Author: Mat Brewster

Welcome to the Midnight Cafe group of sites.

Lyle Lovett – Radio & TV Appearances (1989-1999)

Lyle Lovett
Radio & TV Appearances (1989-1999)

Grammy Awards 2/22/89

  1. She’s Hot to Go

KSGR Broadcasts Vol 6 & 8

  1. (Townes Van Zandt’s) White Freightliner Blues

KFOG-FM, San Francisco, CA 10/26/94

  1. Hello Grandma

Johnny Cash Tribute 1999

  1. Tennessee Flat Top Box

KSGR Broadcasts Volume 4

  1. That’s Right You’re Not from Texas

TNN

  1. Road to Ensenada
  2. Fiona

The Arsenio Hall Show

  1. I’ve Been to Memphis

KCRW, Santa Monica, CA 10/30/98

  1. Bears

World Cafe

  1. Private Conversation

Late Night w/David Letterman 8/9/95

  1. Funny How Times Slip Away

KCBO

  1. She’s No Lady

KSGR Broadcasts Vol 7

  1. If I Had a Boat

KFOG-FM, San Francisco, CA 8/14/99

  1. Church

Lyle w/Asleep at the Wheel

  1. Blues for Dixie

KSGR Broadcasts Vol 4

  1. Test Signal

The Tonight Show w/Jay Leno 2/17/93

  1. Stand By Your Man

Late Night w/David Letterman 6/16/93

  1. You’ve Been So Good Up to Now

Hee-Haw

  1. Which Way Does That Old Pony Run?
  2. I Married Her Just Because She Looks Like You
  3. Where Oh Where are You Tonight? / jokes

Lit Up Inside: Selected Lyrics by Van Morrison

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I swear I posted this review on this site when I first published it, but I cannot find it anywhere. Several years ago, before I went private and public again, I was contacted out of nowhere by a publicist for the company releasing a book of Van Morrison’s lyrics.

She presumably had just googled Van’s name and came across my site. Amazingly she didn’t balk at the fact that I was posting lots of ROIOs from Van and asked me to review the book.

Van is better known for his music than his lyrics, but as my review points out, the man can write some words, too.

Maleficent (2014)

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The idea that Hollywood has run out of new ideas is not new. We’ve been complaining about that for about as long as I can remember. There are still wildly original movies coming out these days (I just watched Poor Things as just one example – although come to think of it, that film was clearly greatly influenced by Frankenstein…). But it does seem that the local cineplex is constantly filled with sequels, remakes, and reimaginings.

That last one has gained a lot of traction over the last few years. Movies and television shows are often going back to the “classics” and tinkering with them a bit, reimaging them for today’s age. Maleficent takes the classic Sleeping Beauty villain and gives us her backstory, making her not quite so evil.

As you can read in my review, it doesn’t quite work.

Don Henley – Mountain View, CA (10/11/92)

Don Henley
Shoreline Amphitheatre
Mountain View, California
Sunday October 11, 1992

Recorded By OldNeumanntapr from lawn repeater stacks, left side
2 Nakamichi CM-300s w/CP-2 Omnis > Sony WM-D6C using Maxell UDXLIIS cassettes
Transferred: Sony TC-D5M > Tascam DR100mkII (24bit/48khz)

Mastered by Flying -M- (January 2021)
Har-Bal 3.0 & iZotope RX 8 advanced > CD Wave > Korg Aqua (16-44) > TLH (flac level 8)

Billed as “Healing The Sacred Hoop – The Next 500 Years”
A benefit for the International Indian Treaty Council
Sunday’s show also featured performances by Bonnie Raitt, Todd Rundgren, Little Feat, Ry Cooder & David Lindley, Cris Williamson, and Floyd “Red Crow” Westerman

  1. The End Of The Innocence
  2. Reason To Believe
  3. Sweetheart Like You
  4. Best Of My Love
  5. What’s Goin’ On
  6. Same Girl
  7. Chief Joseph
  8. Lonely Weekends
  9. What A Wonderful World
    Encore:
  10. The Heart Of The Matter
    [52:36]

Recorded By OldNeumanntapr From Lawn Repeater Stacks, Left Side
Nakamichi CM-300s w/CP-2 Omnis > Sony WM-D6C Cassette Master
XLIIS Master Transferred: Sony TC-D5M > Tascam DR100mkII (24bit/48khz)

