Doc Days II

As promised, I returned to the Balboa Theater for five more hours of cinema on Wednesday evening. At this moment, I've seen all the short- and long-form documentaries nominated for Oscars... except for the likely long-form winner, An Inconvenient Truth.

I arrived at 5:30 and stood in a rapidly extending queue that snaked out into the street. By 6:00 I had what I thought was a prime seat... until the guy behind me, his cap covered in San Francisco Giants pins, started muttering and talking to himself throughout the first show. I think he might've been mentally challenged. He left after one film and I was fine from then on. By the final selection, every seat in the house was full. Hope the theater made lots of money on refreshments.

∙Rehearsing A Dream, 39 minutes. The short-form category is split evenly between third-world misery and fine/performing arts. Rehearsing A Dream brings us to a week-long art camp for high school students funded by the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts. They dance, sing, make music, paint, write, sculpt, create. We hear that they are (surprise!) misfits in their hometowns. I didn't find the filmmaking particularly exceptional -- it's the kids' talent that carries this one. Hope BushCo doesn't cut the program.

∙Deliver Us From Evil, 101 minutes. And so to the child-molesting priest movie, set largely in the Central Valley and Gold Country regions of California. This is really two parallel stories, one personal, one political. A Catholic priest can't control his urges and ruins the lives of dozens if not hundreds of children. Then, church officials go to bat for him, shuttling the offender from town to town rather than allow negative publicity to ruin a senior bishop's chance for promotion within the church hierarchy. The American justice system fails too, and we see little evidence that the priest will ever be stopped. There is some debate as to how fair Amy Berg's film is, but little doubt that the events depicted are some of the most disturbing captured on film this year. Where some of the other nominees just point the camera, Berg develops two strong narratives that run side-by-side. It's hard to imagine a better documentary being made in 2006, no matter who gets the trophy. (It's earned a rare 100% positive rating among the reviews aggregated on RottenTomatoes, for whatever that's worth.)

∙Recycled Life, 38 minutes. Yes, I sat through most of it again, just so I wouldn't lose my seat for....

∙Iraq In Fragments, 94 minutes. A somewhat more artistically assembled film than My Country, My Country, this takes us to the streets of Baghdad, rallies in Sadr City and sheep-grazing lands in Kurdistan. The first segment, in which we see a boy struggling in school and being knocked around by his dad, was the weakest, but the second section was the most illustrative document I've yet seen regarding the following of Moqtada al-Sadr south of Baghdad. I'm still lost in the fog of war when I try to examine factionalism in occupied Iraq up close, but this film sharply communicates a lot of what you don't see on TV. Terrorists? Militias? They don't like American influence, they don't like Saddam, and they sure don't like people who sell alcohol in Sadr City. (Gosh, Moqtada's younger than I am.) The pastoral Kurds, some of whom work in a sooty brick-firing plant, seem terribly vulnerable, and suggest that Iraq's future is indeed fragmented, as three separate countries.

I'm actually hoping that the Balboa charges money for this next year. I'd pay full price both days.

Now we come to Doc Days

I guess the Oscars are being held this weekend. I know this because the Balboa Theater is in the midst of its annual Doc Days, when it screens all of the short and long-form documentaries nominated for Academy Awards in an all-you-can-watch buffet.

You might remember my four-hour marathon viewing session last year. This year, the Balboa and the SF State Documentary Film Institute are doing things a little differently: They're screening all the films for free. And rather than cycling four or five films continuously on each day, they're presenting all nine in a row on Tuesday and Wednesday, but in a different order each day. At least two insane people seated near me attempted the full nine-bagger; one finally cracked after seven films and nine hours, while one apparently stayed for the finale, An Inconvenient Truth. He'd already seen at least two of the films prior to entering the theater too. Moonshot.

My strategy was different. I hit the noon screening of a short film on my "lunch hour," then headed downtown to take a meeting with a venture capitalist. By 4:30 I was waiting in line to get back into the theater, where I took in four more films. Tomorrow I'll attempt to see the remainder, save for An Inconvenient Truth; I've got a DVD copy I haven't watched yet, and I'll see it at home before the weekend's up.

