This song has been on my mind a lot lately:
For the record, I have a huge backlog of subjects to write about here, but just moments ago I learned about GrooveShark and I'm learning how to use it. If it's as easy as it appears to be, I may at last be able to incorporate music on this blog. New depression? Not here!
Friday, January 16, 2009
Saturday, January 10, 2009
Two tickets to Paradise
I was sad to read here that the delightful free music/culture tabloid Arthur is ceasing print publication unless and until a publishing partner materializes. (And just a few moments later, I learned about a gardening magazine also biting the dust.)
On the bright side, Arthur still has an online presence, including a fine blog, where at the moment you can pay tribute to the late Ron Asheton with some bootlegs and hear/read Brian Eno's thoughts on Gaza. And this might just be the time for me to shell out for this 2004 Devendra Banhart-curated compilation CD
featuring folks like Joanna Newsom, Vashti Bunyan, Six Organs of Admittance, Antony, and Iron and Wine. Even more enticing is the DVD of archival footage of the Living Theater's Paradise Now and other landmarks of experimental/political theater circa 1968-69. I've read about these plays since I was a teenager, and it's wild to finally find out what they looked and sounded like. Judging from this promo trailer, they were very, very shrill:
Not the kind of thing I'm going to want to watch on a regular basis, but as an artifact of a crucial yet bygone era, there's no way I'm going to pass it up. Meanwhile, here's hoping Arthur returns to print ASAP.
PS. In brighter news from the publishing world, according to Boing Boing you can now find every incarnation of the Whole Earth Catalog/Review online. Like the Living Theater, this was a staple of my adolescence, even though I was about 10 years too late to the party. Check it out, right here!
On the bright side, Arthur still has an online presence, including a fine blog, where at the moment you can pay tribute to the late Ron Asheton with some bootlegs and hear/read Brian Eno's thoughts on Gaza. And this might just be the time for me to shell out for this 2004 Devendra Banhart-curated compilation CD
featuring folks like Joanna Newsom, Vashti Bunyan, Six Organs of Admittance, Antony, and Iron and Wine. Even more enticing is the DVD of archival footage of the Living Theater's Paradise Now and other landmarks of experimental/political theater circa 1968-69. I've read about these plays since I was a teenager, and it's wild to finally find out what they looked and sounded like. Judging from this promo trailer, they were very, very shrill:
Not the kind of thing I'm going to want to watch on a regular basis, but as an artifact of a crucial yet bygone era, there's no way I'm going to pass it up. Meanwhile, here's hoping Arthur returns to print ASAP.
PS. In brighter news from the publishing world, according to Boing Boing you can now find every incarnation of the Whole Earth Catalog/Review online. Like the Living Theater, this was a staple of my adolescence, even though I was about 10 years too late to the party. Check it out, right here!
Friday, January 02, 2009
Breakdown (go ahead, give it to me)
OK, OK, so it's been a while since my last confession. Forgive me, Father. I never intended to abandon this blog, for I certainly haven't abandoned my obsession with music. Perish the thought! I"ve just been otherwise engaged--and I never move that fast even in the best of circumstances.
Call it a New Year's resolution if you must, but I'm vowing to devote at least a few minutes every day (starting, uh, yesterday) to working on one of the many blogs I have a hand in. By my count, there are eight or nine that are going concerns, including this one. I'm way overdue on announcing this year's--oops, i mean last year's--Ehmke(e) Award winners, updating that new "Shuffle Off" feature I'd started a while back, and sharing lots of thoughts on lots of music. And it's all coming, folks. It's all coming. But not right now, for I've spent much of the evening prepping this entry on a sort-of-brand-new, sort-of-long-gestating blog instead. All things in time.
