Another Friday

Another week and another month gone - I am sorry for the state of this blog. Best intentions or not, I have been very lax in posting here.... Though - I thought I had been a bit more explicit in that post about my hopes to write this year, with comments not only on the history posts I want to do (and will, once campaigning season starts in 1864) but on some of the other things I hoped to do... I guess not... But... I can make plenty of excuses for not posting, some coming down to laziness, some to doing other things - traveling, watching soccer and hockey (the only part of the Olympics I care about really) - but thankfully, a big part of it has been due to a certain non-blogging productivity (as they say in the Corporate World; "productivity" I mean.) I've been reading history, cramming, you could say, for the spring and summer, when Grant and Sherman go off to redeem the United States of America, and 50 years later, when Europe destroys itself and much of the world, though also, in some backhanded way, helps maybe start freeing itself and the world. That's a topic for another day - but WWI and the Civil War are topics that can keep you very occupied.

All right; that is all for now. This is Oscar weekend - I hope to offer some humble something for that... but right now - music, just music...

1. Bob Dylan - I Want You
2. Keiji Haino/Tatsuya Yoshida - Cchjdisoiugpodf
3. Mars Volta - Conjugal Burns
4. Galaxie 300 - When Will You Come Home (live)
5. Blue Oyster Cult - ME 262 (live)
6. Distillers - Hall of Mirrors
7. Melt Banana - His Name is Mickey (live - the live records are heavily represented today!)
8. Gomez - Shot Shot (live)
9. X-Ray Specs - Identity
10. Robert Wyatt - Fragment

Video? A couple songs from X-Ray Specs, live, rehearsal - O Bondage, Up Yours and Identity:



And - not the piece listed above, but - here's Keiji Haino and Tatsuya Yoshida, playing with Damo Suzuki (and others) - what's not to like?



And another performance, rocking out a bit....



And Galaxie 500, live in a high school gym:

Still Winter? Friday Music

Suddenly - it's still February, but the weather has changed. Warm - rainy - like it's jumped a month ahead. I can't complain - I have had my fill of winter. Another storm this week - a very pretty storm this week - icy and shiny snow on the trees, though awful slick slush underfoot. Still - I don't mind winter that much, but I think I have had my fill. Though it won't take me long to start complaining about the rain, if that's what comes next...

Onwards - music - simple random 10 this week, it is. Here goes:

1. Loretta Lynn - Van Lear Rose
2. Pere Ubu - Ray Gun Suitcase
3. Second Hand - Rhubard! [Mojo collection psych rock...]
4. Janelle Monae - Electric Lady
5. Fleetwood Mac - I don't Wanna Know
6. Godspeed You Black Emperor! - 09-15-00
7. Devendra Banhart - Dogs they Make Up the Dark
8. Modest Mouse - Convenient Parking
9. Feelies - Raised Eyebrows
10. Big Black - Kitty Empire

Nice set of songs there, in their way. Let's start, though, with something else - RIP Bob Casale:



And because this might be their best guitar song - and - one of the greatest, strangest, covers ever:



From the randomizer - The Feelies:



And Janelle Monae, on Arsenio:

Left of the Dial

This month's band of the month post will not be as long as usual - because I have done it already, reviewing Color Me Obsessed, the Replacements movie. That post is really the model of these posts - right down to the heavy autobiography. The Replacements were extremely important to me - they marked a definitive break with pop music, and maybe most importantly, with the radio. All the bands I've listed up to now (except Johnny Cash, probably, who I discovered mostly through records people I knew had) I discovered on the radio, listened to and became a fan of from the radio, which led me to the records, and so on.

The Replacements were the first band I came to love that I did not discover through the radio. I did hear them on the radio - they got some airplay when Tim came out, and I think I heard Hold My Life and probably Kiss me on the Bus on the radio - and those songs were enough to convince me to buy the new record (Tim it was.) I also saw them on Saturday Night Live - surprised and delighted by that, making a point of watching it... But I was inclined to like them anyway - I mentioned in the DVD review that I read about them before I heard them, in college newspapers, maybe even in Time or Rolling Stone - and even then, I was beginning to find radio too restrictive. I'd heard a lot of the underground bands in college, on college radio, and late night specials on the more mainstream channels - REM, Husker Du, Mission of Burma, SSD - bands I didn't hear on the regular radio, and by the time I got done with college, I was growing restless. The underground bands that did get on the radio later - REM and X, say, or Joy Division - were better, certainly more interesting, than what was being played in 1985 - so by then I knew I wasn't getting the whole story, and had to find it.

If I'd had any money to spare, I'd have done it all quicker, instead of buying half a dozen records a year. But broke as I was, I spared it for Tim (and Candy Apple Gray, about the same time)> That proved the concept. I'll to paraphrase myself: songs like Hold My Life, Bastards of the Young, Little Mascara, Left of the Dial, Kiss Me on the Bus, Here Comes a Regular - struck me, from the first listen, as being the best written songs I had heard in years, as good as anything I knew. The words particularly - they told stories, I recognized the people in them, they were clever, full of word play, sharp, surprising images and turns of phrase, there weren't cliches - or the cliches were jokes, the jokes were funny - they gave us a world. They were set to the music they needed to be set to - and performed with almost unexplainable directness. Loose, almost careless sounding, but still, somehow, precise, sharp, completely committed. And after that, for a year or two, The Mats were my favorite band in the world. They were what I wanted rock music to sound like. It certainly helped that I saw them, right at the end of their Bob Stinson days, a couple weeks before Westerberg broke his arm and they cancelled their tour and a couple months before they fired poor Bob from his own band. Seeing them live - they came as advertised, an odd mix of drunken shenanigans, half serious covers, snarky noise, and those fucking incredible songs, given strange, sloppy, but usually completely committed readings. They were funny and mind-blowingly brilliant at once. They ended up playing Mississippi Queen until the cops escorted them off the stage at closing time. My god, they were great.

And after the Replacements, almost all the bands I discovered, loved, still love, I discovered somewhere other than the radio - and a lot of them, I never heard on the radio. The Feelies I saw live, the first time I had ever heard them; Pere Ubu - I heard Peter Murphy's cover of Final Solution, but otherwise, I read about them somewhere and bought records on the recommendation; The Butthole Surfers and Meat Puppets I read about, and they sounded interesting enough to check out - bought a Puppets record; went to see the Surfers without having ever heard them (that will make a lively essay when I get to it.) By the late 80s, even the more mainstream bands I liked I found somewhere else, usually MTV - Jane's Addiction; Public Enemy. (Talk about nostalgia - mentioning MTV makes me nostalgic for the days when people were nostalgic for the days when MTV played music.) In the 80s, though, most of these bands I found by reading - I could lay my hands on half a dozen little newspapers - college papers, indie papers, music papers. Since the 90s, most of the bands I have discovered I have found through the internet - a lot by clicking through the related materials on All Music or YouTube - and magazines, Mojo and The Wire mainly. There you go. It was liberating and still is - it means I am dependent on the amount of work am willing to do to find new music, not on someone else putting them on the radio.

