Author: John B. Moore

Posted on: August 26, 2011 Posted by: John B. Moore Comments: 0

Storage Wars – Season One (DVD)

The folks at A&E have this tremendous knack of taking the truly odd and seemingly mundane tasks and turning them into DVR-worthy TV. Storage Wars is the latest and quite possible best example as it is now the networks most popular show. The first season focuses on four individuals who make their living by bidding on storage units that have gone up to auction after the owners fell behind on…

Posted on: August 20, 2011 Posted by: John B. Moore Comments: 0

Zonad (DVD)

Like a cross between an 80’s American sex romp comedy and Waking Ned Devine, Zonad sounds dreadful on paper. An alcoholic runaway from a rehab hospital, clad in a red leather jumpsuit with a goofy helmet on his head is found in the home of a simpleton family in a small Irish town and the stranger manages to convince everyone that he’s an alien. Oh, and the family has a…

Posted on: August 17, 2011 Posted by: John B. Moore Comments: 0

Billy The Exterminator – Season 3 (DVD)

There’s something about the state of Louisiana the draws reality shows like… well like New Jersey draws reality shows. While the Garden State has Jersey Shore, Cake Boss, Real Housewives of New Jersey and Jersilicious, Louisiana has Swamp People, Bad Girls Club, Steven Seagal Lawman, Trashmen, Real World New Orleans (yup, that one counts) and now Billy the Exterminator. Billy the Exterminator (the third season just out on DVD) profiles…

Posted on: August 16, 2011 Posted by: John B. Moore Comments: 0

Mustaine: A Heavy Metal Memoir By Dave Mustaine (Book)

Megadeth founder, and former Metallica guitarist Dave Mustaine is full of contradictions and many of them come out in his memoir. His band Megadeth, along with other thrash metal founders like Anthrax and Slayer were seen as the antidote to the preening, style-over-substance genre of hair metal that hijacked the 80’s music scene, yet throughout his book, Mustaine talks about band member who did not have the “right look” –…

Posted on: August 15, 2011 Posted by: John B. Moore Comments: 0

R.E.M. – Lifes Rich Pageant 25th Anniversary Edition (CD)

When Athens’ favorite sons R.E.M. released Life’s Rich Pageants in 1986, the rest of the world finally got a peek at what the college rock crowd had been raving about for years. Four albums into it, R.E.M. had their strongest commercial success with Lifes Rich Pageant, a foreshadowing of what was to come with the impressive succession of follow ups (Document, Green, Out of Time and Automatic for the People).…

Posted on: August 15, 2011 Posted by: John B. Moore Comments: 0

See a Little Light: The Trail of Rage and Melody by Bob Mould (Book)

SPOILER ALERT! To get the big unanswered question out of the way up front, don’t count on a Husker Du reunion any time soon. “Beyond my personal reasons for not looking back, a Husker Du reunion would surely tarnish the history of the band,” front man/guitarist Bob Mould writes in See a Little Light. In his exhaustive new bio, Mould – co-founder of the highly influential Minneapolis indie punk group…

Posted on: August 5, 2011 Posted by: John B. Moore Comments: 0

The Riffbrokers – Every Pilot’s Blinded By the Sun (CD)

Washington state’s The Riffbrokers have managed to find a way to sound completely timeless. They play “rock” without any unnecessary prefix needed to describe their sound and as a result they could have recorded their latest (Every Pilot’s Blinded By the Sun) in the studio right next to Tom Petty when he was working on Damn the Torpedoes in ’79 or they could have just as easily been playing with…

Posted on: August 2, 2011 Posted by: John B. Moore Comments: 0

The Music Never Stopped (DVD)

Not since The Big Chill has a drama so deftly relied on music to serve as its own character in a movie. The emotional indie, The Music Never Stopped, is based on a true story by neurologist/researcher Oliver Sacks (the doctor who also inspired the book and eventual movie “Awakenings”) about a father (played flawlessly by J.K. Simmons) who uses music to connect with his son (Lou Taylor Pucci), hospitalized…

Posted on: July 28, 2011 Posted by: John B. Moore Comments: 0

Entourage –The Complete Seventh Season (HBO)

After a bumpy couple of seasons, the long-running HBO series finally gets back into its groove with the seventh and second to last season. This season finds actor Vincent Chase (Adrian Grenier) between movies, hooking up with porn star Sasha Grey (essentially playing herself) and getting addicted to booze and Cocaine. His hangers on have each found their own lives, Eric (Kevin Connolly) managing other actors; Turtle (Jerry Ferrara) pitching…

Posted on: July 27, 2011 Posted by: John B. Moore Comments: 0

The Lincoln Lawyer (DVD)

Matthew McConaughey may have just found his ticket out of the romantic comedy ghetto. Lincoln Lawyer, based on the wildly popular Michael Connelly novels, centers around the somewhat sleazy defense attorney Mickey Haller who works out of his Lincoln Continental (get it?). Don’t worry, Haller (played deftly by McConaughey) is a loving dad, gets along great with his ex-wife and has just the right amount of charm to make you…

