Politics, food, travel, exposing hypocrisy. Reading, writing, and revolution. Tipping sacred cows. Outside the box experiences. Art. Love. Philosophy. Spirituality. Animals. Planets. Surrealism. And sexuality.
Anyone who appreciates the joy and beauty of life, who nurtures the fiery spirit that keeps us in the good fight. Individuals who care about changing the system in constructive ways. Seekers. Survivors. Fellow independent artists. Child welfare advocates. Intellects. Existentialists. Iconoclasts. Mona Lisa. Kinky Friedman. Captain Von Trapp. You. Yo mama.
I RECEIVE SO MUCH EMAIL THAT IF I ATTEMPTED TO RESPOND PERSONALLY TO EVERYONE, I WOULDN'T GET ANYTHING ELSE DONE. I DO ALLOCATE A FEW HOURS EACH WEEK TO RESPONDING TO THE MOST PRESSING LETTERS, AND YOU CAN REST ASSURED THAT I DO READ EVERY MESSAGE. YOUR ENCOURAGEMENT AND DIALOGUE MEAN SO MUCH TO ME, SO PLEASE KEEP YOUR LETTERS COMING.
Christopher Largen
For your listening pleasure...
Everything from Adam and the Ants, Tori Amos, Arrested Development, Art of Noise, Syd Barrett, B-52s, Beastie Boys, The Beatles, Beck, Beethoven, Birthday Party, Black Flag, Black Sabbath, Blondie, Boys Next Door, Brave Combo, Jackson Browne, The Butthole Surfers, The Buzzcocks, John Cale, Johnny Cash, Centrinity, Chemical Brothers, Chumbawamba, The Clash, Patsy Cline, George Clinton, Leonard Cohen, Consolidated, The Cramps, The Cure, Cypress Hill, Miles Davis, Dead Kennedys, Dead Milkmen, The Demigs, Derek and the Dominos, Devo, The Dicks, The Doors, The Eagles, Joe Ely, Eminem, Rocky Erickson, Fear, Kirk Franklin (I attended high school with him), Flying Lizards, Diamanda Galas, Gangstarr, Marvin Gaye, Phillip Glass, The Goats, Benny Goodman, Grandmaster Flash, Al Green, GWAR, PJ Harvey, Faith Hill, Billie Holiday, Buddy Holly, Husker Du, Ice Cube, Mahalia Jackson, Jane's Addiction, Jean-Michael Jarre, Ricky Lee Jones, Jonzun Crew, Joy Division, Carole King, The Kinks, Kitaro, Kraftwerk, KRS-One, Crystal Lewis, Jerry Lee Lewis, The Mad Scientists, Bob Marley, Reba McEntire, Meat Beat Manifesto, Meatloaf (a guilty pleasure indeed), Metallica, Roger Miller, Ministry, The Minutemen, Joni Mitchell, Giorgio Moroder, Ennio Morricone, The Motors, Mott the Hoople, Negativeland, New Order, New York Dolls, Nico, Nirvana, NWA, Ojays, Roy Orbison, Paris (the Guerilla-Funkmeister, not Paris Hilton - though I don't diss her either), Peaches, Pharcyde, Shawn Phillips, Pink Floyd, Elvis Presley (the musician, not the icon), The Pretenders, Primus, John Prine, Public Enemy, Puccini, Queen, Radiohead, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Lou Reed, R.E.M., The Residents, Revolting Cocks, Rolling Stones, Roxy Music, The Secret Garden, Sex Pistols, Frank Sinatra, Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, The Smiths, Sonic Youth, The Spinners, Stravinski, Ray Stevens, Donna Summer, Television, Tiny Tim, The Undertones, U2, The Vandals, Velvet Underground, Verdi, Tom Waits, Was (Not Was), Roger Waters, The Who, Hank Williams, Bob Wills and Texas Playboys, George Winston, X, Neil Young, and Frank Zappa, just to name a few out of thousands. Eclectic is my game.
I've spent so much of my life listening to music, I no longer even attempt to categorize styles - better to actually describe elements of the aural dynamic. The best music transcends trends.
