Kevin John Bozelka

Pazz & Jop 2011

2012-01-04T10:01:00.000-08:00

Here's my 2011 Pazz ballot:

Albums:

1. Das Racist: Relax (Greedhead)
2. Death Grips: Exmilitary (Third Worlds)
3. tUnE-yArDs: w h o k i l l (4AD)
4. White Denim: D (Downtown)
5. Unknown Mortal Orchestra: Unknown Mortal Orchestra (Fat Possum/True Panther)
6. Blow Your Head Vol. 2: Dave Nada Presents Moombahton (Mad Decent)
7. Kendrick Lamar: Section.80 (Top Dawg Entertainment)
8. Paul Simon: So Beautiful or So What (Hear Music)
9. Rustie: Glass Swords (Warp)
10. Rangers: Pan Am Stories (Not Not Fun)

Singles:

1. Beyoncé: "Countdown" (Columbia)
2. Nicki Minaj: "Super Bass" (Young Money/Cash Money)
3. Gotye featuring Kimbra “Somebody That I Used to Know” (Samples ’n’ Seconds)
4. Beyoncé: "1+1" (Columbia)
5. Azealia Banks: "212 ft. Lazy Jay" (Azealia Banks and Jef Martens)
6. Chris Brown: "Look at Me Now ft. Lil Wayne & Busta Rhymes" (Jive)
7. Lady Gaga: "Marry the Night" (Streamline/Interscope/KonLive)
8. Rebecca Black: "Friday" (Ark Music Factory)
9. Blawan: "Getting Me Down" (white label)
10. Martin Solveig & Dragonette: “Hello” (Mercury)

Comments later but quickly, I'd probably switch out "Hello" for one of the LMFAO singles, today "Sexy and I Know It."

That charcoal-gray number

2011-12-17T14:19:00.000-08:00

From the Distinctions Not Cost Effective section of Christgau's Record Guide: The '80s:

"Cherelle: I'll never forget the charcoal-gray number she wore on the cover of . . . what was it called again?"

It was Affair.

Yeah I know. Missing the point. But as a Xgau dork, I just had to verify if said number actually existed. And it looks as if she's wearing it in the "Everything I Miss at Home" video.

Howdy Broadway (Charles J. Hunt, 1929)

2011-11-29T23:22:00.000-08:00

Howdy Broadway has been number one on my movie want list ever since reading about it in Richard Barrios' fabulous A Song in the Dark: The Birth of the Musical Film. And now, appropriately out of nowhere, Alpha Home Entertainment allows me to move another title into the top spot because they've released Howdy Broadway along with two featurettes on Vintage Comedy & Music Classics Volume 2. But oh boy, be careful what you want for.

From Barrios' description ("Ed Wood deciding to put on a benefit in his garage"), I was expecting a grungy sub-Poverty Row marvel. An obscure New Jersey studio essaying a musical at the dawn of sync sound? How could it fail to stun? And yet the Buster Keaton quota quickie The Invader from seven years later beats it for godforsaken garage aesthetics and Oscar Micheaux's badass incompetence exists on an entirely different plane altogether. Sure, there's crummy acting and canned theater camerawork. But more than that (garbled syntax, noir-minus lighting, thick soundtrack crud, etc.) is necessary to make a film compellingly awful and Howdy Broadway just isn't bad enough. Ed Wood, my foot. It's more, oh I don't know, bored Christy Cabanne. Richard Koszarski put it best in his history of east coast filmmaking Hollywood on the Hudson: "Unlike the equally threadbare films Oscar Micheaux would soon be making at Metropolitan, Howdy Broadway offers nothing to suggest any degree of pride, interest, or imagination on the part of those who made it" (238).

The title is misleading as well. Despite hero/popular band leader Tommy Christian's Alabama roots, Howdy Broadway is not a tale of Great White Way hopefuls stuck in Mobile or a tenderfoot out of water in Manhattan. Instead, it's a rote campus musical no doubt inspired by the wild success of Good News on Broadway, itself due for movie musicalization in 1930. I suppose it's noteworthy that Howdy Broadway beat it out of the film gate by a year. But so did Sweetie, The Vagabond Lover, and several others. And while I'm intrigued by Koszarski's suggestion, derived from the amazing contemporary film critic Harry Alan Potamkin, that Howdy Broadway exemplifies less a failed attempt to emulate Hollywood than a successful iteration of a unique New Jersey aesthetic, the end result is so serviceably dull I was overjoyed that the version Alpha released was only 48 minutes instead of the 70 reported by an American Film Institute catalog and IMDb. Presumably this is the only version in existence since Edwin M. Bradley reports in The First Hollywood Musicals that the version he saw was 48 minutes as well. There is a point in the film where an obvious chunk is missing. It cuts from this shot

to this one with the sweater-clad student jumping from the right to the left of the screen and the mustachioed man behind him appearing in the frame whereas in the previous shot, he's unseen speaking from far left.

Other factoids:

It was typical in early sync sound cinema to film with two or more cameras simultaneously to maintain the classical Hollywood tradition/trademark of analytical editing (shot-reverse shot, glance-objects cuts, close ups, etc.). You can tell the Howdy Broadway crew had at least two by the perfect matches on action below.

But this method didn't prevent an awkward insert (most likely not shot simultaneously) that breaks the 180-degree rule and jumps the line.

Finally, Barrios mentions that the best moment occurs when "a hapless contortionist momentarily gets stuck in midsplit" (197). Presumably he's taking about this scene.

But after watching it more times than I care to admit, I couldn't find a moment where she gets stuck. Maybe Barrios saw a complete 70-minute print. Lucky guy.

Also on the Alpha disc are two featurettes that I gave only a cursory glance to, Poppin' the Cork (1933) and A Night at the Biltmore Bowl (1935), the latter featuring applause tracks that sound as if they were added by Alpha (why?).

What's number number one on my want list now? Oh, probably Plainsong (Ed Stabile, 1982). Leonard Maltin gave it ***1/2. It can't be that hard to find. Or maybe Private Property (Leslie Stevens, 1960). Check your attic.

The Tree of Life (Terrence Malick, 2011)

2011-09-17T18:34:00.000-07:00

Structurally, The Tree of Life is a gas. Ignoring for a moment the content that floats on the surface, the jarring “first one film, then another” gambit lends a refreshing schizophrenia to Terrence Malick’s latest enterprise, warding against any sense of a hermetically sealed, organic whole. At this subterranean level, The Tree of Life has the makings of a film maudit and the more of those circulating, the better. We need these loopy, irreducibly personal creations precisely because they show off their seams so egregiously. Via invisible editing and unheard melodies, organic wholes prop up their ideologies as common sense, beyond criticism. Films maudits often plant the seeds of their criticism right into the film itself with a shift in register or style casting a skeptical eye on the sequences that have come before it. And while the merchandise feels broken, films maudits are actually a great deal – two (or more) films/styles for the price of one! And they’re perfect for the ADD set – if one film is boring you, another is soon on its way.

But, of course, form and content are one which makes it necessary to reflect on the result of slamming all those cosmological fireworks into the Waco reverie. The latter scenes were beautifully observed and could have carried the film alone – shards of memory coming at you from unpredictable angles the way James Joyce planned it. Good show. But the new agey crap recalls such middlebrow milestones as Koyaanisqatsi and Microcosmos which bypass questions of representation and filmic construction in the rush to ponder the meaning of existence. And the convergence of the two modes is extraordinarily problematic. Apart from a brief Benetton ad on the beach, Malick sews the meaning of existence through a white, heterosexual family which comes off as impoverished at best, tunnel-visioned at worst. The new agey scenes take pride in exhibiting all sorts of phenomena, flora, and fauna. So then why couldn’t Malick apply that same sense of wonder to the variety of families that pepper our existence? And why did the Waco family have to be so supernaturally beautiful? Despite a fine performance as the brutish patriarch, Brad Pitt remains gorgeous Brad Pitt, a point from which it becomes impossible to universalize. And here’s betting at least one of the actors playing his sons becomes a supermodel.

And so what could have been a film maudit has wound up a cause célèbre, something to talk about at parties while ignoring the existence of Adam Cooley.

I want this Leiber-Stoller musical to exist!

2011-09-01T20:12:00.001-07:00

From a lovely NYT remembrance of Jerry Leiber who died on Aug. 22nd. RIP.

"They wanted to write an original show, and had lots of ideas — ideas that seemed amazing to me, if often somewhat unrealistic. One was for a full-length ballet about a high fashion mannequin who comes to life in a department store window after witnessing a shooting and leads an all night chase through the streets of Manhattan in search of the trigger man, only to end up back in the window, immobilized, the crime still unsolved."

shootin' straight

2011-08-24T21:44:00.000-07:00

From Straight Shooting (John Ford, 1917)

Wow Cliffs Notes (sic) really were godawful

2011-08-21T23:10:00.000-07:00

Remember Cliffs Notes (or, as Wiki states, "CliffsNotes, formerly Cliffs Notes, originally Cliff's Notes and often, erroneously, CliffNotes"), those yellowjacketed study guides of great literature for lazy high schoolers? They were supposed to be the bane of our teachers' existence because...well, why really? Because they invited the student to avoid the hard work of actually reading Jude the Obscure or whatever? Big deal. Although I do recall several English teachers warning us to avoid Cliff and His Notes and even promising to fail us if the slim volumes were ever found on our person, never once did they suggest to run screaming from them because the analyses within were so godawful.

Cleaning out thirty-plus years of accumulation from my bedroom recently, I came across the Cliffs Notes for The Glass Menagerie and A Streetcar Named Desire or, to honor the exact title, Cliffs Notes on Williams' Glass Menagerie & Streetcar Named Desire. Apparently conjunctions and even titles require summary (no time for articles [indefinite or otherwise] in the world of too much/not enough). Written by one James L. Roberts, Ph.D. (whose name is prudently left off the cover), this entry contains myriad howlers with respect to the ambient sexuality in Williams' hothouse universe:

"Williams is overly fond of using Freudian sexual symbols. The reader should be aware of these and choose his own response. Aside from the use of raw meat, he uses the bowling balls and pins, and the columns of the Belle Reve plantation home as obvious overt phallic and sexual symbols. The fact that Stanley bowls suggests symbolically his characteristic of summing everything up in terms of sexuality." (41)

"Note the symbolic use of names throughout the play. Blanche DuBois means white of the woods. The white is a play on Blanche's supposed innocence and the woods are used as another Freudian phallic symbol." (42)

I'll let you choose your own response. As for why I had CliffsNotes in the first place, I worshipped Tennessee Williams in junior high and read all of his plays countless times. And I mean, all (I had to special order his relatively obscure 1980 play Clothes for a Summer Hotel from B. Dalton's. The two female employees told my mother and I that they had seen the play and were excited that someone special ordered it. But they seemed both stunned and disappointed to discover it was a 12-year-old boy.) So I picked up the CliffsNotes for some insight my pubescent mind wasn't grasping. But even back then, I knew the analyses were eye-rolling stuff.

And it wasn't just that volume. I also recall the author of the Hamlet Cliffs claiming there was only one way to play The Great Dane's first soliloquy (I think) and that John Barrymore had interpreted it incorrectly whereas so-and-so did it right blah blah blah. I much preferred Hamlet in Everyday English because at the very least it inspired me to rewrite the entire play in my own 1980s slang (true story).

According to this appropriately snarky article, CliffsNotes were the brainchild of one Clifton Hillegass who went on to reap $14 million from these things. I have no clue how widely they circulate today but this article claims that John Wiley and Sons, current owners of the franchise, have partnered with Mark Burnett to produce one-minute video distillations of CliffNotes' already distilled takes on the canon. That may not be as bad as it initially sounds. A minute doesn't give one much time to indulge in the claptrap quoted above. And maybe they can pare it down even further, summarizing A Streetcar Named Desire with a belch so we can move on as quickly as possible to something of value.

Newsflash: Radio Playlists Are Small

2011-08-18T11:49:00.000-07:00

One of the most insightful sentences in all of rockwrite comes early in Simon Frith’s Sound Effects: “The pop song banalities people pick up on are, in general, not illuminating but encouraging” (38). This is a crucial idea for pop music inquisitors because the inclination to remain at a distance from our shiny, happy objects of inquiry can only go so far. Frith’s quote reminds us that mastery over a pop text largely concerns a receptivity to how it masters you. No matter how coldly, confidently intellectual we get, we all need some encouragement now and then.

Like, for instance, on a 16-hour, two-day drive in a ten-foot truck moving to the next chapter of my life. Ten feet might seem small potatoes to all you 10-4 good buddies out there. But for someone like me who hasn’t driven in a year and doesn’t have much experience with anything bigger than an SUV, the prospect gave me heart palpitations.

But as soon as I drove the little beast out of the rental shack, there were pop song banalities encouraging me from the radio: Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ on a Prayer,” Pat Benatar’s best shot “Shadows of the Night,” the like. Jon told me “we got each other.” Pat implored “we got nobody else.” They let me know that we’re in this together and with the clarion call production of Bruce’s “Glory Days” assuring me I wouldn’t wind up like one of his nostalgia-soaked characters, I knew pop radio would help me through this trip.

That didn’t happen. The 44 in Missouri is all twists, turns, and dissected plateaux feeding into my terror that this truck was going to tip over. Hitting it at night was moronic too. Add some hideous rain (it’s amazing how efficiently you can molest the steering wheel to find the windshield wipers in a panic) with a few 18-wheeled jerks tailgating (!) and you have the makings of a state of non-receptivity to pop song banalities. Screaming at the serpentine topography, I craved something more antisocial than the radio was ever going to offer, The Angelic Process perhaps. Or something that transformed me into a warrior to compete with the real truckers. I needed Motörhead: “Snaggletooth” as much as bottled water and primo gas station cappuccinos. For the first time in my life, I glimpsed what it must feel like to exist in such a misanthropic state 24/7. Is this how Bloody Panda have fans?

Even worse for a poptimist like me, heavy rotation turned those pop song banalities into boldfaced lies. It wasn’t long before “Livin’ on a Prayer” came on again and this time, Jon sounded like a loan shark. Then it came on again and now he was a guilty murderer who repeats his story over and over to avoid telling the truth. I knew playlists were restrictive even for oldies. But actually experiencing it was far more oppressive than encouraging.

And it kept happening. With “We Are Family.” With “Gypsy.” With “Separate Ways (Worlds Apart).” With freakin’ “You Make Me Feel Like Dancing.” All snake oil dripping from the FM. As I crept farther south, I expected country to offer a respite. But so much of it now gives off an anonymous hard rock blare that the choruses especially sounded like Incubus or whoever. And I quickly got sick of Dierks Bentley asking “Am I The Only One?” (Yeah, sorry Dierks, you’ll have to party all by your lonesome you. I need to get this rig in before sunset.) I admit that if Missouri had one (1) mile of straight and narrow highway, I wouldn’t have been so closed off. But how great of a mood does one have to be in to adore the same banalities repeated several times in one road trip?

Not that it was all bad. I never tired of the latest chart toppers because they haven’t worn out their welcomes yet; their promises still seem genuine. Gaga’s “The Edge of Glory,” Nicki Minaj’s sunbursting “Super Bass” (always knew it was no “bonus cut”), Adam “Maroon 5” Levine’s “Moves Like Jagger,” oh this must be the new Adele, etc. all sounded fresh on their sixth, seventh go arounds if only in the chutzpah of their airwave saturation. But the only peace I made with the dial came late in the trip when I happened upon a really oldies station playing Sinatra, The McGuire Sisters, and Jack Jones whose pre-rock smoothness calmed my frayed nerves.

Unsurprisingly, when I was on my feet and starting to get back on track (after dealing with apartment snafus, evil cable companies, a looooooong foray into car purchasing, an unfortunate sojourn to Walmart, etc.), I reached for music that mirrored my burgeoning confidence like Gang of Four’s “Ether.” Now that I was a tough guy again, I could navigate its every off-kilter rhythm. But in retrospect, my enslavement to radio was illuminating, a reminder that pop encouragement is always contextual, provisional, and subject to the demands of record promotion. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to being my own DJ again as I unpack boxes and boxes of musical information.

Sheesh! Way to make it plain!

2011-07-15T06:30:00.000-07:00

For those who refuse to believe that the endings of most classical Hollywood films (contemporary too, as an unlucky screening of The Green Lantern didn't need to remind me) are contingent upon the formation of the heterosexual couple, we now have incontrovertible proof that it is so. Take that, evidence queens!

Song O' My Heart (Frank Borzage, 1930)

2011-06-29T00:43:00.000-07:00

Gary Giddins has reminded me of yet another reason why American Pop: An Audio History From Minstrel To Mojo on Record, 1893-1946 remains my all-time favorite box set - there's no John McCormack on it! By contrast, Song O' My Heart features wall-to-wall McCormack which accounts for why it's THE worst Borzage film I've seen so far. Aptly described by Richard Barrios in A Song in the Dark: The Birth of the Musical Film as "a McCormack concert plopped into a rickety story" (and a visually flat concert, at that), Song O' My Heart requires a love for the famed Irish tenor in order to make it through with no tension headaches. It trumps a love for film, a love for Borzage, maybe even a love for the musical, assuming that one of the things you love about the genre is, you know, music.

Wall-to-wall Jolson I can handle because the songs in, say, the winningly grotesque ego showcase The Singing Fool, which Barrios despises, are firmly in the Tin Pan Alley tradition, a pop tradition. McCormack's enormous popularity, especially in the teens when his "It's a Long, Long Way to Tipperary" became the biggest hit of 1915, stems from his position at the intersection between classical and popular music. His sold out concerts placed Verdi next to Berlin, conferring a modicum of prestige upon audiences unwilling to restrict their pleasures to opera and other highfalutin forms (indeed, Song O' My Heart opened at Broadway's prestigious 44th Street Theatre). But at this historical remove, he blankets the ear as a beast of classical music, largely because, as William Ruhlmann notes, "his 'popular' repertoire of sentimental ballads, operetta, and art songs, drifted into the classical repertoire over time."

So whether he's essaying Strauss, some moon-June-spoon, or a reverie designed to elicit waterworks from the Irish diaspora, McCormack's tenor smothers every song o' his heart in operatic bombast with little give to it. And the voice just pins Borzage back, rendering him powerless to do much beyond merely preserving it on film. The only time Borzage indulges in his characteristic juicy romanticism is during a death scene in front of a window with leaves falling from a tree as the final moment approaches.
McCormack's the auteur here and, unlike The Singing Fool, we're all the worse for it.

Oh and avoid the music and effects version which an IMDb user claims is demonstrably better than the full sound version. Don't you believe him.

Burt Edwards Played Burt

2011-06-28T21:56:00.000-07:00

He did. Look.

From The Rivermen

Tantra/Looking Glass mashup?

2011-06-23T08:50:00.000-07:00

So you find Tantra the ne plus ultra of disco? And you have no problem grooving to "Brandy" whenever it comes on? AND you dig ogling unnaturally beautiful guys? Then feast on this mashup (the Tantra kicks in at 1:23):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VmClpGVc-A

I've never heard this album...

2011-05-04T21:16:00.000-07:00

Only Sasha Frere-Jones seems to like it, though...

Then again, this description of Eric Weisbard's from the Spin Alternative Record Guide sounds promising: "Only the album's sheer weirdness is enjoyable, like an inadvertent version of the Jungle Brothers' J. Beez With the Remedy." (339)

Movie Barcode

2011-03-09T00:20:00.000-08:00

I hope film color theorists know what to do with this because I sure don't:
http://moviebarcode.tumblr.com/

So here's the barcode for Gone With the Wind:

Apparently, it's created by the average color of each frame condensed to a one pixel column. But, of course, all I can think about are barcodes for avant-garde films: La Région centrale, Presents, The Flicker, T,O,U,C,H,I,N,G, Blow Job, Mothlight, Little Dog for Roger, select Storm de Hirsch and Luther Price, Le Court bouillon, etc. Or what about the proto-avant-garde of the Cinema of Attractions? Scan away!

Tura Satana 1935 -2011

2011-02-05T16:40:00.000-08:00

There's still a glimmer of hope that this is not true given that an official press release has not yet gone out. But it appears as if a comment from a family member here has de facto confirmed it. So I'd like to take this opportunity to say goodbye to Tura Satana who gave one of the most singular performances in cinema history as Varla in Russ Meyer's 1965 Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!

As befits someone who survived a brutal childhood, a gunshot to the stomach, and two years in the hospital after being hit by a car at 60mph, Satana imbues the character of Varla with a take no prisoners potency. A butch, hot roddin' go-go dancer, Varla wants kicks and she wants them now. She'll even kill to get 'em, a proclivity which stiffens the backs of the holier than thou set. But as always with campfests like Faster, Pussycat!, the surface narrative throws up a smokescreen against what's really going on - an early encounter with the smugness of the 1960s counterculture in the form of banal do-gooder Kirk (Paul Trinka).

Incense nor peppermints swirl around Kirk. In fact, he looks too old to be a part of the happenings that haven't quite yet happened. But he's definitely one of the gentle people Meyer's Carrie Nations would sing about later in Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970 - a bit too late in this instance - Meyer was definitely not in lockstep with the 1960s zeitgeist). Soft-spoken, dull, with a live and let live attitude, he's Dove to Varla's Hawk - in short, a proto-hippie (a fact reinforced by the knowledge that Trinka was a vegetarian...with bad breath to boot!).

But Varla sees through him. Kirk rolls around in the hay with Varla in one scene and calls her "a very sick girl" in the next. He remains brain dead for most of the film about the danger posed by his lecherous father and brother. Indeed, a rape needs to occur in front of his eyes in order for him to take up the mantle of hero. And Varla nails his wishy-washiness every step of the way with lines that become increasingly less camp and more just flat-out correct as the film moves on. As per the code of 1965 narrative (as well as Meyer's, face it, conservative cinema), she has to die at Kirk's hand (really his truck) for his sins of wussdom. But like all saints, she continues to inspire, especially now after (hopefully) the most apocalyptic week of 2011. In a world of moral weaklings, self-absorbed hypocrites, and armchair/internet tough asses, Satana's Varla still oozes with use value.

And in a film choked with eternal one-liners, this straightforward exchange currently hits the hardest:

Kirk (about his slow-witted brother): He'll have to be committed. He can be a person yet...it'll take time.

Varla: Too much time!

Many films were seen

2011-01-22T20:11:00.000-08:00

One was melodramatic, the rest bizarre, even purposeless:

All the Sins of Sodom (Joseph W. Sarno, 1968)
Another sexploitation chore to get through but, as always with Sarno, powered by a constant amazement that the raincoat crowd could have possibly gotten off on this stuff. Exit polls were obviously out of the question (check out how far the reporter gets outside a porn theater in John Waters' Polyester). So we'll never know for sure if the occasional boobage and softcore action did the trick or if the going nowhere chatter that takes up 80% of the screen time prevented any release. For All the Sins of Sodom, Sarno up the coitus interruptus factor by situating the chatter in fields of pure black or white, evacuating any sense of coherent space. It's almost as if he were nihilistically raging against the imperative of having to have a story in the first place.

Still, the film is fascinating in its nothingness, particularly Sarno's unmotivated stationary camera which compels the characters to walk up to it.

Vera (Francisco Athié, 2003)
A man dies in a mining accident. Psychedelia ensues in a purgatory. Basically a succession of frequently gorgeous surrealistic images such as this ever-morphing Fun Tunnel/birthing canal, Vera slips into the Jodorowsky-esque now and then.

But the image that's stayed with me the longest is one of the simplest - a charmingly cliché alien helps the man dry off after a swim.

Svatá Jana (Saint Jane) (Elo Havetta, 1963)
A (potentially hip?) girl appears left out of a party where people discuss Speedy Gonzalez and Paul Klee. The cluttered mise-en-scène leaves the soundtrack unfettered and oppressive. An omelet is made. Eventually someone play the piano. The girl seems to perk up a bit. But her smile looks forced, pained. 7 minutes of delicious huh?.

My Surfing Lucifer (Kenneth Anger, 2009) - "A tribute to my surfing pal Adolph Bunker Spreckels III." The Beach Boys' "Good Vibrations" over surfing footage. Hope it performed some magick for the litigious one.

Beobachtungen einer Postproduktion (Observations on a Post-production) (Björn Last, 2009)
What it says, all blurred and jump cut.

La Maleta (Raoul Ruiz, 1963)
Ruiz's first film based on his play that was staged by Victor Jara. Proves cinema's greatest trickster had a knack for doubling and language games from the very beginning.

La cieca di Sorrento (The Blind Woman of Sorrento) (Nunzio Malasomma, 1934)
This was the melodramatic one, a perfect counterpart to Magnificent Obsession. Starring the ashen eyes of Anna Magnani.

