Slim Shady's back
When Eminem burst on the hip-hop scene in 1999, his Slim Shady persona wasn't gangsta -- he was an American psycho. The horrific but brilliant track " '97 Bonnie & Clyde" must have made Freddy Krueger and Jason quake in their boots.
On successive albums, Shady mellowed into everyday gangsta chic, boring rap braggadocio and that sappy "Stan" song with the telegraphed "surprise" ending. But now Slim Shady, just like Jason and Freddy, has risen from the grave.
The evidence: the appropriately titled new Eminem track, "I'm Having a Relapse." It's a chilling, violent tale in which Slim confesses he's "manic depress-ity." It's on YouTube.
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'Evil' gets touched
Sometimes evil doesn't wear a hockey mask. Sometimes evil looks like a corpulent, slob-mannered crooked cop whose visage hides a cunning, chess-like mind.
That's the lesson from Orson Welles' "Touch of Evil" -- a 1958 film noir that some critics regard as Welles' masterpiece (yep, ahead of that "Citizen Kane" thing).
Welles directs and stars as the disgusting, crooked police officer Hank Quinlan. A surprisingly un-wooden Charlton Heston stars as Mexican narcotics officer Ramon Miguel Vargas, who's on his honeymoon when he's thrust into a cat-and-mouse game with Quinlan.
A 50th anniversary edition of "Touch of Evil," with original and "restored" versions, is in stores now.
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Get busy listening
The blocos afros drummers of Brazil use more than 100 percussionists to achieve "thundering groove ecstasy" during that country's carnival season.
That's just one of the million or so fascinating factoids and insights in the new book "1,000 Recordings To Hear Before You Die" by music critic and sax player Tom Moon.
Moon admirably transcends those trite "greatest albums" lists by ranging very far and very wide in his choices, and by convincing us that he knows what he's talking about -- as when he quotes Bob Dylan waxing lovingly about forgotten folkie Karen Dalton and her Billie Holiday-like voice.
The book's alphabetical listing creates a serendipity that's both delightful and insightful, as when, say, Moon's list moves from Kurt Weill to Gillian Welch to Kanye West. Or from Tito Puente to Queen to spacey jazz man Sun Ra.
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