PS. Oh, yeah--about that photo up there. Little snafu involving some cleanser from DeltaSonic making its way into the radio/CD player and remaining there for weeks. (They were very good about paying for the repair, btw.) You'll be happy to learn that the situation has long since been rectified. My original plan was to use the image to re-introduce the "Shuffle Off" series, but then weeks/months went by, as they always do. Now it seems like an equally apt metaphor for the hole in all our lives left by my not posting anything here in nine long months.
Stay tuned. While you wait for a new entry, enjoy that new playlist feature over on the right. I just set that up tonight, after reading about it here. Nice addition, because I haven't yet figured out how to add audio clips to my posts like everybody else without getting hauled off to jail with that guy who leaked Chinese Democracy.
Wednesday, April 02, 2008
Shuffle Off #2: Mellow out, dude
A few weeks ago I was feeling a wee bit stressed out for various reasons, and thought it might be nice to fill the car CD player with relaxing music. It was also kinda cold, as I recall, so I went for sounds from warm climes. Here's the rundown:
1. Various artists, Hawaiian Slack Key Guitar Masters: Instrumental Collection. Picked this up in a giveaway bin at a past job around the time it came out in 1995; I tend to pull it out every few years and give it a spin or two, think to myself how pleasant it is, then put it back. Certainly does the trick in terms of calming jangled nerves, although in larger doses it's a bit too slack for my taste, so I actually took this out of the rotation first. I attribute the slight Muzak-y tendency to the fact that the label, Dancing Cat, is a subsidiary of Windham Hill. The only names I recognize on the lineup are Keola Beamer and Sonny Chillingworth, although I admit that I know next to nothing about the genre.
2. Kaouding Cissoko, Kora Revolution. Another freebie, and another disc that I play once or twice every few years. (Confession time: what first caught my eye was the cover art, and, believe it or not, the typography. 'Cuz I'm weird like that.) Interestingly, I tend to think of this as an instrumental album, but it turns out there are vocals all over it (the lyrics of which are translated and contextualized in the detailed CD booklet). That's a testament to the power of the kora playing here, which is incredibly lovely even if I don't get the "revolution" part. Cissoko has appeared on albums by Baba Maal and Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, and if you like those guys, odds are good you'll enjoy this.
3. Various artists, Putumayo presents Cape Verde. I'm going to assume that if you know any musician from this series of islands off the coast of Senegal, it's Cesaria Evora. (If you don't know her stuff, better get busy.) Evora has one track here, but there are eleven other performers as well, and just about all of them sound fine in my book. Putumayo compilations can be hit-or-miss, but this seems pretty solid, steering clear of the label's Easy Listening for Sipping Espresso and/or Shopping tendency.
4. João Gilberto, João voz e violão. A really strong (if too-brief) collection of songs, most of which Gilberto has recorded elsewhere. The twist here, which I'll attribute to producer/protege Caetano Veloso, is that the sound is totally stripped down--nothing but JG's super-quiet voice and unaugmented guitar. Of the three or four Gilberto albums I've heard, this is an excellent starting point. Unlike discs 1-3 above and #5 below, I play this one fairly often; in fact, it took up residency near the bedroom CD player for about two or three years as a quiet-time staple.
5. Caetano Veloso, Orfeu. Speaking of Caetano, here he is in soundtrack-composer mode, creating new music for a remake of Black Orpheus, alongside covers of songs from the original. Some of this is orchestral instrumentals, some features vocals, and the range of tempos and textures is all over the map. I wouldn't recommend this as an introduction to Veloso, but it has many interesting moments. (Bonus: handsome booklet, with lyrics in both Portuguese and English plus stills from the movie that make me want to see it someday soon.)
6. Voodoo Child/Moby, The End of Everything. Sure, people give Moby a hard time for his ambient/instrumental projects (hell, some people give him a hard time just for being Moby), but I happen to like this a great deal: it's fairly low-key, with some majestic moments now and then, the whole of it bearing real emotional weight. I had this on as background as a party once and at least two people bought copies the next day. My only beef: what's the point of having a pseudonym if you're going to announce who you are on the album cover? So much for the anonymity of electronic music. (This being a Moby album, there is one of his characteristic mini-essay rants in the booklet, though it's mighty short and can be summed up in its final line: "Animals are not ours to eat, wear, or experiment on.")
