Count Gauntly’s Horrors from the Public Domain: Brian Terrill’s entry into the world of horror hosts

Are you a connoisseur of bad movies? Do you appreciate ”the creepy, the strange, and the poorly and cheaply produced?” Looking for an overview of films so inessential or poorly curated that their copyright has lapsed?

If you live in Northern Virginia, you need look no further than your local television channel. Beginning this spring, you can tune into County Gauntly’s Horrors from the Public Domain, Brian Terrill’s television show in the tradition of classic horror hosts.

The first two episodes of County Gauntly’s are currently airing at various times and days on Fairfax Channel 10. You can find the airtimes on the Count Gauntly’s facebook page.

I sat down with Brian, the host of County Gauntly’s who showed up for the interview dressed in character, to talk a little bit about his show and its origins.

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Creating art is a lot like taking a crap, says Fall Out Boy guitarist

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The AV Club is one of my favorite sites on the web. I love many of their features (as I’ve noted in the past, the New Cult Canon column by Scott Tobias was what directly inspired me to recruit Grant and get this site going).

Probably my least favorite recurring feature on the site is HateSong, in which they ask minor celebrities what their least favorite song is, then ask them to elaborate. It’s basically asking people (most of whom aren’t comedians) to be funny on command.

A couple of the articles have been insightful in somewhat obvious ways (“I think Weezer has put out some songs I really hate because they’ve also put out a lot of songs I really like”), but most of the six or seven entries in the series that I’ve read have been a waste of time.

There’s something special in this week’s rant by Fall Out Boy guitarist Joe Trohman, though. The target is “Mambo No. 5″ but the discussion veers off into a few interesting topics: Using singles to evaluate the overall value of a band, sampling older songs, Tommy Tutone, the interviewer’s friend who used to always dress like Lou Bega at parties, and — my favorite — the analogy between creation and defecation. It’s one of the most amazing things I’ve read in awhile. You can read the quote below and the full discussion here, which I recommend.

I can think of songs that Fall Out Boy wrote, some of our older songs, that are really not my favorite. I’ve learned to not try to throw myself under the bus too much, though. Or my band members.

I’m also a guy who will make a record or a song, and I won’t be able to listen to it afterward. It doesn’t mean it isn’t good, it’s just—this is a really bad way to say it—but it’s like taking a shit. Like, “Oh that felt great! I’m so glad, that was so cathartic.” But I don’t want to look at it. I don’t want to hang out with it. But here’s a difference: I do have to hang out with it. Often, I have to hang out with those little shits.

At the end of the day, I like the music and am proud of that stuff, even the bad stuff. It’s like having tattoos. I have a lot of tattoos and probably, at the end of the day, regret the idea of having tattoos. But I have a lot of good tattoos, and I have my bad tattoos I started out with. I can’t have my good ones without my bad ones, so I kind appreciate the bad ones even more. And I feel that way about the worst songs I’ve been a part of making. I have to make those. I have to be completely naked in front of people and show my disgusting body to people so that I can learn to maybe tone it up a little bit. Maybe look a little better naked.

Ranking the tracks on Bruce Springsteen’s Born to Run and Born in the USA

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Bruce Springsteen’s two biggest and best-known albums are his Borns. Born to Run came out in 1975 as Bruce’s third album and catapulted him to superstardom. Born in the USA came out nine years later as Bruce’s seventh album. Both were massive successes critically and commercially.

The themes of the albums tie together quite well. Born in the USA serves as a twenty-years-later sequel to Born to Run. Both consider small town traps and the American dream.

In Born to Run, Bruce emphatically rejects complacency. His subjects are kids and young adults who have no interest in dreaming big or loving deeply.

Born in the U.S.A. shows a softer and more grown up side of Springsteen. His subject is older Americans whose chance at breaking free are long past. But he now depicts a pride and sentiment in staying loyal to humble roots.

What the albums have in common is that they are two of Bruce’s best and most accessible albums. Their thematic and nominal links make them natural partners.

I’ve been listening to them a lot recently, and I started wondering what a comparison might look like stacking up the twenty tracks on the two albums (8 on Run, 12 on USA) next to each other.

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Read my recaps of Game of Thrones, Season 3

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I’ve been recruited to write episode recaps for the third season of Game of Thrones over at CharacterGrades.com! Character Grades uses the format of a report card for characters from the series with a tongue-in-cheek tone.

I started with a round-up of the second season and then wrote a recap of “Valar Dohaeris,” the first episode of Season 3.

Join me every Monday morning!

Reimagining Billy Joel’s Glass Houses as a Concept Album

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I’ve made it through six albums in my ongoing Billy Joel retrospective, which means it’s time to write a review for his seventh: Glass Houses. It’s certainly one of Joel’s best albums, and I’ve been listening to it again recently in preparation for writing the review.

There’s one thing I noticed that I wanted to comment on but that would be too big of a tangent to include in the review.

Glass Houses is not that far from a concept album of the rise and fall of a romance between Joel and a broken, guarded woman. Cut a couple of songs, rearrange the track listing, and you almost have a continuous story.

