Tuesday, April 13, 2010
An Encounter with Chantal's Vision
Eclipse has done it again giving the world introduction to another filmmaker who deserves recognition. I should probably already have been acquainted with Chantal Akerman, a Belgian has developed quite a body of work in the last forty years or so, but somehow her work has eluded me.
Chantal Akerman in the Seventies contains five films on three CDs. I have so far seen the first one that features three films from her time in New York in the early seventies. Le Chambre consists of a thirteen minute tracking shot of an apartment and Ackerman on her bed. It is the kind of experimental film that many film students have created over the decades, but there is enough assurance and surprise in it, that it is not simply superfluous exercise. Hotel Monterey is an hour's worth of silent images that explore a run down Manhattan Hotel ala Chelsea. The quality of the images in Monterey and their continuity structure (we go from the lower floors to the roof) maintain interest for the viewer, particularly one who is going to engage with such a work.
News from Home is the longest and most intriguing of the films on the first disc. Letters and the two shorter films benefit exceptionally from the camera work of Babette Mangolte. The last time I saw such lovely saturation in colors in urban photography was the work that Robby Muller did for Wim Wenders in films like Paris, Texas and The American Friend. Mangolte's images of New York, particularly at dawn and twilight are stunning, but mostly in a quiet way.
Letters is filled with long takes. There are several low angle shots of alley ways and abandoned streets. The camera is also placed in the subway systems and street corners where we see the comings and goings of city inhabitants. This is not Koyaanisqatsi. There is no Philip Glass music, only natural sounds and occasionally Akerman reading letters from her mother. The letters draw the viewer in with pieces of information about her family and insights into their relationship with her. There is something universal and haunting about a mother's words coping with the geographical distance and adult passage of her daughter that is universal. And something about these personal words that contrast well with the images of the city and its various rhythms.Additionally, Akerman in News has serviced posterity with an amazing time capsule of how urban seventies looked and felt. There is one particularly long tracking shot traveling that was like time travel for me.
But most profoundly, there is the film's final shot taken on a foggy day apparently from a New York ferrry. As is the case throughout News, this take is long and interupted but the last decade gives the shot an added poignancy that the filmmaker could not have predicted or intended because there are two large structures on the left side of the island that are not with us anymore.
My queue will soon see the inclusion of the other Akerman Eclipse films and I am intrigued to see how this artist's experimental film aesthetic was incorporated into her fiction films. I am sure that it this was executed in all kinds of intriguing and beguiling ways. Afterall the type of films on the first disc explore time and structure close to the DNA of cinema. And Akerman's bios often mention that she decided that filmmaking would be her fate after she saw Godard's Pierrot le fou at fifteen years old.
posted by well-executed buffet at 11:28 PM
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Monday, April 12, 2010
Mr. Fox and Mr. Anderson
I finally saw Wes Anderson's Fantastic Mr Fox at a 3.00 budget theater with a really good print and sound execution. It felt like a throwback to go see a film at discount that had a nearly half year run. Not bad for a stop motion puppet show.
Wes Anderson's films are all wild rides. There is a lot that goes on in his films that repeats itself here, but the tone is different. It feels like good Newberry or Caldicott Children's story hour with a twist of course. But that is what makes it stand out from Chicken Run, for instance.
I love the rough hewn look of this film. Anderson does succeed to create a new world and a film that looks like no other. Some try but only a few are able to achieve what is one of the most romantic and elusive of cinema dreams. In Mr Fox, he uses that Melies discovered DNA, the wonder of assigning action step by step later to be played at 18 and then 24 per a second, roughly the time to inhale a single breath.
This is a film that you will need to try on for yourself to see if the magic finds you. There seems to be a lot of that going on where wild things live in wonderland.
posted by well-executed buffet at 11:13 PM
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Friday, March 19, 2010
Bob in Benelux
The buffet is on the road. Check out my posts at Bob in Benelux.
See you soon
posted by well-executed buffet at 5:33 AM
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Friday, February 19, 2010
Go Ask Moon Alice on the Corner of Burnside and Haight
A week ago I was in San Francicso, but in some ways the most SF experience I have had was here in Portland tonight at Dantes on 3rd and Burnside. Moonalice consists of the interface of married couple Roger and Ann MacNamee with some of the best musicians in the world: Barry Sless, Pete Sears, John Molo, and, sometimes, Jack Cassady. It was also musical home for G.E. Smith for a couple of years.
Roger MacNamee is also a venture capitalist and successful businessman. He had another band called the Flying Other Brothers that I heard some hippie music lovers trash on. But I caught a performance of theirs at High Sierra once and was impressed. Why? Because Sless and Sears were tearing it up were the most visible reasons.
Regardless, Moonalice's performance at Dante's felt more authentic than some Grateful Dead alumni evenings (e.g. Ratdog) when it came to what makes SF American roots plus hippies incubates great msic. In fact, Sears is a full on rock legend, playing piano and bass on early Rod Stewart (Ever Picture Tells A Story, etc.) albums as well as being a member of both Jefferson Starship and Hot Tuna. His vocals are a reminder that the sixties could be a time when a vocalist did not need to be a natural singer, but someone who knew how to use his voice as an instrument of both music and emotion, And that generation had it, in Sears I hear John Stewart, Leon Russell, Neil Diamond, Loudon Wainwright III. I would imagine that Elvis Costello is an admirer of his too. They both take very similar approaches to song and lyric.
Berry Sless last night illustrated how great musicians and artist rise to the occasion despite appointed or expected acts not present. I had been looking forward to hearing pedal steel guitar as only a very small minority in the world can. But, alas, the truth came out during the first set by MacNamee that they forgot the insturment in his garage. There are only a small handful of guitarists who can attract my attention and put me in the place where I am listening to their solos as I would navigate a ski run. The tradition of much of this music has legacy and impact of Airplane, Quicksilver and Dead. But Sless is more Django than Jerry. Maybe you will even hear some big fat Wes Montgomery chords interacting with a Corryell quickness. His solos were more than solos, they were tales told well.
Add to the mix John Molo, a drummer with credits with Phil and Friends and Bruce Hornsby. He drums like he is both Mickey and Billy of the Grateful Dead. A great jazz and rock drummer is a wonderful thing.
There was this guy who came out with a rant at the halftime break who was like Wavy Gravy if he had a job in a sort of office. I was reminded a bit of Lester the hanger on poet who used to stink up String Cheese Incident shows when he was carrying on about listening to music with your eyes. I was a bit dumbfounded to find out that the MacNamee posse includes Steve Parish, infamous Jerry Garcia roadie and protectorate.
Whatever. McNamee was a great host. He would read factoids and passages from Wikipedia between songs, and he has the public service announcement down to almost pull it off. There was a weird coincidence tonight. Pam and I watched last week's Simpsons where Marge and Homer when a demonstration gold at the Olympics in Curling. When we walked into the club, McNamee was just getting through reading what was apparently the Wikipedia entry for Curling.
The show was at Dantes but it felt like an excursion in time and distance both. As mentioned it was kind of an extension of my week ago trip to San Francisco. And as far as time travel is concerned, I went to the show with a friend from workdays almost two decades ago. And the music and the vibe reminded us both of old taverns and clubs in now long gone: Key Largo, The Earth, Euphoria.
posted by well-executed buffet at 1:02 AM
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posted by well-executed buffet at 1:01 AM
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Sunday, February 14, 2010
MacWorld 2010
If you wanted to visit Apple at MacWorld, you had to go to the Market St Apple Store a few blocks away from the Expo.