1. Various artists, Hawaiian Slack Key Guitar Masters: Instrumental Collection. Picked this up in a giveaway bin at a past job around the time it came out in 1995; I tend to pull it out every few years and give it a spin or two, think to myself how pleasant it is, then put it back. Certainly does the trick in terms of calming jangled nerves, although in larger doses it's a bit too slack for my taste, so I actually took this out of the rotation first. I attribute the slight Muzak-y tendency to the fact that the label, Dancing Cat, is a subsidiary of Windham Hill. The only names I recognize on the lineup are Keola Beamer and Sonny Chillingworth, although I admit that I know next to nothing about the genre.
2. Kaouding Cissoko, Kora Revolution. Another freebie, and another disc that I play once or twice every few years. (Confession time: what first caught my eye was the cover art, and, believe it or not, the typography. 'Cuz I'm weird like that.) Interestingly, I tend to think of this as an instrumental album, but it turns out there are vocals all over it (the lyrics of which are translated and contextualized in the detailed CD booklet). That's a testament to the power of the kora playing here, which is incredibly lovely even if I don't get the "revolution" part. Cissoko has appeared on albums by Baba Maal and Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, and if you like those guys, odds are good you'll enjoy this.
3. Various artists, Putumayo presents Cape Verde. I'm going to assume that if you know any musician from this series of islands off the coast of Senegal, it's Cesaria Evora. (If you don't know her stuff, better get busy.) Evora has one track here, but there are eleven other performers as well, and just about all of them sound fine in my book. Putumayo compilations can be hit-or-miss, but this seems pretty solid, steering clear of the label's Easy Listening for Sipping Espresso and/or Shopping tendency.
4. João Gilberto, João voz e violão. A really strong (if too-brief) collection of songs, most of which Gilberto has recorded elsewhere. The twist here, which I'll attribute to producer/protege Caetano Veloso, is that the sound is totally stripped down--nothing but JG's super-quiet voice and unaugmented guitar. Of the three or four Gilberto albums I've heard, this is an excellent starting point. Unlike discs 1-3 above and #5 below, I play this one fairly often; in fact, it took up residency near the bedroom CD player for about two or three years as a quiet-time staple.
5. Caetano Veloso, Orfeu. Speaking of Caetano, here he is in soundtrack-composer mode, creating new music for a remake of Black Orpheus, alongside covers of songs from the original. Some of this is orchestral instrumentals, some features vocals, and the range of tempos and textures is all over the map. I wouldn't recommend this as an introduction to Veloso, but it has many interesting moments. (Bonus: handsome booklet, with lyrics in both Portuguese and English plus stills from the movie that make me want to see it someday soon.)
6. Voodoo Child/Moby, The End of Everything. Sure, people give Moby a hard time for his ambient/instrumental projects (hell, some people give him a hard time just for being Moby), but I happen to like this a great deal: it's fairly low-key, with some majestic moments now and then, the whole of it bearing real emotional weight. I had this on as background as a party once and at least two people bought copies the next day. My only beef: what's the point of having a pseudonym if you're going to announce who you are on the album cover? So much for the anonymity of electronic music. (This being a Moby album, there is one of his characteristic mini-essay rants in the booklet, though it's mighty short and can be summed up in its final line: "Animals are not ours to eat, wear, or experiment on.")
Friday, February 01, 2008
Shuffle Off #1: Synthetic sounds redux
I have no shortage of ideas for recurring features for this blog; my only problem is making the time to make them happen. So I'm gonna strike while the iron is hot and launch one mere hours after it occurred to me. Inspired very indirectly by this popular garden-blog ritual/meme and by the way some people include what they're "Currently Listening To" in forums and blog posts, I thought it would be fun to share with you what's in heavy rotation on my car's 6-disc CD changer every now and then.
