Record Stores in 2021

 

Lately due to legal issues I’d rather not discuss herein, I’ve had a surplus of free time.  Taking care of things which need to be done is a priority, of course, but even so I still have time left over.  I’ve been going around the DC area looking at various record stores.  Sadly, the results are not pretty.

First off, with the exception of CD Cellar, in Falls Church, these record stores are only selling vinyl.  CD Cellar does sell CDs, but these are excellent quality used CDs – though I was able to purchase the latest version of Dark Side of the Moon, which is brand new, and has a 5.1 Surround layer on the CD which can be read by BluRay players like mine. 

Now there seem to be three types of vinyl.  I’ll call them Original Vinyl, Premium Reissues, and New Releases.  Original vinyl is the used material originally released from 1948 to about 1988, when vinyl was replaced by compact discs (CD) as the primary format for music.  These albums are 140 grain and fairly flimsy, but may sound acceptable if in good shape on a decent, non-audiophile turntable.  Premium Reissues are 180 grain versions of albums originally released on vinyl.  New Releases include brand new material released on vinyl, which seems to be the norm these days, and also reissues of material originally released on CD from 1988 to the present.  These are my terms, not industry terms.

With very few exceptions, almost all newly released music is released on digital format and CD, possibly also vinyl.  There are some limited cases where new music is released on vinyl and not CD, with or without a download code for MP3s.  In that case you can download the MP3s, upload them to iTunes, create a playlist, and then burn the MP3s to a CD-R, giving you a CD version, though CD-Rs are not as good quality as a CD. 

We need to realize that material originally released on CD was NOT intended for analog reproduction, which includes current releases.  My preference is for CDs.  Thus when it comes to buying vinyl, I am almost exclusively buying premium reissues.  A few I’ve been looking for were Wishbone Ash, Argus – self-titled, Pilgrimage and IV are all on 180 grain; Hawkwind, Doremi Fasol Latido; and Ozzy Osbourne, Speak of the Devil.  I believe Argus was reissued in such miniscule quantity that all copies were immediately purchased. 

These modern day record stores seem to very small, maybe just a room.  Hub City Vinyl in Hagerstown, Maryland, is actually fairly big, just a big, large room with lots of windows.  Many, like Hub City, also sell turntables and t-shirts.  Their selections generally seem to be 60% original vinyl, 20% premium reissues, and 20% new releases.   That being the case, I’m fairly disappointed by each of these, and CD Cellar is the only one I visit regularly.  It helps that it’s next door to Action Music, a guitar/amp store with a remarkable selection of used guitars and amps.  If I ever wanted to buy a Mesa Boogie combo, I know where to find it.

I realize that it’s almost impossible for a brick & mortar store to compete with Amazon and other online retailers, plus streaming services such as Spotify draw off people who don’t care about sound quality and don’t care about having some physical media.  However, I enjoy walking into a store and leaving with something in my possession – well, after buying it.  Sadly, FNAC – the huge electronics store in Paris, France – doesn’t exist in the US.  When I visited Paris in October 2017 I saw it was selling vinyl.  I didn’t see if it was selling CDs.

Let’s review the past, shall we?

Kemp Mill Records & Sam Goody.  These were the chain stores I remember.  Records, CDs, cassettes, they sold all of these.  And then went out of business.  Sam Goody seemed to be located in malls, and Kemp Mill Records were in strip malls.  They were fairly small.

Borders, Barnes & Noble, & Best Buy.  Both of these used to sell music, and both sell vinyl (new releases) now.  Barnes & Noble still sells CDs, though a limited selection. 

Target & Walmart.  If you want to buy a CD in a store today, these are your only options, and by nature their selection is limited to the narrowest, best selling items.  CD Cellar has a huge selection, but it’s all used, sadly. 

Honorable Mention.  Amoeba Music and Vintage Vinyl.  In L.A. there is a huge store, Amoeba Music, on Sunset Blvd, taking up an entire block.  I visited there in summer 2010.  If you ever go to L.A., by all means visit this place.  In Ford, New Jersey, up Route 1-9 up from Rutgers, was Vintage Vinyl.  VV even had bands played live there, but I never caught a show.  I did buy the California Jam bootleg of Black Sabbath, on vinyl, at this place.  Sadly, it’s now closed and out of business. 