Mastered by Flying -M- (January 2021)
Har-Bal 3.0 & iZotope RX 8 advanced > CD Wave > Korg Aqua (16-44) > TLH (flac level 8)

OldNeumanntapr Notes-
These performances were Bill Graham’s last big festival that he was working on before he died the previous year. I’m sorry that he never lived to actually see them performed. On the surface it seemed these benefit concerts were held to commemorate the 500 year anniversary of Columbus ‘discovering’ the new world. 1492-1992. Actually, it was more to open people’s eyes to the suffering and misery that the Native American people have endured during that 500 year history. One of the Native American speakers between sets commented, “Why do we celebrate Columbus? He was LOST!!” Santana headlined on Saturday and Bonnie Raitt headlined on Sunday. Saturday was billed as ‘The Good Road Concert” and Sunday was billed as ‘Healing The Sacred Hoop’. I remember that between songs, Bonnie remarked that there were a bunch of young girls trying to get into John Lee Hooker’s dressing room. “That’s what I call ‘Healing The Sacred Hoop'”, she said. They were awesome shows. Some of the sets were kind of quiet and have more crowd noise on the recordings than I would have liked. I’m kind of amazed that there are not more recordings of these shows out there. I recorded both days up on the lawn with Nakamichi CM-300s with CP-2 omni capsules->Sony WM-D6C. The music went on from about 3pm to around midnight, so bringing in enough blank tape was a major problem. Another big problem was that since the shows started so early in the afternoon it was nearly impossible to hide recording equipment in broad daylight. I rode up to the shows with my friends Dave and Brian and it wasn’t until I was putting my equipment together in the back seat of the car that I discovered that I had the CP-2 omni capsules on the mics instead of the CP-1 cardioid caps. I was really upset because the omnis add a lot more crowd noise because they lack the side and real isolation that the cardioids have. I had been recording a band in a bar back home the night before and we did a matrix mix with a feed off of the soundboard plus the two CM-300 omnis that were hung from the ceiling.

I got everything in OK on Saturday but Sunday I had a problem. (This saga became one of my best ever taping stories in the years to come!) Because it was kind of cold at night I had brought extra clothing to both stay warm and conceal equipment. I had taken a long-sleeved flannel shirt and wrapped up the mics and knotted the sleeves together. I hid the D6 and cables and a couple of tapes with an ace bandage wrapped around my crotch and had no other option but to put the mics at the bottom of a backpack with misc. crap on top of it. I looked for a line with a security guy that seemed to be doing a minimum of searching and had Dave and Brian go through the turnstiles ahead of me. At the last second a supervisor took over my line just as I stepped up to the search. My heart kind of did a double beat but I hoped for the best. I always relied on the old magician’s sleight-of-hand trick of showing them what you wanted them to see while at the same time distracting them from what you wanted to hide. While my friends went through the turnstiles the supervisor was rummaging around in my bag and felt the mics wrapped up in the shirt. “What’s This?,” he wanted to know and stopped the line. I had to think fast as he was trying but could not untie the knots on the shirt. “It’s a beer bottle,” says I, after the other guy had already torn my ticket. He pulled me out of line and, yelled at me,”You can’t bring that in here!” I stepped out of line and said that I’d get rid of it. Meanwhile, Dave looked back and saw what was going on. I put my hand up in the air palm up and he tossed the car keys to me over the top of the turnstiles. I went back to his car, opened the trunk, and took out two blank cassettes from under my ace bandage and left them in the car. I unwrapped the mics and shoved them down next to the tape deck under the ace bandage and hoped for better luck! When I went back I picked a different line and got through without a problem. The usher at the gate did a double take when he saw that the ticket had been torn already and then signed off on the back by the supervisor. He asked me about it and I said, with my best ‘dumb-guy’ look, that they had found a beer bottle on me and made me go and get rid of it. What did he say? You guessed it! “You can’t bring that in here!!!!” Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dave found me inside as I was making my way to the lawn and asked me about it as I gave him back his keys. I told him I had to lighten the load a bit and had to leave some tape behind. “I guess I just won’t tape Don Henley,” I said. “Oh you’ve Got to tape Henley,” he said. Later on, about 5 minutes before Henley came on stage, I looked up to see Dave drop two blank tapes in my lap. “How in the hell did you get Those??” I asked. He said that he had gotten cold and asked the people at the gate if he could go out and get his sweatshirt! Naturally, he had another thought in mind as well. I laughed and shook my head. That’s my story and I’m sticken’ to it! That’s the closest I’ve ever come to getting caught taping.

