Nothing but Trouble (Dan Aykroyd, 1991)

The understandable vitriol this film received upon release is a classic case of genre misdirection. A putative comedy starring comedic talents and written/directed by a comedian, Nothing but Trouble packs its biggest wallop as a horror film. In fact, it's one of the most genuinely scary entries in the old dark house subgenre. Chevy Chase and Demi Moore play Manhattan yuppies who, while on a road trip with Brazilian billionaires Taylor Negron and Bertila Damas, wind up in a cavernous estate presided over by a 106-year-old judge (Dan Aykroyd, in pustule-ridden makeup) who puts the unsuspecting principals through a series of nightmarish Rube-Goldberg-like contraptions including a lethal rollercoaster called The Bonestripper. John Candy does double duty as the local sheriff and the judge's mute granddaughter [sic]. Aykroyd does quadruple duty as one of a pair of deformed grandsons who look like charred Teletubbies. Digital Undeground provide a musical interlude and escape the judge's wrath with a rendition of "Same Song" (look for Tupac in his first film appearance). I don't recall laughing even once. But I found it a consistently inventive ride more than a little reminiscent of Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Comedy fans, avoid this like The Bonsetripper. But horror fans should take a bite.

Grade: A-minus

The cure for The Cure? Staring at the Sea, of course!

I have now heard every Cure album ever and, almost to a song, I couldn't find a single album track that I'd place on a desert island playlist. For a non-goth like me who runs on pop/punk concision and disco sybaritism, Staring at the Sea: The Singles (the CD version of Standing on a Beach), plus a few items detailed below, is all I'll ever need. (If you're already seething, then hie thee to Anthony Miccio's blog who has more tender ears for the band. Do note, though, that he's ignored live albums so I do too. I also forewent remixes but downed all five hours of Join the Dots: B-Sides & Rarities 1978–2001 (The Fiction Years) so slack could be cut.) 

On one level, this is a me problem. I encountered "All Cats are Grey" (from Faith) in Bob Stanley's Yeah Yeah Yeah: The Story of Modern and found it so seductive that I figured it was my problem that I'd never excavated something equally seductive from their non-hit oeuvre, hence this project. If I just listened hard enough, then I'd be able to fall for almost anything unknown to me, right? But on another level, this is a them problem combined with a format problem. The Cure's discography is testament to the album as an inefficient music delivery system. Brutal to acknowledge but many acts don't have 30-40 minutes of compelling music in their oeuvres much less per long player. And when CDs granted artists the possibility of 79 minutes of self-expression, the tax on our attention grows to unconscionable proportions. For the Cure, the advent of the CD couldn't come soon enough; 12 inches of vinyl were too tight a corral for Robert Smith & Co's gothic caterwaul so that when CDs became the norm, the boys were quick to abandon quality controls. Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me (1987) and Disintegration (1989) clock in at 74:35 and 71:45 respectively, upping the ante for those of us who'd already heard them as too slow to get to the point. How was I going to find another "All Cats are Grey" without a Bob Stanley shaving off all the top-heavy filler?

I didn't have the financial or technological wherewithal to roam through the haunted catacombs of their discography as a teenager in the mid-1980s, making it easier to consider myself a huge Cure fan. The only album I owned was 1983's Japanese Whispers which 13-year-old me had no clue was a compilation. My high-school friend Lisa's VHS of Staring at the Sea: The Images passed through so many hands, mine included, that I doubt the poor gal had possession of it for two full years. I watched all 17 videos reverently, allowing those to stand in for the six albums I couldn't afford/hear. But by the time of college in the late 1980s, I was learning about rockism and listening to the canon which left little time for the Cure. I snagged a vinyl copy of Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me for cheap likely because no one wanted two 12"s of bloat in 1988. I didn't hear Disintegration (or anything else I'd missed) until years later; I was too busy with Janet Jackson. 

