Know Your Demographic
Last night, in a Trader Joe’s, I heard this gem, while 30-somethings shopped for agave nectar and gluten-free whatsits.
When I worked at a Kmart in college, I was used to this kinda stuff being our background music: Automatic!
I Survived Another Oscars (Pt. 2)
The only real change to this year’s Oscars was the expansion of the best picture category to include ten-ten!-nominees. Like most people, my first thoughts were “Swell. Now it’s just going to be longer. And have more montages.” But they considerately cut the performances for the song of the year. Sorry, Randy Newman. The rationale for ten, was that it would open it up, Golden Globes-style, to a more diverse field, which could be both good (”District 9″) and bad (”The Bind Side”). The race really came down to just two films, “Avatar” and “The Hurt Locker.” Not only did it pit a formerly married couple against each other, but it put two very different types of films against each other. On one hand, you had the unavoidable “Avatar,” a big, bombastic, hugely priced film that was the event film of the past few years and will supposedly change the face of movies. It also had trippy dragons. On the other hand, there was a small, no-stars film about Iraq, whose entire budget was probably the cost of one giant blue alien. It didn’t have a love story, it wasn’t very political (”Avatar” is much more of a message movie) and it had an ambiguous ending. It’s not that you couldn’t enjoy both films, but they do represent opposing aesthetics: one gritty, character-driven and more indie, the other visually overwhelming, cgi-heavy and made by a small army. Perhaps more striking than the admittedly impressive visuals of “Avatar” was the inanely cliched script, which proves that no amount of special effects can compensate for a lack of good writing. Even some of the planet seemed like Miyazaki on steroids.
So it was billed as a kind of David v. Goliath for best picture. It probably didn’t help “Avatar” that James Cameron has generated no small amount of bad will. And that if Kathryn Bigelow won she would be the first woman in history to do so. Incidentally, she’s only the fourth to be nominated; the others are Lina Wertmuller, Jane Campion and Sofia Coppola. As the broadcast went on, “Avatar” picked up a few expected technical awards, but it became clear that “The Hurt Locker” had the momentum. And it was gratifying to see Bigelow win, not just because she’s a woman but because she’s paid her dues and “The Hurt Locker” is a comeback for her. Even the brief montage for “The Hurt Locker” was more tense and engaging than pretty much anything in “Avatar.”
Elsewhere, all the favored actors won, we stayed moderately entertained by making snarky comments, wondering why certain people where presenters (Ryan Reynolds) and enjoying some of the fashion (Thank you, Penelope Cruz). For the show’s five younger viewers, the “Twilight” kids (I think it was the werewolf and the virgin.) to present a tribute to horror. OK. Maybe they should have a best genre category next year. As always, I felt a little ill afterwards, as if I’d gorged myself at a banquet. But I’ll probably be back next year. May I suggest Ricky Gervais as host and a tribute to tributes?
Crushin’ on a Song
Since hearing their debut, Carnavas, and later, reviewing their second LP, Swoon, it’s clear to me that Silversun Pickups’ One Big Single, “Lazy Eye,” is their own version of Blue Oyster Cult’s “(Don’t Fear) the Reaper;” it’s a impossibly gorgeous song that triumphed at the crossroads of critical and commercial success and it eclipses anything else in their catalog. In essence, it’s a fluke.
Interesting too that anyone I’ve talked to about Silversun Pickups as always thought that Brian Aubert was, instead, a chick singing…and they’ve liked the band less since finding that out.
In any case, though it was all over every commercial in 2008, “Lazy Eye” is worth listening to at least one more time.
I Survived Another Oscars (Pt. 1)
It’s funny how every year I seem to forget how brutal the Oscars are and even actually anticipate them. That anticipation quickly evaporates. This year it was quicker than usual, as they opened with a big song & dance number staring Neil Patrick Harris. Did people really love Hugh Jackman that much last year? Co-hosts Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin showed some promise, but it didn’t last. Really, a pot joke about Woody Harrelson? I suppose they can’t be blamed for the bloated, glittering whale of a spectacle that the Oscars are. I proposed a drinking game based on how many times they cut to Meryl Streep, which we wisely avoided as it could’ve killed us. Oscar ballots also keep us reasonably interested, although I got destroyed in the shorts. If I had only known there was a short doc about cute African kids.