Ever since we got this car with such a ludicrous amount of audio options (there is also a plug for an iPod), I've been having fun curating various combinations of albums: an all-Paul Simon set, all-Van-the-Man, all-Janis, all-Radiohead ... and then some looser ideas, like a mishmash of indie-rock and earlier Americana (Matt Pond, My Morning Jacket, Music from Big Pink, etc.) and later a tribute to psychedelia (Hendrix, Big Brother & the Holding Co., etc.). Then I hit "shuffle" and let the fun begin.
At the moment, I'm on an electronic music kick (I hate the term "electronica"--much prefer "synthetic," since that's the general feel of the stuff) for the first time in years, prompted in part by listening to that Burial album all sorts of unlikely people seem to love (me, I'm finding it kind of repetitive and annoying) and an Autechre EP I'd been looking for for years and finally found used in a Toronto record store. So I decided to pull out a semi-random colleccion of stuff I acquired about 10 years ago (can it be? yikes!) when I discovered that instrumental electronic music was ideal accompaniment for writing, proofreading, driving to work, and all sorts of other mundane activities.
So here's what's in the car as of the beginning of February 2008:
1. Autechre, Gantz Graf. This duo is still probably tied with Aphex Twin as my all-time favorite purveyors of unlistenable noise. And I mean that as a high compliment; they have a brilliant (and frequently quite witty) way of balancing rhythm and chaos, although this particular EP dates from the height of their mostly-chaos period. I find myself fast-forwarding through the 3 tracks when one of them pops up--only to discover that it sounds almost exactly the same in fast-forward as it does at regular speed! (Value added: the flip side of the disc contains a trio of nice videos. But I'm not really sure this was worth the $13 Canadian I shelled out, since it's basically a glorified single.)
2. Kosheen, Resist. Bought this used shortly after it came out in 2001 on the strength of the single, "Hide U," and the freaky Natural History Museum cover art. I was fairly disappointed with most of the other 15 tracks and put it aside for years, but now it's turning out to be the standout of the current shuffle mix. I don't normally care for vocals in drum-and-bass-y stuff--to me the deathknell of the synthetic non-revolution of the late 90s was the widespread addition of singers and/or samples of singers--but I gotta say, Kosheen's Sian Evans has a fine voice, and the lyrics are a bit less silly/disposable than most in the genre.
3. Land of the Loops, Bundle of Joy. If you ask me, this is one of the great lost albums of the 1990s, ripe for rediscovery 20 years from now. One-man-band Alan Sutherland put together a wonderful collection of catchy melodies, weird sound bites, lovely ballads, and brief snippets that sound less like filler than like connective tissue. Secret weapons: guest vocalists Heather Lewis, Simone Ashby, and Meadie Ballenger. So, yeah, maybe I'm not as anti-singers-in-synthetic-music as I think I am. But only when they sound this good.
4. Howie B., Turn the Dark Off. Mr. B was the go-to guy for U2 and other rockers who wanted to dip their toes in synthetic music for a while there. Witness the spoken-word cameos by Robbie Robertson here, sounding nothing like his Band incarnation and a lot like a cross between Laurie Anderson and David Byrne.
5. Freaky Chakra vs. Single Cell Orchestra. I either paid a buck for this or got it for free, and I've always enjoyed it, although a friend of mine heard two minutes of it once and said it gave her a headache.
6. Aphrodite, Aphrodite. Another free or buck find, and a good illustration of what I was just saying about how annoying I find vocalists in this kind of music. Oh, no, wait: the only thing more annoying than singers in drum-and-bass? Rappers in drum-and-bass. That was the death knell.