I don't want to go through each album with too fine a comb, preferring to keep thing as positive as possible. My desert island playlist would augment the ace Boys Don't Cry compilation with the "I'm a Cult Hero"/"I Dig You" 7" from Cult Hero, a Cure side project. "I Dig You" just might be the quintessential post-punk song - post because it dances so well, punk because they let a postman sing it (both songs are appended to the 2005 CD Deluxe Edition bonus disc of Seventeen Seconds). Some might deem Japanese Whispers a ripoff at a merciful 28:27 (although perhaps it was budget-priced, Cure scholars?). But it allowed me to retain affection for a song like "The Dream" which would've gotten lost on an album of even ten more minutes in length. And the one track where I would've welcomed seven-plus minutes, the disco-at-last "The Walk," comes in at an infuriating 3:30. I couldn't even find a contemporary 12" mix of the thing (although do check out the nifty 2006 Infusion mix). I'd like to spend more time with Pornography which was faster and noisier than I remembered. There’s an extreme, uncompromising ethos to its glumness that makes me want to listen harder. I'm weirdly okay with the run from "Last Dance" to "Prayers for Rain" on Disintegration but cannot stand ILM fave "Plainsong." I was nervous by how much I perked up while listening to The Cure (2004), lending the impression that my tastes are truly screwball. But Miccio has kind words for it and Smith is in remarkable voice throughout (check out the American Idol-ready yelps of "Lost").

So Staring at the Sea plus the Cult Hero single plus a 7-minute "The Walk" plus stray tracks taking up a short second disc. Is that so bad? (It is?)

Three Imaginary Boys (1979): B
Boys Don’t Cry (1980): A-minus
Seventeen Seconds (1980): B-minus
Faith (1981): B-minus
Pornography (1982): B
Japanese Whispers (1983): A-minus
The Top (1984): B-minus
The Head On The Door (1985): B
Staring at the Sea: The Singles (1986): A
Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me (1987): B-minus 
Disintegration (1989): B-minus
Wish (1992): C+
Wild Mood Swings (1996): C
Bloodflowers (2000): C-minus
Join The Dots: B-Sides & Rarities 1978-2001 (The Fiction Years) (2004): B-minus
The Cure (2004): B
4:13 Dream (2008): C 
Songs of a Lost World (2024): C+

David Murray Octet, Blue Note, March 17, 8pm show

I have heard that in order to truly understand jazz, one must not only know music theory well but also be a musician oneself. Satisfying neither of these categories, I've long felt exiled to the fringe of jazz fandom and sheepish about professing love for any of my favorites, from Jelly Roll Morton to Ornette Coleman to Mantana Roberts. It was thus with much trepidation that I agreed to see the David Murray Octet last Monday at The Blue Note at the invitation of the great Brad Luen (subscribe to his brainy, wide-ranging Substack, Semipop Life). The last jazz show I recall seeing was Sun Ra at Milwaukee’s Shank Hall in the early 1990s. And while I dug that show (more for the band than for Ra who punkily never acknowledged us and hit a few pings on his synthesizer), I was still nervous about dress (could I wear shorts?), demeanor (is talking okay? hooting? tapping my foot?), or just generally being caught out as not belonging there. Turns out there’s a full menu so you can stuff your piehole with burgers and fries before the show. And shorts were fine; I didn’t look any more haggard than the tourists who showed up in St. Patrick's Day garb. Seating is pretty cramped and, since it's first come, first served, I quickly grasped why there was such a long line two full hours before the show. As it was, we barely got a table for ourselves arriving with about 40 minutes to spare. But here's the rub - with burger in belly along with several Negronis and my chair turned toward the stage for a comfortable vantage point (even a bit of room to stretch my legs), I had a fantastic time!

I assume there are adepts who adjudge Murray the greatest working saxophonist on the planet, especially since Sonny Rollins' retirement in 2014. At 70, he's been at it since the 1970s and he's amassed an impressive array of accolades including a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1989. I've heard several of his myriad albums including Revue, the 1982 album he recorded with the World Saxophone Quartet, which a 1990 Village Voice poll deemed the best jazz album of the 1980s. These were intermittently arresting. But I often hear jazz as wearying iterations of genius within a limited sonic and/or conceptual palette such that a great Billboard Top 40 single seems more difficult to achieve (and hence more precious) than a great John Coltrane album. In short, Murray will always be a side dish to my pop/rock buffet. So I was at the Blue Note not to honor genius but to observe how this music came to life, embodying tensions between composition and improvisation, group work and solo flights. 

