Minus 5/Young Fresh Fellows frontman Scott McCaughey has been blurring the distinction between his two bands for a while, to the point where many of the songs on either group’s LPs would be appropriate for the other. Both return this week with new efforts: the Minus 5’s Killingsworth and the Fellows’ I Think This Is. The tunes are more divergent, with Killingsworth featuring a heavy alt-country vibe and I Think This Is being a typically funny garage-pop workout. When he’s not fronting his own combos, McCaughey is a sideman for R.E.M. and Robyn Hitchcock, the latter of whom produced I Think This Is. McCaughey is guest-editing magnetmagazine.com this week. Read our Q&A with him.
McCaughey: I don’t have cable TV at home—that’s what hotel rooms are for. So a few weeks ago, we had to finally heed the thousands of messages on the news and across the bottom of the screen and go to Radio Shack to buy a digital converter box. A bit annoying, but suddenly a slew of psychotic new Christian channels appeared! And, strangely, so did a “digital subchannel” of the ABC affiliate on channel two, This TV. The channel has made television a temptation again, showing old shows like Mister Ed and movies—and by movies I mean generally mediocre, low-budget affairs that no other channel wants to bother with: horror films, Westerns, made-for-TV shlockfests. Come one, we all know that less-than-stellar movies are also great. I’ve seen Burt Lancaster’s brutal portrayal of a vengeful “red man” in the sublimely ridiculous Apache, Pam Grier as saucy and sexy photographer Friday Foster (with Godfrey Cambridge!) and Patty Duke as Billie, a tomboy track star running to “the beat” and driving dad Jim Backus batty. And in what seems to be This TV’s raison d’etre, Lone Wolf McQuade (pictured), in which Chuck Norris cheats death repeatedly while drinking beer nonstop and battling David Carradine and a crippled dwarf. This TV is only as good as television needs to be—and better than it is otherwise. Check out a scene from Lone Wolf McQuade after the jump.