Ever since we got this car with such a ludicrous amount of audio options (there is also a plug for an iPod), I've been having fun curating various combinations of albums: an all-Paul Simon set, all-Van-the-Man, all-Janis, all-Radiohead ... and then some looser ideas, like a mishmash of indie-rock and earlier Americana (Matt Pond, My Morning Jacket, Music from Big Pink, etc.) and later a tribute to psychedelia (Hendrix, Big Brother & the Holding Co., etc.). Then I hit "shuffle" and let the fun begin.
At the moment, I'm on an electronic music kick (I hate the term "electronica"--much prefer "synthetic," since that's the general feel of the stuff) for the first time in years, prompted in part by listening to that Burial album all sorts of unlikely people seem to love (me, I'm finding it kind of repetitive and annoying) and an Autechre EP I'd been looking for for years and finally found used in a Toronto record store. So I decided to pull out a semi-random colleccion of stuff I acquired about 10 years ago (can it be? yikes!) when I discovered that instrumental electronic music was ideal accompaniment for writing, proofreading, driving to work, and all sorts of other mundane activities.
So here's what's in the car as of the beginning of February 2008:
1. Autechre, Gantz Graf. This duo is still probably tied with Aphex Twin as my all-time favorite purveyors of unlistenable noise. And I mean that as a high compliment; they have a brilliant (and frequently quite witty) way of balancing rhythm and chaos, although this particular EP dates from the height of their mostly-chaos period. I find myself fast-forwarding through the 3 tracks when one of them pops up--only to discover that it sounds almost exactly the same in fast-forward as it does at regular speed! (Value added: the flip side of the disc contains a trio of nice videos. But I'm not really sure this was worth the $13 Canadian I shelled out, since it's basically a glorified single.)
2. Kosheen, Resist. Bought this used shortly after it came out in 2001 on the strength of the single, "Hide U," and the freaky Natural History Museum cover art. I was fairly disappointed with most of the other 15 tracks and put it aside for years, but now it's turning out to be the standout of the current shuffle mix. I don't normally care for vocals in drum-and-bass-y stuff--to me the deathknell of the synthetic non-revolution of the late 90s was the widespread addition of singers and/or samples of singers--but I gotta say, Kosheen's Sian Evans has a fine voice, and the lyrics are a bit less silly/disposable than most in the genre.
3. Land of the Loops, Bundle of Joy. If you ask me, this is one of the great lost albums of the 1990s, ripe for rediscovery 20 years from now. One-man-band Alan Sutherland put together a wonderful collection of catchy melodies, weird sound bites, lovely ballads, and brief snippets that sound less like filler than like connective tissue. Secret weapons: guest vocalists Heather Lewis, Simone Ashby, and Meadie Ballenger. So, yeah, maybe I'm not as anti-singers-in-synthetic-music as I think I am. But only when they sound this good.
4. Howie B., Turn the Dark Off. Mr. B was the go-to guy for U2 and other rockers who wanted to dip their toes in synthetic music for a while there. Witness the spoken-word cameos by Robbie Robertson here, sounding nothing like his Band incarnation and a lot like a cross between Laurie Anderson and David Byrne.
5. Freaky Chakra vs. Single Cell Orchestra. I either paid a buck for this or got it for free, and I've always enjoyed it, although a friend of mine heard two minutes of it once and said it gave her a headache.
6. Aphrodite, Aphrodite. Another free or buck find, and a good illustration of what I was just saying about how annoying I find vocalists in this kind of music. Oh, no, wait: the only thing more annoying than singers in drum-and-bass? Rappers in drum-and-bass. That was the death knell.
Thursday, December 27, 2007
I just wasn't made for these times
My, my, this is an eclectic group of party animals, is it not?
When I first saw a (different, much more stiffly posed) photo on the cover of the TV supplement in this past Sunday's Buffalo News, I thought "who is that stone-faced man standing alongside Francis Ford Coppola, Diana Ross, Martin Scorsese, and Steve Martin?" Then I realized the bearded, bespectacled man was not FFC (he is really pianist-conductor Leon Fleisher, duh) and the stone-faced guy was none other than Brian Wilson. This motley crew was to be honored during the 30th annual "Kennedy Center Honors," so naturally I made a point of watching the broadcast tonight.
