Skip to main content

Meow [NSFW]

I've been a fan of Rammstein since hearing their music perfectly placed in the 1997 David Lynch film Lost Highway by soundtrack coordinator Trent Reznor. Since that point, I've tracked down their albums (import or otherwise) and seen them live a handful of times. The live show is endlessly entertaining, like a winkingly self-aware German version of Kiss, with fire and pulse-pounding volume and bondage gear and (on occasion) a water-gun phallus between the lead singer's legs.

But they've found a way to take things up a notch with their new single, entitled "Pussy." Not only is the song a straight-up single entendre (the chorus "You've got a pussy / I have a dick / So what's the problem? / Let's do it, quick!" delivered in English) guaranteed to receive zero radio exposure, but they also have this video. I can't recall another mainstream band with as much global success as Rammstein releasing a graphic hardcore video, so I admire their balls in taking the song lyrics to the ultimate visual conclusion, even if the edits are seizure-inducing at times. The new full-length Liebe Ist Fur Alle Da comes out in October, and I'm looking forward to it more than I was before.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

"The Silver Gun" by Robert Palmer (1983)

I mean...Urdu? Seriously, Urdu . On an already eclectic and worldly album -- Pride , from 1983 -- "The Silver Gun" closes a chapter in Robert Palmer's career by singing a song about a horse in a language spoken daily by over 100 million people. The liquid bass line and propulsive electronics set out a bedrock for Palmer to ping phrasings rather out of place in Western music, askew astride even the peripatetic minimalism of the rest of the record. Somehow, in the middle of Michigan's Appalachia, I had this on vinyl a few years before the CD era officially commenced. It was an album of effort -- even the cover, a pointillism-and-bronze work, had Palmer's head barely above the water -- but the stitches didn't show to my pre-adolescent eyes and ears. In a career marked by zigs and zags, Pride and "The Silver Gun" were most certainly Other, and for a kid that felt like he didn't belong much of anywhere, it was nice to have those discrete feeling...

Some 2024 Listening Pleasures

It started with a gift of two JBL Control 25 speakers, and by "gift" I mean "borrowed" -- a.k.a. "will never return" -- from an obsolete tech detritus pile at work. I may have snagged more than two gifts, of course, but the raw footage proving such a claim remains elusive. And after installing the JBL speakers into the upper corners of the music room, and after installing speaker stands for the rear speakers I already had, and after making the hard choice between a big-ass bean bag and a comfy leather recliner to properly center myself in the audio field (R.I.P., big-ass bean bag), there was only one missing piece: the Apple TV 4K unit. So for me, 2024 was the year I streamed a lot of music in Atmos through Apple Music, surrounded by new tunes and old bops in thrilling new dimensions. Some might say you don't need surround sound, 'cos the two ears + two speakers modality has been dandy for a while now, but that's like saying you don't need ...

Triple Feature

For the first time since its inception, I was unable to see even one film at the Traverse City Film Festival this year. It wasn't for lack of desire, of course, but rather a scheduling conflict between the TCFF and Lollapalooza, which I attended for the second straight year. (Two quick takeaways from Lolla '18 -- rock music attendance is in the minority, and the young kids enjoy wearing basketball jerseys of varying vintages. And I'm old as fuck.) So to make up for my absence at the TCFF, I decided that yesterday would be my own TCFF in miniature, so I went to three movies back to back to back. I walked into a darkened theater at 3:30pm, and essentially didn't leave until just before 11pm. And thankfully, I was able to see three pretty wonderful movies, each wonderful for different reasons. You should see them if you haven't already. The troika of cinematic joy is as follows, with trailers to click on should you so desire: Mission Impossible: Fallout Rare is the...