On some level I am thinking that this year's MacWorld is a little bit like going to see a classic rock band from twenty or thirty years prior with some changes in the line up. Apple is no longer part of the show. The groove feels right at times, but times have changed and it is undeniably different. IDGWorld have taken the dimensions they were given and made it work somehow. There was always a fan fest element to MacWorld that lived along side the hardcore Silicon valley trade event of the year. But that was back in the GoGo years. Now the fans are left. The trade show isn't as crass as a county fair, but this is all about consumer marketing really. Back in the old days consumers just came along for the ride. I could go all grumpy old man nostalgic or get into corporate speculation porn, but I've got to give IDGWorld credit. They kept MacWorld alive.
Part of that formula is access to the best pundits and trainers in the business. I skipped out on David Pogue early (more on that later) and saw Ted Landau, who among other things wrote a book with one of my favorite titles of all time: Sad Macs, Bombs and Other Disasters. This is the godfather guru of showing us common guys how to troubleshoot Macs in a cool logical fashion. I've consulted his stuff since System 7. I like that he complained about how folks who post insist on OS identifers as OS10.6 instead of OSX.6. It was cool to see him still at it.
There was an excellent RAW photo session lead by author and photographer Ben Long and a number of others. Russell Brown was irrepressible as ever showing cool ass stuff in Photoshop with crowd interaction and 20th Anniversary PhotoShop lore.
I was also able to catch about half of Kevin Smith's presentation the day before the too fat too fly incident. It felt a little bit like going to a naughty assembly with a famous dude. Smith has his college audience patter down. And frankly what is the audience of a fan-oriented MacWorld going to consist of--college students both current and those who never left. Smith is going to be in the public eye for quite some time. And I'm sure that his new film Cop Out is going to get more attention than ever. Oh Well He should be able to take it, this is the Dogma guy, afterall.
And then there were the auditorium variety shows with Guy Kawasaki, David Pogue, and Leo Lapote. Lapote's had the best content: Sarah Silverman was not there but Sarah Gold was. Gold was a heyday employee of Apple and from what I can tell a bit of an icon on the SF comedianne scene. Entertaining enough for a while. I don't do reality based television, but was impresed with Adam Savage who has this show called Mythbusters that I didn't have a clue about.
Roger McGuinn was there too, demonstrating his Martin seven string, doing a version of Eight Miles High for all the boomers in the house. (observation less ponytails on men this time than any other at a MacWorld I have attended.
But this was all a set up for Warp 7. A band of near middle-agers dressed devoting themselves to writing and performing music about Star Trek and drinking. In the past I would encounter stuff like that but usually it was at the Digital Be-In when MacWorld proper was closed.
I got a lot out of MacWorld this year. But you have to come after it wheras before it would kind of slam itself into you. There is a Grateful Dead lyric that parallels this experience "Nothin shakin on shakedown street. used to be the heart of town.
Dont tell me this town aint got no heart. you just gotta poke around"
posted by well-executed buffet at 6:49 PM
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Saturday, February 13, 2010
Van Dyke Parks at Swedish American Hall, SF 2.12.10
Van Dyke Parks is indisputably an American original. He is the ultimate quirky but scholarly piano nerd who mines all sorts of musical, social, and artistic by roads. He came to a kind of cult prominence during the singer-songwriter era. But how many singer-songwriters seem most comfortable performing with a modified chamber string section. His patter onstage is like no other. He moves around language, thoughts ideas in a kind of oblique fashion. For instance, he started talking about boy and the dolphin and it wasn't clear that he might be referring directly to the 1957 film but rather Greek legend and the wonder of creatures of ascension. But then he dropped that as a young man seeing Sophia Loren come out of the water in was a kind of ascension for him.
Parks seems to advocate for a kind of civility and discourse that left long ago. His sets are filled with references to riverboats, left wing politics back in the beat era, the forty years of Louis Moreau Gottschalk's life, FDR's visitation to Trinidad, Mark Twain, the B'rer Rabbit, and even a recitation of a Robert Frost poem he paid performance rights for.
And, if nothing more, for those who care about the rock and roll era, he will forever be a footnote, as the author of Sailin' Shoes, maybe the finest moment for Lowell George and Little Feat. And the lyricist for Smile, the lost for a very long time Beach Boys follow-up to Pet Sounds.
The Swedish American Hall in San Francisco's Castro district turned out to be a lovely place to see Parks perform. Like much of his subject matter, it is a throw back to another era constructed with big timbers and great care. The room seemed to warm up his music even more so. This evening was truly an evening of collaboration. The first half of the evening was a performance by Clare and the Reasons, lead by Clare Muldaur (daughter of Geoff, but, evidently not Maria) and her husband, classically trained violinist Olivier Manchon. They had their own kind of plucky chamber pop infused by Harry Nillson sensibilities. The Reasons also served as Parks' band for the evening, playing most of what can be found on his live Moonlighting album, which featured a much larger musical setting.
Parks was obviously charged by the crowd, the vibe, and the fine playing of Manchon and friends. He ebulliently flexed his muscle Charles Atlas style between songs when the group really nailed it. This was quite a jocular sight since Parks is a small round white headed man who has a copy of yellow pages to boost him on his piano bench. He seemed surprise that this was only the third performance with Manchon and friends. All indications were it was a musical collaboration that existed long before. But, then again, there it seems to point to a kind of timelessness and agelessness that goes beyond his 67 years on the planet that seems to be formed decades before his formidable ones.
Some Links:
posted by well-executed buffet at 8:21 AM
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Tuesday, February 9, 2010
South Korean Spaghetti
Until I saw Ji-woon Kim's huge The Good The Bad The Weird I always thought the last word in the big scale spaghetti western would be Sergio Leone's Duck You Sucker AKA A Fistful of Dynamite. I can't recall having such unrelentless fun at at the movies for a very long time. The style and form of the Leone western is transferred to late 1930s Manchuria where three characters, not too far removed from portrayals of Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef, and Eli Wallach are thrust into a plot involving a treasure map, bank barons, a black market village known as the ghost market, and the armies of both China and Japan.
This is huge, whacked-out entertainment with chase sequences that rival David Lean and Kurosawa. I'm sort of speechless about this one. I'm glad I saw it in a theatrical setting. It will translate well enough to DVD on a good sized television, I suppose, but one should try to see it at one of the screenings at the Portland International Film Festival, or hopefully it will make the rounds to the brew pubs afterwards. Some critics have complained it is too long at a full two hours plus a little change. Maybe so, but can you really have an epic western that only runs 85 minutes?
The only way to describe this experience, it seems is to dip into it a little bit. Here is a six minute drop from the film that someone posted on YouTube:
posted by well-executed buffet at 9:54 PM
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Monday, February 8, 2010
Police, Adjective
Some films create a special relationship with time that is unique and is not likely to work for the film going public at large. Jim Jarmusch is probably the most known practitioner of this kind of filmmaking in the US. His films move at their own pace in a controlled environment, not telling you a story as much as revealing character in a setting. Finish filmmaker Aki Kaurismaki is also a master of this kind of cinema.
