Monday, September 28, 2009
Gumshoe
Gumshoe is the 1971 directorial debut of Stephen Frears. It stars Albert Finney and has generally been described as a private eye spoof/homage. But that isn't a really good description of it. This film has a weird unique tone all its own. It somehow reminds me of a cross between one of the tones of gray cop gangster films of Jean Pierre Melville with the early gangster noir tributes of Fassbinder but in a provincial setting of Liverpool. Of course if you have a film set in the near time zones of Fassbinder and Melville, it might also feel a bit Godard as well, but more of the Breathless or A Band Apart variety.
But surprisingly enough this film is also about rock 'n roll. Eddie Grimley is 31 years old. In 1971 that means he was born in 41, a relative peer of the Beatles. He loves crime novels but also Elvis Gene Vincent and all those cats. At times the Warner Bros flavored patter dialog gets a little old. But hey, isn't rock 'n roll about acting out and "getting over." And if you are a lame ass Bingo caller with stand up commedian aspirations, why not try playing Private Eye. Your life is going nowhere.
Once or twice, the movie feels like it isn't heading anywhere either. There is also a lot of casual racism that creeps up and threatens to ruin the party to the retrospective viewer. The number of good looking girls with glasses, much of the same ilk as the bookstore owner in the Big Sleep encounter Finney doing his wise guy more than make up for it. There is even a scene with a girl in glasses who clerks at an occult bookstore and turns on Eddie (and maybe this audience member) when she claims that all the occult stuff is rubbish.
Another weird note about this weird film is that the soundtrack was composed by Andrew Lloyd Weber. Like much of the film itself, it twists turns, and sometimes helps create some very unique mood to this tale of an everyman schmo going from zero to sixty as wiseass Bingo caller to over his head gangster private eye business accented by cups of tea and Liverpool fog.
posted by well-executed buffet at 8:32 PM
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Saturday, September 26, 2009
A Whiskey River kind of Summer Flashback
The Willie Nelson sets that opened up the Americana triumvirate of Nelson, John Mellencamp, and Bob Dylan were joyful hours with a human jukebox taking you through his hits and a regional swath of our musical tradition from Nashville and Austin. His set had the same structure both nights but order changed somewhat and a few tunes differed.
Nelson, like Frank Sinatra and Ray Charles has this unique way of phrasing a song that is all his own. They establish their own universe when they sing well behind the beat separating themselves from their arrangements and accompaniment. This was very apparent to me with Nelson's current stripped down band--Sister Bobby on keys, a couple percussionists, a bass player and Mikey Raphael creating a call and response to whatever Willie happens to be saying on voice or guitar. And to that end, he seems never to miss an opportunity to say something with his instrument with its extra hole completely worn and signatures of his fellow legends. He makes it look easy, but I notice that he takes full advantage of a few bars to express himself each and every time.
His sets kick off with Whiskey River, of course. And after that you are on the American roots express for the next hour and if you don't find yourself smiling after a couple songs then something might not be right with you. He does a medley of Hank Williams songs. In Fresno he blanked out on the third verse, but from Nelson delivering a line like "I don't remember the words to this verse" woven into the groove his band kicks right along feels reasonable on some level and the crowd approval and acknowledgment adds to the good vibe.
Cousin Kenneth pointed out the pineapple shaker one of the percussionists was using. Big cowboy dude. "What do you do for a living?" "I shake the pineapple for Willie."
Nelson's set reminded me a bit of a good Grateful Dead first set as a soundtrack to the visual of a big eighteen wheeler making it over a mountain pass. It makes it down okay, but once in a while there is a chance for the back end not making it around the turn once or twice.
posted by well-executed buffet at 6:13 PM
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Thursday, September 24, 2009
Wally Lamb At PAL 9.24.09
This year's season opener at Portland Arts and Lectures with Wally Lamb turned out to be a fine evening with someone who has accomplished something very rare in this high speed pop culture world of ours. He is both a popular and literary fiction writer. His first three novels She's Come Undone, I Know This Much is True, and The Hour I First Believed are big books with wide scope and ambition which have sold probably as many books as such novels could be expected to, in part thanks to being Oprah Book Club selections in the late 1990s. But the fact that these books can be found at Target and in that big flat open zone in the middle of a Costco where gross amounts of pop culture are sold for many months should not be held as a pejorative of their quality and value.