And I was willing to do a lot of work in the 80s. The second half of that decade I may have been broke, but what discretionary income I had ended up at Newbury Comix or the Channel - I bought lots of records, went to lots of shows - national acts (almost all playing clubs - The Channel, the Rat, TT The Bears, The Paradise), local acts - or just bars with a house band of some kind. It was good, and I probably feel as much at home listening to music from that time as any time - Mats and Husker Du, Meat Puppets and Butthole Surfers, Feelies, REM (though this is a bit past their time), Public Enemy, KRS-1, NWA, Ministry, The Cramps, locals like the Zulus, Galaxie 500, Buffalo Tom, Christmas, The Blood Oranges... it was a good time, and it started with the Replacements.

That's enough. Let's do the list:

1. Within Your Reach
2. Hold My Life
3. Can't Hardly Wait
4. Answering Machine
5. Color Me Impressed
6. Bastards of the Young
7. Alex Chilton
8. I Will Dare
9. Little Mascara
10. Unsatisfied

Video - start with this, late, 1991, but an early song - I first heard it live, their Pleased to Meet Me tour, post-Bob - they were still good then, but far more professional seeming, and a good deal less interesting. But this is such a gorgeous song - and I went away obsessed with it. It's got Westerberg's way with words - the brilliant twists, sun keeps rising in the west - and the way he twists them live, coming up with new versions, as clever as the originals, sometimes... or - ignoring the originals. Downplaying them in a way that just reiterates how good he is... what can I say.



Saturday Night live - Bastards of the Young:


What a mess by mmr421

Music only version of Can't Hardly Wait, live in 86 - great stuff, which was never guaranteed in those days:



And a very fine live version of Color Me Impressed, 1983:



And finally - Hold My Life, 2013 - Paul and Tommy reliving the old days...

Inside Llewyn Davis

It has taken me about a month to realize I had my 2013 top ten all wrong. A month, and 3 viewings, have made it clear that Inside Llewyn Davis is the film of the year, and belongs among the best of the Coen Brothers' body of work.

It took the three viewings - some of their films have hit me immediately, some have taken time to sink in - all of them, I think, have gotten richer with each viewing - this one seemed like a fine film on first viewing, but has only grown since. It might be less pushy than most of their films - it is definitely their straightest film. It's not an adaptation, not a parody, not a remake, not a genre picture int heir usual style. It might be a comedy, but it's less laugh out loud funny than most of their comedies - never over the top int he way they usually go. It's quieter, though just as harsh, and just as impeccably made, and just as stylized, on so many levels - carefully composed, as images, as a story - as the rest of their works. It might be their straightest film, but it does continue their method of picking a time and place, a kind of community, and working out a kind of idealized, stylized version of it - here, Greenwich Village in the 60s, the heyday of the folk scene, right about the time Bob Dylan shows up and claims it in the name of rock and roll. I suspect they got that trick from Robert Altman, who always favored it, and gave himself over to it completely through the last years of his career. Like him, they work down into the world - the settings, communities, the surfaces and underlying values, are all integral to their films - they create abstracted, perfected distilled versions of them, that still reveal the world to you. Greenwich Village in the 60s - which provides the details, the specifics of the story, and the characters - though also like nearly all of their films, this one ends up being an Odyssey. A character on an epic journey, that usually does't actually go anywhere (round in circles in time and place) - in this case, a sailor fallen from grace with the sea.

The story is about Llewyn Davis - folk singer; erstwhile merchant seaman; New York native with a Welsh father and Italian mother (giving him an odd look, offering critics room to speculate on what his real ethnicity might be); a good singer and picker, but a pretty horrid person. Broke, homeless, facing winter without a coat, carting around the detritus of his floundering music career (a crate of remaindered records), and then a cat, belonging to one of his benefactors... He is a schmuck, tramping haplessly around New York, couch to couch (the Gorfeins, academics on the upper west side; Jim and Jean, fellow folk singers in the Village; his sister, out in Queens, or the Bronx [I'm not sure which; though I think they mentioned it]; and anywhere else that will have him, which here includes a fellow failed folkie with a couch, and a car driving to Chicago), surviving, more or less, trying to make a living as a musician. Musically - he's good, drawing on the deep well of material the country has to offer - blues, folk songs, fishing songs - but maybe not good enough to carry the material himself? or maybe too morose, personally, as in his musical selection, to get past the circle of connoisseurs who like his stuff. Whatever it is - he's sinking.

And that is the story, really. The film starts at the end, loops back a week or so, and trails him forward to the end again - a journey that doesn't get him anywhere. The plot revolves around a couple things: raising money to pay for Jean's abortion; trying to return the Gorfein's cat; driving to Chicago and back, partly because the car is a place to sleep, and he's used up his good will in NY, partly in hopes of seeing the great impresario, Bud Grossman. All of these are loops - all of them doubles, too - Jean's not the first woman he's gotten pregnant, a fact that has significance in the story; he rescues the Gorfein's cat, loses it, finds it - only to find it isn't their cat; he goes to Chicago in one car, drives back in another one. It's like that - he's on a loop, and going down, though - you can read it how you would.

He's hard to like, Llewyn Davis - but he's easy to feel for. The Coens have a reputation for mistreating their characters - for creating caricatures, people that seem like cartoons - but it seems to me, the more you watch their films, the more obvious it is how much they care about their people. Seeing a film three times in a month will help - you pick up the details, as you go, and you see, I think, the ways they reveal character, reveal facets of their characters. They are interesting - it's hard to find a lot of people in their films that they seem to genuinely hate. Though there are usually a couple - often John Goodman characters, and that's the case here. His Roland Turner, a ponderous, smug, junkie jazz musician, is about as hateful as you can get (though Goodman is glorious at it - the voice, the mannerisms, the timing - he is a master) - but even Turner....

He's a bit of a sad case, I suppose - but there's more, a moment, a detail, that shifts things, I think. It's hard to notice on one viewing (I certainly didn't quite catch it) - when Llewyn tells him about his partner's suicide. Llewyn's in the driver's seat, Turner in the back, both in the shot - and when Llewyn tells the story, you see Goodman turn, wince, just for a second - a moment where he is human; only to himself - Llewyn doesn't see, and he doesn't give anything away - he gathers himself, and goes right back into his asshole act, cracking that you're supposed to jump off the Brooklyn Bridge, not the George Washington bridge... But it's fascinating. It shows, among other things, how much of the asshole act is an act - a defense against he world. Which makes him a lot like Llewyn, to tell the truth - Llewyn puts on the asshole act to push people away, just as much, and just as consciously, as Turner. But little moments like that one, the way Turner turns away, almost in pain, before pulling himself back together, acting the villain again - make the film.

What makes a villain though - well, take Llewyn. He's sour and selfish throughout, but not really awful - but he does two things (maybe three, though the third isn't quite his doing) that are hard to forgive. He abandons the cat on the highway; he heckles a nice old lady at the Gaslight. They are unforgivable because they are really the same thing - he's punching down; he's attacking someone weaker than himself. It's why you feel his abandonment of the cat more than his abandonment of Turner - because Turner is clearly not weaker than Llewyn (except through his own behavior.) It's what makes Turner so insufferable, as well - he is a bully - taking Llewyn as his punching bag, someone, finally, worse off than he is.

I'm not inclined, generally, to make too much of the morality of characters in film - this guy is a good guy, this one bad - but it's hard to deny that the Coens make morality one of the central problems of their films. They are all about how to live - choices - how to treat people; never simplified, they are not morality lectures - but there is a kind of exploration of human behavior, stylized and anatomized, in all their films.