Frank Stein (Iván Zulueta, 1972)
My fave of this bunch. Frankenstein filmed off of TV and retold in three minutes of lurches forward and creepy freeze-frames. Waaaay scarier than the original.

Les Idoles (Marc'o, 1968)

2010-12-31T21:39:00.000-08:00

Directed by one Marc'O, producer of Isidore Isou's Venom and Eternity, with assists from André Téchiné, Jean Eustache, and apparent location scouting from Paul Virilio (!), Les Idoles had every reason to be a fabulous film. Instead, it wastes its Lettrist fervor by informing us that, what's this now, pop music idols are really manufactured products and authenticity cannot grow in late capitalism's multinational gardens. Aw. Such profound revelations must have pained the film's vanguard creators. But not as much as its putative pop songs hurt us.

Based on a Living Theater-like play, Les Idoles frames its story with an unorthodox press conference designed to show off three pop idols: Charly Switchblade (Pierre Clémenti), Crazy Gigi (Bulle Ogier), and Simon The Magician (Jean-Pierre Kalfon). The trio's devious handlers allow a warehouse full of fans to ask any question whatsoever which inevitably wears down the singers and compels them to reveal the sham underneath their youthcult-galvanizing images. Via flashbacks, we learn about the manipulation that propelled them to stardom, a trajectory Monsieur O seems chuffed to lay out for us. But because he's cocooned himself so successfully from the "evils" of the pop machine, the overall effect is more arch than revelatory (obviously). Here's yet another movie which feeds the filmmakers' delusions that they can keep it unreal and emulate actual pop music's blissful inauthenticity. I'm no lover of French pop. But I cannot imagine someone hating it enough to applaud the horribly sung approximations/parodies of Johnny Halliday and France Gall that Clémenti and Ogier essay in this sorry context (and lord knows who Kalfon is trying to ape - some sort of cross between Scott Walker and...Pat Smear?). After about fifteen minutes, the self-satisfaction in a job very poorly done becomes unbearable. And M. O's camera offers no counterpoint, establishing the film's righteousness with every aimless dolly shot. Great fashions and maisons, though...

Pazz & Jop 2010

2010-12-23T23:52:00.000-08:00

1. Gonjasufi: A Sufi and a Killer (Warp)
2. Girl Talk: All Day (Illegal Art)
3. Die Antwoord: $O$ (Cherrytree/Interscope)
4. Rangers: Suburban Tours (Olde English Spelling Bee)
5. Kanye West: My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy (Roc-A-Fella/Def Jam)
6. Taylor Swift: Speak Now (Big Machine)
7. Vampire Weekend: Contra (XL)
8. M.I.A.: Maya (Interscope)
9. Jim Ferraro: On Air (Muscleworks Inc.)
10. Caribou: Swim (Merge)

Singles
1. Enrique Iglesias Feat. Pitbull: “I Like It” (Universal Republic)
2. Shamantis: “J. Biebz - U Smile 800% Slower” (MP3)
3. Mozart Satie (Dominique Leone): "ILM Progression" (MP3)
4. Die Antwoord vs. Enya: "Orinoco Ninja Flow (Wedding DJ’s Remix)" (MP3)
5. Lady Antebellum: “Need You Now” (Capitol Nashville)
6. Rihanna: "Rude Boy" (Def Jam)
7. Usher Featuring will.i.am: "OMG" (LaFace)
8. Dominique Young Unique: "Show My Ass" (Art Jam)
9. Droop-E Feat. E-40: "I'm Loaded" (MP3)
10. Lil Wayne Feat. Nicki Minaj: "Knockout" (Cash Money)

What's this picture about? Dope!

2010-12-20T21:51:00.000-08:00

Pickup Alley (John Gilling, 1957)

Bank of America Cinema RIP/Babes in Toyland (1934)

2010-12-19T09:23:00.000-08:00

Sad times last night as the Saturday Classic Film Series ends its run at the Bank of America Cinema. But happy times too since the Northwest Chicago Film Society will continue the series on Wednesdays at Portage Theater (4050 N. Milwaukee Ave.) with Written on the Wind in 35MM on February 16th. I'm embarrassed to admit that this was the first (and last) time I was at the Bank of America Cinema, especially after making the mistake of paging through their final schedule (I missed Sirk's Meet Me at the Fair on film?!?!). But anyone who failed to attend last night missed something remarkable.

Understandably, the lovers of cinema who kept this series going since 1971 (!) did not want to let go. So after the feature they raised the lights a tad, invited the audience to the lobby for free cupcakes, and then allowed the diehards to remain seated for some odds and ends that comprised one of the most singular and moving cinematic experiences I've ever had.

First, an Elvis vehicle in Scope, Roustabout (1964), but just one reel of it (!) (basically corresponding to this chunk here). He was still pretty punky even this late in the game and it featured a surprisingly decent song called "Wheels on My Heels" (oh and Barbara Stanwyck - what the hell was she doing in this??).

Then a National Film Board of Canada short, Dance Squared (Danse carrée, René Jodoin, 1961), that recalls the visual music experiments of Oskar Fischinger, Mary Ellen Bute, etc. Peep it here.

And then...something I can't youtube (ha!) - train training footage found by a local film enthusiast (right?) named James Bond (!). No titles. No sound. Just footage. The camera was mounted on the front of a train and filmed about 20 minutes of a ride (akin to Billy Bitzer's NYC subway footage). Presumably someone learning how to drive (is that the correct word?) a train would watch this footage in tandem with some sort of simulator. It reminded me of driver's ed sitting in mock cars which were (very poorly) synced to an ancient computer and even more ancient driver's ed films in order to test your ability to slam on the breaks along with the character on screen (gawd that was weird!). An exceedingly surreal way to end the evening/series, it winnowed the audience down its appreciative essence, to paraphrase J. Hoberman's on Jack Smith. The projectionist played some Hank Williams (which worked beautifully with the footage) and then some Beach Boys (much less so) which helped ease the film's de facto avant-garde impact...somewhat. As each song ended, our deep-seated knowledge of cinema conventions expected the footage to end along with it. But on it kept rolling, instilling more and more delirium in...well, at least me. I loved the shit out of it, particularly those Warholian, Peek-A-Boo For Adults moments that imbue minor changes with seismic significance ("Look! A man is waving!"). And I sincerely hope each trainee was able to avoid the oncoming train by switching to the track on the right.

I'd never seen the feature, Babes in Toyland, a children's musical directed by Gus Meins (who?) and Charley Rogers (who?) with music by Victor Herbert and starring Laurel and Hardy. Meins and Rogers were apparently afraid of analytical editing. Even in the dialogue scenes, they rarely cut to a close-up or indulged in shot-reverse shots. But all the better to show off the nursery rhyme sets. And the music was much less florid than I anticipated, especially "Don't Cry Bo-Beep."

The (stop motion?) 100 six-foot toy soldiers (not the 600 one-foot models Santa ordered) got some ooh and aahs. Oddly enough, on the bus ride over, I read an essay that had some bearing on this scene, Kristen Whissel's typically brilliant "The Digital Multitude" from the Summer 2010 issue of Cinema Journal (also check out her fantastic book Picturing American Modernity: Traffic, Technology, and the Silent Cinema). "The Digital Multitude" analyzes CGI masses in contemporary Hollywood film and how they're often positioned as a sea of enemies who will bring an end to the current chapter of history if the good guys fail to stop them. Describing their look and narrative function, she writes "(their) radical uniformity of appearance signals the subordination of each individual's actions and desires to a single, shared objective: to facilitate the rise of a new, oppressive power" (103-4). But in Babes in Toyland, the radically uniform toy soliders are enlisted to save Toyland from the evil Silas Barnaby and the equally uniform but much more freely moving bogeymen. So it'd be useful to see if the stop motion multitude in classical Hollywood cinema functioned to less oppressive ends overall.

Still, despite such special effects, I had trouble grasping the film's prestige level. Was this an A picture? The sets were elaborate but a bit chitzy nonetheless. Maybe I just couldn't distinguish it from the rather creepy Castle Films shorts that preceded it such as Suzy Snowflake (who?).

Finally, before the feature, a masterful Laurel and Hardy short I'd never seen. Big Business (James W. Horne and Leo McCarey, 1929) got off to a stiff start but quickly turned into something waaaay punker than Elvis.

The Trend: "Band-Aid" (Northside 1980)

2010-12-04T12:17:00.000-08:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32sLLXTGQDg

Um yeah this is in the running for both the greatest punk song of all-time and the greatest guitar solo of all-time. And now, for the first time ever, it comes complete with lyrics!!! Corrections welcome.

The Trend: "Band-Aid" (Northside 1980)

Every time I cut myself
There's never a band-aid in the house
That makes me bloody mad
When I can't find a Curad

Somebody give me a band-aid

It doesn't matter if I'm cut or burned
Without band aids I'll never learn
I just can't stand the sight of blood
I just can't stand the sight of blood

I found one!

Saloon Bar (Walter Forde, 1940)

2010-12-03T21:27:00.000-08:00

Saloon Bar is an obscure Ealing comedy-thriller set at Christmastime about a group of pub regulars trying to save a friend from hanging for a murder he didn't commit. But the film delights more in its vertical pleasures than the forward momentum towards clearing the man's name. Forde spends much of the running time familiarizing the audience with the characters and their routines, peppering the story with perpetual diversions and interruptions, many of them sonic/musical.

At the film's beginning, a light score plays as the employees ready the bar for opening.

As Ivy and Fred talk, though, the music's volume rises to almost absurd levels, so much so that you think you're in for a sonic experience akin to the obnoxious wall-to-wall score of Ulmer's Bluebeard.

But lo - the landlord reveals it as diegetic music playing on the radio (stereo?) as he complains about the loud music disturbing his wife upstairs who is about to have their seventh child. That's Fred on the right turning the music off.

Then we have some grating music interruptions. First, a tuneless trumpet pokes in.

And a bunch of bratty kids caroling off key (including a young Roddy McDowall)

Here's an odd shot-reverse-shot sequence (cut on the word "irony")

And you can see the boom mic in the upper right on the wall menu

There's a funny bit where the men show off their legs.

And a visceral track in to the murder victim in a flashback (apparently an omniscient one)

There's some business being annoyed with/making fun of the upper class, first in a garage when one of the regular is trying to find some clues to his friend's innocence, and then later as a party of toffs leave the bar in a snooty huff upon discovering there's no tomato juice.

And if you're a newbie, don't get in the Saloon Bar folk's way when they're looking for clues else you'll find yourself shamed out of the place with their cold, silent stares.

With the real killer finally in their midst, the regulars are about to trap him when the sound of preaching comes from outside. A creepy tracking shot moves towards the door and a shaggy evangelist enters rambling about evil and lies.

It all becomes too much and the killer indulges in some kino fisting before running off.

Eventually all is well and everyone revels in their amateur sleuthing.

And the landlord's wife gives birth to a boy. He closes up shop as a policeman reminds him that it's after hours. But the landlord invites him in for a private party with the regulars. As Tim Pulleine writes in "A Song and Dance at the Local: Thoughts on Ealing," "We are left with the sense of a small, cosy clan that may know its place but is not going to stand for being messed about."*

* in The British Cinema Book, ed. Robert Murphy (London: BFI, 2008,), 259-266.

He's a Cockeyed Wonder

2010-12-01T21:11:00.000-08:00

In honor of TCM Star of the Month Mickey Rooney, here's the poster for He's a Cockeyed Wonder, a gay story of a sad sack who becomes a hero.

Shoplifting in Candle Shops

2010-11-29T23:31:00.000-08:00

From a film called Escaping Satan's Web

The Annotated JJ Fad

2010-11-29T14:54:00.000-08:00

So you dig JJ Fad's "Ya Goin' Down," the Roxanne Shanté dis/b-side to "Is It Love?" (Ruthless, 1988), but just aren't getting all the references? Then use these handy links and footnotes to school yourself.

Ice Cube: It’s like this if
Kid Dynamite sample: you’ve got the time
Ice Cube: to go head up with the Double J F-A-D then
Kid Dynamite sample: I’ve got the time
Ice Cube: Hey yo J.B. what you think about that sucker Shanté?

MC J.B.:
Here we go another ho wanna jump on the bandwagon
So you know, it's time to start taggin'
People thinkin' we were just a F-A-D
So let's dis a fat girl from NYC
Listen up, Shanté¹, now really
Your pimp Marley Marl need to slap you silly, girl
Who you think you are to juice me?
First Roxanne Shanté now you're Loosey ?
You couldn't get none of KRS-One²
So you tried to come west³ and get some
Makin' you turn cuz I burn through
I'm more deffer than a heffer like you
And I can't fight that ain't right
Let me show you how to strike a dyke on the mic
First of all, girl, you ain't cute
Then I hear that you're knockin' the boots with Shan
When he rocked your world,
the whole Juice Crew said "Go On Girl!"
They made a line, then they made a pile
Then you and Marley Marl did it doggy style
Biz Markie and Kane got a little
Somehow Shanté you were caught in the middle
After all that sent them on their way
Smiled at the door and said "Have a Nice Day"
Wham bam ma'am and they’re gone
Nine months later sayin' "Mother's home"
Doin' what you did now how that sound
You can't make a wacky record⁴ homegirl cuz ya goin' down

Baby-D:
We knew you was wack from the start
Did a 100 12"s⁵ and never hit the pop charts
Tryin' to get fame off my name then front
Yo – it must be that time of the month (word!)
Or you're just cracked out, you shoulda backed out
'Fore you get rapped out or even slapped out
I’m goin' way out for the kill
Roxanne Shanté you bit your name from The Real Roxanne
Cuz you never seen the world
I gotta dis this dark-skinned fat girl
Who tried to eat the fat then run it
But your eyes are too big for your stomach, girl
Cuz your songs not happenin'
About the Supersonic album? Oh – it's platinum!
When you did wacky records you said ya got 'em (?)
Been rappin' for years and you're still on the bottom
I've been rappin' for a year now I'm on top
Hmph – I mix pop with a lot of funky hip-hop
And dropped it on the Shanté for messin' with the double J F-A-D
We don't play
We slay at a pitch to abuse you
(?) Juice Crew
Stop! You just washed up, clown
Now how that sound, homegirl? Cuz ya goin' down

Sassy C:
I hope you don't think you're as fly as me
Cuz I'm the S-A-double S-Y C
Let's see who's a sucker
It ain't word to the mother
Cuz I'ma smother
A girl named Shanté no doubt
This time you put your foot in your mouth
I don't see you in magazines often
And when you die, it's gotta be a closed coffin
I try to be ladylike on the mic
But right about now I gotta get hype
On a female as big as a whale
Who make wack records that don't sell
Half as much as we do
Everybody wanna dis the JJ Fad crew
Go ahead and step to the Dre⁶
We try to be nice but we'll spray ya
So come one come all
Let's start with a Butterball Shanté she'll fall
I try to play it off cool
But once again I gotta act the fool
Yo homegirl, this ain't no raffle
You ain't got juice cuz you're from the Big Apple
You're still a little new jack
And when you go platinum then you can talk back
But for now just zip the lip
And get off that LA tip
Take it from one girl to another
Ya goin' down cuz you a sucka

1. The greatest rapper of all-time.

2. Well-respected Bronx rapper from Boogie Down Productions; Shanté dissed him on "Have A Nice Day" (Cold Chillin' '87): "Now KRS-One you should go on vacation/With a name soundin' like a wack radio station."

3. JJ Fad were from California.

4. A reference to Shanté's "Wack Itt" in which she disses JJ Fad.

5. And not "112 inches" as state in this review of Soul Jazz's superb Fly Girls! compilation.

6. Not sure if she's saying 'Dre' here. But it makes sense since Dr. Dre co-wrote "Ya Goin' Down" with Ice Cube.

You've got...

2010-11-28T07:38:00.000-08:00

All Day by Girl Talk - Mashup Breakdown

2010-11-24T03:05:00.000-08:00

OMG! Check out this amaaaazing visualization (the lyric sheet of the future!) of Girl Talk's latest opus All Day.

http://mashupbreakdown.com/

I still don't know who Gregg Gillis is. Or if it's purposeful to even wonder. And I'd love to peek at his 1099-G. But for the third time in a row, this Postmodern Prometheus has created a string of the most natural-seeming gene splices. After only two plays, "Move Bitch" feels autochthonous to "War Pigs" and you can scarcely imagine "Dancing in the Dark" without a chant of "All the Girls Standing in the Line for the Bathroom" on top.

And hey - maybe the Mashup Breakdown will help answer some of those questions above. At the very least, it brings to the fore connections your ears can't make, e.g., "Black and Yellow" over "Paint It Black" or Rihanna turning Fugazi's patient boy into a rude boy, finally giving him what's he's been waiting for.

I Luv U

2010-11-24T00:40:00.001-08:00

Bathing Beauties and Big Boobs

2010-10-31T22:33:00.000-07:00

It stars Larry Semon.

Non-Rocky Horror Pix of Peter Hinwood!!

2010-10-31T21:36:00.000-07:00

Peter Hinwood played the title character in The Rocky Horror Picture Show (i.e., Rocky Horror, Dr. Frank-n-Furter's glistening Aryan creation) and then was never heard from again apart from a nanosecond in Derek Jarman's Sebastien and some rumblings in the interior decorating world where he apparently made refuge. But his miniscule filmography before RHPS remained just as godforsaken...until the interwebs...

Here are some shots of Hinwood from a film he appeared (or, more precisely, posed) in five years before RHPS called The Devil's Widow (aka The Ballad of Tam-Lin - Fairport Convention fans take note!) directed by Roddy McDowall (!) in 1970. I've only scanned the film for moments of Peter so I couldn't say whether it's worth your time. But with Ava Gardner at the helm, it has the feel of exploitation fare such as The Big Cube and my beloved Angel, Angel, Down We Go in which classical Hollywood actresses "of a certain age" try to retain their glamour in rather ghoulish projects. As far as I recall, Hinwood has maybe one or two lines if even that, befitting for such a beauty. Look.

The Duke dug Noel Coward

2010-08-25T11:05:00.000-07:00

Dick Cavett blogs about meeting John Wayne who professes a love for Noel Coward.

To be honest, I was more surprised to learn that Cavett blogs than that The Duke dug Coward. Anyone intimate with Red River or She Wore A Yellow Ribbon or The Shootist knows Wayne possessed an enormous artistic intelligence which he rarely had the opportunity to display outside of the maligned genre that imprisoned him so compellingly. "Get John out of the saddle and you've got trouble," Joan Crawford concluded about the admittedly awful wartime melodrama Reunion in France (1942).* But to quote Howard Hawks quoting John Ford, who knew better, that big sonofabitch could act and thus he could've knocked Coward's Blithe Spirit out of the park, spurs well-hidden beneath tux and tie.

Still a good ole boy, though, as Tab Hunter's autobiography makes clear.

* Roy Newquist, Conversations with Joan Crawford (New York: Berkley, 1980), 90.

Fave 100 Singles (and 10 Albums) of the 2000s

2010-08-23T14:11:00.000-07:00

1. A*Teens: "Halfway Around The World" (MCA 2001)
2. Alcazar: "Crying at the Discotheque" (BMG 2000)
3. Sisqo: "Thong Song" (Dragon/Def Soul 2000)
4. !!!: "Me & Giuliani Down By The School Yard (A True Story)" (Touch & Go 2003)
5. Blackout Crew: "Put A Donk On It" (All Around The World 2008)
6. Owusu & Hannibal: "Lonnie's Secret" (Ubiquity 2006)
7. Shelby Lynne: "Killin' Kind" (Island 2001)
8. Hard-Life: "Hard Toxic (Stupid September Mix)" (mp3 2005)
9. Basement Jaxx: "Romeo" (Astralwerks 2001)
10. Lady Sovereign: "Public Warning" (Def Jam 2006)
11. Palomar: "Knockout" (Self-Starter 2002)
12. Alphabeat: “Fascination” (Copenhagen/EMI 2008)
13. Eve: "Tambourine" (Aftermath/Interscope 2007)
14. Grace Jones: "Williams' Blood" (Wall of Sound 2008)
15. Palomar: "Up!" (Self-Starter 2002)
16. Amerie: "1 Thing" (Columbia 2005)
17. Ryan Leslie: “Gibberish” (Casablanca/Universal/Motown 2009)
18. Bitter Sound Foundation: "Why Does Michael Hurt?" (www.bitter.cream.org 2002)
19. Twista featuring Kanye West & Jamie Foxx: "Slow Jamz" (Atlantic 2003)
20. Britney Spears: "Oops!...I Did It Again" (Jive 2000)
21. Lady Gaga: "Bad Romance" (Interscope 2009)
22. Taylor Swift: "You Belong With Me" (Big Machine 2009)
23. Rich Boy: "Drop" (Interscope 2009)
24. Lil Wayne: "A Milli" (Cash Money/Universal/Motown 2008)
25. Mocean Worker: "Under The Matzos Tree (Remix)" (mp3 2006)
26. Supersystem: "Everybody Sings" (Touch & Go 2005)
27. Destiny's Child: "Lose My Breath" (Columbia 2004)
28. Aqua: "Cartoon Heroes" (MCA 2000)
29. Missy "Misdemeanor" Elliott: "Get Ur Freak On" (The Gold Mind/Elektra 2001)
30. The Dismemberment Plan: "The Dismemberment Plan Gets Rich" (DeSoto 2001)
31. Dizzee Rascal and Armand Van Helden: "Bonkers" (Dirtee Stank 2009)
32. The Federation: "18 Dummy" (Reprise 2006)
33. Black Eyed Peas: "My Humps" (A&M 2005)
34. Timbaland and Magoo: "We At It Again" (Virgin 2000)
35. Kylie Minogue: "Love At First Sight" (Mushroom 2002)
36. Escort: "All Through The Night" (Escort 2007)
37. M.O.P.: "Ante Up" (Loud 2001)
38. Adele: "Chasing Pavements" (XL 2008)
39. Kanye West: "Gold Digger" (Roc-A-Fella 2005)
40. Britney Spears: "Piece of Me" (Jive 2007)
41. Madonna: "Music" (Maverick/Warner Bros. 2000)
42. Major Lazer featuring Vybz Kartel: "Pon de Floor" (Downtown 2009)
43. Das Racist: "Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell" (original mix) (mp3 2009)
44. Justin Timberlake: "Like I Love You" (Jive 2002)
45. Basement Jaxx: "Plug It In" (XL/Astralwerks 2004)
46. Rick Ross: "Hustlin'" (Def Jam 2006)
47. Usher: "Yeah!" (Arista 2004)
48. Lee Ann Womack: "I Hope You Dance" (MCA 2000)
49. Shakedown: "At Night" (Defective 2002)
50. Guillemots: "Who Left The Lights Off Baby" (Fantastic Plastic 2005)
51. Black Leotard Front: "Casual Friday" (DFA 2004)
52. Liam Lynch: "My United States of Whatever" (Global Warming 2002)
53. Lil Mama: "Lip Gloss" (Jive 2007)
54. Alcazar: "This Is The World We Live In" (BMG International 2004)
55. Lady Gaga: “Poker Face” (Interscope 2008)
56. Damian Marley: "Welcome to Jamrock" (Tuff Gong/Universal 2005)
57. P!nk: "Just Like A Pill" (LaFace 2002)
58. Daniel Bedingfield: "Gotta Get Thru This" (Relentless 2002)
59. MC Lars: "Signing Emo" (Sidecho 2004)
60. Jesse McCartney featuring Ludacris: “How Do You Sleep?” (Hollywood 2009)
61. Portobella: "Covered in Punk" (Universal Island 2004)
62. Kanye West: "Paranoid" (Roc-A-Fella 2008)
63. Truth Hurts featuring Rakim: "Addictive" (Interscope 2002)
64. Armand Van Helden: "My My My" (Southern Fried 2004)
65. Soulja Boy Tell 'Em Feat. Arab: "Yahhh!" (Collipark/Interscope 2007)
66. Mew: "The Zookeeper's Boy" (Sony BMG 2006)
67. T.I. feat. Rihanna: "Live Your Life" (Grand Hustle/Atlantic 2008)
68. MIA: "Galang" (XL 2004)
69. The Juan MacLean: "Give Me Every Little Thing" (DFA 2003)
70. Baha Men: "Who Let The Dogs Out" (Artemis 2000)
71. Magnolia Shorty: "Smokin' Gun" (Take Yo Shirt Off/Gutta Bounce 2009?)
72. Gnarls Barkley: "Crazy" (Downtown 2006)
73. Kings of Leon: "Use Somebody" (RCA 2008)
74. Webstar and Young B featuring The Voice of Harlem: "Chicken Noodle Soup" (Scilla Hill 2006)
75. 2ge+her: "U + Me = Us (Calculus)" (TVT 2000)
76. Girls Aloud: "Biology" (Polydor 2005)
77. Barenaked Ladies: "Pinch Me" (Reprise 2000)
78. Rihanna: "Don't Stop The Music" (Def Jam 2007)
79. Lloyd Feat. Yung Joc: "Get It Shawty" (Universal Motown 2007)
80. Raffertie: “Sugar” (Seclusiasis 2009)
81. Nas: "Black President" (Def Jam 2008)
82. Las Ketchup: "Aserjé (The Ketchup Song)" (Sony Discos 2002)
83. Skeletons & The Girl-Faced Boys: "Fit Black Man" (Ghostly International 2006)
84. Britney Spears: "Womanizer" (Jive 2008)
85. Janet Jackson: "Rock With U" (Island 2008)
86. Simon Bookish: "Terry Riley Disco" (Playlouder 2006)
87. Timberlee ft. Tosh: "Heels" (mp3 2008)
88. Stereotyp: "Keepin Me (Fauna Flash remix)" (G-Stone 2006)
89. Cortney Tidwell: "Don’t Let Stars Keep Us Tangled Up (Ewan’s Objects In Space remix)" (Ever 2007)
90. Koffee Brown: "After Party" (Arista 2001)
91. Bobby Pinson: "Don't Ask Me How I Know" (RCA 2005)
92. Ladytron: "Destroy Everything You Touch" (Island 2005)
93. Valeria: "Girl I Told Ya" (Interscope 2007)
94. Natasha Bedingfield: "Unwritten" (Epic 2005)
95. Walter Jones: "Living Without Your Love" (DFA 2009)
96. A.R.E. Weapons: "Don't Be Scared" (Rough Trade 2003)
97. Invisible Conga People: "Weird Pains" (Italians Do It Better 2008)
98. The Pierces: "Boring" (Lizard King 2007)
99. Ying Yang Twins: "Wait (The Whisper Song)" (TVT 2005)
100. Kiley Dean featuring Timbaland: "Make Me A Song" (Beatclub/Interscope 2003)

1. The New Pornographers: Mass Romantic (Mint 2000)
2. Glasvegas: Glasvegas (Columbia 2009)
3. Belong: Colorloss Record (St. Ives 2008)
4. Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti 2: The Doldrums (Paw Tracks 2004)
5. Dixon: RA.048 (Resident Advisor 2007)
6. M.I.A./Diplo: Piracy Funds Terrorism Volume 1 (Hollertronix 2004)
7. M.I.A.: Kala (Interscope 2007)
8. Wide Right: Sleeping on the Couch (Pop Top 2005)
9. Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (Epic/Razor Sharp 2000)
10. M2M: Shades of Purple (Atlantic 2000)

Osmium-tipped phonograph needles!