I'll try to keep these capsules short. It's been a long day and I don't want my brain-dump to get out of hand.

∙Recycled Life, 38 minutes. This film about people who scavenge from a garbage dump in Guatemala City was similar to many nominated shorts from the past two years, in that it pointed a camera at people living in some of the most inhumane conditions on the planet, then mitigated their misery with a ray of hope. (See God Sleeps In Rwanda and one more short noted below.) I would have been more shocked by their dreadful circumstances if I hadn't spent roughly 38 minutes reading this story about a similar situation in the Philippines a couple of months ago. Once you've read about the "hot demolition" technique in the Quezon City dump, the scene among the guajeros just isn't going to have the desired effect. Another one I'm thankful wasn't in Odorama. Thoughtful and provocative, sure.

∙Two Hands: The Leon Fleisher Story, 18 minutes. This might've been my favorite all day, thanks to its brevity, soul and wit. Fleisher, a concert pianist, lost the full use of his right hand after cutting it in 1964. What exactly went wrong was something of a mystery; how to treat it was equally mysterious. Eventually, after years spent conducting and teaching, he found his mojo again and returned to the stage. Since the Norman Corwin short won last year, I'm guessing this will win on Sunday night. It went down easily, and was filled with beautiful music. Bonus points for being set in Baltimore. A+.

∙Jesus Camp, 84 minutes. Already saw it, but it sure was fun to see Pastor Ted gaze into the camera and say, "I know what you did last night! If you give me a thousand dollars, I won't tell your wife!" again. It's one of those "completely heterosexual" moments you've been hearing about.

∙My Country, My Country, 84 minutes. More evidence that CNN gets it wrong, when it comes to the war in Iraq. I wish they could pipe this stuff into every household in America. No, it's not propaganda, and it's not really a polemic at all. It's cameras on the ground in Baghdad and Kurdistan, in people's houses, out in the streets, in cars and trucks and polling places and doctors' offices and the Green Zone. The film addresses the six-month period prior to the January 2005 elections in Iraq, an enormously significant period. But the scenes of husbands and wives bickering at home, of people selling guns, of what people talk about during power outages in Baghdad, of soldiers stretched to their limits (and sometimes looking like Keystone Kops), of what Iraqis trust and what they really want (or think they do) -- that's the core of this film, and the upshot too. There's a whole TV channel for golf; can't there be one for this? Chaotic, frightening, full of hope and full of failure. Wish it had a narrator.

∙The Blood of Yingzhou District, 39 minutes. Another uplifting feel-good tale, this one addressing (groan) orphans with AIDS in China's rural central provinces. I hope I'm not making light of the misery in this film by saying it should meet Recycled Life and God Sleeps In Rwanda and go bowling on Thursday nights. We see a couple of small children -- one about three, one about seven -- whose parents have already wasted away, and who are now shunned by their village peers, left to silently contemplate their loneliness while sleeping in crumbling hovels among goats, pigs and chickens. (How'd they get AIDS? Their parents donated blood. The doctors mixed everyone's blood together, separated the plasma, and shot the red blood cells back into the patients so that they would be able to donate blood again, sooner. Can you hear me smacking myself on the forehead?) Eventually one of the orphans is taken in... by another HIV-positive couple, the male of which is always filmed smoking cigarettes. Oh man. This is one of the grimmest things I've ever seen, except for half the other nominees this year and last year.

The Balboa certainly could have charged $5 a head and made a killing off the near-capacity crowd today. I'm sure they did fine at the refreshments stand -- the place was starting to look like the Guatemala City dump by 9:30. Regardless, it's always great to see a neighborhood business with a line out the door, especially in my remote corner of town. Back tomorrow for more.

Thanks to Chino's Taqueria for making it all possible too.

The long and short of it

Many thoughts ran through my head as I read Clive James' essay regarding the death of swing in jazz music, comparing pre- and post-War forms via Ellington and Coltrane. His argument -- a reasonable one in many respects -- has many parallels in various art forms, not the least of which is rock'n'roll. And while he may be quite fair when he swings the wrecking ball at Coltrane's vaunted pedestal, I can't help but think that the writer is ultimately a reactionary.

