C.A.T.: Innervisions

Stevie Wonder – Innervisions (1973)

During the 1970’s, Stevie Wonder was on a creative streak that few artists have seen, and Innervisions is easily one of his best albums. I guess another reason I’m more fond of it nowadays is that unlike some of his other albums, I’m not sick of repeatedly hearing the singles, although every track on it is superb.

Innervisions came after the great artistic and commercial success of Talking Book, in which Wonder showed that he could be an R&B artist with crossover appeal thanks to the hit single, “Superstition”. Also as with his previous two albums, Innervisions saw Stevie shedding his child star persona by showing complete control over his music by producing his material as well as playing nearly every instrument on the album except for the bass and guitar parts that are featured on a couple songs.

And though he’s a more than competent drummer, Stevie makes more than full use of his brilliant piano playing. The songs are densely layered with lots of funky keyboard and synth parts, along with Stevie’s very soulful vocals. The album really shows off the different sides of Stevie Wonder that made him such an easily like-able artist. Songs such as “Livin’ For The City” and “Higher Ground”reflect Wonder’s more socially conscious side while songs like “Golden Lady” and “All In Love Is Fair” show his knack for writing heartfelt love songs.

Stevie’s unique blend of funk, smooth R&B, and pop really make for a sound that is very pop-friendly, and it’s really quite amazing the way he’ll give you a song like “He’s Misstra Know It All” that has a very catchy sound to it even though it’s lyrics are a scathing critique of then-President Richard Nixon. And it’s this unique blend that made Stevie Wonder one of the most successful artists of the seventies as well as emerging along with artists like Marvin Gaye and Curtis Mayfield as an R&B artist with a message.

Favorite Tracks: “Living For The City”, “Don’t You Worry ‘Bout A Thing”, “He’s Misstra Know It All”

Write Home About It

Did you know that the WGA Awards were held Sunday? Me neither. But with so many award shows at this time of the year, it’s hard to keep track of when they all are.

Anyway, if you remember last year, the WGA Awards were held like a commercial due to the strike. Apparently this year they actually had a proper award show, with guests and everything. Once again, Slumdog Millionaire took home best adapted screenplay, and Milk won best original screenplay. I can’t say most of the winners are that surprising, just the usual. You know, 30 Rock, Mad Men, Recount, John Adams, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed. Wait a minute, Force Unleashed? Oh yeah, this is the award show that actually recognizes game writing!

I think they made a good choice with Force Unleashed, its story was certainly its strongest suit. The only real competition would be Grand Theft Auto IV, which we know cannot recieve anything except critiscm from media outside the gaming world.

If you desperately want a list of the winners, you can check out the LA Times. They’re probably available on IMDb too. But, this just quite isn’t that exciting. I find myself caring less and less about award shows every day.

Be Careful What You Wish For

Coraline

In an age of advanced computer imagery, it’s a rare treat to get an opportunity to see a traditional stop motion film. Known for being a rather difficult and time consuming process, stop motion produces a unique and almost otherworldly charm. Coraline had been in the works for a long while and I’d been definitely looking forward to it, so I’m glad to report to you that it didn’t disappoint.

Directed and written for the screen by stop motion expert Henry Selick, Coraline (Based off of the novel by Neil Gaiman) is essentially the perfect vehicle to showcase this seldom used art form. With a simple yet dark story, not unlike something the Grimm Brother’s might concoct, Coraline sparkles with vibrant settings and impressive imagery. Overflowing with imagination, we get a taste of everything from circus trained mice jumping in unison, to creepy ghost children, to a vivid garden containing some quite unusual inhabitants. Naturally there’s that nightmarish quality that often accompanies both Gaiman and Selick’s work and the overall product is a stunning and spooky fairy tale.

Coraline has of course been strongly advertised as an impressive 3D experience, but in the way of 3D films there isn’t much to brag about here. Images slightly pop out every now and then, but frankly there was hardly anything I saw that granted this movie be made in 3D. When I see a 3D movie I want to see a intricate utilization of depth in relation to the foreground and background, but they really missed an opportunity. With that said, I wouldn’t worry about seeing in this in 3D if your contemplating it, Coraline would still be a strong visual experience without 3D.

Henry Selick has only made four theatrical films, often because of his use of stop motion, but I hope this film will lead to and continue to inspire future filmmakers to continue using this technique. Wes Anderson’s next film is supposed to be a stop motion adaptation of Roald Dahl’s Fantastic Mr. Fox so it’s good to know there’s always something in the works.