2010-08-22T21:53:00.000-07:00

Forgive the iPadness of the snap and just swim in all those heavy metal signifiers.

P.S. Osmium is the heaviest of metals (or as Wiki puts it, "the densest natural element...twice as dense as lead").

Getting the Led out

2010-08-20T21:08:00.000-07:00

So you're going through a difficult change in life. Living in a big, bad city. Working a new job. What music do you reach for to weather this new chapter? Why, Led Zeppelin of course.

It makes perfect sense that Robert Christgau labeled Zep r&r - "not rock and roll, dummy, rest and recuperation, a fantasyland grand enough to blot out a world that remains too big and uncontrollable."* A world where you, oh I don't know, take the bus south instead of north and wind up 45 minutes late for a lunch where you're meeting your new colleagues for the first time. Yeah, "Whole Lotta Love," blot that out please!

And if you want to understand this form of r&r more deeply, I suggest taking in Erik Davis' terrific 33 1/3 on Led Zeppelin IV. Davis rightly casts IV as the soundtrack to a teenage imagination, his most definitely included. "I have tried to give the ensorcelled boy I was the temporary reins of a man's mind," (10) he says of this book and on my second reading, I skipped most of the second half where he imagines IV as the Tolkien-esque odyssey of a doomed stud he calls Percy. But before then, he does a marvelous job of discussing the album as an Album, a thing, matter: artwork, cover gimmicks, outgroove inscriptions, lyric sheets, etc. Late 1960s/early 1970s rock was a commodity form above all else and IV was its ultimate fetish. Officially titled with four unpronounceable sigils, "the album no longer referred to anything but itself: a concrete talisman that drew you into its world, its frame" (25). Indeed, countless Zepheads have scanned those sigils for meanings. And when those offered only riddles, they turned to each side's narrative sway or the overall album design or the band's thing-like music (which Davis astutely links to military invasion and a cinematic taking up of space). But "these sigils, and the musical sounds they announce, don't mean stuff as much as make stuff happen" (26). In short, exactly the album you'd want as you start your new life in a big, bad city.

Fwiw, here's how I rank 'em:

IV - Although I'm fine with a copy excluding "Going to California."
Houses of the Holy - Danciest.
II - Most chutzpah.
III - After "Immigrant Song," too consistent.
Physical Graffiti - Too long.
In Through The Out Door - Too unfocused. But underrated. They would have made fine MOR balladeers. And the dazzling "Carouselambra" pointed towards a tragically curtailed career of, what, art-rock circus-boogie.
I - Too slow.
Presence - Their Tusk, I suppose. But with waaay fewer anti-socialites overrating it. "Achilles Last Stand" is all-time, though.

* Robert Christgau, "Genius Dumb: Led Zeppelin," in Grown Up All Wrong: 75 Great Rock and Pop Artists from Vaudeville to Techno (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998), 90.

Justin Bieber 800% Slower

2010-08-17T21:41:00.000-07:00

In case you needed to be told, teenpop is more threatening than the blackest of metals and the most avant of gardes. The latest proof lies in the fear Justin Bieber and his army of adoring tween fans instill in the hate dorks who keep punking him. First there were premature obituaries. Then 4-chan sociopaths tried to reroute his tour to North Korea. Even at his own shows, the dude's not safe, taking flying objects to the head at a recent date (although apparently thrown by a fan, but that doesn't cancel out the glee with which the video has replicated over the interwebs). Clearly, tweens requiring no validation for their objects of worship make these bullies scared. One could riposte that 4-chan chicanery would be wasted on Marduk or John Adams. Ok so then why not punk, oh, Lil Wayne or Eminem? Yeah I thought not.

Now there's J. Biebez: U Smile 800% Slower which seemed poised to join the pranks above. No doubt it comes from a bad place. Someone who records under the name Shamantis has taken chopped and screwed and Beardo disco to new levels of extremity and used a program called PaulStretch to slooooooooooow down Bieber's latest single, "U Smile," by 800%. Ya know, to "improve" it ("800% better than the original" goes one of many tired jokes in the comments to the youtube of the original). The rub here is that, although I hate to say it, it actually does! Smart people know that there's no improving on teenpop at its best. But "U Smile" fails to transcend the assembly line. Slow it down 800%, however, and you get 35 minutes of Popol Vuh-style vocalese and furnace blasts a la my beloved Belong with a still-recognizable Bieb moaning at us from The Phantom Zone. His voice stretches out like streaks in the sky while some sort of sound or movement continues to wash onshore beneath him. I've listened to it three times now and it's all really quite lovely, something a My Bloody Valentine fan could swallow with ease. Would that all disdain for teenpop could result in such beauty. But let's not try to "improve" "I Gotta Feeling" next, kay?

Night Ranger (and more) at Gitmo!

2010-06-28T02:08:00.000-07:00

"How Rock Bands Got Backstage at Gitmo Prison" = fascinating article about music acts performing at Gitmo and getting a tour of the prison facilities (and sometimes a reverse shot stare from the prisoners themselves). Most of the info comes from Craig Basel, the base's former Morale, Welfare and Recreation chief. Relevant passages:

"(In 2003) Basel retired as a Marine and accepted a civilian position as Guantanamo's head of Morale, Welfare and Recreation. It was now his job to keep 11,000 people entertained.

To do so, he had a budget of $150,000 to $300,000 per year. He booked everyone from Jimmy Buffett to pro bass fishermen. If the troops requested a particular act, he'd try to get it, either by calling the agent directly or by going through an office in the Pentagon known as Armed Forces Entertainment.

Armed Forces Entertainment is the Department of Defense's official booking agency. It's run by the Air Force and got its start making travel arrangements for USO concerts. Now, though, its director, Air Force Col. Edward Shock, works full time with a staff of 10, organizing tours all over the world and scouting talent at festivals like South by Southwest.

Shock said it's rare for a musician to refuse an invitation to tour with Armed Forces Entertainment. The gig doesn't pay, but all expenses are taken care of: airfare, room and board."

One Margot B. (who?) has performed there:

"As far as Margot sees it, the detainees 'have an awesome lifestyle. You know, as good as it's going to get for a terrorist. There are little houses that are completely furnished. It's almost amazing to know that it's their jail. So some of the stuff you see on TV, that these terrorists are living these hard lives and they're being tied up or whatever, that's a bunch of bull...'

She played the soldiers "Redneck Woman." She played them "Honky Tonk Badonkadonk." They loved it. They didn't want her to leave.

'If I had the choice, I'd go back every year,' Margot B. said."

Artists right (Charlie Daniels) and left (State of Man [?]) have performed there. Even Drowning Pool has taken the stage, notable due to allegedly showing up (along with Nine Inch Nails and Rage Against the Machine[!]) on the "Gitmo Playlist" of songs allegedly used to torture prisoners.

Henry as Henrietta

2010-04-14T07:11:00.000-07:00

Henry as Henrietta

Remarkable thrift store find a la Casa Susana.

The Lady Pays Off (Douglas Sirk, 1951)

2010-03-24T04:01:00.000-07:00

The Lady Pays Off is minor Sirk which translates as "well worth your time." It fits snugly alongside other 1950s films in which the single woman is the ostensible "problem": Joan Crawford's run from Sudden Fear to Autumn Leaves and Sirk's own All That Heaven Allows or Magnificent Obsession. Only where those films dramatize how women "of a certain age" have fallen out of an oppressive sexual economy, The Lady Pays Off features a younger woman who is alone due to her intelligence and outspokenness.

Linda Darnell stars as Evelyn Walsh Warren, a teacher at The Howell School for Girls in Pasadena, California. In the first scene, Evelyn is receiving a Teacher of the Year award. But her mind is elsewhere despite (or, as we'll soon find out, because of) accolades which extend to Time magazine ("Where mother fails, teacher must succeed" screams the cover).

Miles away from the National Educators Foundation spokesman deeming her "Universal Mother," Evelyn hallucinates various romantic dead ends in the items in front of her. In her jello, she sees the wavy image of a Poindexter with strong echoes of dull Harvey (Conrad Nagel) in All That Heaven Allows:

"With your knowledge of children, Evelyn, and my academic background, we can raise a family of unusual intellectual promise. Why, yes, my dear, this is a proposal!"

She pulverizes Poindexter into oblivion with her fork only to be confronted with a more forward proposal in the ash tray.

"Now see here, Evie. I know it's not romantic but...well, I'm a rich man with three lonely kids. I want you for my wife and the kids want you for a mother. Now how 'bout it? Shall we close the deal?"

She snuffs out the rich man and receives a final communication from her champagne glass.

"Oh come on, Lynn, and marry me. Am I that hard to take? I mean it. You're the only woman I've ever met who's just like my mother. Gee, Mom was a grand (kind?)."

Still agitated from these visions of lame Lotharios and Oedipi, Evelyn steps up to accept the award but jettisons all decorum. When asked what she thinks "the woman of today needs most in dealing with the problems of motherhood," she replies "a bottle of whiskey and a psychiatrist!"

It turns out that Evelyn is frustrated because men respect her too much as a teacher to become romantically involved with her. They want a woman who listens, not lectures. (And she doesn't even wear glasses...yet!) Luckily, her much-needed vacation to Nevada has started and Dean Howell (Katherine Warren) enlists her nephew, Ronald (James Griffith), to show Evelyn a good time. But Ronald is yet another Poindexter who has only two modes of communication - drearily droning on about his work at the university in advanced mathematics and lecherously lunging after Evelyn (sometimes he combines both modes: "The other day I developed an irrational equation in quantum mechanics that was almost sexy").

Ronald takes Evelyn gambling but quickly ditches her to try out his mathematical formulas at the tables. Excruciatingly bored, she gets drunk and winds up losing $7000 at the roulette wheel. As the dealer takes her to talk to the boss, the camera pans left to rest on a classic Sirkian shot of Ronald in a mise-en-scene with imperialist masculinity splattered on the walls, most ludicrously a lurid painting of a reclining odalisque that gives off the reassuring vibe John Berger detected in Bouguereau.

And if that weren't enough to critique Ronald, there are some hilarious puns on the word "craps"/"crap" in the dialogue, i.e. his gambling system is crap.

The owner of the casino, Matt Braddock (Stephen McNally), forces Evelyn to work off her debt by spending a few weeks at his home and helping his daughter, Diana (Gigi Perreau), who suffers from mild depression (presumably - the film fails to flesh out this point much). Basically a prisoner in Matt's home, Evelyn at first mistreats Diana in frustration but soon realizes not to take it out on her. Instead, they form one of those cross-generational, pre-feminist bonds Sirk handles so delicately (e.g., Helen and Judy in Magnificent Obsession or Susie and Annie in Imitation of Life) despite Evelyn's rage towards Matt not subsiding a whit.

In a wild scene in which Evelyn's mirror reflection talks to her, she decides to play nice with Matt in order to soften him up so he'll destroy the $7000 IOU.

The remainder of the film concerns Matt's deepening trust of Evelyn as he falls in love with her.

Of particular note is the use of toys in the film (as with There's Always Tomorrow) which stand in for the affection that Diana so desperately craves from her frequently absent father and recently deceased mother. However, the toys, specifically Diana's stuffed dog Pluto, become more prominent (and eerie) in the frame as the film progresses which suggests that despite Evelyn's warmth towards her, the cat and mouse games she and Matt play with one another threaten to leave Diana behind all over again.

Indeed, the very last shot of the film shows Diana addressing her doll ("Parents are such awful children, aren't they?") as Evelyn and Matt embrace on the terrace.

The lady paid off as a mother and now wife and for most of the film, Sirk has shown sympathy for Evelyn's entrapment under patriarchal forms of de facto blackmailing and kidnapping. But in the end, Sirk targets his bile towards the couple as middle-class self-absorption takes center stage. And in fifteen years, the Dianas of the world would reject this lifestyle as the darlings of Swinging London and San Francisco.

Alex Chilton 1950-2010

2010-03-22T17:40:00.000-07:00

Not since Kurt Cobain's last day has a celebrity death hit me so hard. I guess I never felt that Alex Chilton got what he deserved although he famously (amongst rock crit types) sang otherwise as Side One came to a close on Radio City. Still, the poptimist in me found it easy to ignore him for the last decade-plus. Case in point: I wrote the review below for the long-departed (and decently paying) online music mag Addicted to Noise (swallowed up by MTV.com which then obliterated its writers on September 12, 2001) and probably edited by Billy Altman (I think the overtaxed Melissa Price had bowed out by this point) with equal parts fandom and boredom. It's my de facto tribute to a man who had no interest in death (or sleep). (There are only minimal edits below which means the groanworthy "set" puns are preserved.)

Alex Chilton - Set (Bar/None)
Rating: *** (can't recall out of how many)
Release Date: 2/25/00

Somehow wrinkles don't suit Alex Chilton. The crow's feet and leathery nooks in his face on the back cover of Set come as sort of a surprise if not an insult, as if they weathered his veneer too soon. Then again, nothing has ever arrived on time with Alex Chilton going all the way back to the manly croak with which he sang "The Letter" in 1967 as a sixteen year old Box Top and the pimply cracked voice he's been stuck with ever since he debuted Big Star several years later. His has been a career of square pegs fitting through round holes, a doomed condition that will relegate him to cult obscurity forever. Somehow, though, the little star who wrote 1974's "What's Going Ahn," a tortoise-shelled cri de confusion more gut-wrenchingly beautiful than anything in Marvin Gaye's oeuvre, deserves widespread glory.

But really, most of the above is just cultspeak bullshit. We all succumb to the march of time eventually. The real challenge to an artist whose had as long a career as Chilton is to ride every wave so that getting old sounds more thrilling than dying young. Set proves how difficult meeting that challenge is.

You'd think an album that includes instrumentals of jazz standards, spirited retakes of soul classics new and old, and a cover of country sinner Gary Stewart's "Single Again" might make for forty minutes of unbridled enthusiasm. But Chilton has been playing the archaeologist lounge lizard historian since about 1985 occasionally peppering updates of "Volare" or "The Christmas Song" with his own outré originals. Set in his ways, he's crossed off originals altogether on the set list here settling into a release pattern that will yield a disc of personal favorites every few years or so. No wonder Bar/None changed the title from Loose Shoes & Tight Pussy when it was released in France a few months ago.

Set works best when he indulges his love for black music. Brenton Wood's "Oogum Boogum" and Ollie Nightingale's "You've Got a Booger Bear Under There" retell the history of soul as a series of great oddball trifles and Chilton knows how to make oddball sing - with a goofy falsetto whine, that is. And the delightful reading of the ancient reefer song "You's A Viper" never condescends and should get you started on your Stuff Smith obsession even though another cult hero, Wayne Kramer, already blew the dust off it on Hempilation 2 a few years back.

But the band, including Chilton at times, could scarcely care about the proceedings and they play everything loose and sloppy. Nothing fills in with a snap, crackle, or, worst of all, pop. So the instrumentals are particularly brutal in their pointlessness. "April in Paris" compounds the annoyance with multiple false endings. If anything is putting these songs over, then, it's the intermittent energy and joy in Chilton's voice. But as he retreats further into the past, it becomes increasingly difficult to rally behind him as a cultural as opposed to cult hero.

Spin magazine is on Google books!!!!!!

2010-03-06T01:22:00.000-08:00

Click here to read John Leland's August 1989 Singles Column, "Temporary Music," my vote for the greatest piece of music criticism ever written.

Wow! John Waters has been directing for a while!

2010-01-21T23:14:00.000-08:00

About 20 years before he was born, in fact.

Kooky Film Credits - who was Granville Heathway?

2010-01-21T21:39:00.000-08:00

I've been a fan of kooky film credits ever since reading the "Worst Credit Line" chapter in the Medved Brothers' bad movie Oscars book The Golden Turkey Awards. They chose the scandalous "with additional dialogue by Sam Taylor" from the 1929 The Taming of the Shrew as the winner. But I've always been intrigued by the nomination of one Granville Heathway, Orgy Sequence Advisor (sometimes Orgy Sequence Technical Advisor) for Solomon and Sheba (1959). And having finally seen the film on DVD, I was all set to offer a screen grab of the credit that screamed, no doubt majestically, ORGY SEQUENCE ADVISOR - GRANVILLE HEATHWAY. But alas, no such credit appears in the film.

Which only deepens the mystery. Who was Granville Heathway? Was he really paid to advise on how the Solomon and Sheba set orgied it up? How much was he paid? Who felt his expertise (in what again?) was necessary?

In the absence of answers and a nifty credit to display, I offer you a shot of Anne Sellors whose sole screen credit is "Woman who urinates herself" in the British TV movie Threads.

Why Must We Die? Kate McGarrigle RIP

2010-01-20T05:33:00.000-08:00

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/20/arts/music/20mcgarrigle.html

I'm devastated that Kate McGariggle has passed. One of the many fabulous things about Rufus Does Judy At Carnegie Hall was her appearance on it. You could just see a giant arc from Garland to PFLAG form over their rendition of "Over The Rainbow." And did ever a song step so jauntily (and so bitingly) as "Complainte Pour Ste-Catherine?" RIP.

Complainte Pour Ste-Catherine

Moi j'me promène sous Ste-Catherine
J'profite de la chaleur du métro
Je n'me regarde pas dans les vitrines
Quand il fait trente en d'sous d'zéro

Y'a longtemps qu'on fait d'la politique
Vingt ans de guerre contre les moustiques

Je ne me sens pas intrépide
Quand il fait fret j'fais pas du ski
J'ai pas d'motel aux Laurentides
Le samedi c'est l'soir du Hockey

Y'a longtemps qu'on fait d'la politique
Vingt ans de guerre contre les moustiques

Faut pas croire que j'suis une imbécile
Parce que j'chauffe pas une convertible
La gloire c'est pas mal inutile
Au prix de gaz c'est trop pénible

Y'a longtemps qu'on fait d'la politique
Vingt ans de guerre contre les moustiques

On est tous frères puis ça s'adonne
Qu'on a toujours eu du bon temps
Parce qu'on reste sur la terre des hommes
Même les femmes et les enfants

Y'a longtemps qu'on fait de la politique
Vingt ans de guerre contre les moustiques
Croyez pas qu'on n'est pas chrétiens
Le dimanche on promène son chien

Pazz & Jop 2009

2009-12-24T03:09:00.000-08:00

I think this is my Village Voice Pazz & Jop 2009 ballot. I took the opportunity of a snafu to resubmit and wedge in some last-minute listening. So tUnE-yArDs and Dirty Projectors were dropped from the albums list, Jay Sean's arrival "Down" and The Ting Tings' non-rebellious "We Walk" from singles. I'm dizzee, bonkers, definitely not free - as usual, anyone griping about no good new music (or even no new boundary-pushing, forward-thinking music) just ain't listening. In fact, 2009 > 2008 to these ears.

Albums
1. Glasvegas: Glasvegas (Columbia)
2. DJ Quik and Kurupt, BlaQKout (Mad Science)
3. Sonic Youth: The Eternal (Matador)
4. Health: Get Color (Lovepump United)
5. White Denim: Fits (Full Time Hobby)
6. Brad Paisley: American Saturday Night (Arista Nashville)
7. Raffertie: The Bigger Than Barry Mixtape (mp3)
8. Mos Def: The Ecstatic (Downtown)
9. Bob Dylan: Christmas in the Heart (Columbia)
10. Wet Hair: The Beach (Night People)

Singles
1. Ryan Leslie: “Gibberish” (Casablanca)
2. Jesse McCartney featuring Ludacris: “How Do You Sleep?” (Hollywood)
3. Dizzee Rascal and Armand Van Helden: "Bonkers" (Dirtee Stank)
4. Raffertie: “Sugar” (Seclusiasis)
5. Walter Jones: "Living Without Your Love" (DFA)
6. Franz Ferdinand: “No You Girls (Raffertie Remix)” (Domino)
7. Lady Gaga: “Poker Face” (Interscope)
8. Lady Gaga: "Bad Romance" (Interscope)
9. Major Lazer featuring Vybz Kartel: "Pon de Floor" (Downtown)
10. Jada: “American Cowboy” (Motown/Universal)

Best Video of c. 1992

2009-12-23T07:45:00.000-08:00

Moi Rene: "Miss Honey"

She knew that I was not gone long!

Is this Edith Massey in Arise, My Love (Mitchell Leisen, 1940)?

2009-12-16T21:17:00.000-08:00

So apparently Edith Massey told John Waters that she was an extra in Mitchell Leisen's Arise, My Love (1940). Having finally procured a copy of the film, I scanned for Ms. Edie and, 75 minutes into it, found an extra who resembles her a great deal. At left:

Of course, I'm going by how Massey looked when she was in her 50s. IMDb has her born in 1918 which would've made her only 21 or 22 when Arise, My Love was filmed. The woman above doesn't look like she's in her early 20s to me. But who knows? Maybe an Edith Massey scholar? Anyone?

After Tomorrow (Frank Borzage 1932)

2009-06-02T21:55:00.000-07:00

After Tomorrow is definitely lesser Borzage. The film powers by more on its jaundiced view of marriage than any visual/sonic intelligence despite cinematography by James Wong Howe. But as with Young America, Borzage creates an indelible portrait of the modern psyche under siege.

The title refers to the endlessly deferred marriage of New Yorkers Pete (Borzage regular Charles Farrell) and Sidney (Marian Nixon). Pete's mother (Josephine Hull, in a fantastic performance that finds the insidious evil in Marie Dressler) refuses to move out of her home, effectively shackling Pete to her financially when she's not manipulating him emotionally with crocodile tears and smothering. Sidney's mother Else (Minna Gombell, another fine performance delivered mostly through gritted teeth) is no better, wasting money on clothes and carrying on an affair with a tenant. Devoted to their undeserving parents (albeit with increasing exasperation), the couple see no end to their engagement in sight.

But New York City in general gives them no peace. The first shot (another dolly as in Young America) reveals right away how little the couple enjoy privacy. It follows Pete out of an elevator as three different women inform him that Sidney is working late which he already knows anyway. The last woman uses the time to hit on Pete, an unsuccessful endeavor even before Sidney arrives and kicks her in the leg.