James' basic thesis is that jazz music was most exciting when it was concise and swinging, and least interesting when it was academic and technical at the expense of brevity and rhythmic drive. Upshot: I'd rather hear Ben Webster blow for eight seconds of an Ellington composition than hear Coltrane explore his scales for fifteen minutes, he says. Similarly, most rock critics, and many fans for that matter, have traditionally been most impressed by something with a beginning, middle and end that's wrapped up in, say, three and a half minutes. Epics are boring, so goes the school of thought; give me "The Seeker" (3:12) or "Signed, Sealed, Delivered" (2:46) any day. (Sometimes I have the impression that lazy rock'n'roll record reviewers reject longer songs based on length alone, automatically leveling a charge that the songs are "bloated," "ponderous," "pretentious" or similar.)

Now, I don't mind hearing good musicians, or even average ones, stretch out if they're still revealing something. Longer, ambitious compositions can be very satisfying too. Admittedly, the longer the piece, the less likely I am to return to it frequently. The songs we listen to over and over are usually the short, punchy ones. And, indeed, Ellington took us places we'd never been before in "three-minute miracles," as James calls them, without losing the swinging backbeat that made jazz music fun.

Today, where do we find rock'n'roll? Born as black American dance music, it's been through phases: watered down for teen idols, energized by British kids with good taste in American blues records, blown up into little psychedelic pieces, mated with country, jazz and classical music, beefed up and slowed down, refined into a high-octane version, celebrated as music of incompetents for whom intent mattered more than skill, reshaped into an artier soft-focus jangle, rendered as cartoonish meathead party music, booted off the charts by synthetic dance records, and reconstructed by backward-facing fetishists of all these past eras. (Among other things.) The conciseness and danceability has ebbed and flowed, but today, it's not uncommon to find fans who insist that the music "rocks" but who wouldn't be caught dead actually dancing to it.

You know what's funny? Many of the first jazz records I bought were by Miles Davis and John Coltrane. (Ask any jazz novice what they like, and those will probably be two of the first three names out of their mouths.) But nowadays, I've knocked them off the pedestal myself -- at least partly. A couple of weeks ago, I plucked from the bin a Prestige twofer of Workin' and Steamin', two five-star albums that featured both players. They were, I'm afraid, boring in just about any context -- close listening, casual spins while cooking dinner, in front of the fireplace with company. I understand they're very similar to what the Miles Davis Quintet would do onstage at the time. And while I appreciated the players' individual talents and modest interplay, their actual creativity left something to be desired. As players, each seemed to have better ideas than he was capable of executing. Sometimes it's interesting to have your reach exceed your grasp; other times it just sounds like you're fumbling. Would I rather hear some playful Benny Goodman trios and quartets? Yes, definitely.

That said, I think James' article fails in part because it doesn't recognize that the most obvious driver of innovation is boredom. People thought up bebop because it was a new challenge, after spending fifteen years refining swing. Free jazz? For one thing, it gave players something new to do while waiting for someone else's solo to end. (For me, they just didn't do enough while allegedly Workin' and Steamin'.) It's easy to see this as one big story that you could learn from a few records, or in a semester-long class. It's another thing entirely to experience it over the course of a century. Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny, as someone once said -- far more concisely than this post.

(One other thing: James has to know that Ellington's band used to stretch out the songs onstage; he must know that Webster was turned loose to play "Stardust" for several minutes on at least one occasion. The three-minute 78rpm record may have caused Ellington to keep his compositions short, but that doesn't mean he wanted to play them that way, given the opportunity to stretch out.)

Meanwhile, check it out: Women are chokers!


FMFM: Gentle On My Mind And Other Originals By John Hartford, eleven songs in a solid twenty-six minutes. Fun, poetry and insight.

The Sarin

A highly unfortunate name for an Asian restaurant, if you ask me. Wonder what they were thinking.

The food was tasty, though.

