The View From Fort Miley

It's a long way down

2008-12-02T10:57:00.000-08:00

I try so hard sometimes to write decent song lyrics. And then, this reminds me that you can make an incredibly memorable song out of nothing -- and I mean, absolutely nothing.

Purple America

2008-11-05T10:48:00.000-08:00

2004 electoral map, by county, shaded red/blue/purple based on vote percentage:

2008 map:

Source.

David Byrne on election eve

2008-11-03T16:41:00.000-08:00

I just received this note from David Byrne:

Pardon the bulk mailing. I Can't Vote. I am an immigrant with a Green Card and, therefore, I am not eligible to vote in a federal election. FYI - I can get drafted (luckily, Daniel Berrigan burned my draft board's records) and I pay taxes, yet I cannot vote for President. On Election Day, I see my neighbors heading to the nearby elementary school to cast their ballots. The voting booth joint is a great leveler; the whole neighborhood - rich, poor, old, young, decrepit and spunky - they all turn out in one day.

But most of you can vote. What can I say? The Republicans have made us less safe than before 9/11, bankrupted this economy, started an illegal war they can't - and don't intend to - finish, removed what sympathy (after 9/11) and respect the world had for the US, and have robbed US citizens of many of their basic rights. Global warming? What's that? Science and education? Investment in our future? No, thanks - we'll stick with a good 'ole hockey mom. Ignorant, and fucking proud of it, as is always the case.

Although it looks like a shoo-in, it ain't over 'til Florida. And there are plenty of racists in this country who will vote against their own best interests. So please, get to your local elementary school, post office, town hall, or whatever, and cast your vote and make this a country we can all be proud of. We can get out of this mess, and life can be better than it is.

David Byrne
NYC

Standing on the verge

2008-09-08T18:25:00.000-07:00

It's tough to say which Wikipedia entry deserves the Best Ever mantle -- Frank Chu springs to mind, among others -- but I really have to give it up for the author of P-Funk mythology, which elucidates in plain English a tale heard by many but understood by very, very few.

FMFM: Motor Booty Affair

Gentle on my mind

2008-08-05T17:23:00.000-07:00

From Spin's interview with Glen Campbell, August 2008 issue.

What new music do you like?

It goes back to instrumental guitar playing, to Django Reinhardt -- the best in the world.

How about people making music now?

You ever heard any Django Reinhardt?

Eating crowe

2008-08-01T08:14:00.001-07:00

There's a bit of irony to the Black Crowes suing anyone for being a ripoff, but I have to admit, I'd be jealous again if I heard this one on the radio.

Scrabulous plea

2008-07-27T19:52:00.000-07:00

Dear Electronic Arts and Hasbro,

Your new online Scrabble game is TERRIBLE.

I know Scrabulous is a totally infringing knockoff. And I know it's slow, and buggy, and sometimes when I start a game, it starts six of them. And you managed to make something far, far worse.

I do not want jumping tiles. I do not want any of the crappy features you probably think have "Wow! factor," because the only "Wow!" I feel when I play your new game is, "Wow! This sucks." For goodness sakes, couldn't you have even gotten the colors right? YOU OWN SCRABBLE.

Please buy Scrabulous from those two guys in India, and fix its bugs, and put your newly-launched version out of its misery. No one likes it.

Thanks,
The View From Fort Miley

UPDATE: Nice work, Hasbro. Way to win over the crowd. Thanks for nothing.

This boardwalk life for me is through

2008-07-02T08:44:00.000-07:00

Madam Marie is dead.

The Madam's all-seeing eye had a strange allure, surviving the worst of Asbury Park's misery as the boardwalk around it literally crumbled into the sea. She never told my fortune -- I think you know how I feel about superstition and sorcery in general -- but a stroll by her little cottage never went without comment. My family spent a lot of summer evenings eating salt-water taffy from Criterion Candies and playing mini-golf on that boardwalk during my youth, and our amusement at Madame Marie was part of every visit.

She may have told fortunes better than the cops do, but she also outlasted most of them. RIP -- the Fourth won't be the same without you.

FMFM: Pure romance in song. "Say you will!"

Alternate take with different lyrics here.

Born under widespread changes

2008-05-17T14:03:00.000-07:00

Via the resuscitated JordanKlein.us, here are some Things Younger Than John McCain.

I nominated "White Christmas".

Advance cassette

2008-05-15T18:16:00.000-07:00

The March 2006 Britt Daniel show I wrote about here is now available online here. Enjoy.

Grade F

2008-05-06T09:30:00.000-07:00

Top three least-convincing F-bombs in rock'n'roll history:

3. "Laura" by Billy Joel
2. "Steamroller Blues" by James Taylor
1. "Invisible Touch" (live version) by Genesis

Any nominations for #4?

Papa don't take no mess

2008-04-10T21:16:00.000-07:00

Don't read any further if you don't want to know about James Brown's sex life.

*

"One night in the summer of 2001, after he'd slathered her in Vaseline
('He liked you all greased up,' she says. 'Like a porkchop') and wore
her out trying to come, he gave up and left the room, and Gloria dozed
off. When she woke up, Mr. Brown was standing at the foot of the bed
in a full-length mink coat over his bare chest, a black cowboy hat,
and silk pajama pants with one leg tucked into a cowboy boot and the
other hanging out. He had a shotgun over his shoulder and a white
stripe of Noxzema under each eye. 'I'm an Indian tonight, baby,' he
announced. 'C'mon, let's let 'em have it.' Then he dumped a pickle jar
of change on the floor, told her to get a machete, and went out to the
garage. He took the Rolls, drove ten miles to Augusta, weaving all
over the road, clipping mailboxes, smoking more dope, and screaming
about being an Indian."

This time tomorrow, where will we be?

2008-03-25T14:20:00.000-07:00

Getting up at six o'clock a.m. to watch baseball? Big deal. That's easy.

C'mon, NYT, when are you going to do a story about people who get up at three a.m. for baseball?

It was worth it, until the top of the ninth.

FMFM: Richard Buckner's Since, which I revisited this week for the first time in years. I can't help but feel like he's lost his mojo lately, but he got everything right on this record and its predecessor, Devotion & Doubt.

Somethin' Else

2008-03-08T16:51:00.000-08:00

Happy 50th birthday to one of my favorites, Cannonball Adderley's Somethin' Else, recorded at Rudy Van Gelder's studio in Hackensack, N.J., on March 9, 1958. It's got a reputation for being the best Miles Davis album that isn't a Miles Davis album, but it's almost certainly Cannonball's finest hour as well. Art Blakey was known as a powerhouse drummer, but he takes it easy here, driving along playfully rather than calling too much attention to himself. A classic in every way.

Somethin' Else is really every bit as good as its cousin, Kind of Blue, which is routinely fetishized by by Rolling Stone and other publications that clumsily try to toss a few jazz records into their pop-dominated lists as they try to rewrite history over and over. (I guess it's their way of saying that their generation is one that likes to mix it up every once in awhile, which to me trivializes the entire idiom. But then, their lists trivialize everything, don't they?) Kind of Blue is a great album, but the argument these publications give for lionization -- "it used modal scales" -- seems awfully out of place compared to the rationales posed for including other pop records ("it was the beginning of new wave," "it was a forerunner of industrial music," "it was on drugs") on these lists. Why the sudden interest in harmonic theory, anyway, RS? And how come your four-star Shania Twain reviews don't refer to that kind of thing?

To say how much I like you

2008-02-15T12:54:00.000-08:00

"Offensive Haiku"

I am offended.
I will be honest with you.
I am offended.

—Roger Clemens, Feb. 5, 2008, deposition

Haircut One Hundred, minus ninety-nine

2008-02-12T11:11:00.000-08:00

Friends, I've buzzed my own hair down to half an inch, every two months, for the past thirteen years. Haven't paid for a haircut since the first pass through Baltimore.

My bro is getting married next week and I don't want to buzz it right now. I want to go to a pro.

I do not need to have a haircut. I just need a haircut. Tidy up the back and around the ears, and retain a little of the natural curl on top, I guess. I'll trust their taste in making me look neater, but I don't want the stylist's stylishness to overwhelm my appearance.

In this day and age, do I need a barber? A stylist? Will Supercuts do, or is that an accident waiting to happen? If I need a real stylist, can I make this happen by Sunday afternoon? Can hair appointments be made that quickly? I honestly have no idea. What the hell does a haircut cost in 2008?

If you've seen my new roommate, you know he's no help. Actually neither of the last two would be any help.

Please advise! Thanks.

FMFM: "Floyd the Barber"

Diamond in the rough

2008-02-04T17:19:00.000-08:00

Best comment: "Take that, Mr. Bob Dylan."

You know you're just a mama's boy

2008-01-29T21:20:00.000-08:00

I have to wonder if the NYT is trying to be funny with a headline like that. Especially when this seems to be so close to the truth.

Sadly, no mention of Clay. Guess he was in the Peace Corps or something.

I need four walls around me to hold my life

2008-01-29T07:14:00.000-08:00

Via KennyKellogg, I note that Paul Kedrosky describes SoCal exurb Temecula as if it were an Anasazi ruin, as freshly-constructed American subdivisions are "emptying out."

My amigo Laz is fond of pointing out my prescience in describing the hastily-constructed suburbs of Las Vegas and Phoenix as future disaster areas. What a strange sight it will be, when yesterday's McMansions are tomorrow's slums.

Sleeveface

2008-01-28T12:18:00.000-08:00

Incredibly, no one's done Sticky Fingers yet. (Front or back!)

NP: "Bitch," from here

White Whine II

2008-01-22T08:08:00.000-08:00

"Don't they know people in Marin will shop at an IKEA if they build one here? It really sucks to have to drive all the way back from the East Bay with a load of furniture in the Prius."