Most of the secondary and minor characters are unhappily married or joyfully widowed. Borzage uses them to create a sort of ambient dread around marriage that permeates even the moments of respite Pete and Sidney find at the top of the Empire State Building or in Central Park. It all results in a rather heavy film which the rushed happy ending does little to dispel. One is left with the distinct feeling of scores unsettled as the heroic couple kiss at Niagara Falls before the end credits.

As a pre-Code film, After Tomorrow features some frank discussion of sex. Pete's mother embarrasses him with talk of how "in every man lurks a beast that can be aroused," undoubtedly to arouse that very beast so that he might step out on Sidney. Sidney herself suspects that the long engagement is putting undue stress on Pete's loins and suggests a "holiday" together. But Pete has self-control and vows to wait for Sidney until hell freezes over.

Finally, for anyone like me interested in the representation of music in film, Borzage includes a scene where Pete gives Sidney the sheet music for "that tune you're so crazy about." As they discuss how much spending 40 cents will cut into their marriage fund, a car drives by advertising a song (although whether it's hawking sheet music or a specific recording is unclear).

Later, after a demoralizing argument with Pete's mother, Pete and Sidney sit at the piano and sing the tune. It's called "All The World Will Smile Again...After Tomorrow."

Young America (Frank Borzage 1932)

2009-05-02T21:17:00.000-07:00

The next few weeks, eh?

Ok some spoilers below although I tried to minimize them as much as possible. As always, click on the pix to make them bigger.

Like all great directors, Frank Borzage synthesized seemingly contradictory ideologies. His oeuvre reveals a 19th-century Romantic suspicious of, if not utterly blindsided by, modernity and industrial capitalism. But films like Liliom and 7th Heaven display a total immersion in the technological wizardry of that most modern of 20th-century entertainments, the cinema. As Murnau, Borzage and Fox (both the documentary and the book) proclaim, Murnau's work (and Fox's money) spurred Borzage to exploit cinema's potential more fully. But any dazzling effects and byzantine camera movements were put in the service of a melodrama that harked back to the 19th century and arose from the wear and tear of modern life.
Young America lacks the cinematic fireworks of some of its predecessors in the box. But it's a perfect introduction to the melodramatic mode in which Borzage worked and flourished.

An often didactic plea to approach juvenile delinquency with compassion, Young America resembles the Warner Bros./First National social problem films of the time, e.g., I Am A Fugitive From The Chain Gang (1932) or William A. Wellman's extraordinary run of gritty programmers, especially Wild Boys of the Road (1933). But Borzage juices the genre for maximum melodramatic impact by fixing his gaze rather calmly upon secondary or even seemingly throwaway characters for whom the swift injustices of the modern city have proven devastating. So his take on modernity is less hectic than Murnau's. Both directors evoke the bewilderment of encountering a wide array of urban dwellers on a daily basis. But where Murnau in Sunrise (1927) whizzes by blurred bodies on a city street, Borzage here contemplates his characters in the lengthy proximity of the train or bus ride, taking in their faces, their gestures, their ways of speaking.

Juvenile court provides Borzage with a perfect opportunity to indulge in this aesthetic. Here we encounter "young America - boys from all walks of life" as Borzage parades several of them in front of Judge Blake (Ralph Bellamy) to hear their cases. The first shot of the film explicitly links their fates to not just Blake but to Edith Doray (Doris Kenyon) as well who will serve as the film's heart and thus Borzage's closest surrogate. A dolly shot, it follows the boys into the court room

where it picks up Edith as she walks into the judge's chambers (overseen by a painting of Lincoln and a bust of what looks like Shakespeare)

and finally rests on her meeting with Blake.

She has come to see Blake to gather information for a paper on juvenile court that she is to read at her woman's club. Blake obliges and allows her to sit next to him as he hands down his verdicts.

As unconventional as this already may seem, even odder is Blake's appearance and demeanor. He has stiffened his hair into a wind-swept look that comes off rather "mad scientist" in the spectrum of male Hollywood star coiffures of the era.

And he affects a downright insolent slouch while addressing the young men from the judge's bench.

No doubt he presents himself in this manner in order to create a bond with the juveniles whose lives he will change forever. But it also makes him a type, a weird sort we don't time to figure out as we pass him by on our way through the city/ movie.

While Blake remains a bit of a cipher, however, he serves to render modernity more legible, one of the key goals of melodrama. As a judge, he plays a vital role in the dissemination of what Foucault calls biopower, the explosion of judicial, medicinal, psychological, etc. discourse that the modern state uses to create ever-knowable subjects. Privy to biopower's enormous paper trail, Blake knows every boy "mentally, morally, and physically" before they even step foot in his courtroom. Little passes him by. So by the time the JDs are seated across from him, he can read the truth behind their faces. For instance, he knows that George is crying because he's sorry for himself and not for what he's done.

After consulting the paper work on Freddie, Blake knows that he has run away only not out of delinquency but rather to see his mother who has been committed to an insane asylum.

Most importantly, when Edith comments sypmathetically on Sam's "fine face," Blake informs her that he's a thief and a gang leader, "one of the worst boys I've ever handled."

By the end of the scene, Blake has transformed the boys, passing before us like unknowable strangers on a train, into docile subjects capable of rehabilitation and legible through and through.

Before that happens, though, we are introduced to the hero, Arthur Simpson (Tom Conlon), an orphan living in poverty with his aunt.

Crucially, his crime is most explicitly linked to modernity - he drove a car that didn't belong to him (but only to move it away from a fireplug). Contrast this with Washington Lincoln Jackson who stole a vegetable wagon because he wanted to ride its horse.

The city in Young America plays up this contrast because it is a city in transition, poised between agrarian and urban modes of existence. And the fundamentally good Arthur finds himself caught in between with various adults and authority figures convinced that he is the worst boy in town. Much of the time, Borzage blames this predicament on cars as a sort of modern scourge. The first time we see Arthur outside of the courtroom, he is already driving another car which does not belong to him, again to move it away from a fireplug so that the owner will not receive a ticket. But it always brings him to the wrong place at the wrong time.

In this instance, he meets up with his friend Nutty (Raymond Borzage, the director's nephew). Nutty too bears the marks of a city in transition. But he has arrived at a more peaceful relationship with his environment, a farm boy making do in a rapidly developing town. Arthur finds him trying to hypnotize chickens.

And later Nutty mans an elaborate rig constructed from modern detritus such as tires and Fuller Varnish cans.

But quickly Arthur gets in trouble again as a man bursts into the scene and accuses him of trying to steal the chickens. Arthur flees to a busier part of town where he rescues a dog stuck in traffic, one of many reminders of Arthur's good in the face of dangerous modernity.

The dog belongs to Edith who rewards his good deed by entreating her grouchy, suspicious husband Jack (a perfectly cast Spencer Tracy) to give Arthur a job in his store because she is one of the few people who she believe in Arthur's goodness.

In the next scene, Arthur and Nutty walk to school and come across Clarence Paine. "Guys like (Clarence)" make them sick because he is always hanging around girls. "Any guy that walks to school with a girl is a big sissy," Nutty proclaims.

If we accept John D'Emilio's theory in "Capitalism and Gay Identity," then here we have another effect of modernity before us - the modern gay subject. Or at the very least, Clarence exemplifies the wider range of masculinities available in a city. After a classroom fight that gets Arthur suspended, the teacher (an uncredited Jane Darwell) elects Clarence to monitor the class (presided over by another portrait of Lincoln) while she takes Arthur to the principal's office. Clarence's swishy response of "yes, teacher" sets him up for the ridicule of his classmates who proceed to ignore his temporary authority.

Without spoiling too much more of the remainder of the story, suffice it to say that Arthur does everything, including breaking the law, for a greater good and gets punished for it each time. Edith's awareness of this fact compels her to take Arthur in to her middle-class home despite the vehement protestations of Jack. When the couple return home one evening to find Arthur gone and some money missing (again, taken by Arthur for a good reason), Jack gives Edith an ultimatum - either he goes or Arthur goes. Arthur overhears this conversation from outside and knows he has to do yet another bad thing for the good of the marriage.

He comes inside and acts the bad boy he never was before storming out of their lives. Jack assures a devastated Edith that there was nothing she could do to help the boy and the couple reconcile. Arthur looks on again through the window, happy that his ruse has saved their marriage.

And in a gut-wrenching shot that resembles the end of Stella Dallas (King Vidor 1937), he makes his way towards an uncertain future, wiping the tears from his eyes.

Film theorists such as Linda Williams and Patricia White have suggested that the end of Stella Dallas fuels a fantasy of escape from motherhood. Similarly, we ought to entertain the notion that this sequence in Young America fuels a fantasy of escape from bourgeois standards of comportment. Mitigating against such a reading somewhat is the fact that the film does not end here. Arthur wanders throughout the city and catches Jack being held up by two burglars in his store. The burglars notice Arthur and take him along in their getaway car. As Jack and a police officer drive after them, one of the burglars tries to shoot at them. But Arthur saves their lives by taking the wheel and slamming the car into a ditch. At last Jack sees the true, good Arthur as he cradles the injured boy in his arms. The last scene shows Arthur has finally found his place in the city, integrated into the middle-class utopia of the Dorays' home. But the fact that it took the destruction of a car to arrive at this happy ending (in a film sewing a great deal of anxiety around city life) suggests that Borzage believes much more fervently in an agrarian, pre-modern utopia. As classical Hollywood's most incurable Romantic, where else would he find it?

Murnau, Borzage and Fox (aka Box Sets Sometimes Rule...Sorta)

2009-02-19T21:58:00.000-08:00

So starts a series of commentary on the it's-about-damn-time Murnau, Borzage and Fox box set - 12 DVDs and two books honoring William Fox and the geniuses he funded (for a time), F.W. Murnau and Frank Borzage. Check back here over the next few weeks for an in depth look/listen into each film complete with copious screen grabs (I just discovered Command-Option-S on VLC - try it!!!).

For now, though, I want to comment on the box itself. The adjective I've encountered most in reviews of Murnau, Borzage and Fox is "overstuffed." And indeed opening the behemoth burns many calories with the books sliding all over (save those ugly cardboard stoppers - they help!) and the title plaque becoming frequently unglued. Plus the discs are sequestered in thin folders which means that in order to remove a disc, one has to pick at it like chocolate in an advent calendar. (Complaints about the $239.98 list price are silly. How cheap can 12 DVDs and 2 books possibly be? Don't answer that, Mill Creek Entertainment.)

But only cinemaniacs (coughs) would purchase the thing for home consumption. It's ultimately designed for video stores and libraries where the discs only need to be plucked from the box once to begin their rental/checkout lives. And if a box's gotta be stuffed with something, then lordi let it be looooooooooong unavailable Murnau and Borzage films.

I'll work backward so first up next time is Young America (1932). Stay tuned.

Queer To The Core!: Queer Rock From The Vaults! (Quick Nuts c. 1998)

2008-12-30T22:56:00.000-08:00

Queer To The Core!: Queer Rock From The Vaults! (Quick Nuts c. 1998)
1. B. Bubba: "I'd Rather Fight Than Swish"
2. B. Bubba: "I'd Rather Swish Than Fight"
3. Teddy & Darrel: "I'm Hungry"
4. Teddy & Darrel: "Wild Thing"
5. Teddy & Darrel: "Gary Ghoul Boy"
6. Teddy & Darrel: "Little Red Riding Hood"
7. Teddy & Darrel: "The Hollywood Agent"
8. Teddy & Darrel: "These Boots Are Made For Walking"
9. Teddy & Darrel: "Strangers In The Night"
10. Teddy & Darrel: "Say There"
11. Teddy & Darrel: "Hanky Panky"
12. Teddy & Darrel: "Hollywood Swings"
13. Teddy & Darrel: "They Took You Away, I'm Glad, I'm Glad"
14. Teddy & Darrel: "Hold On, I'm Comin'"
15. Bonus Cut - Billy Devroe and The Devilaires: "There Once Was A Man Named Durkin" and "Queer Police [aka You're Arrested]"
16. Byrd E. Bath: "Mixed Nuts"
17. Byrd E. Bath: "London Derrierre"
18. Unknown: "The Ballad Of The Camping Woodcutter"
19. Unknown: "Scotch Mist"
20. Bonus Cut - "Redd Foxx Is A Lesbian"
21. Selections from Pearl Box Revue: Call Me MISSter

Here's Queer To The Core!: Queer Rock From The Vaults! released around 1998 on the (presumably) ad hoc label Quick Nuts. It contains:

Several comedy 45s from Camp Records

The entirety of Teddy & Darrel: These Are the Hits, You Silly Savage!!!! (Mira 1966)

Bonus cuts from Billy Devroe and The Devilaires and Redd Foxx

Side two and the second half of side one of Pearl Box Revue: Call Me MISSter (Snake Eyes, c. 1970). This is a hilarious and poignant two-record round table discussion featuring four drag queens: Jaye Joyce, Clyddie McCoy, Tony La Frisky, and Dorian Corey (of Paris is Burning fame). Soul journeyman George Kerr serves as a ring leader of sorts. It was distributed by Sylvia and Joe Robinson's All Platinum Record Co. and produced by Coasters baritone Billy Guy. I own the album and will up it in its entirety when I finally figure out vinyl-to-mp3.

Get it here (YSI so move quickly)

Pazz & Jop 2008

2008-12-30T20:48:00.000-08:00

Here's my Village Voice Pazz & Jop 2008 ballot:

1. Ghislain Poirier: Bring The Fire Mix (MP3)
2. Steinski: What Does It All Mean?: 1983-2006 Retrospective (Illegal Art)
3. Raphael Saadiq: The Way I See It (Columbia)
4. Belong: Colorloss Record (St. Ives)
5. High Places: High Places (Thrill Jockey)
6. Gang Gang Dance: Saint Dymphna (Social Registry)
7. Royce Da 5'9": Bar Exam 2 (Mixed by Green Lantern) (MP3)
8. The B-52's: Funplex (Astralwerks)
9. Girl Talk: Feed The Animals (Illegal Art)
10. The Service Industry: Keep The Babies Warm (Sauspop)

1. Blackout Crew "Put a Donk On It" (All Around the World)
2. T.I. feat. Rihanna: "Live Your Life" (Grand Hustle/Atlantic)
3. Alphabeat, “Fascination” (Copenhagen/EMI)
4. Lil Wayne: "A Milli" (Cash Money/Universal/Motown)
5. Grace Jones: "Williams' Blood" (Wall of Sound)
6. Kanye West: "Paranoid" (Roc-A-Fella)
7. Tmberlee ft. Tosh: "Heels" (MP3)
8. Burial: “Archangel (Boy 8-Bit's Simple Remix)” (MP3)
9. Nas: "Black President" (Def Jam)
10. Royce Da 5'9: "Shot Down" (MP3)

Slumdog Millionaire (Danny Boyle 2008)

2008-12-18T21:37:00.000-08:00

Danny Boyle's Slumdog Millionaire can best be described as ambient Bollywood. Given its Mumbai setting, the film is dusted with references to India's (if not the world's) largest motion picture industry but in the end (and how!) steadfastly resists the structure of its films. There's a shit-covered encounter with Sholay icon Amitabh Bachchan. Boyle has enlisted the scoring talents of singer/composer A.R. Rahman (best known in the States for Lagaan). And the story is no less preposterous than any number of Bollywood feel-gooders. Street urchin Jamal Malik (Dev Patel) winds up on the Hindi version of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? and each question just so happens to reference a usually horrifying event in his life. The game show provides the paint-by-numbers grid and flashbacks to Jamal's past color in the details all the way up to the beyond obvious climax.

That's bad enough right there. But what's really infuriating about Slumdog Millionaire is that Boyle felt compelled to indulge in the annoying English-speaking film practice of shunting off a musical number to the final credits. Just as the obsessively plotted story comes to an end, cast and crew run out on a subway platform and perform a choreographed dance (but do not sing) to "Jai Ho" (sung by Sukhwinder Singh) with Patel leading the charge. Thus when it comes to song, the film has more in common structurally with There's Something About Mary, Shrek, Bend It Like Beckham, Garage Days, Down With Love, The 40 Year Old Virgin, Hitch, Jackass 2, Inland Empire, The Game Plan, and I Think I Love My Wife than it does with Sholay or Lagaan. And thus Boyle flubbed a perfect opportunity to invigorate his stiffly conceived film with song and dance.

This is not a plea for Bollywood authenticity (sort of a laughable concept anyway). Indeed, if we're to believe Rahman, the film has nothing to do with India in the first place. In an interview with Logan Hill for New York magazine, he admits that:

"For me, it’s not about India at all. It’s about human emotion, how we suppress so much and it all comes out. It’s a human film, not about India at all. The soundtrack isn’t about India or Indian culture. The story could happen anywhere: China, Brazil, anywhere. Who Wants to Be a Millionaire is on in every damn country."

After sucking on 120 minutes of Slumdog's sap, I'm inclined to agree with his human's lib perspective. But my One World movie would feature a more regular alternation between narrative and number. Slumdog Millionaire is missing that regular alternation which offers not only a set of disjointed pleasures but the potential for auto-critique that is the gift of the best Hollywood musicals and Bollywood films. Instead the story remains confident of its own cleverness throughout even though its architecture is laid out in its entirety by the first ten minutes. And the benefits of musicality come too late, as we're walking out of the theater.

Rocky Horror movie to be remade

2008-08-13T04:38:00.000-07:00

Blowing off dust:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/7558091.stm

Shangri-La Plaza (Nick Castle 1990)

2008-02-19T08:52:00.000-08:00

About three years ago on the a_film_by list, Mike Grost mentioned a TV pilot musical called Shangri-La Pizza. It was apparently shown only once one godforsaken night in 1990 on CBS. Mike was lucky enough to catch it. And his site was long the only site on the internet that mentioned the thing.

Well, that's because Mike, bless him, got the name wrong (and you really can't blame him - he was taking down credit info as the show was being broadcast!). It's Shangri-La PLAZA and in our era of immediate gratification, you can now relive that fateful night in 1990 on youtube as the entire episode is there in three parts. Here's part one:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LhOa_i12GtY

After watching it twice now, it's clear that we didn't need Nirvana to sweep away Shangri-La Plaza (and Cop Rock in the same year no less!). Apparently, TV execs took the enormous success of MTV-style danceicals of the 1980s as an excuse to greenlight these spontaneous outbursts of song. But by 1980, such outbursts were long since verboten (despite very occasional successes here and there) and Shangri-La Plaza goes Cop Rock one better by featuring very little spoken dialogue. That is, it's almost sung through which ups the ante for a nation already turned off by such musical expression.

So it's no shock that it never got past the pilot stage. Still, loving the musical as I do, I just gotta give Shangri-La Plaza the hug it so desperately needs. I love the main theme, the "Donut Hole" song, and I mourn the fact that we'll never get to hear the blond skater/surfer dude sing.

It was directed by Nick Castle whose odd career seems indicative of the type of floundering (profitable or not) that he would not have had to do in the classical Hollywood era. He played Michael Myers in Halloween and dipped his toes in quasi-musicals such as Tap and August Rush. Also, watch for a young Savion Glover.

If I had to be mean about any of it, I'd say that the apparently requisite dual focus heterosexual narrative of the musical is not resuscitated here by tweaking the formal into a triple focus heterosexual narrative (two brothers after the same woman). In fact, it's forced and awkward to watch. And trust me - you don't have to be gay to come to that conclusion. In the end, then, it's a measure of the dead end of the musical in the 1980s and 1990s, the impoverished bank of stories to tell via music. But that in itself is a perverse kind of pleasure anyway. Enjoy!

Roswell

2008-02-19T08:11:00.001-08:00

I'm surprised a trip to Roswell didn't happen earlier seeing as how Stuart's a conspiracy nut. But I was recently invited to fill out a panel at a conference in Albuquerque. And given that Roswell is only three hours away, we made a vacation of it.

We spent very little time in Albuquerque so I don't have much to report beyond that we ran into a lot of tough guys. And the mountains outside the city were absolutely gorgeous.

I told a conferencer I was heading to Roswell and he responded that he'd be reluctant to visit because he imagined his stay would be an imposition. Having felt like a pestilence-bringing imperialist during my two loooong days at Niagara Falls, I know how he feels. Somehow, I escaped this feeling in Roswell probably because we spent a lot of time just sleeping. That is, this was one of those real vacations where you simply veg rather than rush to cram in as many memories as possible.

Not that there was much to cram. The sight of the UFO crash (and if you're wondering what that phrase is doing here, brush up on the event here) is off-limits. And besides, the crashed happened near Roswell (wonder what town is pissed losing all the tourist dough). So you go to Roswell for The International UFO Museum and Research Center which, like the museum at Dealey Plaza in Dallas, strives to present an even-keeled assessment of the situation (with an obvious lean towards "the truth is out there and the U.S. govt. is hoarding it"). However, if you're not inclined to wade through the word-heavy exhibits with the diligence they require, you can breeze through the entire thing in an hour tops. Which means that either you or the person you accompany must be a UFO/conspiracy freak to get something out of it.

And actually, as a mere tagalong, I did get something out of it. Below is a placard listing some reasons why the U.S. govt. would want to keep UFO information under wraps. Nos. 3-5 seem particularly sound to me.

Here are some of the showier attractions.

And some cool art work.

And some props used for a TV movie about the crash.

After the museum, there's really not much else to do. There was a haunted house thang that I am too adult (i.e. even more scared than a child) to patronize. And countless memorabilia shops that, as with Graceland, start to blend into one another very quickly.

One shop, though, had a nifty little Spacewalk, a short glow-in-the-dark exhibit that cost two bucks and provided a mildly trippy divergence for about three minutes, maybe four. I told Stuart to get the hell out of the way in the last pic but it turned out to be kinda spooky. Ooooh.

Around town, there is no poverty of attempts to exploit the UFO connection. Aliens are welcome at Arby's, says a sign advertising Beef & Cheddar prices. Keep your junk at Alien Storage. An accountant sprinkled his office windows with those beach ball green aliens you can buy at the state fair.

The streetlights are alien.

The sidewalks are alien.

The soda machines are alien.

Even the failed restaurants are alien.

In sum, an peculiar, slightly lame vacation. Megatons better than Niagara Falls, though.

Stuart got hideously ill the morning we left (tons of alien infestation jokes so far from friends; but no govt. infestation jokes yet). So I sped him back to Austin during which time I noticed this sign: Melodrama at Granny's Opera House. I know Christine Gledhill, Linda WIlliams, et al. consider melodrama to be the central mode of western media. But this sign advertised melodrama as a genre. Which suggests that Granny's Opera House might not exist anymore. Sadly, the puking gentleman in the back seat prevented further exploration.

Carly Hennessy on Idol!!

2008-01-24T22:00:00.000-08:00

Holy democracies! Check out this front page post on Allmusic yesterday identifying Idol hopeful Carly Smithson as the Carly Hennessy, star of that notorious Wall Street Journal piece about how MCA spent almost $2.2 million on Hennessy and her album Ultimate High only to watch it sell 378 copies (as of the time the piece was written). Gawd - Clap Your Hands Say Yeah!'s homegrown debut feels like Rumours in comparison.

Naturally, she was dropped which brought her to Idol Season 5. But she couldn't participate in Hollywood Hell Week due to visa problems (she's a Dublin native). Now she's married (hence the Smithson) and with all obstacles removed, she made it through easily to Hollywood this season.

It'd be convenient to dump the entirety of your reality TV disillusion on Carly's beleaguered profile. But she's hardly the first vortex the biz has thrown toilet bowls of cash into. Check out this New Yorker piece on the meticulous coiffing of Cherie whose 2004 self-titled debut on Lava probably moved 379 units. And she's not the only Idol contestant on even just this season to have enjoyed (so to speak) major label support of some sort. Check out the guilty lined up here at Votefortheworst.com.

Still, it begs the obvious question of whether or not Idol can sustain its Preston Sturges-like tension, prompting one wag here to suggest the show should be retitled American Exposure. We want a poor schmuck like Dick Powell in Christmas in July or season five finalist Kevin Covais to get their shot at The American Dream. But will we thrill to Carly's rise knowing someone/thing has already spent $2.2 million on her? How many of us can boast of such expenditures?

Then again, how many of us can boast of making $50,000 a year? (Do I hear $20,000?) How many of us can boast of holding a high-level position at our place of employment? The latter scenario, of course, was where Dick Powell found himself in Christmas in July and together with Ellen Drew's climactic speech which gets him the job, it resulted in one of the greatest comedies of the classical Hollywood era. But it probably wouldn't make for gripping reality tv. Still, whatever drama we'll feel this season on Idol will depend on not only how we define The American Dream but where exactly we place the contestants on the path towards it. So we have to ask ourselves how we know that the dream has been realized. But we also have to determine from how far back the contestants are starting.

