Monday, June 30, 2008
Jill Scott Redux
So it doesn't look like Jill Scott is going to show up to save Bumbershoot this year. Bummer. So I will have to settle for another concert that is circulating on the OneTV, a cable station that kind of resembles Ted Turner's TBS that is focused on urban African Americans: instead of reruns of Andy and Gomer, it features the Hughleys and Martin Lawrence. But in the midst of all of these reruns comes the occasional special or movie. Two weeks the Jill Scott homecoming Philadelphia concert from her recent Real Thing Tour has been on their airwaves.
And it is a true wonder. The command this woman takes of her stage and the intense funk grooves that her band weaves behind her are absolutely spellbinding. I continue to be amazed that this woman isn't about five times bigger a star than she is. Readers of the buffet know that I consider soul music is a pinnacle of human expression, on mypantheon as others would place Beethoven, Ellington, or Stravinsky (or Miles Davis, Hank Williams, the Beatles, or Neil Diamond) on theirs.
Early in the show Jill tells "We're doing it big." Before launching into a reprise of The Real Thing.
I’m the real thing,in stereo
I got a little highs,I got a little lows
Follow this,melodic flow
I could make it shine,I could make it glow
I’m more than a toy for your satisfaction
I’m a pay-per-view for the TV screen,your
main attraction/
Your phosphorus,I’m your energy
When your lost,and you need some focus
come see me
She is more Muhammed Ali here than Aretha Franklin. There is an incredible assurance and confidence in her attack of note and lyric as her tighter than tight band creates the foundation of steadily moving platform for her to take her stand.
Before she launched into A Long Walk, she riffed on Everybody Loves the Sunshine from Roy Ayers. I admired and appreciated Ayers fusion with soul and jazz back when he created it in the seventies. I recall George Page, Portland's lead jazz DJ (who seemed to feature an organ+tenor quartet almost every hour on his program Jazz Rap) once disparagingly comment how Ayers had lost his mind. In actuality he moved on the same soul jazz highway of the seventies that also had Maurice White of Earth Wind and Fire and Ramsey Lewiss in its fast lanes. Regardless, it was great to hear Ayers being touted as the father of Acid Jazz in the seventies and to see the great Neo Soul divas of the nineties and the two thousands, Erykah and Jill cover his songs and give further tribute to the man.
But I digress. This post is about Jill, celebrating this broadcast of her Philly concert, but needs to make mention of another recent enterprise of hers. She has given her name and cred to the design and release of a brassiere especially designed for full figured voluptuous women like herself. How cool is that? I think it is tribute to her down to earth nature to use her celebrity not to try to save the world or sponsor a fragrance. The design and need to create something that will make the life the world, by redesigning the physics of underwear in a way that has not been addressed in such a direct and high profile way is pretty impressive. Just another reason why I am extraordinarily impressed by this woman and artist.
posted by well-executed buffet at 5:02 PM
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Sunday, June 29, 2008
Privilege Resurfaced
In 1979 I went to the house of a friend who had connections to the Reed College film series. She had a 16mm projector and the company another friend who went on to be a noted cinematographer. We had in our possession a print of Peter Watkins' Privilege. I was pumped up to see it because its title song was a part of an album that was a pretty significant in my life at the time: Patti Smith's Easter. Since then, I have never seen a VHS copy available or a listing on a cable channel. But recently it has appeared on Sundance Channel. They have probably rotated it through there before but this is the first time I have had opportunity to see it since that Spring or Summer evening back almost thirty years ago. Watkins website also reports that there is a DVD release of the film coming out later this month.
This film is probably the only film of Peter Watkins that appears to be a studio release. The opening splash features the earth globe in space that was Universal studios but that this were the resemblance ends. There is no credits, only a slate with a emotionless pop star with a sound bite about returning from American tour. Watkins uses voice over "documentary man" narration throughout this film. Near the beginning of the film documentary man says: "The reason given for the extreme violence of the stage act you are about to see is that it provides the public release from all the nervous tension from the state of the world outside. Stephen Shorter, British pop singer (played by Paul Jones, former singer for Manfred Mann's Earth Band) is "the most desperately loved entertainer in the world" in a Britain
of the near future from the 1967 world the film was made. The theatrical act that follows show Shorter being locked in a cage and being beaten by police with billy clubs while he sings Privilege with the same spooky organ lines that are featured in the Patti Smith version. The reaction from the crowd is a kind of hysterical Beatlemania.
Shorter is seen manipulated by the his handlers, commercial enterprises (the Steve Dream Palace dedicated to keeping people happy and buying British), the government, and the church. He becomes a Shorter becomes a messianic tool of both Church and State. Privilege is a kind of forerunner for a lot of ground that Pete Townsend covered in Tommy a year later. But when Shorter breaks and can't take it anymore, he is swept away from the entire country's consciousness.
Watkins' film prior to Privilege was The War Game, a ground breaking documentary, still quite powerful, where he reenacts with complete trappings of BBC documentary the effects of a nuclear attack on England. It won the Academy Award but was the object of derision in its country of origin and was banned by the BBC for decades.
I have written about Watkins before in the Buffet. He has always been an iconoclast with projects and intentions never mainstream. Detailed passionate essays fill his website where he talks about the media crisis which he defines as "the increasingly irresponsible manner in which the mass audiovisual media (MAVM) function, and to their disastrous impact on society, human affairs, and the environment."
In 2005, Tom Supton wrote an essay exploring Watkins and his War Game/Privilege era with this conclusion of themes, explored by Watkins in 67 but still being expressed in his essays.
In Privilege — a genuinely radical film; a near masterpiece so lost in the ether that its own director cannot get a copy of it — Peter Watkins boldly advanced the proposition that, in the end, we exist as followers in a cult of commodity, creatures of the marketplace buying every manner of human phenomena (war, rage, dissent, revolution, love) the way we buy tube socks and teacups. But no one wanted to hear it; not from him, not from anybody. Then as now, everything has its price. The only thing you can't make a dime off of is the truth.
There is definitely a time capsule feel to this film. And for me I inevitably recall the filter of being fortunate to see it in 1979, but recent viewings of Watkins films such as his six hour version of the Paris Commune uprising or his lengthy documentary-styled biographies of August Strindberg of Peter Munch. But even forty years ago the wicked observations of media abuse and power are very present such as when his artist girlfriend watches him tune the radio unable to find any tunes on the radio other than the current hit "I'm a bad, bad boy..." Somehow this seen reminds me of the story of the Clear Channel memo that restricted the playing of John Lennon's Imagine and other tunes in the days that followed the 9/11 attacks. That memo seems to me the product of the same ilk of folks sheparding and manipulating a shell shocked in Privilege.
posted by well-executed buffet at 8:09 PM
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Saturday, June 28, 2008
Quintessence: Great fusion of Jazz, Soul and Funk from Finland
This is a lovely band to come in contact with during an early Summer heat spell. My first contact was with their albums Talk Less Listen Moreand 5am.
I first heard them and thought of Floetry, Jill Scott, maybe an international jazz funk band like Incognito from seemingly all of Europe and probably the rest of the world or United Futures Organization and its spin offs from Japan. But Finland? Who would have thunk?
The albums have a certain sense of multi-layered sonic funhouse to them. The live clips embedded at the end of this post do justice to a good band, but one a a bit out of place, it seems, to perform as an act in what is likely a straight-ahead jazz festival but there are some lovely twists and turns, espcially on the second clip. I think the three clips are worth the time, and the finale at the end of two and duration of three, singer Emma Salokoski's take on Luis Bonfa's classy samba Felicidade from the Black Orpheus sound track is quit e a pleasure. Here we have Helsinki does Rio, a big reach across the world, indeed. Apparently, Quintessence is currently inactive or broke up and Saloski is doing a combination of what is probably finish torch jazz-pop spiced with a lot more Brazilian/latin tunes. She has a website promoting her work, but its written in Finish, and its best value to me are some very attractive images of this singer.
For us English readers, there is a spritely press release about the band from the record company with some more nice factoids about these musicians. Be sure to scroll down for the band pictures and discography. Both Talk Less Listen Moreand 5amare at emusic and are definitely worth checking out if you are a subscriber.
I have sometimes devoted entries on the buffet to Internet discoveries like Quintessence. There is a great deal of pleasure in stumbling across something that immediately appeals to you, and then to triangulate with search engine, video site, and old standby links to have an experience that fundamentally can be in a way considered somewhat like spending an afternoon with them.
Here is a murky looking music video of Delirious. The tune has a great hook, but I find the drum track a bit distracting.