Waiting for the UFOs

2008-01-17T11:43:00.000-08:00

Karl Rove has taken to referring to Dennis Kucinich in a way that seems to imply that he's nuts:

"Think about that," Rove said. "She's running against nobody and nobody gets 40% of the vote. The other 5% of the vote went to three other people. 27,924 votes went to the guy who believes in UFOs, the guy who dropped out and the guy who last held public office somewhere around 1855."

*

Wonder if Rove would be willing to characterize Ronald Reagan in the same fashion:

Two of these Reagan UFO encounters have become public.... "I was in a plane last week when I looked out the window and saw this white light. It was zigzagging around. I went up to the pilot and said, ‘Have you seen anything like that before?’ He was shocked and said, ‘Nope.’ And I said to him: ‘Let’s follow it!’

We followed it for several minutes. It was a bright white light. We followed it to Bakersfield, and all of a sudden to our utter amazement it went straight up into the heavens. When we got off the plane, I told Nancy all about it.’"

White Whine

2008-01-15T21:40:00.000-08:00

"Gosh, it's so hard to find a cobbler who can re-sole my cowboy boots in a reasonable amount of time -- I hate wearing the other ones three days in a row. And since my local one started getting such good Yelp reviews, it's impossible to park anywhere near him!"

As he slowly walked by, the weeping willows would cry for joy

2008-01-14T09:21:00.000-08:00

Happy 70th birthday to one of my favorites. Hope he has a happy day -- and more importantly, a sweet Southern Night. His solo performance of that song with extended monologue at the Herbst last summer was among my very favorite musical moments of 2007.

Words, words, words

2007-12-30T20:35:00.000-08:00

Three favorite words:

aubergine
louche
nightsoils

Yours?

Commonplace

2007-12-28T20:47:00.000-08:00

I've been lazy about producing original content for this space lately, and I'm not really sure why. In lieu of my own bons mots, here are a few thoughts from W.H. Auden, published in 1952. They were translated into French and back into English; the original English has been lost. (Via Harper's.)

*

What English-language poet has not at times rebelled against a language in which the suffix -s makes a noun plural and a verb singular?

*

Rhymes, meters, stanzas, etc., are like servants. If the master is just enough to win their affection and firm enough to command their respect, the result is an orderly, happy household. If he is too tyrannical, the servants give notice; if he is too weak, they turn slovenly, impertinent, drunk and dishonest.

The poet who writes "free verse" is like Robinson Crusoe on his island: he must do all his cooking, laundry, darning, etc. In a few exceptional cases, this manly independent produces something original and impressive, but more often the result is squalor: empty bottles on the unswept floor, dirty sheets on the unmade bed.

*

As societies grow, their poems tend to grow shorter. A peasant will listen to interminable epic poems in the village square; the literary man in big cities reads sonnets in his bath.

*

Propaganda is the use of magic by those who no longer believe in it against those who still do.

*

I look down from an airplane upon a stretch of land which is obviously continuous. That, across it, marked by a tiny ridge or river or even by no topographical sign whatever, there should run a frontier, and that the human beings living on one side should hate or refuse to trade with or be forbidden to visit those on the other side, is, from the height where I find myself, revealed to me as ridiculous. Unfortunately, I cannot have this revelation without having the illusion that there are no historical values.

Turn on all the Christmas lights, 'cause baby's coming home tonight

2007-12-06T13:20:00.001-08:00

He may be writing about "Christmas in Fallujah", but I know what he's really thinking.

Do they know it's Thanksgiving?

2007-11-23T13:10:00.000-08:00

Build your vocabulary while donating food.

I can't get above level 46... not yet, anyway. Good luck!

UPDATE: I want to take you higher!

And please don't say "foodie"

2007-11-22T12:44:00.001-08:00

Blogging about King Corn a couple of weeks back, I wrote:

You could make an argument that for people below the poverty level, starving is worse than getting diabetes....

And today, as I prepare to eat well in the land of plenty, I see that many Americans can't afford to eat right, despite Earl Butz's efforts to make food as inexpensive as possible. That farm bill is apparently dead too. Eat well, folks. It's a privilege.

Oh, Caroline

2007-11-20T08:10:00.000-08:00

Neil Diamond has reportedly confessed that "Sweet Caroline" is about Caroline Kennedy.

That's not what I heard.

Close your eyes. Open them. Take our test!

2007-11-06T14:18:00.000-08:00

I got a 56. You?

A-Rod

2007-11-03T14:34:00.001-07:00

Whoever signs him is going to be sorry.

King Corn

2007-11-03T11:06:00.000-07:00

In my line of work, I'm sometimes called upon to take a topic most people would find profoundly uninteresting, and turn it into something entertaining, or at least worth reading about. That's why I was so impressed with King Corn, a film that takes on such scintillating topics as farm subsidies, high fructose corn syrup, ulcerated cattle and animal feedstocks, and turn them into an amusing narrative.

King Corn's starting point is the revelation that corn -- the genetically engineered, industrial-grade yellow stuff, not sweet niblets or the fresh kind you'd eat on the cob -- is so pervasive in the American diet that we are actually made of the stuff now. This inspires a couple of Elis to live in northeastern Iowa for a year and raise exactly one acre of corn, then trace the grain's path through the food chain and the food processing industry to see where it all winds up.

I was initially put off that these two guys inserted themselves so prominently into the story, but they won me over in time. As with Super Size Me, a film to which King Corn is rightfully often compared, it helped that they brought some understated charm to their adventure. They know they're mostly playing to non-farmers like me who know relatively little about the primary economic sector, and I think their estimate of farming-for-dummies content was just about right for a broad audience.

Somehow, the filmmakers obtain a brief interview with the infirm, 95-year-old ex-Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz, in their Charlton Heston moment. (One of the filmmakers who was present at the screening, Curt Ellis, subsequently told the crowd that they didn't want King Corn to turn out like a Michael Moore film.) Butz still seems to think the best decision of his life, and the best-kept secret in American economics, is that he made food cheap enough that we spend money in other places, despite the public health problems that the processed-food industry is creating.

You could make an argument that for people below the poverty level, starving is worse than getting diabetes, and King Corn doesn't quite air that one out. Nor do our young heroes challenge, say, the CEO of Cargill, although they do have a nicely-edited sequence with a spokesperson for a corn-syrup processor. But, as Ellis noted, a key farm bill is expected to go to the Senate floor next week. I see that Butler County, Iowa favored Bush to Kerry by 59%-40% in 2004, and while King Corn ultimately shies away from saying whether such legislation will be in the farmers' best interest, it leaves little doubt whether it would benefit the nation. Hope to see it at Doc Days in March.

Shiver me timbers

2007-10-30T20:08:00.000-07:00

No, I didn't bump into the shower door while I was peeing. It was rattling all by itself....

Looks like it was 46.6 miles away. Lasted about six seconds, no big deal in the greater Fort Miley region.

Hope everyone's all right in the South Bay and East Bay. There are callers on KCBS radio saying it reminded them of the Loma Prieta quake in 1989 -- guess it was a pretty big shock down there. 5.6 is no joke.

Alternatives

2007-10-21T22:14:00.000-07:00

SIOUX CITY, Iowa - City leaders have scrapped plans to do away with the Sioux Gateway Airport's unflattering three-letter identifier — SUX — and instead have made it the centerpiece of the airport's new marketing campaign.

...At one point, the FAA offered the city five alternatives — GWU, GYO, GYT, SGV and GAY — but airport trustees turned them down.

Shocked! Shocked!

2007-10-17T09:53:00.000-07:00

The SFChron shocks us twice this morning!

One: $27,000 a year isn't a lot of money in the Bay Area.

Two: People don't know who Alice Waters is.

I had no idea!

Nobels

2007-10-12T11:52:00.000-07:00

Two winners.

Gore: "Deeply honored".

Lessing: "Oh Christ! ... I couldn't care less.... I'm delighted to win them all, the whole lot, OK? It's a royal flush. I'm sure you'd like some uplifting remarks.... I'm 88 years old and they can't give the Nobel to someone who's dead, so I think they were probably thinking they'd probably better give it to me now before I've popped off.... I'm already thinking about all the people who are going to send me begging letters — I can see them lining up now."

Rubber sole

2007-10-11T21:42:00.001-07:00

I may be the first customer in the history of Netflix to select Werner Herzog's Fitzcarraldo as the first film ever slotted into his queue. But I am certainly not the first to follow up this great movie with Burden of Dreams, a vaguely meta version of a "making-of" documentary about Herzog's quest deep into the Amazon rainforest to shoot the movie. Included on the DVD of the latter is "Dreams and Burdens," a retrospective of the documentary about the making of the original. Whew, that's exhaustive treatment -- all for an insanely ambitious, unrepeatable film whose documentation has been satirized and whose content has been celebrated in song.

I don't think I'll ever forget the image of Klaus Kinski perched on the bow of his steamship, cruising up through the rainforest as he breathes in the sound of Caruso on his Victrola. It's one of many memorable shots that made the 2:40 running time seem a lot shorter, as Kinski's opera-loving would-be rubber baron steams upriver, meets curious and sometimes hostile natives, and ultimately attempts to drag an entire steamship over a mountain. Although Kinski is known for his maniacal intensity, he's actually quite funny at times. I laughed out loud at the final shot.

While Les Blank's Burden of Dreams reveals a great deal, I liked one of Herzog's remarks the best. He implies that Fitzcarraldo was a reaction to special effects in popular cinema, and that he was trying to retrain viewers to trust their senses by shooting improbable things. Hence, dragging a 340-ton steamship up a 40-degree incline for half a mile, then down the other side to a different river, using (mostly) 1910 technology. Improbable, yet accomplished before your very eyes. Most people would've used a scale model, but not Herzog. We've grown accustomed to appreciating interesting camera angles, cuts and effects, and equating them with good cinema; Herzog gives you simple shots of unbelievable situations that simply must have existed in reality. Deadly.

[Also: As with Aguirre, I found myself laughing at the overlap in languages more than once. This time, Fitzcarraldo is supposed to be an Irishman living in countries where Spanish and Portuguese are spoken (along with native tongues). The actors were filmed speaking English, but the soundtrack was dubbed in German; then, they subtitled the whole thing in English. And the subtitles don't always match the original English track!]

