Flogging Molly have returned with their fifth studio album, and the first released on their own record label, Thirty Tigers.  Is it a worthy addition to their growing discography of live and studio albums?  Yes.

Ever since I fell in love with Flogging Molly with their first studio album, Swagger, I have approached each album with trepidation.  ”Is this the album where they’ll finally fall apart and I’ll only have good memories to live off of?”  Each album has take two to three listens for me to finally make up my mind, but with Speed of Darkness, I was immediately in love.

The band finally starts to stretch its legs a bit creatively adding in new sounds (piano on ”The Cradle of Humankind”) and finally allowing fiddle player Bridget Regan to sing a duet with her husband, band founder Dave King, on ”A Prayer For Me in Silence.”

This isn’t to say that the entire album is a work of art.  For the first time ever, there may be a song I skip in future listenings entitled “The Heart of the Sea.”  This song sounds like it’s trying to go in too many directions at once, and it can never seem to settle on one.  Considering their body of work, and this is the first time I’ve ever gone, “er … no thanks,” that’s a pretty good batting average.  It may grow on me with time, but for now I suggest leaving it at the bottom of the sea.

One thing that has always been a recurring theme with this band has been the plight of the working man, and this album ratchets that up even a notch further.  It could be because King and Regan now live in Detroit, and in fact, the song “The Power’s Out” is all about the decay that now surrounds them.

There is something that can definitely be said about this album over their previous efforts, and that is that it is possibly their most accessible to the general public.  The sound has been softened slightly, but not to a degree that should anger long standing fans, only enough that I could potentially see new people giving them a try, and that is never a bad ting.

Enjoy their first single, “Don’t Shut ‘Em Down”, and make sure to pick up the album if you get a chance.

A third Green Lantern movie trailer has been released, and it is by far the best they have released yet.

Perhaps it seems someone finally told the marketing department that they needed to explain the concept of the Green Lantern Crops a bit more to people not familiar with the comic book.  Employing the dulcet tones of Geoffrey Rush as Tomar-Re, one of my favorite members of the Corps, this trailer gives everyone a crash course in the lore of the character.

For existing fans of the series, we get some fan service as well in that we get to see a few more ring constructs, and if you look closely at the 2:35 mark, you can see something that closely resembles the symbol of the Yellow Lantern Corps from the comic books in the flames.  It’s not exact, but it definitely gives hints to a future storyline … if you know what I mean.

This trailer gives me far more hope than any of the other footage I’ve seen because it finally tells me they are honoring the storyline at least even if some of their design choices aren’t.

We’ll just have to wait another month to see how it really is, but my hopes are starting to rise, and that may not be the best thing  as the last thing I want to have happen is to have them crushed.

Take a look at Green Lantern trailer #1 and #2.

I very rarely talk about the music on this site any more, but when I do, you can be pretty sure it’s going to be about the greatest band on the planet, Flogging Molly.

No, I haven’t gone to see them in concert again (though I would love to), but it is about the fact you can now pre-order their new album, Speed of Darkness.  Due for release on May 31st, the new album is the first from their own record label that they have formed named Thirty Tigers.  Why is this exciting?  Because it means the band will make that much higher of a percentage from the sales.  Good for them, they deserve it.

While you can order it from your usual locations, I hope you’ll take a moment to consider ordering it from their own site at FloggingMolly.com.  You can get it on CD, vinyl, MP3 or FLAC format.  You can go as basic as you want or go for various “fan packages” with exclusive bonuses.  (yeah, I went for the $64.99 Super Deluxe CD pack … call me a sucker if you must)

Below is a live performance of the first single from the album, “Don’t Shut ‘Em Down” at this year’s Coachella concert.  While I actually didn’t thrill to this song the first time I heard it, once again Molly has proven you really have to hear their songs in a live performance setting to dig them, and this song immediately grew on me.

In the age of blogs being required to disclose everything, I can tell you I am making absolutely no money from this post, it’s not a paid placement or anything else, but if I can’t take a post to promote my favorite band, what’s the point of having a blog?

