Friday Random Ten

Spring, by the way, might have finally arrived - temperatures getting into the 50s, maybe. March will go out like a lamb! a damp, dingy lamb maybe, as it looks like rain for the next few days, but nonetheless! None too soon... we avoided the worst of the snow this week, though the weather seems to have done us some real harm anyway - there was an absolutely horrifying fire here this week, in the middle of Wednesday's wind-storm: 40-50 mph winds coming off the river seem to have contributed quite a bit to the intensity of the fire. There may have been more to it - afire in the basement of an apartment building expanded extremely fast, injuring several firemen, and trapping others - 2 were killed - I don;'t know if there was a gas leak or something like that... but it seems that once the fire spread, the wind sent it through the building in a hell of a hurry - like a blowtorch, one article said. Very sad, and on a different day, without the gale, who knows...

All right. Now? it is Friday - I don't have much besides our customary random 10. Here goes!

1. Olivia Tremor Control - A Peculiar Noise Called 'Train Director'
2. Benny Goodman Sextet - Seven Come Eleven
3. MIA - Tell Me Why
4. Interpol - Obstacle 1
5. The Sensational Alex Harvey Band - Give My Compliments to the Chef
6. Fire Theft - Rubber Bands
7. David Bowie - Heroes
8. Warren Zevon - Werewolves of London
9. Stereolab - Metronomic Underground
10. Ciccone Youth - Burnin' Up

Damn - it's the tale of two lists - deep cuts and oddball stuff in the first half, then some rather Frequestly Played, shall we say, tunes... So video? Bowie is of course required - especially this fairly glorious clip, with Adrian Belew on guitar:



Alex Harvey usually makes for an entertaining time:



And finally - Benny Goodman, with George Benson doing the Charlie Christian parts:

Baseball Predictions 2014

Spring is here, you know - though the wind is howling outside, it's still frigging cold, and there's still been snow flying around (though most of it went out to sea - up to Nova Scotia, judging from what my cousins up there are saying...) - but it is spring: baseball season is underway, and all is well. Better anyway.

So what do I think will happen this year? well - roughly:

AL East:

Boston - last year, all my Red Sox Ifs came true - they stayed healthy, the solid pros they brought in all performed to reasonable expectations, Farrell stabilized the pitching staff, and so on. This year - they brought back most of the team, and I'd say, most of the same ifs apply. If they stay healthy - if people perform to expectations... It took a lot of luck to do what they did last year - but it's at least partly luck they made. They stocked up on players - they had cover for the positions where people were hurt (filling up the bullpen like they did.) They've done much the same thing this year - bringing in Mujica and Badenhop and Capuano to stock the pen, bringing in position players, and so on - and they have a deep farm system, that's a year further along. They have risks - Ortiz and Uehara are not young; Napoli, Victorino, Lackey, the catchers have been around the block a few times as well - but they have a good team and lots of depth and should be in the running once more, and might as well be the favorites.

Tampa - as always, they don't have a lot of room for error, but they have a really good core and outstanding pitching - so they should be fine. There's nothing there to make you think they won't be in the thick of things.

Toronto - after making fools of many a prognosticator last year (me included), people are likely to write them off - but I don't think they are hopeless. If they get a bit of luck this year, they could get back to respectability or better. Though they are quite capable of another stink bomb.

NY - I look forward to their decline every year and was finally rewarded last year. Sort of. They had a strange off-season - bringing in a bunch of outfielders and letting Cano walk, which is an odd approach, given that they had decent outfielders last year and nothing beyond Cano in the infield. This year could be grim, unless they put Soriano back at second. Still - it comes down to pitching, and there is at least a chance that could be solid. Or awful - is a crap shoot. Will Sabathia decline? Will Tanaka be Darvish or Dice-K? what kind of pen can they field? I don't think they will be awful (alas), but I don't see a lot of ways they can get into the post-season.

Baltimore - I wish they had more pitching - they could get past the Yankees. They have a nice team on the field - but the pitching seems more than a little suspect. They strike me as being in a difficult race with Toronto and NY for the honor of being the best last place team in baseball.

AL Central:

Detroit - they remain prohibitive favorites. Building on last year - excellent starting pitching; a better bullpen; good lineup, probably balanced better than last year, and better with the gloves (though losing Iglesias hurts.) A solid team in a weak division, and, I think, the safest post-season berth in the game. And a real chance at the world series.