The Hitman's Bodyguard's Wife

 

While I’m loathe to fall back on simply reviewing whatever movie I happened to have watched before Friday, in this case a pair of movies was remarkable enough to warrant my review in this context.

The Hitman’s Bodyguard (2017).  The original film starts things off.  Michael Bryce (Ryan “Deadpool” Reynolds) is a top level executive bodyguard in the present day.  However, his career took a hit – quite literally – when his client, Kurosawa, was abruptly assassinated despite his best, most diligent efforts to protect him, by some unknown assassin. 

Meanwhile, a particularly nasty Byelorussian dictator, Dukhovich (Gary the Old Man), is on trial in The Hague, Netherlands, for war crimes, mainly various Einsatzgruppen style massacres 60 something years after the original series.  He has managed to wipe out all witnesses, except one: a hitman, Darius Kincaid (Samuel L. Jackson).  Bryce winds up escorting Kincaid across England to Dover, by ferry to Holland, through Amsterdam and then to The Hague to beat a 5 p.m. deadline to testify, otherwise the case against Dukhovich will fail and he’ll be released, presumably to resume his prior position as dictator and mass murderer – an outcome most would consider suboptimal.

Naturally, Dukhovich has some moles in the UN/Interpol hierarchy who give his Russian henchmen fairly accurate information about Bryce & Kincaid’s whereabouts at any given point, so the quest is almost a continuous shootfest of bloodshed, car crashes, explosions, etc. all the way to The Hague. 

By the way – Kincaid has a provocatively attractive wife, Sonia (Salma Hayek) whose release from a maximum security womens’ prison will be a reward for his testimony against Dukhovich. 

By now I’ve seen countless of these type of films, the most annoying being the obvious implausibility of all these crashes and deaths, clearly an orgy of CGI.   In fact, it’s so implausible it becomes de facto science fiction rather than action.  Moreover, Jackson is just as arrogant and “my dick is bigger than yours” as ever, especially having the ever-hot Hayek as his wife.  However, when the dust clears, all the casings fall, and the guns are dropped on the ground, I found it as entertaining as any of the other films of this nature and enjoyable for that reason.

The Hitman’s Wife's Bodyguard (2021).  Now Sonia is out of prison, ostensibly celebrating her honeymoon with Kincaid, which seems to be spent – along with Bryce – attempting to foil another ubervillain, Aristotle Papdopolous, a super rich Greek rich guy (Antonio Banderas) who plans on destroying Europe’s power grid with a virus from his yacht.  We also learn who Bryce’s step-father, Bryce, Sr., is…. Played by Morgan Freeman.  So here you get SLJ AND Morgan Freeman in the same film.  Not a bad combination.   The narrative begins with Bryce trying to enjoy his bodyguard license suspension in peace and quiet, predictably disrupted when Sonia shanghai’s him into rescuing Kincaid, who has been kidnapped by the Italian Mob – given a face –“Carlo” by Syrio Forel, who we know from Game of Thrones as Arya’s fencing instructor.  Carlo was the UN’s confidential source on Aristotle’s diabolical plans, so Kincaid, Bryce and Sonia wind up in the middle of the whole mess. 

Oh, need I mention that Sonia wants children, and relentlessly harasses Darius about his apparent inability to impregnate her, so the dialogue between the two is predictably saucy.  And the issue of whose eggs or whose sperm is at fault is quite explicitly discussed - as are their heroic, high octane multiple orgasm attempts to conceive.  As you might imagine, all such attempts occur off-camera, the audience treated to the subsequent bickering about her NOT missing her period.

This time around Sonia is front and center in the narrative – and it turns out she had a prior relationship with Aristotle, until she fell off his yacht, suffered amnesia, and married Kurt Russell.  Oops, wrong movie - and part of the charm of this film is explicitly acknowledging lifting the plot of the Goldie Hawn version. 

What’s a little frustrating is that, as hot as she obviously is, Hayek isn’t showing any more skin than she did in “Dusk Til Dawn” – in fact, far less, despite the fact that we know in real life she’s proud to still have such a killer figure at her current age.  For that matter, Christina Hendricks, the buxom redhead in “Mad Men”, “Tin Star”, and now “Good Girls”, doesn’t even seem to strip down to a bikini, much less nudity, despite – or perhaps because of – her obvious assets.  She had a sex (sorry, have to laugh here) scene in “Tin Star” in which she’s fully clothed.  Kind of defeats the purpose of having a voluptuous actress if she isn’t going to even get down to lingerie or a swimsuit.  Anyhow.  She does add considerably to the entertainment value of the film, so overall I’d say her presence is more enjoyable than frustrating.  I suppose if we want mainstream actresses showing skin, there’s Game of Thrones, though none of the women therein can boast such figures as Hayek or Hendricks. 