The most fascinating aspect of the show was how openly the octet managed soloist duties. Of course, Murray led the charge here with nods and verbal signals to various band members to take their turn. But sometimes one member would hand signal to another for some sort of predetermined direction. No doubt these allotments of freedom within strictures are de rigueur for most jazz shows. For me, though, it helped drain some of the intimidating mastery from the event.

As a rhythm guy, the musicians who impressed me most were the bassist and drummer and, later, the pianist. (There were nine musicians on stage including David Murray. I couldn't find the names of the bassist and drummer and I don't want to assume the roster listed on the Blue Note website is correct since it lists only eight musicians. But I assume the pianist was Lafayette Gilchrist. The others listed were: Russell Carter, Luke Stewart, Corey Wallace, Mingus Murray, Shareef Clayton, and Immanuel Wilkins.) I paid close attention to their supporting roles while the others were soloing. And even when I lost the thread, I intuitively appreciated their generosity in remaining in the background while the soloists came forward (this might be why the bassist and drummer's own solo turns felt a bit abstract to me). Gilchrist contributed to the bedrock on later numbers and helped me understand why I much prefer jazz pianists to saxophonists - no matter how showy they get, they always seem to be selflessly rhythm-a-ning rather than accessing the deepest recesses of their souls. 

The only moment that thrilled me (goosebumps popping, blood rushing, silly grin forming) came at the climax of the last number with the entire ensemble coming together for a shrill wall of confrontational gush. But watching the attempts at keeping the music going was enough to captivate me for the entirety of the two-hour show. It was also enough for me to rue the fact that I haven't taken advantage of the copious jazz performances NYC offers daily. Wonder who's playing at the Village Vanguard this weekend. 

North to Alaska (Henry Hathaway, 1960)

I was convinced this was a near-masterpiece when I first saw it about twenty or so years ago. Today it reads as little more than a solid western, with John Wayne and Stewart Granger pawing at Capucine for 122 minutes and Ernie Kovacs waiting for a paycheck. But its value to me has increased in that it provides more ballast against an argument of Pauline Kael's, from her infamous 1963 essay "Circles and Squares," that has always bugged me: "Movie-going kids are, I think, much more reliable guides to this kind of movie than the auteur critics: every kid I've talked to knows that Henry Hathaway's North to Alaska was a surprisingly funny, entertaining movie and Hatari! (classified as a "masterpiece" by half the Cahiers Conseil des Dix, Peter Bogdanovich, and others) was a terrible bore" (15). It doesn't matter if she actually talked to kids about these films; she chose to center them as the prime audience for North to Alaska because the film does as well. It courts pre-teen boys with cartoon sound effects during fight scenes and an older-brother surrogate in Fabian who plays a horndog teenager competing with Wayne and Granger for Capucine. But it's the verb "knows" that annoys suggesting it is somehow preordained that North to Alaska is superior to Hatari! in entertainment value or art or even auteurist credentials. And with no further evidence about either film's value provided, the statement just sits there in all its crankiness. It feeds into Kael's own theory about entertainment, developed more diffusely throughout her writing but no less a theory than auteurism, as an unpretentious, often gritty/violent, male-oriented aesthetic register. That entertainment can take many other forms doesn't concern her, at least not in this essay. In short, I still prefer Hatari!; its discursive drift and lax attitude towards the three-act structure provide plenty of entertainment for me and perhaps for the millions of moviegoers who made it the #7 highest-grossing film of 1962 in America. 