KC - they made great strides last year, and I think they will hang around this year. Maybe slip on the hill, improve with the sticks - who knows. Still - they aren't far off respectability.

Cleveland - likely to regress, but there's still enough talent, and Terry Francona, to be respectable.

Minnesota - I think they could sneak back into the high 70s this year, though probably not much more - they tend to be capable of over-achieving, and I can see people like Hughes and Nolasco giving them a definite bump.

Chicago - they have Chris Sale, right? Actually, they have some interesting young outfielders, who may or may not get them past awfulness.

AL West:

Texas - I think they will do all right. Just as the Tigers are better balanced with Kinsler than Fielder, I think Texas is better balanced with Fielder than Kinsler - that trade should help them. They might not be great, but I think they have the best chance of staying clear of the rest of the division.

Anaheim - can't stay sucky forever. Though soon enough they are going to suck and have to pay Albert Pujols to do nothing: but I suspect before that day arrives he has a throwback season or two. If he and Hamilton have their throwback seasons together, they could be dangerous.

Oakland - they are deep and well put together, but they have been a bit lucky with the pitching the last couple years, and that luck might run out on them. They have some injuries - and a bit like Tampa, I don;t think they have the resources to absorb too many losses. Though they do a very good job of rooting up has beens who still are...

Seattle - there are hints and signs that they could be in a position to improve - they certainly laid out a lot of cash. They should be decent - if they got a dose of luck, they might improve dramatically.

Houston - not much to talk about here yet. Might be in a couple years.

NL East:

Washington - they sort of disappeared for a lot of last year, but were coming on fast at the end - they have arms and talent and should be back at the top this year. It helps to have the competition fall apart of course...

Atlanta - They lost some players (McCann notably), and their pitching has been slammed this year - 2 Tommy Johns so far? They're still pretty good - and could get better, if Heyward and the Uptons bounce back - but probably not past second.

Philadelphia - they haven't really addressed their problems, but have talent hanging around - and the rest of the division is not good.

NY - they added a few people, but not really from the top drawer. Unless Granderson returns to form, which is possible, or Colon's deal with the devil still has some years to run.

Miami - I hope they lose, anyway. They deserve to lose. They don't deserve players like Stanton and Fernandez. They probably won't have them more than a year or so more.

NL Central:

St. Louis - they moved some pieces around, but basically brought back the team, all those young arms - if they stay healthy and develop, they should stay good for a while.

Pittsburgh - they need to make the transition from developing into a good team to staying a good team, which is the hardest thing to do. They should still be pretty good this year, though.

Cincinnati - solid team that should stay solid for a while. As usual, the health of the pitching is probably the difference.

Milwaukee - one of the real wild cards, I think - I expect Braun to pick up where he left off (I'm inclined to think steroids, if they have an effect, mostly keep players on the field, and inflate the overall offensive numbers - individuals tend to stay around where they were, relative to everyone else. Maybe spend more time on the DL. So while Braun's numbers might be down, everyone's numbers are down, and he should stay roughly where he always was, relative to the league.) I hope Segura develops, and Davis too (since I drafted both of them for fantasy...) They could be very good - they could be completely irrelevant. I think. Probably 77 wins and utter mediocrity - the Blue Jays! - but you never know.

Chicago - they seem to add a player a year, though someone else seems to regress. Not likely to factor in any pennant races.

NL West:

Dodgers - yes, they do look very good. I don;t like the Dodgers, but there's not much to say against this team.

San Francisco - this is their On year, right? they still don't have much offense, they still have a bunch of good arms - we'll see. They like the even numbers...

Colorado - why not.

Arizona - Corbin's out - there's not much going on there.

San Diego - they could be a bit better than this - they could menace .500.

Playoffs:
AL: Boston - Detroit - Texas + Tampa and Anaheim, I suspect. I'll pick Boston to come out of it, because I want them to, though Detroit, Texas and Tampa are all quite capable.

NL: Washington - St. Louis - LA + Pittsburgh - San Francisco. I want Washington to come out, but suspect SL and SF have the advantages. Not LA, for all their talent.

Awards:
AL MVP - should be Trout, for the third year in a row.
NL MVP - likely to be McCutcheon again, I think.