The Burden Of Dreams DVD came with an unexpected treat. I'd heard about this 20-minute short before, and now I can't believe I've actually seen it. Duck fat, it seems, was the key. (And what do you know -- that's the manager of my local movie house, introducing Herzog onstage in Berkeley.)

HSB

2007-10-08T10:54:00.000-07:00

SF Chronicle: "Police told Slim's and Great American Music Hall general manager Dawn Holliday, producer of the sprawling event, that they thought more than 500,000 people filled the entire west end of the park from 25th Avenue out."

Wikipedia: "Woodstock has been idealized in the American popular culture as one of peak events of the hippie movement — a festival where nearly 500,000 "flower children" came together to celebrate."

Congratulations to Jordan on his HSB appearance!

FMFM: Un "Sung" Stories, the first solo album from Blasters singer Phil Alvin, whose brother Dave played at least twice during this year's festival. Somehow, the eventual mathematics Ph.D. got Sun Ra's Arkestra to be his backing band on three songs; the results remind me vaguely of Mingus's Oh Yeah. The rest of the album's a little more traditional, although the Dirty Dozen Brass Band brings a certain amount of chaos to one song too. Not available on CD (was it ever?), but I'll see what I can do about digital distribution. Wink.

I slipped the kid a twenty, said, "Billy, give 'em hell"

2007-10-05T10:35:00.003-07:00

The best idea in music criticism in a long time: Download the top 20 songs on the Billboard chart, review and grade. Why didn't I think of that?

FMFM: John Prine's Sweet Revenge. I'd been planning to watch the great Nick Lowe tomorrow afternoon at HSB, but while laughing all the way through "Please Don't Bury Me" this morning, I'm going to have to reconsider. It's going to be a close call, but there's no way to see both. Toughest decision of the fest. Neither one's getting any younger, either.

$3 Berlin Trilogy

2007-09-25T22:15:00.000-07:00

Yeah, at this point, it's probably free to most of you. But I'm very happy with my $3 Berlin Trilogy. ("Amoeba, my dear, we'll always have Berlin.")

And, of course, it's buy three red-tag dollar-bin records, get one free!

20 minutes

2007-09-24T07:37:00.001-07:00

It was all too appropriate that the first episode of Ken Burns' The War was aired roughly forty minutes after 60 Minutes's interview with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad ended. Burns titled his first episode "A Necessary War"; the interview pointed another way.

War with Iran is unimaginable at the moment. Taking on a bigger country, with our military resources stretched as thin as they are, seems like a very large second step toward our nation spending itself into irrelevance, largely in the name of securing our wealth and dominance. That said, as I watched Ahmadinejad last night, I thought of my dad's remarks from a couple of years ago: "They finally found a world leader who's dumber than Bush."

What I saw, between his weird smiles and circumlocution/ equivocation, was a world leader awkwardly trying to insert himself between the American Left and American Right, playing to Bush-haters inside and outside the U.S. Instead, Ahmadinejad proved that he hasn't got a clue what we're all about. (Bin Laden does this too: sometimes, among his 14th-century revenge fantasies, he tries to say something that parrots left-wing American criticism of Bush, but comes off sounding like a bloodthirsty fringe-nutball anyway.) I was still somewhat surprised at the hostility of the interviewer's very first question about the Ground Zero request ("What were you thinking?"), and found it unfortunate that the interviewer did not ask him directly whether he really does want Israel wiped off the map. If Ahmadinejad wanted to win any sympathy from liberal Americans, he blew his chance last night. Instead, he came off as a clown. Fortunately, most of Iran thinks he's one too. (Sound familiar?)

No, I'm not part of the "neoconservative push for war". I'm just remembering what I'm for, and what I'm against. [As for Burns, I'll be watching as much as I can this week.]

Show night: New Pornographers/Lavender Diamond

2007-09-22T12:42:00.000-07:00

My regular publisher seems to be napping, so I'm posting this here until it appears there.

*

The current New Pornographers tour offers a rare opportunity to witness the Canadian guitar-pop group as most fans would like to see them – in its full eight-piece lineup, with often-scarce members Neko Case and Dan Bejar on board. Monday night's show in San Francisco was the fifth in a sortie that will loop through the U.S. and Canada over the next 48 days. I spent the evening just beyond the monitors at stage right of the Warfield Theatre, with a close-up view of a band acting like they were on vacation together rather than slaving it out night after night.

Out skipped Becky Stark, the singer and apparent auteur of Lavender Diamond, to open the show shortly before 9:00. (I missed what must have been a brief set by Fancey, the band fronted by New Porns guitarist Todd Fancey.) Her band, working with a piano, acoustic guitar and a couple of drums, was trancelike and buoyant, as Stark sang of open hearts and springtime in a clear, striking soprano. In between her airy open-throttle peaks and strangely subversive asides, Stark cultivated an impossibly ingenuous persona, apparently obsessed with smiles and sunshine. Truth is, there's no shortage of despair weighing on her gossamer wings; it just takes awhile to make itself plain in the songs. ("It's a paradox, people," she warned at one point.) The idea, I think, may still be obvious enough: If you can't find what you want in this world -- truth, beauty, etc. -- you make up a world that you like better, and live in it. Come to think of it, that's what we all do anyway. I'm on her side.

Recent criticism has suggested that the New Porns' Challengers album is somehow too restrained. Indeed, it trades big, satisfying drum codas for subtler textures, and its production leaves more room for voices and quieter instruments. Although drummer Kurt Dahle is credited with producing the basic track "beds" upon which the songs were built in the studio, some listeners seem to think Challengers could use another big basher moment like the one Dahle provided on the last album's "The Bleeding Heart Show." Dahle isn't around for the first leg of the tour – we were treated to replacement drummer Jon Wurster (Superchunk) instead – but with a fog machine blasting, a big blinking sign identifying the band, and Mason Williams' "Classical Gas" as entrance music (!), the New Porns were off and running with "All The Things That Go To Make Heaven & Earth," clearly favoring vivid momentum over subtlety.

If the band tried to make more space for detail on their new record, they seemed willing to sacrifice nuance for bluster during most of the show. Frontman Carl Newman isn't really all that powerful of a singer; his more timorous moments were occasionally overwhelmed by the forceful rhythm section. (Not so for Neko Case; she can compete for volume with any drummer, no matter how muscular his rhythms may be.) There were quiet moments too; I thought of Vivaldi's mandolin concerto as I heard the plucked octaves during "Challengers," although I admit thinking of Cheap Trick more often during the set. There was plenty of magic in little moments: the round-like section spilling into the terminal key change in "Mass Romantic," the roar following the Roxie shout-out in "Twin Cinema," Blaine Thurier's harmonica in "Sing Me Spanish Techno." But the prettiness and delicacy would soon be blown away in the end; when Wurster dropped the final bomb on "The Bleeding Heart Show," it was clear which side won out.

Case played the guest-star role, but second songwriter Dan Bejar was the wild card. Every fifteen minutes or so he appeared, as if he'd just risen from a nap. He'd sing a song, retreat to his glockenspiel and wander off for awhile, then return with a fresh Corona for another number. (Seems like a dream job.) "The Spirit Of Giving" was quite good, thanks especially to Kathryn Calder's accordion solo; "Myriad Harbour" was great, thanks to the in-band dialogue written into the lyrics; and "Jackie, Dressed in Cobras" killed, with Case and Bejar riding Wurster's nuclear drumming.

For a band that may not get to rehearse all that much – its members reside in various cities – the New Porns sure seemed ready to roll when they arrived. Five shows may be just enough for them to find themselves; a long, transformative road surely lies ahead of them in the next seven weeks. The band members seemed content to take talky breaks for their own amusement, even briefly essaying a Journey song as they chitchatted with audience members. Increasingly, bands are following the virtual model, living in scattered places, e-mailing demos around, and convening only when necessary; it works for the New Porns. And when you treat your work like a vacation with old friends, your most intense moments turn into your most fun ones too.

Hey man, nice shot

2007-09-17T16:59:00.000-07:00

Thanks, Flickr!

Great work by this guy.

If you wear red tonight

2007-09-12T07:59:00.000-07:00

Remember my run-in with polygamists this spring? Their "prophet" is going on trial this week, as you may have heard.

I see that today's CNN story about the trial includes this sentence:

Former followers say red, thought to be the color of evil, is banned.

Oh. Well this couldn't have helped me stay under their radar. I assume that I would've made myself obvious no matter what, but obviously I tipped my hand much sooner than I'd thought.

Q&A with Joe Henry

2007-09-07T08:29:00.001-07:00

Here.

Germophobe

2007-08-30T08:53:00.000-07:00

Happy birthday to my most famous exact contemporary.

RIP Max Roach

2007-08-16T15:08:00.000-07:00

It just so happened that I pulled out Sonny Rollins' Shadow Waltz LP this morning, and listened to "Freedom Suite". Now comes the sad news that Max Roach has passed away.

Roach kept company with a lot of great musicians; his quintet recordings with Clifford Brown and Rollins are among my favorite music ever. His polyrhythmic intro on "St. Thomas", on Rollins' Saxophone Colossus, alternately tumbles and gleams, propelling the song forward while retaining the easygoing sway of its island roots. It's one record that, in my experience, even non-jazz fans like.

The beat goes on. I understand he had a second career in academia, and made innovative music as long as he was physically capable. Fascinating life. RIP.

Where do we go now?

2007-08-10T17:16:00.000-07:00

You gotta wait for the solo.

Mixology

2007-08-06T22:44:00.000-07:00

1-1/2 oz. Tanqueray Rangpur gin
3/4 oz. Campari
3/4 oz. Villa Italia blood orange soda from Trader Joe's

Shake with ice, and serve up.

