Title: Hanson Brothers - 'It's a Living'  Label: Wrong Records/Southern Records Released: Available Now Format: CD/DVD & Double Vinyl         I love it when I get pleasant suprises, and this the latest opus from NoMeansNo's oddball Bar-comedy-punk side-project The Hanson Brothers, has plenty of them!   The first thing that surprised me was my own lack of any observational skills, and how I should probably eye-ball the press release a bit before slamming CDs into my Mac. This CD has a DVD on the otherside, which really baffled for a second! (I had put the disk in the wrong way!)    First up, the music! THB play a blend of punk rock that harks back to the good-ol days of the Ramones and The Ruts-era Punk, but with the added twist of cleverly placed (and actually funny) odd-ball comedy. The CD is setup to sound like a live radio-session, interspersed with band interviews and rants, which actually works really well. If, like me, you are a fan of NoMeansNo, you will instantly recognise the 'sound' of this record...in fact this kind of reminds me of their earlier releases, but with more of a, dare I say, comedy-concept.    The DVD, which I ended up rewinding once I realised my mistake, is, ...

Fantastic new addition to the SittingNow writing-crew, Adrian Dobbie, gets down and dirty with the recent Julian Doyle (Monty Python)/Bruce Dickinson (Iron Maiden) written, Chemical Wedding. Is this release finally what acolytes of Aleister Crowley have been waiting for? or another Magickly-huge disapointment?...   Carry-On Crowley?   Among occultists and Thelemites specifically there has long been a certain desire to see their hero Crowley immortalised on film. The exploits of the Master Therion would seem to offer pre-packaged prime subject matter for an industry that thrives on titillation and sensationalism, but while general interest in Crowley does seem to be on the rise, the definitive Crowley film remains to be made. In the last few years we've seen a number of documentaries of varying quality and lately the internet has been awash with teasers and half-baked trailers promising more dramatized takes on the life and times of the Beast 666. Yet none of these have seemed more likely to come to fruition than Bruce Dickinson's project ‘Chemical Wedding'. For those who may not know who Dickinson is, he is the yodelling, spandex-sporting front man of legendary UK metal band Iron Maiden. I have to admit that when I first heard about the Brit-rock legend touting his ...

I think this DVD was released on a 'need-to-know' basis; I for one, had totally forgotten it was available! So, imagine my surprise when this arrived in the Sitting Now mailbag!  This was well timed by Ipecac, it's been a while since the last Fantomas record, Suspended Animation  and I think fans of Mike Patton's crazy cut-up metal supremos, used to a pretty much annual release, are starting to get a bit itchy for new material. Ipecac released a CD of a similar show a few years back and for some reason, I think shoddy sound levels, I couldn't get into it. That mistake has been rectified in this release, however, and what you see is pretty much what happened on the day both audibly, and visually (I was at the show).  I wasn't too sure about the animations added into the mix at first, but you soon realise that they compliment, rather than hinder your enjoyment of the show. One of the truly weird elements of this release has to be in the DVD commentary. Buzz and Dale of the Melvins, the promoter of the show, the (I think) filmmaker and Danny Devito (what the hell?) deliever a rather random conversation that includes a quite ...