Me, I'm willing to entertain the notion that Carly possesses some of the unluckiness of the poor schmuck because I know that however we conceive of The American Dream, it's never one immovable endpoint. Like an agitated muscle, it pulsates and can disappear completely over time if not overnight. That's why we marvel at the peaks and valleys in the careers of a Neil Young or an Elvis. Or a Jennifer Hudson. They lay out The American Dream as if on a graph and define the absolute limits of its representation.

So let Carly have her sixteenth minute. If she rides it far enough, she'll be telling us more about ourselves than anything else.

Liza digs Maroon 5!

2008-01-18T21:25:00.000-08:00

Liza was just on Nightline doing some sort of "Famous People Pick 5 Songs They Dig" spot (is this a regular feature?). Anyhoo, she picks Aznavour, "Maybe This Time," Raitt fille, and..."This Love" by Maroon 5! She says Maroon 1 Adam Levine combines jazz with rock. Is that why the song snakes its way around your inner music matrix? She would know. Jazz with rock, huh?

Ananda Shankar on Idol???

2008-01-16T01:22:00.000-08:00

Did anyone else notice Ananda Shankar's raga-funk version of "Jumpin' Jack Flash" providing the background for our introduction to the sparkly, non-victorious, soon-to-be-actressing Alexis Cohen?

My top tens of 2007

2007-12-31T18:43:00.001-08:00

Albums

1. M.I.A.: Kala (Interscope)
2. Jewface (Reboot Stereophonic)
3. Dixon: RA.048 (Resident Advisor podcast)
4. Authenticite - The Sylliphone Years (Stern's Africa)
5. The Angelic Process: Weighing Souls With Sand (Profound Lore)
6. Jens Lekman: "Night Falls Over Kortedala" (Secretly Canadian)
7. Rufus Wainwright: Rufus Does Judy At Carnegie Hall (Geffen)
8. Rilo Kiley: Under The Blacklight (Warner Bros.)
9. Barr: Summary (5 Rue Christine)
10. Matthew Dear: Asa Breed (Ghostly International)

Singles

1. Owusu & Hannibal: "Lonnie's Secret" (Ubiquity)
2. Eve: "Tambourine" (Aftermath/Interscope)
3. Escort: "All Through The Night" (Escort)
4. Britney Spears: "Piece of Me" (Jive)
5. M.I.A.: "Boyz" (Interscope)
6. The Pierces: "Boring" (Lizard King)
7. Dude ‘N Nem: "Watch My Feet" (TVT)
8. Hannah Montana: "Nobody's Perfect" (Walt Disney)
9. Maroon 5: "Makes Me Wonder" (Octone/A&M)
10. UGK ft. OutKast: “Int'l Players Anthem (I Choose You)” (Jive)

I took out the two reissues for the Idolator poll and put in Burial and Fountains of Wayne.

My fave reissue of the year is both music and film - the 3-DVD Deluxe Edition of The Jazz Singer.

The Jazz Singer you know (or know of). But the real gems here are the Vitaphone shorts that make up Disc Three. Vitaphone was the sound-on-disc process used by Warner Bros. for sync sound features, e.g. The Jazz Singer. But the studio also produced short musical subjects, most of which remain the only filmic record we have of certain vaudeville artists.

What's so moving about watching these professional entertainers ham it up for the camera (complete with bows, curtains parting, direct address, etc.) is that they're performing for a medium that sped up their decline as a cultural force. And beyond (Baby) Rose Marie and Burns & Allen, very few of these particular performers managed success in film/TV. (You can see Al Jolson shake his tush in the extras on Disc One.) Even the revue format in which most of these shorts are locked fell to the wayside in film musicals by about 1933.

But if you think shtick if not corn is the lifeblood of pop, you'll find counless hours of entertainment here. There's oh so much to mention. Tons of great novelties. Tons of hot jazz. Tons of banjos (an entire girl orchestra of them, in fact). Tons of jokes. Tons of catchiness.

And itchiness. For blackface without the burnt cork, check out the dialects of [Gus] Van and [Joe] Schenck in "The Pennant Winning Battery of Songland" on such hits as "Hard To Get Gertie" and "She Knows Her Onions." Or Blossom Seeley and Bennie Fields, the latter of whom wrote a French coon song called "Marseillaise In The Cold, Cold Ground" (say it a few times out loud). And in case you had to be told, gay people existed back then, if only in caricature with Ethel Sinclair and Marge La Marr in "At The Seashore."

There's Dick Rich, a priss queen Paul Whiteman. There's Green's Twentieth Century Faydetts, another all-girl orchestra with a conductor in pants who dances. There's The Foy Family who tell a gruesome children's story in between violent tap dances. And even if you have low tolerance for shtick, you'll love Shaw & Lee in "The Beau Brummels." Two men in Derbys tell naughty, even nihilistic jokes with deadpan voices and poker faces and sing a jaw-dropping metasong which might be called "This Is Where The Chorus Ends." Very Emo Philips if not Neil Hamburger ("20 people fell from a 10 story window but no one was hurt." "How did that happen?" "They all died").

Disc Two contains a featurette and several shorts on film sound. For more info, check this review out.

DVD of the year.

Best film of the year: The Death of Mr. Lazarescu; Runner Up: Southland Tales
Worst film of the year: Once; Runner Up: No Country For Old Men

I bought a scanner!

2007-11-19T18:36:00.000-08:00

Which means you'll be getting lots of pictures of Joan Crawford. Here's one of my faves from her useful how-to-be-Joan-Crawford book My Way of Life:

And it's true, ya know. I'm always running around with last minute cleaning and underwear drying before a party and thus always frazzled and mad at Stuart while guests are arriving. One day I'll be able to greet my guests like so, Diet Pepsi in glass and all.

Puritans

2007-10-19T19:30:00.000-07:00

Here's beleaguered UT American Studies PhD student Carly Kocurek on reading 200+ books for her comps:

"You know what I don't want to read about? Puritans."

Buy Barry!!!

2007-09-19T06:40:00.000-07:00

Run out right NOW and buy a Barry Manilow record. It doesn't matter which one as long as you don't get it used. Or free. Every Sunday, Record Head in Milwaukee would open its attic and sell albums at insanely cheap prices. They had so many copies of his 1977 Live that they actually started giving them away with each purchase. Some still thought zero pennies was too pricey and refused the gift.

So yeah - no free Manilow records. Try The Greatest Songs of the Sixties which hit number two on the U.S. pop album charts(!)! Why are you buying this? Because Manilow refused to go on The View yesterday to promote his new album, The Greatest Songs of the Seventies (actually, you might want to wait for the Eighties volume...I'd love to hear his "Pocket Calculator"). He finds Republican, Rosie-riling host Elisabeth Hasselbeck too "dangerous" and "offensive." The producers rejected his request to appear on a Hasselbeck-less View so he bowed out. Or was canceled. Same thing, really. (Read the story here.)

In any event, Manilow is my new cultural hero. And yours too, right? Ok good. See ya at Waterloo under "M," baby!

And check out this bit of tid from the article:

"He was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2002, although many of his big hits -- such as "Mandy," "I Write the Songs" and "Looks Like We Made It" -- were written by other people"

Sheesh - did Hasselbeck write this copy? Well, Lizzy, listen up:

1. Who cares?

2. That just makes him all the cooler.

3. Um, he did write A LOT of songs, some of which were his hits.

4. Ooh, I just got some diss fodder.

5. Who cares?

Cassette Tape Skull

2007-09-15T17:24:00.001-07:00

How cool is this pic?

The only albums I can make out are metal ones - Motley Crue: Shout at the Devil and Judas Priest: Screaming for Vengeance. Is this a critique of the seemingly natural association of death with metal? Or a critique of metal's seemingly impoverished bank of subject matter? Is it a celebration of metal's power, so great as to reduce itself to a pile malleable plastic? And what would our response be if the cassettes were melted from other artists/genres? Or a mix thereof? Scandal featuring Patty Smyth with Franco et Rochereau?

The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing (Richard Fleischer 1955)

2007-09-14T19:06:00.000-07:00

In The American Cinema, Andrew Sarris slotted Richard Fleischer under "Strained Seriousness." But it appears that Fleischer's mortal sin wasn't so much pretentiousness as it was mere inconsistency. Take The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing, a remarkably unlurid account of the turn of the 20th century Stanford White/Evelyn Nesbit/Harry Thaw affair. Recently released as part of a Joan Collins box set (a Richard Fleischer box just wouldn't fly), it falls somewhere between the tight-as-I-wish-my-tummy-was The Narrow Margin and the nightmare of the Neil Diamond The Jazz Singer - neither brilliant nor crummy enough to merit sustained thought.

There is one terrific conceptual edit, however, that I want to commit to memory. Stanford White (Ray Milland) is chatting with a friend during intermission at an opera house.

A buzzer alerts the crowd that the opera will soon resume. I took the liberty of including the close captioning altering same in case the turned heads of the friend and a gentleman in the background weren't enough to signal the sound.

The shot dissolves into another scene. But the buzzer sound continues over the dissolve. See? (Since you can't hear)

We are now in a dentist's office where Evelyn Nesbit (Joan Collins) is outside buzzing to get in. Notice the dentist at top left who has turned at the sound.

In short, it's a match on sound. Nothing earth-shattering. But they're uncommon enough in classical Hollywood cinema that it's worth taking notice here.

Also, purely for my own edification, there is a piece of music in the film which seems to sing a character's inner thoughts, a practice that would become increasingly prominent in ensuing decades. Harry Thaw's (Farley Granger) rage is brewing at the sight of Nesbit's former lover White. The song captures Thaw's rising fight-or-flight tension.

And the camera tracks in to more strongly cement the song to Thaw's inner turmoil.

But the song is diegetic as the scene takes place at a theater performance to which we're introduced several shots prior.

Even less earth-shattering. I mention it only because I'm studying the different ways subjectivity is displayed or enhanced through music in cinema. Do with it what you will.

Homophobia here, homophobia there

2007-09-13T21:44:00.002-07:00

I woke up today with two instances of homophobia in my inbox. First up is Ja Rule. On September 25th, there will be a U.S. Congressional hearing on hip-hop lyrics (full story here).And boy does Ja (or is that Rule?) think Congress has got the focus wrong:

"There's a f--king black kid right now about to get
25 years for having a fight with some white kids over hanging the
nooses over the white tree, let's get to that. Let's get into sh-t like
that, because that's what's tearing up America, not me calling a woman
a b--ch or a h-e on my rap songs."

"And if it is, then we need to go step to Paramount, and f--king MGM,
and all of these other motherf--kers that's making all of these movies
and we need to go step to MTV and Viacom, and lets talk about all these
f--king shows that they have on MTV that is promoting homosexuality,
that my kids can't watch this sh-t," he continued. "Dating shows that's
showing two guys or two girls in mid-afternoon. Let's talk about s--t
like that! If that's not f--king up America, I don't know what is."

Rule (feels more appropriately fascistic than the spiritual-sounding "Ja") told this to the not-ironically-entitled Complex magazine which, in case you've been lucky enough to avoid it, is stuffed with pull quotes, charticles, and pages of "Promotions" (what happened to "Special Advertising Section?"). It's yet another rag bringing us closer to a Fahrenheit 451 reality and as such appeals to the bullying side of our natures, the side that would take Rule's phobic spew as wisdom. I wonder if he would've spewed the same shit for Rolling Stone.

Eh, probably. But it's the "and if it is" that gives his bullshit away. So if MTV stopped, um, promoting homosexuality, Rule, does that mean you'd stop calling women bitches and hoes and work to eradicate such sentiments from all hip-hop? And while we're at it, do you let your kids listen to that kind of hip-hop? Or, to put it in your words, can they listen to it?

Here's hoping we meet in the cutouts bins next time.

Then here's a great review by Mark Harris of the not-awaited DVD release of Cruising. In case you're Complex, I've taken the liberty of pulling some choice quotes:

The film literally darkens as Steve abandons the sunsplashed, airy apartment of his girlfriend Nancy (Karen Allen) to descend into a nightcrawler's realm of facemasks and jockstraps, color-coded hankies and poppers, handcuffs and ominously greased-up fists and forearms, all displayed amid an angry, scratchy-industrial musical thrum. (There's no sissyboy disco for the badass, stone-faced thrillseekers in these gay armies of the night.)

In no time flat, Steve has become one of the undead, drained of color, life and expression. ''Why don't you want me anymore?'' asks Nancy. ''Nance, what I'm doing is affecting me,'' replies the newly bitten zombie.

there's barely a daylight gay world in the movie at all.

As for the murderers, one turns out to be a gay Columbia musical-theater major whose daddy didn't love him enough (did you just hear ten bowling pins crash in the alley of cultural stereotypes?)

Pacino, looking every one of his 39 years in an unfortunate scoop-necked black sleeveless T-shirt and a mutating perm that's as frightening as anything in the script, seems wildly uncomfortable as a cop meant to be a hot piece of sexbait in his late twenties.

Lee also doubts that anyone viewing the movie in 1980 would ''automatically equate'' the world of the film with ''gay culture at large.'' Fair enough, but in that case, count me among the duped: In 1980, I was a years-from-coming-out 16-year-old growing up in New York City, and Cruising scared the crap out of me. In fairness to Cruising, it wasn't conceived in order to make me comfortable; in fairness to me, there wasn't exactly a multiplex full of gay-friendly options back then.

Cruising's second gasp of life can't help but call to mind the thousands of gay men who protested the film — not a single one of whom, remarkably, is allowed to speak for himself on the DVD. (One of the grass-roots leaders of the protests, Ethan Geto, is now Hillary Clinton's senior policy adviser on LGBT issues.)

If the film, now frozen in its historical moment, scarcely seems worth the anger it generated, that's only because we've come a long way, not because anybody judging the movie got it wrong the first time.

Cruising's technical adviser Sonny Grosso claims, somewhat incredibly, that he had ''never seen ferociousness'' like that expressed by the film's picketers (really? This from the NYPD detective on whose life The French Connection was based?) If that's true, bravo to the haters.

--30--

Now all we need is a formalist appreciation of Friedkin's emancipatory use of space of texture.

Box Sets Suck 6: Phil Spector: Back To Mono (1958-1969) (Abkco 1991)

2007-08-26T15:20:00.000-07:00

This one was extremely easy to construct. Basically, most of disc one and very little of the awful discs two and three. In short, it apes the vinyl era standard of Phil Spector's Greatest Hits from 1977 with Phil as parade balloon on the cover (not to be confused with Phil Spector's 20 Greatest Hits from 1976 with the ice cream cone in the kisser cover).

Of course, I'm cheating as usual by excluding anything from disc four which is A Christmas Gift For You From Phil Spector. But as Rolling Stone will tell you, it's its own entity. And besides, what needs to happen is an elegant two-disc set that fits in the space of one with MY track listing below comprising disc one and the Xmas album on disc two leaving space for the apparent faves I rejected: "Spanish Harlem" (doesn't really count), "Under The Moon of Love," "Just Once in My Life" (never much liked The Righteous Brothers because by the time Spector got to them, he was crushing good songs under his Wall of Sound and forgetting to motorvate them with anything beyond funeral tympani), maybe "Do The Screw" or even a grotesquerie like "I Wish I Never Saw the Sunshine" (which makes "River Deep - Mountain High" sound like something off of Colossal Youth).

And Christ, shit else. The man was/is obnoxious (to be nice) and his box followed suit. Not just too damn long but too damn big - a 12" vinyl-sized elephant (it's gray too) with each song lyric getting its own page in the ho-hum booklet. Plus the CDs are hard to get out of (and back into) the cheap plastic tray. I look forward to getting it out of my apartment.

Phil Spector: Back To Basics (1958-1969) (Bozelkablog 2007)

1. The Teddy Bears: " To Know Him Is to Love Him"
2. Curtis Lee: "Pretty Little Angel Eyes"
3. Gene Pitney: "Every Breath I Take"
4. The Paris Sisters: "I Love How You Love Me "
5. The Crystals: "There's No Other Like My Baby"
6. The Crystals: "Uptown"
7. The Crystals: "He Hit Me (It Felt Like A Kiss)"
8. The Crystals: "He's a Rebel"
9. Bob B. Soxx and the Blue Jeans: "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah"
10. The Crystals: "He's Sure the Boy I Love"
11. Bob B. Soxx and the Blue Jeans: "Why Do Lovers Break Each Others Hearts"
12. Darlene Love: "(Today I Met) The Boy I'm Gonna Marry"
13. The Crystals: "Da Doo Ron Ron"
14. Veronica: "Why Don’t They Let Us Fall in Love"
15. Bob B. Soxx and the Blue Jeans: "Not Too Young to Get Married"
16. Darlene Love : "Wait 'Till My Bobby Gets Home"
17. The Ronettes: "Be My Baby"
18. The Crystals: "Then He Kissed Me"
19. Darlene Love: "A Fine, Fine Boy"
20. The Ronettes: "Baby, I Love You"
21. The Ronettes: "(The Best Part Of) Breakin’ Up"
22. The Ronettes: "Woman In Love (With You)"
23. The Ronettes: "Walking In the Rain"
24. The Righteous Brothers: "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'"
25. The Righteous Brothers: "Unchained Melody"
26. The Righteous Brothers: "Ebb Tide"
27. Ike and Tina Turner: "River Deep - Mountain High"
28. Sonny Charles and the Checkmates: "Black Pearl"

Box Sets Suck 5: Nuggets I (Rhino 1998)

2007-08-22T03:21:00.000-07:00

Right, I'm missing some good, even great, ones. Right, the box is pretty damn essential overall. But wrong, crap tracks do exist. Come on - you know "The Little Black Egg" lives and dies with its lyric (as a for instance). As for those missing great cuts, I went by the "sounds better/more at home elsewhere" principle (e.g. Love, Sir Doug, Raiders, etc.). And though at first I was betraying one of my own principles by opting for historical relevance over pleasure, I soon realized both crashed into each other in such sacred texts as "Lies," "Hey Joe," "I Ain't No Miracle Worker," etc.

The Nuggets from Nuggets (Bozelkablog 1999)

1. The Electric Prunes: "I Had Too Much to Dream (Last Night)" - Dig those parentheses, Sixties, dig 'em!
2. The Standells: "Dirty Water" - Fug you!
3. The Knickerbockers: "Lies" - What else would you call a Beatles ripoff?
4. The Seeds: "Pushin' Too Hard" - Check out Sky Saxon & Co. here on The Mothers-In-Law with Eve Arden and Kaye Ballard. I find it gassy myself.
5. The Remains: "Don't Look Back" - Best song on the box because it adheres to the number one rule for masterful singles in a capitalist country: it must include several great songs in one.
6. The 13th Floor Elevators: "You're Gonna Miss Me" - They were indeed all heads. P.S. Turned out Tommy Hall wasn't Jandek after all.
7. Count Five: "Psychotic Reaction" - A freakout usually counts as a song within a song.
8. The Leaves: "Hey Joe" - Well, for one, Hendrix couldn't sing like his own guitar.
9. The Third Rail: "Run, Run, Run" - Bubblegum used to come in a little bag called Gold Nuggets, ya know.
10. Sagittarius: "My World Fell Down" - Pretty proto-prog psych.
11. The Nazz: "Open My Eyes" - Goddamn, this dances like a motherfucker!
12. The Music Machine: "Talk Talk" - Hello, Mud.
13. The Litter: "Action Woman" - I guess dirtbags never got laid either.
14. The Elastik Band: "Spazz" - Probably the second best song on the box. For why, see #5.
15. The Chocolate Watchband: "Sweet Young Thing" - In the dictionary next to "droogy."
16. The Brogues: "I Ain't No Miracle Worker" - They got the "wish I was a virgin" blues.
17. Kim Fowley: "The Trip" - Pebbles 3 representing (sorta).
18. Swingin' Medallions: "Double Shot (Of My Baby's Love)" - This gave me the idea for a movie about two closeted gay frat guys in the 1960s.
19. The Merry-Go-Round: "Live" - Belongs in the Nuggets II diaspora.
20. The Sonics: "Strychnine" - The drinking age meant nothing to these thugs.
21. The Daily Flash: "Jack of Diamonds" - Listen as a song rises from the grave and returns in less than three minutes.
22. The Groupies: "Primitive" - The exact same length as the least primitive cut here (Sagittarius).
23. The Lollipop Shoppe: "You Must Be a Witch" - If you ever wanted to know why this music is called punk, listen to how he sings "An easy life in heaven with a thousand other guys." Pure Roxy London 1977.
24. The Balloon Farm: "A Question of Temperature" - The first new wave song.
25. The Third Bardo: "I'm Five Years Ahead of My Time" - Pebbles 3 representing.
26. Clefs of Lavender Hill: "Stop - Get a Ticket" - ...for a train to Popsville.
27. The Monks: "Complication" - Live, they invented Krautrock. On record, this was their only nugget.
28. The Other Half: "Mr. Pharmacist" - Here comes the nice.
29. We the People: "You Burn Me Up and Down" - No, you do!
30. The Bees: "Voices Green and Purple" - More Pebbles 3 representing.

Total Time: 1:18:45

Bigger Than Life vs. Bigger Than Life

2007-08-08T03:20:00.000-07:00

I totally forgot to relate this HI-larious story courtesy of a student of mine (yes, I have his blessing to tell it here).

My student was writing a paper on one of the films I screened during the course I taught in the spring. He wound up calling all over town because the easier to find titles were gone from most of the video stores. But finally he found a place on 5th St. that had Nicholas Ray's Bigger Than Life for rent. "That's odd," I thought because I assumed Vulcan Video was the only place in town that would carry such a rare title.

So he goes to this video store on 5th St. and immediately notices that there are no video/DVD boxes visible. He approaches a guy who works there and says that he called about Bigger Than Life. The guy fishes out the video and it turns out to be a gay porno. And suddenly, I know exactly where my student is. He's at Tape Lenders, one of at least two exclusively gay porn shops in Austin. And I know exactly which Bigger Than Life he's talking about. It's the 1991 opus starring Jeff Stryker!

All turned out well in the end. But as a public service to my students past and future, I present the following visual aids to help you distinguish between the two Bigger Than Lifes. :)

Just lookin' out for y'all.

Box Sets Suck 4: Nuggets II

2007-08-03T22:30:00.001-07:00

Nuggets, Vol. 2: Original Artyfacts From the British Empire & Beyond (Rhino 2001) is much less consistent than Rhino's first Nuggets box. Apart from the jaundiced imitations and what sounds like blue-eyed soul (on a garage/psych box? why?), there are just too many overrated tracks including all of those by The Pretty Things and The Eyes (even the one below doesn't justify their rep), The Factory's proto-motorik "Path Through The Forest," and, above all, Tintern Abbey's "Vacuum Cleaner" (get off your lysergic-soaked ass and help with the vacuuming, buddy!). Gawd, if ever there was a song proving that the sexual revolution did not happen in the 1960s, it's this one - the precise point at which tripped-out bliss becomes smug laziness.

But Nuggets II rocks more on the deconstructive tip. The pimple poppers on the first Nuggets box displayed a confidence in their own burnt-through structures even though they frequently hid from girls behind them. The bunch of sweeties on Nuggets II, however, hover over their creations to gaze at how they're working. They make you aware of their songs as texts. I'm thinking of Tomorrow's "My White Bicycle" and the way the band tries to emulate the opening suckfest of tapes that never knew tomorrow. Or the way sirens and rapid fire bullets swallow up Sands' "Listen to the Sky" before a prog nightmare war march ends the song in a completely antithetical place from where it started. Most of all, I'm thinking of "A Midsummer's Night Scene" where John's Children kick up leaves at a white witch ceremony and the "pedals and flowers!" chant visits the climax from another tape world. I read somewhere that the band thought the mix sounded like shit. But that's why the track fascinates. It's not an organic whole but rather a song that primps and preens in a mirror at itself using various colored muds as eyeshadow.

Which means the positions from which these songs are sung are similarly deconstructed. The personae radiate both "I" and "Not I" as they collapse the inside with the outside, the masculine with the feminine, the LSD with the spot of tea and crumpets, the rocking out with the couldn't possibly be bothered with rocking out right now, love. It's a combo that The Sweet would streamline and take to the top of the charts in the next decade. But the sweeties here remain baffling, their motives unreadable. Did The Acid Gallery need such fat-bottomed riffs to "Dance Around The Maypole?" Why does the Blossom Toes' drummer cook more than the eggs that are boiling in "When The Alarm Clock Rings?" And speaking of which, who on earth would sing such couplets as "Think of things you'll do during this new day of toiling/Think of things you'll wear while your eggs are boiling?"