I came up with this on Friday night. It's descended from the Negroni; I'm starting to think any drink that's one-third sweet vermouth needs a tweak. I even put a shake of Angostura bitters in there just to see how it would work alongside the Campari, but it wasn't necessary. This is a summertime drink best served very cold on a warm evening. It works as an apertif. Pair with something by Lee Morgan.

The Tanqueray Rangpur probably works in a G&T, but it's not Martini material; I guess you could work with it in a Gimlet too. Inessential in your liquor cabinet.

Name my drink?

Warhol irony alert

2007-08-06T22:13:00.001-07:00

A new advertisement that exhorts you to purchase Nike Shox Remix sneakers from athletic retailer Finish Line begins with a stage performance by the Hives. Mid-song, you learn that the band's music is actually the soundtrack to your workout, as demonstrated by a Finish Line sales associate. The music falls into the background as a voice says, "Fifteen minutes and four seconds".

Gentlemen, your time is up when you've associated yourselves with a shoe that's called a "Remix". Kindly return to Sweden.

UPDATE: Here it is.

In the parlance of our times

2007-07-28T12:22:00.001-07:00

Every time I drive past the Zen Center on Highway 1 in Marin County, I ask my passenger, "You know what happens there, don't you?"

"No, what?"

"Nothing."

FMFM: Joe Henry's Civilians (due in stores 9/11/07), which indeed addresses a tearful nation via the wobbly knees of Willie Mays. Henry pretty much knocks this one out of the park. (My full review will appear in the next No Depression.)

More quake

2007-07-20T13:33:00.000-07:00

A little more information about this morning's geologic shrug:

∙ I was 17.43 miles from the epicenter
∙ Classified as "weak" in my ZIP code, but "moderate" in the East Bay
∙ My housemate, a much lighter sleeper than I am, did not wake up!

Buns of steel

2007-07-20T08:22:00.000-07:00

The Chinese tainted-food scandal now has its Jayson Blair.

Wonder if they'll execute him too.

I feel the sky tumbling down

2007-07-20T07:52:00.000-07:00

Yeah, I felt it.

It woke me from a dream in which we -- me and somebody else, can't remember who -- were chasing a rat around the house. I think it was my old house in Baltimore. We didn't know if the rat was in the same room as us; we thought maybe it was behind the dresser. And then everything started creaking. First I thought the rat was scratching behind some furniture... and then I was awake, and fully aware that the furniture was moving. Ten seconds of jiggle, with the mattress going back and forth, but no real shocks. It was over quickly.

I turned on the radio, and heard the KCBS news reporter talking about how most people don't have earthquake insurance because it's too expensive. And then he sort of chuckled and reported that a little quake had just happened, although he didn't feel it down at Battery and Broadway. KCBS always takes phone calls from all over the Bay Area when little tremors roll through -- starting with their own reporters, then going to the general public. It's like the Oakland A's postgame show!

I think I've felt six quakes in eight years. I was dining at Le Soleil with my visiting photographer friend when the last one rolled through in March. She didn't notice it, but I could see the light fixtures swaying and felt my chair go to jelly. Cool.

National velveteen

2007-07-05T15:32:00.000-07:00

About that National record....

I haven't heard any of the National's work prior to Boxer. What enticed me to buy the record was "Fake Empire", the "single" given away as a free download prior to Boxer's release. I liked the initially deceptive three-against-four piano part, the looped horns at the end, the tip-of-the-iceberg lyrics that imply more than they give away, the casual delivery that's mercifully restrained from over-emoting. That, along with reports (widespread in certain circles) that the National were a good band, sent me to the store.

"Fake Empire" is a very good song, and while it's probably the best thing on Boxer, I'm not wholly disappointed with the rest. There are loud moments, barely-there quiet interludes, sonic experiments and straightforward songs, and yet the whole thing holds together. It's one record where I prefer that the singer delivers almost every line exactly the same way, and maybe that's the consistent element that makes the whole album sound like it comes from one place. (He's probably going for a dramatic Joy Division thing, but he comes off a little like like Mark Knopfler sometimes. I'm OK with that, although as a vocalist, Knopfler was a great guitar player.)

There are some very lovely moments that are difficult to pull off; the string arrangement on "Brainy" is one*. Some of the more spartan songs may have been even harder to get right; "Start A War" vaguely reminds me of Greg Brown or one of Dave Alvin's dronier pieces. It would have been very easy for this record to come out something like an Interpol product (the bands share a producer), but where I find that band a little corny and half-baked, the National is somewhat more approachable.

I see that at least one reviewer has pegged Alligator (2005) as a "grower," with "initially off-putting and seemingly obtuse... non sequiturs and stray details [that] proved unpretentiously poetic over time." Boxer may or may not share that characteristic, but I'm not yet convinced that the writing's going to reveal itself as all that deep. Can I possibly be hearing at least three songs expressing distaste for what bankers wear when they go to work? (Hey, man, is this, you know, a concept album?) Two years, and this is what you have to say? Bitching about yuppie clothes?

Its unbroken tension is what makes Boxer work; I think several songs would play nicely on a film soundtrack -- say, in a black-and-white film with a lot of nudity. (Remember when Pete Buck called one of R.E.M.'s outtakes "a movie theme without a movie"?) It's good enough to take seriously, but I'm worried that what you see is all you're going to get, and that it's less a grower than an empty bit of atmosphere.

- - -

*I meant "Squalor Victoria" here, but the bit at the end of "Brainy" is nicely done too.

#3

2007-07-03T08:01:00.000-07:00

More musical musings in my third HuffPo salvo.

NYT: "It takes a tough man to tell a bad joke."

2007-06-24T20:34:00.000-07:00

But apparently, guys with man-boobs can tell them too. Nice photo, Toby.

Black flies in my chardonnay

2007-06-20T19:45:00.000-07:00

Two ironies not lost on me:

∙ The music from The Natural playing after Sammy Sosa hit his 600th home run.

∙ President Bush telling us, "Destroying human life in the hopes of saving human life is not ethical. And it is not the only option before us."

Swingin' A's, again

2007-06-11T13:23:00.000-07:00

You have to wonder whether Ray Ratto knew about the rumor referenced here when he wrote this column.

Says Ratto:

I mean, when you have the best numbers in baseball, you don't get to go winery hopping with your wife (or anyone else's, for that matter).

#2

2007-06-11T08:32:00.000-07:00

Here.

My new gig

2007-06-06T08:48:00.001-07:00

First post here.

And the beards have all grown longer overnight

2007-06-04T13:24:00.000-07:00

It's nice to know that while some people in the Jam-Band State consider secession to protest "electoral fraud, rampant corporate corruption, [and] a culture of militarism and war," the wingnuts in Utah's Dixie would secede because they fear that the U.S. is controlled by "a group of Soviet KGB masters under the direction of the Soviet Comintern."

Speaking of bad taste in music, why were they playing Bonnie Tyler at the Progressive Convention? (Via Laz.)

Simply because you're near me

2007-06-03T01:36:00.000-07:00

A NYT reviewer writes the following of Let's Get Lost, the Chet Baker documentary:

Jazz history hasn’t been kind to him; his talent, though real, was thin.... When you hear Mr. Baker’s stuff, you can’t help picturing his ideal listener as one of those lupine swingers of the Playboy era, decked out in a velvet smoking jacket and loading smooth platters onto the hi-fi to get a hot chick in the mood for love.

And he says that like it's a bad thing.

We get a noseful from our so-called friends

2007-06-01T10:47:00.000-07:00

Also in the Ertegun documentary, a smirking Mick Jagger tells this story:

You'd meet [Led Zeppelin manager] Peter Grant, and he'd say, "Would you like some cocaine?" And then he'd say, "I have three kinds of cocaine. There's the cocaine for the band, for Jimmy. There's the cocaine for me. And then there's the cocaine for you.

The story of jazz

2007-05-31T21:41:00.000-07:00

Anecdote told by Ahmet Ertegun on American Masters, screened on KTEH this evening:

I wound up at a rent party [in Harlem], where James P. Johnson was playing. I'm drinking scotch and sodas. I'm in the seventh grade.

I had already met Sidney Bechet through my brother. He sees me at the party and says, "What are you drinking?" I say, "Scotch and sodas." He takes my drink away and says, "You're too young to be drinking!"

And he hands me a joint.

Compare and contrast

2007-05-23T08:58:00.000-07:00

The similarities are eerie.

What was that about escaping genre boundaries?

Swingin' A's

2007-05-16T14:32:00.000-07:00

Don't click here if you don't want your Oakland A's viewing experience totally ruined.

Hand me the drumstick, snare, kick

2007-05-16T08:30:00.000-07:00

As much as I enjoyed reading the AV Club's interview with Jeff Tweedy today, I think I'd rather share this brief anecdote about auditioning a replacement drummer for Uncle Tupelo, from Greg Kot's biography of Wilco:

"[W]orking out the nuts and bolts in rehearsal, [Mike Heidorn's] drumming could be like a shoe in a dryer. It was work sometimes to hear the kick drum, because Mike wouldn't play loud. And then Ken [Coomer] comes in and is just a powerhouse: tons of experience, tons of chops, and yet not so flashy that he can't come down and play a country beat. As a bass player, I could finally relax. With Mike, I was playing and singing and hoping that I was playing somewhere near where the bass drum was. With Coomer there was no doubt where the bass drum is: it's right up my fucking ass. I couldn't deny it.

...I think there was a certain amount of discrimination against Ken at the time because he had dreadlocks down to his ass. I don't think my concerns or Jay's concerns were ever so pure that we didn't have some vanity about how we pictured out band to be like; everybody does it. It was as simple as he didn't look like our drummer."

Uncle Tupelo went with another candidate named Bill Belzer instead of Ken Coomer. Six months later, Belzer was out and Coomer was in.

FMFM: Aretha Franklin's "See Saw", where the kick drum is right up my fucking ass. From Aretha Now, featuring one of the great session bands of all time. I think that kick goes, um, even farther on "You're A Sweet Sweet Man."

Speak up! I can't hear you, here on this mountaintop.