Take Jean. I have seen more than one comment about her that either abused the Coens for the misogyny of her characterization, or criticized her behavior directly, for being a shrew, angry and bitter. Those are pretty much the same complaint, and both rooted in the idea that Jean is a shrew - angry and selfish and unfair, a slut even. But I don't see it; I don't see her character that way, and I don't think the Coens are quite portraying her that way. Now - she is certainly angry - she is mad as hell for most of the film... But how could you say it is irrational or unfair? Why shouldn't she be in a wrath over Llewyn? how is she supposed to react? Mix in, I suppose, her anger at herself, and maybe the sense that she is punching down - taking her regret out on Llewyn; add whatever she feels about dead and gone Mikey - but these things hardly make her anger less understandable. And seeing the film more than once makes clearer the rest of the story - reveals the world she lives in. Everyone wants to fuck her. Everyone who gets a chance does. A lot of people, one imagines, like Papi, fuck her because they can - she needs them, they use her. Maybe it's less clear at first, but it's more obvious seeing it again, she is living in a nastily misogynistic world - how could she not be pissed? She's a smart, talented woman, that everyone takes for granted, except as someone to fuck. How is her reaction anything other than logical? The men around her treat her as a prop - Papi says it all - but Llewyn obviously thinks so too; Jim is nice and competent and oblivious, at the mercy of hard cases like Papi and Llewyn.

And there's another detail I caught the second or third time around - maybe one I'm reading more into than I should, but still - important, I think. Some time between the night Jim and Jean sing with Troy at the Gaslight and the end when Llewyn sings there, Papi fucks her - and then tells Llewyn, if you want to play the gaslight... But there's a glitch there, isn't there? Papi hadn't fucked her the week before, and Jim and Jean have obviously been playing the Gaslight for a while. They make money for Papi - she doesn't have to fuck him for the gig. Which makes me wonder if maybe the reason she fucks him is to get Llewyn a gig. I don't know - maybe I'm over thinking it - but... It makes the scene when he comes back to town, when she tells Llewyn he can play there (even though he played less than a month before), just a bit more devastating. And turns Papi's line - if you want to play the gaslight - a little inside out. I don't think Llewyn catches on - he reacts with a kind of jealousy and general rage - and he's never quite self-aware enough to think or notice that maybe someone somewhere might be doing him a favor without having him whine for it... and if they were, he'd spit int heir face, maybe... but I can't help it. That scene knocks me on my ass.

And so... One more thing, before I go, about the music, and about the performances of the music... There's an interesting pattern to Llewyn's songs: he is constantly shown singing to blanks. The invisible (smoke shrouded) audiences; his senile father; the impassive Bud Grossman; the junkie Turner; or all by himself (in the empty Gate of Horn, say.) The only exceptions are the rather joyous foolishness of the session (which he does for a buck - the one thing he really does do to pay the rent - and that he insists on bad-mouthing, whether he enjoyed it or not), and the dinner party, where his audience's enthusiasm stops him cold. He sings to the void - and when his audience isn't a void, he fights it. He seems lost when people respond to music - he is lost when the audience sings along at the Gaslight on 500 Miles; he loses his shit when Lillian sings along at the dinner. He uses it to attack Turner, engaging him in a parody of the singalong style of folk singer (he's an anti-Pete Seeger, there - no preaching, none of that will to create a community). There's also the odd fact that his songs get more melancholy the more of an audience he has. He can sing a lively number like Green Green Rocky Road to his hostile car mates, sing bits of Cocaine Blues by himself; but when he has an audience that matters, the songs become all the more grim. Faced with a chance to get a career, impress the important Bud Grossman, he picks the most miserable song he can find, suffering, death, loss.... though also, a song that gives away far more of his inner being than he thinks. (Because another thing this film is obsessed with [without quite saying so] is birth, children, fathers, families - things turn on pregnancies, births, fathers and sons.) It's strange, but to the point. He is comfortable singing to the void; he somehow does reveal, something - pouring his soul into it, singing from inside Llewyn Davis - though the act of connecting to another person seems to fill him with despair.

Friday Random Ten

Another week, another snowstorm, another stretch without much content on this blog - well - we shall see how it goes. It's been an odd month, more productive for me than it would appear here - hopefully something will come of it. Out in the world, the Olympics are starting, but seem more than usually ugly this year, what with the Russian government (and the darker parts of Russian society) doing all it can to show that evil is not a Communist monopoly.... I doubt I will pay much attention this year.

But for now, stick with the better things, like music, and ten songs chosen at random by iTunes - enjoy:

1. Neil Young - The Needle and theDamage Done [iTunes remembers Philip Seymour Hoffman, I guess]
2. The Allman Brothers - Melissa
3. Boris w/ Merzbow - Flower Sun Rain
4. The Meters - Be My Lady
5. Xiu Xiu - King Earth, King Earth
6. Meat Puppets - Roof with a Hole
7. Six Organs of Admittance - They Fixed my Broken Mirror Today
8. Gene Vincent - Rocky Road Blues
9. PJ Harvey - Grow Grow Grom
10. Butthole Surfers - Sea Ferring

And video? Mr. Young, singing on the Johnny CAsh show seems right:



And lacking a live clip of Gene Vincent, here's Chris Thile and Michael Daves playing Rocky ROad Blues:

Philip Seymour Hoffman

I don't have a lot to add to the remembrances of Philip Seymour Hoffman. He was, without question, one of the best actors of the past 20 years, someone whose presence in a film always marked it. He was a strange figure - had a kind of reassuring presence on screen, even when his characters were boiling front he beginning. And oh so many of them came to a boil, and he could wig out with the best of them. Or - wig out without breaking that air of calm. Strange, but - you can see it through his career. Brant in the Big Lebowski, a put upon lackey, visibly holding himself together on the face of intolerable (and not quite glimpsed) provocations. Up to Dodds, in The Master, working to keep his cool, to maintain his equilibrium, his sense of being in control all the time - until he's not.

All right. I was thinking about him the other day, about actors and directors, and how well he served PT Anderson, and how I hoped he'd make another film with the Coens, or work with Wes Anderson or Quinten Tarantino - those writer-directors who give their actors words to work with,tones and inflections, who use their voices as much as their faces. Because too - more than anything - Hoffman's greatness was in his voice. So this - Hoffman's voice, and his and Joaquin Phoenix's faces - is maybe the center, if not his best moment, his purest.

Friday Music with Pete Seeger

The big music news this week has been the death of Pete Seeger. His brand of music has never been one I was particularly committed to, but he has always been a presence in the world, on TV, on the radio, a name you knew, and a voice you recognized. it was a comforting voice, though I noticed a tendency, especially when I was growing up, to turn his type of folk music into children's music - that was the 70s, and maybe by then, his generation and style of musicians had been squeezed out of the mainstream of the culture, event he mainstream of folk music, and their last bastion was singing pretty old songs for kids on TV. Maybe. Thinking about it that way, I almost feel sympathy for the old stories about Pete trying to take an axe to Dylan's power cords at Newport - it's a sense that there was a place in the world for folk music, and now Dylan was taking that away, turning this thing into rock and roll too. Rock did do that - squeezing a lot of musical styles into the margins - swamping them. It also appropriated them, being greatly enriched by everything that flowed into rock - rock music is better for Dylan, better for Pete Seeger - but it didn't always leave its sources much.