Livin’ The Dream

Bruce Springsteen – Working On A Dream

Sorry I took so long to post this conclusion to my in-depth retrospectus of Bruce Springsteen. Anyways, Working on a Dream marks the third entry in a supposed trilogy of albums, along with “The Rising” and “Magic” that reteams Bruce Springsteen with the E Street Band and producer Brendan O’Brien. It could very well be the best of these albums, but one thing that’s for sure is that it’s another very impressive outing from a man who’s giving us an exciting career with no end in sight.

The album starts off with the 8-minute “Lonesome Pete”, and proves to be one of The Boss’s most epic songs in years thanks to some sweeping instrumental work. The rest of the album however, shows Springsteen in a more optimistic state. There are a surprising number of simple but nonetheless charming love songs like “What Love Can Do” and “Tomorrow Never Knows”. A lot of the songs such as “This Life” and “Working On A Dream”, are fairly laid back, but their soaring melodies and lush arrangements make Working On A Dream one of the Boss’s most accessible albums yet.

If The Rising offered messages of strength and healing in the face of a post-9/11 world and Magic was a meditation on the waning days of the Bush administration, then Working On A Dream definitely appears reflect Bruce Springsteen’s hopeful attitude towards our new President. And of course Bruce’s brilliant contribution to The Wrestler soundtrack embodies that film and is a nice addition to this great collection of songs that explore the poppier side of one of rock’s greatest talents.

Favorite Tracks: “My Lucky Day”, “Working On A Dream”, “Surprise, Surprise”

On The Topic of Jr.

So the great Seattle Baseball debate has been going on violently for the past few months and with under a week to go until pitchers and catchers report in Peoria, AZ, time is running out for the decision to be made.

Should we bring back Jr.? Most of the Seattle area columnists seem to think so. The sabermetric thinking blogosphere disagrees whole heartily. They argue that statistically Griffey has fallen off the planet much like Edgar and Olerud did in 2004. It wouldn’t be right to sign him and watch the shell of a “kid” struggle and be released come June.

But I say, “I don’t give a shit.” Reports came out that he was suffering from a knee injury all year and that it has been surgically repaired and now he is healthy having lost 20 pounds. I’m willing to bank that Jr. will return to his 2007 form slugging 30 home runs. Hell, I would pay him 5 million to hit just one more dinger in a M’s uniform. These are obvious reasons why I am not a general manager.

But I was thinking of all the scouting reports saying things like “Jr. can’t catch up to a fastball any more,” and “He should only hit against right handed pitching”. I decided to spend my lazy Sunday looking up every at-bat in which Jr. hit a home run using MLB.com’s Pitch f/x data.

Here’s the spread sheet I made.

That took me the better half of my day and I was kind of disappointed with how many different sources I had to use to find all that information.

Some immediate things that jump out at me was that 14 of his 18 home runs were off right-handed pitching. So it would be a safe bet to only allow Griffey to hit off of right handers, who encompass the majority of Major League pitching.

The pitch selection looked like this: 9 Fastballs, 5 Sliders, 2 Curve Balls, and 2 Change Ups. So the myth that he can only hit 70 MPH Curve Balls for home runs just isn’t true. The other thing you could say is that the only reason he hits Fastballs further than Curve Balls is because Fastballs jump off the bat faster, thus going further.

But only 5 of his home runs were off pitches that were 90 MPH or faster, 4 of them being Fastballs. The one that I remember very vividly is the one off Kyle Farnsworth in Yankee Stadium when I made the pilgrimage to New York. He started Jr. off with a 98 MPH Fastball, then a 99, and then he stroked the 97 MPH into the right field seats. If he knows that Fastballs coming he can for sure catch up with it.

The last thing I wanted to look at was the distance and how it compared to Safeco. The Safe’s right field was taylor made for Jr.’s swing but is not as friendly as the Great American Ballpark in Cincinatti. These are very rough estimates and should be taken with a grain of salt but I feel pretty confident in them.

Overall there are plenty of flaws in this analysis because I only looked at his home runs and it does not include all of his other batted ball data. But this is a window into what Ken Griffey Jr. can still do what he does best. And coming into the season healthy I think Griffey can be an impactful player for the Seattle Mariners in 2009.

The Beginning of the End (of YouTube)

I think this has been going on for at least a month now, but I am just now becoming fully aware of the shit that hath been going on over at YouTube. Apparently the deuchebags over a Warner Music Group (WMG) were all “give us mo’ money!” And YouTube was like, “mo’ money mo’ problems.” So WMG started pulling their content from the website.