2007-05-04T10:31:00.000-07:00

THE CRITICAL DECISIONS

∙ Re-purposing my Southwest Airlines ticket, originally for Los Angeles, to Salt Lake City, with the intention of driving down to Zion National Park for a few days of hiking and general outdoor relaxation.

∙ Abandoning my Swiss Army knife at airport security. Should've packed it in checked baggage. When I realized I still had it, I stuck it in the part of the backpack that also contained the lensatic compass and other outdoorsy supplies. Didn't fly.

∙ Accepting the "upgrade" from a compact car (Dodge Neon or similar) to a much thirstier 2007 Jeep Compass, because Enterprise had no compacts on the lot.

∙ Bringing the iTrip. The 90-song shuffle sequence made the drive down a pleasure. Thanks, iPod, for spitting out Townes Van Zandt's "Tower Song" somewhere around Panguitch.

∙ Choosing to take US-89 for as much of the trip down as possible. The landscape changes significantly on the way, from the shadow of the Wasatch to the open ranchland of Nephi, to the first spectacular scenery between Sevier and Marysvale, to the red and cream-colored rocks between Bryce and Zion.

∙ Avoiding an afternoon thundershower on Tuesday, and driving to Colorado City, Arizona, instead. Oh man. Separate post forthcoming.

REVIEWS

∙ 2007 Jeep Compass: I really regretted accepting this, but thought vaguely that it'd be useful on some winding, rocky road somewhere. Mostly it kept me from being laughed at in places like Hurricane, Utah, but when the unscheduled snowstorm occurred late Thursday morning on I-15, I sure was glad I wasn't in a Neon. It handled just fine in dry conditions, and didn't really feel like it was too much car. Burned a hell of a lot of gas, though.

∙ Springdale, Utah: Normally I avoid the tourist places. In southern Utah, I assumed that they'd be the only places to find decent food. Keith Richards reportedly once described jail thusly: "The food's terrible, the library is abysmal, and the wine list is very, very limited." That's what I expected from Washington County, Utah, so imagine my pleasant surprise at the vaguely Sedona-like Springdale. It's the home of the Bit & Spur, where I enjoyed a black bean burrito mojado and a Polygamy Porter, outdoors, beside the giant red rocks, with a slight 73-degree breeze wafting across the porch, for a very reasonable $14.

∙ Angels Landing Trail: The signature hike in Zion National Park, a strenuous four-hour journey up 1400 feet or so. I'm sorry to say that hunger and vertigo got the best of me on the dangerous chain portion, but the vistas from Scout Landing were enough to satisfy me. It's a very popular trail, and my experience was almost ruined by a large, loud group from Indiana (I think). I say "almost," because nothing could ruin this. (Hey, what's that driving down the road? Oh, it's a....)

∙ Zion Canyon Shuttle Bus. Few word combinations strike such fear in my heart as "shuttle bus". Once I stepped off the bus, however, the canyon was much more peaceful. They say each shuttle replaces 28 cars in the park, and I don't miss the congestion. The buses are probably faster anyway, during what would be peak vehicle traffic times. Hidden benefit: You can hike from one place to another and take the bus back. That's actually a big deal.

∙ Hidden Valley Trail: The payoff view isn't quite as famous, but I enjoyed this one more than the Angels Landing hike. The chain sections here didn't freak me out as much, for one thing. It's strange that the trail just kind of ends among some puddles. Much less populated in the early morning than Angels Landing. Minor quibble: You can see the parking lot from way too much of the trail.

∙ Weeping Rock Trail: Not solitary. Obese people. Flat, paved, half-hour round trip to an interesting geologic spot. All right. After doing this one, I skipped the walk to the Narrows, a famously great spot in Zion. I'll do it next time, preferably at seven o'clock in the morning.

∙ Canyon Overlook Trail: It's on the other side of a very long, dark tunnel, and was surprisingly lonely despite being highlighted in the park newspaper. I had a moment to myself here. If I had more time, I would have gone to the real "other side" of the park, Kolob Canyon, but that might have meant getting trapped in a snowstorm.

∙ St. George, Utah: This fast-growing town is one of those places that reportedly "has it all". What does it have, exactly? A shopping mall, every fast food joint you can name, an airplane-hangar-sized Wal-Mart and a distribution center, too much traffic for its little streets to bear, retirees, and a conspicuous lack of nighttime entertainment. Oh, there's golf, I guess. A suburb without a city.

∙ Hurricane, Utah: Pronounced "hur-ken" by locals; maybe there's a third syllable in there somewhere. This is much closer to Keith Richards' description of jail. It's definitely closer to Warren Jeffs' idea of jail.

∙ Talk radio in Utah. I heard the phrase "red-haired pickaninnies" used by a caller without irony, explanation or censure, in reference to children allegedly produced by Thomas Jefferson's affair with a female slave.

∙ Colorado City, Arizona/Hildale, Utah: See below.

Married my cousin in Arkansas, married two more when I got to Utah

2007-05-04T10:30:00.000-07:00

It just so happened that my visit to Utah's Dixie coincided with PBS's airing of The Mormons and my reading of Under The Banner Of Heaven, Jon Krakauer's enthralling tale of polygamist Fundamentalist Latter-Day Saints. During an afternoon thundershower, I found myself with little else to do but drive around the dry, profoundly empty, red-rocked region. After a moment's consideration, curiosity got the best of me: I had to go to Colorado City, Arizona, the border town (with Hildale, Utah) inhabited by thousands of Mormon polygamists.

I'd seen the pictures before, but something told me I had to go. I didn't quite have a handle on it: How big is this place, really? Are people out walking around? Are there businesses open, that I could patronize? If they're not allowed to talk to outsiders, how will they treat me? (Yeah, I know. Live and let live. There are enough polyamorists in San Francisco that I'm not really shocked by Mormon polygamy, although the part of it that resembles institutionalized child molestation is pretty tough to get over.)

So into town I drove, greeted by a little sign announcing Hildale as I approached from the northwest. There's a drugstore, a gas station, and a lube-and-filter place. Some farm equipment, construction equipment, tanks and silos. And the houses are big. Very big. Like, eight-bedroom houses, with small parking lots instead of driveways. It's a town of unusually large houses in a region of unusually large houses. Extended cab pickups and minivans sit in the yards. I cross into Arizona on the main highway, and see that just beyond the gas station is the Merry Wives Cafe. (Coffee? They can't drink coffee here.) And so I turn left, off the drag and into town, with a red pickup on my rear bumper. He turns into the dirt driveway of the first house, and I am now unaccompanied.

It's windy and a little cold with a storm on the way, and no one's out walking in the wide streets. Most of the houses are at least two stories high, have hastily-constructed additions, and are surrounded by wooden fences so you can't see much of what's going on. I turn left on Center Street, and approach a tiny business district, and there they are.

There's a sad little Food Town, with a small parking lot full of large vehicles. Loading groceries and packs of children in and out of their vans are women dressed in nineteenth-century-style ankle-length dresses. All the women and girls look like Melissa Gilbert on Little House On The Prairie; the boys have their shirts tucked into neatly pressed pants. I settle into a parking space before losing my courage. I can't do it. I can't walk into the weird polygamist grocery store, not even to buy a bottle of water and leave. Am I already being watched? Is there some guy in a pickup, eyeing me, packing heat? Shit. Must move.

I turn the car around and pull back into the street. What's across the street? Radio Shack! (I guess polygamists need coaxial cable too, although the community leaders have banned television, newspapers, and other means of contact with the outside world.) There's something that might be a private school or day-care center, a little florist-type business that seems to cater to kids' birthday parties, and an inauspicious pizzeria (five stars!). I make sure to stop completely at all the stop signs, and move back toward the Hildale side.

I see more ankle-length dresses. Three people, possibly including a teenage mom, are riding around on bicycles. A girl crosses my path on horseback. A child of about eight pushes a mower around his family's lawn. Two blocks later, two more equestrians cross my path. I remember to take photos, but can't bring myself to snap shots of them. Not wanting to be seen waving a digital camera around, I inconspicuously snap two poor shots of people's houses. (This guy got some pictures too.) I see a crappy old blue Pontiac Sunbird approach and slow down, and the driver looks me in the eye. (I'm glad I'm not in my gray Honda Civic at this moment.) This is the same car that was behind me on the twenty-mile journey from Hurricane. It's time to go.

Whew. Colorado City creeped me out completely in the roughly ten minutes I spent there. In the eyes of the state, the town is mostly populated by single mothers with out-of-wedlock children. They're all collecting welfare, and sharing the money in something called the United Effort Plan, which owns all the land and is managed by a prophet who assigns and re-assigns wives and children to various men. (Part of the Taliban-like situation in town involves kicking out teenage boys who misbehave, thereby reducing competition for young brides.) Although Krakauer mentions that most people in the town live below the poverty level, it wasn't until I got there that I realized the obvious: The place is a fucking dump. It's a never-ending construction site, with shabby little businesses. The backyards you can see all seem to have rusty little swingsets and rotting toys. Somehow, Colorado City manages to be highly unsightly, despite the majestic cliffs rising behind it.

On the way out of town, I spotted a sign for something called Barlow University. That's the name of a large clan in town (how could they not all be related somehow by now?), which includes the mayor and one of the defendants in the current prosecution of various polygamists/molesters in the town. Right near it was a billboard for Mohave County College, whose north campus is located in Colorado City. But the spirit of the billboard implied something else: Get an education, and find a way out. Hope some of those girls do.

SSLYBY

2007-04-23T07:46:00.000-07:00

Not anymore.

Bubble lounge

2007-04-21T11:30:00.000-07:00

I guess the boom really is back. Wasn't this an Industry Standard cover story in 1999?

(Not to be confused with "Suddenly, Rich Marino!", a pilot for a bubble-era sitcom that, sadly, was never picked up after everything fell apart.)

FMFM: A couple of new songs from Ray's Vast Basement, a literate, contemplative San Francisco collective.