But that's not the point, except maybe to explain how Seeger could seem so marginal to my musical life. It's all right. He made music all the way, and made good music. When you do sit down and listen to him - he brought the goods. Here he is on the Johnny Cash show, bringing the goods.



And now? let's try randomness to close out this month:

1. Jethro Tull - Up to Me (I suppose you wouldn't have Jethro Tull in the world without Pete Seeger)
2. Magic Hour - Rosebud (psychedelic guitar freakouts probably would be here without Pete Seeger; Damon and Naomi, on the other hand - maybe)
3. Melvins - I'll Finish You Off (neo-Sabbath and grunge probably would exist without old Pete too.)
4. REM - e-bow the letter
5. The Raconteurs - Five on the Five
6. Neil Diamond - Kentucky Woman
7. And you will Know us by the Trail of Dead - Ode to Isis
8. Tom Waits - Trouble's Braids
9. Madonna - Crazy for You
10. Blue Oyster Cult - ME 262

and one more video - let's try Tull:



And since guitar freak outs are always good for the soul - here's Magic Hour live.

Friday Music Check In

Another Friday - another week without any other content on this humble blog: I wish I at least had a better excuse. I suppose I have reasons (laziness?), but - you know. It's not that - I have been distracted, by books and Bertie Wooster, and never seem to get around to blogging... Still - this month has gone quickly; it does not feel like 3 1/2 weeks into the year. The weather - remains very interesting - we've had 2 (or 3?) major cold snaps, separated by days in the 50s; we've had snowstorms and downpours, and blizzards that stayed south of us or went north of us; it's eventful. It appears to be 9 degrees outside right now; it can't be much more than 60 in my apartment. Fun times in the temperate zones!

All right - here are 10 songs chosen at random in iTunes:

1. Bob Dylan - Queen Jane Approximately
2. Sonic Youth - The Mind of the Bourgeois Reader
3. Mahavishnu Orchestra - Awakening
4. My Blood Valentine - Nothing Much to Lose
5. Yardbirds - Mr. Zero
6. Minutemen - Plight
7. Richard Thompson - Miss Patsy
8. Marvin Gaye - I Heard it Through the Grapevine
9. Led Zeppelin - Dancing Days
10. Superchunk - Me & You & Jackie Mittoo

Video? I can see I have some very good material to choose from here... I would not want to miss the chance to post Marvin:



How about a bit of fusion? Billy Cobham puts in a shift on the drums...

Friday Random Music

Just another Friday this week, and a meeting at work to get to, so better be quick...so just another random list, I think...

1. Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Y Control
2. Mudhoney - In n Out of Grace (live)
3. The Beatles - When I'm Sixty-Four
4. Revolting Cocks - Cousins
5. Arcade Fire - Windowstill
6. Robert Johnson - Stones in my Passway
7. AC/DC - Girls Got Rhythm
8. 6 Organs of Admittance - Procession of Cherry Blossom Spirits
9. Neu! - Super 16
10. Dangerdoom - No Names (Black Debbie)

And video - start with Mudhoney, a live clip of the very song (I think) above; complete with a drum solo and ballet:



And here are the Yeah Yeah Yeahs... though the best reason for including this video is, oddly enough, the ad that played with it. Some sound system for your TV or iPad or whatever - using The Dead Boys for music. I though I'd been Stiv-rolled... Anyway - the odd sensation of wishing the ad would continue in place of the song... Not that there's anything wrong with the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, the world needs more Pretenders tribute bands, but it's not Sonic Reducer.



But this is Sonic Reducer:



and this is the real Chrissie:

Pockets Lead the Way

Here in New England it has been a damned cold week. Snow, cold - winter (though it's headed back into the 50s this weekend: NEw England!) - I have had enough. Time to cast our musical attention southward... it is good, then, that I have sort of gotten myself out of college in my Band of the Month series, and can write about R.E.M., 80s left of the dial darlings.

I first heard them on the radio, Radio Free Europe, some station or show playing underground music, probably fall of 1982. My Springsteen loving pal was something of a new wave fan (big into XTC and Elvis Costello, I recall), which spilled into punk and indie bands like REM - though more like X, one of his favorites. (He wore out Under a Big Black Sun as a sophomore, like we wore out The River as freshmen.) He sought out college radio and the like - that's where I heard Radio Free Europe; I don't remember what I thought - I liked it, but can't say it made too much of an impression. I think there was some hype, that I didn't quite get, but didn't turn me off. I filed them away, I think, for future reference. And then - a year or so later - Reckoning came out, the radio started playing South Central Rain - Dick Clark featured South Central Rain! I remember watching that with my brothers - they were very confused: Why can't he sing? they asked, or something to that effect. But I knew... It didn't take the kids long to catch up - one of them ended up getting me Murmur for Christmas, and the next summer I lived on Fables of the Reconstruction.... And later? I believe that Reckoning ended up being the first CD I ever bought; Lifes Rich Pageant, I think, was the first LP I replaced with a CD (like, a week after I got the LP). And so on. I saw REM in 1986 - but that experience factors more next month. And after that - I always liked them; I sometimes loved, them; I never liked them as much as I did in the middle of the 80s. But to the end, they made good music, and sometimes great music.

That's beside the point. It's also a function of the power of their music in that period. There aren't many bands who can measure up to those 2 records. I wore Fables of the Reconstruction out - I lived on it. I taped it, when I got it - I gave a copy to one of my friends, who kept it in his car, and we'd listen to it endlessly. (There were a bunch of tapes we listened to all the time: that one, The Good Earth, a couple Husker Du records, a compilation of stuff from the big Springsteen live box, Live at Leeds, Live at Folsom Prison and San Quentin, a couple Iggy Pop and Stooges records (old and new), a Ramones greatest hits, Motorhead's Ace of Spades - there was some Ministry in there somewhere, and various heavy metal acts he liked... all good.) It was good.

But it was more than good. It wasn't just the music, words, it was something about the feeling REM gave me. They always conjured up imagery in their songs - for all the jokes about Stipe's indecipherable lyrics, that is the most striking thing to me, how clear the imagery is. They are full of scenes: The smell is sweet the short haired boy woman offers pull up a seat... the walls constructed stone by stone... two doors to go between the wall was raised today... did you ever call, I waited for your call... I will try not to breath, I can hold my head still... that's me in the corner, that's me in the spotlight... I was wrong, I have been laughable... bank the quarry river swim.... Even when he's at his most opaque - it's not so much opaque as just stripped of the normal syntax, really. We knee skinned that river red - why not?

I admit the imagery their music conjures is not all Stipe's: their music, especially Reckoning and Fables of the Reconstruction, bring up almost irresistible images for me - memories, real and imaginary imaginary landscapes. The associations were odd ones - memories, in particular, of the places my grandparents lived - in rural Vermont and Canada, places with fields and woods, and old dirt roads overgrown with grass. I latched onto the natural images on those records - the fields divided one by one, the green growing rushes, the palpable feeling of hot summer days. They reminded me of being a kid, in the country, reading the Hardy Boys (The Secret of the Lost Tunnel! with it's old south setting, its Civil War treasure, its overgrown mansions and battlefields...) - imagining the stories in the real world. There probably isn't much else in common - but I can't help it: the associations are overwhelming, and always make me very happy.