Lamb had decades of experience as a high school English teacher before he became a published novelist. And that experience was evident in his presentation. I worried early on that the crowd was going to correct this Connecticut native pronunciation of "Oragon" I have seen PDX crowds be merciless to such offenders upon occasion. But no such fate occurred to Lamb who was engaging, entertaining and shared his story and work in a lecture that could have easily gone on for quite longer than his allowed time. In fact, time limitations prevented him from reading the last of the voices he "throws" for a living, Caelum Quirk, the protagonist of The Hour I First Believed We from the audience vocalized our disappointment of that circumstance so he read his sample of Quirk's voice.
This end to the formal part of his presentation created an interesting parallel to the story Lamb told earlier about when he first read his fiction in a timed open mike reading that was part of the Writer's workshop at Mountpelier Vermont lead by Gladys Swan . At the end of his time, someone from the audience told him to go on. The next scheduled reader yielded his time for Lamb. Lamb said this was one of the pivotal moment in gaining confidence to continue his writing pursuits.
He began the evening with some anecdotes of what it is like for a now somewhat celebrity writer to go on book tour. There was the bride who showed up in a wedding dress to get her book signed somewhere between her reception and the honeymoon. And there was the book signing line where one elderly lady admonished him for his use of swearing and another said he was the greatest writer to s--t behind a pair of shoes. At another time he turned on a hotel television when Jeopardy's Alex Trebeck gave his the answer of "He's the Author of She's Come Undone" only to watch the three contestants stare back at him dumbfounded.
He did not read and write stories much as a young boy, but he attributed three elements of his early years as clues and preparations to the life of a writer: he drew a lot, he lied a lot, and he was the only boy among older girl sisters and cousins who were into imaginative role games.
Lamb maintains the literary tradition of writing is a journey and discovery and a reader working through one of his tomes gets opportunity to the aha moments of surprise and connectivity. And that world has scape larger when one considers and finds connectivity in the three novels as a whole, works that show both a micro world of Connecticut folk and a macroscape of the world at large, our pop history fairly current but sometimes finding linkage with centrury 19 as well. But that discussion and more on Wally at PAL will have to wait for later.
posted by well-executed buffet at 10:18 PM
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Sunday, September 13, 2009
Empire of Oshima
Nagisa Oshima's Empire of Passion will always stand in the shadows of its more crazed and bolder predecessor, the sexually explicit In the Realm Of The Senses. Empire features the same producer actor and crew of the Realm. But it is an entirely different universe. Place is a distinct character here. They rented an old village and remodeled an entire 19th century there over a three-four month period fully accounting the seasons.
The tale is an archetype. It regards as background to one of the most standard of subject matters: passion between wife stuck in her life and a rogue charisimo whose love leads to one conclusion which is to kill the husband. But the real story comes after murder. It regards The consequences of Their actions. The commentary track on the Criterion reissue by a woman professor from Toronto (whose name I do not recall) links Empire with the novels and the films of novels by of James M Cain. In particular contrasts and linkages were studied in the various film versions of The Postman Always Rings Twice. Empire is not really a version of that story, it is more like its nineteenth century Japanese cousin. Its static social order shaken by lust at the same time feudalism was getting ready to crumble.
In Realm, that means dealing with the ghost of their victim, the husband Chiracaso the rickshaw driver. He has a playful vengence annoying the murderers and making guest appearances in dreams of the townpeaple. Chiracoso the ghostly rickshaw driver is pretty cool. For the right person it would make a killer halloween costume.
This film is both naturalistic and stylistic. The mise en scene is Welles Euro old style at times. It even kind of feels like John Ford at times. There is much to take your breath away here. It has this unique quality of feeling like a really amazing Hollywood like set, but you know you are really out in the woods. Apocalypse now made me feel like that.