Corneliu Porumboiu is another filmmaker who is working in this realm. He is not afraid to take his time and work with long silent moments. "Cinema is dealing with real time and cinema is dealing with rhythm" he comments in an embedded clip that accompanies A O Scott's review of Police, Adjective late last year. Scott describes Porumboiu, correctly, I believe, as having a "talent for infusing mundane, absurd moments with gravity and drama as well as humor." One could definitely use similar terms for describing the work of Jarmusch in Limits of Control and Broken Flowers or Kaurismaki's Match Factory Girl.
Police, Adjective observes Cristi, a plain clothes cop (or put more accurately, plain sweatered) investigating some teenagers who are routinely smoking some cannabis in a school yard each morning. He begins to doubt the importance of this activity as time goes on. The climax of the film is a lecture by his supervising officer is a didactic encounter that involves defining words like police and conscience in a dictionary, single camera and in real time. I realize that this sounds like this would be boredom personified, but it is really quite engaging, in a quiet and unique way. Porumboiu does not present us real life, but rather an observed vision with some big and substantial ideas in a way fashioned from real life. In this there is a huge, but subtle difference. Police, Adjective is a rich experience in its own way. But an ever so quiet one.
posted by well-executed buffet at 11:31 PM
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Saturday, February 6, 2010
Gil and Al Just After the Double Lives
In a wide variety of ways, Wolfgangs Vault is serving us well on the web. Their release of hours and hours of Newport Jazz Festival is one of the reasons why I love going to this site. As I have written once before, listening to those tapes gives one an experience of truly being there, almost as though you were laying on the floorboards. I also appreciate their massive releases of Bill Graham Archives and King Biscuit Flower Hour programs in a complete fashion. It is a wonderful opportunity for music lovers to compare their favorite bands as they evolve from tour to tour or even evening to evening on the same tour. And what about the opportunity to listen to the entirety of The Band's Last Waltz, warts and all? I found it to be wonderful aural wallpaper to dealing with a bunch of grading I had to do last fall.
Recently, I have been appreciating the Vault for being able to provide extensible opportunities for two of my favorite live record albums of the seventies. The seventies, of course is the era of the live album, but the purpose of this post is certainly not to expand on the virtues of Led Zeppelin's The Song Remains The Same or Frampton Comes Alive. I am actuallly pleased to say I I have never owned a copies of either.
Two double lives from the seventies that still mean a lot to me are Gil Scott Heron's It's Your World and Al Jarreau's Look to Rainbow, which were both recorded and released during 1976-77. Both of these records opened up new worlds to me. I had been exploring Gil Scott's music and poetry for some time prior, but the power of the Midnight Band ripping through a quarter hour versions of Home is Where the Hatred Is and The Bottle were revelations of what jazz and funk could be when they are pulled together in a full force gale. I first heard Jarreau's live recording on a August evening when the sun was going down and was dumbfounded by his energy. This was Al Jarreau long before the goes down easy Breaking Away album that helped define the smooth jazz era. He didn't just sing songs back in those days. They were more like propulsive excursions of joy.
I played the hell out of both of these doubles. And I secured them on CD as soon as I was able. Now fast forward to our current download demand wonderland and Wolfgang's has released the equivalent of the sequel to Its Your World, capturing Gil Scott Heron, Brian Jackson and the Midnight Band a year after It's Your World and a concert six months after Jarreau's pyrotechnics on Rainbow. Unlike the conditions of their predecessors, these are not scrubbed and sanitized concert records but broadcast quality boards that feel a little more like being there.
Full disclosure. My main motivation to create this post was to include the embeds so they were more easily accessible, but I hope you might take time to connect with them as well. I love these performances, both from the summer of 1977. And listening them takes me back to my early twenties and the possibilities those years had in store.
Here's a full workout by Gil Scott and the band taking us to Vidgolia. "Step Right Up...It is very close to San Clemente."
And here is Jarreau bursting in with the dawn with even more energy than he did on the Rainbow recording. His voice may not be in great shape, but the energy is still there big time.
posted by well-executed buffet at 8:16 PM
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Friday, February 5, 2010
Light Rail Sideshow
I've been digging the scene waiting for the light rail these days. Hundreds of geese working their way back and forth between the Portland International Raceway and Delta Park. In a few weeks, this sideshow will fly out and the waits for the train will not nearly be as entertaining.
Pam has spotted the train. Soon we'll be downtown.
posted by well-executed buffet at 11:07 PM
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Thursday, February 4, 2010
Zoo and Birthday
As a part of my mother's birthday, we decided to go to one of her places, the Oregon Zoo. It was a lovely day with few visitors.
Inevitably this scene brought some commentary from my mother comparing the interactions of these two reminded her of dynamics and relations of those of my brother and I back in the day. I did not attempt to augment or dispute her. Afterall, it was her day. And she actually had a point.
These two are always posing fine whenever I go to the zoo. They know their job, I guess.
Rose Tu and Samudra were enjoying the fine day as well.
posted by well-executed buffet at 11:06 PM
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Wednesday, February 3, 2010
Hipsters
"Every hipster is a potential criminal" Or so says Katia, buttoned-down party-line, not party girl in the fifties Stalin Russia of Stilyagi. Also known as Hipsters, this is a dynamic musical from Russia directed by Valeriy Todorovskiy featured in this year;s Portland International Film Festival.
This is a film with a very free camera and a flexable definition of permissible reality, which by definition is what one would expect of a musical, but here even more so. We are talking about a world that uses some of the same kinds of laws of physics and narrative that Baz Luhrman applied in Moulin Rouge or Julie Taymor utilized in Across the Universe. From time to time, the camera sweeps, swoons and characters who were in the background become part of a vigorous chorus line.
Hipsters shows youth in fifties Russia as a kind of binary world. One is either grey and uniform or and follows the party or outlandish to the extreme with bright colors an pompadours that would make those of the Stray Cats seem conservative. The latter is almost an act of unthinkable defiance in a country where "sneezing too loud might get you arrested." Or in a place where saxophones are traded on the black market like guns.
The adventurous ones transcribe records from broadcasts on old XRay film, anglecize their names (Boris becomes Bob, Paulina becomes Polly, etc.) and always seem to be just a step or two ahead of disapproving authorities. The main character is Mels, whose encounter with a proto-feminist and hot free spirited girl leads him into an almost overnight transformation as Mel, a sax wielding hipster who later tells Katia a junior Rosa Klebb that its cool when people are different." But Mel later learns that there can be freedom in simplicity in style and appearance, it kind of blows his mind.
Hipsters is a film that might be almost a reel too long and it suffers a few missed steps in its script and structure. But it makes up for it with heart, verve, and style along with some pretty interesting commentary about freedom,identity, and the transformation from youth to adulthood.
posted by well-executed buffet at 11:25 PM
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Tuesday, February 2, 2010
Marketplace and Subsidy
Near the conclusion of the post-screening event for the feature version of Icons Among Us: Jazz in the Present Tense Portland Jazz Festival director and founder Bill Royston repeated the following phrase like some kind of mantra for the survival of events like his and the future of public arts in general: "marketplace or subsidy."
Royston said the festival receives a small state subsidy, but could not survive without marketplace funding. When Qwest pulled out as sponsor in late 2008, the festival was shuttered until Alaska Airlines came to rescue. I have sometimes expressed some of my concerns, frustrations even, about PDX Jazz, but Royston has made some great contributions to this community with the festival. And if for last year's amazing afternoon with Bobby Hutcherson and Lou Donaldson alone, he deserves great ovation.