Longer, shorter III

2007-04-20T08:01:00.000-07:00

Re: The Long And Short Of It, here's Exhibit B:

This is a bloated, overlong rock record that shouldn’t have even considered breaking the 40-minute mark. It breaks that cardinal rule like Bane broke the back of The Bat. The song lengths can’t even keep their enthusiasm in check; it’s unlikely that four of the fifteen songs really honestly needed six minutes to explain themselves. Anything cuts like "The Lost Brigade" and "C.I.A." had to offer discerning ears gets lost in the shuffle of the exhausting track lengths.

It almost seems like the writer didn't listen to the longer songs, and guessed that they couldn't possibly be all that interesting! What else could he mean by "it's unlikely"?

Also, is he anthropomorphizing the timings themselves there? Gosh, 5:57 can be so enthusiastic sometimes. I hate it when he does that.

Man, I feel like....

2007-04-18T10:22:00.000-07:00

While escaping the Arctic night air of the Oakland Coliseum in the faux-est of Irish pubs within the ballpark's bowels, Jim from Berkeley asked me curiously, "Is there any genre of music you're not interested in? And are you keeping tabs on all of them just to keep up?"

It's a very good question. I suppose there are some extreme fringe genres that never appealed to me -- grindcore, for example. I never embraced the world of metal, apart from, say, Zep and Sabbath (and it'd be a stretch to say I ever embraced Sabbath!), but I can't say I really have a proper boundary there. I've shopped from nearly every bin in the record store, save for the "black metal" section at Amoeba, if that's the question.

What Jim was really asking me, or at least what I wish he were asking me, is: Are there good ideas to be found in every idiom? And my answer is, most probably yes. Obviously I'm knee-deep in rock'n'roll, jazz, folksong, CBGB (the acronym) and, increasingly, classical music. My gut tells me that the great innovators in modern music are the ones who embrace technology, and that most music cognoscenti (me as well) give criminally short shrift to electronic composition. Yet I admit I have a hard time being truly touched by purely machine-made sound, and will quickly grow bored if I can't hear someone's hands and/or windpipe at work. Sue me.

I will always embrace some cultures more than others in this world, and we can debate all day long whether some are right and some are wrong (or "more right" and "more wrong"). But I do believe that they can all contribute something of value, in the end: an academic idea, an artistic notion, a form of tonality, an instrument. I don't exalt the oud for its otherness, but I'll bet there's an oud player who can show me something. I'm not one to take sides: "World music is for hippies," etc. The Clash didn't say that, and neither did Ellington.

Greil Marcus once wrote of Sleater-Kinney that he liked them because they knew things he didn't know. This person wishes new indie-rock bands would sing in French, lest he "have to listen to someone 20 years younger than me try to tell me something I don't already know about the human condition." Can an artist in an easily-reviled genre such as Contemporary Hit Nashville Country tell me something I don't already know? Of course she can, and I'm simply not willing to wave my hand and write it all off due to antiseptic production, retro-awful synth sounds, slickness or whatever, without admitting that it's possible that they can tell me something new.

To wit: Listen to the "killer chorus" of this song. Do your best to ignore ~~the screwed-up Tron video~~ (sorry, conflated with one of her others), and check out the timing of the words and the oh-ohs. Is it as original, as strange, as something off of the Pixies' Surfer Rosa, universally lauded as a major influence on modern rock song structure? I could make a very good case that it is. We applaud Spoon for doing the same thing, and in fact we applaud them for making such weirdness a little more palatable -- for their specific choices in being derivative!

But (and I can't believe I'm going to write this) Shania Twain's "Man! I Feel Like A Woman" does not signify as influential music for early adopters who pride themselves on being ahead of the curve (or, for that matter, college kids who think violent head-splat fantasies are hilarious). Rather, "Man! I Feel Like A Woman" signifies as fun radio fare for Women Who Want To Have It All. How does it signify this? By not using appropriately vintage guitar equipment, by deploying synths reminiscent of the bold, primary-and-pastel-colored 1980s, by the silly video that remakes another silly video that's all about the costumes, by the snare drum that's loud and obvious and simple enough that even the line-dancers can find it after a few Bud Lights, and by (as Anthony notes in the comments section of another post below) the haircuts of the people involved. And although the Twain record seems to come from a different world, it's not like Mutt Lange's never heard of the Pixies.

All right, then: No, "Man! I Feel Like A Woman" doesn't really speak to me. (I'm not a Woman Who Wants To Have It All.) I'm just trying to say (back to my original point) that there are good and bad ideas everywhere, regardless of idiom. In a way it's amazing that Mutt and Shania made such a weird little bit of music acceptable to an audience of 40 million people. I could have rejected it out of hand, because of where it came from and what, at first blush, it seems to stand for. But it's really not a bad little musical idea, see? Or, at least, it's one comparable to things people trip over themselves to applaud (see hilarious love shown in Pixies 'Gouge' documentary). It's very easy to fall into the trap of accepting lesser ideas because they seem like familiar good ones. (Don't get me started on cumulative advantage; that's for another day.)

At any rate, there you have it: my rationale for how it came to pass that I can find myself spinning an Oliver Nelson record one minute and a Hüsker Dü speedfest the next, via Shania Twain's "Man! I Feel Like A Woman." In fact, I'm willing to wonder aloud whether the flat-out dismissal of a whole genre - say, reggae -- is really all that different from saying that there aren't any good ideas coming out of Jamaica, period. How, exactly, are those two ideas different? There's intense reggae, languid reggae, violent reggae, peaceful reggae. The easiest way for us to dismiss reggae, though, is to associate it with a particular kind of listener and suggest that we don't like that kind of person, which is the ultimate disservice to a work of art. And that last idea is one for which I have little patience.

Attitude amplification

2007-04-17T08:10:00.000-07:00

Compared with last time I saw them, everything good about Silversun Pickups is even better now, and everything irritating is even worse. Last night's show at the Independent revealed a band ready for takeoff, with a massive ego up front that's quickly spinning out of control.

What's not to like about the flailing, wrong-handed drummer? About the deep science of the electronics whiz seated at stage right? The shyly grinning, expressive bassist? The squalling guitar figures, reminiscent of so many great bands when they get fully sonic? The pieces are all in place, and yet it's apparent that the frontman is developing one of the worst attitudes in rock music.

As the night wore on, the between-song banter became more and more self-congratulatory. "I think we booked too small of a venue," singer Brian Aubert told a sold-out crowd full of people who either bought tickets in the first ten minutes they were on sale, or paid through the nose to get them afterward. "What do you think? I was starting to feel bad for the people waiting outside when we got here." Later, he delivered this gem: "San Francisco is very important to us, because Live105 was the first radio station to add 'Lazy Eye'." Are you serious, amigo? If you're going to call me your market, you'd better deliver some serious songs. And, I'm afraid, the band did not.

I'd like to say that the band's more rhythmically complicated numbers benefited from their ambition, but the truth is that those songs seem more like filler. The band's hooky little grooves, like the otherwise poorly-written "Little Lover's So Polite", are really their bread and butter. I haven't really spent much time with their records, and I've only seen the band play twice, but it's increasingly apparent that the lyrics don't give a person much to hold on to. People sang along with the parts they could remember. "It's everything that is connected and beautiful, and now I know just where I stand," goes one. "I've been waiting for this moment for all my life, but it's not quite right," goes another, and so forth. The disconnected ideas really don't add up to much in the end, and the noisy crescendos and intricate textures start to seem like so much hot air.

Hmmm. Lots of buzz, long on style, precious little substance... um, what city did you say they were from?

Aubert thanked "the beautiful people" about a dozen times, and appeared to spend a lot of time soaking up their applause. It's hard not to be cynical about a rock star's motives when his narcissism is so apparent. (Ever see a film of Sting when the Police were megastars? Same attitude.) By the end of the night, I felt like I should've sold those tickets on eBay, and gotten myself something I could really use.

[BAD VENUE ALERT: The Independent's fine, generally, but when you ask the bartender for water and he automatically gives you a little bottle of Calistoga and charges you $2.50, he doesn't deserve your business. He should have asked if I wanted tap water. It came out of his tip.]

[UPDATE: Check out someone's terrific pictures here.]

FMFM: Living With The Living, Ted Leo's latest record of timely, commentary-focused songs. Apart from the irritating "Bomb.Repeat.Bomb.", which should have been a non-LP single, the record highlights Leo's best traits while cleaning up some of his more abrasive ones. I'm not quite sure about the full-blown reggae song, but I love the tin whistle on "A Bottle of Buckie" and the straight-ahead simplicity of "La Costa Brava". As always, he means every word. Why would I ever bother with Silversun's nonsense when I could be listening to this?

All your life is channel 13

2007-04-13T07:56:00.000-07:00

Although the program is two years old, I'm posting about the hour-long documentary aired on KQED last night: From Shtetl To Swing, which traces the rise of Jewish-Americans in the performing arts, particularly the jazz sphere. It's amazing how the minor third's "longing" could unite klezmer music and blues in one of the most distinctly American fusions that's ever happened, undoubtedly paving the way for the birth of rock'n'roll less than two decades after Benny Goodman's heyday. The entire program was worth watching just for the clip of the Goodman's quartet bashing its way through an uptempo number -- pure ecstasy in music. Keep your eyes peeled for this one. (Side note: I'm not sure exactly why KQED aired it immediately prior to a documentary about the Nuremberg trials.)

FMFM: Lee Morgan's The Gigolo, a fiercely loud (but acoustic) session featuring complex melodies, often harmonized between Morgan and Wayne Shorter. (I could listen to that sound all day -- two horns playing in unison until they split for a tricky little harmony, like Chet Baker and Gerry Mulligan used to do. I've had studio engineers tell me to write a little Bacharach figure, and I never tell them I'm really sourcing this stuff instead.) The Gigolo is a sunny-day blaster that's as much soul-jazz as hard-bop in many ways, with hard-hitting grooves and bright horns. Wonder if the title track and "Speedball" pointed the way to Morgan's untimely end...