Grade: B+

2024 Best Picture Oscar Nonimees Ranked

Nickel Boys (RaMell Ross) - Ross applies the unlocked, myriad-faceted ways of seeing from his 2018 documentary Hale County This Morning, This Evening to this adaptation of Colson Whitehead's 2019 novel and the worst I can say for it is that his phantasmagoric technique blunts the twist ending of the novel. But even that minor drawback has compensations for Ross demonstrates the capacious properties of Black sound and vision to vanquish the forces that attempt Black genocide. Grade: A

The Substance (Coralie Fargeat) - Reviewed here. Grade: A-minus

Anora (Sean Baker) Whizzes by at roller-coaster speed until the devastating ending in which two atomized laborers try to find a connection and together wonder if they’ll be exploited for an eternity. Also, a sequel to The Last Showgirl avant la lettre. Grade: A-minus

I'm Still Here (Walter Salles) A brutal but somehow relatively quiet account of Eunice Paiva’s quest for justice concerning the 1971 murder of her politician husband Rubens Beyrodt Paiva at the hands of Brazil’s military dictatorship. The multiple endings that push the story into several futures started to irk me until I realized what Salles was doing - bearing witness to the rich and accomplished lives Eunice and her family enjoyed despite rage-inducing tragedy. Grade: A-minus

A Complete Unknown (James Mangold) Now that Boomers got their anonymously directed Wiki-film on Bob Dylan’s betrayal of folkie purity, based on Elijah Wald’s brisk, fun Dylan Goes Electric!: Newport, Seeger, Dylan, and the Night That Split the Sixties, we need one about his betrayal of Boomer purity, one that, in the words of ILX user President Keyes, “covers the important parts of Dylan’s life: Kurtis Blow collab, We Are the World, Soy Bomb, lingerie commercials, Nobel prize, joining Twitter” to which Alfred Soto adds "...talking to Arthur Baker about producing Empire Burlesque" to which I'll add Self Portrait, Renaldo and Clara, lyrics that acknowledge the existence of Alicia Keys, posting a Machine Gun Kelly video on his Instagram, etc. Grade: B+

The Brutalist (Brady Corbet) A pungent take on the Jewish immigrant experience in America post-WWII. But the controversial epilogue is not the problem; it’s the random point at which the story breaks immediately before. Why end it with Erzsébet making Harrison’s abuse of László public? What happened to Harrison in the wake of this news? And why not dig deeper into what made László an architectural genius, meditating on process more or what made him stand out against other architects? In short, why did it have to be 215 minutes if such huge, compelling chunks of László’s life would be excised, leaving the feeling that the film is both too short and too long? Grade: B+

Wicked (Jon Chu) Too damn long. But I loved all the discourse around it - the memes, the straight boys performing friendship via its songs on TikTok, the girls who came dressed in full costume on opening day, the singalongs. This film was popular. Grade: B+

Emilia Pérez (Jacques Audiard) Reviewed here.  Grade: B+

Conclave (Edward Berger) Typically mid Oscar fodder, more TV Movie of the Week than Cinemah. Docked a notch so I’m not tempted to watch it again. Grade: B

Dune: Part Two (Denis Villeneuve) Actually sustains interest across its length. But that’s still 166 damn minutes of humorless proper nouns to stomach. Are camp and world building at odds forever? Docked a notch so I’m not tempted to watch it again. Grade: B

 

Tears for Fears: Songs from the Big Chair (Mercury, 1985)

Ten aperçus:

1. Gawd, this album is boring!

2. And I claim this with "Pale Shelter" as my 94th fave single of the 1980s. 

3. Average song length = 5:19. That merits a "tsk-tsk" from a popist perspective.

4. Best song = "Mothers Talk" cuz it's the most disco

5. Worst Song = definitely the ironically titled "Listen," although "I Believe" runs a close second in unlistenability. They're both water-logged, excrescent ballads. Blech!!!! And that's over a quarter of the album right there!

6. If "Shout" were a package, it would cost hundreds of dollars to send. And that's just the single version. The album version would have to spend a week in a shipping container and get held up at customs for another week. 

7. They had big mouths...physically big mouths, especially in the "Shout" video. 

8. The Seeds of Love is even worse. Who the hell needed ever more Pepperisms in 1989? I wisely stopped listening to them after that and given such Rick Wakeman-like titles as Raoul and the Kings of Spain and Saturnine Martial & Lunatic, it was not a moment too soon.

9. They were the INXS of the 1980s.

10. Oh wait a minute - we already had an INXS in the 1980s. Ok the Procol Harum of the 1980s. 

Grade: C+ 

The Byrds are Okay! Is That Okay?