Sometimes the drumming gets to be a bit much in the aforementioned three part air check capture (probably) of the group from the Novusakdat jazz festival. but the talent and groove of these Finlandians (that or Finns, Finecians, what term is right?) comes across well enough.
posted by well-executed buffet at 11:46 PM
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Friday, June 27, 2008
Down on Ecke Schönhauser
Berlin Schönhauser Corner (Berlin-Ecke Schönhauser) is a film concerning 15-20 year olds in 1957 East Germany. This is the first full generation to come of age since the duration of the war and the first wave of Deutsch rock 'n roll teens. Dieter, Karl Heinz, Kohle and Angela all come from households still greatly impacted by the war when they were five or eight. They are having a heck of time getting a bearing on the world, and move forward sometimes into enterprises without considering repercussions.
In this world, the neighborhood East German police play a substitute paternal role playing guidance counselor in between processing and inquiring about the corner gang's latest transgression. For instance Dieter when exiting after being held by the police said "You Don't believe me." The police commander replies:"I believe You. Believe in yourself."
There are some excellent performances here, especially by Ekkehard Schal as Dieter
and Ilse Pagé as Angela. But it is director Gerhard Klein's blend of workmanlike classic filmmaking a'la Hitchcock, and a fearlessness to take some time out for some visual poetry. There is also an Unmistakable Italian neo-realistic feel to the film, but more towards the I, Vittelonizone of that cinema's Rosselini-Olmi-Fellini spectrum.
And there are these absolutely wonderful sections of poetry in this film. The first comes as Angela, the young seamstress leaves the scene of some bet you I can vandalism at the corner Die Jungen all hang out at. Later other street scenes of this absolutely convincing Lolita woman child are handled with a sweetness and care. The director takes his time if it is significant and needed to present the story of his characters.
In 1957 our protagonists can move between East and West, and they do so, especially for movies and culture and cash flow opportunities. A full fledge escape by two of them occupies the last act of the film.
I am hoping that more and more fifties and sixties DEFA films will continue to surface. Ecke Schönhauser is the best East German film I have seen since I first became aware of the richness of this country's cinema with exposure to works like Das Kaninchen bin ich (The Rabbit Is Me), Naked among Wolves (Nackt unter Woelfen), and Ich war neunzehn (I Was Nineteen).
It has been intriguing to see two products of 1957 (the year of the Bobman) back to back. A common link between Ecke Schönhauser and Sweet Smell of Success besides their worlds of moral ambiguity is that both are presented with a wonderful link between realism and a highly art-driven style of storytelling.
posted by well-executed buffet at 11:25 PM
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Thursday, June 26, 2008
Still A Sweet Artistic Success
Sweet Smell of Success opens big and bold. Elmer Bernstein's swinging angular score immediately takes one to the Broadway and Times Square of the fifties. When I see names on the credit sequence, my blood rushes like it would if I was at a surprise all-star game or jam session. Clifford Odets and Ernest Lehman! Chico Hamilton! James Wong Howe! These credits made me giddy.
Sweet Smell of Success is undeniably a great film and a landmark one that somehow I have not taken opportunity to view in the thirty five years or so that I have taken movie viewing somewhat seriously. It is as hard driving and well crafted a film that has ever been produced in the United States. It is a noir. It deals with under handed dealings and human behavior dishonest and unclean, but it does it in such a well-crafted vehicle a view with exceptional acting. And this film is look by Cinematographer Wong Hall that uniquely captures mood alternatively between realistic documentary feel and Hollywood light that is just what the New York streets, night club, apartments and offices call for.
In an article about the current status of the locations in Sweet Smell of Success NY Times writer Charles Strum describes Sidney Furie, Tony Curtis press agent character as "the obsequious press agent who makes slime look pure" Burt Lancaster is uber-powerful columnist J.J. Hunsecker, who was in part modeled after Walter Winchell. Hunsecker is such a powerful presence in this film but one not physically present for for the first 20 minutes with asides about his influence and the rants or Furie, who has recently been ignored by Hunsecker because he hasn't broken up a relationship between his sister and a jazz guitarist played by Martin Milner.
On one level, Sweet Smell of Success is about dysfunctional family. Hunsecker is definitely hung up on his sister. Furie's uncle is Milner's manager. And the night club denizens in the shadowy world are all related in a kind of virtual fraternity expressed with the the kind of language that A.O. Scott once called "a high-toned street vernacular that no real New Yorker has ever spoken but that every real New Yorker wishes he could."
There is much systemically New York about this film that continues to capture the imagination of writers and commentators. A lot of this surfaced in the NY Times in 2002 when Sweet Smell was converted into a Marvin Hamlisch musical. Is this in part because this film in 1957 can be seen as kind of beginning to the tabloid pop culture we live in. For instance in the Sunday Times Magazine Kurt Andersen wrote:
In the intervening 45 years the wardrobe and lingo have changed some, and the relative power of various players has shifted. But as a benchmark of modern cultural history, ''Sweet Smell'' is more like the end of a beginning than the beginning of any end. Since the film's release, the infotainment-industrial complex grew exponentially from post-vaudeville germination to the all-subsuming 500-channel efflorescence of global media-movie-music conglomerates; gossip columns and crypto-gossip columns began appearing in more and more magazines and newspapers, including this one; celebrity became both indiscriminately fungible and a genuine national obsession; murky symbioses between journalists and publicists grew more widespread and entrenched; and a sneering, clued-in, ''Sweet Smell'' cynicism about the quid pro quo bargains for fame and success became the standard American take. Hunsecker and Falco are monsters, but they're also pioneers, founding fathers of the world we inhabit now.
But regardless of its linkage to our times and culture, Sweet Swell of Success is first and foremost a rip-roaring ride empowered by themes we now identify as noir, great dialog and some fine black and white cinematography.
posted by well-executed buffet at 11:55 PM
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Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Another Sigur Ros Convert
The personal impact of finally checking these guys out closely is kind of like discovering a fountain pen when they are in about the fourth or fifth grade. I have not heard a music in quite some time that had as much mystery and this kind of sense of danger that you might end up liking it a little too much and not being quite the same afterwards. If find myself quickly getting fully immersed in the falsetto callings and bowed electric guitar of Jónsi” Birgisson bleeding over a soundscape with at least two or three rhythmic elements over a soundscape long extended tones evoking high drama and some poignancy.
I haven't even really scratched the surface of the output of these folks, but I'm glad encouragement of a work colleague and his wife to see what they might be about. They first told me about Sigur Ros' documentary of concerts they put on throughout their native Iceland called Heima. It seems to be stalled in Netflix's land of Very Long Wait. So thank the web for YouTube. Embedded here is the finale (because sometimes I find it takes going to the end first to get started) of a concert in Reykjavik and also probably the finale of the film itself. This last part of a tune from their () album (yes, the name of the album is empty parentheses, how cool is that?) that was first untitled then given the name Popplagi (the pop song.)
Their music to me at this moment seems a bit like Sound Tribe Sector Nine being gene spliced to Pink Floyd with some prog rock Bjorky seasonings, but I have the sense that the more one stays ear open and digs further with a journey through their fourteen year history and into their current album which, according to Wikipedia is called " Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust (in English: "With a Buzz in Our Ears We Play Endlessly")" the more one's relationship with their music will change and morph.
Regardless, I'm convinced we should go see these folks when they come to Portland in October. I'm getting a bit older, I guess, when I became disappointed to find out they were going to be here on a Monday night, but that potential agony was assuaged by the fact that it will be in the Arlene Schnitzer concert Hall, which means it will be over at 10:30 instead of starting at such a time only applicable to those in their twenties and a few really hearty souls.
posted by well-executed buffet at 11:59 PM
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Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Hey Model Couple, You're a Bit Like You and Me
William Klein is an American photographer and filmmaker who has been expatriate in France for many decades. Prior to the Eclipse/Criterion release of three of his films, I had only been exposed to his exceptional documentary, Muhammad Ali, the Greatest (not to be confused with The Greatest the bizarre Herbert Muhammad-bank rolled auto biopic where Ali played himself and Ernest Borgnine played Angelo Dundee) and had read a bit about him from time to time in film journals and alike.
The Model Couple (Le Couple témoin) is one of the films in the new Eclipse box. It is a French comedy with an absurdist tick. Jean Michel and Claudette are selected to undergo some kind of experiment/propaganda trick/reality TV show (nearly 25 years or so before Big Brother, the Truman show and EdTV) Their keepers are this round almost mime d makeup woman who reminds me of a cross between Leo McKern in Help! and Lotte Lenya as Rosa Kleb in From Russia With Love.