AL Cy Young - there are lots of candidates, really - I suppose Verlander is the default choice, but Scherzer, King Felix, Darvish are all good choices, Price maybe, even Lester maybe - Anibel Sanchez - Weaver. Right?
NL Cy Young - all Kershaw until he fails. Though Strasbourg, Cain, Wainwright, Fernandez etc. will be hanging around.

AL Rookie - might as well be Bogaerts. or Tanaka, I suppose.
NL Rookie - Wacha? why not?

And World Series Champions? Time for the Red Sox to go back to back! though - it's unlikely - they still need a bit too much luck. a couple years, when Bogaerts is established, and they've traded for Jose Fernandez, then - you know... now - Boston's still the best team if everything goes to plan - but since going to plan twice in a row would be very rare - Detroit is my safety pick.

First Random Ten of Spring

So spring is finally here - the calendar says so, and the last couple days, here in Boston anyway, I can almost believe it! Sun is out, over 50 degrees for a day or two in a row - what next? More snow next week; temperatures back in the 20s - yeah yeah... Baseball starts tomorrow, though on the other side of the planet. But hey... spring.

In the world? I spent most of last week off the grid - up in Vermont - a somewhat... difficult trip. Car troubles in Montpelier - not fun, when you don't live in Montpelier... It's good to be back, resuming something of a normal schedule - Lars von Trier and Wes Anderson films to see... The news has been a bit off - missing planes; helicopter crashes; dead monsters. Both Slacktivist and Tom Junod contrast the late Mr. Phelps to the magnificent Mr. Rogers - Junod pointing out the astonishing fact that Phelps actually picketed Mr. Rogers' funeral. I suppose grifters gotta grift, but you do wish he'd found a less hideous way of hustling a buck or two.

Anyway - music... Let's keep it simple today. 10 songs, etc.

1. Nightingales - First My Job
2. Blue Oyster Cult - The Subhuman (live)
3. Grinderman - Worm Tamer
4. DNA - Cops Buy a Donut
5. Radiohead - Kid A
6. Badfinger - Icicles
7. Jarvis Cocker - Baby's Coming Back to Me
8. Pavement - Jackals, False Grails: The Lonesome Era
9. Husker Du - The Biggest Lie
10. Robert Johnson - 32-20 Blues

Video? No sign of Jackals, live, on YouTube, so - Loretta's Scars, live in Belgium, will suffice:



And to make up for not having the one iTunes wanted - here's a more recent performance of Summer Babe:



And some live Radiohead...

You Remind me of a TV Show, Well That's All Right Don't Watch it Anyway

This month, we have the Feelies. They come up a lot - they have their own tag - like the Replacements, I've already sort of written them up... Did I say what I needed to say then? Probably not - it's hard to overstate how mind-blowing they were. I alluded to it again, a couple months ago, writing about REM - since the first time I heard them was opening for REM. They stole that show - REM was in fine form, but they were better. I saw Husker Du a few months later - and they stole that show. I saw them open for Sonic Youth a few years ago - they mostly stole that. I saw them open for Lou Reed - the one time they didn't knock the headliners out - probably because Glenn Mercer kept breaking strings... of course Lou was in fine form, but all those bands wee in fine form. The Feelies were just the most satisfying live act I ever saw anywhere.

Still - they provided an odd sort of satisfaction. I wrote myself an essay about them, God - 25 years ago almost - interestingly, one of the first things I typed on a Mac, whatever that is worth. I had just seen them play, for the 7th time I think it was... I've cannibalized bits of it since - looking at it now, it ain't bad - at least, it hits on why the Feelies are one of THE BANDS here. Let's see:

Seeing the Feelies is never quite like seeing a show. Music, I think, is a communal sort of thing. Of course there are songs that should be listened to in your room alone with the lights off, and songs that can be listened to like that, but there is something in music that is meant to be shared. Even private songs almost cry to be shared. Concerts should be the epitome of musical experience - rock concerts especially, where you stand in a hot cellar, banged against and crowded, inundated with the smell of tobacco and alcohol and sweat, and the music lifts the crowd, grabs it into motion, and the crowd (if it is a good crowd, a good concert, a good place) surges side to side, like the sea rushing into and out of a niche in the rocks. I don't mean you have to slam dance at every concert - only that there should be motion at concerts, that music needs motion, some kind of dancing, in a mass, in pairs, something. But the Feelies—

