Bringing It Back Around

It's a music industry maxim that if you're going to go to the trouble of recording someone else's song, you'd better be prepared to put your own stamp on it. I feel like exceptions can be made if you're choosing something obscure, but in general, I think you can probably see the wisdom here — if you want to hear something that sounds like the original, you might as well listen to the original, and if you're an artist who has no ideas for new material or new stuff to do with old tunes you love, then you should probably think about hanging it up.

If and when I ever accrue an immense pile of money and/or rule the world, I've long said that one of my first orders of business will be to bankroll a compilation that features extremely disparate artists covering each other's hits. I need this to happen if for no other reason than I am endlessly tickled by the thought of, say, Kenny Loggins covering "Crazy Train" and Ozzy covering, I dunno, "House at Pooh Corner." Like I said a paragraph ago: Put your own stamp on it. Even if the results aren't timeless, they'll probably be fun.

I mention all of this because I've been listening to Bring It Back Around by Bryant Roses, a singer-songwriter whose latest release is a fan-funded collection that sees him offering up country/folk covers of '90s "alternative" hits. The results are nowhere near as tongue in cheek as one might suspect, which means the record is more samey and sedate than I'd prefer, but also that it highlights the (generally rock solid) songwriting in ways you probably wouldn't expect. You'll likely still get a chuckle out of country ballad versions of "My Own Worst Enemy," "Santa Monica," "Dammit," and "When I Come Around" — among others — but these arrangements are so pure and simple that you'd be hard pressed to argue with Mayor Matt Wardlaw when he says "solid song, still holds up" after every track.

Watching: It's been a few weeks since I've posted one of these, and I've watched a bunch of stuff in the interim, starting with Godzilla Minus One, which I finally got around to seeing and can confirm is an excellent entry in a sprawling franchise whose bumpy history is littered with films that miss the point completely. Don't care about giant lizards? Me neither, but GMO hooks you in anyway by focusing on a human story that hits all the right beats until the film's final moments. I rolled my eyes at that ending, but only a little. (Netflix)

Next up was Butterfly in the Sky, a documentary about the long-running PBS kids' series Reading Rainbow. It's about what you'd hope it'd be, which is to say it's informative, extremely sincere, and it'll leave you mourning the death of the program all over again. I do my best to refrain from the type of "things were better when I was a kid" bullshit that you hear every goddamn day from us Gen X types; that said, watching Reading Rainbow be sacrificed on the altar of budget cuts really is enough to make you wonder why we've been so willing to give up so many good things in the name of profit or progress or whatever else we're being handed. (Netflix)

I also watched Knox Goes Away, in which director Michael Keaton gets a solid performance out of star Michael Keaton as an aging hitman whose speedily advancing memory loss dovetails with his efforts to help his estranged son beat a murder rap. It's uneven as hell — basically, anytime Keaton's offscreen, you're just a few moments away from unintentional laughter — but as far as these things go, it's fine. (Max)

Finally, I've been enjoying the first couple episodes of Bad Monkey, the new Apple TV+ adaptation of Carl Hiaasen's 2013 novel about a down-on-his-luck wiseass police detective who gets mixed up in a murder case that begins with a severed arm getting reeled in during a honeymooners' fishing expedition. You've got lovely Florida location shots, a soundtrack loaded with covers of Tom Petty songs, and plenty of the humor and witty dialogue Hiaasen's known for. You've also got Vaughn, who might be a myopic dope where politics are concerned but remains a quick draw with comedic banter, especially when he's playing a character this tightly aligned with his strengths as an actor.

Reading: I finished Chris Nashawaty's The Future Was Now: Madmen, Mavericks, and the Epic Sci-Fi Summer of 1982, which I enjoyed, albeit not anywhere near as much as I should have considering the incredibly fun subject matter (and how precisely it's aimed at the bullseye of my '80s-raised heart). Overall, it's rather dry, and I was also distracted by how Nashawaty further dampens the book's inherent spark by using "would" in every third sentence. Whoever edited this would have been wise to deduct most of those; it would have given the book more snap. Still, if you're interested in reading the behind-the-scenes stories of Tron, The Thing, Blade Runner, Star Trek II, E.T. and more, I think you'll find it an extremely easy read. Now I'm on to Julie Schumacher's Dear Committee Members, an academia-set novel that — at least so far — seems to owe a heavy debt to Richard Russo's Straight Man. Fortunately, Straight Man might be my favorite book, so I suspect I'll end up having a good time even though it looks like every chapter is written in the form of a letter.

(Of course, if you're looking for something to read, you should really buy my new novel, Langley Powell and the Society for the Defense of the Mundane. And if you've already bought it, leave a review! Its Amazon product page is looking lonely, and its Goodreads page is even lonelier.)

Elsewhere: I played guest DJ for a bit during the most recent episode of Bill Childs' wonderful Spare the Rock radio show. We served up some songs connected with Langley Powell, talked about the book, and just generally caught up for the first time in far too long a while. You can stream it here.