I had never seen Empire of Passion until its Criterion reissue of earlier this year. I am glad it has been twenty years since I saw Realm Of The Senses. I saw it my first and only other time was thirty years ago when it came out. Realm is a film one can never forget. Its sexuality is indeed explicit but is not necesarily pornographic. It isn't really poetic as much as telling a hard ass shell at the extremes kind of story with poetic spicing. Realm bangs the movie goer into territory of sensual obsession bright and head on.
On the other hand, Empire is literally a tale of a village. Literally. The voice over postscript about the fate of the lovers is voiced by an old, old woman who apparently was there at the time. She could have been old enough for a modern interview in 1978 when the film came out. Long before Titanic.
posted by well-executed buffet at 7:03 PM
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Friday, September 11, 2009
Musical World Travelin' With Folks From Home
I only heard Pink Martini once. It was at one of the last Bumbershoots I attended in the 1990s, one of their early non-political benefit gigs, probably 1997, just before their first album Sympathique was released. As I recall it, I happened by the International Flag Pavilion stage (now defunct) as the band was just beginning their interpretation of Ary Barroso's 1930s samba, Brazil. China Forbes' verse opening of the song stopped me in my tracks. Hers is a big but not overwhelming voice, one equipped for the interpretation of a song that could stand as a kind of definition for the word nostalgia.
Then - tomorrow was another day
The morning found us miles away
With still a million things to say.
And now when twilight dims the skies above
Recalling thrills of our love there's one thing
I'm certain of... Return, I will, to old Brazil.
Pink Martini is decidedly a Portland phenomena that has proven to find its own niche in the world. Portland has been the location to spawn not one, but two, large scale musical projects that are lead by quirky iconoclastic probable genius types. One of these is Colin Meloy's Decemberists. The other is Pink Martini led by a eternally cherubic piano nerd, Thomas Lauderdale.
"Its music of the world without being world music.Records one would hopefully never grow tired of..." is how Lauderdale describes the efforts of Pink Martini. "Records that could be played whether you were sad or gleeful. Cleaning, vacuuming around the house or seducing somebody's grandmother." It is cabaret plus salsa plus samba plus standards that seems to fount from a time when music was on solid 12 inch discs and flying, especially international flight was a luxury.
The group's 2005 New Year's Eve Concert (recorded at Portland's Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, of course) has recently been released as a DVD entitled Discover the World: Live in Concert. The DVD offers the world a pretty good vantage point to see what they can do. I love seeing long time Oregon jazz musicians like bassist Phil Baker and guitarist Dan Faehnle be a part of this group that usually seems to have about a dozen folks onstage.
Several years ago I told my former college roommate who was for a short time the president of Oregon Symphony that it made sense to me to hand over the baton of Norman Leyden, the Oregon Pops director with Glen Miller and many radio TV credits (and collaborator and endorser of Pink Martini) to Lauderdale because he had this ability to attract both younger and hip audiences as well as middle aged and older. The Pres just smiled and said "We have been talking to Thomas."
But after watching Discover the World: Live in Concert it seems to me that Lauderdale's passion would likely not be in producing a yearly Pops series but is rather in continuing the accessible aural pop world bandwidth that is Pink Martini. In the twelve years since the release of Sympathique and its surprise success of nearly a million copies, there have only been two other PM albums and a fourth on the way next month. And when I listen to the first three albums I find several tunes which do not connect with me (even a couple I kind of hate) but one can not deny the care and quality that comes out of a Lauderdale recording session.
They sell out concerts here in PDX but also do quite well in LA with big shows at the Disney Hall and Hollywood Bowl. I'm not sure I'm a fan, but I appreciate this group a lot. I'd like to see or hear their new production updating the Stan Freberg commision for the 1959 Oregon Centenial. Hopefully, it will surface on NPR/OPB's ongoing lovefest for this band. And mostly, I like the fact that Lauderdale with his cigarette holder, puffy blond hair is still downtown coming up with new soundscapes that are substantial but go down real easy.
posted by well-executed buffet at 11:31 PM
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Thursday, September 10, 2009
S-Double A-D-I-Q and his Panorama of Soul
This is the third or fourth post I've made this year regarding Raphael Saadiq. Quite handily, he is by far the artist I have most enjoyed discovering the work of this past year. In late winter or early spring, depending on how one wants to interpret the time, I was first major exposure to Saadiq was a very memorable night with what seemed like the vast majority of African Americans living in Portland Oregon over the age of forty at the Wonder Ballroom right between Williams and Vancouver Avenues, of course.