While I'm on the topic of "fake sex in movies" - though "Game of Thrones" is not a movie - there was a recent film with Jason "Ted Lasso" Sudeikis and Alison "Annie from Community" Brie called "Sleeping With Other People".  It's a fairly raunchy film with several scenes of simulated sex (always avoid alliteration).  The characters involved are partly nude, but no amount of suspension of disbelief will convince us that mainstream actors are actually having sex on camera for a film.  So it's a bit weird.  Having said so, having seen Alison Brie as semi-innocent in "Community", and Jason Sudeikis kind of too clueless to be a stud in "Ted Lasso", seeing them both take overtly provocative roles like this is a bit of a novelty.   I suppose your mileage may vary.

Will there be a third movie?  Actually, I’m still waiting for “Deadpool 3”[ Deadpool 3 release date, trailer, cast and more | The Digital Fix], which presumably would keep Reynolds busy to the exclusion of Hitman’s Bodyguard’s Wife’s Gynecologist.   We’ll see. 

Ted Lasso and Major League

 

Season 1 of Ted Lasso came out in August 2020, and season 2 was released more recently, both on Apple TV.  That streaming service also gives us For All Mankind, the alternate history story, in two seasons, which speculates what might have happened had the Soviets beat us to the Moon in 1969.  In real life, despite having a head start with Sputnik in 1957 and Yuri Gargarin in 1961, we caught up to them and beat them to the moon, at which point the Sovs then implausibly denied they were even trying to compete with us.  There’s also Foundation, which is based on the Isaac Asimov stories – which I have not read.

Ted Lasso.  This features Jason Sudeikis as the central character.  It seems a fictional Premier League (top tier) soccer team, AFC Richmond, from London, wound up being owned by a vindictive woman, Rebecca Welton (Hannah Waddingham) out to destroy the team out of spite for her ex-husband, who cheated on her and now has a baby on the way with his 20-something sex kitten.  So she hires Ted Lasso, a college football coach from Kansas City, USA of all places, with absolutely ZERO prior experience in soccer, let alone a Premier League team. 

Lasso appears to be a lightweight, annoyingly optimistic and naïve, with as little clue about London and England as he does about soccer.  He brings his assistant coach (Beard, and he has a beard, Brendan Hunt) along with him.  The local fans are highly skeptical of his chances (WANKER is the universal cheer at the local pub, not meant endearingly) as are the players and the local press.  Lasso also learns, firsthand, how brutal not only the English tabloids can be, but also mainstream journalists as well, e.g. Trent Crimm from the Independent (James Lance).  It seems literally everyone has written him off.

Remarkably, he rises to the challenge, and somehow manages to navigate all these obvious issues, partly with his happy-go-lucky charm but also with a fair amount of strength of character which eventually cuts through the incessant cynicism.  It turns out he has some underlying issues which make his character not only more complex but also more sympathetic.  Season 2 picks up with the team finally turning things around, partly with the help of a therapist.  What’s interesting is that though AFC Richmond itself is fictional, the team is up against real-life Premier League rivals such as Liverpool, Manchester City, Tottenham, West Ham, Aston Villa, etc., all names which soccer fans are sure to recognize. 

I also find the array of characters to be highly entertaining.  Higgins (Jeremy Swift), the owner’s XO, bumped around without a permanent office; Roy Kent (Brett Goldstein), the abusive and cynical ex-player who winds up a sports anchor – with NO filter! – and then back on the team as an assistant coach; his GF, Keely (Juno Temple), very cute (!!!); Jamie Tartt (Phil Dunster), one of these spoiled, highly talented but egotistical players who left the team earlier with extreme prejudice only to have Man City dump him – and then no one else will take him except his former team, with whom he’s already burned all his bridges and has to crawl back begging for his old job back.  ("Be careful who you piss on, on your way up, as you'll be meeting them on your way down...") That’s just a few…

I’ll spare anyone spoilers or specific details of the plot and simply advise:  you may well find the modest fee for Apple TV to be worth it for this show alone, never mind the aforementioned sci-fi shows which are worthy in their own right as well.