For the record, I think Scorsese's brilliant in small-to-medium doses, never really found Martin all that funny, never heard of Fleisher until now, and am one of the few homosexual men of my generation who finds La Ross tremendously overrated. She has her moments, from "Someday We'll Be Together" to her recent career in crime, but she's never really done that much for me as a pop diva, a camp icon, or anything else. I mainly tuned in for Brian. (Here's his official site's page on the event, with plenty of links.)
I'm really, really tempted to trot out that overused William Carlos Williams chestnut about the pure products of America going crazy, because this was one surreal assemblage of talent: the five honorees sitting next to each other and Lord and Lady Bush, Diana blowing kisses every few minutes, Scorsese looking slightly embarrassed, and Brian mostly off in that safe place he goes to when things get scary (which is to say 95% of every day since January 1, 1964). The announcer for the show was Carl Kasell, direct from NPR and my favorite game show. Apparently public radio does not pay its most highly regarded voice that well, because here he was picking up a little extra cash shilling for CBS, reduced throughout the evening to saying things like "The Kennedy Center Honors ... sponsored by: the Bristol-Meyers-Squibb-Sanofi Pharmaceuticals partnership."
Art Garfunkel did the intro to the Wilson segment, and people laughed when the first words out of his mouth were "I love rock and roll," thinking he was being sarcastic--when, as we know, Garfunkel does not do sarcasm. This was followed by a film bio which managed to compress most of the key plot points into 3-4 minutes, paying as little attention to the other Beach Boys as possible. I couldn't help wondering how Brian felt hearing this tidy, relatively perky trip through the most painful events of his life: abusive father, clueless record label, career-crushing depression, yadda yadda yadda. Hey, guys--you left out the brother who died of cancer, the one who drowned, the decades of lawsuits with the cousin, and the cult-leader psychiatrist. What gives?!
But no matter, for it was on to the musical performances, each more surreal than the last:
1. Lyle Lovett performing a truly touching slowed-down version of "In My Room" (the surreal note here was that I had just seen him parody exactly this sort of gala tribute near the end of Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story to hilarious effect).
2. Hootie and the Blowfish, all dressed in matching blue Pendleton shirts, doing a cover-band medley of "I Get Around" and "California Girls" that inspired Brian to bounce around a bit in his seat, a move that Diana picked up on and began to exaggerate in her groove-y diva way, which in turn made Brian nervous again. Several elegantly dressed women in the audience leapt to their feet to dance, until, in that time-honored ritual repeated at every dive bar and suburban wedding across this great land since the early 1960s, their male companions grudgingly joined them. Soon the President and First Lady joined in, and for one brief and shining moment, a room full of wealthy, mostly white people was united in arhythmic hopping and bopping, clapping merrily against the beat. Even Leon Fleisher, whom we had just learned 20 minutes earlier has lost the use of his right hand--a tragedy that ended his career as a pianist and nearly destroyed him--was clapping away, visibly wishing he was somewhere else. A Christmas miracle!
This would all have been quite enough, but no:
3. "Ladies and gentlemen, Libera," says Carl Kasell, and out walk 9 boys in white choir robes (very Polyphonic Spree--and boy, wouldn't they have been a cool choice?). The littlest, cutest boy says in his best Oliver Twist voice, "Mr. Wilson, we were born a long, long way from your 'California beaches,' but the sunlight of your music can be felt every day on our streets in South London." Brian looks taken aback by this news flash, then smiles, and the boys sing a churchy choral version of his late-period solo non-hit "Love and Mercy," a wonderful song whose anti-war message surely sails directly over the head of our Commander in Chief (whose fave BB hit is BOUND to be "Kokomo," you just know it). The 9 moppets are joined by approximately 75 more boys; this new batch has clearly hit puberty so they have to stand farther back. All these underage kids chanting somberly about "standing in a bar" is a jarring image, but also lovely in its way. Brian closes his eyes; he and his wife Melinda look like they're going to cry, Diana dabs her eye, and it is quite powerful--until the kids reach the climax of the song, and--can it be? no, it can't! yes, it can!--dozens and dozens of beach balls fall from the ceiling onto the heads of the audience, who begin batting them around as if they are on spring break. Yee-ha!
