It's Sho Time!!!

I was sitting with my wife watching Ninja Warrior who was enjoying watching her favorite competitor, Makoto Nagano. In fact, she has a fan page on a link at the side of this page about the most recent Ninja Warrior winner. Also on the program were Kane and Shane Kosugi. They appeared a few times on the program and Kane even dramatically lost in the final round (he went home literally crying in the rain). That's not to say they're athleticism or ability isn't impressive, but watching the Kosugi brothers made me think that they need their dad to Sho them how it's done. I'm talking the last known Ninja (that I know of), Sho Kosugi.

I grew up on B action movies produced by Cannon films. "Invasion USA", "American Ninja", "Death Wish 3"...these were classics to me. And one of my favorite stars was Sho Kosugi.
Sho had the iron face of a jackyl and the moves of a ...well, ninja. To say he was agile and badass is an understatement. I couldn't find it, but there was one movie where he did a running start and flipped over a concrete wall and landed on his feet atop of a parked car on the other side. He was known for being trained in the actual Ninja arts, not just the pretend stuff. Plus, he had that great name: Sho. Me and my friend would come up with excessively lame ways to use his name to comment on the movie action. "It's Sho Time!", "That Sho'ed him", "Sho'en how it's done", "Sho what!" , I'll Sho you (also a play on the Japanese word Shoyu for Soy Sauce)" were all phrases we used during the action or to punctuate the duller parts of the movie. I made this post so I could remember to Sho my wife what the hype was about, how this guy is great and much better than watching his kids.

So here's the final battle at the end of the classic Revenge of the Ninja (1983). I love how they start the fight on a Tennis Court because at the time I saw a lot of Tennis courts due to my parent's love of that game. It made this movie seem that much more real to me (because ninjas dressed in black in the daytime fighting on rooftops with ninja weapons instead of a gun is sooo realistic!). Also like how the first smoke bomb duds out and everyone act's like it was blinding them. So, for the educational benefit of my wife who has yet to learn the ways of the Sho, all 10 minutes of it, a movie Flashback!

More Rilo Kiley - Silver Lining

I debated with myself for a while on what my new Song of the Moment would be. Could it be the whistle happy "Young Folks" by Peter Bjorn and John? The Zepped out White Stripes rip "Icky Thump" (which I like a little better than their Bad Companyish current single, "You Don't Know What Love Is"). So close, but I'm going to give the nod to Rilo Kiley. Again.

I guess I have to admit to really liking this band without really realizing it. I got into them through a Paste magazine sampler that had "It's A Hit". I thought the song was groovy in a 70's soft rock kinda way. Even the vague anti-war message was 70's to me. I bought their 2004 disc More Adventurous and was treated to cute, tasteful country inflected pop rock. I liked it but wouldn't say I was amazed by them.

So I've been a little surprised that I seem to like them a lot. Before the new disc dropped, I started listening to Adventurous again plus a live bootleg of one of their shows. I enjoyed "The Moneymaker" enough to make it a Song of the Moment. It's unintentionally silly with it's stiff funk and phone sex operator vocals but it really stuck in my head.

There's no doubt Rilo Kiley sold out and have become a little blander, but I still can't get enough. I guess it's all those Fleetwood Mac comparisons floating around. At any rate, "Silver Lining" has replaced "The Moneymaker" in my head thanks to a handclap beat, George Harrison guitar lick and plaintive vocal reminiscent of their earlier work. Like "Moneymaker" it's overproduced and beat happy but I still like it. The gospel backing vocals help a bit to, reminds me of a Disney movie soundtrack.




Rilo Kiley - "Silver Lining"

Number 46

I was glancing at my list of my 100 favorite CDs and noticed that Number 46 has been getting a lot of press lately. A recent cover of Rolling Stone magazine no less!

Number 46 - Guns N Roses Appetite For Destruction (1987)

Without a shout of a doubt one of the greatest CDs of all time. For a few years, GNR was all anyone heard about in rock music. People thought they were going to be the new Rolling Stones. For a time, it looked like they could be.

My first exposure to this album stuck with me because I found it annoying at first. It was before they became popular, I heard this album played nonstop at my college dorm repeatedly. So much that I was tired of hearing it. But, during summer break I actually missed hearing it so I went out and bought it. That's when I really started to listen to them a lot.

In the summer of 1988 I played this album constantly. It was metal, but not polished or wussy like White Lion (not a total knock, I still love "Wait". "Wait...Wait...I couldn't get along with out you, one more ttiiimmmeeee"). Guns N Roses had nasty hard rock riffs, howling vocals screaming profanity and an authentic streetwise attitude. "Welcome To The Jungle" was and is a fantastic song filled with driving guitars, heavy percussion and frantic paranoia. "Mr Brownstone" grooved like Aerosmith (I would say like Aerosmith on drugs, but that was at least half of their career anyway). "Paradise City" always brings to mind the sights and smells of lawn seating at rock concerts, I don't know why.

My favorite song is "It's So Easy", a punky bit of jaded Los Angeles gutter rock. Sung in a lower register than the rest of the album, it's druggy, violent and misogynistic in an ear catching way!

Later that summer they hit with "Sweet Child O Mine" and unseated U2 as the top rock band in the land. It was never my favorite song of theirs, maybe because the first time I saw the video my friend intentionally turned off the tv to keep me from seeing it (he was upset I was watching HIS MTV, yet he never felt bad about borrowing money or any of my records). Anyway, GNR saturated the media which I was fine with until about Use Your Illusion era when Axl Rose started begging for people to understand him ( It was about two years before he offended so many different groups of people that he started to feel bad about it. )

Appetite is the rare album that has grown over time. As decades of artifical rock piles up, the raw raging essence of this disc feels that much more authentic. My wife got me into "You're Crazy", particularly the acoustic version from GNR Lies (1989). She also brought my attention to the catchiness of "Anything Goes". The Rolling Stone article shed new light on "Rocket Queen" which moves from raunchy sleaze to sweet optimism in the same song.

It's clear that Axl Rose will never recover enough of his sanity to regroup the original Guns N Roses and we'll be tormented with periodic updates on the loonng delayed Chinese Democracy album. The worst thing that Axl can do is release it because it's obvious that it sucks and once it's out everyone will stop caring about him. Appetite For Destruction captures one shining moment when rock music had infinite possibilities. Or at least a future.