Major League.  My buddy Dave advised me that the “team sabotaged by a vindictive female owner” plot was the premise of this 1989 film about the Cleveland Indians.  I saw it when it came out but I don’t think I’d seen it again before now, when I took another look at it. 

In this case the owner, Rachel Phelps (Margaret Whitton) is angling to move the Indians from cold, dreary Cleveland to warm, sunny Miami.  The catch is that the team is bound by contract to remain in Cleveland…UNLESS their attendance figures fall below a certain number.   So she deliberately assembles a motley crew of renegades, washouts, and misfits deliberately calculated to result in a last place finish.  The team includes catcher Jake Taylor (Tom Berenger) whose knees sidelined him earlier; the temperamental pitcher Ricky Vaughn (Charlie Sheen); pampered, rich third baseman Roger Dorn (Corbin Bernsen, aka Arnie Becker from “L.A. Law”), voodoo shaman Cerrano from Cuba (errr.. I thought voodoo was from Haiti, not Cuba, but whatever) (Dennis Haysbert); and flashy Willie Mays Hayes (Wesley Snipes).  Rene Russo plays Berenger’s love interest, and Bob Uecker is basically playing himself as the team’s announcer,  Harry Doyle.

I have to marvel at how much I remember from this film despite only having seen it once.  Dorn’s wife catches him slipping away behind a TV commentator at a party with another woman, so she seduces Vaughn at a bar.  When housemate Taylor sees her leaving Vaughn’s bed the next morning, Vaughn says, “honest, I had no idea who she was!”  

Getting back to the basic premise, eventually the team learns of Rachel’s ulterior motive and decides to pull out all the stops and get to the Series for the team’s first title since 1948 – and winds up against the Yankees, of all teams.  I would think that once the team entered playoff contention the attendance would surpass the threshold which would allow it to walk away from the lease with the city.  Certainly once it made the playoffs itself, you could expect the stadium to be mostly full.  Either way, it’s an entertaining story, made more so by watching Sheen’s later work – “Two and a Half Men” – and indulging in the Washington Nationals in recent seasons with my brother. 

Actually, the two wind up as opposites of “Fever Pitch”.  The original featured Colin Firth (with buddy Mark Strong) as die hard Arsenal supporters in London, with the remake featuring Jimmy Fallon and Drew Barrymore as Red Sox fans.  

Game of Thrones Revisited

 

I originally blogged about this. Chris' Blog: Game of Thrones (formula57l.blogspot.com).  That was in December 2012, meaning I had only seen season 2, and season 3 hadn’t even come out yet.  Since that time all 8 seasons have aired.  These were based on books written by George R. R. Martin, basically the Beatles’ producer with an extra R, a beard, and a few pounds (visually, no one will confuse the two).  Not sure if GRRM has any interest in the Beatles. 

A few years ago, they had a Game of Thrones Exhibition in Manhattan, NYC.  Among many other intriguing exhibits was a replica of the Iron Throne, which I sat in and had my picture taken.  

Books.  A Game of Thrones (#1) (1996), A Clash of Kings (#2) (1998); A Storm of Swords (#3) (2000), A Feast For Crows (#4) (2005), and A Dance With Dragons (#5) (2011).  Book #6, The Winds of Winter, is STILL not out yet. 

Series (HBO).  Season 1 (2011), Season 2 (2012), Season 3 (2013), Season 4 (2014), Season 5 (2015), Season 6 (2016), Season 7 (2017), and Season 8 (2019).  Given that Martin has still not finished book 6, seasons 6, 7 and 8 had to be done without the benefit of the actual books, though the story is that Martin gave them enough basics on his intentions for them to craft three full seasons of material.  My subjective impression is that now that the full series has actually aired, Martin’s incentive to finish the books is highly attenuated.  As it was, when seasons 1 through 5 were airing, it seems half the viewing audience had actually read the books and had some idea what was going to happen, the other half NOT reading the books and saying, “SHH!!! Don’t tell me!”  Whether it was because these are people who don’t read things without pictures – unless they’re actually paid to do so for work – or whether they simply didn’t want the whole thing spoiled, I couldn’t say.  I count myself among the many who actually DO read fiction as a recreational activity.

