Eugene tonight, Minimalist Jug Band tomorrow, plus Cassavetes' Husbands

The Minimalist Jug Band by Femke Van Delft - not to be reused without permission

So - just a brief music'n'film check-in (I really need to stop blogging for awhile but I can't! Coping mechanisms are hard to come by):

Eugene Chadbourne plays The Cobalt tonight, along with local maniacs Yellowthief. See my most recent Doc Chad interview here... which also ran in The Skinny, tho' not online. (By the way, by me, there's a new SNFU piece, a Damo Suzuki review, and part two of my New Model Army series in the new issue; there's also likely an update on the saga of the imperilled Cobalt. Come out tonight and show your support to the 'balt by two fisting bottles of Pacific, or somethin'.)

The Minimalist Jug Band, it transpires - I learn this from a gig poster by Zulu - is doing his CD release at Cafe Montmartre tomorrow, along with Petunia (Myspace here) and Rodney DeCroo and maybe someone else. See this old article o' mine for a better indication of what that night might hold...

And finally: Videomatica, as of yesterday, had a few copies of John Cassavetes' Husbands on ths shelf, newly released on DVD (HMV, who I thought were getting smarter, didn't bother to bring it in at all; ah, well). DVD Talk review here, for those of you who don't know the film. I boasted when playing a boot of this to a select group of friends a couple of birthdays ago that the version I was playing was as complete as any you were likely to find - it contained "all the vomiting, shitting, farting" and the complete "drinking and singing" scene that presages it (I gather many prints of the film have had some of this material excised; the VHS that came out several years ago certainly is missing a big chunk). I have not had a chance to watch the whole Sony DVD yet, but it appears that all the drinking contest and all the puking scene are there; the runtime is 142 minutes, which appears to be slightly longer than the boot I played, though I haven't figured out where. Plus it's widescreen! ...so I'd say Sony have done a damn good job on this DVD. That great old BBC doc on The Making of Husbands is, alas, not included as an extra, nor the hilarious Dick Cavett interview with Cassavetes, Peter Falk, and Ben Gazzara - but there is a featurette including new interviews with Gazzara, Al Ruban, and cinematographer Victor Kemper, and a commentary with biographer Marshall Fine, which is wayyyy more than I was expecting. Alas, Ray Carney once again appears to be in Siberia for this project, but is it just possible, folks, that without his passionate protests against the butchering of Cassavetes' works, we wouldn't be seeing the whole film released on DVD thus?

Anyhow, it's a must see, and Videomatica had it for only $21.99... Beats the shit out of what Warner Brothers did with their Zabriskie Point release. Or their Performance one, for that matter. Yay Sony.