It would seem that being a woman beater is not harming Chris Browns career in any way, shape or form. Must be nice.

Following an appearance last week on Good Morning America where he was so enraged by an interview that he broke a window, Chris Brown was back on ABC tonight to appear on Dancing With the Stars.  Despite the fact that host Tom Bergeron and professional dancer Cheryl Burke both voiced opposition to his coming on the show, come on he did.

In case you’ve forgotten why this matters, while Brown has had some success as a singer, he became most well-known for beating his now ex-girlfriend Rihanna back in early 2009.  He got noticed again when American Idol singer Adam Lambert got pulled from some TV bookings due to kissing another man on sage at the American Music Awards.  Brown took over Lambert’s bookings, sending a signal that beating women was still better than being gay.  Good to know.

So, here we are with Brown still acting up, existing show personalities expressing their dismay at his coming on the program, and ABC just ignores it all.  Does he have incriminating photos on someone high up at the network?  Somehow he keeps getting on this channel even after he has thrown a hissy fit on another of their shows.  Does this make sense to anyone?  Was a guy who is simply out promoting a new really that necessary to appear on your show at the risk of alienating viewers and cast members?

Apparently so.  Apparently woman beating is perfectly acceptable in the eyes of the Disney-owned network.  Getting destructive after another interview on the same network?  Perfectly ok.

So glad to see ABC has a sense of moral direction

I am not nearly as up on current music as I once was, but when I saw Justin Bieber nominated for multiple Grammys … well, I had to chime in.

Are people in the music industry smoking crack? Oh, wait, I know, they’re trying to make the Grammys actually seem relevant and draw in young viewers to the telecast by nominating a talentless teenage twit. My bad.

That would also explain how Lady Gaga got so many nominations for an album that is essentially a re-release with a couple new songs thrown on to it. Wooo.

Don’t get me wrong, there are some good nominations on there such as Florence and the Machine getting a nod for Best New Artist, but since she’s up against Bieber, who knows what will happen.

I have no delusions that the music industry hasn’t done this before, but this is absolutely insane that a kid with no talent other than a high pitched voice can be nominated for such a prestigious award.  So, congratulations to the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences for driving another nail in the coffin of their relevance.

For those that want to see all of the nominations, they’re below the jump.

Continue Reading ->

It’s beginning to seem like the time around the holidays is also when we find out what shows on Broadway just aren’t cutting it.

Last Dec. I reported on a bunch of shows closing on Broadway (which probably ended up being one of my most controversial posts ever and led to a week long verbal fight with a PR firm), and here we are again with several shows closing.  Hopefully I can avoid the silliness of insanely rude PR people getting abusive with me via e-mail or spamming my comments this time.

The following shows are all closing early due to poor ticket sales:

• Elling – starring Brendan Fraser
• La Bete – starring David Hyde Pierce
• A Life in the Theatre – starring T.R. Knight and Patrick Stewart

According to The Hunffington Post, Elling is closing after only 22 performances, including previews.  The show open last Sunday and was expected to run until March.  In its first week the show grossed $145,000, but due to seating capacity has the potential to do $882,000.  Ouch.

La Bete and A Life in the Theater have been playing to half-full audiences in spite of their big name actors.  Life was scheduled to close Jan. 2nd, but instead will go dark as of this Sunday, while La Bete will hold on until Jan. 9th.

Mix a sluggish economy, holiday spending and ticket prices which have soared to astronomical levels, and Broadway just can’t keep up any more.  Unless you are putting on a huge production such as The Lion King, it just seems you can’t make it any more.

Many people have already been joking about the Broadway musical Spider-Man; Turn Off The Dark because it keeps getting delayed, and has racked up a $60 million dollar budget, the biggest in the history of the medium. Despite all of this, the show is indeed finally going on … and it looks to be an absolute horror.

Vogue sent well-known photographer Annie Leibovitz out to shoot some images for the show, and … where do you even start with how dreadful this looks? (click the images for much larger views)

First up is a shot of Spider-Man, Green Goblin and Mary Jane Watson.  Um … since when did the Green Goblin have wings?