The film is bright and shiny. Films from France in the seventies and late sixties always seem to have this wonderful sheen to them. Model Couple's look reminds me of the Truffaut films of a few years earlier, especially Bed and Board. Klein takes no prisoners with his assault on consumer culture and psychosociology (as it is called at one point in the film.) His film is stocked with more gags than Woody Allen's Sleeper, of which Model Couple has a similar tone
Model Couple takes on market testing, consumerism, television and the French government. (The last a fairly humorous episode where the minister of the Future comes to dinner.) And the last episode consists of tweenager "terrorists" coming to take over the New City experimental lab, kidnapping or rather adultnapping the model couple with their demands being a chance to be heard "Do you know what's in your television" before powers that be demolish the New CIty Research lab and leave Claudette and Jean Michel stranded.
Model Couple is definitely a product of 1977, but its themes still hold contemporaneously thirty years later.
posted by well-executed buffet at 11:38 PM
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Monday, June 23, 2008
Quick Pause to Salute George
When I was in eighth grade, the cutting edge techology in school libraries (which were in the period of transition when they were starting to be called media centers) were listening centers. Big banks of plastic headphones that could be connected to a cassette player. KINK used to have Album Preview each weeknight at 10pm. I used to take the Panasonic cassette recorder that I had earned from berry picking profits and record their selection first with microphone carefully placed 4-8 inches from the speaker and later through the miracle of patch cords. In January or February of 1972, I had a tape I just had to share with my friends: George Carlin's AM & FM, which paved the way for his far more successful and famous, Class Clown, with the infamous Seven Words... . Carlin had been a comedian for 10 years. We all knew the Hippy Dippy Weatherman, but none of us had heard anything like this.
It didn't take long for us to get busted. Picture a bunch of eighth grade boys laughing their guts out because of a comedian using the word shit in all kinds of artful and funny ways. Somehow I remember getting the tape out of the machine and everyone scrambling off in a different direction when the librarian zeroed in on us.
FM & AM prepared me for Lenny Bruce and Richard Pryor's That Nigger's Crazy. But I was never a super nut fan who used to do Carlin's bits. I know from experience that those folks existed. If his HBO specials or hosting of SNL were on you kept him on the room, but I never sought him out. I remember when Second City did a parody of a Carlin in real life who totally alienated his family and friends because he would launch into bit voice and ramble on with some stoney revelation and all would groan or leave.
I felt differently when I saw him in Kevin Smith's Dogma and Jersey Girl. He seemed a perfect choice for these films. In the first, his character came out as the perspective he brought religion in his humor. In the second, you really believed him as Ben Affleck's working class pop, the old man from the hippie daze. Mr. Smith should feel honored to have had this icon in his flicks. And I think it was great that George Carlin was headlining in Vegas a couple weeks past as he has been for decades.
And tonight I got pretty choked up when I saw John Stewart's brief tribute to Carlin: "I'm getting pretty tired of people we need leaving us" He went on to call Carlin a personal hero and the moment of Zen was a brief clip from 1992 where Carlin said that you could learn everything about the Persian Gulf war from the names of two guys in charge of it: DICK Cheney and COLON Powell. Here's the rest of that performance to help say goodnight to George here at the buffet:
posted by well-executed buffet at 11:22 PM
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Sunday, June 22, 2008
Alexander the Great Meets Oliver the Audacious
I can appreciate the big as well as the small. I love both stripped down demos and fully realized productions. I love grand opera and epic film as well as that which was made on less scale. I figure anyone worth trying to do something epic on film, to take on the tradition of Wyler, DeMille, and Lean is worth checking out.
Alexander, Oliver Stone's 2004 film always struck me as something I wanted to see, but I missed the window in Fall 2004 to see it in a theater. Its reception was tarnished by the release and poor reception of Wolfgang Petersen and Brad Pitt's Troy a few months earier. So recently I got hold of Alexander, Revisited, the final 217 minute version. For the first time in my life, probably, I felt an epic film too darned long. I literally shouted out loud when I realized there was still over half an hour to go after his amazing battle with an elephant.
Oliver Stone is not a subtle filmmaker. And he can be a most startling one. I appreciate his audacious, confident, in your faceness style. Every twenty minutes or so features an image or sequence that can't be denied as being unique or big or over the top. My favorite in Alexander occurs at one of the battles where the camera raises above the spears into the sky and then over the wing of an obvious CGI (but who cares) eagle soaring for miles over soldiers to the opposite camp. It may not be worth watching the entire film for, but it comes pretty darned close.
Colin Farrel is a driven, troubled and plagued emperor of the world. His best scenes are with his snake loving and obsessed mother, Olympias played to the max by Angelina Jolie or the striking Rosario Dawson as Alexander's wife Roxanne. Roxanne and Alexander's show down on their wedding night after she busts him being affectionate with childhood friend Hephaistion portrayed by Jared Leto is almost equal to the eagle flight.
But I have to admit the three hours plus of Alexander, Revisited has cured me of epic movies for a little while. I was thinking of going to Mongol, but I think I will wait a while.
posted by well-executed buffet at 11:56 PM
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Saturday, June 21, 2008
A Great Way to Start Summer
Saturday night with good weather in June, at last. Celebrating a friend's birthday party was a most excellent way to begin the Summer. Food, tunes, croquet, beer and Mexican Food
Co-host Robert did a wonderful job of keeping the cross-faded hits a'comin. Thanks for a great evening
posted by well-executed buffet at 11:25 PM
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Friday, June 20, 2008
A day and a night on tour with the Alexandria Ceremonial Police Orchestra
I became aware and a part of this phenomena when I went to see King of Hearts with Alan Bates sometime in 1972 (probably.) King of Hearts was still the current cult of the quirky movie from another country. This cult had celebrated films with Alec Guinness and Jacques Tati before I got on the quirk train. But The Gods Must be Crazy, La Cage Aux Folles, and back to Britain again finally with The Full Monty with a bunch of stuff in between.
Now comes The Band's Visit (Bikur Ha-Tizmoret), a film directed by Eran Kolirin. I think it is one of the first quirk train films I will never learn to hate. I would never watch Roberto Benigni's Life is Beautiful with its oversimplistic paptrap about the holocaust. But although Kolirin's story is about national and racial interface, there is not a feeling of stereotypes, just types we are likely to find in our life.
Anyone who sees this film will likely never forget the Alexandria Ceremonial Police Orchestra. I can't recall a recent film that is such a creative fount of visual humor . It is aided by the fact that almost every scene has a baby blue uniform on. It is one of the great unknowns of the universe but most humans grimace to a grin when they see a grown man in this hue.
The film is best explained by its online tag within the first minutes of the films: "Once-not long ago-a small Egyptian police band arrived in Israel. Not many remember this...It wasn't that important." But it is important for the band members and those that assist them when they are stranded out in a isolated cinderbox of a town in the desert.
A film about all male band is going to need a woman to keep it buoyant. Ronit Elkabetz plays Dina, a single independent restaurant owner is analagous to an entire harbor. Th scenes with Lieutenant-colonel Tawfiq Zacharya played by Sasson Gabat are poignant and lovely. The film uses long takes and sweet comic timing with a few intercut situations where the various members of the band interacting in the small town such as the man who waits for his sweetheart's phone call eveynight outside a payphone or a local that gets hooked up with a goth on a rollerboogie blind date.
The Band's Visit feels less like a film than a place you spend time with some interesting characters. That makes it a rare film for me, because how many films can one say that about. It would be a very short list with Bottle Rocket and maybe a couple others.
posted by well-executed buffet at 11:07 AM
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Thursday, June 19, 2008
Sherman Alexie Goes to Community College after a morning in Federal Court
I had a very brief direct encounter with Sherman Alexie. I told him I had enjoyed his recent series of columns for the Stranger about the Seattle Sonics. He thanked me and told me he had testified that morning. I wanted to explore this topic further, but circumstances prevented that. He was at the head of a reception cue that I was in the process of joining about a hundred feet further. I started a follow up question of something like "Well how was court?" when I turned around and saw that I was partially holding up an exiting crowd of about 150 of my colleagues and over 300 cloaked graduates following them. Too bad. I would like to have talked further about his morning at the courthouse.