The seat with the clearest view

Another Wednesday, another Red Vic matinee. This time, I took in Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars, D.A. Pennebaker's film of a 1973 event in London featuring David Bowie, Mick Ronson and the rest of the Spiders in their final performance. It's slightly more than an onstage concert film, but far short of a true documentary.

I don't have any hard-and-fast rules about what I do and don't accept in music, but in the macro-view, I admit preferring stylelessness in performance. I hope I'm not going down Snickers' road here by saying I have a hard time taking a man seriously when he's wearing blue eye makeup and a thigh-length silk kimono. It's not really a phobia, but can you blame me for feeling like the singer's four costume changes in an hour are going to be a distraction from the business of music-making?

That's why I walked away impressed with Bowie's performance in the movie -- the theatricality of the performance adds to the effect, but Bowie's ability to sell the material overcomes any distraction from the extra-musical performance art elements. There are several backstage bits, including makeup and costume changes. They're there to humanize Bowie (as distinguished from Ziggy). My instinct was to say that he looked silly primping for the stage, but once he was out there, he sold it like the actor that he is. The man who sold the world. Of course.

I'm really not much more than a casual fan -- ChangesOne and Ziggy, and not much more -- so for me this was a mix of songs I knew and songs I didn't. I found the first song, "Hang On To Yourself," to be a bit of a dud, with Bowie's voice at its weakest and Mick Ronson at his worst posturing-to-skill ratio. The ship rights itself after that, though, and the band charges through some startlingly aggressive moments as well as a few tender ones. Bassist Trevor Bolder's magnificent coiffure gets about four seconds of closeup screentime, unfortunately, but he does engage in a nifty guitar-neck joust with Ronson, pantomiming knocking each other to the floor with the power of rock'n'roll. And Ronson himself survives a couple of heavy-duty Nigel Tufnel moments, transcending the poses with a knockout one-handed guitar solo.

Pennebaker shows you very little of the other six musicians onstage besides Bowie and Ronson, choosing to spend more time on the crowd. The film really isn't about how musicians make music; it's about how a couple of characters can transport you into their world of stardom, tragedy, sleaze, etc. There were five cameramen in the credits, including Pennebaker; reportedly he and Bowie restored the print carefully and remastered the soundtrack. It helped, but the film is still a little dark (and red!), and the sound a little muddy. I didn't especially mind, but this is really a classic midnight movie that should be screened at high volume in front of a drunk/stoned crowd. Maybe I shouldn't have gone in the afternoon.

As seen on TV

Two commercials, aired consecutively during Donny Deutsch's interview with Clive Davis on CNBC just now:

∙Cadillac ad featuring M. Ward's "Here Comes The Sun Again"

∙American Express Business Card ad featuring Spinal Tap's "Gimme Some Money" (re-recorded)

If life is really as short as they say, then why is the night so long?

After the strong showing from M. Ward at the Fillmore last fall, I was pleased to see that he'd be doing a short solo tour in select cities, and jumped on a pair of tickets for last night's show at Bimbo's shortly after they went on sale. The day amounted to a long, enervating one -- baseball practice, a Super Bowl party in the Haight, and the show -- but the last event was worth staying on my feet for.

A sparse crowd seated cross-legged on the parquet floor rose to its feet as Victoria Williams began her opening set; the crowd would swell to fill the sold-out room by night's end. Williams played with a bassist and, briefly, Ward himself. Williams is not an easy songwriter to accompany. Her songs change tempo, lurch forward and back, and glide through talky sections, while her delivery ranges from somewhat groovy to extremely difficult to follow. It also seemed like the bassist hadn't rehearsed much at all. He was fairly superfluous, providing minimal support for Williams' bizarre rural tales, animal noises and emotional visions.

Williams is one of the most ingenuous artists alive, and she is not uncreative. Her skill set as a performer, however, is fairly limited. I'd like to say she makes up for it in purity of intention, heart and soul -- her performance certainly isn't a contrived act -- but at some point in the evening, I had to admit to myself that sometimes she's just caterwauling. There is something about what she does that cuts straight through to the heart of the matter, and even makes you feel displaced from your normal self (as much good art does). There is also something about what she does that reminds me of cats fighting behind my old house in Baltimore. I found "Crazy Mary" and "You R Loved" moving, and "T.C." intriguing; "Happy Come Home" was excruciating. Would I pay $5 to see her again next weekend? Sadly, the answer is no. But I like her anyway.