Chilly, chilly is the evening time

2007-04-08T10:10:00.000-07:00

Saturday was likely a slow night in the Irish bars of the City, as it is every time the Frames are in town. I shook off some minor cold symptoms and met up with the freshly returned Mexican Submariners and some other old friends at the Fillmore, ready to cheer on the bands despite an inability to raise my own voice in approval.

We arrived precisely at showtime and were somewhat surprised to hear Los Angeles-based duo the Submarines covering "Waterloo Sunset" for what may very well have been the first song of their set. I don't know why in the world anyone would take the stage by covering "Waterloo Sunset," and their version was pleasant enough, but my goodness, I wish they'd done something else for a set-starter. With sampled drums, assorted electronic whooshes and atmospherics, male-female harmonies (but very little if any call-and response), and (usually) a pair of electric guitars up front, the Subs were sweet enough to be worth watching, but I couldn't imagine bothering with their record. Maybe there's something more to the lyrics (apparently the story of the band members' breakup, prior to their reunion); I'll probably never know. The female singer's enthusiasm did project, and I can see why people like them. I think they'd be a lot better with a real live drummer; they'd certainly be more interesting to watch. But if they're sticking with the laptop drums, they'd be wise to start creating beats out of other interesting, non-drum noises. Just a thought.

Oh, and they had a glockenspiel up there. Another glockenspiel band! Reminded me of the Bishop Allen, another group in danger of terminal cuteness but whom I liked more than the Subs. Three, as they say, will be a trend. Anyone else? I'm sure there's someone.

Anyway the Frames arrived around 10:00, and began with an unusually tender 6/8 ballad, called "Races". The band structured its set with about five quieter numbers up front, before breaking into their bread-and-butter material ("part two of the concert," said the singer). Although their recorded output includes a fair number of adventures (as far as I know, I'm not all that familiar), they definitely have a sweet spot of midtempo, vaguely adult-oriented contemporary rock plus electric violin, generally topped off with impassioned and/or pleading lyrics.

I imagine that sounds like I'm saying they seem fairly ordinary. Somewhere in the Counting Crows area, maybe: five-chord songs where the singer bitches about his girlfriend or something. Well, there are times when the Frames' material is pretty ordinary, and they certainly do some things a lot of other AAA/Jack FM-type bands can do. But there's another side to the Frames too, in which the personal idiosyncrasies of frontman Glen Hansard are entertained. The songs frequently seem to be built around the vocal, pausing for a word or phrase, changing tempo to suit his delivery. Instead of laying down regular grooves into which the singer can fit his words, the songs are set up to support his writing and timing. They play with structure a lot. He's a decent lyricist, usually offering up something fairly comparable to Ryan Adams' diary entries; it's the way the songs are set up that makes them convincing.

None of this would really work anywhere near as well as it does, though, if the Frames weren't extremely well-rehearsed and highly in touch with their instruments. I believe everyone in the band wore wireless belt packs and at least one earphone monitor; the overall sound and texture seemed to be of the utmost importance. Although the fiddle player took a few turns in the spotlight, the others seemed content to play with their heads down, without gesture or vanity.

In that sense, they're there to set up Hansard as he indulged some antics. He's a highly charismatic guy onstage, a true frontman in every way. He invited crowd participation on at least four or five songs if not more; he told good jokes in between songs; he's animated and passionate at the mic. I definitely thought he clowned a bit too much, undermining his material on a few occasions. And why in the world would he make a point of telling the crowd what a banal chord progression he'd written in "Fake," stifling the song's hooky propulsion by throwing in a few bars of "Private Dancer" and then most of "No Woman No Cry"?

Despite some of his overselling (or in the case of "Fake", underselling!), it's apparent that Hansard is deeply committed to his songs, and the night's best moment was probably his straightforward performance of "Finally," the first encore. No midsong talking, no goosing the crowd for a singalong -- only the thing I'd come there to see. The re-emergence of the Submarines for another song was charming enough, but slowed the Frames' momentum; I was pretty bored after that. The band tried to send everyone home with a final singalong they were supposed to take outside into the streets; I don't think it worked.

The Frames draw a heavily Irish crowd, and a crowd that likes to drink, and a crowd with a lot of women in it, and a crowd that likes to listen to songs about frustrating relationships. Being slightly ill, I experienced the evening stone-cold sober. Believe me, there was a lot of people-watching to be done as the somewhat-duller encores went down just after midnight. I hope there weren't any fights in the street afterward. Singing would be better.

Quoted

2007-04-03T08:29:00.000-07:00

"[G]enerally speaking, baseball players don't have the coolest music taste. I think your ability to hit a baseball takes away from your ability to like good music."

"There's no doubt that there are a dozen or more players who are overpaid, but that's the American way. Shouldn't we all be overpaid? Don't we all want to be overpaid?"

Something affected him down in the desert

2007-03-27T19:54:00.000-07:00

I knew it'd be a great weekend when Mike Piazza connected for a long three-run homer in the first inning of the Oakland Athletics' Friday afternoon spring training game against the Padres. After an inexpensive but turbulent flight down through Arizona's nastiest thunderstorm in months, it was the first highlight in a long weekend of pleasures in the desert.

Some others:
∙ The walkoff victory Friday, courtesy of Donnie Murphy.
∙ Bobby Crosby's liner over the advertisements beyond the left-field wall. I assume the ball is still rolling.
∙ Travis Buck's moonshot Saturday, at the Rangers' park in Surprise, Ariz.
∙ The pre-game tailgate Saturday. (The sluglike items in the photo are bacon-wrapped pork tenderloins, from a wonderful, magical animal.)
∙ The ninth-inning rally Sunday, despite the eventual outcome.
∙ Good times with my gracious hosts and friends, at home and out on the town. We spent some fine time at Four Peaks in the older part of Tempe, and at T.T.'s Roadhouse, a seemingly rebellious little joint in Scottsdale. (The Horse & Hound, maybe less so. Damn Red Sox paraphernalia....)

A few more photos are here. I'd share more of them, but as it turns out, I'm an awful photographer.

FMFM: Seven Steps To Heaven and My Funny Valentine, a pair of Miles Davis albums I'd skipped until now. Both are largely downtempo and ballad-heavy, but feature the roiling Ron Carter/Tony Williams rhythm section that adds tension to the proceedings. (Only the absence of Wayne Shorter keeps these from being considered part of Davis's "second classic quintet" period of the mid-1960s, with the estimable George Coleman doing tenor duty instead.) Where Davis frequently draws meaning from long notes, Carter, Williams and Herbie Hancock find a way to accent and subtly propel the music forward without undermining the leader's laconic statements or distracting from his very pure expression. Two very nice records that don't get much talk, but very much pointed the way toward his great quintet's future.

The longer and shorter of it

2007-03-09T09:33:00.000-08:00

Per "The long and short of it", here's Exhibit A.

"Hendrix's, Clapton's, Bonham's, and even Van Halen's solos go beyond the masturbatory level."

Boy, Jimi really stretched it out on Axis: Bold As Love. Just thirteen songs in 38:49. If he'd added another eleven seconds of that ubiquitous wanking, his songs would average a whole three minutes apiece. (And "even Van Halen"!)

"And as for bands like Pink Floyd, Steely Dan, and Stereolab, critics tend to be divided between those who hear something profound and personal in their sprawling, instrumental-passage-heavy records, and those who can't get past the heavy aroma of pretension."

Wow. Instrumental passages. How pretentious of people to make music without singing for a little while. God forbid.

"Isn't Donald Fagen just taking us on a journey inside his head, which happens to be filled with complicated horn charts and lounge-lizard misogyny? Even if his head's in a different place from yours, couldn't you grow to appreciate what comes out of it for what it is?"

Oh no! They're doing something complicated! This cannot stand! Everyone should sound like the Ramones, or else they're making music wrong!

"J. Mascis soloed for what felt like an eternity in every song, which completely bored me. And though I'm a Sonic Youth fan, I have a low tolerance for its noisy self-indulgence."

There's that word again, "self-indulgence", dropped by a rock critic. Do people use that word anywhere else but rock critic circles? ("You know nothing of my work! You mean my whole fallacy is wrong. How you ever got to teach a course in anything is totally amazing.")

*

Stop me here, or else I'll have to rebut this absurd piece in the SFWeekly. Suffice to say, the author could have written it in any year, with different band names. And how does she figure that David Byrne isn't "gutsy", but Sufjan Stevens is somehow engaged in the quest for rebellion?

1983!

2007-03-08T09:46:00.000-08:00

One more signal that Bob Mould is really Nostradamus.

The third verse, we've known about for awhile. Now the second one's coming true too. Please, let's not have the fourth one.

We had some lusty little crushes. We had those all-ages hardcore matinée shows.

2007-03-04T20:23:00.000-08:00

A little fun on the baseball diamond, a walk in the park with my amiga and her pooch, a Mediterranean lunch beneath a eucalyptus tree, and then a four-band NoisePop matinée at the Bottom of the Hill. That's a good long day of fun, and it all happened before dusk.

Due to the rapidly growing, blog-endorsed popularity of Midlake, the BotH had sold out weeks earlier, and was nearly stuffed with people when we arrived as the second band, Ester Drang, was finishing up. I preferred them to the next act, Minipop, which I wanted to like but found sadly monochromatic and familiar. (This one sounded like "Fake Plastic Trees," that one like "The Sweater Song," none like Minipop. We went outside for some air.) The main event, judging by the sheer amount of gear involved and the attention of the crowd, was the still-mysterious Midlake: an oversized panther head, a projector flashing weird images, a concept album's worth of not-very-comprehensible songs, a whole freaking recording studio on the stage.

I understand the five Midlakers were all jazz students at some point, though their music currently features little improvisation. There are vestigial traits -- careful mastery of multiple instruments, an affinity for long melodies -- but Midlake seemed to draw far more from the pop canon, including various flakes of 1970s AM gold, the obvious Fleetwood Mac nick in "Roscoe", and maybe late-period Byrds. As easy as it might be to say they're derivative, I somehow felt convinced that Midlake was onto its own thing, and not merely walking through a series of references to past rock glories. It was as though they simply made music they'd want to listen to, whatever the consequences.