The Oscars are notoriously starved for moments of actual spontaneity and fun, but I was surprised several times. Did anybody know that Fisher “Short Circuit” Stevens was a producer on the dolphin murder expose, “The Cove”? Good to see him. And my favorite speech might have been costume designer Sandy Powell, who won for “The Young Victoria” (always go with the period piece) and blithely stated “I already have two” and then dedicated it to designers who did contemporary films. For those of us of a certain age, the John Hughes tribute may have been the most nostalgic. What really put it over the top was the presence of four fifths of “The Breakfast Club” (What? Estevez is too busy?), many of whom we hadn’t seen in years and were borderline unrecognizable. Is it too late for a sequel?
And Now For Something Completely Different…
Let’s talk health care. Contrary to what the news media and various Republican talking heads tell you, this isn’t a freaking political issue. This is Important.
Maybe you’re one of a rapidly disappearing group of Americans who are lucky enough to have a full-time job with benefits. (Good luck with holding that, btw…)
There are those of us who worked our asses off to finish school (40+ hours a week, while working full-time and going to school full-time) who find ourselves in the position where eating and having a roof over our heads kind of takes precedence over paying through our noses for “coverage” that really doesn’t cover.
I graduated second in my class from Pepperdine – a school I attended on grades and massive scholarships and the aforementioned 40+ hour weeks working as an assistant manager at Taco Bell. By anyone’s definition, I am not a slacker. I routinely juggle 50,000 different jobs just trying to eek out a living in this economy.
I work in the music industry. Most of my friends are musicians. There’s a reason most of us are uninsured. Let’s do some math.
I’m fortunate enough to be ridiculously healthy. Let’s just assume that I’d been paying $200/month for health care for the past 14 years that I’ve been freelancing. That comes to a whopping $33,600. Know how many times i’ve been to the doctor during said 14 years? TWICE. Total bill = roughly $400, including blood work and supplements.
My naturopathic doctor and her cohorts lobbied a lab to give a break to their uninsured patients – which means I pay less for my blood tests than my insured friends do. I get discounts from my dentist, N.D. and eye doctor because I don’t have insurance.
OUR HEALTH CARE SYSTEM IS BROKEN. It thrives on keeping people unhealthy, overcharging your insurance company and prescribing medication that causes side effects worse than the initial symptoms because there’s a kick-back from the pharmaceutical company.
Our uninsured brethren tend to end up not getting preventative care and end up in emergency rooms, where the rest of America gets to foot the bill for the triage care they can’t afford.
We can fix this mess. We SHOULD fix this mess. Those retarded assholes who cling to their Medicare benefits while calling Obama a “socialist” should have their coverage revoked so they can scramble to figure out how to survive like the rest of us. We would SAVE money focusing on preventative medicine – which strangely never gets talked about.
I would dearly love to stop having to explain to friends from overseas why we have so many drug company ads on TV – “Do you occasionally hiccup? Ask your doctor if (insert drug here) might be appropriate! (Side effects may include anal bleeding, increased blood pressure and death.”)
Nothing about our current system favors health. It favors costly and ineffective referrals and drugs that will screw up something to fix something else. I’m fortunate enough to have a network of music-friendly doctors to support me, but most of America isn’t.
Those are the people I worry about. And those are the people that Obama is trying to help.
So… Let’s do this thing. Before it’s too late. Before YOU don’t have health insurance.
On a completely unrelated note, the new Avi Buffalo album is pretty fucking sweet, and I’m totally stoked for the revamped Columbia City Theater (in Seattle) to reopen this summer. Oh, and if you have a chance – by all means, go see Parson Red Heads. Soooooooo good!
Sinatra Sundays- “By The Time I Get To Phoenix”
From a distance, it’s hard to imagine a guy like Frank Sinatra even driving to Arizona. Largely because inhabiting working class characters was never his bread and butter. Sometimes, especially with his more downbeat songs on Capitol Records, the emotional currents he sought to manipulate were painstaking average but also pretty nebulous. You come home pour yourself a drink and think about…her. Doesn’t matter if it’s in a mansion or an apartment near the railroad tracks.
What makes Cycles such an intriguing experiment isn’t just that it was Sinatra’s first foray into 60’s music, by way of commercial country and folk songs, but also because he tries to wear the clothes of middle America for the first time. I love late 60’s- 70’s songwriting from this period because there’s a wistful ordinariness to a lot of the soft orchestrally backed AM Pop. It seemed like folkies and simple country singers had been influenced by Sinatra’s songs with Nelson Riddle and sought the same gentle breeze to their own recordings. But unlike Sinatra, their songs were firmly rooted in salt of the earth concerns and attitudes. Something far from the cosmopolitan concerns of big city singers.