Though getting away from myself - REM's songs never fail to impress. Stipe's impressionism never really loses touch with the world - real stories, real scenes, real people are in them. All of them are crafted just so. And the music is just as impressive. Especially those early 80s songs - the lush Rickenbacker guitars, Mike Mills' bass lines, his backing vocals, the steady, relentless propulsion - they are so good.

So it's time for the top ten - and another reminder of how horribly arbitrary these lists are. I mean - I like these groups because I like them! everything they do - their basic sound, style, the things they do, that make them who they are. So - yeah, maybe I can pick out 5 or 6 that are better, somehow, obviously necessary on a top ten list - but after that? something like "Moral Kiosk" come up on shuffle and I stop to listen cause I haven't heard it in years and think, this is not a song that I would think to include in a top ten, but - you know... if this was the best REM did, I'd still have most of their records, wouldn't I? That probably goes without saying - if the best thing The Who ever did was Eminence Front or Squeeze Box or Naked Eye, I'd have been a fan...

But that's not helping me now. Okay: I don't know if this 10 is better than the next 10 (beyond the top 6 or 7) but - I do have to resist the temptation just to put 5 each from Reckoning and Fables. That's not quite fair to the rest of their career, which has an awful lot of good work - but I have to say, I was completely besotted with those records, and it comes back every time I hear them now... But I did it with the Beatles - I can do it for REM!

1. Driver 8 (this is another of the all time great songs)
2. Little America
3. Life and How to Live It
4. Pretty Persuasion
5. Try Not to Breathe
6. Catapult
7. 7 Chinese Brothers
8. South Central Rain
9. Country Feedback
10. Carnival of Sorts (Boxcars)

...though that leaves off Don't Go Back To Rockville - that can't be right... I don't know. Whatever. Video!



Picking videos isn't any easier than picking the songs. They are well documented on YouTube - lots of excellent live footage out there. What can I do? I tried to find their American Bandstand performance, but had no luck - I think I remember it - band in shadow, Stipe with headphones on, buzzing away.... This will have to do - on Letterman, network TV debut and all that... YOu can see some of the group dynamic at work - Mills and Buck showing their composure, Stipe hiding, Bill Berry waiting patiently behind the kit...



And while we're on the Reckoning - here's 7 Chinese Brothers:



Though this - we have to have this. Same show, here's two (2) train songs! You can never have too many train songs.



And since it can't all be from the early days - Country Feedback:



Though I have to stop somewhere - so I will end here: Little America. The biggest wagon is the empty wagon is the noisiest... they were so goddamned young!

Music 2013

Happy first Friday of the new year! It is a happy day for me - big ass blizzard outside has shut down the city so here I am sitting at home. (I'm not sure why the city is shut down - there is not that much snow down, 10-12 inches - I think it is a new thing, cities, and businesses, shut down quicker, stay shut longer, trying to make sure things are working again before loosing the public on the world. Businesses can get away with it because of technology - people work from home anyway, a bit of snow doesn't have to change anything. 20 years ago - 10 even - you could get 2 feet of snow [over a couple days], and the office stayed open. I don't mean to pass judgment - but it is an under-remarked change...)

Enough of that (for now - I plan to go out in a bit, walk around, take some pictures, maybe post them...) I will spare you another year of snow songs - since this is the first Friday of the new year, and the time for a best of 2013 post.

Which, I am sorry to say, is almost completely pointless. It's been that way for the last couple years - it is odd; I go in cycles of listening to music - this is a down cycle, and it's lasted a while now. I don't know if this year was as bad as last year - I did spend a fair amount of time listening to music for my band of the month posts, and bought quite a bit of music for that (this was a year I ended up buying a lot of things I have on vinyl from iTunes) - I didn't buy much new, though. 17 records, I think it is - but unlike last year, I think I managed to listen to them. Most of them. At least once. I think.

So this isn't anything like a real list or rank or anything else - it's just naming some names - the records I did listen to, some of them quite a bit, that made an impression....

1. Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Push the Sky Away: this one I listened to a lot - not surprising, I suppose, as I have become a passionate fan of Nick Cave lately - of current Nick Cave, too - I got plenty of records by old favorites this year (Richard Thompson; Pere Ubu - those two about as favorite as it gets), records I like well enough, but that aren't really at the top of their body of work. But Cave - for the past 15 years or so - just keeps getting better and better. I didn't love Nick Cave in the 80s, and don't really love 80s Nick Cave even now - but I love 2000s Nick Cave, almost all of it. This is no exception. Great record.

2. Janelle Monae - The Electric Lady: I don't think this made as much an impression as Archandroid, but - still - damn, it's catchy, and clever, smart, writing - likely to hold up as the best thing of the year (along with the Bad Seeds: they are on top of their game.)

3. Grant Hart - The Argument: this is an odd one - based on Paradise Lost - um, okay. It's not bad though - I've listened to it a couple times, the songs come up on shuffle a couple times, and it's really rather cool. And - you know - having someone like Hart come back, make new music, now - makes me very happy.

4. Richard Thompson - Electric: these latter day Richard Thompson records tend to all sound alike to me - they fade into one another - the songs fade into one another... but when you listen to them, you know, somewhere in there, you are going to hear the best guitar playing of the year. With a couple big guitar solos that leave you helpless.

5. Pere Ubu - Lady from Shanghai: an odd record, all electric beeps and burps and David Thomas mumbling in his way... it's not quite vintage Pere Ubu, but it's a fascinating record, as they always are.

And? that's about all I have - there are a couple records here I have to listen to to judge, though I expect I would like them if I gave them the attention they deserve (Sigur Rus; Melvins; Neko Case; My Bloody Valentine) - records I feel guilty about not spending enough time with. Others - Lee Renaldo's record, MBV - I liked enough, though I can't quite say more.

Enough. The truth is, I wallowed in nostalgia this year, when I did listen to music - so... until things change (and I expect it will - my music listening runs in cycles, and there is bound to be an up cycle sooner or later) these kinds of posts will have to be pretty perfunctory. I'll leave you with 5 songs that I made a point of listening to more than once, then some video.

1. Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - We No Who U R
2. Janelle Monae - Dance Apocalytic
3. Richard Thompson - Good Things Happen to Bad People
4. Grant Hart - The Argument
5. Lee Renaldo & The Dust - Blackt Out

Video - Nick Cave:



Thompson, live:



Janelle Monae - the hardest working woman in show business:

2013 Films

Another year done... 2013 was kind of an off year for me and films - I didn't see all that many (though I think I beat 2012, which kind of surprises me) - and wasn't exactly overwhelmed by the ones I did see. It certainly seemed that there were a lot more weeks this year than usual where I didn't care if I saw any new films or not. Strange. But now at the end - it's not a bad collection. Actually, in terms of movies I saw in theaters this year - a rather strong year, though a lot of it was because the stragglers from 2012 turned out to be very good.