Once night fell, I could get the mics up higher and make a better recording, but in broad daylight I had no other choice but to sit on the ground under the repeater towers and build a little pile of clothing on top of my backpack. I hid the mics in the sleeves on the shirt and ran the mic cables back to the backpack where the D6 was. I need to transfer these cassettes to CDR. Some will sound better than others.

The music was pretty good. I couldn’t see much of the stage, especially in the daytime, because the view screens were not on. I remember that the Hooker / Cooder set and the Lindley / Cooder set was kind of quiet. Those sets have more crowd noise on them, plus the omni caps sure didn’t help matters. It would have been nice to have the shotguns but they are a little noticeable!

Do NOT Convert To MP3.
Enjoy! Share freely, don’t sell, play nice, don’t run with scissors, etc. 😉

Thanks go out to Professor Goody for verifying the pitch on this recording.
Jewel box artwork by ethiessen and it looks so nice, a million thanks for the beautiful covers.

Finally, thanks to OldNeumanntapr for trusting me with his recording and waiting forever for me to finish this.

For historical reference only and not intended for resale or any commercial use

Enjoy…
-M- (January 2021)

FLYING M PRODUCTIONS

Sci-Fi In July : The Girl With All the Gifts (2016)

cover art

A young girl sits counting in her cell. Suddenly an alarm sounds and the lights come on. Armed soldiers come calling. Though she can walk she sits down in a wheelchair. The soldiers strap her arms and legs down and her head so she cannot turn it. She is wheeled into a classroom with numerous other children likewise strapped to wheelchairs.

Soldiers look in on the classroom calling the kids names like “freaks” and “abortions.” Their teacher, Helen Justineau (Gemma Arterton) is the only adult who is kind to them. In a moment of grace, she touches the girl’s head. Immediately, the soldiers, led by Sergeant Parks (Paddy Considine) come in and chastise Helen for touching a student. He then spits on his hand and pushes it under one of the children’s nose.

Immediately, the kids go feral, writing in their wheelchairs and attempting to bite the soldiers. They are zombies. Or more correctly, they are zombie hybrids. They will attack with fury when they smell humans, but can also talk and think like normal people.

They may also be the key to a cure. The zombies in this film were caused by some sort of fungus that grows inside the brain. These kids were In Utero when the virus first came about (the film occurs some ten years after the beginning of the apocalypse). They absorbed the virus when their mothers got it which may have caused them to be…well not immune as they are definitely hungry for human flesh, but special. The scientists, led by Dr. Caldwell (Glenn Close) think this specialness may lead them to a cure.

I feel like I’m getting bogged down in the plot, but really what I’ve just described happens in the first ten minutes or so. But it is such an interesting setup for a zombie movie I wanted to dig into it a bit.

All of that occurs at a well-guarded military base, but just after those events, it is attacked by hundreds of zombies and overcome. Our heroes narrowly escape and the rest of the film finds them traveling into London in hopes of rescue.

That girl I mentioned is named Melanie (Sennia Nanua), she is smart chatty, inquisitive, and kind. In the time we spend with her on the base, she always says hello to the military people even when they are cruel to her. She always asked a lot of questions and was the top student in her class. This both endears her to her capturers and ingratiates them.

The look and feel of the film has a lot in common with the recent television series The Last of Us (the series came out in 2023 but was based on a game from 2014 game – the book this film was based on also came out in 2014 so I’ll let you be the judge of who created this look first). The landscapes are overgrown with vegetation while the city buildings and infrastructure are beginning to collapse. This creates a beautiful yet eery look to everything.

The plot is your basic quest scenario but it is well done. This type of movie often will involve a child but they are usually just there to add a sense of danger. Melanie is something different. Because she is a zombie the other do not sense her as food. She is safe from them. But when she gets hungry she is a force of danger. Yet she is also the human’s only hope. That makes the plot more interesting than your standard zombie fare.