Posted on: July 26, 2011 Posted by: John B. Moore Comments: 0

ER – The Complete Fifteenth Season/The Final Season (DVD)

American TV audiences have a problem saying goodbye… well, let me clarify, American TV show producers have a problem saying goodbye as evidenced by how often they keep the shows on life support long after all of the story lines have been exhausted and the audience has moved on. Though NBC’s ER happens to be a big exception to that rule. By centering the show around a revolving cast of…

Posted on: July 8, 2011 Posted by: John B. Moore Comments: 0

Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds – Let Love In, Murder Ballads, The Boatman’s Call and No More Shall We Part (CDs)

Nick Cave is right up there with Leonard Cohen and the late Jeff Buckley as being one of those musicians everyone claims to love but if you look purely at record sales all three still hover closer to cult status rather than international superstars…which is far from being a bad thing (unless you have to pay a mortgage). If you’ve been resolving to actually listen to Cave versus just nodding…

Posted on: July 7, 2011 Posted by: John B. Moore Comments: 0

University of Strangers by Bob Pfeifer (Book)

A hybrid of fact and fiction, Bob Pfeifer’s latest is an impressively original look at secret societies and International corruption in the courtroom, all tied into the real life trial of Amanda Knox. The story is cleverly told through journal entries, interviews and news reports and centers around a hush-hush society of international celebrities called The Strangers (everyone from Dave Grohl and Woodie Allen to Sean Penn and the fictional…

Posted on: June 27, 2011 Posted by: John B. Moore Comments: 0

Glenn Tilbrook and the Fluffers – Live in New York City (DVD)

Along with having quite possibly the best named backup band in the recent history of rock, Glenn Tilbrook, the former front man of the influential UK pop rock band Squeeze, is also a fantastic pop music song writer. Live in New York showcases this better than just about any of his albums. Coming across relaxed and humble in a small New York club, Tilbrook and his band run through nine…

Posted on: June 24, 2011 Posted by: John B. Moore Comments: 0

Squidbillies – Volume Four (DVD)

Squidbillies is by far the best cartoon depiction of redneck, inbred squids living in the Georgia’s Appalachian Mountains since… well ever. The Adult Swim show packaged in tidy 10 minute episodes was conceived by the same brains behind Adult Swim staple Aqua Team Hunger Force, so if that show has you scratching your head, it’s probably best to skip Squidbillies. Your loss though, unless you can find another adult-targeted cartoon…

Posted on: June 23, 2011 Posted by: John B. Moore Comments: 0

You Must Go and Win by Alina Simone (Book)

Given the paint-by-numbers memoirs that are being churned out at an alarming rate lately by rock stars that reveal just about nothing, it’s refreshing to read a collection of essays by a little known indie folk singer who reveals more about herself via humor than the recent works of Belinda Carlisle, Vince Neil and Scott Wieland combined. In You Must Go and Win, Alina Simone opens up about her childhood…

Posted on: June 23, 2011 Posted by: John B. Moore Comments: 0

Material Issue – International Pop Overthrow 20th Anniversary Edition (CD)

Chicago’s Material Issue is one of the best power pop bands to come out of the 90’s and there were a slew of decent bands from that genre in the 90s. International Pop Overthrow, the band’s first major label (and finest )release is finally getting the anniversary treatment, complete with a slew (eight to be exact) of bonus tracks including a live version of Simon & Garfunkel’s “The Boxer” and…

Posted on: June 22, 2011 Posted by: John B. Moore Comments: 0

Swamp People – Season One (DVD)

The most surprising revelation about the History Channel realty show Swamp People is how the network manages to portray the families in the series in an honest, non exploitive manner. The show focuses on a number of Louisiana families who make their living in the swamps catching alligators and snakes. Yes the Cajun accents are thick enough to require subtitles, but there are no ridiculous scenarios constructed simply to make…

Posted on: June 20, 2011 Posted by: John B. Moore Comments: 0

Queen – 40th Anniversary Reissues of first five studio albums (CDs)

If Queen were to make their debut now, instead of 1973 when they released their eponymous debut, it’s very likely they’d be considered a novelty band, and I’m not even talking about Freddy Mercury’s skin tight cat suits or Brian May’s getting closer to God afro as reasons why. The songs alone, which have proven not only to be fantastic examples of what can be accomplished with hard driving drums…

Posted on: June 17, 2011 Posted by: John B. Moore Comments: 0

Shot in the Dark (DVD)

You’d be excused for thinking Shot in the Dark, the new HBO doc from Entourage’s Adrian Grenier, was little more than a predictably sappy tear jerker aimed at the Lifetime crowd. That’s certainly what I was expecting, so I was pleasantly surprised when the film turned out to be a sincere look at Grenier simply searching for answers about the estranged father he grew up without. Out on DVD just…