Who are these people? I mean, we know who, say, Caleb (Quaye) "really" is (answer: not related to Tricky). But the authorial voice in "Baby Your Phrasing Is Bad" is so shook that it's difficult to position yourself in relation to it. You feel like you're imposing upon the song rather than listening to it. How else respond to someone whose main complaint is that he has to strain his ear to understand us? How else respond to a guy buried in layers of psychedelic muck and whose voice is phased into oblivion? No wonder why he has trouble hearing.

And yet I'm overstating things a bit at least in terms of my condensation below. Nuggets I-style burners outnumber the effete deconstructions, from The La De Das' "How Is the Air Up There?" (what a great insult!) to The Creation's "Biff! Bang! Pow!" (now we know what a Roy Lichtenstein painting sounds like) to The Zipps' "Kicks & Chicks" (didn't know Mark E. Smith had relatives in The Netherlands). And my favorite song is The Idle Race's relatively straightforward and Apollonian "Days of the Broken Arrows" just like my favorite song on Nuggets I is The Remains' similarly straightforward and Apollonian "Don't Look Back."

But still - why is there more a deconstructive spirit in Brit psych/garage (and in later voices like David Bowie, Bryan Ferry, Steve Solamar, Ben Watt, Billy Mackenzie, etc.)? Is it because Britain has ceded world bully status to America? Does deconstructing your own subject position leave you more open to attacks or more prepared for them? Do I respond to the Idle Race and Remains tracks most viscerally because I'm American? Will American song become more deconstructive in the twilight of its empire?

Nuggets from Nuggets II (Bozelkablog 2002)

1. The Creation: "Making Time"
2. Fire: "Father's Name Was Dad"
3. The Move: "I Can Hear the Grass Grow"
4. The Smoke: "My Friend Jack"
5. Tomorrow: "My White Bicycle"
6. The Eyes: "When the Night Falls"
7. The Idle Race: "Imposters of Life's Magazine"
8. The La De Das: "How Is the Air Up There?"
9. The Sorrows: "Take a Heart"
10. The Mockingbirds: "You Stole My Love"
11. John's Children: "Desdemona"
12. Caleb: "Baby Your Phrasing Is Bad"
13. The Easybeats: "Friday on My Mind"
14. The Move: "Fire Brigade"
15. The Creation: "Biff! Bang! Pow!"
16. The Bluestars: "Social End Product"
17. John's Children: "A Midsummer's Night Scene"
18. Sands: "Listen to the Sky"
19. The Idle Race: "Days of the Broken Arrows"
20. Episode Six: "Love Hate Revenge"
21. Status Quo: "Pictures of Matchstick Men"
22. The Downliners Sect: "Glendora"
23. The Creation: "How Does It Feel to Feel"
24. Timon: "The Bitter Thoughts of Little Jane"
25. The Zipps: "Kicks & Chicks"
26. The Acid Gallery: "Dance Around the Maypole"
27. Kaleidoscope: "Flight from Ashiya"
28. Blossom Toes: "When the Alarm Clock Rings"

Total Time: 1:19:35

Box Sets Suck 3: We Can Fly

2007-07-28T18:26:00.001-07:00

Again, not a box set. Again, a psych series (five volumes). But this one is UK/Europe/Middle East stuff. And it's officially available from Past & Present Records. Sorry, I just can't get enough of the stuff lately.

The Best of We Can Fly

1. The Glass Menagerie: "Frederick Jordan"

Title character's married to a lovely white woman. But the child she's carrying belongs to another (one of many hooks: "Someone beat ya to it"). So he goes to get a gun. In the second verse (!), the narrator identifies himself as the best friend of Frederick Jordan who "laid the seed with his wife seven months ago." This pushes Mr. Jordan to more drastic measures: "Get me a stick of dynamite!" (another hook). The monomaniacal organ is much more prominent than the guitar and the drummer kicks some minor ass. I give it an A minus: it's got a freakbeat and you can dance to it.

2. The Peep Show: "Mazy"

This lovely stroll could pass for an outtake from The Velvet Underground & Nico if the drums were Moe-torvating and the singer were more deadpan as opposed to moaning for an extra minute in the bubble bath. But the guitars have that chattering metallic quality down pat while the bass makes little dabs of paint from high on the neck. Is this where Mazzy Star got their name from?

3. The Bunch: "Looking Glass"

I guess this one's about a dude who thinks Alice in Wonderland is his girlfriend and gets miffed when a man with a sports car steals her away (such men win every time, the singer informs us). Judging from the hyper, trebly sound (here's another bass played very high on the neck), the situation is making him nervous.

4. The Neat Change: "I Lied to Auntie May"

Apparently so named because they changed clothes during the middle of their sets. Peter Banks of Yes was in the band but I don't know if he's on this single. One of the Neat Changers looks like Jo Callis of The Human League. The string-laden "I Lied to Auntie May" was co-written by Peter Frampton and does McCartney proud. Great crybaby lyric: "I'm feeling so alone/Just me alone at home/Home all alone." (He lied to Auntie May by telling her he was doing okay.)

5. Sands: "Mrs Gillespie's Refrigerator"

Written by The Brothers Gibb. They took drugs.

6. The QPR Supporters: "Supporters Support Us"

The drums pound out the "Rockin, rock'n'roll radio, Let's go!" beat. Bass and guitar do the same. The voices chant first "Rangers Rangers Queens Park Rangers," then "Rodney Rodney We Want Rodney...Maaaaaaarsh," then "they're the greatest...teeeeeeeeeam." The beat never deviates. This is the closest I ever want to get to learning about English football.

7. Serendipity: "Castles"

The singer here sounds so much like Brian Eno it's uncanny. Someone please advise.

8. Shy Limbs: "Trick or Two"

There's something off-puttingly supper club about this tune probably because the singer overreaches like David Clayton-Thomas or Steve Winwood. But the bass and percussion are high in the mix lending both an odd frontality. And it's faster than the supper club norm (do supper clubs exist anymore?). Note: Greg Lake was in this band.

9. PUGH: "Love Love Love"

Sampled by DJ Shadow in "Mutual Slump." Pugh Rogefeldt was huge in his native Sweden. Sung in Swedish.

10. The Lords: "Don't Mince Matter"

There's every reason to believe that Faust heard this bit of single-mindedness before recording "It's A Rainy Day, Sunshine Girl." But where Faust lock down their single-mindedness unto eternity, these page boys eventually rave up. And the singer deliberately stumbles over his words, pronounces "mince" like "meintz," and sings about Ginger Joe (is this where the Kersal Massive's Ginger Joe got him moniker?). Check out a video here in which nicely-dressed teens try in vain to dance to this proto-Krautrock.

11. The Julian Kirsch: "Clever Little Man"

Opens with the ominous Beethoven's Fifth chords. Ends with a sardonic jazzy bit. In between is three minutes of even more ominous piano hooks and foppy, traded-off vocals. From Brussels and one of the best cuts here.

12. The Tages: "Fuzzy Patterns"

Goddamn, there's a lot of "Waiting For The Man" in these songs. From Sweden. They became a band called Blond.

13. Los Brincos: "Passport"

Fascinating track from a Spanish group about looking at a girl's passport to find her real age. Brincos are now shoes designed specifically to help illegal immigrants into America.

14. Daddy Lindberg: "Wade In The Shade"

Peter Lorre-like vocalist mewls over a bass-and-drum track waiting to be sampled. At the end, the bass becomes very "Father Cannot Yell"-esque. 1:57. Probably a joke.

15. Pesky Gee: "Where Is My Mind"

Heavy fuzz which seems to be continually ending. Great non-intrusive use of horns.

16. Mick Softly & The Summer Suns: "Am I The Red One"

Proto-Matrix psych.

17. Los Canarios: "What can I do for you"

Three songs in one. The first cleans up the opening riff from The Litter's "Action Woman." The second features a mariachi band somewhat at odds with the beat a la Ricardo Villalobos' "Fizheuer Zieheuer" (hmmmm...). The third is a sweeter, harpsichord-infected section with an ensemble singing "Please let me go." Then back to song one.

18. Brut: "My Kind of Feeling"

Love how the Bollywood strings mimic the main guitar riff.

19. Neo Maya: "I Won't Hurt You"

Here's some quiet dementia from Episode Six, Ian Gillan's pre-Deep Purple outfit. I need to hear more from this band (see below) like the b-side to this one ("UFO") which "is just a list of UFO sightings read out over a drum pattern!"

20. Russell Morris: "The Real Thing (Parts 1 & 2)"

"An Australian rock classic," screams Wikipedia. Starts off as an inoffensive folk-rock number but Morris "ohh mow mow mow mow"s it into six minutes of phased-out apocalypso. Nuclear explosion included.

21. The Rokes: "When the wind arises"

Another song that sounds like it's constantly ending. From Italy.

22. The Mint: "Luv"

I have no shame.

23. The Iveys: "And Her Daddy's A Millionaire"

A catchy burner at "Paperback Writer" speed from the band that became Badfinger.

24. Episode Six: "I Can See Through You"

This doesn't really get going until the break when the guitar apes the way silent movie piano players conveyed rising tension. At which point it breaks into an elfin war march and goes out with a recorder-backed madrigal. They took drugs too.

25. Kim Fowley: "Lights"

Fruity vocals that anticipate Fred Schneider. The keybs hook and the beat pounds. Face it - the anti-master wrote some great pop songs.

26. The Loot: "Radio City"

Here mainly because they sing like droning bees.

27. Giorgio: "How Much Longer Must I Wait, Wait"

Probably the best song here and an object lesson on what to do with horns: make 'em riff! That's Giorgio as in Moroder.

Box Sets Suck 2: Psychedelic Archaeology

2007-07-11T21:38:00.000-07:00

Ok this one isn't a box set. It isn't even available for sale. But as a sucker for psych, Pebbles, and the like, I had to have a go at it. This site explains what Psychedelic Archaeology is in detail. But basically, it's a labor of love courtesy of many psych fans aiming to compile cuts that have never been reissued. I listened to all ten volumes while writing the first chapter of my dissertation. That might explain the preponderance of novelties in the one volume condensation below given how much those type of songs mean to rape your earhole no matter what task you're simultaneously performing. But if you read my Pebbles Volume 3 post, you know I'm a novelty kind of guy anyway.

Still, some of my choices seem like the product of lazy listening. So to redress this error, I created a second volume of goodies. The first is still definitely the better one overall. But the second provides many pleasures even if that simply amounts to giving me yet another reason to laugh at the 1960s.

So here they are with justifications for Volume 1.

The Best of Psychedelic Archaeology Volume 1

1. Rochelle Rosenthal and the Kickball Queen: "Lottery"

Over creepy organ (is there an uncreepy kind?), Rochelle explains a yearly television show in which men 19 - 26 get sent to Vietnam. Then the band kickballs into a track reminiscent of Shocking Blue's "Send Me A Postcard," in sound and sarcasm. Last couplet: "And if the killing gets slow (through?)/Then you can work on your tan." A fine start.

2. The Sandals: "House of Painted Glass"

More a Middle Eastern pastiche than a Far East one, despite the prominence of sitar in the mix. The harmonies swarm like a sandstorm in the Sahara. The opening winds could charm the snake off ya. And the singer sounds like he was born somewhere very far away from Riverside, California from whence this band hailed. Apparently, they took this song as a novelty item which might explain those inexplicable Creature Feature laughs after each chorus. But I'd be stunned to discover they topped it with their more serious songs, assuming they had any.

3. Jefferson Lee: "Pancake Trees"

This one begins exactly like the phat Fat Albert theme which soon gets bejeweled with mysterioso guitar and lush strings completely antithetical to the goofy beat. But that's psych for ya - the clash of supposed opposites rather than mere acid damage (well, good psych, that is). Then after a few relatively straightforward measures acknowledging the existence of the title wonders comes a scaling, scary section mirroring the flight of said trees: "Pancake trees floating in syrupy skies/In maple and butterscotch blowing your mind." Probably another joke, especially given that this track comes from 1970. But it has genuine ookability.

4. The Mission: "Calmilly"

Googling "Calmilly" turns up almost nothing but references to this song. No one knows a damn thing about the group perhaps including the group itself. The singer states a very fetching melody calmly yet briskly (hey - could "calmilly" be a misspelling of "calmly?") over an organ that has replaced the traditional guitar (although a bass dances below). There are some vaguely prog touches in the keyb solo with even vaguer, unsettling "ooh"s in the background. It all seems to be about a Mr. and Mrs. D(evil?) sitting down for dinner. The flip is coming up and is even nuttier.

5. She Trinity: "Climb That Tree"

Quite possibly the greatest single of the 1960s. I will say no more...for now.

6. Oracle: "Don't Say No"

I hemmed and hawed about including this Verve b-side produced by Curt Boettcher. A bit wussy overall. But for a day or so, the trebly chorus wouldn't leave my head. Plus I love how the one solitary bass note at the beginning seems to set off the entire windy wall of psych. Wind effects included at the close.

7. The Mission: "Gailing Made It"

It's The Bendedictine Monk Variety Hour! More organ this time but most of the meat is in the voices. Starts off with some choice chanting and then moves into skippy outer space shape note singing or maybe just pure gibberish. I can make out "gailing made it" and even a "scoob dooby doo." Perhaps on The Mission's planet "gailing made it" is some sort of root that helps form different words. Witness:

Gailing made it-ah
Gailing made it-doobay
Nooting saw

One echoey brother is definitely not taking his role seriously what with his monkey sounds and goofy "ha ha ha"s. I hope Gailing made it okay wherever s/he was going. A classic single.

8. Fenwyck: "I Cry"

Rather generic. But the whizzing guitar commentary after each line wants to break out into a better song, preferably one without such a crybaby singer. In this respect, it kinda reminds me of Jimmy Page's work on The First Gear's "Leave My Kitten Alone" although the anonymous guitar god here doesn't reach such heights. Thankfully everything moves pretty fast. But in retrospect, I probably should have traded this one out.

9. Owl: "Spirits"

A tough folksy-rock itch. The nerve-wracked riffs wash their hands repeatedly. The singer comes to you from underwater on select verses which is okay since he's definitely the weak link. And best of all, there's a nasty Creedence-like guitar solo about a minute in which promises no swampy good times.

10. Alexander Rabbit: "Malaguainia" (sic)

Apparently these cuties were slotted to perform at Woodstock but their manager backed them out for fear of derailing their college education. From the evidence here, they would have fit in perfectly - nearly seven minutes of speedy, earthbound Santana.

11. Beautiful - "Shadows in the Sun"

Kim Fowley-produced. Sort of a baby brother to his "Strangers From The Sky." Might even be him on vocals. Liners say this is a carbon copy of Soft Machine's Fowley-produced "Feelin' Reelin' Squealin'." True? Another one I probably should've traded out.

12. Sagittarius: "Virgo"

Hated it at first. But I wanted something like a transitional cut on an album rather than a single shining forth and this instrumental served that purpose. Then I grew to dig its mildly enervated quality, largely due to the Dragnet-like bass line undergirding the monsoon of harpsichord, bells, and pot-stirring geetar until it all spazzes out at the end.

13. Delicate Balance: "Night is Almost Gone"

Traded this in at the last minute since the Shy Limbs song that was originally in its place is on another collection I intend to winnow down (and in much better sound quality). "Night is Almost Gone" is a simple, tight nugget with a nice breakdown two minutes in. Fruity vocals, a great buzzing drum intro and it all gets sucked into an interstellar vacuum cleaner at the end.

14. Giant Crab: "Listen Crab"

Hyper geeks looking for a spot on one of Zappa's early albums. They have that one-singer-normal-the-other-helium-cured duet style down pat. The drummer practices rolls on his snare. Everyone throws light bulbs at the fade out. Freak out!

15. Conception: "Babylon"

The main riff here is so archetypal that I can't believe it's not a ripoff. Maybe it is and I just can't place it. Still, most cruncheriffic. Most.

16. Le Cirque: "Land of Oz"

Featuring Leon Russell and Marc Benno, this is probably the worst song on here. Too twee, too "quit fellating those damn helium balloons!" But the tape speeds up towards the end and keeps speeding up for a few measures until all the munchkins are fired off into the stratosphere and I cannot stop laughing.

17. Changing Colours: "Da Da Da Da"

More helium. Was this a cheap high for those who couldn't afford LSD? Together with the Le Cirque and Giant Crab songs and The Raven(s) one below, this would make for the most irritating EP in history.

18. UK Baby: "Michael's Daughter"

McCartneyesque, piano-hooked razzmatazz that is actually a 12-or-so-bar blues in an English music hall stylee. Missing that "interesting story in the lyrics," though, that the liners mention.

19. The Raven(s) (sic...but why?): "Calamity Jane"

Here mostly for the obnoxious telegraph beeps that play non-stop for the first and last thirty seconds. And the song's the shortest here at two minutes exactly.

20. West Coast Natural Gas: "Jumping Frog"

Grass grows alongside the highway, people die from eating cranberries, husky eagle scouts are disguised as the title amphibian, a plastic doll talks like the singer's brother (see more brother paranoia below), a drag queen masquerades as his mother - but none of it can fool him. I'd call this folksy, über catchy ramble a paean to hippie authenticity if it weren't so laid-back and good timey. Have Moicy! fans, take note.

21. These Vizitors: "Rippling Road"

Kinda like a punky Fairport Convention. Actually, this reminds me most of The Meat Puppets for the hardcore get-up that motrovates these vizitors down the road. Not at hardcore speeds, mind you. But the one-two one-two one-two spirit is definitely there. Seriously - this wouldn't sound all that out of place on II or Up on The Sun.

22. Troyes: "Morning of the Rain"

The riffage here moves past archetypal to primordial. These boys were dragging some serious knuckles. Message: drugs kills brain cells.

23. The Paper Train: "Brother"

Entire lyric: "Walks like a lady. Talks like a lady. Cries like a lady. Smiles like lady. Too bad it's my brother."

24. The Electric Duck: "Most People Get Happy"

The gushingest song here. Sounds like a countercultural revival meeting. The choir response vocals should please fans of The Edwin Hawkins Singers and The Polyphonic Spree. But this one really frugs out with congas and wah-wah guitar running and jumping on golden clouds. And it was nice of them to acknowledge that not everyone gets happy.

25. Flower Power: "Stop! Check It"

The fastest song here. So fast, in fact, that I initially took it for a more contemporary throwback from Redd Kross or The 5-6-7-8s. Entire lyric: "Stop! Check it! Yeah!"

26. Frosty: "Organ Grinder's Monkey"

Beat miners, listen up: there's a great break here that gets even greater with the introduction of rubbery bass. Very danceable bubblegum although a bit harder and psychier than the 1910 Fruitgum Company norm.

27. Think: "California (It's Getting So Heavy)"

Well, this track is already there. The drums detonate in a cavern, the singer yells the whole time, the guitar blows King Kong farts. And yet there's still a safe Howard Johnson's feel to it due to the echoey 5th Dimension-style scatting underneath and a section of suburban garage horns. A very clean, safe garage upholstered with fun fur and a fake polar bear head.

28. The Fastest Group Alive: "Bears"

A dumb public service announcement warning us that bears don't care who they scare. But why is there a dude making puking sounds every so often? The b-side is "Beside." I wanna hear it.

The Best of Psychedelic Archaeology Volume 2

1. Kim Fowley: "Strangers From the Sky"
2. Sound Sandwich: "Zig Zag News"
3. The David: "People Saying, People Seeing"
4. Gregorians: "Dialated Eyes"
5. London Phogg: "The Times to Come"
6. Barry Mann: "Young Electric...Psychedelic Band"
7. Lexington Ave. Local: "Along Comes Mary"
8. Sweet Smoke: "The Great Evacuation Of Haight"
9. Sixth Day Creation: "Cherry Pie"
10. Epic Splendor: "Cowboys and Indians"
11. Ronnie James Reincarnation: "Is This The Only Life You've Ever Had"
12. Bill Soden: "My Mermaid and Me"
13. Epitome: "Sleep #9"
14. Five By Five: "15 Going On 20"
15. City Zu: "Too Much, Too Soon, Too Fast"
16. The Sun: "Soul Sync"
17. Gas Light Village: "I Am Afraid"
18. Ry Cooper: "The Game of Life"
19. Ry Cooper: "1983"
20. Fourth Dimension: "Mr. Blake"
21. Luv Lites: "Born in Chicago"
22. Peter B‚s (Aka Peter B's Looners): "Jodrell Blues"
23. Village: "Long Time Coming"
24. Merriday Park: "Went Home Today"
25. Revelation: "Wait and See"
26. MC2: S.S.T."
27. Dr. T. & The Undertakers: "Blue Blue"
28. Chicago Loop: "Richard Corey"

Best jokes from Neil Hamburger: World's Funnyman DVD

2007-07-09T18:09:00.001-07:00

1. Why did Madonna feed her infant baby dog food?

Well, she had no choice - that's just what came out of her breasts.

2. Why did Al-Qaeda under the direction of Mr. Osama Bin Laden burn in a public town square in Kabul, Afghanistan over 10,000 copies of Pink Floyd's Dark Side of The Moon album?

Cuz it's a terrible album.

3. Why did Paris Hilton absolutely refuse to sit on the toilet seat at Courtney Love's house?

Well, she couldn't - Courtney was already dead on it.

4. What does Sir Paul McCartney's wife, Heather Mills, have in common with The Dead Kennedys musical group?

Well, both of them only have three original members.

And the best...

5. Why did Bilbo Baggins cross the road?

To depress those of us who don't find those sorts of characters at all amusing.

Porn paranoids, y'all ruined my blog!

2007-07-08T16:19:00.000-07:00

OK I caved in to pressure to put up a photo more suitable for the workplace. I have no problem with that. But you non-workplace porn paranoids who complained better help me figure out why that line is going through this lovely photo of the great Owusu & Hannibal. The pic is less than 50k as per Blogger requirements. And I tried/tired tinkering with the template to no avail. So porn paranoids, you want a cleaner internet? Fix this!

Homosexual gowns by Adrian

2007-06-21T00:56:00.001-07:00

A while back, I received a response here from Howard Gutner, author of Gowns by Adrian: The MGM Years 1928-1941 about my ten fave Joan Crawford dresses post. I had stated that he stupidly ignored Adrian's homosexuality in his book. But I decided that the implications of his response were too important to leave in the comments section and that they needed a rebuttal. So I've reproduced his comment here:

"I'm Howard Gutner, the author of Gowns by Adrian, the person who so "stupidly" ignored Adrian's homosexuality. If you'll note the title of the book, it's Gowns by Adrian: The MGM Years 1928-1941. It's NOT a biography, or a look at his private life, but an examination of his WORK at MGM.

Got it?"

Yeah, Howie, I got it. So perhaps I should have replaced "stupidly" with "homophobically."

First off, if the book was not a biography nor a look at his private life, then one wonders why Gutner felt compelled to mention Adrian's marriage to Janet Gaynor (p. 191) which, by the way, was a marriage of convenience as Gaynor was gay too. Second, cordoning off one sphere of life as public and another as private is one of the oldest homophobic tricks in the books. Not only does it ignore how sexualized work environments are; it also suggests that nothing of sexuality goes into work. A very good book could have been written about how Adrian's homosexuality impacted his designs. But unfortunately, Gutner decided that that book would have been a bit too heavy for America's coffee tables.

And really, folks, at the end of the day, could a heterosexual man have created THESE:

I thought not.

Luka in Croatia

2007-06-13T21:46:00.000-07:00

There was a pop music lyrics category on Jeopardy today (which I swept, thank you very much). But one of the wrong answers/question was a beaut.

A: My name is Luka and I live here.

Q: What is Croatia?

So sing, y'all: "My name is Luka/I live in Cro-a-atia!"

A Fela A Day Mix CD out now!!