This all worked for me quite well. I dug the the look of the film, the action scenarios, and all of the characters. If you like zombie films I highly recommend this one. It also has a fantastic ending.

The Friday Night Horror Movie: The City of The Dead (1960)

poster

Christopher Lee made well over 200 films in his storied career. Not all of them were great, of course, out of the 40 I’ve seen only a few of them are truly wonderful. But I love him just the same. From the late 1950s through the early 1960s he had a run of horror films that are just terrific. Many of them were made for Hammer Studios and I’ve talked about a few of them, but he made plenty of other films for other studios as well.

The City of the Dead was put out by British Lion Studios. It was directed by John Llewellyn Moxey who mostly did TV work (including the influential The Night Stalker in 1972). It is a slight, but evocative slice of gothic heaven.

Lee plays Alan Driscoll a history professor whose lecture on the New England witch trials intrigues his student Nan Barlow (Venetia Stevenson). Enough to make her want to take a trip there to get some first-hand sources. Driscoll recommends the small town of Whitewood and tells her to stay at the Blackbird Inn, where his name will guarantee her a room.

One fog-filled night she drives to Whitewhood. Along the way she’s warned off by an old man at a petrol station, then she picks up a creepy hitchhiker who magically disappears when she arrives and is met at the inn by the mysterious Mrs. Newless (who looks suspiciously like – and is played by the same actress, Patricia Jessell – as the woman we saw burned at the stake in the flashback sequence that begins the film).

Strange things are afoot at the Blackbird Inn.

I won’t spoil what happens next. Not that anything that happens is too surprising, the film’s plot is pretty standard stuff, but it has style to spare.

The town is in a constant state of fog creeping in. The buildings are all in disrepair, making it look ancient and decrepit. The cemetery with its crosses sticking out at odd angles sits in the center of town. The stark black-and-white photography gives it an eerie quality.

The townspeople are creepy as can be. Nan has a boyfriend back home, and a brother. She befriends one friendly lady in Whitehall. They all come looking when she goes missing, giving the film some needed action.

At just under 80 minutes in duration, it all goes down quick and smooth. I had a marvelous time watching it.

Sci-Fi in July: Palm Springs (2020)

cover

I love Groundhog’s Day-type movies. There is something really interesting about watching characters relive the same day over and over again. Ironic, since when our daily lives feel like that, we want to strike out and do something different.

Actually, now that I’m thinking about it, I think that is what makes these films so interesting. Because the characters are literally stuck on the same day, getting a reset whenever they fall asleep or die, they are free to do whatever they want. Knowing everything will go back to normal the next day, they can do all the things they were too afraid to do in real life.

Palm Springs came out in 2020 when many of us were stuck in lockdown. It felt like every day was the same because we couldn’t go anywhere or do anything. It is fun reading reviews of the film when it came out because everyone was feeling like they were stuck in their own time loop.

It does a couple of interesting things with the concept. First, the film is a romantic comedy which I don’t believe has ever been done with this type of film. Second, it brings other people into the time loop with fascinating results.

We suspect something is different from near the start. Niles (Andy Samberg) behaves strangely. He attends a wedding reception in a Hawaiian shirt and shorts. He gives an impromptu speech that seems well-rehearsed. He dances to impress a girl, Sarah (Christin Miloti), but his moves incorporate all the other people at the reception in a way that seems impossible.

Of course, he’s been stuck in the time loop for a long time. That’s something else that’s different about this movie. Normally we enter the loop with our main character, here he’s already been inside it for years.

He starts to hook up with Sarah but before they get too far he’s attacked by a strange man named Roy (J.K. Simmons). Niles runs into a cave and even though he shouts for Sarah not to follow, she does anyway.

Now she’s stuck in the time loop. They are stuck together. They get to know each other. They have fun. They do crazy stuff. She tries to kill herself. It is all the same basic time loop movie stuff, but they make it fun.

Roy is also stuck in the loop. Years ago he and Niles connected at the wedding reception, got drunk, had a lot of fun and Niles took him to the cave. Now Roy hates Niles for putting him into the loop.

