Recalculating – Based On The Comedy Of Ray Romano
If you’re trying to make it in any capacity in the American film business, the only one worth sleeping on someone’s sofa and eating expired cornflakes for, the best thing that you can happen to you is to get good press. Someone writing a nice review on a blog or in a magazine is great. A reporter requesting an interview and asking you what to name your favourite Powerpuff Girl is even better. Oh, so campy!
The worst thing that can happen to you once you’ve established your fame is to have a songwriter make fun of you in a pop song. An angry punk song would be even worse. Those things seem to seep into people’s subconscious and get transferred around like naughty photos taken on the beach. This is the tragedy that has befallen Ray Romano, and we’re yet to see if the famed actor will ever recover.
Recalculating’s “Based On The Comedy Of Ray Romano” is a brilliant fever dream with punk-rock instrumentation. It is, as far as we can make out, a revenge fantasy on the aforementioned Ray Romano in which the dreamer heckles the beloved entertained off stage, only to be then asked to replace him. It’s mean and karmic action and the result played out in 153 angry seconds. Besides, all this Recalculating sounds great while reclining in the therapist’s chair and delivering this performance.
Feral Minks – Matador
They say that history always passed the great poets of the past by. Few of them wrote about the truly epochal events that occurred during their lives. Few of them saw the period in which they lived as eventful. Why? Because, for the most part, they were too busy reading the classic themselves and waxing lyrically about periods that they thought had been greater than they’d really been.
It’s easy to give up on the world. It’s easy to be unappreciative and start thinking that nothing worthy of being written down or sung in pop tunes ever happens to you. Not everyone is a romantic by nature. But most of the time, you’re wrong in thinking that. And the more that you do, the more life will know to really make an effort and pass you by.
Feral Minks see the glory in drunken town parties, the romance of high-school sweethearts getting married and the warfare ignited by fistfights with folks who’ve had one too many glasses of cheer. It’s earnest North American rock and storytelling that most will recognise as familiar. But it’s in no way less impressive than the dusty history books and their tales of glory and woe. The musicians in Feral Minks just know where to look for the drama.
