I spent time from 2019-2020 as a contributing writer for Funkhouser, the pop-culture section of Kentucky Sports Radio — one of the most widely read publications in the Commonwealth of Kentucky. I reviewed film and television, while occasionally diving into other aspects of pop-culture. My articles were critical, but much more informal than my academic writing. All of my writing can be found on my KSR author site. Selected excerpts of my writing follow.
NOTE: Kentucky Sports Radio’s website has changed ownership since my time there, and the new owners’ revamped website made my articles published on the original site look… well, pretty ugly. Just a warning if you click into any of my articles.
40 Years After ‘Highway To Hell,’ AC/DC Is Still Rock n’ Roll At Its Best
AC/DC was my first pop-culture obsession. I was in 3rd grade when Guitar Hero II overthrew the U.S. government and brainwashed all of its citizenry into obsessively strumming their five-button controllers along to classic rock covers. The genius of Guitar Hero was its ability to convince players that they were rock gods, and 8 year old me fell hard for the ploy. I moved quickly into picking up a real guitar to manifest my inner power. AC/DC quickly became the band whose catalogue I burned through . Their riffs were more than easy enough for beginners, but the myriad patterns they produced with A, D, and G power chords, along with their breakneck speed, made AC/DC songs the ideal target for my early musicianship.
Of course, the reason behind my love for AC/DC as a budding musician (spoiler: I never truly bloomed) is the most frequent criticism against them: their songs all follow the same formula. The riffs center primarily on three to four chords, the chorus likely features some variant of the word “balls,” and the solo is some bluesy shred from schoolboy guitarist Angus Young. Young supposedly once said “I’m sick to death of people saying we’ve made 11 albums that sound exactly the same. In fact, we’ve made 12 albums that sound exactly the same.” Complexity is not their claim to fame.
I’m not here to deny that the formula exists, but there is more variety in the band’s catalogue than I think they are given credit for. Their whole ’70s career oozes a bluesiness that they shed in the Brian Johnson era. Songs like “Ride On” and “Gone Shootin’” owe as much to Robert Johnson as anyone. And “Beating Around the Bush,” while rooted in the three chord structure, has an adrenaline-fueled two string lick that makes me want to rip off my shirt and toss my brother through a wall. AC/DC may only five tricks up their sleeve, but the combinations of those tricks and the kineticism with which they perform them never cease to amaze me.
The full article can be read at Funkhouser.
“The Twilight Zone” (2019): Season Finale
Sophie somehow knows the Blurry Man’s presence is connected to her hatred of genre fiction. “Jordan’s putting you up to this, isn’t he?” she screams at the figure. “Because horror is real? Because the genre stuff isn’t just bullshit.” There is a tension in Sophie’s mind between the fantastic and the intelligent. For her, sci-fi itself is not quite able to reach a profound level. What she believes Serling did was not give profound stories, but rather gave profound narration at the beginning and end of trashy sci-fi episodes because that was the only way to reach the masses. We know in this alternate reality that Sophie is one of the chief creative minds behind the new Twilight Zone, and her idea that the new show needs to shrug away its genre tendencies to deliver message is very much in-play in almost all of The Twilight Zone’s actual episodes. Very few of this new season resides in the supernatural, and “Blurryman” gives us a reason for that: Sophie hates the supernatural. The soapbox messaging of “Point of Origin” and “The Wunderkind” are a result of her reluctance to dive into genre storytelling and insistence that the show needs to bluntly say something insightful.
The full article can be read at Funkhouser.
Review: Jordan Peele’s “Us”
Peele’s social commentary, though, is inconsistent throughout the film’s runtime. There are moments as heavy handed as the Red claiming their American heritage, and other instances far more opaque. A large emphasis of the film in its early stages is a materialistic war between Gabe and his lake-house neighbor Josh (Tim Heidecker), who always gets nicer boats or newer cars than Gabe. It is a classic suburban sitcom struggle. While a connection can be made between the men’s materialism and the trials of the Tethered, Peele loses sight of the dichotomy of the two groups so that the movie doesn’t ever truly allow itself to be about the classism that it presents. Challenging cinema need not be wholly transparent. However, as the movie gets bogged down in its own plot mechanics – namely who the Tethered are and what havoc they plan to wreak – it loses sight of its ultimate goal.
The full article can be read at Funkhouser.
Adrian Paul Bryant 