I've been thinking a lot about a Recent New York Times article by Michael Kimmelman about European Museums moving towards private funding. The traditional European attitude towards art preservation of the arts is something that the US has a hard time comprehending, just as they do the concept of how many European countries deal with healthcare and other social services.
I love art museums when they are populated by the few, but always feel a bit funny that too much of that could lead to their demise. I will always remember Pam and I finally making it to the final week of the Clement Greenburg collection's first showing at the Portland Art Museum on September 13 2001 when there was still a lack of normalcy in the activities of the world and pretty much no patrons besides ourselves. But in recent weeks I have been dropping into the museum more frequently and have found that you don't need a world crisis to time a quiet visit among the collections.
I appreciate Kimmelman's description of this phenomena:
Here in Berlin I often escape for an hour or two to the Gemäldegalerie, this city’s museum of old master paintings, one of the best in the world. But because it’s off the beaten tourist path, and because this is Germany and not France, it is nearly always empty. In room after room of Giotto and Raphael, Titian and Rembrandt, Dürer and Holbein I find myself alone, save for the sandal-clad guards spending quiet days of monkish solitude, sharing what I have come over the years to think of as my private Filippo Lippi, my personal Vermeer, my own Chardins and Watteaus.
It is a glorious gift, and I am grateful to a public financing system that in this particular case is not yet in thrall to, or is proudly resisting, the marketing strategies that have turned the Musée d’Orsay in Paris and the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Tate Modern in London into the equivalents of Wal-Marts on Black Friday...
It is a huge issue and neither subsidy or marketplace sponsorship are the answer. Curators and directors will need to continue to find the right balance. And most importantly, we the public, need to help support wherever we can as well as costs get ever tighter for those trying to make our communities and worlds just a little bit richer.
posted by well-executed buffet at 11:57 PM
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Monday, February 1, 2010
Grammys 2010: A Late Wait for Any Master's Voice
The Stephen Colbert monologue was entertaining, but there was nothing of interest until the final half hour of the show with the exception of the Zack Brown Band doing their number with Leon Russell.
Send the kids to bed at 11 and on comes Dave Matthews, Maxwell and Roberta Flack doing Where is the Love, and Jeff Beck's super How High The Moon tribute to Les Paul. Actually I didn't stay up to 11 because we DVRd it so I could quickly speed through the five thousandth Michael Jackson tribute, Pink in the aerial cage, Beyonce, Haiti pleas, lots of unlistenable rap and Taylor Swift caterwalling with Stevie Nicks. The Grammys were always a mixed bag, but I don't ever recall a year where most any performance of any merit was stacked up at the last half hour.
Either I'm getting old for most of this or pop music is getting much worse. Or most likely, both of these statements are true.
posted by well-executed buffet at 8:40 PM
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Sunday, January 31, 2010
Icons In The Here and Now
Icons Among Us: Jazz In The Present Tense is a significant film achievement in regards of presenting and investigating the nature of jazz. In fact I would say there are only two other films it has as peers: Bert Stern's Jazz on a Summer Day and Ken Burns' Jazz. On one level it is a kind of a answer record to Burns' film, which focuses on historical figures of the past hundred years with a deep take on the social impacts of the music. "Cool Enough" says this new film, but, guess what? There is history and joyfoul sound being made in the here and now out there now.
The version of the Icons Among Us that was brought to Portland as part of the NW Film Center's was a feature version of a four hour television series that appeared on The Documentary Channel. Producer John Comerford accompanied the at the screening event for a Q & A that also featured Portland Jazz Festival Director Bill Royston. The feature endeavors to encapsulate the series. I'm a director's cut kind of guy who believes in the powers of cinema immersion so I would have preferred the full meal deal, but a solid hour and a half proved to be a heck of serving of this project that was sculpted out of 130 hours of interviews and 30 hours of performance footage.
No one can repeat Jazz On A Summer Day (Or Burns' Jazz, for that matter). The footage of Esperanza Spalding's performance at a recent JVC Concert showed us what a performance of a modern Newport Jazz Festival now, But the real resemblance is in the care that the directors of Icons take to get the viewer quickly into the essence of the performances that are included in this film around the world in sessions and rehearsals, in clubs and festivals. Comerford mentioned that this footage was shot in Super 16mm. They didn't have to do it that way but the fact they did for the aesthetic quality that film has to offer indicates just how much love and care went into this film with a big story to tell. Afterall, you better have the scale, resources and time to time and resources if a film is going to answer the likes of Burn's Jazz.
And scope is certainly a factor in telling this story of this music, which to me is described in two sections of interview in the film. In one, guitarist Bill Frisell talks about how "jazz is infinite." Another that frames the film is veteran trumpeter and composer Terrence Blanchard's observation that there is a quiet revolution going on with amazing players and diverse interpretations of what the music. If it is a revolution, it is coming from all kinds of fronts like one recalls from map animations in war documentaries. Icons shows us what came out of the eighties Young Lion's era, a taste of the European jazz scene, an excursion into the loft jazz and hippie jamband scenes, and somehow, it all kind of seems to rightly find its way back to New Orleans.
There are dozens of artists included here. But the big discovery for me was the DaKah Hip Hop Orchestra. Talk about scope and scale! This is a full fledged symphonic orchestra converging with turntable artists, rappers, soulful vocals, and all kinds of joy and surprise. Geoff "Double G" Gallegos pushes musical definitions and boundaries with a sense of proportion that reminds me of Don Ellis during the Tears of Joy period.
Icons is a film of ideas and observations from a wide range of articulate musicians and commentators. We look at the diversity of the music, but also in areas like the economics that are involved with the music. Much of the running time in the film is occupied with trying to define what jazz is and means in our current times. A thread of ideas has Seattle writer Paul de Barros sharing his concern that the music doesn't play a cultural role the way it did in the fifties and sixties. He talks about how artists like Bill Frisell can make fine music, but "How do we get it (jazz) back into the culture."
I understand de Barros point, but I counter that this music, which I believe will always have an audience that is comparatively smaller than the mainstream (as parallel, think about those who are practitioners of Macintosh computing as compared to the Windows world.) I believe the film points out some of the rewards that can be found in seeking out musical experiences. And, in actuality, one sometimes doesn't need to look to far for these rewards. For instance, the Portland Jazz Festival mirrors much of the kind of vision the film's directors captured here. During the follow up to the screening, the festival's director responded when asked by Comerford his initial impressions of the film: "I feel like the last 25 years of my life have been legitimized."
posted by well-executed buffet at 7:35 PM
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Saturday, January 30, 2010
Exodus 77: A Film Essay
Sometimes a structural idea or dichotomy for a work is better than its final outcome. Yet that is not to say it is wholly unsuccessful, especially if it provokes thought I believe this is the case with Exodus 77, a film that takes a unique approach to the life, times and influence of Bob Marley. This is another episode of the BBC Arena series that the NW Film Center has brought in as part of its most recent Reel Music Festival.
The film is framed by two significant dates and events in the life of Bob Marley: December 3 1976 when he is attacked in a attempted assassination attempt and April 22 1977 when he gets arch political Michael Manley and Edward Seaga to join hands before 100,00 in a concert known as One Love Peace. What happens in between is 1977, the Marley's year of exodus to and exile in England.