All About Eve, All My Sons, All That Jazz, All The President's Men, American Beauty, Animal Farm, Annie Hall, Apocolypse Now, Aria, As Good As It Gets, Avalon, The Bad Seed, Benji (yeah, the dog movie), Betty Blue, The Birds, Birdy, Blazing Saddles, Blue Velvet, Bob Roberts, Born On The Fourth Of July, Bowling For Columbine, The Breakfast Club, Burnt Offerings, Cabaret, Carrie, Casablanca, Cat On A Hot Tin Roof, The Champ, City Lights, Conspiracy: The Chicago 8, Chicken Run, Clockwork Orange, The Color Purple, Dances With Wolves, Dawn of the Dead, Death Of A Salesman, The Deer Hunter, Do The Right Thing, Dog Day Afternoon, Easy Rider, Eating Raoul, The Education of Shelby Knox, The Elephant Man, E.T., The Exorcist, Everything You Wanted to Know About Sex But Were Afraid To Ask, Evil Dead (1 and 2), Fame, Fantasia, Fast Times At Ridgemont High, Fiddler On the Roof, Forrest Gump, Frankenstein (the original), Freaky Friday (the original), The French Connection, Gates of Heaven, Ghandi, The Glass Menagerie, The Godfather (1 and 2), Goldfinger, Gone With the Wind, The Graduate, Guess Who's Coming To Dinner, Halloween (the original), Hardcore, Hearts and Minds, Heaven, Hello Dolly, Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, Holocaust (TV Series), I Spit On Your Grave, In The Heat of The Night, Inherit The Wind, The Jerk, JFK, Judgment At Nuremberg, The Killing Fields, King Kong, Koyanisquatsi, Last House On The Left, Last Temptation Of Christ, Lenny, Liquid Sky, Little Big Man, Little Shop Of Horrors, Logan's Run, Looking For Mr. Goodbar, Man On The Moon, Manhattan, Manhunter, Marathon Man, Mary Poppins, Mask (not the Jim Carey film), Mean Streets, Midnight Cowboy, The Mission, Mississippi Burning, Monster, My Bodyguard, My Fair Lady, Network, New York New York, North by Northwest, Oliver, The Omen, On Golden Pond, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Once Upon A Time In America, Ordinary People, Paris Texas, Patton, Philadelphia, Pippi Longstocking, The Plague Dogs, Platoon, The Prince of Tides, Psycho, Pulp Fiction, R. Budd Dwyer's Suicide Footage, Rain Man, Raising Arizona, Rear Window, Rebel Without A Cause, The Red Balloon, Reefer Madness, Repulsion, Reservoir Dogs, Risky Business, Rocky (the original), Rocky Horror Picture Show, Roger and Me, Roots, Rope, Rosemary's Baby, The Ruling Class, Running On Empty, Saturday Night Fever, Say Anything, Scarface, Scent of a Woman, Schindler's List, Sex Lies and Videotape, Shampoo, The Shining, Shoah, The Shootist, Short Cuts, Silence Of The Lambs, Slacker, Some Kind Of Wonderful, Song of the South, Steal This Movie, Steel Magnolias, Straw Dogs, Suburbia, Supersize Me, Taxi Driver, Terms of Endearment, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Thin Blue Line, The Tin Drum, Titanic, To Kill A Mockingbird, Tommy, Traffic, Urban Cowboy, Vertigo, Wait Until Dark, Waking Life, Watership Down, West Side Story, Whatever Happened To Baby Jane, What's Eating Gilbert Grape, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolfe, Woodstock, Wild At Heart, Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, Wizard of Oz, Yellow Submarine, Young Frankenstein, thousands of others. For all you confirmed cynics out there, I'm also a Rogers and Hammerstein fan.
Local television and print news outlets were aware that James Taylor Moseley was chained to the second floor of The Tomato for days - but they didn't report it until after the fire. Those same outlets were subsequently aware of the attempted firebombing of Texas Filmmakers headquarters (where raw footage for The Burning of Fry Street was stored), during Thin Line Film Festival (at which The Burning of Fry Street had its world premiere) - but they didn't report it, and haven't to this day.
As if the Boston Tea Party never happened...
Jane Austin, Richard Bach, Iain Banks, Clive Barker, Charles Beaumont, Robert Bloch, Ray Bradbury, Charles Bukowski, William S. Burroughs, Albert Camus, Manuel Cervantes, Anton Chekov, Noam Chomsky, Kate Chopin, Pat Conroy, Charles Dickens, Fyodor Dostoyevski, Brett Easton Ellis, Ralph Waldo Emerson, E.M. Forster, Anne Frank, Gatewood Galbraith, Jack Herer, Herman Hesse, Abbie Hoffman, Homer, Aldous Huxley, Molly Ivins, John Irving, Henry James, Carl Jung, Franz Kafka, Jack Kerouac, Ken Kesey, Stephen King, James Kitchens, Dean Koontz, Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, Stanislaw Lem, Christopher Largen (lol), C.S. Lewis, George McMahon, Flannery O'Connor, Sharon Olds, George Orwell, Ovid, Plato, Edgar Allen Poe, Tom Robbins, Henry Rollins, J.D. Salinger, Carl Sanders, Jean-Paul Sartre, Dan Savage, William Shake-Spear, Mary Shelley, Upton Sinclair, John Steinbeck, Braham Stoker, John Stossel, Shelly Taylor, Hunter Thompson, Henry David Thoreau, Leo Tolstoy, John Kennedy Toole, Mark Twain, Kurt Vonnegut, HG Wells, Walt Whitman, Tom Wolfe, Malcolm X, and too many others, enough to blow my mind through the ether and back again.
For children: Where Did I Come From? I'll Love You Forever, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Free To Be You And Me, The Lorax, The Giving Tree, Little House (series), The Butterfly Ball and the Grasshopper's Feast, Where The Wild Things Are.
Idolatry aside... Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Mohandas K. Gandhi, Mark Lunsford, George McMahon, Jesus (the one you won't hear too much about in many churches, who hung out with the outcasts, called the religious leaders hypocrites, and challenged the authority of the state), warriors, artists, survivors, anyone with the motivation and courage to speak their own truth in the face of injustice. Mr. Munchies. And you.