I was dazzled at his masterful re-imagining of the era of sixties and seventies soul music presented on his album of a year ago The Way I See It. But what really knocked me out that evening was my indoctrination into the rest of the musical world of Saadiq. It is a world of Oaktown soul, a song in first person from the perspective of a baby crawling across the floor, funk soul guitar worthy of Funkadellic or Living Colour, and, so often, a lovely silky approach to a love song.
He has referred to his own music as gospelellic. So I guess could describe a lot of his stuff is of yearning, thanks, praise, joy and pain. One of the most noticeable of these intersections is his instant classic song about New Orleans and Katrina, The Big Easy.
After the Wonder ballroom show, I dug into the three albums prior to The Way I See It. Instant Vintage and Ray Ray are big personal albums of stylistic variety and classy delivery. Better yet is the live album, All Hits At the House Of Blues that reviews those records, plus a nod to the Toni Tony Tone days. It is filled with guest stars and is basically a heck of a very uncheesy variety show. The first big multi-mile walks I took after weeks of coughing in the basement were accompanied by Pod phones playing House of Blues.
The March Portland show drew from a lot more of the earlier material than the recently released live DVD From the Artist's Den or Saadiq's Bumbershoot weekend performance. I love The Way I See It and its unabashed retro and makes for a heck of a core of a show. I can't comment negatively really either on the shoot show or the DVD except to note I wish more time had been spent in other realms of Raphael.
There was a Neil Young interview I saw once where he talked about tricks of time and occurrence that make your audience feel like they have been on some kind of journey or transformation. At a Saadiq show he comes out boundingly with big Mars Blackman glasses and a skinny tie. By the end of the night he is basically doing a strip tease which ends with him throwing his white shirt into the crowds and then rubbing his nipples under the black wife beater that remains.
But wait, there's more! Raphael comes out with his bass and kicks into this song which truly is a gospelellic jam. It is called Skyy, Can You Feel Me that ends with this organ player secret weapon singer who truly kills the place at the end of the song. Then things jump into a Let the Sunshine In/Age of Aquarius jam that lasts for quite a while.
Skyy is certainly one of the highlights of the DVD and the live version on Bumbershoot Sunday was even more fabulous. Here is a link to a home made music slide shows of near naked buff African American men with Skyy playing. The live bootlegs at YouTube all look like they were done on a phone so this seemed like the best way to deliver the tune to you all.
I'm trying to visualize what Saadiq's next project will be like. Would it be retro or more like the earlier headphone trippers Ray Ray and Instant Vintage? Regardless, I will be continuing to plumb more from the recordings he has put out already. I am looking forward to checking out Lucy Pearl, a 1999-2000 which featured Dawn Robinson (En Vogue) and Ali Shaheed Muhammad (A Tribe Called Quest). D'Angelo was supposed to be in it too, but he had some contractual conflicts. I have no doubt that Saadiq will continue to lay down American soulman grooves for many years to come. I look forward to this.
posted by well-executed buffet at 11:27 PM
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Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Belated Review: George Clinton @ Crystal Ballroom 9.1.09
This was the best George Clinton show I had seen in years. If you have been to a Clinton shows in the past, you know it is going to be more about ritual than innovation. They can be long, sometimes cumbersome affairs where anywhere from six to twenty people rotate among each other on stage and do their particular thing, sometimes the same thing they have done for decades.
Many of the tunes, chants, and novelty bits (Sir Nose, George's grandaughter who goes by the moniker the Sativa Diva, and the rest of the cast) were preserved under a funkalicious for us to witness and groove too. But there have been some changes in the mob. Blackbyrd McKnight has retired. I don't believe there were any horns on stage, instead more of an emphasis on the group vocals that George pioneered. But most of all, the band had a fire about them I hadn't seen for about a decade and a half when they played a full four hour plus show at LaLuna after having been regaled to three quarter hour sets when they were on tour with Lollapalooza. The 9.1 show and the next evening seemed to be warmup shows for a big festival date they had in Japan a couple nights later. I speculated that they were probably clearing out the medicine cabinet before heading overseas.