This next villain is called Swiss Miss and was created specifically for the show.  Because, you know, Spider-Man doesn’t have enough of his own bad guys in the book, so why not create one that looks like a deranged wine bottle opener?

Finally … oh good grief, where do you even begin with the look of Carnage?  I give them points for the tendril effect because that’s how they look in the books, but beyond that … why?

Lets be up front folks, there is no way this thing will ever make its money back, and it will universally be considered one of the biggest flops in the history of Broadway.

You know, I have no clue why TV shows feel they have to do Halloween episodes because they rarely work, but sometimes you do one that is just so bad that you aren’t even sure it was about the holiday … or anything for that matter.

I have not watched Glee before, but I couldn’t resist tuning for an episode of a TV show that was billed as an homage to The Rocky Horror Picture Show. And, yeah, I shouldn’t have bothered.

As for Glee itself, I’m not even going to bother commenting as I had no clue what was going on with the characters, although I can say with the amount of story progression I saw it must take you an entire season to get through any sort of character arc.  Speaking to The Rocky Horror Picture Show aspects, if this is any indication of what the remake that series creator Ryan Murphy wants to make … please don’t.

First off, I have heard great things about these actors as singers.  Please stop fooling yourselves.  They’re passable at best with way too much emphasis on song trickery to show off their supposed skills.  They are suited for Broadway-style deliveries for sure, but when you’re singing songs that are so well known, you should at least be remotely close.

While I understand that the delivery of songs is open to interpretation, the wholesale changing of the lyrics was just an abomination.  Yes, yes, I’m sure the censors would have reacted to some things negatively, especially in “Touch-A, Touch-A, Touch-Me”, some of it just made no sense.  As for the changes to “Sweet Transvestite” … okay, you changed the character to a woman to begin with, which was bad enough, but the lyric changes made the song make no sense, and I’m sorry, but Amber Riley just had no clue how to deliver that song without it sounding like some top 40 Beyonce rip-off.

If you’re going to do an episode that is going to garner obvious media attention, and bring in new viewers, you would think they might have tried to make it at least somewhat engaging.  Instead, I walk away from it wondering why in the hell it seems everyone and their sister seems to adore this show.  And judging from the comments I was getting on Twitter as the episode aired, even regular fans of the show thought it was pretty bad.

Good job, Fox.

Apparently Warner Brothers has a lot of faith in the Green Lantern movie because the studio is already moving forward on a sequel.

The long-awaited Green Lantern movie is currently filming, and isn’t due for release until June 17, 2011, but apparently that isn’t stopping Warner Brothers with moving ahead with big plans for the franchise.

At the end of May, Cartoon Network, another property of Warner Brothers, announced that it was working on Green Lantern: The Animated Series for release next fall. A toy line for the movie and cartoon are a given also, and already announced, but that isn’t all that’s coming.

Greg Berlanti, Michael Green and Marc Guggenheim, the men who wrote the script for the current film, have been contracted to write up a treatment for a Flash movie and Green Lantern 2.

Really?  You haven’t even finished the first film, and you’re moving ahead on the second?  You must have a lot of faith in this movie, and as a life-long fan of the character, I hope it works out, but man do I think this is ambitious.  This character has next to no track record with the general public, and this is a whole lot of eggs to put in his basket without knowing for sure how it will go.

Count me in for the ride, I just hope enough other people follow along.

As I mentioned yesterday, Flogging Molly was coming to my town, and, yes, I did make it to the show.  Seeing as I am always looking for things to blog about, here is a review of the show.  And, yes, also a review of how the show was run, which was … well, just read that part, but it was a comedy of errors to the point even the bands were mocking from the stage.

Big D And The Kids Table

I had only heard of this band in passing prior to this show, and had only heard a handful of songs.  They are labeled as third wave Ska band, but honestly they have morphed into something that is Ska-influenced, but they are certainly not Ska.  There is an occasional underlying horn section that has a bit of the traditional up-down Ska rhythm, but it is not that common.