Hello from 2025, (sung to the tune of "Turn! Turn! Turn!") a time after garage punk and punk, after the innovations of James Brown have penetrated down to every funktional cell in our bodies, a time when Chic vies with the Beatles as the greatest English-singing band of the 20th century, a time after disco, house, and techno, and time when not only The Byrds' Greatest Hits exists but the capacity to create our own Byrds' Greatest Hits exists as well. Hello from a time when it's difficult to recreate the rush that the Byrds provided folks (a word I use advisedly) when almost out of the gate in 1965 the band space traveled to #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 with "Mr. Tambourine Man." The Byrds were innovators, that we can still hear. But when critics claim that the band welded Dylan to the Beatles for a brand-new musical fricassee, they neglect to mention that the Byrds exude little of the raucous thrill of the early Beatles, the ones who fused a rump-shaking R&B bottom with crystal-blue harmonizing up top. For instance, Whit Strub is correct when he claims that "the bridge on “You Won’t Have to Cry” threatens to climb a step into straight-up wanna-hold-your-hand-ness." But threaten is all it does - never does one get the sense that a Hollywood Bowlful of girls and boys would start screaming (and, more importantly, dancing) as the band limps back into the verse. 

This means that from their onset, the Byrds were keeping pace with the Beatles, concurrently in their Ordinary Phase during which they were Dylanizing their own music and recording the two worst albums in their discography - Beatles for Sale and Help!, albums which Rolling Stone types have overrated if not flat-out lied about for decades. They're just okay like most Byrds albums ever. Will the Boomer gerontocracy ever allow them to just be okay? In short, why is the Wiki for the inconsequential Byrds reunion album longer than the one for an album better than anything the Byrds ever recorded (Greatest Hits included), Love: Forever Changes?

Digesting the first few albums is not a painful experience, especially since they traffic in a concision that often gives the Ramones competition. But the drastic lack of bottom gets deadening for anyone even remotely boogie-besotted. Feel free to lay this shortcoming at drummer Michael Clarke's feet; the Byrds themselves had no problem dunking on his talent (and before you get too snarky about Clarke's abilities to ground the band, check that link for a grueling letter written by him as he was dying of alcoholism at 47). But it's not as if they kicked out any jams after Clarke left and/or was fired in 1967; it's clear that the Byrds never cared about our butt cheeks. Add harmonies that start to sound samey after a song or three, like ghosts who visit nightly but fail to haunt you, and you have a sound too thin to support their overinflated legend. 

1967's Greatest Hits has rendered the first three albums superfluous, especially Mr. Tambourine Man, the debut, which lends five songs (out of twelve) to Greatest Hits. Keepers include faster fare like "It's No Use," "It Won't Be Wrong," "I See You," and the bonus track "Why," maybe the friendlier take on Dylan's "Spanish Harlem Incident" or "If You're Gone" with its undergirding drone voices. But really - you can make do with Greatest Hits or, if you fancy more concise jangle, the two early-1980s volumes of The Original Singles. 

A measure of how much I don't get this band lies in my appreciation for Younger Than Yesterday, downgraded by both Robert Christgau and Rob Sheffield in The New Rolling Stone Album Guide. But David Crosby's "Renaissance Fair" was the best non-Greatest Hits song to date. For once, the harmonies haunt and Chris Hillman's bass leads like they never needed a funky drummer in the first place. Crosby's "Everybody's Been Burned" comes in a scosh less haunting and even Hillman works up some spookiness in the verses of "Thoughts and Words." And while even fans like to rip on Crosby's psychedelic indulgence "Mind Gardens" (in two version on the 1996 CD reissue!), it's no drearier than "2-4-2 Fox Trot (The Lear Jet Song)" from the previous year's Fifth Dimension. 