And - I do wonder how much of my general negative attitude toward this year's films comes from my inability to do a lot of writing about new films. I have completely lost the habit of reviewing new films, even in capsules - a habit I need to try to get back... I did a lot more writing about old films, whether associated with my directors series, or with the Wonders in the Dark's Western Countdown - certainly, Japanese films and Westerns made a lot more impression on me than the new stuff.

But that's still not quite fair. I look at the list below, and realize there were some very good films out this year. And quite a few good films beyond the 25. (Of course that might be a result of cutting back on film going - being even more careful than usual to only go to films that I know I will be impressed by. Though that takes a lot of the fun out of it - takes the chance of being surprised away, which is a shame. I have to work against that.) Okay - that is enough. Here then - the best films I saw, that were released commercially, in Boston, in 2013:

1. The Act of Killing
2. 12 Years a Slave
3. Blue is the Warmest Color
4. Beyond the Hills
5. 56 Up
6. Apres Mai
7. Tabu
8. Inside Llewyn Davis
9. Like Someone in Love
10. Computer Chess
11. Stories We tell
12. The Hunt
13. Ain't them Bodies Saints
14. Post Tenebras Lux
15. Much Ado About Nothing
16. Night Across the Street
17. Frances Ha
18. Mud
19. The Great Beauty
20. No
21. Ginger and Rosa
22. Upstream Color
23. Before Midnight
24. Enough Said
25. I Used to be Darker

And now - though it's early, of course - the best films dated in 2013:

1. 12 Years a Slave
2. Blue is the Warmest Color
3. Inside Llewyn Davis
4. Computer Chess
5. Ain't them Bodies Saints
6. The Great Beauty
7. Upstream Color
8. Before Midnight
9. Enough Said
10. I Used to Be Darker

Finally, a look back at 2012 - which is retrospect, looks a lot stronger than I thought. I remain completely sold on those top 2 films - 2 of the best of the century. But there's a lot of depth there too. Good year.

This was my immediate top ten for 2012:

1. Moonrise Kingdom
2. The Master
3. Barbara
4. Killing them Softly
5. Lincoln
6. Django Unchained
7. Compliance
8. The Central Park Five
9. Keep the Lights On
10. How to Survive a Plague

And retrospectively:

1. Moonrise Kingdom
2. The Master
3. Amour
4. The Act of Killing
5. Beyond the Hills
6. Barbara
7. 56-Up
8. Apres Mai
9. In Another Country
10. Tabu
11. Like Someone in Love
12. Stories We Tell
13. The Hunt
14. Zero Dark Thirty
15. Post Tenebras Lux
16. Much Ado About Nothing
17. Killing them Softly
18. Night Across the Street
19. Lincoln
20. Frances Ha
21. Mud
22. Ginger and Rosa
23. No
24. Django Unchained
25. How to Survive a Plague

Out with the Old, In With theNew - 2013, 2014

My idiot cat is very happy, currently stretched out between the keyboard and the screen, purring away and occasionally batting my fingers. She is a lot of help. Here is a picture of her helping me put away some pots and pans I got this year - she is often very helpful that way:



The year is waning fast. I figure I should put up one more post though. It has been a very eventful year - blizzards, the Red Sox, wickedness, personal loss - in a year in which I passed one of those milestone birthdays people get worked up about (not that I am about to admit which one, though anyone following my band series might be able to hazard a guess, from the dates referred to here and there...) It was a momentous year, with anniversaries and birthdays, deaths, retirements of friends at work, things that brought out reminiscences and considerations of events - and things like the trip my brothers and I made to Ellsworth ME, to find our great- (and great-great-) grandparents' graves.

All of which makes me more inclined than usual to post something like this, looking back, maybe looking ahead. It was an eventful year - a reasonably satisfying one, in a way. I don't usually post things like resolutions or goals for the next year - but if I had last year, I would have ended up reasonably happy with the results. Just thinking about the blog - I have stopped writing film reviews for some reason, and stopped writing about politics (though I think about politics more than is healthy) - but I am rather pleased (and a bit relieved) that I have kept up with my Civil War posts, with those band of the month posts, with the director of the month posts (though I've missed the last couple - holiday congestion, call it; I should be back at it in the new year. Not sure what kind of theme I will pursue - though I suspect I know where I will start...) I hope this continues in 2014 - I see no reason not to keep it up. I have music and civil war posts already in the pipeline, so things should proceed. And I imagine I will pick up another anniversary series this year - I have been diligent in making Armistice Day posts every year - 2014 is the 100th anniversary of The Great War, an event that, I think, was as definitive for Europe as the Civil War was for the United States. Everything since revolves around it, to this day, we are still working out its aftermath. (Just as the US is for the Civil War.) I don't actually know as much about WWI going in as I did about the Civil War - that sounds like an invitation to find out all I can, and I hope I can share it as I go.

This might turn into a history blog, after having spells as a political blog, mostly a film blog, though always a bit of a music blog. Why not? I have been reading history the last couple years - Civil War mostly, though lately I've been reading Elizabeth Eisenstein's The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe - a fascinating subject itself. But - I do hope this year to get back to more film reviews - and for that matter, more politics.

I can't get away from politics. I have been inclined to try to avoid it lately - it's been very depressing these past few years. But - you can't get away from politics; I certainly think about it enough. I could have plenty opt opportunities to argue about it, particularly on Facebook - though that is a soul destroying forum for any kind of serious conversation. Just this week I had a bit of a conversation - someone posted a meme about how the Republicans passed the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments with almost no Democratic support - and now, the Democrats passed Obamacare with no Republican support. It would have been hard to figure out the intended point, if the thing hadn't included an anti-Hillary Clinton bit: seems to have been a Republican source trying to resurrect their past as the sensible party. It's not very effective - though one certainly can feel the irony of the party of Lincoln becoming the party of Jeff Davis. Parties change - it is fascinating to see how the Republicans and Democrats have reversed themselves so completely, and almost perfectly. Still - the conversation that ensued ended with someone making one of those weaselly both-sides-do-it, what-is-the-difference complaints - a complaint given the lie by the graphic itself. Obamacare passed with 0 Republican votes - whether you think the ACA is a good thing or bad thing, it's pretty clear that it is part of a very different set of policies between the party.

And that is true - party discipline is about as strong right now as it has ever been in the US (especially among the Republicans; the Democrats are a bigger, broader party - their positions and orthodoxies are a lot less rigid.) And I was thinking about it - I can list off a dozen or so policies I would like to see: and most are official Democratic positions, and the others have supporters among Democrats; none (almost) have any support from the Republicans at all. I wonder how often, in American history, that would have been true? that policies I like would be almost exclusively associated with one party?

I mean it - here are some examples, things I would like to see:

Higher minimum wage
Higher top marginal and corporate tax rates
Expended social security and medicare and Medicaid
Expanded benefits for food stamps and other programs
More spending on education
More spending on infrastructure
Better health insurance systems
Climate change projects
Gay marriage
Stronger unions
Stronger regulation of banks and financials and corporations
Prosecution of bankers etc. for the more egregious offenses
Reining in the security state

Of those - everything down to stronger unions are basically positions held and advanced by Democrats, and opposed by Republicans. The strength of the party positions varies, the parties may have different priorities - but those positions are all clearly aligned with one party or the other.

The bits about bankers and corporations goes quite a ways beyond the official Democratic party - but plenty of actual Democrats (my senior Senator, prominently!) push for those kinds of policies.