One of the interesting things about this film is that it delves a little into what a time loop would do to you psychologically. Niles has become ambivalent about everything. Nothing matters because it will all reset tomorrow. At one point Sarah becomes depressed and tries to kill herself. Later, she’ll become angry and she lashes out violently against some men. Niles stops her because he says, that while those people won’t remember what she did to them, she will. Knowing she is capable of such violence will take its toll on her own mind.

But mostly it is a silly little romantic comedy. The jokes don’t always work for me, they are a little too broad and silly for my tastes, but I still laughed quite a bit. What makes it work in a big way is the chemistry between Samberg and Miloti. Christin Miloti is especially great. I haven’t really seen her in anything, but she deserves to be a star. Together they make it work. I wanted to spend all the time with them living through each day, even though it was the same day.

Sci-Fi In July: Paprika (2006)

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I rarely remember my dreams. Sometimes I remember them for just a few seconds as I’m walking downstairs in the middle of the night to use the toilet (for I am of the age where I walk downstairs in the middle of every night to use the toilet) but by the time I get there the dream has been forgotten. Like mist, it fades away no matter how hard I try to capture it.

I’m not one to put much stock into dreams and their significance. Once in a while, I’ll remember a dream and it will seem to have some deeper meaning. During my brief tenure in graduate school, I had a dream about my grandmother, some hot air balloons, and a bunch of turkeys which guided me through a major decision, but mostly I think dreams are just your brain playing Etch-A-Sketch while you’re sleeping.

Paprika is a Japanese animated film from the mind of Satoshi Kon (who also made Perfect Blue). It is a strange, beautiful film that is all about dreams, reality, and our relationship to movies and pop culture.

Taking place in the near future scientists have invented a machine that allows others to view (and even record) people’s dreams. It was built as a psychiatric tool, but it has been stolen by a terrorist. The devices, called DC-Minis, are prototypes and lack restrictions, thus anyone (including terrorists) can enter anyone else using the machine’s dreams.

Our hero is Doctor Atsuko Chiba, the head of the psychiatric department developing the DC-Minis. She’s secretly been using the machine to help people outside the purview of the research facility. When she does this she uses the alias “Paprika.”

One of the people she’s been helping is Detective Toshimi Konakawa who has been having recurring dreams about a murder case he has been unable to solve.

Together (along with Doctor Toratarō Shima the chief of staff for the institute and Doctor Kōsaku Tokita, the childlike inventor of the DC-Mini) they try to solve the mystery of who stole the device.

I think. Honestly, the plot of this film was beyond my grasp. Like a lot of films that deal with dreams, Paprika embodies dream logic to tell its story. Things are constantly changing, morphing before our eyes. Characters jump into painting and movies on a whim.

There are a lot of movie references within the film. Not to specific movies (at least none that I caught) but to genres like mysteries and romances. In doing so the film seems to be toying with the idea of reality versus fiction and how movies and books and stories sometimes seem more real than reality.

Or something. Seriously, I’m not sure what I just watched, but I sure as heck enjoyed watching. The animation is simply gorgeous. And weird. And wild. And trippy.

Go see it.

Arlo Guthrie – Arroyo Grande, CA (04/08/15)

Arlo Guthrie
Forbes Hall
The Clark Center for the Performing Arts
Arroyo Grande, CA
April 8, 2015

16 BIT

Neumann AK-40s (ORTF In Hat) > LC3 > KM-100s > Beyer MV-100 > Tascam DR-100mkII @ 24 bit/48 kHz

Mastering: .WAV’s > iZotope RX3 Advanced v3.00.695 (declick) > Sound Forge Pro 10.0a (minor edits, normalize, & fades) >
WAV >Audacity (Track Splits, Down Sample / Dither To 16 bit / 44.1k) >FLAC (Level 8) via xACT 2.35) >FLAC Tags Via xACT 2.35

Location: 7th row, Center Section, three seats in from left-side aisle
Recorded, Audacity track splits / down sample, FLAC, tags, & front-cover artwork by OldNeumanntapr

Mastered by: Dennis Orr

Set I:

  1. Motorcycle Song
  2. talk / band intros
  3. Chilling Of The Evening
  4. talk
  5. Darkest Hour
  6. talk
  7. Me And My Goose
  8. talk
  9. Ocean Crossing
  10. Last Train
  11. Pig Meat Papa*
  12. talk / Wavy Gravy story, Woodstock story, Checker cab story
  13. Coming Into Los Angeles