I have always appreciated creative artists when they feel inclined to passionately speak out about turns in life that they can't get on board with. Alexie is using his celebrity to personalize how his personal experience of fan and family man is compromised by corporate greed and outside money. When Howard Schulz, robber baron pusherman of this millennium bought the Seattle Sonics, he bought an important part of the history and tradition of the city. When you let go of a holding like that, you have a responsibility to make sure it goes to a good home, and not one where the Dad says you are moving across the country.
The next morning I read the Seattle PI account of Sherman's day in court and the transcript of his testimony.One of my favorite moments are
Q When you write who do you write for?
A Everybody on the planet, I hope. By and large I am a
literary fiction writer. I depend on about 150,000 hard core
readers.
But you owe it to yourself to download and read the full transcript. The story of how his shift of allegiances between his father's Minneapolis>Los Angeles to his own adolescent choice to support the Sonics instead. And true respect for the level of physical talent in the NBA. Pardon the length of this quote, but Sherman was on fire here:
A Oh, I mean -- Professional athletes are amazing in any
form. But the great thing about basketball is they are
barely wearing any clothes, they play in their underwear, so
you can see their muscles, you can see their size, you can
see their ability. I mean, LeBron James who is probably the
best player in the world is six foot eight, 260 pounds. He
can jump four feet off the ground. When we look at history,
when we look at mythology, when we talk about Hercules, when
we talk about Athena, when we talk about these gods what we
are talking about is physical accomplishment. So when I look
at a LeBron James I look at current mythology, I look at the
way in which a 100 years from now people will be talking
about LeBron James the way we talk about Hercules.
THE COURT: Mr. Alexie, I can't get a record on you.
Q. You have to slow down.
Major American writer waxing philosphically in a Federal Court comparing pop culture with mythology? This just doesn't happen every day.
Nor does a college graduation often get the opportunity for a real life American artist speaking passionately about what he thinks is one of the greatest things--community colleges.
I didn't take notes, but I am very glad the Columbian's Howard Buck, who has covered the highs and lows of Clark College captured Sherman's comments about his thoughts on three groups of community college graduates.
“I got all emotional,” Alexie explained after his introduction, which included a scene from his film, “Smoke Signals.” “I’m the son of a woman who got her A.A. degree at age 46. My father got his GED at 32. When I look out at you, I see my Mom and Dad, sort of.
“I’m so touched to be here with you, to celebrate all your reinventions,” he said.
Alexie gave shout-outs to three particular subsets of the cap-and-gown crowd:
- To single parents, after years of corralling children and cramming in studies: “Madness, madness! And now you’re here! Congratulations.”
- To first-in-the-family graduates: “You are revolutionaries! And you’ve changed your families, forever.”
- To those who’ve stumbled or overcome chronic cluelessness: “I’m sure your parents and brothers or sisters are sitting there, thinking, “ ‘Can you believe we’re here?’ I honor your reinvention.”
I've made my living in a variety of roles at Clark College for most of the past two decades and I found Sherman's remarks excellent and moving. It is so great to hear someone you admire acknowledge that you are in a good place doing good work.
It was difficult to take pictures or notes at graduation due to robes. Plus I had a bottle of water and a camera both hanging under a bunch of fabric and at one point I got one or both of the cords caught up in my hood. So I kind of missed out on this opportunity to capture the attendance of Al Bauer and Tom Koenninger. These are the statesmen and elders of our community who have been the ambassadors for education in our region. Bauer's volume and quality of educational legislation for the state, not just for his 49th district and adjacent environs. Also great are accomplishments for alumni and Columbian editor emeritus Koenninger, who served as chair of the Washington State Board of Higher Education. This shot will have to suffice. I had my flash forced off by default and missed a better shot of the both of them reasonably in the frame. It didn't make it any less a nice evening for the class of 2008.
posted by well-executed buffet at 8:19 PM
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Wednesday, June 18, 2008
I'm Your Man: Aspects of Leonard
I'm Your Man is concert film of the 2005 tribute to Leonard Cohen produced by Hal Wilner and it provides the opportunity for a pretty intimate and detailed biographical profile narrated by Cohen himself. When I first saw it about a year and half ago I was mostly impressed by this access to Cohen. This time I am really impressed with what is basically a three part collaboration by Cohen, Wilner, and the film's director, Lian Lunson.
Lunson is quite a talented director She uses the conventions of music concert film, biographical film, and music video grammar. Some of the concert sequences are amazingly stirring. Hal Wilner accessed a stellar group of the kinds of performers who not only sing will with a artful and artistic delivery, he provides a group of people who are seemingly in love with singing and great songs:Rufus and Martha Wainright, Nick Cave, Jarvis Cocker, Beth Organ, the Handsome Family, the McGarrigle sisters, etc. And isn't that what you need to pay attention to a really great songwriter. And to create what results in what Cohen calls named one of his songs: A Tower of Song.
Tower of Song is the only one in the film performed by Cohen himself, the only full song that is not part of the actual tribute concert, and the only song in the film that U@ performs in. Bono only sings a bridge chorus and I dare say, he is actually a bit restrained. What is loveliest about this performance is The Edge's guitar work, lovely flowing with a kind of Chet Atkins attack to the song's melody.
I could watch this film just to see how Lunson handles transitions between interviews and concert sequences. One technique became kind of signature. At times through post production, she slows down the exits of performers at the end of their numbers. But it works, especially when it is followed by a cross-fade of sonic rumble into a black and white interview that creates a deep contrast with the warmly lit stage. And you are then in what Rufus Wainwright called Leonard Cohenland.
The stages of Leonard's life are revealed both by his songs and his commentary about Montreal, the music game, his life in the monestary. There is no doubt that he is a deep thinker and he knows he is talking for the record on a document. In a very memorable passion, he takes the opportunity to express his regrets on once telling a reporter years ago that his Chelsea Hotel was about Janis Joplin. He talks about how that was a major indiscretion, a very ungallant moment. "She wouldn't have minded, but my mother would."
I couldn't find much about director Lian Lunson except that she is quite beautiful and this is her most high profile project so far. Would another filmmaker (picture Martin Scorsese with his rapid fire questions in the Last Waltz or telling the story of Dylan or the stones) and get the same level of intimacy in his comments, observations and reminiscences, Because no matter how wonderful the music and the presentation, this film's most exceptional value will likely always be the rare chance to see Leonard Cohen and what I would coin as Cohenisms, and most are prety darned deep. For instance,
We somehow embrace the notion that this vale of tears is perfectable. And you are going to get it all straight. I found things became a lot easier when I no longer expected to win.
posted by well-executed buffet at 11:14 PM
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Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Emile de Antonio & In the Year of the Pig
Watching In the Year of the Pig, I felt like I was in an auditorium at a college in the late sixties or seventies because this, or a small art house theater is were probably the only likely locations where you would view the films of Emile de Antonio. I could almost flashback to a room with brown metal folding chairs and the bright white light of a chatty Bell and Howell or Eiki projector and the kind of abrupt silence when house lights came up to change reels after forty minutes that was accompanied with the internal decision making of whether or not you were going to stay and watch the whole thing. You know you are watching something important, but there might be something more fun or pleasant to await you outside the room.
Emile de Antonio was a radical filmmaker who had a point to impress upon his viewer. But he was, it seems to me, intellectual in his passion. He was more Noah Chomsky (the subject of the book Necessary Illusions and the film Manufacturing Consent which were dedicated to de Antonio by authors and filmmakers Mark Achbar and Peter Wintonick.) than Michael Moore. He was the kind of director who would be featured in publications like Cineaste ("America’s Leading Magazine on the Art and Politics of the Cinema. His first feature Point of Order is a skillfully hewn collection of newsclips that create a kind of narrative arc to tell the story of the Joe McCarthy era. It should always be available as one of the first sources for students and others to understand that time of the politics of fear. I first saw it on VHS during the mid-nineties shortly after the Newt Gingrich Republican congress was strutting its stuff and it felt oddly contemporary at that time.
And, unfortunately, one will feel such parallel history (i.e. Iraq, war on terror) when they view In the Year of the Pig. This film is one of the first to abruptly and scathingly question the United States involvement in Vietnam. It opens with images of firebombing, militarism, and refugees from villages. These images are intercut with segments of black with reconstituted sonic soundscape of helicopter noise. There is no narrator. The film consists of interview segments and illustrative footage, sometimes in counterpoint. At one point General Westmoreland states that there is no torture of Vietnamese, but edits to follow, show footage contrary to that claim and another interview with a soldier talks about outright assassination of prisoners.