Whatever was going on there was no denying that this was a hot show. A Motor Booty Affair breakdown in the midst of a very long Flashlight sandwich came off like a dubbed out version of Weather Report. And Michael Hampton really worked out and all over Maggot Brain in a most exhilarating outing of that fuzzed out Hendrix like warhorse. Usually I find myself heading to the bathroom or the beer line for that one. Even Gary Shider got down to business, being about as funky serious as one could be if you are wearing a diaper on stage for his One Nation Under A Groove feature.
Part of what impressed me with this set was what it was lacking. Belita Woods didn't sing Sentimental Journey, thank god. George didn't scream chorus after chorus of Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On. And there was no excruciatingly long scat solo by the band's saxophonist on Knee Deep. These were some of my least favorite moments in a George show.
But then there was Kendra Foster. In recent years, she has become one of my favorite of PFunk denizens. Her big tune is Bounce 2 This, 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! The clip here is from the Oregon Garden show I had to miss because it was on the eve of the big String Cheese Incident farewell shows at Horning's a couple years back, but thanks to some able videography and the miracle of YouTube we can sample it here on the buffet.
posted by well-executed buffet at 7:40 PM
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Tuesday, September 8, 2009
Some Seattle Images
Evidence of the Night Before
This image provides evidence that it did indeed rain during this past Labor Day Weekend. I guess it is a good idea to know where the faulty storm drains are before the rainy season.
And I Only Thought They Served Old Fashions
This was kind of strange. I don't know what an Acalia is nor am I certain if Lodge 92 has anything to do with this location anymore or if all is in the jurisdiction of the catering company. Back before the early sixties, if you wanted a public drink in the State of Washington you had to do it at the Moose or Elks or OddFellows. What is happening now to these old "lodges" is an opportunity for some young artistic photo person to document.
A Needle Through A Calder
I bet Alexander Calder would have loved to have one of his large form works serve as a frame for a view of the Space Needle.
While Drinking my coffee...
I look up and see dog woman train space needle. And time kind of froze up.
posted by well-executed buffet at 9:38 PM
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Monday, September 7, 2009
More Bumbershoot
Dave Alvin and the Guilty Women
We were only able to sample three or four songs by Dave Alvin and the Guilty Women, the Blaster's latest project with an all female band, but it was quite impressive. I've since downloaded the album and think it tops the Elvis Costello-T-Bone Burnett album as the Americana roots record of the year. This is not a novelty record! It is a great record by a band that just so happens to be made up of women. What the heck is wrong with that?
The Vivian Girls
I didn't get a chance to see very much of the Vivian Girls set. Our timing for cruising the Broad Street and Mural Amphitheater stages always seemed to coincide with an encore number or a set break. I figure you can learn a lot about a band from their merch, so I went and checked out their Ts. I found from this study that there are three women in the band that can be defined by line art.
Weird Stilt Women aka Flexion by Wise Fool New Mexico
By no means does this image do justice to this strange otherworldly Road Warrior-ish circus act. I would have liked to have seen Flexion do their thing from beginning to end. I had intended to come back and watch this further, but was not able to time myself to their presentation. What the heck. Bumbershoot is like that--a feast for the senses that is moveable indeed.
Seattle Center and Bumbershoot
The above image was a shadow play that would go on for a few minutes til this woman would scream a most primal and sonic scream. Then there was apparently more shadow play and then more screaming. It was not only an art project (I hope) but an art project at Bumbershoot.
A secret to Bumbershoot's success is the center grounds themselves. These acres serve a mass population well. The Center House itself is quite a solid, large and imposing structure. They don't build memorial and armory buildings like they used to back in the late thirties. Anyway, the Center wears its city well during festivals like "the shoot." There are flush toilets to all who wish to use them there. That's a key reason it works as well.
posted by well-executed buffet at 11:59 PM
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Sunday, September 6, 2009
Bumbershoot 2009 Day Two:
Roy Ayers and Melvin Van Peebles
The rain was heavy for the first few hours of day two, but it cleared out and turned out to be one of those damp cool but not too wet days and evenings common with this season around here. My mission today was to have optimal experiences at Roy Ayer's concert and Melvin Van Peebles' appearance. I was successful for both.