I was expecting a so-so performance, and I am happy to say they put on a solid performance.  The backup singers, which the blonde has changed since this picture was taken, were a pleasure to watch as they harkened back to the old days of 1950′s backup singers who wear matching dresses and do little synchronized dancers.  Quite a fun little nod.

Overall the band was pretty tight, if a little loud and poorly mixed, but isn’t that the fate of all opening bands?  Would I see them on their own?  Probably not, but as an opening act they did their job admirably and entertained the crowd with fun banter and decent music.

Here is their song “Fluent In Stroll” from their 2009 album of the same name.

Flogging Molly

What can you say about this band? There is honestly no way you could ever accurately describe what it is like to experience them live.  Some bands sounds better live than they do on their CDs, while others it is obvious that they are a “studio” band that no one should ever be subjected to live.  In the case of Flogging Molly they sound exactly the same as they do on their albums … I mean that.  Note-for-note you realize that they must have the perfect mixer working for them because what you hear on CD is exactly what you will hear live.

So, why go see them?  You are sure to have heard how some bands have an energy on stage that is almost electric?  Flogging Molly’s stage energy is enough to power a small city.

Sadly, Bridget Regan, the lone woman in the band, and wife of lead singer Dave King was missing tonight due to a family health emergency with her mother.  While the band was still six strong, and they found ways to work around the lack of her fiddle and tin whistle playing, it did feel “off” at this show, and you could tell her bandmates missed her.

Because Bridget was missing, it meant that some songs such as “The Devil’s Dancefloor” couldn’t be performed, which is one of my favorites.  However this made me realize something … I don’t thin there is a Flogging Molly song I don’t like.  I got to hear great ones such as “Float”, “Selfish Man”, “Worst Day Since Yesterday”, “If I Ever Leave This World Alive”, “Every Dog Has Its Day”, “Drunken Lullabies”, “Seven Deadly Sins”, “Tobacco Island”, and with each song I kept thinking that they were going to have to hit a song I was indifferent to eventually … and they didn’t.  I sang along with each song until my throat was raw, and my feet hurt from stomping along.

All that aside, Flogging Molly came, they saw and they kicked our asses.  And I think I finally figured out part of their appeal: it’s like a 90-minute pub sing-a-long.  The band includes you in the singing every song, they point out individuals in the crowd to dedicate songs to based on their clothes, meeting them before the show and so on.  They are not an aloof and disconnected band, they want their fans in the experience, and nothing says this more than the insanely bright 16 spotlights that flip on when the audience is supposed to sing.  Nothing is said about it being used as a cue, but anytime a sing-a-long spot came along, I noticed the lights flipped on.  At those moments, with the heating beat down on you from the lights, you are no longer the audience, and the people on stage Flogging Molly, you are a bunch of old friends having a pint together in a pub, singing along to an old Irish drinking song.

Smart band.

Overall Flogging Molly is a band every one should experience at least once.  This was my third time seeing them, and by the time I left, I was ready for number four.

Below is “Drunken Lullabies” from the band’s album of the same name.

Truman Student Activities Board (SAB)

• I called to see where “Will Call” tickets would be. You told me inside the building. Thanks for moving them over a block away and not telling me until I was in the building, meaning I lost my spot online and moved back several hundred people.
• Your security was a joke.  You had me pat myself down.  Yes, you read that right folks, they watched as I patted myself down.  Amazing how I missed patting that camera you were so obsessed with me not getting in with.  (Picture of Dave King at right taken with my camera)
• By the way, we all had cell phones … with cameras in them.  You let those in, but no actual cameras were allowed … I’m sorry, have you met the 21st century?
• Your green “Security” shirts with glowing necklaces so people would notice you was laughable.  Both bands mocked you for it from the stage, that should tell you something.
• You know you must have over stated the “No Alcohol” policy to the bands when David McWane of Big D said he and the band would not be offended if we all snuck off for a Guinness before Flogging Molly … he also wondered if he could have a beer on stage if it was just beer flavored water.
• You said “No Moshing” repeatedly.  After the mosh pit and crowd surfing broke out, Dave King of Flogging Molly said to you, “By the way, these folks in the green shirts are doing a really crack job … oh well, if you can’t make fun of yourself, who can you make fun of.”

