Boil It First 002: Retro Acid Green

OK, so our esteemed, cuddly, teddy-bear of an editor, Mr. Dan Majesky, posted an incredibly entertaining mixtape yesterday, so you know I had to get in on that business. Making mixes is one of my only talents, apart from run-on sentences and fanboy hyperbole, which you might know if you were following my blog, Random Old Records, and my stellar podcasts. Unlike his selection of what was rocking his face in the now, I decided to go way back! These twelve tracks come from a mix I made in 2007, and to be honest, it was for an ex-girlfriend. This thing probably contributed to me getting laid, so you know it's good stuff! It's called "Retro Acid Green" and it's all over the place, but it flows brilliantly, if I do say so myself. The original was 19 tracks and ran over an hour, so I cut out the duff tracks and left the pure gold. OK? Let's begin.

This Is Why People Don't Let Me Pick Movies: Boil It First's Take On Lars Von Trier's Antichrist!

I feel like the mark of an excellent film is needing to pee halfway through the movie and being too intrigued to leave your seat. By those standards, Lars Von Trier's Antichrist is a superb movie. Building a significant amount of word of mouth buzz before its release for the graphic and disturbing nature of the movie, Antrichrist never received a proper release in the U.S. despite being the talk of many film festivals the world over. You don't, after all, earn the honor of being "The Great Genital Mutilation Film of '09" and not get talked about.

For those unfamiliar with Antichrist, the film stars my long time girl crush Charlotte Gainsbourg and the always unnerving Willem Dafoe as a married couple who, after the death of their son, retreat to their cabin in the woods to face their demons. There's also graphic sex, graphic violence, and graphically violent sex. And a talking fox. Interested yet? Between that and the aforementioned genital mutilation, I can't see how anyone would not put Antichrist at top of their Netflix cue.

A Saylor Park Hymnal: The Tillers - By The Signs

Photo by: Mike Meldon

I am out to sing songs that will prove to you that this is your world and that if it has hit you pretty hard and knocked you for a dozen loops, no matter what color, what size you are, how you are built, I am out to sing the songs that make you take pride in yourself and in your work. And the songs that I sing are made up for the most part by all sorts of folks just about like you. - W. Guthrie

2010 promises to be a huge year for this great Queen City. Can’t you feel it, y’all? There’s something in the air, I tell ya! Take it all in now and don’t you dare worry cause it’s gonna linger all year long, baby doll! Lucky for you, beloved, the good news fell into my lap early this year, and I'm here to spread the gospel! It’s the first shot fired out of the chamber in the Cincinnati campaign to take over the landscape of popular culture. It comes in the form of a record made in a west side basement by three unshaven men in their mid-to-late twenties -- The Tillers.

Get To Know The Idiots That Run Your Favorite Blog!

I've wanted to post an introductory blog since Boil It First started, a "get to know your new favorite bloggers" entry, if will. I feel like we here at Boil It First are an amazing and eclectic group of weirdos and ruffians and a blog getting to know us would be an interesting and informative read.

Thankfully, tonight, a hilarious Facebook conversation was started that will help you get to know myself, Dan Majesky (our fearless leader), and that aforementioned ingenue Zach Braun quite well.

So what happens when one Boil It First staff member innocently posts on their Facebook that it's going to snow? A discussion about upper decking, fancy elephants, and alcoholic goats, of course!

I Made You A Tape: Boil It First 001

I find it hard to reconcile myself to making any kind of year-end list. Pop music is so temporary that I barely remember anything week-to-week or month-to-month. It has me and it's gone. I won't really have a handle on the historical 2009 until 2012 at the earliest, if ever.

Okay, maybe 2011.

Wouldn't it be better to know what's rocking my soul right now? Sure it would. Here, I made you a tape.

Who Gives a Fuck About An Oxford Comma? I do. Four Times In This Blog Alone: Examining The Vampire Weekend Backlash.

Let's talk for a second about the great blogger backlash against Vampire Weekend. Once a charming, affluent, and preppy indie band from the east coast, now hated by the vast majority of "cool kids", the hipster community hadn't seen a band go from beloved to despised so quickly since Zach Braff used Garden State to try to ruin former Vampire Weekend tour mates The Shins. (FYI: Just because a song is good does not mean that it will "change your life".) To quote fellow Boil It First ingenue Zach Braun, "I hated Paul Simon's Graceland when it came out and hate it even more when smug college kids rip it off."

As a self proclaimed "indie kid" (Definition: White person wearing a thrift store sweater with obscure band buttons on the collar; An individual who knows more about Jeff Tweedy's personal life than the personal lives of their siblings.), I found myself front and center for Vampire Weekend's rise to beloved, quirky pop band and subsequent fall to the ranks of the band no one wants to admit they like for fear of being judged by thick glasses clad bloggers and art school majors everywhere. Summing up the events that took place over the past three years in a few paragraphs would be a pretty easy, wikipedia aided feat but wouldn't it be more fun to create a Vampire Weekend timeline? Starting with their formation in New York and ending with a sophomore album featuring autotune, this is a quick glance at how Ezra Koenig went from being just another Jewish kid at Columbia to being called a pussy by Alice Cooper.

Confessions Of A B-Movie Addict #2

Like a lot of people, I grew up on a steady diet of '80s action movies. I know I'm not the only one who whiled away the hours watching the Beverly Hills Cop and Lethal Weapon franchises on HBO after getting home from school. Direct descendents of John Wayne, wise-cracking anti-heroes like Axel Foley and Martin Riggs drove sports cars, carried 9mm pistols, and blew away drug dealers, terrorists, and assorted sundry scumbags with finesse and instantly-quotable one-liners. A lot of really bad action movies made it to the screen in the '80s too, bereft of the hot-shot screenwriters, blockbuster budgets, and state-of-the-art special effects that made those classic films tick. Let me introduce you to perhaps the most unassuming action hero of all time: Leo Fong.

The Wrong Con: An Education

I've spent a good portion of my life watching shitty movies and enjoying the crap out of them. There's nothing wrong with that. Once you've got your head wrapped around the idea that a movie is going to be awful, you can go with the flow, and enjoy it.

Outside of B-grade pictures, I have come to expect movies to be mediocre, even the ones I've been dying to see. I've just been burnt too many times, and I don't really feel all that cheated anymore.

Frustration sets in when I see a film that begins strongly, hooking me emotionally, only to flounder and let me down at the end. This is what An Education did to me, and I'm kind of pissed.

Hey Everyone! Here's A Dead Indie Musician For You to Canonize! Remembering Vic Chesnutt.

If there's one thing people on a whole seem to love to do, it's lionizing the dead, particularly the dead that die under tragic circumstances after leading what was, overall, a tragic life.

Few people lead a more tragic life than Vic Chesnutt. He became paraplegic at eighteen, after a car accident. He attempted suicide countless times and wrote about it frankly. On December 24th, he overdosed on muscle relaxers. After landing in a coma, Chesnutt died on Christmas day.

Making Concessions: Up In The Air

There are burdens we all bear, as good donkeys, to get to the bottom of the canyon, or wherever it is we're going. George Clooney raps about the straps of those burdens digging into your shoulders and makes one hell of a case for putting them down in Up In The Air.