Kasell takes us to another commercial break, then out comes host Caroline Kennedy, fresh from her recent notoriety as the inspiration of Neil Diamond's "Sweet Caroline," to wish us all a good night. (This is a total digression, but does it strike no one else as slightly creepy and restraining-order-y that she was 13 years old when he wrote that song?)
Writers' strike or no writers' strike, TV does not get much better than this, folks.
When I first saw a (different, much more stiffly posed) photo on the cover of the TV supplement in this past Sunday's Buffalo News, I thought "who is that stone-faced man standing alongside Francis Ford Coppola, Diana Ross, Martin Scorsese, and Steve Martin?" Then I realized the bearded, bespectacled man was not FFC (he is really pianist-conductor Leon Fleisher, duh) and the stone-faced guy was none other than Brian Wilson. This motley crew was to be honored during the 30th annual "Kennedy Center Honors," so naturally I made a point of watching the broadcast tonight.
For the record, I think Scorsese's brilliant in small-to-medium doses, never really found Martin all that funny, never heard of Fleisher until now, and am one of the few homosexual men of my generation who finds La Ross tremendously overrated. She has her moments, from "Someday We'll Be Together" to her recent career in crime, but she's never really done that much for me as a pop diva, a camp icon, or anything else. I mainly tuned in for Brian. (Here's his official site's page on the event, with plenty of links.)
I'm really, really tempted to trot out that overused William Carlos Williams chestnut about the pure products of America going crazy, because this was one surreal assemblage of talent: the five honorees sitting next to each other and Lord and Lady Bush, Diana blowing kisses every few minutes, Scorsese looking slightly embarrassed, and Brian mostly off in that safe place he goes to when things get scary (which is to say 95% of every day since January 1, 1964). The announcer for the show was Carl Kasell, direct from NPR and my favorite game show. Apparently public radio does not pay its most highly regarded voice that well, because here he was picking up a little extra cash shilling for CBS, reduced throughout the evening to saying things like "The Kennedy Center Honors ... sponsored by: the Bristol-Meyers-Squibb-Sanofi Pharmaceuticals partnership."
Art Garfunkel did the intro to the Wilson segment, and people laughed when the first words out of his mouth were "I love rock and roll," thinking he was being sarcastic--when, as we know, Garfunkel does not do sarcasm. This was followed by a film bio which managed to compress most of the key plot points into 3-4 minutes, paying as little attention to the other Beach Boys as possible. I couldn't help wondering how Brian felt hearing this tidy, relatively perky trip through the most painful events of his life: abusive father, clueless record label, career-crushing depression, yadda yadda yadda. Hey, guys--you left out the brother who died of cancer, the one who drowned, the decades of lawsuits with the cousin, and the cult-leader psychiatrist. What gives?!
But no matter, for it was on to the musical performances, each more surreal than the last:
1. Lyle Lovett performing a truly touching slowed-down version of "In My Room" (the surreal note here was that I had just seen him parody exactly this sort of gala tribute near the end of Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story to hilarious effect).