I appreciated their incredibly economic flexibility onstage, which included handing off instruments midsong, placing two people on the same keyboard for one piece, and at least three different people playing tambourine with one hand and something else with the other, at various points. It must be so easy for things to go wrong; it sure can't be easy to take a request. As a result, though, the band seemed a little fussy and not at all spontaneous. There were fairly few moments where everything came to a head, and there were times when it all seemed like a recital. (My amigo used the word "clinical", and I can't really say he's wrong.) There was an antiseptic Pablo Cruise/Orleans feel to some things, and a few turns of phrase and drum fills that seemed obvious to me. I felt like I connected emotionally with a moderate fraction of the material -- the yearning chorus of "Balloon Maker" improved on the studio take, for one example -- and the enigmatic "Roscoe," played early, was perfect.

I wouldn't say this about many bands, but here goes: I'd like to hear Midlake make an expensive record, a super hi-fi one that allows them to take advantage of everything sonically beautiful about them. Though I own neither, it's obvious from what I've heard that The Trials of Van Occupanther was a major step forward from Bamnan and Slivercork in terms of sound quality and fidelity, and I'd like to hear that trend continue. (Except, the iTunes revolution is starting to make it clear that no one really cares about sound quality anymore, and it'd be a total waste of money to go the extra mile.) As much as their show could have come off as a collection of retro-isms, it's possible that Midlake is simply a band out of their own times, one more suited to the era that produced "Long Train Running," when deft musicianship was fashionable in rock'n'roll. At times facile, at times committed, Midlake's show was ultimately satisfying enough. See you next year.

FMFM: McCoy Tyner's Sahara, a damn interesting dollar-bin score. Four intensely chorded pieces on side one, with a solo piano excursion as track two; then a twenty-three-minute monster on the flip. I'm most impressed with the lengthy title track, which incorporates flute and tambourine noises mimicking animals (more like jungle birds than desert critters to my ears, but never mind) or bazaar scenes, a rapid-fire bass solo and wild drum solo, a couple of placid moments, and aggressive periods of crashing skronk. Awesomely powerful at high volume.

What's that I hear? The sound of marching feet?

2007-03-03T09:35:00.000-08:00

I'll trade you three peace marches for one Ted Leo ticket. He and his band attracted a fired-up NoisePop crowd to the Great American Music Hall last evening, and delivered the goods, despite his alleged jetlag and some sort of norovirus he claimed was slowing him down. We couldn't tell. Leo's righteous anger and despair at the state of national affairs are infectious, and his personal emotional investment in his own work is paramount.

We skipped the first two acts in favor of Mangosteen and Ha-Ra. I liked third act Georgie James just fine. It seemed like the drummer was driving the bus; the keyboard player had enough charisma to hold my interest, even if she was no Dusty Springfield at the mic.

Leo hit the ground running with "Little Dawn," launching into over-the-top choruses and extending the coda with a crazed chant as the band vamped. (They brought along second guitarist James Canty, restoring the quartet setup that preceded Shake the Sheets.) Though it peppered the set list with new songs, the band drew heavily from Sheets, leading to the curious spectacle of fist-pumping during "Me and Mia," a song that addresses eating disorders. (It took me awhile to catch on too.)

Drummer Chris Wilson brings remarkable technique to the table, adding elements of reggae and swing to the otherwise chugging rhythms (and deploying a nifty move where he somehow flips the stick over his right wrist). It says a lot that couples danced to Leo's songs; I guess people dance to Joe Jackson's first couple of records too. The tempo shifts and tricky on-off elemental arrangements keep things interesting, but it's really Leo's commitment to the material that makes the Pharmacists a great band. Toward the end of the night, there he was, tearing busted strings off his guitar, neck muscles still bulging, eyes still full of fire. They hit the stage like a hurricane, and finished like a tornado, wrapping up with an obscurity from Chumbawamba. (Check that Wikipedia entry. Who knew?)

Leo's aggressively political music doesn't seem belabored or forced. The entire presentation was equal parts rally and party, but it seemed like everyone had a good time. Stuff like this can be so much more convincing than taking to the streets, but I'll also grant that there's still a whole lot of walking to do.

Mind/body problem

2007-03-02T09:35:00.000-08:00

It was one of my all-time impulse buys. Last Sunday morning, full of coffee, I decided it would be a good idea to trawl Craigslist for musical instruments. Two hours, a trip across the Bay Bridge, and $200 later, a Danelectro baritone guitar was mine. (Look: I could've paid $350.)

It's a late 90s reissue, but vintage-toned. Not really expert craftsmanship, but more than adequate for my purposes -- an extra, wider paintbrush for home recordings and maybe some gigs. It's also a workout for the fingers, because you have to stretch to reach the wide-spaced frets. (Compare this regular-sized guitar with my long-necked axe.) It doesn't play fast, but it's not supposed to. Mostly, it's about finding new chord voicings and hearing bright, growly bass strings without feeling like you're playing bass. Love it.

But strangest of all, it's a trick for the mind. Your hands are playing A... why do you hear E? You finger a G chord... and D comes out. It was hard enough trying to learn mandolin (tuned in fifths) after eight or ten years of guitar (tuned in fourths, mostly). But it's much trickier to use the same fingerings as a regular guitar and expect certain sounds, but hear others instead. The curse of having good pitch!

Doc Days II

2007-02-22T11:58:00.000-08:00

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

2007-02-20T21:56:00.000-08:00

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

2007-02-14T11:37:00.000-08:00

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

2007-02-09T15:35:00.000-08:00

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

2007-02-07T16:13:00.000-08:00

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

2007-02-05T19:22:00.000-08:00

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?

2007-02-05T11:20:00.000-08:00

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

2007-02-03T16:26:00.000-08:00

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?

2007-02-01T13:00:00.000-08:00

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.

I changed My mind was changed

2007-01-31T21:13:00.000-08:00

Whether you agree with Truthout.org or not, this is a fascinating glimpse into the way the White House works these days.

And you have to wonder what that little scribble is before the note lapses into the passive voice.

FMFM: Post-War, in anticipation of Sunday night's solo gig at Bimbo's after the big game

Marked: Aguirre

2007-01-28T16:33:00.000-08:00

I knew only Grizzly Man among Werner Herzog's films upon entering the Red Vic this afternoon for a screening of Aguirre, The Wrath of God, a bleak 1972 tale of an ill-fated conquistadores expedition through the Amazon rainforest in 1560 and 1561. A slow-moving, green and moist opening sequence initially spurred memories of the gentle Old Joy (seen in the same screening room eleven days earlier), but Aguirre would soon reveal itself as a violent, dark story of greed, envy, and misguided colonialism.

The story centers on a splinter expedition intended to save a larger group led by Gonzalo Pizarro, whose crew includes holy men, nobles and slaves. Bogged down in the Amazon's muddy headwaters, Pizarro sends forth three rafts and a couple of dozen men in order to find a populated area downriver and report back in two weeks. Their chances for survival seem slim-to-none within a day or two, as the group encounters hostile natives, rough rapids, and most prominently, dissension within the ranks. Aguirre, originally second in command, leads a mutiny in the hopes of finding the city of gold, El Dorado, and eventually finds himself in charge of a raft floating into near-certain peril, fever and insanity.

Aguirre seemed to combine elements of both Apocalypse Now and Blood Meridian, though it preceded both. Like the former, it distills the jungle madness from Heart of Darkness; like the latter, it takes the shine off a once-glorified era of conquering the savages and forging a new America. Herzog's characters are made to look preposterous when they wave around a Bible and execute a confused native for blasphemy. Their words turn into black humor, ripe with irony in the context of the familiar story of Christian settlement and civilization in the animalistic jungle.

Reportedly shot with only one camera, Aguirre is full of how'd-they-do-that moments and unrepeatable takes. Its final shots are frighteningly memorable, as are various others in the story; I was not disappointed to learn that it is primarily a work of fiction. And I will certainly keep my eyes peeled for another upcoming Herzog screening in the same movie house.

Side note: Something about watching the Spanish explorers shout at each other in German was hilarious. Like it'd be more realistic if they were speaking English, of course.

Respect at this point is pretty much out of the question

2007-01-24T08:46:00.000-08:00

Something tells me the narrator of this one is Randy Newman. My god.

[UPDATE: I note that the NYT's op-ed page published an "abridged version" of Newman's song. This blog has the complete lyrics, and it's easy to see why the NYT canned one verse, late in the song. Wow. What was that about going racist on people?]

[UPDATE 2: Here's someone with a live mp3.]

FMFM: "Political Science"

Dropping the ball

2007-01-21T22:26:00.000-08:00

The Patriots lose, and BostonDirtDogs.com asks, "Are you ready for some baseball?"

FMFM: Kenny Burrell's A Generation Ago Today, a tastefully engineered LP created in tribute to Charlie Christian. (AMG mysteriously says that "the music is excellent" but awards it two and a half stars; the same album under a different name receives three stars here.) At any rate, I don't really need one more interpretation of "I Surrender, Dear" or "Stompin' At The Savoy," but I'm still enjoying these warm, round-toned versions, with intermittent Getz-ish blowing from Phil Woods. The great Grady Tate provides subtly shifting rhythms, and Ron Carter gets all bossa nova on you. Another simple pleasure, if not an aggressive one that grabs you by the throat. (The fine guitarist Steve Khan discusses here, and transcribes a solo here.)

Punks not dead

2007-01-19T11:40:00.000-08:00

Evidence that punk rock happened 30 years ago, and that its participants are now in their fifties:

The Buzzcocks' "Everybody's Happy Nowadays" is in a commercial for the AARP.

I saw it this morning, and it's very possible that I said "aarp" out loud, with a sharp intake of breath, when it happened.