The security state - NSA spying, drones, all that crap - is about the only item on the list where I radically part company with the Democrats. It's an issue that you will hear Republicans weigh in - though to be honest, I don't believe a word of that. Rand Paul can say what he wants to now, but if he were to get elected president in 2016, I hope no one will be shocked to find that he's as enthusiastic a war monger and authoritarian as any other Republican. (Or way too many Democrats.)

BUt the point of this is - well: two things. First - that parties matter, whether you like it or not. And second - imagine me trying to make this case on Facebook, a sentence at a time. It's hopeless! I can't do anything in a sentence at a time. I need 1000 words!

So consider yourself warned.

And so - I have managed to time this almost perfectly to finish on the stroke of midnight - or 11:59 I hope, so this hits 2013 not 2014. I will leave you with another cat - a carving of a lion in Copley Square. Happy new year, everyone!

Merry Christmas!

Is that a reindeer I hear?



Look out Doctor! There's a Dalek behind you!



Merry Christmas - let's hope you all got nice boxes to sleep in!

Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas

Let's let Judy wish you into Christmas eve...

Accept No Substitutes

If you absolutely, positively got to kill every motherfucker in the room... Odd post for Festivus, but for a history nerd like me, what can I do?> Mikhail Kalashnikov, inventor of the AK-47, the greatest firearm ever invented, is dead, at 94. A machine that more or less literally redrew the map... He certainly made it easier to air one's grievances.

Its the Season...

Winter has come and gone this week - by the end of the day, it will look like spring around here! headed for the 50s...

All right. We are less than a week from Christmas - a rather startling fact, that I can't quite process. I might have some shopping to do....

So - whatever, man. Time for tunes. Here, then, a perfectly random friday offering...

1. Dungen - Mina Damer Och Fasaner
2. Benny Goodman Sextet - Six Appeal (fromt he Charlie Christian collection)
3. Fairport Convention - Book Song
4. ABC - The Look of Love Pt. 1
5. The Fall - Cruisers Creek
6. Pavement - Passat Dream
7. Neko Case - Magpie to the Morning
8. And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead - Worlds Apart
9. OOIOO - Baby Bamboo From Noise
10. Matthew SWeet - Does She Talk

Not a single Christmas song. Can Bing help? Video? Cruiser's Creek, video, sounds like a plan...



Matthew Sweet - this is Girlfiend, live - but it's got Robert Quine playing - that's worth having.



and what the hell - Richard Lloyd, playing Someone to Pull the Trigger:

Quiz for the Holidays

Dennis Cozzalio has a new quiz up, just in time for finals.... Larry Gopnik's Post-Hanukah, Pre-Christmas, Post-Schrodinger, Pre-Apocalypse Holiday Movie Quiz. Took me four days to finish this one (it's like in high school and college - I spent all my time listening to The Who to do my homework...) But here it is!

1) Favorite unsung holiday film

A. Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence? for all having the word in the title, it doesn't get much attention for that element of it (even from me, and I have paid a lot of attention to it) - but - it probably should.


2) Name a movie you were surprised to have liked/loved

A. The most obvious was probably The Fall - a film I hoped I would think was okay, but that turned out to be wonderful. There are others (and I think I have used this a lot in these sort of quizzes) - but it is hard to beat the difference between expectation and result there.



3) Ned Sparks or Edward Everett Horton?

A. I grew up on Fractured Fairy Tales, so what choice do I have?

4) Sam Peckinpah's Convoy-- yes or no?

A. No - haven’t seen it.

5) What contemporary actor would best fit into a popular, established genre of the past

A. Michael Shannon should make Westerns.

6) Favorite non-disaster movie in which bad weather is a memorable element of the film’s atmosphere

A. Anything by Altman? McCabe and Mrs. Miller notably.



7) Second favorite Luchino Visconti movie

A. Visconti is one of the holes in my experience - I have only seen The Leopard.

8) What was the last movie you saw theatrically? On DVD/Blu-ray?

A. Theater - Nebraska; Blu-Ray - Pirates of the Caribbean, On Stranger Tides (my damned nephew watched all four of them over Thanksgiving.) DVD - shoot: Winchester 73 (writing about it) - been a while since I have watched a lot of movies. And what the hey - streaming: Up - my nephew again, downloaded it from Netflix.

9) Explain your reaction when someone eloquently or not-so-eloquently attacks one of your favorite movies? (Question courtesy of Patrick Robbins)

A. I am generally inclined to argue, though probably with myself. If I'm in a conversation I might argue with the person - depends on the conversation, I suppose. In the past, some of these conversations could become less than amiable - now, I find myself less willing to start fights - so I just write up rebuttals to myself...

10) Joan Blondell or Glenda Farrell?

A. Joan Blondell! Over and over!



11) Movie star of any era you’d most like to take camping

A. Isabelle Huppert, in another country, maybe...

12) Second favorite George Cukor movie

A. I would say Holiday.

13) Your top 10 of 2013 (feel free to elaborate!)

A. I will have to wait for the new year for write-ups, but:
1. The Act of Killing
2. 12 Years a Slave
3. Blue is the Warmest Color
4. Beyond the Hills
5. Apres Mai
6. Like SOmeone in Love
7. 56 Up
8. Stories We Tell
9. Computer Chess
10. The Hunt

(Though since Inside Llewyn Davis hasn't opened yet, maybe the whole list should wait...)

14) Name a movie you loved (or hated) upon first viewing, to which you eventually returned and had more or less the opposite reaction

A. people always ask this. It’s very hard to answer. I might as well go with Batman & Robin, since it's something of an extreme case - to my horror, when I rewatched it, I found myself actually enjoying it. Not just Uma Thurman either.

15) Movie most in need of a deluxe Blu-ray makeover

A. McCabe and Mrs. Miller? I don’t know really.

16) Alain Delon or Marcello Mastroianni?

A. Marcello, all the way

17) Your favorite opening sequence, credits or no credits (provide link to clip if possible)

A. Aguirre: Wrath of God - it's hard to beat that shot...

18) Director with the strongest run of great movies

A. Ozu over his whole career; Godard in the 60s, or Ozu in the 30s or 50s, or Capra in the 30s.

19) Is elitism a good/bad/necessary/inevitable aspect of being a cineaste?

A. Elitism is good. One should be the best you can be, like the best you can find, and value everything.

20) Second favorite Tony Scott film

A. Beverly Hills Cop II? (I haven't seen a lot...)

21) Favorite movie made before you were born that you only discovered this year. Where and how did you discover it?

A. Joli Mai - rereleased on its 50th anniversary (I believe). This was an odd year - fewer of these than usual.

22) Actor/actress you would most want to see in a Santa suit, traditional or skimpy

A. Guy Kibbee? or maybe Eugene Pallette? I guess that would have to be traditional... I pray that it's traditional...

23) Video store or streaming?

A. Um - I do stream movies now and then, so I guess that is the answer. It is not really an improvement over video stores, I admit that. (Netflix is, though, which is why I haven't been in a video store in 12 years or so - that and there aren't any left....)