You used to give SAB an endless amount of grief when I briefly attended the college … glad to see nothing has changed in 17 years.  You are still all incompetent fools.

Normally a concert coming to someone’s town shouldn’t be that big of a deal, but when your town has a population of only 17,000 locals and 6,000 students, it tends to be a big event.  You would think everyone would be talking about it, but that doesn’t seem to always be the case.

Case in point, I learned that my favorite band, Flogging Molly, is coming to my town last night … 26 hours before the show.

My parents were leaving town on business when my mom called me and said she had seen a sign up that said “Welcome Flogging Molly.”  Knowing they are my favorite band, she called me to ask if I knew what was up.  One quick Google search later I discovered that they were indeed playing at Truman University tonight.  I frantically called to see if there were still tickets, and there were.  Phew.  Crisis avoided.

I have no clue how this more widely known in my town, but for whatever reason, it wasn’t.

Luckily I have seen them two other times.  The first was Oct. 17, 2000 opening for The Mighty Mighty Bosstones.  This date is burned in my head because when I left the show that night, I learned that our state governor, Mel Carnahan, had died in a plane crash.  Hard to forget.  I hadn’t heard of them before that show, but I instantly fell in love with them, and even met the lead singer, Dave King shortly after the show and expressed my new undying love for them.  (We discussed Irish heritage too, but mostly my “OH MY GOD!  YOU JUST ROCKED MY FACE!” reaction)

I got to see them again on Oct. 23, 2006 when they were on a headlining tour.  I blogged my reaction to the show, which they again proved why I had fallen in love with them.

Both previous times I have seen them in Columbia, MO at a venue called The Blue Note, which, for all its faults, at least serves Guinness.  Considering they are an Irish band, you feel you should at least be drinking it.  Sadly tonight there will be no alcohol as they are playing on the university campus, but somehow I doubt that will lessen my enthusiasm for seeing them play again.

I barely know the opening band, Big D & The Kids Table, but if anything, Flogging Molly taught me years ago that sometimes the opening band can change your life …

Below is the song “What’s Left of the Flag” from their second studio album, Drunken Lullabies.

Apparently Hollywood has fallen back in love with the musical film, but will they ever cast people known for their singing abilities?

News has come out this weekend that a new version of Damn Yankees is moving forward with Todd Graff directing.  This is the first big budget film for Mr. Graff, 50, and is a rather large gamble for a film studio.  While he has directed some smaller budget films to critical praise, gambling what is assumed to be tens of millions on this updated version of the 1955 Broadway musical seems a rather large risk for any studio.

There have been several films in the past few years that have revived the musical film, but while a few of them have gone on to financial success, not all of them have fared as well.  Here is a breakdown of five of the most notable musical films in order of release, and how each has done at the box office: (data from Box Office Mojo)

As you can see, when they hit, they hit well, but one mis-step and it’s a huge loss for a studio.

For those unfamiliar with the story, Damn Yankees tells the story of a middle-aged baseball fan who is tired of seeing his team lose to the New York Yankees.  He makes a Faustian pact with the Devil to make him into a young star ball player to take his team to the World Series.  Along the way, the Devil tries to tempt him with assistance of his top seductress, Lola, to break his contract which would allow him to collect the fan’s soul early.

The musical started on Broadway in 1955, received a film treatment in 1958, a television production in 1967 and a Broadway revival in 1994.  The new film is to have Jake Gyllenhaal in the role of the fan, and Jim Carrey as the Devil.  Lola has yet to be cast.

And that brings me back to my opening thought: Why do they keep casting people not known for their singing abilities?  You firing up a big budget film with a director who has not proven himself with a large budget, two actors that — while capable actors — are not known to be singers.  This production seems to have a lot of strikes against it before it even starts pre-production.

I hope I am proven wrong, but this is sounding a lot more like another Nine than another Mamma Mia!.