She called M. Ward "Matt" all night. I wonder if he's starting to regret the abbreviated stage name. (It makes it hard to explain to people who you're going to see, although as a longtime college lacrosse watcher I appreciate that he's differentiated himself from this guy.) Ward began his set with a fairly high-energy, five-plus-minute fingerpicked guitar solo. We were lucky enough to be quite close to him, so I was able to witness his aggressive technique up close. He's got a gnarly little right hand, actually, and he hits way harder than Mississippi John Hurt ever did. And, gosh, his old Gibson sounded terrific. The instrumental was followed by "Chinese Translation," my favorite of his latest batch of songs; he leaned heavily on Post-War for the set list, but threw in faves like his "Let's Dance" cover from past records. I often thought of Catano Veloso. As a singer, Ward seems highly intent on communicating meaning in every word. Did some simple, subtle piano songs too, including his Beatle George tribute "Here Comes The Sun Again." Ward made use of a loop pedal on about half his guitar numbers, and waved goodbye at the end of the set as three of his own guitars played the wonderful "Undertaker," ushering him into the wings.

Williams joined Ward for the encore; they appeared to decide what to play onstage. He essayed at least one of her songs, then the fun began: "Moon River," "When Will I Be Loved?" and "Stand By Me," performed as duets. (The bassist still seemed lost.) I admit that I preferred his encore with Watt last time, but on the whole this was a very satisfying performance.

[UPDATE: Here's that gnarly little right hand in action.]


FMFM: Barney Kessel, Shelly Manne and Ray Brown's Poll Winners reunion album, Straight Ahead. It could be a tad less inspired than the original efforts from the late 1950s, but the band still sounds alive and swinging.

Love me two times

This may be my nerdiest and perhaps longest music post ever, but I suspect it won't surprise most people familiar with this space. I freely admit that it's a window into my obsessive, fetishistic mind.

During a conversation with my hermano this afternoon, I mentioned that I did not own, but would own, the Rubber Soul we grew up with -- the old mono U.S. version. This led to a brief discussion of albums of which I actually do own multiple copies, for whatever reason. He told me to take it to the blogosphere, so here you go.

This is not a list of music I own twice; that happens all the time, with anthologies and original albums. Nor is it a list of records I have bought on more than one occasion. I'm talking about records that, for one reason or another, I have more or less consciously decided to keep multiple copies of. Some stray into the realm of alternate versions, but most do not.

∙Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, The Beatles. I bought the CD the day it came out -- June 1, 1987, the twentieth anniversary of the original release. I took my late friend Tom's mono wax copy from his collection, after he died but before Amoeba bought the rest. (Side note: I have the regular CD and a bootleg mono copy of the White Album too, but I'm not counting boots here. And my stereo Meet The Beatles LP isn't quite the same as the mono CD of With The Beatles.) Anyway, the mono and stereo Beatle records provide quite different experiences. I'd just as soon own their entire catalog in both forms.

∙Pet Sounds, The Beach Boys. I have Tom's LP and my early-90s CD. There was no way I was going to let Tom's copy of Pet Sounds go into the bin with all the other records. An otherwise unremarkable pressing ("A Capitol reissue"), that piece of vinyl stirred my fallen friend's soul to the highest of heights. When I listen to the CD, it's just Pet Sounds, but when I listen to the LP, I feel like I can hear it the way Tom did.

∙Odessey & Oracle, the Zombies. Tom had a 1980s Rhino pressing; same story as above. I've got Time Of The Zombies, a two-LP collection that has all of O&O as sides three and four.

∙Lady Soul, Aretha Franklin. I have a pretty clean Japanese pressing, and a slightly noisier regular old Atlantic U.S. copy from the dollar bin. I have no justification for keeping both. But Lady Soul is magnificent.