2007-05-23T23:26:00.000-07:00

If you're one of the millions who read my A Fela A Day post (where I reported on listening to 25 Fela twofers in 25 days), you know that I intended to winnow the winners into one useful 700MB CD. That day has arrived. Here's the track listing (along with the corresponding albums from which it was plucked):

1. It's No Possible 17:36 Expensive Shit He Miss Road
2. Egbe Mi O (Carry Me) 13:15 Shakara / London Scene
3. Who're You 9:30 Shakara / London Scene
4. Unknown Soldier 31:08 Coffin for Head Of State / Unknown Soldier
5. Opposite People 16:38 Opposite People / Sorrow Tears And Blood
6. Original Suffer Head 21:09 Original Suffer Head / I.T.T.
7. Power Show 14:48 Original Suffer Head / I.T.T.
8. Confusion 25:36 Confusion / Gentleman
9. Igbe 8:07 Confusion / Gentleman
10. Everything Scatter 10:34 Everything Scatter / Noise For Vendor Mouth
11. Trouble Sleep Yanga Wake AM Roforofo Fight/Fela Singles
12. Shenshema 9:09 Roforofo Fight/Fela Singles
13. Alu Jon Jonki Jon 12:41 Open & Close / Afrodisiac
14. Omuti Tide 3:51 The '69 Los Angeles Sessions
15. Laise Lairo 4:14 The '69 Los Angeles Sessions
16. Government Chicken Boy 29:15 Army Arrangement
17. Ikoyi Blindness 15:08 Ikoyi Blindness/Kalakuta Show
18. Kalakuta Show 14:31 Ikoyi Blindness/Kalakuta Show
19. Upside Down 14:44 Upside Down/Music Of Many Colours
20. 2000 Blacks Got To Be Free 18:39 Upside Down/Music Of Many Colours
21. Africa Centre Of The World 17:31 Upside Down/Music Of Many Colours
22. Underground System 28:27 Underground System
23. Pansa Pansa 17:20 Underground System
24. Confusion Break Bones 29:11 Underground System
25. Beasts of no Nation 28:20 Beasts of no Nation
26. Teacher don't teach me no nonsense 25:48 Teacher Don't Teach Me No Nonsense
27. Look and Laugh 30:49 Teacher Don't Teach Me No Nonsense
28. Just Like That 22:17 Teacher Don't Teach Me No Nonsense

Remarkably, that amounts to 690.3 MB. MP3 CDs never work out that perfectly. Anyway, trades welcome. Comments like "Oh my GAWD! I can't believe you missed '_______'" not.

American Idol Finale - Blake takes the cake!!!

2007-05-23T21:28:00.000-07:00

I wish!

First, I skipped last week which featured more good songs than any Idol telecast I can recall:

the improbably great "This Love"
"She Works Hard For The Money"
"Nutbush City Limits"
"I'm A Woman"
a decent Walter Murphy-hooked Robin Thicke songs (my students adore this guy but I find him a D'Angelo wannabe and I've always had problems with D'Angelo's skeletal R&B to begin with)
"I (Who Have Nothing)"

Let's address this last one. Simon fretted that it was too adult for her, ignoring the immediacy of its crowd-pleasing melodramatics. But won't the Idol mafia fit her for an Adult Contemporary straitjacket now that she's taken the cake? Instead of letting her be a teenager (in spirit) a la Britney Spears or Pink, they'll steer her towards big, grownup ballads a la LeAnn Rimes or Mariah Carey (or early Kelly Clarkson or Taylor Hicks or, um, Daughtry). So all this cant about remaining teenage is hot air.

I mean, did you hear that horror that won the songwriting contest? Poor Blake - saddled with such garbage, what could he do but smile through it and look forward to his guest spot with abortion foe Doug E. Fresh (dream conversation: "Sorry, Doug - I don't beatbox with anti-choice zealots. Got Biz Markie's number?" Actually, Biz might be anti-choice as well but at least the genius didn't rap about it). But this kind of vacuous shit is perfect for the sparkless Sparks who took it to the Oscars towards the end by choking up a bit. The judges (esp. Randy) love her because she's blandly moldable and young enough for the molding to pay off longer than it would with Melinda Doolittle. But good music? Hey, the show's over.

My hope is that Sanjaya breaks out from all this and creates some fucked-up masalas - Cornershop with a Britney Spears brattishness, I'm conjuring up in my sick rock crit fantasies. He certainly was the highlight in what amounted to the dreariest finale show yet. Sure, Tony Bennett took everyone to school and Bette Midler had some mic problems (I hope). But that's barely tomorrow's water cooler fodder. The evening was simply too even-keeled overall. I kept waiting for a Prince to sweep me off my feet. Even Joe Perry whipped up a big whoop next to Sanjaya (nice geetar, though). And all that the lovely but predictably arranged (oh wow! end on "With A Little Help From My Friends" - how novel!) Sgt. Pepper medley proved was how hard it is to fuck up such gorgeous melodies. Carrie Underwood seemed properly stunned by the beauty of "She's Leaving Home" and Ruben Studdard didn't look one bit silly singing about "cellophane flowers of yellow and green" (well, maybe a little bit...).

In short, I think Idol is starting its downward climb. But it's not just due to all of the above nor my displeasure in Sparks' victory. From gee-whiz backup singer Doolittle to Sir Mix-A-Lot sparring partner Lewis, the show's millions of viewers are now fully aware of an echelon of popular music populated with once-weres and hopefuls barely scraping by. And it diminishes the Preston Sturges-like quality that makes the show so bracing to watch. Religious nuts, fat people, Sanjaya, even shitty singers (e.g. William Hung) try not to waste their big chance and the resulting struggle makes for television more gripping than any cops-docs-lawyers hour-long. But now that a certain level of professionalism has been introduced from the get go, the drama necessarily loses some of its lift. That's why it was hardly surprising to see the footage of Jordin Sparks on American Juniors (look it up). But it's still a bummer - she was clearly groomed for victory in a way that Fantasia was not.

That doesn't render Fantasia more authentic (gawd forbid); it just makes her story more interesting. So yeah sure, I'll take it in next year and the year after that (and after that?). I watch so little TV that as a budding media scholar, I gotta keep my toes in somewhere beyond The Simpsons. But even the reality TV format will atrophy (if it hasn't already - witness the "when I call your name, step forward" routine on that Spielberg-sponsored movie show afterwards last night...strictly Snoozeville). But it's the kind of showbiz head starts outlined above that will quicken the genre's demise.

American Idol 5/9/2007 - Jordin can take this fucker

2007-05-10T21:35:00.000-07:00

So stop her and let's have a Blake/Melinda finale.

Who knows what did Lekisha in ultimately? I'd say it was her inability to sublimate the sadness she alluded to in her interview (and that I'm sure millions have long since detected). She just seemed so saaaaad after every song which some viewers no doubt read as a kind of haughty nonchalance. Or maybe she gave us an unappealing glimpse into her subsequent stardom. Either she couldn't feign the resilience we require of our pop stars or was unwilling to wallow in the madness of the pop star life (a la Britney). Maybe Broadway's her true calling - she can play at being someone else.

But at least some of us can feel a something underneath Lekisha. Jordin's merely characterless. Again, perfect for pop product but not pop priesthood. I doubt she'll record anything to makes us believers much less speak in tongues.

Did you notice how confident Blake looked once he found out he'd be back next week? Maybe he was just being modest. After all, it's a delicate balancing act to discover you're not going home; you can't be too happy else you'll look like a jerk to the loser. Still, I think he knows he'll be alright even if he loses the big prize. He's just so damn musical that he can thrive in a variety of contexts. My guess is that if Filter (or was it Live?) was courting Chris Daughtrey, some crusty new wave act is current casting about for a lead vocalist and Blake will find himself fronting, oh I don't know, Gene Loves Jezebel or Modern English.

American Idol 5/8/2007 - Who's Your Favorite Bee Gee?

2007-05-08T19:42:00.000-07:00

Hmmm. Maybe theme weeks aren't the best way to find great singers. Bee Gees night just didn't work. That's because this music does not allow solo vocalists to shine. From "Holiday" psych to "To Love Somebody" schlock to "Stayin Alive" shoogity, each Gee blended into the other more than he stood out from the falsetto whitewash. "Bee Gees" always subsumed "Barry Gibb." And their songs don't reward impeccable enunciation. No one has ever known what the freak the Brothers Gibb were singing in the verses (and even the chorus!) of "Stayin' Alive" (quick - recite all the lyrics right now!) and an adult contemporary attention to every diphthong renders the songs too pageanty, to borrow Simon's diagnosis of Jordin's "Woman in Love" (although "too Broadway" is another term that comes to mind).

So:

Blake fucked up with honors, bravely covering (that word somehow seems right for him - already such an artist!) an obscurity like "This Is Where I Came In." But an obscurity it remained - Paula said he made the song contemporary. But it IS contemporary - it was released in 2001! Wonder what Barry thought of that gaffe.

Melinda was competent and dull with only half a performance to ride on.

Lekisha couldn't find her way through the falsetto.

And then Jordin, my least fave. What is it about her that I don't dig? Maybe she seems too perfect an American Idol, largely due to the youth factor. After seven years of indentured servitude to Simon Co., she'll still be young which only expands her profit-making potential. Plus she's eager to please in a way that seems forced as if mom implored her to keep smiling through Simon's tirades no matter how much he humiliates her. Where's the grit, the 'tude? And actually, where's the niceness? Right, Melinda's "gee, am I really a great singer?" shtick has long since reached the crusty stage. But she seems genuinely ("seems" next to "genuinely" is a contradiction, I know, but that's how pop music works) friendly whereas Jordin plays at it, aspires to it. She's just not there yet. And I don't think she has it in her (or rather, her future keepers don't have it in them) to make interesting music out of getting to that illusion of genuineness.

But it's getting cozy and someone's gotta split. My hope? Jordin. My guess? Lekisha.

Dixon's Resident Advisor podcast = Best mix of the year

2007-05-04T21:33:00.000-07:00

Go here:

http://mnmlbeats.wordpress.com/tag/ra-mixe/

Scroll to the bottom and download the Dixon Resident Advisor podcast. It's the best mix I've heard since M.I.A./Diplo's Piracy Funds Terrorism, Vol. 1.

Here's the track listing:

01. Amp Fiddler - Faith (Jazzanova Remix)
02. Alice Smith - Love Endeavor (Maurice Fulton Remix)
03. Kelis - 80s Joint
04. Owusu & Hannibal - Lonnie's Secret
05. Kathy Diamond - Album Track 13
06. Paul Randolph - Believer (Jazzanova Remix)
07. Demba (Boundzound?) - Louder (Henrik Schwarz Main Mix)
08. Martin Landsky - Let Me Dance (Sebo K Remix)
09. Telepopmusic - Love Can Damage Your Health (Ferrer Remix)
10. Tracey Horn - It's All True (Martin Butrich Remix)
11. Matthew Herbert - Moving Like A Train (Smith n Hack Remix)

"Lonnie's Secret" by Owusu & Hannibal will wind up on my top ten singles list for the decade even though it's not a single per se but in the era of mp3s there really is no such thing as a single per se anymore right and besides it might as well be a single since it sits all single-like in this extracelestial mix.

And here's the de facto cover:

Do it now.

American Idol 5/2/2007

2007-05-03T21:39:00.000-07:00

Not much to say beyond I'm sorry to see Chris go. But only cuz he's pretty - it was his time. And Phil, may he run into a George Jones collection with godspeed (I suggest this one). As for the guests, Bon Jovi were a bore. And much as my students adore him, I just can't get with Robin Thicke's attenuated soul (didn't D'Angelo attenuate it enough?). Plus I can't shake the Alan Thicke from his face and the effect is eerie.

Not all disco moments happen on the dancefloor

2007-05-02T17:12:00.001-07:00

UT RTF AI (PYT!) Kristen Warner has risen up to almost every grad school challenge with vim and grace. But the one that continually eludes her is Mac use.

She made her Mac hatred known a few months back by trying to get me to watch one of those smarmy Youtube harangues "exposing" the difficulties of Macs. It immediately became clear that she bought into this party line when she demanded "How do you get onto the internet with a Mac?" ("Um, click on it."). But I tend to get bursted blood vessels when I argue for the intuitiveness of Macs over the gearhead time wasting of PCs. So I let the matter slide.

Wehehehehehehehehl. Welly welly welly. Wellity wellity wellity. Last week, in our shared office, Kristen was surfing the internet on our Mac (clicking works!) and then turned to me, head shaking back and forth all sassy-like, and said "Ok, so how do you save pictures from the internet? There's no right click button on the mouse."

Ooooooweeedoggies! My entire body felt like a penis mere nanoseconds before ejaculation. "You wanna see?" I clicked on the pic and then dragged it to the desktop. C'est tout. Total running time: 0.0000001 seconds.

Kristen's jaw didn't hit the floor before I threw my hands in the ay-aire and waved them like I just didn't cay-aire. But hit it did.
"That's it?"
"Yeah, it's right there on your desktop," I assured her in the midst of a disco victory dance. Not even Sylvester could make me feel more mighty real at that moment.

The lesson: A simple one. Come over to the darkside, Kirsten.

American Idol 5/1/2006

2007-05-01T20:42:00.001-07:00

I can't even remember what last week's theme was. Write in with the answer and I'm sure I'll have something witty to say about it.

Tonight was Bon Jovi aka rock which you knew by all the instrumentalists joining several contestants in the limelight. Gotta keep that authenticity quotient up.

Good night overall, especially considering none of the remaining six are rock types. I don't know - is Chris rock at all? I still think his best performance was that "Pig in the Stink" or "Pig in the Pink" or whatever that Jason Mraz song was called. But is Jason Mraz rock? What is Jason Mraz, for that matter (besides very, VERY pretty)? Singer-songwriter? But that has such folky connotations. Certainly not R&B even though I think that's what Chris is aiming for (wonder if he has Timbaland's cell number yet). Anyhoo, Chris' "Wanted Dead or Alive" was zzzzzzzzzz on arrival. His winning just-fucked looks have now officially failed him.

Jordin (sp?) fucked up - an object lesson for those who think softer versifying is easier than belted chorusifying.

And Phil...ugh. Number six with a bullet (please). Stuart called him a blank slate which sounds great in pop theory. I reminded him of such divine cyphers as Aaliyah and Taana Gardner (those double A's!). But I just realized the sexism (and racism?) inherent in that conclusion. Are only women available for blank musical slates? Who are the male counterparts? I'm blankin' (get it?). The teen idols? Billy Joel? In short, is our discomfort with Phil a result of this apparent mismatch between men and a certain chameleonic spot-changing? Maybe so. But sometimes blank equals blah (e.g. Celine Dion whose duo with Dead Elvis was grody indeed although I bet The King would've loved it) and as with most things Idol, there's just no music to the guy. At least Aaliyah had Timbaland. And Taana Gardner has one of the greatest singles of all-time (see my 1980s singles list to the right). He needs a similar sort of setting in order to get by and Idol simply doesn't provide them.

So you have to provide them for yourself which Blake did beautifully. His pomo "You Give Love a Bad Name" (is that the name?) gave me goosebumps. But I'm willing to concede that 1/4 of those bumps were because he looked so bon, Simon Le Bon, to be precise. The man is music; but new wave is his destiny. Get gayer. Asymmetricalize your hair. Never get enough.

As for the soul gals, Melinda was more consistent than Lekisha. But Lekisha got to the top of the mountain with that attitudinal stare before the last line. Maybe she was cheating by choosing one of Bon Jovi's "soul" songs. But so what? It's not as if Simon is out to sign a Betty Davis (I hope).

American Idol 5/1/2006

2007-05-01T20:42:00.000-07:00

I can't even remember what last week's theme was. Write in with the answer and I'm sure I'll have something witty to say about it.

Tonight was Bon Jovi aka rock which you knew by all the instrumentalists joining several contestants in the limelight. Gotta keep that authenticity quotient up.

Good night overall, especially considering none of the remaining six are rock types. I don't know - is Chris rock at all? I still think his best performance was that "Pig in the Stink" or "Pig in the Pink" or whatever that Jason Mraz song was called. But is Jason Mraz rock? What is Jason Mraz, for that matter (besides very, VERY pretty)? Singer-songwriter? But that has such folky connotations. Certainly not R&B even though I think that's what Chris is aiming for (wonder if he has Timbaland's cell number yet). Anyhoo, Chris' "Wanted Dead or Alive" was zzzzzzzzzz on arrival. His winning just-fucked looks have now officially failed him.

Jordin (sp?) fucked up - an object lesson for those who think softer versifying is easier than belted chorusifying.

And Phil...ugh. Number six with a bullet (please). Stuart called him a blank slate which sounds great in pop theory. I reminded him of such great cyphers as Aaliyah and Taana Gardner (those double A's!). But I just realized the sexism (and racism?) inherent in that conclusion. Are only women available for blank musical slates? Who are the male counterparts? I'm blankin' (get it?). The teen idols? Billy Joel? In short, is our discomfort with Phil a result of this apparent mismatch between men and a certain chameleonic spot-changing? Maybe so. But sometimes blank equals blah (e.g. Celine Dion whose duo with Dead Elvis was grody indeed although I bet The King would've loved it) and as with most things Idol, there's just no music to the guy. At least Aaliyah had Timbaland. And Taana Gardner has one of the greatest singles of all-time (see my 1980s singles list to the right). He needs a similar sort of setting in order to get by and Idol simply doesn't provide them.

So you have to provide them for yourself which Blake did beautifully. His pomo "You Give Love a Bad Name" (is that the name?) gave me goosebumps. But I'm willing to concede that 1/4 of those bumps were because he looked so bon, Simon Le Bon, to be precise. The man is music; but new wave is his destiny. Get gayer. Asymmetricalize your hair. Never get enough.

As for the soul gals, Melinda was more consistent than Lekisha. But Lekisha got to the top of the mountain with that attitudinal stare before the last line. Maybe she was cheating by choosing one of Bon Jovi's "soul" songs. But so what? It's not as if Simon is out to sign a Betty Davis (I hope).

American Idol many rough weeks later

2007-04-22T21:37:00.000-07:00

Latin week was rough for everyone. Even though Latin music abounds with great singers who you could name better than me, I think of great Latin rhythms before singers. And as such, it's just not a genre to highlight singing, particularly singing by eight non-Latin twentysomethings. The same holds for funk. Yes, James Brown could beg, scream, and shout as well as any soul deity. But that's just not his gift to the world. And after Soul Brother No. 1, where are you going to turn for great funk vocals? P-Funk? Zapp? The Gap Band? Could Hayley have saved herself with "Funky President?"

Still, the contestants did their best to find the most Eurovision Latin hits available with Gloria Estefan predictably dominating the evening. A dreary show all around even though it got the overdue job done of sending Hayley back to whatever wallpaper she'll blend with best.

Then last week's show comes right on the heels of Cho Seung-Hui's shooting spree. And as the Mr. suggested, Sanjaya Malakar was a casualty of the sour national mood. But I find it ominous that Sanjaya was voted off during country week. "In a time of tragedy, let's get back to the verities," his departure begs, screams, and shouts. And where can we find these verities? Why, in Phil Stacey, all of a sudden, now that he's decided country is his soul. This is why he wasn't even in the bottom three last week. I didn't believe his announcement just like I haven't believed a single note he's sung all season (as with Lekisha, he seems distracted by some sort of sadness although Lekisha can paper over it with a much better voice).

But sincerity hardly mattered after Monday. Sanjaya represents the unfamiliar, the "foreign," difference, some of the concepts Cho Seung-Hui represents to so many Americans. A vote cast to keep Sanjaya on for entertainment value (Hey! isn't that the point of the show anyway?) or to sway the numbers towards "incompetence" would be a vote for those concepts. But Sanjaya met every slab of negativity with aplomb and megawatts of charm. When the going got rough, the hair went up into a mohawk. As such, he represents the crazed opportunism that is as American as the country verities. He held on and he'll continue to hold on, maybe even eclipsing the actual winner. Phil is merely grasping onto something, anything. And Cho Seung-Hui let go a long time ago.

American Idol 2/27/07 - Well, try Europe, Leslie

2007-03-03T08:56:00.000-08:00

So it turns out that this week's casualty Leslie Hunt wasn't even trying to access Melissa Etheridge; she was aiming for Nina Simone. And thus we have the first great maxim of the season: "America don't care for jazz," snuck in at the very end of the broadcast like some distress call.

Wish I could throw out a line to her. But the only one I can come up with is: "This is news to you?" Jazz has long since become the new classical what with its "aw, poor baby" institutional affiliations, its musicological barriers to understanding if not pleasure, and its frequent sterility. As such, most Americans must be forced to care about jazz if they're to think of it at all. Not that its keepers make it any easier, the swellheads. As with Beatles fans, jazz douchebags, as they are affectionately known on ILM, betray their cause with a snooty inability to live in the now. So for me, I love jazz but I'll give as much attention to the clueless musings of Homer Simpson as I do to Gary Giddins.

And Ms. Hunt's equally clueless admonishment only fans the flames of jazz indifference (spilling over into hate). It certainly doesn't help the cause that she sang the exact same song as A.J. Tabaldo (who was also kicked off this week...it's a conspiracy!!), no matter how different the arrangements. Hadn't she ever heard Billie Holiday's "I'm A Fool To Want You?"

In other news, note to Ryan: our Jennifer Hudson? Our? Sure, y'all didn't vote her off. But that still doesn't make her yours.

Note(s) to Randy: Heart is NOT edgy, esp. in their song doctored days. And yes, us jazz-hating Americans do know Jamiroquai...unfortunately.

Brandon Rogers was a sap this week and deserved the ax. But he inspired Simon's best bitchiness of the season so far: "My mom's b-day is in November. And I like puppies." Snap!

Sanjaya pulled in about 5,000 votes with his intro. But he delivered what is probably the very worst performance ever at this level of the competition. Told ya it wasn't a singing contest.

Chris Richardson's little kick dance is A-D-O-R-A-B-L-E.

But Blake Lewis is still my man. He's just flat-out musical, pointing towards a wider range of genres out there than the other contestants even hint at. He's already better than Jamiroquai. Do I hear Jamie Lidell?

As for the girls, Lakisha coasting and she knows it. Stephanie seemed behind the music. And Blake seemed to know it! And fuck Antonella Barbra. I'm glad Simon set her straight on who kicked Jennifer Hudson out. It's called AMERICAN Idol, sweetz, not Simon Idol.

Finally, the band is superb this season. The arrangement for Nick Pedro's losing "Fever" welded jazz insouciance to quiet storm. And the backup singers were smokin' on Sundance's ass-saving "Mustang Sally."

American Idol 2/21-22/07

2007-02-25T16:02:00.000-08:00

This is a singing competition, my foot. Sure, you gotta hit the pitches better than William Hung. But prettiness will get you very far. Why else would Seacrest announce that Sanjaya Malakar was in the top four? It's because he has a smile (and an even better pout) that could render puberty an eternal stage. He'll be with us a loooooong time.

And just say it, Randy! "Stay" was too BLACK for Nicole Tranquillo, not too urban. Even at that, though, her "crime" cannot match the desecration Alaina Alexander visited upon "Brass in Pocket." Part of what makes that song so special is that you can hear how unspecial Chrissie Hynde has felt at various points in her past. Another part is that Hynde fostered a legion of rock and roll women who didn't give a shit if they had some of your attention. Alaina Alexander simply embalmed the song with her lust for celebrity/money. She never gave the sense that she needed to sing it. So while she was technically better than, say, Gina Glocksen (who did NOT get the big note), she should have been axed for deeply misunderstanding the song. Now you know the difference between a good singer and someone who merely has a good voice.

Other brief notes: Leslie Hunt needs to access her inner Melissa Etheridge if she wants to make this a career. And LaKisha Jones was a bit pitchy at the end of her ballsy "And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going," no?

As for the boys, what can I say - barefeet and the Edgar Winter Group were potentially great gimmicks that just didn't work.

American Idol 2/20/07

2007-02-21T02:19:00.000-08:00

My legions of fans have demanded a regular American Idol play-by-play. So voila!

Very little of Idol's endless watchability has anything to do with music per se. I invest much more in these hopefuls when they're contestants than when they become our idols. And is this really my shortcoming? Face it - the winners (as well as such "losers" as Clay Aiken and Chris Daughtry) have made astonishingly insignificant contributions to the world of music. The only natural hit that has been extracted from Idol's unnatural hitmaking machinery is "Since U Been Gone" and I hold no particular hope for an encore from Ms. Clarkson. Ruben and Carrie are prisoners of their ghettos. Taylor Hicks is wishing he had a ghetto. And Fantasia's voice was too artful for the Idol treatment to begin with.

No, what makes Idol better than any prime time novel extant is the weekly Preston Sturges-like drama on the inequities of capitalism. Hard work and talent can help you acquire lots all kinds of capital, Idol reminds us. But so can good looks and pure dumb luck and only Simon seems willing to wrestle with that icky reality. Take cutie patootie Chris Richardson, for instance. His vocal was unquestionably one of the weaker ones of the evening. But ain't no way he's leaving anytime soon. The boy oozes sexiness and he knows how to work it for the camera. What's a few sour notes when this pimple-poppin JT is singing to ME? And if Simon isn't exactly hearing a symphony, he's certainly seeing dollar signs. As usual, he was dead on about the performance. He'd be this century's very own Preston Sturges were he not so preoccupied with seeing dollar signs.

And just to prove that the show has little to do with music, how hilarious was it when Randy misidentified Chris' song as recorded by Edwin McCain instead of his "boy" Gavin DeGraw! Not that I blame him; I myself have trouble telling them apart without the help of a Google image search.