I read all 5 books and watched all 8 seasons when they were originally broadcast on HBO.   After Season 5, even the book readers like myself no longer had the benefit of source material, so everyone was left wondering what was going to happen next.

Probably the #1 distinguishing feature of GOT is the vulnerability of major characters to swift dispatch.  With Star Trek, the original series, the running joke is that if an away team goes down to a planet with major characters and some new guy in a red shirt we’ve never seen before, guess who’s going to get killed?  Hint, it won’t be Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Scotty, Sulu, Chekov, etc.  At least the Next Generation actually killed off Tasha Yar (Denise Crosby) fairly early on.   Martin wanted to keep us in suspense:  NO character was safe, even the most beloved ones such as Brann Stark, Khal Lego, or Frodo.  Who knows, even Tony Stark might get killed if his “iron suit” proved vulnerable to poison or the Dothraki.

PLOT HOLE.  I’m re-watching the series again, and finished Season 1.  I’m picking up a few things I missed the first time around.  The 800 pound gorilla here is the Baratheon kids.  We haven’t seen younger siblings Tommen or Myrcella yet, but eldest child, and the heir to the throne, Joffrey, is certainly here. 

The King is Robert Baratheon (Mark Addy), of the Baratheon clan, whose “animal” is the stag.  His younger brothers are Stannis and Renly.  Stannis shows up in Season 2, but we’ve already seen Renly (Gethen Anthony).  The Queen is Cersei Lannister (Lena Headey), of the Lannister clan, insanely rich but also nasty and cynical.  All the Baratheons have black hair and blue eyes, while all the Lannisters – with the curious exception of Tyrion (Peter Dinklage) - have blonde hair.  That includes Cersei, her twin brother Jaime (Nicolai Coster-Waldau), and practically all the others.  The head of the Lannister family is Tywin (Charles Dance), though what’s left of his blonde hair is now grey.

As noted in my earlier blog, the good guys are the Starks, the family furthest north, whose animal is the wolf.  The kids actually do come across and adopt wolves as pets – again, didn’t see any stags with the Baratheons, lions with the Lannisters, bears with Ser Jorah Mormont or his father, the commander of the Night’s Watch, and we certainly won’t hold our breaths waiting to see any “krakens” with the Greyjoys when they finally show up in Season 2, aside from hapless Theon. 

As the story starts, the prior Hand (executive officer) of Robert Baratheon has died mysteriously, of poisoning.  It turns out he was investigating this bizarre business of Robert’s kids with Cersei all having blonde hair.  As Robert trusts his old war buddy Ned Stark (Sean Bean, also Boromir in “Lord of the Rings”) to tell him “NO” every now and then, he asks Ned to take over as Hand.  Doing so, Ned picks up where John Arryn left off, likewise discovering the truth.  He even confronts Cersei about this, who remarkably admits she has been sleeping with Jaime and that Robert was always too drunk to properly impregnate her, she “finished him off by other means”, presumably orally – which we all know doesn’t result in pregnancy.   And yet it’s left to Arryn and Ned Stark to realize something is going on.

Robert wasn’t particularly stupid.  Not only would he suspect something when Joffrey bumped out with blonde hair, certainly he should have suspected something when Tommen and Myrcella did too – and all his own offspring by various whores and side chicks had black hair – as did Stannis and Renly, his brothers. 

Then there’s this business of failing to “get the job done” with Cersei.  He knows he needs an heir.  And while Lyanna Stark was his first choice as bride, and Rhaegar Targaryen was Cersei’s crush, they both ended up together.  Boo hoo.  If there’s one thing the royalty knows, is that they have little or no choice in who they wind up married to – thus a fairly lax standard in allowing extramarital affairs.  The stupid thing is, Robert’s tendency to whore around behind Cersei’s back – while Cersei was enjoying her brother’s intimacy – was not mutually exclusive with actually spending some sober time making sure Cersei was well and truly pregnant with his own offspring inside her.  And if he was only achieving happy ending down her throat, should he really be surprised when Joffrey didn’t wind up with black hair? 