Set II:

  1. Alice’s Restaurant
  2. talk
  3. St. James Infirmary**
  4. talk
  5. Hear You Sing Again***
  6. City Of New Orleans****
  7. talk
  8. Highway In The Wind
  9. This Land Is Your Land***
  10. talk
  11. My Peace^*
  • Leadbelly, circa 1935
    ** Cisco Houston
    *** Woody Guthrie
    **** Steve Goodman
    ^* Words By Woody Guthrie, Music By Arlo Guthrie

Arlo Guthrie – lead vocals, guitars, & keyboards
Abe Guthrie – keyboards
Bobby Sweet – lead guitar & violin
Terry A La Berry – drums

OldNeumanntapr Notes:
I hadn’t seen Arlo in almost 17 years, since he played the old Cuesta College Auditorium in San Luis Obispo. I noticed right away that Arlo appeared to have lost weight since the last time I’d seen him. His voice was a little craggy, which he attributed to being sick.

The night before the show I burned CD’s of the two previous Arlo shows that I had recorded (3/23/91 Ventura Theater and 10/23/98 Cuesta College), in hopes of giving them to Arlo. I wasn’t sure if he would meet folks after the show, like he did at Cuesta in ’98, so luckily I was able to stop by the back doors of the Clark Center at around 3 pm. I was able to give the discs to Arlo’s bus driver and he said that he would pass them along.

My friend Dave bought four tickets back in November or December, when they went on sale, so I knew I had a good reserved seat waiting. Even though Arlo is reputed to allow taping, I decided to go stealth because it would be easier. Plus, my seat was about 10 feet or so in front of the board, which is where I figured to set up if I went the open taping route.

I wasn’t sure the venue would allow me to bring in a mic stand, and even if they would have I thought the possibility was high, being it was a sold out show, that someone in the back would complain that my microphones were blocking their sight lines. When we walked out after the show I noticed that Arlo’s sound crew had brought in their own mixing board and lighting gear, and the house board was covered up in the spot where I had set up before, for Dark Star Orchestra in 2007. So, it was a good decision to run stealth. Fortunately the crowd around me was very quiet. One guy behind me coughed a couple of times but it wasn’t intrusive. There was a baby that cried once or twice during the second set but fortunately it was way in the back of the hall.

Being a multi-media presentation, Arlo opened the first set with a claymation video of the Motorcycle song, complete with Arlo as a pickle riding his Honda and falling off the cliff and smashing the police car. The band came out, in the dark, while the short film was playing, and synched their playing with the film soundtrack. There was also a cartoon later depicting a little boy and his pet goose, which Arlo used to highlight a children’s song about the goose being cooked and eaten for dinner. ‘Coming Into Los Angeles’ closed the first set, which is a favorite of mine.

The second set opened with ‘Alice’s Restaurant’, with four part harmony and full orchestration. 😉 Arlo had film clips from the 1969 film ‘Alice’s Restaurant’ playing behind the band during this part of the show. He remarked to the crowd that Officer Obie, as well as the judge, were real people playing themselves and were not actors. Arlo said that Obie told him when the film was being made that if anyone was going to make a fool out of him he should do it himself. He said that he and Obie actually developed a friendship that lasted until the officer’s death.

Arlo played ‘The City Of New Orleans’, which was written by Steve Goodman. He mentioned that Goodman wanted him to pass the song on to Johhny Cash but Cash wasn’t interested, having done a recent trains album. ‘That was fortunate for me,’ Arlo said. He also played ’St. James Infirmary’, which I don’t know if I have heard before.

Arlo played a plethora of acoustic guitars, including a 12 string that seemed to be electric/acoustic, which had a sound hole that was high up in the front corner of the body. He fiddled with one acoustic six string guitar which needed some adjustments and remarked to the crowd, ‘Funny, I tuned it last year.’ He also played keyboards. His son Abe played keyboards and he had a lead guitarist who also played violin. His drummer was surrounded by a clear Plexiglas sound containment wall.

All in all it was a good concert evening in a really small intimate theater. The theatre at the Clark Center holds a little over 600 people.

Enjoy! Share freely, don’t sell, play nice, don’t run with scissors, etc. 😉
DO NOT Convert To MP3!