My least favorite contestant, purely on an ideological level, is Brandon Rogers. Yeah, yeah, he's good, maybe even very good. But he contributes to the widespread delusion that backup singing is somehow a lesser calling than idolatry when in actuality it's one of the saner musical career options. This entire middle ground between Kelly Clarkson and the myriad hopeless that make me sound like Al Green is woefully unexplored. Even Paula doesn't know what role backup singers serve. She told Brandon that he needed to get rid of the background runs he was used to doing. But isn't that what lead singers do? Backup singers provide the foundation from which an Al Green can start running (e.g. check out how he never sings the melody of "I'm Still in Love with You"). As such, they're an undervalued but essential resource for the idols at the helm. Brandon has already been "lucky enough to work with the best" of them (assuming you feel Anastacia is one of the best). But he's pushing his luck. Now pushing one's luck is the engine behind some of the best music because it gives us a sense of how much room there is to move around in a world ruled by capital. It's why, for instance, Gino Washington's "Gino is a Coward" is one of the most dramatic and moving singles of all-time. But it takes more than a good voice to keep on pushing and I doubt that Brandon has anything more than that in him. Which is certainly not an advertisement against backup singing. Quite to the contrary, it should make one feel lucky for having a career in music in the first place.

Sanjaya Malakar is another cutie who will soar despite slight vocals. But here I gotta admit that the sound of a slight Stevie Wonder was attractively disquieting. Still, that frown (and that smile) will get the little girls dialing for a long time to come. And props for completing the GED early to concentrate on stardom.

Phil Stacey's look is attractively disquieting. But however well the judges felt he did, he'll prove too disquieting for the little girls that vote.

Biggest surprise was A.J. Tabaldo who turned in a credible version of Luther's "Never Too Much."

My sociological fave Chris Sligh checked in with a song by Mute Math (yeah, I had to look them up too). He won't make it all the way. But he has a fine career in rock criticism awaiting him. Check out this sardonic aperçu: "Only one of us will be standing up and singing 'Do I Make You Proud' and I look forward to that." The man knows a pieceashit Diane Warren-esque inspirational number when he hears it.

But best in show goes to my boy Blake Lewis. Confident, vaguely alt, he's clearly already there. But why was everyone (including the Mr.) so surprised that he sang Keane. What were they expecting, The Fat Boys? It is a singing competition as Simon reminded him last week.

As usual, Ryan Seacrest continues to provide the low points. When will he realize that Chris Sligh comes off less gay openly praising Sanjaya's looks than he does telling Chris "Glad you're on that couch"? And his "sweetheart" sparring with Simon was disgracefully homophobic. Oh well - he has cute feet.

Memphis, TN – greatest vacation ever?

2007-02-18T18:28:00.000-08:00

Well, maybe Hollywood 1985 was better. Or Las Vegas 2010? But for now, at this point in my life, Memphis is it.

Let’s get Graceland out of the way first since upon my return eight out of ten people greeted me with “How was Graceland?” and not “How was Memphis?” Maybe I encouraged the delusion myself before I left, can’t recall. But so many other attractions eclipsed Graceland, fine as it was. Still, gotta give the people what they ask for.

First off, a bit of consumer advice. As of this writing, there are “three great ways to tour” Graceland according to elvis.com. The Graceland Mansion Tour is just the manse and grounds. And truth be told, you could live an extremely rich and varied life exercising the consumer discretion to choose that option. But for just $5 more ($4.50 for students…and there’s a AAA discount) payable to The King’s cadaver, you get The Graceland Platinum Tour which “includes an audio-guided tour of Graceland Mansion and grounds, along with self-guided tours of Elvis's two custom airplanes, Elvis's Automobile Museum, the Sincerely Elvis Museum, and Elvis After Dark,” i.e. all the goodies across the street at Graceland Plaza, the complex where you start your journey anyway before being bused across Elvis Presley Boulevard and up to Graceland. I mention this because the biggest of the airplanes, The Lisa Marie, was sweeeeet. I liked it even better than Graceland itself. But my enthusiasm may be due to the fact that I LOATHE flying and the plush seatery and Elvis’ comfy bed (all befitted with regulation seatbelts) gave the illusion of safety. Stuart assured me I’d like the smaller one better because it’d move around less up in the air. I’ll never know. The other museums are fun but quickly consumable, sprinkled throughout shop after shop of memorabilia stores, each one visited in the hopes that it would reveal something fresh about Our Lord The Pelvis. And they did – Peter Guralnick’s Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley was easier to find there than his Careless Love: The Unmaking of Elvis Presley.

I mention all this for another reason. There is the Graceland Entourage VIP Tour which costs $68 (Platinum’s $30). In addition to all the benefits of the Platinum Tour, you get “front of the line access, special all day ticket, keepsake backstage pass, and an enhanced tour.” Ok, first of all, we went on Elvis’ motherfunkin’ birthday and waited in no lines. Actually, we had no intention of going that day because we assumed the place would be swamped. But for some fucked-up reason, fans want to celebrate his death more than the day he was put on this earth. We drove by and decided to give it a shot when we saw no crowds (we later learned that the mayor gave a little speech early in the morning). Apart from free birthday cake and coffee back on the other side of EP Blvd., his birthday is just not a big deal. Now there may be lines during the summer or if you’re dumb enough to go on August 16th. Still, the VIP Tour would not have helped us in that regard. I don’t know what this “special all day ticket” is - after several hours with no one shooing us away, we felt that we had thoroughly exhausted the place (and even the Elvis outlet store up the street a bit). Fuck the keepsake backstage pass – your ticket is keepsake enough. And I’m suspicious of enhanced tours when there’s no mention of how exactly enhanced they are. The only sign of VIP privilege was a section in Graceland Plaza marked “VIP Section.” Only two people were sitting there. They looked a bit nervous.

In short, don’t do the VIP.

Before boarding the bus to Graceland (total trip time: about 2 minutes), you get your picture taken in front of a cheap painted Graceland backdrop for what we assumed were security purposes. But no, that’s not cheesy enough. When you step off the bus after the mansion tour, your cheese ass picture is for sale at a merch table for $10. I wonder if they would’ve let us purchase the pic of the cute rock and roll boys in our bus instead of our AWFUL one.

As for Graceland itself, I suggest reading Karal Ann Marling’s longwinded, hideously illustrated but still generally excellent Graceland: Going Home with Elvis. Elvis freaks get itchy about this book because Marling dares to shift her focus away from The Almighty for a larger portrait of The South (note to editor: retain caps) and a vast field of inauthentic Americana. But for those of us who can live without His presence for moments at a time, it will anticipate reactions and answer questions you’re going to have immediately. Here’s a brief rundown:

1. Graceland’s smaller than many people expect.

2. It is indeed situated in a long strip of crass commerce which somehow serves only to further mask Graceland's own crass commerciality.

3. Elvis did not find Graceland in some untainted Garden of Eden. The crass commerce had already settled in by the time he purchased it.

4. To the extent that it apes the mansions in Gone With The Wind, it is a sham: “There had never been a house in all of Georgia remotely like the Hollywood Twelve Oaks that threatened to disappear into its own forest of ornate columns.” (142) Also, Tara in the Margaret Mitchell’s novel was “plain, uncolumned” (147) to ironically set off “Scarlett’s (later) carpetbagger failures of good taste.” (143) But the film flattened out this irony by making everything “uniformly lush.” (147)

5. Pause for a gorgeous line about Mama Presley’s ghost which some claim to encounter now and then: “She flitted in and out of the blue lights strung along the driveway, carrying her ectoplasmic lawn chair down the hill to sit and visit with the fans camped just outside the gates of heaven.” (158)

6. Actually, a question remains. I always thought that a peanut butter and banana sandwich was THE Elvis dish. And indeed, I had one somewhere on Graceland Plaza (I gave half of it to Stuart – a bit too heavy for me, esp. with only a Sprite to wash it down). But now I read that Elvis made his notorious late night 1976 flight to Denver for The Fool’s Gold which is a deep-fried PB/J sub with a pound of fried bacon. Here are some pics:

So why isn’t this available on Graceland Plaza? And where/when did the banana (ever?) come in?

My favorite room? The Living Room and again, Marling helped me understand why: “The studied disposition of parts suggests public or quasi-public spaces, like cocktail lounges and hotel rooms…these spaces remain impersonal and lifeless in a way the funkier, more idiosyncratic red rooms upstairs were not.” (221) I don’t agree with “lifeless.” The Living Room breathes with the life of not only tourists enjoying their first “holy shit! I finally made it here!” glimpse of the house but also the many visitors to Graceland while Elvis was alive. This is where Elvis came down to meet you, the last stop before “the nervous, episodic quality” (196) of the rest of the house not to mention the funky idiosyncracy of the upstairs. Few people ever enjoyed these episodes of Graceland before it was opened to the public. And even when the King was alive, almost no one was admitted upstairs which is where the lifelessness really resides, a symbol of the unknowable, untourable reality of death.

But impersonal? Absolutely, in the greatest pop way. And here the most telling detail is those stained glass peacock panels which are supposed to separate the living room from something called the music room but serve only to underline the two spaces as one continuous flow of modest kitsch. They mark the kind of personal enclave one would find in a hotel lobby, at a slight remove from the nearest co-inhabitants but still visible and potentially audible to all. Nothing here suggests the comfort and permanence of Home, from the television set at an neck-stretching 90 degree angle in the music room to the uncomfortable low back of the living room’s fifteen-foot sofa. The peacock panels thus epitomize the illusion that this space isn’t for Elvis but rather “everyone” which helped mitigate my sad feelings of have-notdom during the rest of the tour.

Two quick observations to wrap up Graceland: I loved the staircase leading down to the Jungle Room. Always nice to have an extra escape route. And judging solely from the various jumpsuits on display, Elvis was never as fat as reported.

We lit out to Sun Studios immediately afterwards and it wound up the high point of the entire trip. I’m not a rootsy guy and have little use for origin myths. And it’s becoming increasingly difficult to hear the revolution in Elvis’ Sun sessions. But boy did I ever get sucked into the romance of firsts standing right where Sam Phillips placed Elvis for the recording of “That’s All Right,” the “first rock and roll record” (or the last if you’re Nick Tosches). Or fingering the indentation in the tile supposedly made by Bill Black’s bass. Or salivating over the 78 of “That’s All Right” on the wall (even though, yes, I know the “Milkcow Blues Boogie” 78 is rarer). Our cute, fun rockabilly tour guide actually gave us a moment to kiss the floor if we so desired.

Where Graceland was smaller than anticipated, I was genuinely stunned at how large the actual studio looked. It’s far from cavernous but Jim Jarmusch’s Mystery Train made it seem like a closet. Also surprising was the fact that it’s used very regularly for recording today.

Before entering hallowed ground, there’s a little exhibit upstairs tracing the development of rock and roll. Our guide told the tale of the busted amplifier that was responsible for the sound of another first rock and roll, Jackie Brenston’s “Rocket 88.” Upon seeing a busted amplifier in a glass case, I interrupted his spiel and asked if that was THE amp. No, he said, a bit put out, but he’d let us know if any item wasn’t the original although no further mention was made of simulacra.

Day Two was spent at The Memphis Rock N Soul Museum. Both the best and worst thing about it was that the digital audio tour guide allows you to listen to over 100 songs in their entirety – great for rockin’ the fuck out but an evil temptation with a husband who’s zipping through the place at three times your speed. Favorite factoid: Sam Phillips made a lot (most?) of his money by getting in on the ground floor of Holiday Inn. There was even a Holiday Inn Records label.

That evening, we ate at R.P. Tracks, a rather grungy bar/restaurant/café popular with the college set. I place “bar” first because that element gave off the strongest vibe and as such, I wasn’t expecting much from the food. But we were getting visions of Elvis by the time we reached the bottom of our vegan nachos. Supporting a tower of guac, chips, and veggies was a bed of THE very best barbecue tofu we’ve ever had. This was some deep red shit that let you KNOW it was barbecue every bite of the way. Please, R.P. Tracks – send your recipe to Mother’s here in Austin whose BBQ tofu is bland as carnivores imagine it.

Crammed in a lot during the last day. The Stax Museum of American Soul Music had the unfortunate, but predictable, effect of diminishing Stax’s contribution to popular music by focusing on American soul in general. I know it’s blasphemy to say but Stax always offered diminishing returns anyway, especially as the 1970s rolled around. And their greatest figurehead, Otis Redding, has been eclipsed by Al Green (and not just because Green has the luxury of still being alive). Still, the hallway showcasing every Stax LP and single was particularly jizzworthy. And let it be known that one of their divisions put out an awful Lena Zavaroni record someone gave me for free.

The National Civil Rights Museum would take days to go through properly but we only had 90 minutes. It was terrifying rolling up to the correct address and seeing the Lorraine Motel (where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was shot) but no sign that this was also the museum. Another terrifying moment was standing where King was shot and seeing someone staring back at me from where James Earl Ray stood when he shot King from across the street. Stuart neglected to tell me that the museum continued across the street with an exhibit which explores the assassination in detail.

Did a quick jog down Beale Street which was profoundly anti-climactic. It was around 5pm so most stores were closed and the night life had yet to begin. Still, I got the sad impression that I wouldn’t be missing much beyond the desultory fifteen minutes we spent searching for signs of significance.

After a drive-by view of Ardent Studios, we had dinner at The Bar-B-Q Shop. Ok let’s settle something right now. Dry barbecue is a waste of time. To my palette (which admittedly is the planet’s most undiscerning), it tastes the same as meat with no barbecue sauce on it. So the dish to remember here was the barbecue spaghetti which you can get without meat. Gene-yus! Better than anything that passes for barbecue in the sorry food town that is Austin. And I drank a gallon of their amazing sweet tea. When I told the waitress how good it was, she sweetly replied “thanks for the compliment.” Now when have you ever heard that phrase uttered in a restaurant? (P.S. We saw our cute Sun Studios tour guide come in to pick up a few BOXES of barbecue. Wonder who he was bringing it back to. U2? Paul McCartney? Billy Lee Riley?)

One final Memphis observation. Where was everybody? Even American Idol noted the ghost town feel of the place. And this wasn’t just in the touristy area since we experienced a similar sense of desertion near our hotel which was about 5 miles from downtown. Could the following observation from Marling about William Faulkner at his Mississippi home Rowan Oak be generalized to explain the lack of bustle:

“Modest affluence never overwhelmed gentility. Nor did labor: the study was tucked away at the back of the house, off-limits to family and visitors…What the plantation stood for in the twentieth-century imagination was a spaciousness of life, an ease and a perpetual leisure, unspoiled by the grim necessities of making a living. Nostalgia for an Eden without regular jobs and hard cash…” (37)

Ok NOW it's official!

2007-01-19T21:38:00.000-08:00

It was suggested to me that I STILL wasn't a PhD candidate until I sent off some boring paper work (or rather, e-paper work). With that done, it's official. If a ten ton truck drops from the clouds on me seconds after I publish this post, I will have died a PhD candidate. The graduate school has confirmed my admission into candidacy. My beloved supervisor has approved it. I am registered for dissertation hours this semester. The graduate coordinator in my department has congratulated me. I never have to waste my life in mandatory "advising" appointments again. In short...

I AM NOW OFFICIALLY A PHD CANDIDATE!!!!!!

We want The Beatles quantized!!!

2007-01-15T21:50:00.000-08:00

I really rather love this new (ha!) Beatles album, Love (and if you don't know anything about it, check out Stephen Thomas Erlewine's useful summary here). It sits so carefully in the middle of options that it's bound to unite several different groups of music lovers in fury. As Erlewine suggests, seekers of the mash-up will roll their eyes at the safeness of the reconstructions while Beatles lifers will go into convulsions as is customary in the face of all "impurities." Me, I find it indulges my inner Beatles obsessive with an industrious spirit that splits the difference between campy and dorky.

But something I heard about Love on NPR's All Songs Considered recently indulged my inner Beatles hater (ok, inner Beatles FAN hater). On the 22 Dec 2006 show, host Bob Boilen interviewed Giles Martin, son of George and mixmaster wizard behind Love. Boilen asked Martin about the extent of tinkering done with the original tapes. Here's the exchange:

Giles Martin: I suppose our rule was we didn't want to take any soul out of The Beatles. The first thing I did was the drum solo from the end going to "Get Back" and the easiest way to do this is to put this is in time...What I mean is the tempo doesn't vary - Ringo wouldn't slow down or speed up. Like you do this in modern tracks. Hip hop guys do this all the time...And I did that to Ringo and it sounded awful...

Bob Boilen: Can I just paraphrase real quick? I want to make sure I understood. What happens with modern techonology is you can make something that maybe drifts a little bit one way or another, the human factor of drumming, and you can make it lock like a clock, right? And you did that to Ringo and that sounded awful? Is that what you're saying?

Giles Martin: It sounded like Beatles in the eighties.

(Courteous laughter from Boilen.)

End

Oh like that's self-evident - the eighties = quantization (which is the technical term for what they're talking about). Moreover, quantization = soullessness. And worst of all, the eighties = awful!

Ok look. I'm grateful for Martin's work on Love. If tonight Mr. Kite is topping the bill by slamming into "I Want You (She's So Heavy)," I'll buy a ticket. But goddamned if I'm gunna sit still while the 1960s (here in the guise of rockist ideology) refuse to die AGAIN when they're being resuscitated via eighties hip-hop (and dance music) techniques. Yes, I know tape manipulation existed long before the days of yes, yes, y'all. But the spirit of Love is more Sugarhill than Les Paul and Mary Ford. In fact, I'd say Love is proof very positive that the musical world we inhabit today is largely a hip-hop/dance music one. So bow down to it, Giles Martin. And realize that we already have The Beatles quantized. See pic.

Straight outta 1988. Greatest Beatles cover ever?

Top Ten Singles/Albums 2006

2006-12-31T15:31:00.000-08:00

Below is the ballot I submitted to the first ever non-Christgau-helmed Pazz & Jop at the Village Voice. Damn right I'm schizy about it. But the man himself is voting. And it's a different world out there now, sorta like a cross between Brave New World and 1984, contrary to what this book says.

The albums list is a mess which is why it comes second (beyond the fact that I'm a singles guy). #10 is pure tokenism and a reissue (of sorts) which I hate including on albums lists. Some of these I've heard only a few times. And with others I either still need to hear them (T.I.: King) or haven't figured them out yet (Dylan). But as usual, I stand by my singles list. Tall.

Singles
1. Lady Sovereign: "Public Warning" (Def Jam)
2. The Federation: "18 Dummy" (Reprise)
3. Mocean Worker: "Under The Matzos Tree (Remix)" (MP3)
4. Justin Timberlake: "SexyBack" (Jive)
5. Mew: "The Zookeeper's Boy" (Sony BMG)
6. Rick Ross: "Hustlin'" (Def Jam)
7. Lily Allen: "LDN" (Regal)
8. Simon Bookish: "Terry Riley Disco" (Playlouder)
9. Skeletons & The Girl-Faced Boys: "Fit Black Man" (Ghostly International)
10. Ceephax: "Hardcore Wick" (Firstcask)

Albums
1. New York Dolls: One Day It Will Please Us To Remember Even This (Roadrunner)
2. Todd Snider: The Devil You Know (New Door)
3. Herbert: Scale (Studio !K7)
4. Sonic Youth: Rather Ripped (Geffen)
5. The Coup: Pick A Bigger Weapon (Epitaph)
6. Beirut: Gulag Orkestar (Ba Da Bing!)
7. Arctic Monkeys: Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not (Domino)
8. Girl Talk: Night Ripper (Illegal Art)
9. Congotronics 2 (Crammed Discs)
10. Queer Noises 1961-1978: From The Closet To The Charts (Trikont)

Box Sets Suck 1 - What It Is!: Funky Soul And Rare Grooves (1967-1977) (Rhino/WEA 2006)

2006-12-30T06:09:00.000-08:00

Here's part one in what I hope will be an undying attempt to rid the world of box sets and the horseshit claims made on their behalf. For each installment, I will take one overrated box set (which is almost as redundant as saying "a Bollywood musical") and winnow it down to one, snarkily titled, consumer-friendly CD. The buck starts here.

First up is What It Is!: Funky Soul And Rare Grooves (1967-1977), Rhino's bid for the discretionary income of your younger brother the aspiring DJ. What it isn't is very good, 91 tracks of mostly justifiably obscure funk (aka rare groove) begging some rapper or turntable magus to put up sparkling mansions onto its scaffolding. It starts off promising with The Watts 103rd St. Rhythm Band's well-named "Spreadin' Honey," a slinky instrumental that could serve as a band introduction to the late soul man of your choice. And then track two - wow! You already get the best track on the entire box with The Bar-Kays giving you the "Soul Finger," as joyous a party as early Sugarhill. But then track three - blech! You now have the worst track on the box, Brother Jack McDuff's flute-infested take on "The Shadow Of Your Smile," cocktail funk so weak it couldn't stir your shaken martini.

Had the box alternated like that, one would've been able to mine at least two CDs worth of gems and leave the rest as the soundtrack to pushing your shopping cart. But for better or worse, funk is so utilitarian that when it doesn't jam above and beyond the call of duty (as happens here with the "Tighten Up" clones and Criscoed-up Hammond B-3s), 5 hours of the stuff blends into a sort of musical camouflage. You literally can't hear many of these tracks.

Which is why it was very easy to compile the CD below (which still rates only an A-). The great and the godawful (see previous post) stood out like brightly colored easter eggs in a basket of 90% fill. I have no doubt that, oh, The Unemployed's "Funky Thing - Part 1" could funk me something good if I choose to boogie this new year's eve. But the schlock synths and proto-Mariah Carey trills of Funk Factory's "Rien Ne Va Plus" were so grotesque that at the last minute I welcomed them on the CD in place of Seatrain's "Flute Thing" (which I had included only because it sounded like an outtake from Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy).

Oh and can we talk about "rare groove," the lamest generic designation of all-time? Naming a genre after the obscurity of the records within it?!?! What's next, planned obsolescence punk?

Finally, shame on Amazon review Jerry McCulley for describing the box's previously unreleased take of Aretha Franklin's "Rock Steady" as "radically different." It's virtually identical to the original save for the absence of horns and some slowing-down at the end. When fancy packaging won't sucker 'em into buying box sets, bold-face lying should do the trick. Caveat downloader.

What It Really Is!: Funky Soul And Grooves (Bozelkablog 2006)

1. The Bar-Kays: Soul Finger - A "Mary Had a Little Lamb" quote, a snare peal that slides non-stop into the main horn seizure and we're off!

2. Jimmy Norman: Gangster Of Love (Parts I & II) - Only here for its noisy guitar.

3. Rufus Thomas: The Memphis Train - C'mon 'n ride it.

4. Natural Bridge Bunch: Pig Snoots, Part I - I'm off to the grocery store.

5. Eldridge Holmes: Pop, Popcorn Children - Goes well with pig snoots. Great avant horn breaks.

6. Johnny Cameron & The Camerons: Funky John - This sounds like a party in the next room that you're not sure you want to join. But there's some sonic value to that.

7. Titus Turner: Do You Dig It - I love parties where all the boys are bear-hugging.

8. Little Sister: Stanga - Sly's Fresh backup singers. Nuff said.

9. Ananda Shankar: Jumpin' Jack Flash - Nice to hear campy psychedelia with a tight bottom.

10. Curtis Mayfield: (Don't Worry) If There's Hell Below We're All Going To Go - Possesses an urgency the rest of the box lacks.

11. Johnny Harris: Stepping Stones - Hated it at first but its manic obnoxiousness eventually won me over. If there's gotta be flute, let it be hyper, damn near breathless flute.

12. 6ix: I'm Just Like You - More Sly. More drum machine. More nuff said.

13. Mongo Santamaría: I Can't Get Next To You - Was prepared to hate it but damned if it isn't even faster than The Temptations' version. And theirs didn't have congas in overdrive.

14. Hammer: Tuane - Scatting more desperate than professional.

15. Harlem River Drive Featuring Eddie Palmieri & Jimmy Norman: Seeds Of Life - Jamming more professional than desperate.

16. Baby Huey & The Babysitters: Hard Times - Male psychosis with creepy organ and Spam on the menu.

17. Earth Wind & Fire: Bad Tune - Also, a weird one.

18. The Beginning Of The End: Funky Nassau (Part II) - I hear very vague traces of highlife in here.

19. Little Richard: Nuki Suki - 15 years later, he still sounds very naughty.

20. Claudia Lennear: Everything I Do Gonna Be Funky - I like how the Sly-like guitar talks.

21. The Mystic Moods: Cosmic Sea - Prog funk by accident.

22. Funk Factory: Rien Ne Va Plus - Prog funk on purpose.

Time - 1:17:10

Trades are welcome.