∙Double Nickels On The Dime and What Makes A Man Start Fires?, The Minutemen. I bought the double-wax version of Double Nickels in the 1980s. The first CD issue was remixed and all screwed up, so I never bought it. Even when they issued a CD with the original mix, it was still missing a couple of songs, so I passed on "upgrading" to that one too. Later, when SST Records was in dire financial straits, I bought a second vinyl copy because I fricking adore this album and I was worried that if anything ever happened to my original copy I'd be stuck without the complete version. Then someone gave me his old copy of the original CD (later identified by SST as the "Shitty Remix"). Yep, I've got three. As for Fires, it's on Post-Mersh Vol. 1 in its entirety but I like the vinyl version better. Oh, and it's on the My First Bells tape* too, as is The Punch Line -- the other half of Post-Mersh Vol. 1 -- and Paranoid Time, which a well-meaning friend gave me on CD. I'm not getting rid of any of it. Crazy, I know.

∙Zen Arcade, Hüsker Dü. I might've bought the CD when I was living without a turntable, or maybe when I thought a five-star classic concept album like Zen Arcade should flow from beginning to end. In the end, the vinyl just sounds better -- the CD is flat and distant while the needle practically jumps right off the wax. And I love the packaging, with text in the runout groove and all. (So do the Shins!) But I don't mind having a digital version too.

∙The Velvet Underground and Loaded. The box set Peel Slowly And See has slightly different versions of both, so I kept my old copies (although I sold the banana album, and I can't remember whether I actually had a vinyl White Light/White Heat). Loaded is the old CD (not the "Fully Loaded Edition"); the third album is 80s vinyl.

∙Kind of Blue and In A Silent Way, Miles Davis. I've got old CDs from before they were remastered. Instead of buying the new ones, I bought better-sounding wax instead. My Kind of Blue LP was probably pressed in the 1990s; In A Silent Way is likely mid-70s. The CDs are still nice to have in the car though.

∙Fontessa and Lonely Woman, The Modern Jazz Quartet. Two copies of each LP; I believe I have each in mono and stereo. One copy of Lonely Woman hangs on my living room wall, just above the Deluxe Reverb. The second Fontessa used to be in the same frame, and may hang beside it one day.

∙Born To Run, Bruce Springsteen. When I bought the 30th Anniversary Edition CD/DVD box set last year, I figured I'd just get rid of my old wax copy. Then I looked at it and said, "Hey, that's my Born To Run. I'm not getting rid of that!"

∙There's A Riot Goin' On and Greatest Hits, Sly & The Family Stone. Bought around 1991, my Columbia disc of Riot is the single worst CD product I've ever owned. The mastering job is hissy (not that the original recording was crystal-clear, but never mind), and the packaging is abysmal. They used the back cover for the front cover (well, part of it, anyway), and they didn't even bother to include the real front cover anywhere. The spine identifies the artist as "Sly" -- that's it. And the purple and white song list, seemingly laid out by an unpaid graphic arts intern, doesn't include the central conceit of the album: a title track whose length is listed as 0:00. The job they did with Greatest Hits isn't much better. I nabbed wax out of the buck bin awhile ago and just haven't purged the old CDs yet. What would I get for them, anyway? Two great albums, rendered as awful products and since replaced by better ones?

∙The Who Sell Out. First I owned the old 80s MCA CD. Then I bought the wax twofer that also included A Quick One/Happy Jack, netting me an extra LP of Sell Out. MCA sent me a promo of the remaster in the mid-90s, and I purged the old MCA disc. Still have the second LP though. It's possible that I've owned it for twenty years and never listened to it.


*Cassette tape! Do you even still bother with tapes? I think this post might be a lot longer if I were to consider tapes....

What will Brittanie Mountz think?

Tom Abbott, 36, an executive recruiter, said that having an affair with a loyal aide's wife was "a total slimeball move.

"Any guy who puts that much mousse in his hair can't be trusted," Abbott said. "You don't screw over your own boys."

However, Abbott said that he would probably vote for Newsom in November.