The first 45 minutes of Pig are a history lesson of the French and early American efforts prior to the gulf of Tonkin resolution. French and American historians and journalists (including David Halbertstam) review the full history of colonialism and politics of the region. Ho Chi Minh's transformation from western educated student to Marxist revolutionary is covered, along with the Battle of Dien Bien Phu, the Dinh brothers and Madame Nhu (she is still alive and is said to be preparing her memoirs--wow) The last hour of this 1968 film cover the Johnson years, particularly the Tonkin Gulf resolution (the WMD bluff of that time, in my humble opinion) to what at that point was the current state of messy affairs.
Hearts and Minds,the 1974 film on Vietnman, which sometimes is similar to tone and spirit of de Antonio's film, helped galvanize my perspective on the war. I well remember Daniel Ellsberg's interview in the film where he very emotionally talks about his decision to share what later became known as the Pentagon Papers. Daniel Berrigan's presence near the end of In the Year of the Pig played a similar role. After the history lesson and a summary of how bad things had gotten, the only solution seems to be, no, has to be, consciousness and action.
In the Year of the Pigis one of the films that is a part of a four disc DVD collection called Emile de Antonio-Radical Saint which its main release date has been delayed until July 8. I look forward to seeing his films on Nixon, the Weather Underground, and a retrospective film on his own filmmaking career, Mr Hoover and I, which features much information on the huge FBI file that was gathered about de Antonio.
posted by well-executed buffet at 9:32 PM
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Monday, June 16, 2008
Killer of Sheep
I met Charles Burnett and saw his film Killer of Sheep back in 1978 or 79 when it was toured to universities, community centers, and museum film programs. His film took me to another world this suburban kid had no experience in, the gritty reality of South Central Los Angeles--just as Cassavetes and Bergman's films took me to a strange adult world of marital and relationship politics and Scorsese's Who's that Knocking at my Door and Mean Streets impacted me with their visceral impact of Little Italy. I remember being impressed by Killer of Sheep and have never forgot its imagery: the slaughter house, the kids throwing rocks at each other in the street, and the starkness of the black and white photography.
But mostly I remembered the little girl with her doll singing along to Earth Wind and Fire's Reasons blissed away in her own universe. When I saw this scene again on the DVD, I noticed she only caught about every fifth world but comes out very strong at the la la la la chorus at the end. Her mother looks at her and smiles, approvingly perhaps, but very, very knowingly. Returning to Sheep thirty years later, I found many other sequences just as poignant and significant in feeling and in meaning.
Killer of Sheep was a memory but now that the film has been preserved, distributed in a limited 35mm run, and, most importantly, released on DVD, it belongs to all of us. It is a realistic film, but it has a poetic reality. Burnett's use of music is evocative and connective. Paul Robeson and Dinah Washington have a significant presence on the soundtrack, but also so do the blues and some classical pieces. Sheep is a film experience of mood and place.
This black Los Angeles of the seventies seems almost quaint before gang bangers, Rodney King. and crack. There are large lots and construction sites that kids play in and there is a strong sense of family and community where lead protagonists Stan's family and his neighbors are struggling on very little resources. In the title song to Superfly, Curtis Mayfield sings at the end about "Trying to get over." Stan and his family are only trying to get through and get by.
I am pleased that Sheep is back out there in the world. It deserves its place on the National Film Registry. One can look at it as a missing link in the history of black cinema between Parks-Van Peebles era and the "revolution" later led by Spike Lee, Singleton et al. And its influence is likely apparent in independent films of the past couple of decades like David Gordon Green's George Washington But mostly one should look at this film as an accomplishment on its own terms. This is one of those unique and kind of timeless cinematic experiences that has the ability to reveal more and more each time it is viewed, just as the greatest of music, poetry, and literature have that trait and capacity.
posted by well-executed buffet at 9:02 PM
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Sunday, June 15, 2008
When a Ballad is no Longer a Ballad
I searched YouTube for Miles Davis' version of I Fall In Love Too Easilybecause his classic performance of it has an incredible amount of poignancy and emotion. This version with the Hancock-Carter-Williams-Shorter quintet is all sharp corners and muscular angularity. I appreciate it as well. There are moments where Tony Williams absolutely explodes. And Shorter's solo seems to be on a wavelength too far to the left of a normal transceiver.
For a brief moment, I must have felt like Miles' audience did often back in those days. "Hey, that's not.." But, for those who want and choose to listen, there are big rewards and payoffs as this group takes you on its journeys. And if you don't like it? Well, Miles summarized that with a response in one of his tunes from the early sixties: So What.
posted by well-executed buffet at 8:44 PM
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Saturday, June 14, 2008
Take Five: A Major Treasure of the 20th Century
I was at a gathering among friends when Dave Brubeck's Take Five came on the ITunes mix. We had a discussion about how the impact this performance had on the world. I see it as one of the finer moments of the 20th Century.
I can't speak first hand to this Brubeck-Desmond-Wright-Morello masterpiece when it came out, but I certainly can speculate on what it must have been to have a simple, understated performance hit the public sphere in a world of rock 'n roll still manic and Mitch Miller styled pop music that hadn't caught up. Somehow, sometimes, things that are great come to the surface and stick around.
The rhythm prior to Desmond's melody line reminds me of a wild stream moving forward and maybe downhill. Is the the time signature really that odd? 5/4 has always felt like a waltz with a jolt to me.
The sound of Desmond's alto is indeed the essence of west coast cool brought out for the world to treasure. His became as recognizable a voice as any pop singers, a very rare thing for a jazz artist.
Nearly twenty years after it was released, I noticed how often you could find Take Five on Juke boxes of taverns and pizza joints. And when it comes on still, you have an invitation to still take five and cherish a little bit of cool in a world of hot, of some quiet rhythm and melody in a chaotic noisy world. As Al Jarreau used to conclude on his hyper vocal version of the tune, "Just take five."
posted by well-executed buffet at 8:19 PM
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Friday, June 13, 2008
Wet Asphalt in Fifties Berlin
Wet Asphalt (Nasser Asphalt) is basically one of those time capsule curiosities that would have likely ended up on the late late show or a movie matinee on a pre-cable era independent television station. It is a dubbed 1958 German film featuring Horst Buchholz that maintains a lovely nuanced atmosphere and some star presence from its lead, but then it falls in the far background of your experience of viewing it.
Its plot revolves around yellow journalism. A successful independent international reporter, a kind of one man news syndicate, named Ceasar Boyd, played by Martin Held, arranges for the early prison release of an ambitious reporter Greg Bachman (Buchholz) to aid him in his business and activities. The main action begins when Boyd's niece comes to stay. She is all late fifties style (pointy bras and all). While suffering the old man's creepy over protectiveness, she falls in love with Bachman. The best scenes in the film are when he drives her around Berlin and takes her to the bombed wreckage of his childhood home with plaintive fifties jazz providing mood for this tour.
The major plot develops, however, when Ceasar makes up a sensational story about German soldiers being caught in a Polish bunker that is inspired by a wartime reminiscence of his valet, played by a very pre-Goldfinger Gert Frobe. The story becomes an international sensation and Ceasar tries to pin the whole thing on Bachman.
There is a kind of strange "six degrees of separation" machination going on here surrounding this film. The plot of this movie is close in many ways to the 1951 Billy Wilder film Ace In the Hole, where Kirk Douglas manufactured a story about buried miners. In 1961, Wilder filmed One Two Three, in Berlin and it starred Buchholz. Could he have seen Nasser Asphalt prior? There does seem to be a kind of connective tissue in these circumstances that go a bit beyond pure coincidence.
posted by well-executed buffet at 11:57 PM
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Thursday, June 12, 2008
Music for Experimental Film with Tom Verlaine and Jimmy Rip
Tom Verlaine's guitar sound is unique and can evoke mysterious. His band Television is one of those bands that those who know them are passionate and nostalgic about, but most folks have never heard of them. They released two late seventies albums which featured somewhat strained and passionate vocals by Verlaine, which I am sure turned off many first time listeners, who also might have missed the tight rhythm section as well as the intricate, interactive, and dynamic guitar work of Verlaine and Richard Lloyd. Lloyd has stepped away from the third occasional reconstitution of the group and is replaced by Jimmy Rip, Verlaine's partner for this project, Music for Experimental Film.
Rip and Verlaine provide the score for seven avant garde experimental shorts from the 1920s. There is surprisingly little aquarium guitar noodling here. They are able to create a mood that is appropriate for each of the films. According to the Kino website, only one of the soundtracks was recorded in the studio, the rest were captured when the duo presented this program in concert over the past couple of years.