During that year he records and releases Exodus. It still stands as probably Marley's strongest album and in Wall's film is portrayed as the work that raises him to a cultural figure and even a kind of prophet. Just as Arena did with The Agony and Ecstacy of Phil Spector a few years later, it integrates and mixes up a few key elements to reflect on its subject. In this case the elements are newsreel footage, unidentified commentary from a wide range of Brits and Jamaicans who talk about the impact that Marley had on their lives, concert and interview footage of Marley, and, unfortunately, some footage which feels interminable of the dedication of a plaque at a home that Marley lived during his first extended London stay in 1972. (Little kids reading essays about Bob Marley? Aaagh!)
The really cool structural idea that almost works is using each track of the Exodus album to represent a month in 1977. Against each track we see Jimmmy Carter's first year in office, lots of activities connected to the Silver Jubilee Celebration of Queen Elizabeth and the death of Elvis among other events set against Marley's tunes. So what if Exodus only had ten tracks. No problem--throw in Punky Reggae Party against the footage of punks on King's Road (77 was a huge year for Punk) and if one plays Natural Mystic the first track again, there is a full year represented.
I believe that if it had been tightened up to an hour instead of its ninety minute run time, it could have been a lot more successful, but I love the almost audacious structure of this thing. I walked away thinking about what a year, what an album, and what a life. And that is success enough.
posted by well-executed buffet at 5:42 PM
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Friday, January 29, 2010
Retaking Silent Films Back
The NW Film Center presented an evening of silent film with a seven piece orchestra known as Retake Productions. Retake's instrumentation consists of cello, violin, and two electric guitars on the audience left side of the screen, trumpet, acoustic bass and drums on the right. The result sitting in the middle of the Whitsell Auditorium was a kind of natural stereo accompanying two classic shorts from 1929 and excerpts of two important features of the silent era.
Lots of folks never got past the sliced eye shock of the opening sequence of Un Chien Andalou. Eighty years later, this collaboration of Luis Bunuel and Salvador Dali can still beguile and stun. I believe it can only be described as the regurgitation of dream imagery. It is that and as filmmaker Guy Maddin (who also utilizes quite arresting images in his own films) points out, Bunuel and the surrealists were clearly very horny. And there is much evidence of this in Andalou and not just obviously in the groping scene. The Retake musicians provided a musical that complemented this unique eternal oddball rollercoaster. I am glad I was fairly familiar with the film or I may have felt a bit more overwhelmed at trying to absorb music and image. Guitarist/co-founder of Retake Kyle Williams said to the crowd at the film's conclusion: "I hope that didn't make any sense." In other words, they get it.
Regen by Joris Ivens has been one of my favorite film essays ever since I saw it over thirty years ago in the same building that the Retake performance was held. This collection of images of a constructed rainstorm in Amsterdam has obvious appeal and linkage for me as a native Northwesterner as Williams said it does for him. Of the four films in performance, I liked this Retake treatment the most, probably because I love this film and certain fine images in it. Williams and his musical partner drummer Adam Fuderer thankfully don't "Mickey Mouse" with their soundtrack treatments but strive again, I believe for that right set of balance.
The showing of the first ten minutes of Earth reminded me of my college studies in film theory that clearly illustrated how Soviet filmmaker Alexander Dovzhenko built his film piece by piece in a constructive way as one would create a house where his much better known contemporary Sergei Eisenstein would assault the viewer with montage imagery. The sampling from the Dovzhenko film showed that the Retake folks could create more than mood for abstract imagery but also play to support story. The opening sequence shows a grandfather's last moments on earth with both dignity and humor. The audience responded well for this.
The final piece was a mid section of Robert Flaherty's Nanook of the North. You can listen to the Retake soundtrack here. It is worth checking out even without Flaherty's images. I especially like the nice interplay between the string trio and the two electric guitars on the track Fishing on the Thin Edge. The igloo building section was the centerpiece of the section shown at Reel Music, it is focused more on drums and guitar great for evoking the images of work intercut with Nanook's son playing.
I wish we could have seen this group play to the entirety of Nanook and Earth. I applaud and appreciate the ambition and ingenuity of Williams, Fuderer, and company for taking on such a task. I hope I have opportunity soon to see them present their scores to those films in full as well as other silent films. I think their instincts are good here working on creating a sound that is both contemporary and traditional. I hope they will continue this work and hope to check out Williams and Fuderer's other project, The Murder Trio.
posted by well-executed buffet at 11:02 PM
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Thursday, January 28, 2010
Zaire 74 Revisited One More Time
When We Were Kings, Leon Gast and Taylor Hackford 1996 documentary of the Rumble in the Jungle, the 1974 world heavyweight prize fight in Zaire between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman is one of the most entertaining and successful non-fiction films of all time. It one the Oscar and is such a definitive film about Ali, that it makes other films about him, Michael Mann's Ali, the odd Nation of Islam funded The Greatest where Ali played himself, as well as documentaries AKA A.k.a. Cassius Clay, and even Muhammad Ali The Greatest by the great William Klein pale by comparison.
Soul Power, which has come out 13 years after When We Were Kings is much closer to the film about the Zaire 74 music festival created and promoted by American record producer Stewart Levine and African pop music legend Hugh Masekela which was set up as a corollary event to the fight that Gast was hired to Documentary film producer and editor on Kings Jeffrey Levy-Hinte directed this film reconstituting the footage into a film that features some great Ali moments, and overlaps with some of the ground covered in Kings but this is clearly a film focused on the Zaire Festival. The rumble is almost a sidebar to the content of the filim in much the same way the festival was a sidebar in the now legendary Kings.
Before HD cameras, steadicams, gyro stabilized cranes, and digital technology, concert documentaries, (and non-fiction films, in general) were almost heroic accomplishments created with 16mm handheld Eclairs and Arriflexes. Levy-Hinte is able to assemble this film well after the passage of so many films partly because the cinematographers who worked on it are legends and superstars in their own right: Albert Maysles, one of the main practitioners of sixties cinema verite; Kevin Keating, cameraman for the Oscar-winning Harlan County, USA; Paul Goldsmith who is responsible for the stunning concert footage in Dylan's Renaldo and Clara; and Roderick Young who was one of the shooters on Wattstax.
There are no talking heads giving retrospective commentary on the event like the roles that Norman Mailer and George Plimpton played in Kings. Instead Levy-Hinte has taken the Woodstock/Wattstax approach of showing the event unfold without narration from its chaotic origins, through its "show must go on" moments after the fight has been postponed due to George Foreman's cut eye, through a sampling of the performances leading up to a climatic showing by Soul Brother No. 1, the Godfather himself, James Brown complete with midlife crisis mustache a JB dog collar and a one of a kind jumpsuit.
Soul Power is ultimately cultural and historical document. These artists coming and sharing the stage with a variety of acts from Zaire and elsewhere in Africa. Besides Brown, Bill Withers, The Spinners, BB King, The Crusaders, Fania All-stars (Celia Cruz and a veritable who's who of seventies salsa) are all captured with footage that is like lightning in a bottle, but one wishes there could have been oh, so much in the film stock that Levy-Hinte had to work with.
But no matter, this is a solid document of what was a significant and important musical event. I see it as the forerunner of Womad and what we now categorize as world music. These American musicians are clearly pumped up to be participating in this. And the adoration of the Africans is truly evident. One of my favorite moments are the very young teens of Sister Sledge trying to show the African dancers in Tabu Ley Rochereau's group how to do the bump.