“By The Time I Get To Phoenix” was an inescapable song for baby boomers and their young children. Something so entrenched in the 70’s it’s been covered by it’s children (Nick Cave) and it’s masters (Issac Hayes). It was one of the most popular songs Jimmy Webb wrote for Glen Campbell, which is saying something since the two dominated commercial radio for a decent chunk of time; completely taking over the country charts and delivering rare crossover hits for people who weren’t found of hard rock but wouldn’t identify themselves as country fans. In short, people who usually listened to Frank Sinatra.
Though there have been a sizable number of takes on the Webb/Campbell partnership, I’m still impressed how soon Sinatra jumped on board. His version was released only the year after Campbell’s so it’s words and melodies were still kinda fresh in people’s recollections. Because of that it’s more or less a straight retelling of the lyrics and melodies. Though I do think Don Costa’s Cycles arrangement is more enjoyable than some of the bombast on Campbell’s recording. Everything is softer, most likely to allow Frank to own the song on his own terms but there’s still a small evocation of Webb’s southwestern setting. A gentle acoustic guitar is strummed under the violins which is very strange to layer with Sinatra’s voice but I like it all the same.
The only thing that’s markedly different is Frank and the new character he constructs out of Webb’s words.. I try to imagine him wearing a short sleeved flannel shirt while stopping at a gas station outside Oklahoma and the image comes alive easier than you might think. He wears the clothes of a more downtrodden man and they end up fitting him well. It’s a role he doesn’t revisit very often in his film or music career. But it makes you wonder what would have happened if he embraced it at middle age and crafted a new persona for himself.
There’s a pretty nice restraint to Sinatra’s voice as he traces the day of the woman he has just left. What’s strange is that Campbell’s version is phrased like a grandiose working slob opera. Ironically, he’s more Sinatra-like. By contrast, Frank’s version is considerate of the disappointment the jilted woman must be feeling. He knows he’s the heel of the story and, unlike Campbell, he doesn’t makes the song almost entirely about him and what he’s done. There’s more guilt in Sinatra’s voice which isn’t even resolute in it’s wandering. Could this woman be upset over him? Probably. But in Frank’s pregnant pauses there’s the unspoken acknowledgment that the sheepishness with which he croons the song is as much about avoiding anger as dodging tears.
Sobering shit, man
I was raiding the bargain book section at my local Border’s today when I overheard one of the cashiers having a conversation with a customer.
“You can tell a lot about someone by the title of the book the person buys,” the cashier said.
I stole a glance and saw that the customer was buying one of the Dalai Lama’s countless testaments to peace, love and understanding.
In my own hand I held two books: One was called “The Grifters,” by Jim Thompson. The other: Arthur Nersesian’s “The Fuck-Up.”
I waited for a different cashier.
Mix
My girlfriend may make fun of me, saying that I’m not as broad-minded as I think I am just because I own 2 or 3 dance records- but I goddamn love Swiss/NYC via Eastern European duo In Flagranti.
Mixing disco, Moroder-esque sequencers, overripe female vocals and a visual sensability informed by brown-paper covered smut, these guys have wormed their way into my brain with their analog-heavy foor-on-the-floor via their underappreciated 2009 opus, Brash & Vulgar.
In Flagranti, being the DJs they are, put together a mixtape for Fact magazine last year, splicing their own work together with the Temptations and Killing Joke among others. It’s great fun and works as an extended piece of music devoid of any no-brain references to overplayed songs without any context- you know, like Girl Talk.
The Best Bad Movie You’ll Ever See
Cult classic fans rejoice- your favorite awful movie is soon coming to a theater near you! After six years of midnight showings in LA (and a $5k/month movie billboard strategically placed somewhere in LA for 5 years) “The Room,” written and directed by the world’s worst actor (he plays the movie’s protagonist), has gone international.