Le'Etoile de Mer a 1926 film by Man Ray is the opener. And it is a combination of what we now can recognize as an almost categorical collection of surrealism with an emphassis on eroticism. Much of the film is shot through what looks like shower glass. It also features what appears to be an obsession with starfishes. The guitar work is a bit loopier here to my ears than some of the other pieces but it makes it more accessible to additional viewings as well.
James S. Watson and Melville Webber's The Fall of the House of Usher from 1928 and The Life and Death of 9413 A Hollywood Extra from Robert Florey are the two films that come close to maintaining some sort of narrative. They were my least favorite of the films, but the expressionism, especially in Usher, makes a nice contrast to some of the looser collection of images featured in the more surrealist or
Dadist offerings. The music for these two seems to propel the images along more than comment and reflect on them, such as with the lovely theme featured in the latter part of Le'Etoile de Mer.
Man Ray's Emak Bakia (1926) to me clearly shows how experimental images are not simply accidental ones. Emak truly is a visual poem with many images of litht and shadow. Also, If Le'Etoile de Mer obsessed over star fish. This film features the human eye as a routine feature, but thankfully non are sliced like in that other surrealist masterpiece of the time, Un Chien Andalu. But it does recall some of the rough and tumble action and motion of Rene Clair's Ent'racte, which was made a couple of years earlier. It also takes us into surf and some images of sexual gender bending. And its latter third is a lot of circling images of shadow and light.
Hans Richter's Rhythmus 21 plays with square shapes and objects that merge, recede and advance. The feel to the music on this one is light and almost meditative.
Brumus D'Automne (1929) by Dimitri Kirsanoff is a piece of visual poetry exploring the internal moods of a woman who has just received walking papers from her lover (at least that is my interpretation) It builds visual motifs of rain and scenic exteriors.
The last selection is Ballet Mechanique by Fernard Leger. It is the most upbeat of the group and probably contains the most images. Images reverse, are optically printed over each other and meet the beat to the music in a kind of fun house ride.
I think it is quite cool that a New Wave guitar god will help allow folks to discover the vintage experimental films of Man Ray, Fernard Legar, and the others. I invite you to check out the trailer from Kino the collection's distributor.
posted by well-executed buffet at 11:07 PM
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Wednesday, June 11, 2008
Googleville on the Columbia
The most chilling article I have read in sometime appeared in last week's Willamette Week. Byron Beck has written a provocative account regarding Google's presence in The Dalles entitled Welcome to Googleville: America’s newest information superhighway begins On Oregon’s Silicon Prairie and it certainly opened my eyes.
Beck's tale is one of non-disclosure agreements, preferred utility rates and a company shrouded in secrecy. A couple years back Google has taken over the old Martin Marietta aluminum plant site and created a site where no one knows exactly what is happening inthis data center/server farm that was touted to bring 200 high paying jobs to the area.
Most telling in Beck's article is this quote from the Dalles' mayor Robb Van Cleave:
“The perception, at the time of negotiation with Google, by the local press and the public at large, was that a large employer was on the way, but that no one could talk about it because everyone involved in the negotiations—port, city, county and power officials, and over a dozen more people—had all signed nondisclosures,” says Van Cleave. “I felt strongly that if I didn’t sign the nondisclosure, I could still speak freely to the press and public about what was going on down at the port.”
The article indicates there has been some economic uptick in the area, particularly dramatic in real estate. But the question is at what price is all of this taking place. And why does it have to be so damned secret. No one knows what kinds of deal have been cut with the public utility company or how much power (and it is apparently a lot) Google uses.
Ironically, in a moment I will post this article to my server using technology Google owns. And I will likely have more than a few encounters with the technology that may be routed to that sleepy town 90 miles up river. But I wonder as Hillary, author of one of the comments on the website version of the article who writes: "So what we can expect is that every mothballed or closed aluminum plant site in the Northwest, once making strategic metal for defense, will become a data bank center because the power production, the sub stations, the power lines, are all in place." I am pleased Mr. Beck brought this story a bit more out in the open. Before, all I had known and heard was some coffee cooler talk about Google being in the area wih everyone's response as "Jobs. Isn't that nice?"
posted by well-executed buffet at 11:56 PM
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Tuesday, June 10, 2008
The Moog Movie
Hans Fjellestad's 2004 film Moog reveals that Robert Moog was involved with electronics and music for the majority of his life. He began with the theramin, the electronic instrument that allows one to create sound and music by moving their hands in space. Moog built his first theramin when he was fourteen and sold the first one he produced for money in 1954. His current company still makes theramins. The last shot of this film shows Moog outdoors, likely in his backyard playing Old Man River on a theramin.
This film starts with Bob Moog talking about how he has the ability to feel a piece of electronic equipment. He maintains that ideas come to him in a process that is something in between discovering and witnessing. Fjellestad's portrait of Moog reveals his sensitivity to spirituality. This is evident in a tour of his garden. He talks about how gardening and inventing are somehow linked, an ecosystem is like a machine.
The film was released in 2004, a year before Bob Moog died. This portrait documentary is a most important time capsule with its combination of interview footage of the inventor discussing his life and work and studio interviews with a range of artists who have been impacted by his inventions.
How did he get to be interacting with the likes of DJ Spooky, Keith Emerson, Bernie Worrell, Money Mark, and Rick Wakeman, some of which are performing at an event, Moogfest, in his honor at BB King's Blues Club in New York City. He described his journey into the world of electronic music "like slipping backwards on a banana peel." His work with theremin kits put him in touch with Herb Deutsch which turned him on to the world of electronic music. The New York Times published a short article about the Moog/Deutsch era about a year ago.
The Moog Synthesizer and its modular electronic sound creation system created interest among the cutting edge of the musical and compositional community, was sought after by those interested in experimental sound and music. The instruments became popular in the world of advertising and commercials, and then to popular musicians.
In the film, Rick Wakeman talks about how the Mini Moog allowed rock keyboard players to compete onstage with guitarists. This sequence also leads to a hysterical segment where Wakeman, the great Bernie Worrell and Moog are backstage at Moogfest, acting and sounding like three regular guys talking about, what else, sex and women, (but also music and synthesizers) Regardless, Fjellestad has captured one of those moments of truth that is hard to forget here.
Fjellestad's director's notes in the DVD extras reveals that Moog was filmed in Super 16:such a seventies medium for a seventies topic! It allows for a kind of seamlessness between archival footage of Moog or Gershon Kingsley's concert of the first Moog quartet. And this choice helps give the film a timeless quality that fits it well. Afterall, this film will likely become the most important future record for folks to get an introduction on Moog, his character and his accomplishments.
The Moog can create space sounds and "the language of aliens" as Money Mark calls it in the film. Wakeman calls it the "instrument with an x factor" Moog's hope was that it would create new sounds and he comments on the practice of the Moog and other electronic instruments replacing traditional musicians and instruments, He voices concern that "music has becoming something that producers do by themselves for solitary listeners." feeling that live music is the most basic. And there is a kind of poignancy when he says "I hope we don't forget how important it is for live performance where musicians interact with players and form a community right there on the spot." And in a way, he seems to form a kind of community with nature in that aforementioned last shot of playing Old Man River on his theremin.
posted by well-executed buffet at 10:08 PM
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Monday, June 9, 2008
D'Angelo: Ultimate Student of Soul
D'Angelo has all of the great soul moves down and finds ways to bring on a few of his own. Here are clips of him from the 2000 Montreux Festival. Sly, James, George Clinton are all rolled up into this monster jam.
Unfortunately, D'Angelo's personal life also has parallels with those of his forefathers. But I can only hope that the reports of new music on the way and rehabs being successful are true. Great artists have a way of coming back for more, sometimes stronger than ever, although it is difficult to consider how the energy level of this room could be topped.
posted by well-executed buffet at 9:29 PM
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Sunday, June 8, 2008
Retreat into Rhythm: Brand New Heavies Forever
There was this fresh sounding British pop in the early nineties with a fabulously soulful foundation. I tried it on again and by gosh, The Brand New Heavies still have this groovy contemporary sound. I still dig the Heavies. They went through some changes and a number of lead singers. The most prominent of those vocalists is N'Dea Davenport. She has this great radio friendly set of pipes and I predicted that she was going to do some major StarTime either with our without her heavy brethren. But alas, as probably their best tune says: "Dream on, Dreamer"
Their music tends to show up on soundtracks. Because of their connection with classic R&B roots of the seventies, they were lumped into an acid jazz category, because they weren't the only ones discovering a hybrid groove. There are lots of remixes of their tunes released by the Heavies. Part of that is to keep alive, but I believe their music has a versatility well-suited for various recastings and imaginings.