This would be mildly aggravating if they were just pulling music videos or something to that effect. But, sadly, that is not the case. It seems like any content that could in any way contain something that WMG owns is getting muted. So, for example, some videos of Rock Band DLC have had their audio tracks removed. Or, and this is where it really hurts, What’s With The Fifties. I guess they own “Great Balls of Fire.” Never again will viewers around the world get to hear the first half of that special video.

This whole concept is quite terrifying, I mean, what if more labels follow suit? What if shit gets so serious that anything that possibly violates a copyright gets pulled? It would completely destroy YouTube. I don’t want that. I like YouTube. I go there like every day.

So, in conclusion, fuck you WMG. Fuck you hard. You’re killing creativity, the Internet, and freedom of speech. Or something like that.

T3: Worst Album Covers Ever!

Posts have been slow at Cat Fancy lately, so for this week’s “Top Ten” I thought I’d blow your mind and do the first ever “Top Twenty”. I was recently looking up terrible album covers and immediately I felt inspired. There’s just so many great (By which I mean horrible) covers so I had to go the distance. Most are extremely obscure artists but I looked at over a hundred album covers to narrow it down to this tight twenty. I’ll keep most of my comments brief as I belief the images speak for themselves. It’s hard to decide which covers are worse than others, but something that we can all agree on is that these are all terrible.

20. Freddie Gage – All My Friends are Dead (1969?)
: Oh yeah that’s uplifting.

19. Dwarves – The Dwarves Must Die (2004)
He died for our lollipops, poor little feller.

18. Eulenspygel – Eulenspygel 2 (1971)
This is cruel, unusual and very, very sad.

17. Larz Kristerz – Stuff Party 2 (2004)
If you thought “Stuff Party 1” was intense than wait till you hear the followup!

16. Tiny Lynn – Little Lehman’s Half-Fast Songs (????)
Is this foreign? I can only imagine what kind of great material is on this album.

15. Elvez – G.I. Ay! Ay! Blues (1996)
What the hell is this? Is this guy like the Latin Elvis?

14. Fabio – After Dark (1993)
Yeah it happened…

13. Boned – Up at the Crack (2005)
Yes, yes, this rocks!

12. The Braillettes – Our Hearts Keep Singing (1968)
They all ready have to deal with being blind, now they have to deal with people laughing at their cover behind their backs.

11. Tino – Por Primera Vez (1983)
: You cannot resist the Tino!

10. Herbie Mann – Push Push (1971)
: If women want to “push” with anyone it’s Herbie Mann. He’s sweaty, balding, hairy, he plays the flute, what more could you want?

9. Pooh Man – Funky As I Wanna Be (1992)
A guy named “Pooh-Man” between a woman’s legs, what comes to mind?

8. Millie Jackson – Back to the S..t! (1989)
: Seriously, that’s just disgusting.

7. Joyce – Self Titled (1983)
Who’s the target audience here? Who’s Joyce and why would I want her album? I guess that’s why she went for such a great cover.

6. Christian Crusaders with Alvin Davis – Self Titled (1972)
: Looking spiffy! I bet all the hip kids loved the Christian Crusaders.

5. Heino – Liebe Mutter (1972)
: For those who don’t know “Liebe Mutter” loosely translates into “love mother”. I guess this makes Heino like the German Norman Bates. If Norman Bates recorded an album.

4. The Handsome Beasts – Bestiality (1996)
You have to admit they make a cute couple.

3. The Ministers Quartet – Let Me Touch Him (1964)
: Let Me Touch Him?!? You have a picture of four middle aged religious men and you name the album “Let Me Touch Him”?

2. The Handsome Beasts – 04 (2004)
What’s that guys obsession with being naked?

1. Ken – By Request Only (1976)
Widely considered as the worst album cover of all time, I’m not sure what’s so striking about By Request Only. Whether it’s Ken’s late 70s porn star look or the lame overlaying of his vacant expression, By Request Only is beyond hilarious.

As a matter of fact, people were so taken by this cover when it first popped up on the internet that it became somewhat of an urban legend. Who is Ken? Is this an actual album? What kind of music did he do? Well it didn’t take long for a copy of this baby to appear on eBay and soon all the secrets were revealed.

Ken Snyder is his name and this is indeed a real album. Released in 1976 the album contains Christian music. Apparently the real Ken has actually found this whole fiasco quite amusing. He’s sold a few copies online (with his autograph) and has embraced the legend. I’m glad this whole thing could end on a good note.

Dishonorable Mention
There’s a lot of horrible 80s hair metal album covers. Scorpions and Man-O-War definitely have some of the worst in that genre. There’s a lot of other religious albums that are pretty bad as well.