If you aren’t familiar with the vanity project known as “The Room,” here’s a little background. This guy named Tommy Wiseau spent something like $7 million of his own money to produce a craptacular flick that got awful reviews by the few people who saw it. Once it hit the cult market, it became one of those movies people go back to see over and over again- sort of a “it’s-so-bad-I’m-dying-laughing” thing. Wiseau then claimed that of course it was his plan to make a comedy and it was so obviously his intention to pretend like he had no talent. All the other actors dispute that fact (and claim that Tommy was a controlling fruitloop to work with) and once you’ve seen the movie, you’ll probably agree with them. Besides nonsensical writing and bad acting, the cinematic elements of the film are just… off. Exhibit A, a few clips displaying the weird pacing:
I don’t know what Wiseau’s origins are- some say he’s Austrian- but wherever he’s from, they must have some idea that Americans frequently carry around footballs and throw them whenever it gets awkward, because there is a football in practically every scene.
I don’t know about y’all, but I frequently play catch with my three friends who are all standing six feet away. But one of my favorite parts of “The Room” (it’s hard to pick just one) is the line at the end of this scene:
The great part about that line isn’t even the delivery- it’s the fact that the breast cancer plotline is never again mentioned in the movie. It’s a beautiful testament to the dedication of detail and precision Wiseau employs in his work.
So if you feel like spending your money on rewarding Mr Wiseau for being the worst moviemaker ever, you can check out screening dates and places here. Just make sure you bring plastic spoons with you- and if you know what that means, you probably already bought your tickets.
Sinatra Sundays- “Meet Me at the Copa”
“Meet Me at the Copa” is a minor song in the Sinatra catalogr but it came at a crucial time for his career. It appears on 1950’s Swing and Dance With Frank Sinatra, his final LP for Columbia Records not counting Christmas Songs by Sinatra which was released a month later.
This was his first record after the sudden hemorrhaging of his vocal chords which I mentioned in my post on “All the Way”. What’s very clear on this LP (when the 78 RPM technology was brand new and LPs were finally possible) is that he’s still learning the ropes of a fast and punchy style of singing which would define his image for the next 40 plus years. His post -Tommy Dorsey heyday was distinguished by his high pitched vibrato. It’s clear that he’s still clinging to the focal point of past glories even as the world shifts under his feet. The talent which drove Sinatramania was not only outdated but physicall gone forver. His career from here on in would be unchartered territory for the remainder of his time in show business
Sinatra would turn 35 two months after this release, yet he was still trotting the same trick pony out of the stable. The arranger for “Meet Me At The Copa” was Axel Stordahal, a Dorsey mainstay. Musically, it’s hackneyed even for the immediate post-War period. Lots of Andrews Sisters pop and little in the way of harder R&B or more complex soft instrumentation. Even the “Swing and Dance” moniker is meant to cover for Sinatra’s new hard shuffling voice, which was in such fragile shape for these sessions that they were virtually recorded under the cover of darkness. He couldn’t swoon any more so the best that could be hoped for was that the man could carry a steady beat.
Fortunately, Sammy Cahn is the lyricist. Largely, I view him as the architect for what would blossom into the lasting flower of Sinatra’s career. Cahn’s musical theater background and bouncy phrasing are enduring. This is, after all, the man who wrote the words for “Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow”. But it was his Broadway tinged and timely cultural references which provided the clay to mold the skinny neophyte “Frankie” into “Frank” the ultimate insider. The type of guy who could get a table at any club or restaurant at any hour of the night. A junior member of the board who would stay long enough to be the chairman. “Copa” is our introduction to him. Cahn’s lyrics shew away the working class pleasures of Ebbets Fields and 52th Street, “stuff for squares”, to travel to the Copacabana, a club with a reputation so lengthy as to coin the phrase exclusive. My favorite line of the song is:
Do you hear the applause and the cheering ?
Even if you’re wooing, stop what you’re doing
Hurry down to see what you’re hearing
I love that one lyric: “See what you’re hearing.” Most of this site is comprised of indie rock critics who’ve had to ask themselves why we go to see the latest “it” act from time to time. But Sinatra knew why. The attraction of the closed door is too much to handle. As is the knowledge that somewhere there’s a place where things are happening and an elusive cool is so abundant that it’s smeared all over the walls. Whether or not it’s better than what’s in front of you is besides the point-space is limited. It’s the lure that brings us in. The chance to make the scene. We can Swing and Dance with Sinatra all we want, but we’ll never be with Sinatra. We’re the squares who go to the movies and catch ballgames. Even if it’s on the 78 of a man who’s career was in jeopardy, his desperation is still our highest peak.
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