Don't get put off by the disco groove on this track, Spend Some Time. Listen closely and you will hear a myriad of beats and oh, the hooks are sooo sweet!
posted by well-executed buffet at 8:54 PM
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Saturday, June 7, 2008
Paul Schrader: Still Slippin' Into Darkness After All These Years
I grew up in the seventies. It was the end of Vietnam exacerbated by the Pentagon Papers, the fall of Nixon and Watergate, and a time when enough evidence had come to the surface for many or most Americans to believe that the full story of Kennedy's assassination did not dwell between the covers of the Warren Report. And it was a time when my taste in film became highly influenced by the Hollywood "new cinema" era where Coppola, Scorsese, Altman, and others came into prominence.
By the mid seventies, the tide turned. Studios were being bought up by investment firms and big corporations. Jaws and Star Wars, began the era of the mindless spectacle thrill ride which we still have too apparent with us. What became immediately rarer were the moral character studies which featured intimacy, great technical and aesthetic components and an opportunity for actors to shine.
Paul Schrader's film of last year, The Walker, connected with me I am sure because it took me back to a zone that his other pictures dwelt in, a protagonist's world closing in and caving in due to external forces, some of which were exacerbated, at least, by his or her own choices. His script of Taxi Driver, and direction and/or writing of American Gigilo, Night Sleeper, Auto Focus, Patty Hearst, Yoshima, Blue Collar and nearly all the rest feature this kind of conflict.
Woody Harrelson's character of Carter Page III is the homosexual son of a prominent southern politician who does some deal dabbling in real estate and investments, but he is mostly a walker, a gentleman who escorts prominent Washington, DC women to societal events and plays Canasta with them weekly. Harrelson spit shines and rises to the occasion in this role. He is best when he gets to wax candidly with the likes of Lauren Bacall, Lily Tomlin, and Kristen Scott Thomas. Wilhem Dafoe and Ned Beatty are among the men who play the husbands. But my favorite male actor in this work besides Harrelson is German actor Moritz Bleibtreu (from Im Juli) who plays Harrelson's boyfriend, an agitpop and flamboyantly gay artist that is more open and truthful to himself than his walker lover.
Car's world comes a'tumblin' down when the lover of one of his Senator's wives is murdered and he finds himself implicated in he crime. Yes, there are complications, coverup, and conspiracy. And as it unravels, Schrader's script is filled with lots of wicked touches like the character of Mungo Tenant, an ambitious prosecutor who might remind one of Rudolph Giuliani.
This film dropped out of sight during the late fall/Christmas glut of movie releases. The window is so small these days and pictures that are not mainstream and trendy get mislaid. I think that is the case with The Walker with its long shadows, character driven circumstances and ultimately, a film that might be a bit of an anachronism, but one that took me back 30 years to when these kinds of experiences at the cinema mattered.
posted by well-executed buffet at 9:30 PM
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Friday, June 6, 2008
Heavy Reggae Reprise
Every once in a while, maybe twice a year, I get the jones for some reggae music. Real deal stuff--heavy dread Roots Irie stuff, music of the bass and drums and spirit.
Burning Spear is featured this month on your cable operator's Concert TV On Demand. It is a classic Spear performance with the original horns, but not the singers from Germany's Rockpalast. This stuff is amazingly dread heavy. It has to be Spear at the top of his game, so joyful and majestic.
Winston Rodney aka Burning Spear has had a long career spanning many record labels and backup musicians, but his message and love of Rastafari and Marcus Garvey's legacy over steady bass and drum riddim have remained constants. His reading of the Grateful Dead's Estimated Prophet 17 years ago probably expanded his fan base. I think it is also significant to note that Spear maintains a blog, I don't see this being done by any other artist of his age and generation. I can't help but believe that this will also be impressive to younger generations of fans who link to his site because someone turned them on to the Live! album or they stumbled across the impressive Rockpalast performance.
I also checked out a new DVD tribute to Joseph Hill of Culture, who died in 2006. When you see Hill or Spear perform, it becomes really clear how lame much reggae is, particularly of the slithery dancehall variety. And this was apparent to the two hour sort of cable access like packaging of concert sequences by his Hill's son, Kenyatta Hill, but also IJahman Levi, Taurus Riley, and a woman singer by the name of Etana, who I found basically unwatchable. The intensity of the half hour concert footage of Joseph Hill and Culture overwhelms anything else on the disc.
When Hill shouts out at the beginning of his songs that he is taking down Lucifer, it grabs one's attention. Rodney and Hill have and had the ability to create a stage persona larger than life. I saw Culture at a reggae festival in the velodrome in Dominguez Hills, CA back in the early nineties. I remember being in an entirely different space mentally and emotionally at the end of the show than I was when it started. How many performers can you really give that kind of credit to?
Heavy roots reggae will likely soon drop back out of my musical rotation, but I and I know it will resurface again and I once more will appreciate the spiritual and emotional devotion masters like Spear and Hill possessed and shared with the world with their riddim, passion, and spirituality.
posted by well-executed buffet at 9:22 PM
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Thursday, June 5, 2008
Remember the Daze and the film tradition of the "big day" for teens
Remember the Daze is a new independent teen movie that depicts a last day in school for 1999. It is in a tradition of films that explore a big pivotal day for a group of teens in a retrospective setting. In 1993, Richard Linklatter explored the same kind of territory looking back at 1976. And of course, there was George Lucas' famous 1973 depiction of a night in 1962 with American Grafitti.
Remember the Daze also known as The Beautiful Ordinary is not in the category of either of those forerunners, but creates a sense of entry into an ensemble and private teen world, to perfectly anarachisic toe be real. These kids consume lots of drugs and alcohol move around from one party to the next. There is the closeted lesbian couple, the spurned girlfriend who is out for revenge, the macho dude who ends up with younger girl and is ultimately protected her. And once in a great while, they show some clueless adults. I like the fact this world of 1999 is color blind, with lots of biracial kids blending in among each other. The real minority is the framed device,a solitary asian guy who sees the world who takes pictures of the manic happenings around him.
This film's director, Jess Mamafort, is a 26 year old graduate of the NYU film school. I don't thin Remember the Daze/Beautiful Ordinary is any kind of landmark effort, but her talent as a director is apparent and there are definitely some nice moments in it. The tone is closer to Canada's Degrassi: The Next Generation than American Pie, thank goodness. Her cast including Amber Heard, Alexa Vega, Melonie Diaz and others were not household names but then again Ben Affleck and Matthew McConaughey and Richard Dreyfus were not known to the world when Dazed or Grafitti came out.
I've got to hope that 2020 some new director is going to do a big day of teen film about their memories of 2010 and that cycle will come around again a decade or so beyond that. Film has a lovely way of capturing and creating a romanticism for time of transition and it is nice to see a talented filmmaker try out this universal theme and setting in the ensemble day in the life format.
More about this film can be gleaned from this review in Variety.
posted by well-executed buffet at 11:55 PM
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Wednesday, June 4, 2008
Hisao Shinagawa and his Atomic Music
Blessed are the filmmakers who find tell us important stories of those on the margins of our world and culture. I Want to Destroy America: The Atomic Music of Hisao Shinagawa is not only cool because it has a two part with a colon title, but because it is one of the most intimate and interesting documentaries I have seen in a long time. Peter I. Chang's film is no Werner Herzog styled documentary featuring filmmaker and crew, nor is it puckered with critics doing sound bytes.
This film is and is about Shinagawa. He tells his life story. Born in Hiroshima shortly before the bomb was dropped. His family moved to Tokyo when he was young. Was there as a teenager when Rock 'n Roll hit, but it was the folk music of the late fifties and early sixties that caught his complete consciousness. The film shows how Shinagawa had many musical adventures crossing genre, but he is mostly noted, it seems as being called a Japanese Bob Dylan.
He came to the US as still another stumblebum musician lover of folk stumblebum going Greyhound and hitching to many US points, including, obviously Nashville. In Nashville he lived out of Jack Clement Studios and he recounts some great stories of encounters with Townes Van Zandt, Jerry Jeff Walker, and Johnny Cash. Met up with Jackson Browne and the CSN bunch at one point but more notably David Byrne sometime later.
Byrne totally gets Shinawaga. He turns him on to new wave pop and world music. The latter eventually lead to Shinawaga becoming the world beat DJ at Club Lingerie. I kind of vaguely, vaguely remember Shinagawa's MTV Basement Tape winning video Happy Weirdo, a strange bright colored blue screen extravaganza with the everpresent 1980s oversymphed electornic keyboards.
