5a) In Which More Cowbell is Needed...

4a1) SNL - More Cowbell

4a2a) ...and in which Will Farrell gives one of his great unhinged performances, Jimmy Fallon cracks up halfway through, Horatio Sanz gives his "I'm just lucky to be here" performance, and Cristopher Walken tries to keep the whole thing going.

4a2b) Which is all to say the skit itself is not that good. The concept is hilarious, especially to classic rock fans (see next item), but what saves it is that no one can really hold it together once things really get going. SNL often operates more on charm than actual comedic chops, and this is a prime example. One that never gets old. 

4a2c) And like a true music geek, I have to point out that Bruce Dickinson's (he, the lead singer of Iron Maiden, and fencer of Olympic medalists), first production credit was in 1984, nearly ten years after Blue Öyster Cult's "(Don't Fear) The Reaper" was released. Arguably putting them in the influence seat, not the other way around. But then, you knew that. And so did whomever wrote the script. 

3a) See You Space Cowboy...

3a1) Art by Maarten Donders for Billy Strings.

3a2) Also see Doctor Bionic cover below

5a) Wrapped in Plastic

5a1a) Twin Peaks - Laura Palmer, Portishead "Roads"

5a1b) 

Storm in the morning light

I feel, no more can I say

Frozen to myself

I got nobody on my side

And surely that ain't right

Surely that ain't right

5a2a) Mashed in Plastic: The David Lynch mashup album trailer

5a2b) 

1. The Voice of Love is Crying - [Colatron]

2. Blue Rigby - [Wax Audio]

3. Twin Hearts - [Colatron]

4. Heaven's Drive-In - [Phil RetroSpector]

5. Tori's Deranged - [Wax Audio]

6. Something Stupid This Way Comes - [G3RSt]

7. I'll Be There in Twin Peaks - [Colatron]

8. The Pink Jack - [Wax Audio]

9. Lauren's Opus - [The Reborn Identity]

10. Frank's Here - [The Who Boys]

11. The Elephant Connection - [The Reborn Identity]

12. I've Told Every Little Pumpkin - [ToToM]

13. Violent at Heart - [The Reborn Identity]

14. Don't Go All Wicked on Me - [Neiltomo]

15. Eraserhead Serenade - [RIAA]

16. Velvet Dreams - [Voicedude]

17. In My Twin Life - [Phil RetroSpector]

18. This is David Lynch - [Neiltomo]

Mashed in Plastic YouTube Playlist

5a2c) Colatron article on the creation of Mashed in Plastic

5a3) Albums containing Twin Peaks samples – a list by WhiteBlur2 at RYM

5a4) It all started here. It's still hard to believe that it made it to network television at all. Maybe even more unbelievable is the pressure on Lynch to solve the mystery and move on. It's still one of the most accurate portraits of how grief affects a community. Near madness matched by a numbing of experiential reality in response to its rupture. The black hole at the center of the galaxy.

Marshall McLuhan said that the medium was the message. And maybe in the end, the medium won. But there for a bit, Lynch stretched it to its breaking point and gave us a frame into a world that would become all too familiar. The punctuated equilibrium of precarious confidence in security. A world wrapped in plastic. 

5a5) See 060621_4a

5a) Sorcerer (1977)

5a1) Sorcerer (1977) Trailer, Directed by William Friedkin

5a2) 

5a3) Sorcerer in Cinemonkey 016 (1979 Winter) at Internet Archive

5a4) Considered by many cinema buffs to be director William Friedkin's underappreciated third straight masterpiece following the one-two punch of The French Connection and The Exorcist, 1977's long-lost Sorcerer starring Roy Scheider has finally gotten a widescreen Blu-ray release this month. Inspired by the Georges Arnaud novel The Wages of Fear, the film focuses on four men — a Mexican hitman, an Arab terrorist, an American hood, and a disgraced French businessman — who are hiding out in an impoverished South American oil town. The quarrelling gang gets contracted as truck drivers to deliver unstable explosives to the site of a raging oil well fire. The story is just as socially relevant today as when it came out. 

[...]

ESQ: You were the first film director to give Tangerine Dream a film score. How did you discover them?

WF: I was over there [in Germany] doing promotion for The Exorcist and some young guy told me about this incredible group with this extraordinary sound. They played an abandoned 18th-century church in the Black Forest at midnight with no lights on them, just the light of their electronic instruments, and it was hypnotic and trancelike. I met the leader, a guy named Edgar Froese, and told him I didn't know what film I was going to do next but I was going to come to him to do the score. About a year and a half later I sent him the script, told him the story of the film over the phone, and said, "Just write your impressions of what I've told you and what you read." He mailed me a score about seven or eight months later never having seen the film. On April 3, 2014, I was in Copenhagen where the new Tangerine Dream, which is still led by Edgar Froese, gave a live concert of the score. They played two hours of the music from Sorcerer expanded by stuff I didn't use. They got the old instruments back and played to an absolutely packed house that was mesmerized. They're releasing that as a live album.

Bryan Reesman – Inside the Forgotten Movie Masterpiece Sorcerer

5b1) Tangerine Dream Sorcerer Score

5b2) Psychotronic Video 03

8a) Beyond the Uncanny Valley

 

8a1)

8a2) And I thought Data's violin playing lacked soul.

8a3) Of androids, gods, and monsters: A Transylvanian Lullaby by John Morris, Gil Shaham (violin).