Among the various different characters we meet in season 1, my favorites are Tyrion – who “drinks and knows things” – and Varys (Conleth Hill), the eunuch.   He spars off with Peytr Baelish (Aidan Gillen), aka Littlefinger, who runs the brothels in King’s Landing, the capital.  Khal Drogo (Jason Momoa) is also fairly compelling.  We haven’t even seen Arya’s transformation, or Brann’s, nor have we met Brienne of Tarth.  Plot holes big or small, the show has a remarkable cast of characters, and the casting was practically flawless.   Those of us who have seen it already can check them all out on Netflix (albeit only on DVD, sorry) and those who haven’t should finally get with the program and see for themselves what the fuss is all about….

Guns N' Roses

 Here’s case where I did NOT previously write about the matter in question, most likely because the only time (prior to last Sunday’s show in Baltimore) we had seen them was in 1992, a time at which I was not blogging, and Chinese Democracy, their most recent album of new material, wasn’t released until 2008, and although I purchased it and listened to it soon after it was released, it made no favorable impression upon me.

And as for the Sunday release? Well, I’m writing this watching “Radical Action”, a video of a latemodel (three drummer) King Crimson show.  Don’t count on GNR covering any Crimson….   In between confirming I don’t have COVID on Friday afternoon and finishing off Vincent Bugliosi’s critique of the “fiction posing as fact” which was Oliver Stoned’s “JFK” crapfest, I was distracted.  But now you get my 2 centavos on Weapons & Flowers.

Back in fall 1987, I was a sophomore at University of Maryland, College Park.  We had a suitemate named Woody, whose musical preference, while including Iron Maiden and Judas Priest, also featured a heavy dose of hair metal; his favorite band was Twisted Sister.  Then Appetite For Destruction came out, and he went nuts.  He was obsessed.  I thought it was OK, nothing special.  The strongest element isn't Axl - though he seems to fit the bill of oversexed, egocentric lead singer - it's Slash, pumping his blues-scale solos through Jubilee-spec Marshall amps, often playing on the neck pickup, oddly enough. We also saw Axl filling in for Brian Johnson on AC/DC's most recent visit to the Verizon Center (now Capitol One Arena) in DC.  Not bad, plus a set list of deep cuts Johnson usually doesn't sing.  

In 1992 we saw the joint Metallica/Guns N’Roses tour at RFK Stadium in DC.  Faith No More went on first, followed by Metallica, and then GNR.  We left before the encore.  The show was OK, but we preferred Metallica.

Guns N’ Roses Concert Setlist at Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium, Washington on July 17, 1992 | setlist.fm

Last Sunday we saw them again, in Baltimore.  Our seats were actually up close on the floor, but the damn yahoos in the seats in front of us blocked the view waving their cell phones en masse – because a show didn’t happen unless 300++ people record it on their cell phones.  Of the original lineup, Waxl Rose (vocals), / (guitar) and Duff O’Kagan (bass).  They had some other guy playing rhythm guitar, Weedy Dizz on keys, some drummer, and some chick on keyboards – hired elves, so to speak.  Oh, and lots of stage movies, with a focus on medieval plague doctors with vaccine syringes.  Unclear message there: the plague was caused by bacteria, not viruses.  Maybe meant to imply that the vaccines were medieval technology and therefore practically useless, possibly harmful.  GNR are anti-vax?  Oddly, in addition to a few covers, the current band played "Slither", from Velvet Revolver (Scott Weiland of Stone Temple Pilots originally singing).  

Guns N’ Roses Concert Setlist at Royal Farms Arena, Baltimore on September 26, 2021 | setlist.fm

Discography:  Appetite For Destruction, GNR Lies (half live, half acoustic), Use Your Illusion #1, Use You Illusion 2, The Spaghetti Incident (collection of covers, mostly punk), and Chinese Democracy.  The last album came out several years later with a revolving array of musicians (e.g. Buckethead) and lacked any standout songs, though the band saw fit to include several numbers from it on at Sunday night’s concert.

Of these albums, you could cull 10-12 quality songs and write off Chinese Democracy altogether.  I enjoyed watching Slash on guitar; Duff was still spry and energetic.  Axl did a heroic effort of belting out vocals written when his voice was much younger.  Stalwarts like “November Rain” and “Estranged” were the stellar, epic numbers which make the whole endeavor worthwhile.  Sadly, the band is hit-or-mess, with a fair amount of forgettable material, but their good stuff is good enough.  Thank you, Matt, for bringing me to another show.  AMEN.