24) Best/favorite final film by a noted director or screenwriter

A. Would Night of the Hunter count? probably not, since Laughton probably can't be called a "noted director" on one film - still... I think in it's place, among directors with a decent career as directors - it's Yi Yi, Edward Yang. There is quite a bit of competition - An Autumn Afternoon, Tabu, L'Argent, etc...

25) Monica Vitti or Anna Karina?

A. Anna Karina, very easily.



26) Name a worthy movie indulgence you’ve had to most strenuously talk friends into experiencing with you. What was the result?

A. I convinced some of my history nerd buddies (who were not really the type of film nerds) to see Kusterica's Underground - they liked it, very much, so there's that.

27) The movie made by your favorite filmmaker (writer, director, et al) that you either have yet to see or are least familiar with among all the rest

A. I need to see Brothers and Sisters of the Toda Clan in a good print - I have seen it twice, but the print was a mess - badly damaged soundtrack. So there is that.

28) Favorite horror movie that is either Christmas-oriented or has some element relating to the winter holiday season in it

A. Nightmare Before Christmas? I suppose Curse of the Cat People would be the best answer for real horror films.

29) Name a prop or other piece of movie memorabilia you’d most like to find with your name on it under the Christmas tree

A. Jimmy Stewart's cowboy hat?



30) Best holiday gift the movies could give to you to carry into 2014

A. Inside Llewyn Davis, to start.

We Have a Remedy

And with this month's band of the month, we are back on schedule. I mean, back to my rough autobiographical chronology. Though truth to tell, it was not easy deciding when to slot The Who into this story. I've been writing about bands I really started to embrace in college - Springsteen, U2 - I liked the Who in high school, when I was listening to all AOR. I liked them very much - maybe not up to The Beatles or Led Zeppelin, but not far off. I bought Who records when I did not have money to buy records with - they war one of my favorites before I went to college.

But I'm putting them here, because it was in college that I understood the full majesty of the Who at their best. That was when I heard Live at Leeds. My roommate had it on tape: I listened to it (along with the White Album and The River) over and over and over. I never actually bought it, though - I taped the tape and listened to that until it wore out. Then (around the end of the 80s) I broke down and bought the CD. And then, when the deluxe edition of the CD came out, I bought that. And, you know...

It was the perfect record for what I wanted to hear in college - it shaped what I liked. My appreciation of the Who grew in tandem with my deeper love of Springsteen, my discovery of U2, my general embrace of more contemporary bands. The Zep got shaded out (and the Doors, and Black Sabbath, and a good deal of the hard rock I liked in high school) - the Beatles grew, and The Who grew. The Beatles, though, were the Beatles - they were in their own world - the Who was the model of what I loved.

Live at Leeds. Even then, I can't say I was much of a fan of the later who - though I did buy a copy of It's Hard when it came out - just about the only record I bought that in college, before War. And that was not a coincidence - what I liked most about U2 is that they seemed to me to be the 80s version of the Who. What I wished the Who sounded like in 1983 - worthy successors. It's Hard? I don't remember much of it - Eminence Front is the only song I really remember from that record (and a pretty good song at that - Pete could craft a tune, even when things were not going so well); digging around on the internet for this, I am reminded of some of the others - Cry if You Want - sheesh! I forgot that existed! and I think I loved that song, when the record came out... Still - that wasn't going to hold up, not to bands like U2, and certainly not to classic Who - and never to Live at Leeds.

If they had a problem, it's that everything else they did faded next to that live record. (And to the other live recordings they made in that period - 69 to early 70s - not sure when it stopped, 73 or so maybe...) The later stuff declines - maybe Pete Townsend got too caught up in his elaborate ideas - maybe the drugs cut them down - maybe - something else was wrong... but though there is plenty to like about their 70s records, they were distinctly less convincing after Who's Next - and when Keith Moon died, they were just another mince band trying to adapt to the times. (Look at the woful clothes in that Cry if you Want video - oh god: the 80s...) And the earlier stuff - is superb, but they were a band that needed the technology. Those great songs they did in the 60s sound thin, weak, compared to their mature sound (and I mean, sound.) They always had the attitude, the approach - those crunchy guitars and hammering drums and Entwhistle's bass sound, keeping the beat and carrying the melody - but until they got the equipment to make the noise they made in the late 60s, it never quite makes it. Or - hearing it now - it feels like it is striving for the sound of Live at Leeds and not getting there. But still - the albums get better and better, until Tommy and Who's Next sound fantastic - and they could make a dreadful noise live.

And so: this is the other thing - that after college, as I embraced punk and underground music far more - The Who stayed right where they were, more or less at the center of it all. Live at Leeds did: Pete beating the hell out of his guitar, his solos were always rooted in his rhythm playing, and the rhythm, everything (this is clearly a big part of why I loved U2 as well); the bass, on the beat and the melody; Daltry's voice - if you are going to bellow, that's the way to do it. And Moonie. That fantastic, fast, sputtery drum sound he had, always moving, moving, moving, always changing... they could drift, they could sink into noodling, solos and making stuff up and wandering all over the place - but they never lost their momentum. Something like that massive jam on My Generation on Live at Leeds works because Townsend never runs out of riffs, never stops coming up with more, and Moonie keeps driving the songs on. That is pretty much what hard rock is supposed to do - no one does it better than they did at their height, and more or less every hard rock band I have liked since have done some kind of variation on it. Maybe not all of them - I sort of re-embraced the virtues of Black Sabbath and Ac/DC through the years, and straight punk... but still. At their best - they are the coolest thing on earth.

And so - the songs:

1. A Quick One While He's Away - which is among the great songs ever
2. I Can See for Miles - which ain't far off the great songs ever...
3. Baba O'Reilly
4. My Generation
5. Substitute
6. Won't Get Fooled Again
7. Pinball Wizard
8. Who Are You?
9. Bargain
10. I'm A Boy

Since the version from Rock and Roll Circus doesn't seem to be available, here's The Who live, doing A Quick One - with a lot of comic business on the way in... (Ivor, being an engine driver, doesn't come on time...)



And at Monterey:



Out here in the fields...



Very early live My Generation:



And at their height, 1969 - same show as the first, stretching out, the coolest thing on earth...

Ozu Memorial

Today is Yasujiro Ozu's birthday. It is also, as it happens, the 50th anniversary of his death. I jumped the gun - I should have held up my great big Film Countdown for this date - what can you do? I suppose I can repost my top 32, for the enjoyment of anyone who missed the first...



1. Early Summer
2. Late Spring
3. Tokyo Story
4. I Was Born But...
5. The Only Son
6. Good Morning
7. Passing Fancy
8. An Inn in Tokyo
9. Tokyo Chorus
10. Autumn Afternoon
11. What did the Lady Forget?
12. Early Spring
13. Story of Floating Weeds
14. Woman of Tokyo
15. Tokyo Twilight
16. That Night's Wife
17. Floating Weeds
18. Record of a Tenement Gentleman
19. Flavor of Green Tea Over Rice
20. There Was A Father
21. Equinox Flower
22. Days of Youth
23. Brother and Sisters of the Toda Clan
24. Late Autumn
25. Where Now are the Dreams of Youth
26. Hen in the Wind
27. Walk Cheerfully
28. Dragnet Girl
29. I Flunked But...
30. The Lady and the Beard
31. End of Summer
32. Munekata Sisters

And point to another fine appreciation from David Bordwell.