These days, they are almost accessible - they still tune the guitars between every song, but now they use electric tuners (cutting down the delay between songs by several minutes); you can hear the vocals now, almost, sometimes pretty well; they are getting friendlier, the drummers smile, they throw souvenirs into the crowd, at their most recent show, the bassist even cracked a joke and they tried to plug their record from the stage (in the tone of someone contractually obligated to do so of course). Their music is even lightening up - it is harder (as though they had spent the last year locked in five dark rooms listening to The Stooges very loud) [as I said above - I think this is from the end of 1989, so is referring to Only Life - though this sounds more like a description of Time for a Witness, from 91; these old documents have been reworked a few times through the years I'm afraid...], but also more accessible, more conventionally rock and roll. Yet for all that, a Feelies show remains one of the most intensely private experiences imaginable.

Music is usually communal - it binds listener and singer/player, binds its various listeners, creates a community, or the image of a community, even in the most private songs. But not the Feelies. No matter what the context, their songs sound like echoes inside your head, like remembered voices, remembered impressions of the sounds of guitars. The effect probably comes in part from the band’s stage presence - the bowed heads, the expressions of nothing but concentration, the abstracted jumping that looks more like air guitar than real rock-star antics - but there is more. They are rock music’s equivalent to Borges - they do nothing new - they almost deplore the idea of originality, they are content to do covers of songs someone somewhere should have written. Everything sounds like that lost forgotten unreleased Velvet Underground record, or maybe something by Iggy Pop or the Beatles you’ve never heard before.

There are records that exist in dreams that seem as though they should be real, just as there are books you dream about that should exist. In your dreams, you hesitate on these records, songs, pages, drawings - you realize you are dreaming, and some instinct warns you that these dream-books are illusions - they are only dreams. But these books or records are things you desperately want to be real - music you have not heard, new, unknown Beatles records, a Herman Melville novel you had forgotten about, that says just those things you suspected Melville meant to say, but never actually did - and you hesitate in the dream, you wait, you weigh this thing, check it against wakefulness (the subconscious seems to do this), and finally, you decide that it is real. Then sometimes this dream will recur - there is a stash of records, for example, David Bowie, The Beatles, T-Rex, I think, Pink Floyd, and lately, a Replacements record or two have been added, in the bottom of a hope chest in Maine, that though I have never actually found these records in that hope chest in Maine, I dream about, over and over, every time doubting their existence, every time knowing I hadn’t ever really found them there before, but every time rejoicing, when I remember that they indeed are there, and this dream is a memory and not an invention.

The Feelies are the caretakers of these dreams, just as Borges is the caretaker of the libraries of dream books. Both, Feelies and Borges, make art that seems like a synopsis of something already done, something you have heard, on a radio in Vermont somewhere, something you have heard about, seen cited in an article somewhere, seen in a dusty library or a shambles of a record store somewhere. You must always squint when you hear the Feelies, as if trying to remember where you heard this song before, just as you frown reading Borges, wondering if you didn't see the book he is describing on the shelves at Aunt Annie’s library. And maybe you did - The Search for Al-Mutas’m never existed before Borges, and Loveless Love is original to the Feelies, but The Purple Land, generally forgotten, and Take it Any Way You Can may indeed have preceded their reinterpreters; but that strange hesitation is part of the point.

Well - you can see what I was reading 25 years ago. But that's about it - what always struck me was their ability to absorb vast chunks of music history, and play it in a way that sounded both as if it were something you had heard all your life, and something that was just being revealed to you now for the first time. And - that goes for songs I've listened to for going on 30 years. I mean to say - the first time I heard them they were a revelation, and as familiar as my favorite band - and they have that quality now that I have heard them hundreds of times - everything sounds like it has always been there; everything sounds brand new.