Roy Ayers at Fisher Green Stage
I have been anticipating the opportunity to see Roy Ayers perform again. His genre bending funk/soul/jazz first caught my ear back in the mid seventies days of Earth Wind, and Fire. Like the elements, Roy had solid jazz credentials when he was experimenting in this territory when he was in this twenties. He always seemed to secure a role as an opening act for folks like Herbie Hancock or Chic, but not securing headlining spots for himself. He released a large amount of music, most of it under the band identity of Ubiquity.
If not ubiquitous, he was a visible force in music until the eighties. I didn't hear much about Roy Ayers at all until the Seattle Rocket profiled him as "The Godfather of Acid Jazz." A solid R&B groove is an essential component to the acid jazz movement, basically this meant that lots of turntablists were sampling Roy's funky 1970s output.
Some folks want to crunch him in with the smooth jazz people, but I say his music is way too hard and funky to categorize it in such a fashion. He is appreciated in England, where several live albums at Ronnie Scott's Club allowed those that have been brought into his world to hear what he has been up to. His annual tour schedule seems to consist of some club dates on the east coast and some festivals in Europe, so the opportunity to see Roy outside, live in full Bumbershoot effect was very attractive to me.
The opening certainly had the Roy Ayers sound. His second number was Dizzy Gillespie's Night in Tunisia. It was one of those barn burning arrangements where everyone in the band ends there time with a comedy bit and a novelty solo. I was hoping to hear as many Roy tunes as possible, not to watch his drummer with a towel on his head playing on the ground or the bass player with baby marracas and a harmonica. Mercifully, the number ended after a while.
At last, Roy and Band launch into Everybody Loves the Sunshine, and somehow I end up riding the rail looking at the stage and the typically surly looking guy in a yellow jacket in front of it. They also played a medley of You Can See Me/Running Away/Evolution, We Love in Brooklyn, Baby. and a lovely closer of Good Vibrations. It was tasty, but I would have liked more.
Melvin Van Peebles at the Literary Arts Stage
Stan Shields, a programmer with the Seattle International Film Festival who served as moderator for the Bumbershoot event with Melvin Van Peebles described him as a provocateur in the world of culture and film. His story of going from Air Force veteran to SF cable car driver to author in Paris to filmmaker in Paris returning to the San Francisco International Film Festival to win the Critics award at the festival and the attention of Hollywood, where he eventually was the first black director to do a feature "in the castle," not out on location as Gordon Parks and Ossie Davis had.
One of the audience members acknowledged the accomplishments of Van Peebles asking if he had a mentor. He said yes, it was the words "N-----, You can't Do That." Sweet Sweetback's Baadassss Songwas his response. "The only way I could get to do it was in a certain way." He had a vision of how he could make the film work and went for it even down to the details of how it would premiere. He insisted Sweetback's play in Atlanta and Detroit, cities with a significant black population, as a single feature and that it would make money.
He never was hired by the big studios after the film proved to be successful. Instead, his success became a kind of gold rush for desperate studios to tap into the urban and ethnic audience. He claims he is a happy pioneer and enjoys seeing folks have opportunities he didn't have. "I own everything (he has done) because no one would go in with me."
He has recently created a new film and accompanying graphic novel titled Confessionsofa Ex-Doofus-ItchyFooted Mutha and the Seattle appearance is part of his tour promoting these. He showed two different trailers that had been created for the film. He considers them to be mixes of the same song.
Melvin was also the first African American to work on the American Stock Exchange as a broker.
I bought my Confessions graphic novel before the Q and A and had brought my pocket book version of Sweetback's My Melvin moment was quick, but he seemed kind of impressed I had seen 3 Day Passand that it still held up. Regardless of all that, it was just cool to be talking with Melvin Van Peebles, American iconoclast.
posted by well-executed buffet at 11:56 PM
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Saturday, September 5, 2009
Bumbershoot 2009 Day One
Bumbershoot was my first true festival experience. For approximately basically a decade and a half beginning in 1981, I would go to Seattle every Labor Day weekend and would come close to spending every hour on the grounds the fest was open. It would take at least an essay's worth of commentary and speculation to explore why it lost its glow and allure, at least for me.
