, they only care about kicking each other as hard as possible. I may be a fan of footy but I`d prefer to have at least a single goal on screen when I watch a football film and not only a lot of fighting pricks. The message of the film may be a positive one, but I don`t care. Some people claim that the film is meant to be idolizing those hooligans but I really doubt that, I`d rather say that the film had quite a lot of struggle in terms of a plot which is close to non-existant. At some stages the film tries to be funny but doesn`t quite succeed at that, at others it tries to be a lot like "Trainspotting" but it ain`t trippy so it`s mainly silly. Yet I can`s say that I didn`t like it, I just don`t think that there`s a need for films like this one in the world.

This book was something new for me in several aspects. First, it was the first book by R.S. I read. Not too surprising though, for he isn`t that popular. Second, never before had I read a book where characters occasionaly speak in yiddish. Not that I learned anything from that language, apart from "Meschugge" and "Kuss mech in toches" which I knew before this book. Then the contents of the book were really untrivial - it`s about modern days of Jews in Germany and about what people`s attitudes towards Germans are, what they think of themselves and of the others. The leading character is a man in his early seventies who can`t accept that he`s got cancer (because he hasn`t got cancer), who can`t accept that his son lives with a German woman (although he himself also lives with a German woman), and who doesn`t want to spend a rather big amount of money for his friends eye surgery. The interesting aspect for me was how the Jews draw a very strict line between themselves and the "gojim". For a partly Jewish person like myself it was quite a surprise, it was also interesting to read about the different approaches towards the state of Israel and towards the Palestinians the German jews have nowadays. As a pure work of art the book ain`t no slouch either, but it`s surely mostly the content and not the form that made the difference for me.

Welcome to the magnificient world of Francois Ozon! The director of "Swimming Pool" and "Water Drops on Burning Rocks" has created another controversial movie. The film starts with the divorce trial of Marion and Gilles. After the trial the former couple goes to a hotel room in order to perform the good-bye sex, but it ends up as Gilles raping Marion (I`m not gonna discuss whether I find it a perfect occasion for what they do). After that the film starts going backwards showing us the most critical moments of Giles` and Marion`s relationship. We see how they argue over Giles` homosexual brother, we see how Giles falls asleep on their wedding night and how Marion meets some English speaking guy in the park and does as if he was her new husband and not Giles. Then we switch over to some place near the sea where Giles and Marion become a couple. Apparantely there`s got to be 5 major scenes in the film, but I somehow remember only 4 of those but it doesn`t really matter. In comparison with other Ozon`s movies this one doesn`t offer anything particulary new. It`s more in the direction of "Water Drops" but not quite as daring (since no Fassbinder had written the script for it). It`s a bit disturbing to the eye - especially the rape scene, but that`s a thing you`d expect from Ozon.

Most likely you won`t agree if somebody`ll tell you that "The Bloodhound Gang" is a genuinely intellectual band. And neither will I, although I must admit that they must be less stupid than their music premises it to be. They rock not to suck but to make you laugh. Frank Zappa already gave you the answer to the question whether humor belongs in music. But it`s not only good news. Musically the new round piece of plactic the bloodhounds have put out is purely bad. For instance, the opening "Balls out" is an endless repetition of the same note. It may be hard rockin` but it ain`t too good. The first single "F.U.C.K." contains more than ten different innuendo ways of saying "sex" and it somehow reminds the best cuts from their previous albums and is the only real highlight on the record. But overall it`s too much ear-bashing synthesizer sounds that don`t really work too well. "Ralph Wiggum" (the son of Springfield`s police chef Wiggum) is an okayish song but a bit boring. Without a doubt the most disturbing song on the record is the dance music piece "Uhn Tiss Uhn Tiss Uhn Tiss". If the melodies weren`t that lousy and unlistenable I`d probably call this a so-so record. But I won`t do it. Instead I`ll say it`s plain bad.