Peter Ivers was a fringe New Wave Punk supporter who had a late night television show and got murdered by a claw hammer. There is an absolutely incendiary rant against Reagan consumerism and conservatism that feels a little bit like probable cause for some psychotic. Hisao was part of the Ivers' posse for a time before his death.
After Ivers, Shimagawa did a couple of spikey New Wave albums for big labels, two of them, including More Money, More War. Then apparently he gave up music except DJing for flower arranging and then decided to be true to himself and return as a street musician playing much at the Pasadena and Hollywood Farmer's Market, with a lifestyle that has freedom, but as he says in the film, it was a freedom that cost him.
There is this really raw naked emotional section (maybe sake fueled?) in the film that still shows that Hisao in full sweaty rant.
My Dream is bigger than life. I gotta destroy America, the US system, they put the bomb...son of rising son GodZilla Son of nuclear waste I am son of Hiroshima bomb.
This film encaptures a very unique and interesting personality. Others have noticed him as well.
- WFMU has two classic Hisao tracks including More Money, More War
- Masahiro Sugano did a shortfilm called Hisao. It features some pretty cool stop motion and photo manipulation animation of Shinagawa.
posted by well-executed buffet at 8:01 PM
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Tuesday, June 3, 2008
Daytrotter Sessions: A Musical Haven
Daytrotter.com offers free exclusively produced EP-length performances by independent bands and musicians. There are currently over 1000 songs available from over 200 bands in the sessions and although I have only explored about 10-20% of what is available here, the selections and quality are remarkably strong and consistently good. And if something doesn't work for you, there is no risk because, as I mentioned before, the content is free. Samplers are okay, but one track, at least for me, is not enough to find out if a group is going to connect with me; the four or five tracks Daytrotter serves up is just about right. In addition to the sessions, many other bands have tunes available from their regular releases on interview and review pages from the site.
And I think it is notable that the site is more than just downloads. The illustrations of the bands are pretty nifty and help give daytrotter a kind of nice branding and vibe. The content of the features I have read show a real enthusiasm for indie bands and other expressive art forms.
I came across daytrotter from Wolfgang's Vault, the stream concert archive, store, and repository for Bill Graham's Legacy and home of dozens of FM concert soundboards that appeared on King Biscuit Flower Hour and other syndicated shows. Not all daytrotter content is available at Wolfgang's, but the sessions can be downloaded or streamed as individual content.
My approach is to download a few shows and check them out as a cluster to see what appeals to me. Some shows are by bands or artists I am familiar with such as Grizzly Bear or Jim White. But the beauty of daytrotter is that it is filled with what they call "your next favorite bands." Because of daytrotter, Yeasayer and the Dodos are currently likely to be in that category for me. All though my wife disagrees, I maintain you can never have enough bands.
The spirit of daytrotter is probably best described by the folks involved on the site, as in this August 2006 post describing the sessions.
These fine people – as they’re traveling through America’s heartland – take two hours out of their travels between shows to stop in for a Daytrotter Session at Futureappletree Studio One in downtown Rock Island, Ill. The name of the city is not ironic. They use borrowed instruments, play with their touring mates, utilize an often unkempt toilet, eat some food and then cram back into their vans for the last half of the drive. What they leave behind is a pile of ashes, sometimes a forgotten stocking hat and four absolutely collectible songs that often impart on whomever listens to them the true intensity that these musicians put into their art, sometimes with more clarity than they do when they have months to tinker with overdubs and experiments. These songs are them as they are on that particular day, on that particular tour – dirty and alive. We want you to make this your new home as it is ours. We promise that you will love it here.
A week or two ago in this web space, I celebrated My Damn Channelas a site that was doing most of the right things when it came to delivering entertainment content on the web. I also believe that daytrotter is another that will serve as a kind of a model as the web medium evolves. They have found a wonderful way to allow the Econoline van riding bands who play small clubs introduce themselves to us who have the interest but no longer stay up that late or have hours to spend talking to black t-shirted dudes at record stores to find out what is good and new. Thanks Daytrotter.
posted by well-executed buffet at 10:45 PM
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Monday, June 2, 2008
Remembrance of an Encounter with Bo Diddley
In 1979 or 80 I saw Bo Diddley perform on a Sunday night at the the Earth Tavern. The Earth was a oversized room in NW Portland that back in the late seventies brought in a steady stream of quality national talent until the promoter couldn't afford to do it anymore.
Reading today's obituary, I realized that Bo was about my current age when he played the Earth. But then I was 21 or 22 going through an exploratory period of the roots of rock 'n roll and I believe that Bo's service as an opening act for the Clash somewhere probably had piqued my interest at the time. But I also recall being fascinated and amused in record store browsing with titles like Bo Diddley Is a Gunslinger or Bo Diddley's Beach Party. But I also recall him mixing it up both onstage and off in the concert film Let the Good Times Roll.
The Earth Tavern show stands out in my memory because he was there still as gunslinger not posing as a macho Rock 'n Roll legend like I saw him do when he opened for James Brown at a mid-eighties Bumbershoot gig or in 2000 when he was part of the headlining free entertainment commemerating Paul Allen's Experience Music Project.
The Earth had no backstage. Bo left his square box guitar in an open case on a barroom table. I remember being a couple feet from it where you could really tell what a home cast item it was. He played that night with a local rock 'n roll trio. I remember the drummer was my age or younger and was having the time of his life. Bo's music is of course about rhythm. Haircut shave two bits, Who do you Love, I'm a Man kind of riddim, if not all invented, then certainly appropriated and packaged under a big brim leather hat. There was no or little patter from the stage by Bo (who in the later shows I mentioned reminded the crowd frequently who he was, even creating a hideous rap song preaching to the youth) In this concert, he kept the self-referential to his songs like "Hey, Bo Diddley" and that diddley diddley daddy thing. The show at the Earth was all about an original master onstage doing his thing. I remember his guitar had a pretty long cord and I believe he went out into the audience at one point, but I do remember him going back and exchanging licks with the drummer, all keeping to the famous blamblam blam blamblam rhythm he immortalized.
And when the show was all over, he answered questions of a few reverent an hard core fans who came to see him, but it was not big Bo who was talking to them, it was Ellas McDaniel, guitar player and showman from Chicago, Ill. And for me it was a great night of living rock 'n roll history.
posted by well-executed buffet at 11:25 PM
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Sunday, June 1, 2008
The Great Intentions of Rendition
In Rendition, Jake Gyllenhaal plays a CIA agent who is observing the torture of an Egyptian who lived most his life in the US taking place "somewhere in north Africa." The Egyptian has been pulled from an arrival of an international flight hooded, and put through the gauntlet of extraordinary rendtion." Jake becomes in effect the eyes of the audience. What the filmmakers want to show the world about the absurdity of rendition and the torture. Or "not torture" as the Texas accented Bush administration amalgamam CIA she-witch played by Meryl Streep claims.
The Streep character is absolutely chilling and methodical, as is the intensity of the interrogator played by Yigal Naor who reminds me of Telly Savalas in his pre-Kojak era. Yigal as the police chief/security officer really rips into the Egyptian chemist and as the story unfolds, it makes more sense. These two characters could wear black hats almost, so in contrast to the "good guys" which of course include Gyllenhaal, Reese Witherspoon as the Egyptian's widow, and a good performance by Peter Sarsgaard as a political assistant to a Senator that advocates for and delivers plot points to Witherspoon.
The film intercuts between the three connected centers of action in the way that recent noble-minded political thrillers often do these days. There is a third story surrounding Naor's family members that criss-crosses between the Witherspoon in Washington and Gyllenhaal stories. The editing room and the passion of those involved in this film kind of keep it all together. This is not a perfect film, but I kind of think that anything that's not blockbuster fodder and/or escapist entertainment is worth a viewing.
I looked on line for backstory on this film and found evidence of the Weinstein publicity machine stoking up stories about casting and intent in the fall of 06, the shooting in Spring 08, and the premiere, first at the Toronto film festival and then to the world in Fall 07. Then plop, crash and fizzle. It was another war on terror film flop in a big season (The Kingdom, Lions for Lambs, Redacted) for those. Checking out those films on DVD somehow became a personal mission for me and I have been featuring that exploration in this blog. I am still formulating my conclusions on this phenomenon and wondering how many more efforts of this sort will surface before the current boss's expiration comes up in January.