And for all my 1989 era mysticism, the fact is that Feelies concerts were just about the most enjoyable, and indeed, communal experiences, I remember. They always conveyed a shared delight in the music - the songs, the playing. Maybe part of the mysticism comes from how easy they were to identify with. (Which may or may not have been a function of being a nerdy white guy.) And this - that they were (and still are) one of the tightest, sharpest bands going. The tight, fast rhythms, the interlocking drums and guitars, the clean sharp solos, their ability to convey multiple feelings in their songs - jittery, smooth, mellow, harsh - they could excel in any mode. They were more pastoral and pretty than REM, harder, more intense than Husker Du, more experimental than Sonic Youth. And - the guitars. I am a sucker for guitars, and Mercer and Million just ride those machines... it is a thing of beauty indeed.

And so - the countdown - which requires two lists of rate Feelies. First, their own material:

1. Slipping (Into Something) - which also provides one of the greatest musical cues in film history: the moment this song shifts tempos in Something Wild - signaling the films' shift in tone... just glorious.
2. The Boy with Perpetual Nervousness
3. Crazy Rhythms
4. Find a Way
5. Loveless Love - another song that makes a film, Assayas' Carlos - coming in as the film seems to take off...
6. The Good Earth
7. Slow Down
8. Away
9. Moscow Nights
10. Decide

And then, Covers:

1. Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except for me and My Monkey
2. She said She said
3. Sedan Delivery
4. Dancing Barefoot
5. Roadrunner
6. What Goes On
7. I Wanna Sleep in your Arms
8. European Son
9. Fame
10. Mannequin

Video:

Dancing Barefoot:

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Young Neil, sped up:

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And another cover - featuring Peter Buck on another of the all time great rock songs... See No Evil:

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And Bowie/Lennon, from Something Wild:



Beatles covers:

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And here's Loveless Love live - just how fast they were live:

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And another live version of Slipping (Into Something), which there can't be too many of:

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Charles Pierce for the Win

Dipping briefly into politics... Here's Charles Pierce, the magnificent Charles Pierce, summing up one of the blights on the American political landscape:

She is the living representation of the infantilization of American politics, a poisonous Grimm Sister telling toxic fairy tales to audiences drunk on fear, and hate and nonsense. She respects no standards but her own. She is in perpetual tantrum, railing against her betters, which is practically everyone, and volunteering for the job of avatar to the country's reckless vandal of a political Id. It was the address of a malignant child delivered to an audience of malignant children. If you applauded, you're an idiot and I feel sorry for you.

The fact that that dim bulb is still running her grift, 6 years after being laughed off the stage... tells you all you need to know about modern conservatism. They are a pack of suckers, and proud of it.

Music Day

Well - I don't have a lot to say today. Daylight Savings Time is coming - painful! I don't want to lose an hour of sleep! I don't want to wake up in the dark! - and for some reason, Grand Budapest Hotel is not, not for another week. Horrible. Cruel. Evil. Anyway... music:

1. Doctor Nerve - Mister Stiff Fries a Dozen
2. The Raplacements - Run It
3. Dinosaur Jr. - Your Weather
4. The Who - They Made My Dream Come True
5. Boredoms - (Star)
6. Delta 5 - Now That You've Gone
7. Johnny Cash - Cocaine Blues
8. Six Organs of Admittance - Harmonice Mundi II
9. fIREHOSE - Number Seven
10. The Germs - Manimal

How have I never heard of Delta 5? despite having one of their songs on the computer? How did that happen? They are pretty amazing - a 2 bass, 2 girl singers version of Gang of Four. How did one song make it to my computer? Just one? strange. Anyway - this is the song above - music only.



Here's another one on Top of the Tops:



and going from 2 bass players to 77 drummers - the Boredoms - their 77BOADRUM incarnation....



And finally - the Germs:

What About the Oscars?

We're almost there - everyone seems to be posting something, so why not me? As usual, I admit I am not going to watch the show - I can barely muster any interest in the voting and winners.... But it does give me an excuse to post my own favorites in the various categories. So off we go, right?

Best Picture:

So one of my top 5 got a nomination - and stands a pretty good shot at a win. I skipped a couple of the best picture nominations without a good reason (Gravity say) - but... of the ones I saw - 12 Years... is the best - I hope it wins. I didn't love Nebraska, but it's not a bad film - but pretty hard to see it winning. Same for Her, I suppose. I hope 12 years wins - and think that's as likely as anything.