2009 is the first time in about fourteen years or so since I was there each day of the festival. i attended two years ago and was pleased to discover that Norman Langhill and his merry men and women have been tweaking the venue and various procedures over the years I was away. I especially was impressed with the meadow stage just SW of the International Fountain that replaced the old International Flag pavilion stage. I was also impressed in the lineup announcement back in late Spring to make plans to return to experience this festival more fully.
The Goldberg Variations
Bumbershoot can be about diversity if you want it to be. This year's Bumbershoot experience began with a dance performance of Bach's Goldberg Variation with live piano accompaniment. Mark Haim originally designed this choreography as a solo piece for himself, but here is with eleven other accomplished dancers.
Variations works well for a general audience. Haim's interpretation has a range of ideas and conceptions including a piece where the audience is invited to come on stage and move the dancer into various poses. I was kind of dreading this after it was announced at the beginning of the performance, but it turned out to be one of the most entertaining moments of the show.
Mayer Hawthorne
Mayer Hawthorne sings soul music and does it well. I was skeptical when I first heard about this Ann Arbor, MI crooner, but if early Seventies Stylistics and Stax is your thing, Mayer is worth checking out. He eases into the lilting chord progressions that are signature of seventies soul music with both a light touch and determination. His original material previewed from his first and new album A Strange Arrangement melded well with covers of the Isley Brothers as well as a surprise cover of ELO's Mr. Blue Sky.
My copilot at Bumbershoot noted that there were dozens of musicians this year who were wearing skinny black ties and white shirts. Bumbershoot allows one to contemplate such comings and goings of popular culture
Rawk Shows at the Shoot
While Hawthorne was channeling spirits of old school soul 45s, The All American Rejects were reviving big late seventies and eighties rock complete with power ballads and smoke effects on stage. "I Wanna wanna touch you, You wanna touch me too." No thanks, we aren't of the same demographic.
Variations works well for a general audience. Haim's interpretation has a range of ideas and conceptions including a piece where the audience is invited to come on stage and move the dancer into various poses. I was kind of dreading this after it was announced at the beginning of the performance, but it turned out to be one of the most entertaining moments of the show.
My copilot at Bumbershoot noted that there were dozens of musicians this year who were wearing skinny black ties and white shirts. Bumbershoot allows one to contemplate such comings and goings of popular culture
Bumberscreamin'
This guy, Nick Anderson is one of the Whore Moans. There is a fine line between screaming and scream singing, and I think this guys got it. The band reminded me of one of those late seventies bands who was influenced by punk and new wave but also the bar rock of Springsteen and Petty. I understand that the skinny ties in this case are not generally a part of their special Bumbershoot EMP Sky Church presentation of Black Atom! which from what I understand means they recruited a couple of woman dancers in black cocktail party dresses as well as their skinny ties.
I'm seeing evidence that the Whore Moans are already becoming part of Seattle's regional band legacy. It is obvious from the half hour I spent with them that hese folks can put on quite a show. But part of the problem is that Anderson's presence is really overwhelming at times. Hopefully the band will develop a Mick to go with this Joe, a Bob to go with the Jerry. The songs we saw Anderson did lead vocals with on Saturday were intense short films of passion that had near feature impact. Anderson's persona onstage is reminiscent of Henry Rollins. How do you lighten that load?
Anyway, if I was in my mid-twenties (same age of the WM members), I could see myself tracking them down at the Comet or the Tractor. Instead, I read David Fricke's Rolling Stone piece about their latest album, Hello From the Radio Wasteland and am pleased to note that loud sounds from Seattle still can make the meter move a little bit.
If you are into experimental trance dance music, then apparently going to see Gang Gang Dance was a big deal for Sunday night. It didn't dislike what I saw by any means, but felt they were overmilking the bigger moments.
Os Mutantes and More