If nothing more, Soul Power is great to watch for the backstage stuff and the fashions of the time. Who ever thought that plaid suits were a good idea? It boggles the mind.
posted by well-executed buffet at 11:04 PM
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Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Patti Smith Book Event at Bagdad PDX 1.26.09
If Patti Smith were a part of the Sesame Street universe, she would be brought to you by the letter R. R for Rimbaud, Rock 'n Roll, Romance, Revolution. And at her book event appearance one could add Remembrances of Robert.
Patti is on book tour supporting Just Kids, her well-received memoir of the late sixties and early seventies of the New York scene and her relationship with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. I have read a couple commentaries where folks have favorably compared it to Dylan's Chronicles Vol. 1. From excerpts heard at her book event appearance at Portland's Bagdad Theatre, that seems appropriate. Both have an uncanny level of detail that make one feel that the events they are describing took place not decades ago, but very recently.
I appreciate and admire Patti Smith because of the unflinching and high principled way she lives and perceives the world. It is still kind of hard to forgive her for supporting Ralph Nader, but I appreciate and understand it. After the Bagdad appearance I watched James Crump's film Black White + Gray: A Portrait of Sam Wagstaff and Robert Mapplethorpe which focused on Mapplethrope's relationship with museum curator and photography collector. Many of the talking heads in this film focus on the darker side of this strange, symbiotic connection between these two. But Patti's contributions to the profile were filled with a kind of romanticism about how all three of them would go out to "grease the night," to quote a line of hers.
Patti Smith is a survivor and this has become a very important part of her art how she wears it as her public persona. The lines from Elegie: "And my skin emits a ray, but I think it's sad, it's much too bad That our friends can't be with us today." is a place she has had to revisit with the deaths of Mapplethorpe, two members of her original band, her husband, her brother, and giants like William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg who influenced and informed her art.
There is always a wonderful kind of playfulness to Patti Smith in public appearance. Before she began her presentation a loud and persistent discussion going on somewhere in the building. "Tell that broad to...like talk somewhere else." She began by saying there are no rule for the evening so folks don't have to be worried how to respond after she reads pieces. "Uh, like am I supposed to clap?" She began the evening by answering the three questions she has been answering routinely on the interview circuit:
What are you listening to?
The Decemberists, Glenn Gould and Sinead O' Connor
What are you reading?
"Everything by Roberto Bolano." She Talked about carrying around 2666, Bolano's 900 page tome and now finished with the book feels like something is missing in her life.
What movies do you like, Patti?
She said she liked Dr Parmassus Sherlock Holmes she liked Robert Downey Jr and is anticipating Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland. "Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter...aaaah"
She also talked about spending the day signing 819 books. She added that it made her really happy to know that each one was going to be in someone's hands that evening. There is an old world dinginess about the Bagdad, which is now used as a McMenniman's brewpub theater and utilized by Powell's more often for larger scale events. She got the Powell's guy (who she commented on his appearance favorably) to help her out with the light on end table arrangement they had. When he adjusted it to the best that could be expected, , "Only the finest in Portland." she quipped She read two or three segments from Just Kids On this time out, there seemed to be more Jersey street-wise and vernacular than usual in her delivery. It seemed appropriate with her tales of poaching a copy of Rimbaud from a book stall, her getting Mapplethorpe to pose as her boyfriend to get her out of a date from hell with an unnamed science fiction writer, or her first encounter with Allen Ginsberg where he mistook her for a boy.
I've generally come to dread Q & A sessions from the public at book events and celebrity appearances. These can be especially dreadful with someone like Patti Smith where they feel more inclined to want to publicly testify how important the artist is to them than pose any kind of reasonable or justifiable question. The first questioner was a woman who rambled with a bunch of half digested stuff she apparently gleaned from Smith's recent Terry Gross interview. In the midst of this dribble Patti asked her if she was on pills. Yet Patti was able to turn this mess into an opportunity to update us on her kids. Pam and I did not realize her son Jackson was married to Meg White. How cool is that ? If they have kids, they might be third generation rock and rollers. As one responds to a wall on Facebook, I say "I like this."
The other cool moment that came out of the pill lady's question was Patti's anecdote about how at the body viewing of the funeral home internment of her brother Todd, the family broke into hysterics due to the appearance that his hands placed under a sheet at his waist could be interpreted as arousal. Patti, who has experienced grief (and high-profile grief) than most of us imparted this advice: "Never in your grief be afraid to laugh and smile. Why not when they go off to their next adventure?" As for being still among the living she later talked about how she always loved Jimi Hendrix's line, "Horray, I woke from yesterday"
Patti closed out the evening with some poems and additional readings from Just Kids, but also pulled out the acoustic guitar for four songs, Grateful, written in tribute to Jerry Garcia, my favorite post-1979 Smith song, Beneath the Southern Cross, My Blakean Year, which began with a spontaneous improvisation of why she loved Portland (HP Lovecraft film festival and Powell's, of course) and, for a finale, brought up Peter Buck, formerly of REM for a version of People Have the Power.
But, of course the final word of the evening was about Mapplethorpe. Just Kids was the result of a promise Smith made to him to tell their story. "Not Everything is in the book, but what's in there is true."
posted by well-executed buffet at 11:16 PM
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Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Images From A Morning Walk
This is a tribute to the women dockworkers of WWII located about a half mile or so from where they did their thing. It is also important to note that this sculpture is the work of a group of local artists: Women who Weld.
posted by well-executed buffet at 11:22 PM
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Monday, January 25, 2010
Powerland
When I was little, the electric company had a history program on the radio called "Pacific Powerland" I went home from lunch every day and settled at the kitchen table, with a melted Velveeta Cheese sandwich and a bowl of Campbell's soup, and listened. I was far too young to understand the irony at work, listening only for the sonorous tones in the voice of Nelson Olmsted. I cherished the corny jokes, the dramas in his stories of the old Northwest, which seemed so far away and gone.
--From Stepping Westward by Sallie Tisdale.
When I read this about 13 or so years ago, I got pretty excited. I thought I was the only one who had a strong memory of these broadcasts. I remember them from the backseat of my parent's Impala on those nights when we would pick my father up from work or otherwise all be in the car together in the early evening. I think we paid special attention to them because My Dad's friend Clint Gruber, who was also the director of OMSI would introduce Nelson Olmstead and give the commercial plug for Pacific Power and Light.
I've been contemplating why I've always felt a kind of kinship for hydro electric power and lately enjoy photographing and studying the aesthetics of transmission towers and substations. Somehow part of that seems to be tied into these old radio shows. Here is a sample of one of these from a guy whose selling them at a website called otrcat.com.
OtrcatPacificPowerlandSample
And also, here is an embed from archive.org where you can listen to ten of these broadcasts.
posted by well-executed buffet at 11:48 PM
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Sunday, January 24, 2010
Herb Alpert & Lani Hall: 1.24.09
This was a surprisingly fine evening of music. Herb Alpert sold 72 million Tijuana Brass records and ran one of the most successful independent record labels in history Now he has resurfaced in the public eye with his wife Lani Hall (the signature and siren voice of Sergio Brasil 66) with a show of American standards and Brazilian music accompanied by a really able jazz trio of Bill Cantos, Hussain Jiffry and Michael Shapiro.