2. Hootie and the Blowfish, all dressed in matching blue Pendleton shirts, doing a cover-band medley of "I Get Around" and "California Girls" that inspired Brian to bounce around a bit in his seat, a move that Diana picked up on and began to exaggerate in her groove-y diva way, which in turn made Brian nervous again. Several elegantly dressed women in the audience leapt to their feet to dance, until, in that time-honored ritual repeated at every dive bar and suburban wedding across this great land since the early 1960s, their male companions grudgingly joined them. Soon the President and First Lady joined in, and for one brief and shining moment, a room full of wealthy, mostly white people was united in arhythmic hopping and bopping, clapping merrily against the beat. Even Leon Fleisher, whom we had just learned 20 minutes earlier has lost the use of his right hand--a tragedy that ended his career as a pianist and nearly destroyed him--was clapping away, visibly wishing he was somewhere else. A Christmas miracle!
This would all have been quite enough, but no:
3. "Ladies and gentlemen, Libera," says Carl Kasell, and out walk 9 boys in white choir robes (very Polyphonic Spree--and boy, wouldn't they have been a cool choice?). The littlest, cutest boy says in his best Oliver Twist voice, "Mr. Wilson, we were born a long, long way from your 'California beaches,' but the sunlight of your music can be felt every day on our streets in South London." Brian looks taken aback by this news flash, then smiles, and the boys sing a churchy choral version of his late-period solo non-hit "Love and Mercy," a wonderful song whose anti-war message surely sails directly over the head of our Commander in Chief (whose fave BB hit is BOUND to be "Kokomo," you just know it). The 9 moppets are joined by approximately 75 more boys; this new batch has clearly hit puberty so they have to stand farther back. All these underage kids chanting somberly about "standing in a bar" is a jarring image, but also lovely in its way. Brian closes his eyes; he and his wife Melinda look like they're going to cry, Diana dabs her eye, and it is quite powerful--until the kids reach the climax of the song, and--can it be? no, it can't! yes, it can!--dozens and dozens of beach balls fall from the ceiling onto the heads of the audience, who begin batting them around as if they are on spring break. Yee-ha!
Kasell takes us to another commercial break, then out comes host Caroline Kennedy, fresh from her recent notoriety as the inspiration of Neil Diamond's "Sweet Caroline," to wish us all a good night. (This is a total digression, but does it strike no one else as slightly creepy and restraining-order-y that she was 13 years old when he wrote that song?)
Writers' strike or no writers' strike, TV does not get much better than this, folks.
Saturday, December 15, 2007
Eldorado
I wish I could provide as detailed a review of Carlos Diegos's 1984 film Quilombo as this one or this one, but the simple truth is, I kinda napped through long stretches of it as I watched it tonight. I was more awake during the willfully eccentric making-of featurette (which looks like something Godard might make if he was hired to shoot promos for HBO) that I watched first; it not only encapsulates the plot (17th century slaves escape their Portuguese owners and create utopian societies in the wilds of Brazil, eventually leading to armed guerrilla warfare) but spells out the mythology behind various scenes that might otherwise be baffling to those of us not versed in Candomblé. You also get to see Gilberto Gil at work on the soundtrack, which is cool.
That soundtrack appears to be the most controversial aspect of the film in the eyes of many folks who've written about it on IMDB. One such reviewer describes Gil's music as "cheesy pop rhythms best left to the disco or bad cops [sic] dramas." A defender, on the other hand, draws a parallel to the intentionally anachronistic classic rock anthems in A Knight's Tale. Me, I liked it; I'm pretty sure I've got the title song on some compilation or other, and all the music is both catchy and evocative of a certain tone. I also appreciated the chance to learn more about Zumbi, leader of the rebellion, who gets name-checked by all sorts of Brazilian musicians. (I could be way off base with this analogy, but I feel like an outsider to US culture who keeps hearing about this guy "Malcolm X" in all these rap and soul songs, then rents Spike Lee's movie of the same name to find out what the hell they're all talking about.)
Great costumes, nice touches of what my friend Ed Cardoni calls "blatant artifice," intriguingly low-key (and thus quite effective) battle scenes. I drifted a lot, and apparently slept through all the key moments in which various orishas manifest themselves that looked so cool in the featurette, but I didn't feel the urge to rewind and watch them.
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