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Eve 6′s Legacy: A Discourse by Correspondence

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Dan:

So, Colton, let’s talk about Eve 6.

Their reunion album has come and gone. In a few months, we’ll hit the fifteenth anniversary of their debut album. Though they might tour some more and, who knows, release another album, now seems as good a time as any to reflect on their career, discography, and legacy.

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FAQ: Grammy Snubs

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Q: Why didn’t [your favorite artist] get nominated for Song, Album, or Record of the Year?

A: Nominations in the Big Three categories are designed to recognize achievements beyond those of the artist. That’s why none of these awards have the word “artist” in them.

Song of the Year, then, is given for the best song. Not a performance of it, but the song itself, as it exists in the abstract. The person who wins this award is the songwriter. Go pull up your artist’s latest release on Wikipedia and check whether they wrote their own songs, helped write them (i.e., aren’t the first name on the list), or weren’t credited at all in that column. The latter two options are the norm in the world of pop.

Record of the Year—wait, you know what a record is, right? Too many people seem to think that word means nothing beyond a flat black disc of vinyl in your parent’s collection. The English language has these pairs of nouns and verbs with related meanings but opposite syllables stressed: a rebel likes to rebel, I permit you to hold a permit, and you record a record. So this award is for what actually gets committed to tape, copied onto CDs, and sold through iTunes. The result is considered holistically as the sum of the artist’s performance, the mixing, the engineering, and the production work.

Album of the Year is in the same spirit as Record, with all in-studio contributions considered as they affect the quality of a full-length release. So if your artist didn’t get a nod for any of these awards, it’s probably because they’re surrounded by losers who are wrecking their potential masterpieces. Personally, I’d blame those session musicians they brought in to add the strings on the bridge.

By the way, all but four of the Grammy awards’ categories are genre-specific: the “General field” consists of the three big ones above plus Best New Artist. Rather than their actual debut, Best New Artist nominations go to “the first recording which establishes the public identity” of an artist, which is why fun. is up in that category despite the existence of Aim and Ignite (2009). Apparently Top 100 on Billboard, Top 25 in digital album sales, and Top 5 on the Tastemakers chart aren’t enough to “establish” anything.

Q: But [your favorite artist] is/has a FABULOUS songwriter and the production work is MAGNIFICENT and everything they’ve ever released has been GLORIOUS!!!

A: Okay, that’s not a question, and you need to calm down. While you do, check out this aside: the year of eligibility for the 55th Grammy Awards is from October 1, 2011 to September 30, 2012. Rather than be released between those dates, new work must have “first achieved prominence” in that range to be considered for an award. Hence Gotye’s three nods for a song and an album that dropped in the summer of 2011.

Anyway, let’s assume that you’re right about the magnificent glory etc., and that your artist’s new hotness is eligible. To win the award, their work needs to be nominated; to be nominated, it needs to be submitted and elected. But you can’t submit it. The only people who can do that are members of the Recording Academy and record labels who are registered with the Academy. If your artist is a genius living on the fringes of the indie world, tough luck! If they’re signed to a major, but the bigwigs are trying to push someone else on their roster and don’t want to split the vote with too many submissions, tough luck! At least, that’s the sort of scenario I envision.

Who votes for nominees? (See, that’s a question. With a question mark.) There are a few different ways to become a voting member, including by winning a Grammy within the last five years. Fans at home don’t get votes, though. The Grammys’ pomp and circumstance derives from the peer recognition that they signify. People striving for success in music industry are recognizing those who achieve the same. Though I believe that Academy members are fundamentally goodhearted people, many of the voters are heavily invested in, or simply are, the nominees themselves. Keep in mind the bias that might come into play when sections of voters stand to gain financially from the sales bump an artist enjoys after receiving such a prestigious and public award. Votes determine who gets nominated before votes determine who wins, so feel free to label your snub an insider conspiracy.

Q: Dang. Well, I’m also kind of into [your favorite hip artist] who surprised a lot of people by getting nominated for some Grammys this year. Do you think they’ll win?

A: Underdogs are not favored to win. Surprise! But don’t lose hope: Arcade Fire won Album of the Year in 2011. Heck, USA for Africa swept Song and Record with a charity release, and Toto won six Grammys the year they released “Africa,” none of which were for the song “Africa.” So stranger things have happened.

Q: Thanks, that clears things up. Say, who would you like to see win in February?

A: Readers might be wondering at this point just how F these Q’s are really A’d. Anyone who’s still here gets to indulge me. For Song of the Year, “We Are Young” is far more creatively constructed than any of the other options. I’ll admit that I haven’t listened through all the Album candidates, but I’d hate to see The Black Keys win anything just because it would vindicate the millions and millions of bandwagon fans who praised the band’s advent in 2010, unaware of their seven or eight earlier releases. And as a longtime devotee of Max Martin (a topic for another post), I find myself cheering for Taylor Swift to take Record, bringer of the pop-country apocalypse though she is.

Finally, a former pet band of mine who has recently earned decent publicity is up for Best Hard Rock/Metal Performance. Check out the song here, or watch this drum solo to see what really makes Halestorm great. The first minute or so is ordinary, but stick with it.