The right crowd and the right vibe at the Aladdin Theater can be a heckuva love fest. And the Herb and Lani show was certainly one of those evenings. It appeared to be close to a sell out filled with lots of baby boomers and the generation that spawned them. For certain, it was a room of very appreciative folks.
At 74, Alpert still has that singular voice on the trumpet. When he responded to journalist Tony Sachs remark that he doesn't sound like anyone else, Herb replied: "That's what Miles [Davis] said - he said, "You hear three notes and you know it's Herb Alpert," which is quite a compliment. I think I have my own language and way of approaching it." Here's Sachs review from a show last Spring
The quality of the arrangements of the standards and their execution was enough to make you forget exactly who was playing but we were reminded when Herb ended his first vocal feature of My Fair Lady's I've Grown Accustomed To Your Face with a quote from "This Guy's In Love With You." I turned into a black church lady at that point as did most of the crowd. "Hey, More of that!" And for the next few minutes he delivered with the 70s hit Rise and a truncated mash up medley of TJB favorites like Lonely Bull, Spanish Flea, Taste of Honey and so forth. That room got real bouncy and happy in a flash. As it did later when Lani did Night and Day. I would have loved a Look of Love too, but have no complaints for that evening at all.
I grew up with Herb and TJB. My folks played the heck out of their Tijuana Brass Vol. 2 album. I remember my Dad putting it on whenever we had tacos for dinner. I pretty clearly recall their Singer sewing machine sponsored specials including the one where Herb introduced This Guy's In Love With You (he sings! but most importantly with a normal person's singing voice) Many of the Herb Alpert albums still stand as great records worth revisiting. In 2005, Shout Factory reissued the whole catalog (available at emusic) as well as a collection of rarities.
But the live album, Anything Goes, recorded during earlier stages of their current project is pretty fine too. Their version of Besame Mucho is even nominated for a Grammy. One gets the sense that Herb and Lani are doing this because they truly want to.
A lot of the other folks and myself had a reaction during the evening a bit like Nelson did on the Simpsons when Bart and friends went to Branson and saw Andy Williams. Boomer bliss, I guess, of an earlier time when the music industry, media, and radio are far less complex than they are now, but at the same time, a fine evening of music that stands on its own.
posted by well-executed buffet at 11:59 PM
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Saturday, January 23, 2010
Hands Over The City
Hands Over The City is a 1963 film directed by by Francesco Rosi that was reissued on DVD by Criterion a few years ago. It features Rod Steiger as a corrupt city commissioner who is engaged in shady real estate development. This movie was a great surprise to me and feels very contemporaneous in this era of economic gulch that the greed of wall street has incurred on us all. Stylistically, it has the same kind of post-neo realist feel of fifties or sixties Visconti or Antonioni, and reminds me much of another one of my favorites, Bertolucci's Before the Revolution.
But more than a stylistic resemblance and the early sixties zeitgeist of those films, Hands Over The City is worthy to sit on the same bookshelf or festival program with Pontecorvo's Battle Of Algiers or Z by Costa Gavras. This is a bleak look at corruption and those who perpetrate it, but as critic Stuart Klawans points out it is quite an exhilarating piece of film making as well.
Rossi is brilliant in how he tells his tale. There is a prologue where we see the developers scheme and put themselves above city codes to create a scheme where profits are likely to be astronomical. A montage of contemporary urban landscape of Naples accompanies the title and then we see documentary-like sequence of a building collapse in a lower class neighborhood that is unflinching in its approach.
I'm fascinated like probably many Americans are in European politics with their multiple parties and coalition deal making. A book I'm reading now about Konrad Andenhauer, maybe the most important 20th century figure in German politics is filled with machinations and wheeling dealing. The city council in Hands felt a bit similar to postwar Cologne.
According to Klawans' essay for Criterion, Rossi actually featured the real city council of Naples., "playing themselves, in their own chamber, lift up their arms in protest to cry, "Our hands are clean!"—a bit of acting that they must have performed twice, so that Rosi could film it in long shot from the front, and then cut to a closer, more emphatic view from behind."
The way Rosi handles transitions and set ups in scenes in this film contributes to it having a unique documentary like style. He'll take his time to show context. We are shown a minute of a physician /city council member making his rounds with his pediatric patients before a direct connection occurs with the story.
I almost feel like a new term needs to be made up to describe this film, Battle for Algiers and some others. Docudrama doesn't feel right for it at all. Maybe something more like "realistic fusion" or Trusion, perhaps? Whatever it is. The good news is that there are a number of other Rosi films available on DVD that I look forward to investigating as well.
posted by well-executed buffet at 12:42 PM
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Friday, January 22, 2010
Keaton
The greatest of all of the silent ones: Buster Keaton. What an acrobat! What an athlete he was! There is something which moves me very deeply just looking at him for two seconds. You see a tragic man and you see how he is exposed to the obstacles of the world and you see how funny he is. He moves my heart more than anyone else in the silent era.
--Werner Herzog with Elvis Mitchell on The Treatment 12.2.09
The above remark by Werner Herzog was one of my motivations for seeing a screening of three Buster Keaton films from the early twenties when they were screened at the NW Film Center. Other motivating factors were a rainstorm, rush hour traffic, my new Silver Screen pass, and a need to spend a few hours in town before meeting up with some friends at a concert.
Additionally, I was interested to hear the soundtracks that were prepared for these films by Bill Frisell. Bad canned music, especially honky tonk style piano usually can pull me out of films from the silent era. When viewing silent films at home, I'll give the accompanying track about 5 minutes. If it starts to drive me batty, I'll find something on my CD jukebox to replace it quickly. The Frisell soundtracks with Joey Baron (drums) and Kermit Driscoll were sometimes spirited and plucky but would sometimes also lapse into the undersea aquarium guitar that is a kind of signature for that jazz artist. I think his score worked best with the short feature Go West, which featured a theme that, to my ears, sounded a whole lot like The Pretender's song 2000 Miles
I've never been terribly huge on silent comedies until fairly recently. In the last few months I have become a big admirer of the earlier work of Ernst Lubitsch. His work at Babelsburg Studios in the Wiemar Berlin twenties before coming to the United States were either epics or comedies, and my favorite of these, which I need to view again soon and do a post is Wildcat, truly an epic comedy, with the amazing Pola Negri.
Part of the great joy in appreciating physical comedy is to watch it in a crowd. When Pam and I saw Matt Groening speak a few years ago, he showed the Homer Simpson's jump over Springfield gulch and the gym at Evergreen responded with a kind of pandemonium. When we see that episode or a clip of it even, Pam and I can't help but laugh. Even talking about it makes us smile.
There were moments in the screening of Keaton's One Week, The High Sign, and Go West that were almost as joyful as Homer's freefall into Springfield Gulch. The key to Keaton's comedy is a battle with the laws of physics. The affordances of solid surfaces may turn out to be passage ways or trap doors. In The High Sign, guns are shot and bullets find unexpected trajectories. And in Go West, his adoration for a cow crosses the borderline of absurdity.