It took me forever (i.e., last week) to figure out The Notorious Byrd Brothers and I still think Love's Forever Changes smothers it in a field of poppies. Psychedelia consists of constantly morphing figures and thus requires time to allow for the permutations. Much as I celebrate albums lasting 28:28, The Notorious Byrd Brothers' concision seemed thin and unyielding all over again. But eventually, I realized that Roger McGuinn & Co. were just getting through the permutations more quickly (albeit less heartbreakingly and ominously) than Arthur Lee & Co. did. "Natural Harmony" and, especially, "Draft Morning" document a scary false idol washing up on the Beach Boys' shore.

By contrast, I got Sweetheart of the Rodeo immediately. Due to the vagaries of a pre-Napster/Spotify world, I heard it many years before the other titles and it was quite possibly the first album where I could grasp irony, the band (with Gram Parsons for a hot minute) loving and lovingly joking about country music. In this mode, the best track, even better than the ace Dylan and Parsons songs, is the faithful-but-not take on the Louvin Brothers' "The Christian Life."

And then, after their victory year of 1968, the decline sets in as so often happens with congregations of more than one person. Hyde is a lesser Sweetheart although "Drug Store Truck Drivin' Man" would have fit nicely on the latter. It gets the edge over Ballad which is almost entirely covers with originals by such esteemed songwriters as John York and Pamela Polland; all you need is the 2:10 they expend on "Jesus is Just Alright." Preflyte is 25:38 of demos from a band guilty of thinness even at their best, i.e., for scholars only. The live half of the (Untitled) double album is good for doing dishes; the studio half is good for McGuinn/Jacques Levy's "Chestnut Mare."

To gauge how low the Byrds subsequently sunk, one need only listen to the Kim Fowley (let into the den by Skip Battin) co-writes on Byrdmaniax and Farther Along. If you can stomach Fowley, check out the baffling Hollywood Babylon-style report "Citizen Kane" on the former or the equally baffling Coke commercial "America's Great National Pastime" on the latter. Extra points to Byrdmaniax for the cool cover if it tricked at least one metalhead into biting. The 1973 reunion is the nadir, an admission that the congregation no longer meant anything to the principals, most of whom had solo irons in the fire by this point. Two Neil Youngs, one Joni Mitchell, yet another McGuinn/Levy, a couple of desultory Crosbys - they'd be embarrassing if they weren't so dull. 

The one song that kept rolling through my head while listening to this discography was "Outside Chance" by the Turtles of all people. I submit that the Byrds bequeathed far more to popular music than Flo & Eddie & Co. ever did. But "Outside Chance" (co-written by Warren Zevon) bashes harder (thanks to new drummer John Barbata) than almost anything on those first three wildly revered Byrds albums. If that means that the Byrds got to the sound first, then so what? Much as I appreciate an open atrium, eventually I'm going to require a floor to go along with my dwelling.

However demented you find the above, do check out Whit Strub's Byrdstupor blog wherein he endeavors to listen to all Byrds-related recordings ever. Perversely, he hasn't gotten to the 1968 goodies and may never will. Even more perversely, he's not properly worshipful of The Flying Burrito Brothers: The Gilded Palace of Sin (A&M, 1969), another album better than anything the Byrds ever recorded. He thinks part of the problem is that Gram Parsons subjugated Chris Hillman (!). He has kind words for the second-worst song, “My Uncle” (!!). And he may prefer subsequent Burrito albums to Gilded (!!!). But cut the man some slack - he's listened to this right-wing Hillman horror. 

Oh and p.s. Hüsker Dü's "Eight Miles High" >>>> the Byrds'.

Grades (all releases on Columbia except where noted):

Mr. Tambourine Man (1965): B-minus (docked a notch for decades of overrating and inutility due to Greatest Hits)

Turn! Turn! Turn! (1965): B

Fifth Dimension (1966): B

Younger Than Yesterday (1967): B+

The Byrds' Greatest Hits (1967): A

The Notorious Byrd Brothers (1968): A-minus

Sweetheart of the Rodeo (1968): A

Dr. Byrds & Mr. Hyde (1969): B

Preflyte (Together, 1969): C+

The Ballad of Easy Rider (1969): B-minus

Untitled (1970): C+

Byrdmaniax (1971): C

Farther Along (1971): C

Byrds (Asylum, 1973): C-minus