But most of all, Keaton, like many great comedians is a master of timing. I don't think it gets much better than the scene from One Week where the train is going to apparently run into the ill-fitted newlywed home that is being moved to its appropriate lot with the help of a couple barrels. Please move your scrubber to the 3:17 mark to witness a truly hysterical moment in film. Maybe almost as good as Homer's skateboard jump.
posted by well-executed buffet at 11:38 PM
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Thursday, January 21, 2010
Re-encountering Shuggie
My current favorite rediscovery of the 2001 reissue that David Byrne's Luaka Bop label put out of Shuggie Otis' 1974 album Information Inspiration. It is an album worth befriending, full of surprises at almost every listen. It is funky without being heavy. It has tinges of psychedelia without being spacey. It feels both simultaneously timeless yet rooted in a early seventies groove. The one anchor of Otis' work that most folks know about is his composition Strawberry Letter 23. It became a big hit for the Brothers Johnson, produced by Quincy Jones, who according to the Shuggie Wikipedia entry offered to work with Shuggie. The lyrics of Strawberry Letter, like a lot of other Otis' tunes features slinky lyrics filled with non-sequiturs and lush bright day dream imagery of time and space similar to Robert Hunter's China Cat Sunflower. Here's a sample:
Hello my love, I heard a kiss from you
Red magic satin playing near, too
All through the morning rain I gaze, the sun doesn't shine
Rainbows and waterfalls run through my mind
Shuggie Otis was a child prodigy and was featured even before his teens in his father Johnny's R&B review. Unfortunately, his two or three solo albums didn't find a large audience and he has become a kind of footnote to the funk and soul of the seventies. There is an energy to Inspriation Information that is reminiscent of Prince's pre-Purple Rain period or even the Music of My Mind/Talking Book period of Stevie Wonder. Like Prince, he would sometimes come up with strange phonetic spellings for his tunes. Probably most notable of these is Aht Uh Mi Hed which I include here on one of those audio YouTube clips accompanied with various images of the artist.
In a Luaka Bop sponsored roundtable discussion among several late-90s early 2000s hipster artists, Tim Gane of Stereolab said of the album It's almost like a new style of music that could've developed but never did. And that's the problem. It never developed past this record." And one of the most bittersweet things about digging into this record is knowing that this is it. It would be nice to be able to fill up an eight hour playlist with Shuggie's lovely grooves, but it was not meant to be. You can listen to a radio interview from last October posted on YouTube and hearing it you hope that the 56 year old legend can get his new project Novemberin' out and that it will gain some public attention, but that dream may prove to be as elusive and ephemeral as the Strawberry letter's rainbows and waterfalls.
posted by well-executed buffet at 11:02 PM
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Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Steve Earle at the Aladdin 1.19.09
I first saw Steve Earle fifteen years ago. He had returned to recording and touring on the other side of his well-publicized (by 1995 standards) troubles with heroin and legal system. He had an all star bluegrass band with him with Peter Rowan, Norman Blake, Roy Huskey, Jr and they were supporting an album Train 'a Comin' with covers of By The Rivers of Babylon and I'm Looking Through You that still sound great. The most memorable moment was Ellis Unit One the song he had contributed for Dead Man Walking, which had not been released yet. This moment felt like the Steve Earle I had been impressed with for the seven or years prior.
Earle's first three albums Studio albums Guitar Town, Exit 0, and Copperhead Road were a breath from 1985-88 were a breath of fresh air from the MTV-centric, drum machine, neon dayglow stuff that seemed to overstock Tower Records (remember them?) back in that era. I saw him as a kind of new generation Texas outlaw with a lot of the same kind of drama and intensity that Bruce Springsteen had before he filled stadiums with Born in the USA. Copperhead Road has always impressed me as a huge cinematic anthem that stands next to the best of Boss Springsteen's work.
I admit, however, that Earle's music and provocative world commentary have been out of my rotation for sometime. I recall a wonderful sundown set with the Del McCoury band in support of a bluegrass project they did called The Mountain. The collaboration reportedly did not last long because of Earle's continued and unrepentant use of colorful language. In the last decade he has produced seven or eight albums and been the subject of a documentary film, and is now settled in Greenwich with Shelby Lynn's sister, singer-songwriter Allison Moorer (Check out her hot version of Patti Smith's Dancing Barefoot) married for the seventh time at 55 expecting their first child together in March.
A friend and former student of mine called me to ask if I was interested in taking up an extra ticket to one of Earle's quickly sold out shows at the Aladdin this week. Why not? For certain, I knew it would not be a lacklaster event. Earle played for almost two hours with a well-structured set that integrated his catalog with the songs of Townes Van Sant, a hard living artist who served as idol, mentor and teacher to Earle. Townes even tried to intervene during Earle's decline. "Imagine. I got a temperance lecture from Townes Van Zandt ."
When Earle takes a show on the road it is a good solid presentation. He has presented his current Townes acoustic show without any other accompaniment with a lot of standard bits, but as he told his audience. "If you come back tomorrow you are going to see pretty much the same show...I don't know if it will be any better but it should be as good."
It was a brilliant evening. I now hand over my reportage to a professional who recounts some of the best stories of the evening.
posted by well-executed buffet at 11:36 PM
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Tuesday, January 19, 2010
George Clinton at Crystal Ballroom 1.18.10
George Clinton used to come through Portland about every nine months or year or so, but this time he returned after being here last August. No complaints from me. I try to be in the house every time the mothership lands. Things weren't overwhelmingly crowded like his shows have sometimes been in the past. And even though it was pretty easy to move around on the floor (Over 21 show without the legal barrier between ages and cardless, thank goodnes) I still decided to check out the balcony and it was a nice way to catch one of his shows for a change.
Tonight was the standard George opening to Cosmic Slop about a half hour or so into the show after a big helping of Gary Shider and Belita Woods (I call her helium woman or the mother of Alvin and the Chipmunks) warming things up. George's entrances like those of Sun Ra, when he was on this cosmic plane, is usually one of the best parts of the show. No kid's bed sheet this time. With his downy vest, purple wig and shades he looked a bit like an eccentric divorcee who had been hanging out in a ski area lounge. Apres ski with PFunk, anyone?
My favorite ingrediant of the PFunk sound is the cluster tight vocal harmonies. I've been to PFunk shows without the horns but you can't have a true George PFunk show without a group of folks singing how you can't get over it, can't get around it. Remember, this whole mess began with George as a barber in New Jersey leading a doo-wop group called the Parliaments.
Kendra Foster continues to be one of my favorites in the more recent configurations of the PFunk Mob. She has star time presence and I am a little surprised that she is still touring regularly with the mothership pulling out Bounce to This a tune I described back in September as "a very slinky duet with George that takes you to a really nice happy place and reassures you that this S--t ain't over!" This lady has star time presence, to be sure.
George Clinton shows of recent years do not seem to have the kind of rambling anarchy they used to have. At this last Crystal show, they barely got through the One Nation Under A Groove re-entry after Maggot Brain and it all was over in less than three hours. I wonder if I'll ever see another show where things went on for a couple hours after last call. No matter. Clinton shows remain unique, one of a kind experiences coming from the legacy of the man I consider to be the last of the great AFrican American bandleaders, right up there with Ra, Mingus and Ellington.
There are a few prominent PFunk players whose absence would be quite conspicuous. Gary "diaper man" Shider is a very important ingrediant in the mix, as is Michael "Kid Funkadellic" Hampton. Hampton was heir to Eddie Hazel and he still comes out every night to lay down the the swirling and shimmering guitar feature known as Maggot Brain. Free you Mind and your ass will follow indeed.
It really isn't fair to review a singular Pfunk show. Every evening is another component of a continuum of funk. I hope the ship will touch down again in my coordinates in another few months.