My Top 5:
1. Inside Llewyn Davis
2. Act of Killing
3. 12 Years a Slave
4. Blue is the Warmest Color
5. Beyond the Hills

Director:

It's been noted that since the academy expanded the best picture nominations, they have severely restricted the number of films nominated for any major awards - so - the five nominees are all best picture nominees as well. Annoying, as it does tend to squeeze out some of the alternatives, I think. (They start to show up in cinematography I noticed.) Anyway - I do hope McQueen wins, because that was a great film and he did a superb job. Cuaron seems to stand a good chance, and though I didn't actually see it - that's my fault, not his; I suspect this is a justifiable pick.

My Top 5:
1. Coen Brothers
2. Steve McQueen
3. Christian Mungiu - Beyond the Hills
4. Miguel Gomes - Tabu
5. Olivier Assayas - Apres Mai

Actor:

Of the nominations - shoot: I can't complain about any of them. Wouldn't feel too bad about any of them winning, though a couple stand out - Ejiofor should win I suppose; people seem to think McConaughey is the favorite - I can't complain if he does. Dern would be a nice pick, though he won't get it.

My Top 5:
1. Chiwetel Ejiofor
2. Bruce Dern
3. Mads Mikkelson - The Hunt
4. Matthew McConaughey
5. Toni Servillo - The Great Beauty

Actress:

Of these nominees, I only managed to see 1 - Amy Adams. I hope not. She's fine, but American Hustle is a mediocre and weird film, miscast high and low, including her. Blanchett? why not - she's the consensus favorite, so - fine. My not seeing any of these American actresses is a rather marked contrast to the extraordinary slate of actresses in foreign films (and a few smaller American films) I saw last year, a slate that goes on quite a ways beyond the 5 below...

My Top 5:
1. Greta Gerwig - Frances Ha
2. Adele Exarchopolous
3. Christina Flutur - Beyond the Hills
4. Amy Acker - Much Ado About Nothing
5. Rin Takanashi - Like Someone in Love

Supporting Actor:

Usually, if Michael Fassbender is nominated, he should win. This is no exception. At least until the academy starts nominating Michael Shannon for things. But meanwhile, off in Coen Brothers land, John Goodman steals another picture.

My Top 5:
1. John Goodman - Inside Llewyn Davis
2. Fassbender
3. Gerald Peary - Computer Chess
4. Jared Leto
5. Paul Giamatti - 12 Years a Slave

Supporting Actress:

I saw three of these - Jennifer Lawrence, Lupita Nyong'o and June Squibb. Lawrence had no business being nominated, she's the weakest part of a rather badly put together and cast film. The other two are first rate. Squibb, in a just world, would win; the Oscars are seldom just - I have no idea who will win. The cynic in me says Lawrence. I hope it's Squibb or Nyong'o.

My Top 5:
1. June Squibb
2. Lupita Nyongo'o
3. Gaby Hoffman - Crystal Fairy
4. Amy Adams - Her
5. Carey Mulligan - Inside Llewyn Davis

Original Screenplay:

I saw 4 of the 5; of the ones I saw, I would pick Her, with Dallas Buyers' Club justifiable. Nebraska's script was solid, but a bit too obvious some of the time; American Hustle wasn't bad, but - I dunno. Not a fan. Woody Allen, of course, I'm back on my one in 7 plan, after getting suckered into a couple off year films. I wonder if you can guess, o reader, what film I have at the top?

My Top 5:
1. Inside Llewyn Davis
2. Frances Ha
3. Like Someone in Love
4. The Hunt
5. Enough Said

Adapted Screenplay:

This category actually has a film not nominated for best picture - an upset in itself. I would give the prize to 12 Years a Slave - I don't know if that is going to win, though I suppose it's got a good chance.

My Top 5:
1. 12 Years a Slave
2. Before Midnight
3. In the House
4. Blue is the Warmest Color
5. Much Ado About Nothing

Music or Score:

I don't know; of the nominations - my god: I've only seen Her. So, I guess, whatever. My own choices - I admit, I find the "original score" concept a bit underwhelming - I tend to think of music in film in terms of how the music is used. Songs or original scores or adapted music, it's all the same - it;s how it is deployed. Anyway - it's a category I'm always surprisingly unsure of... but here goes anyway:

My Top 5:
1. Inside Llewyn Davis - I suppose this is inevitable
2. I Used to be Darker - another backstage musical, and a fine one
3. A Band Called Death - I'm not sure what I'm after in this category, but I might as well bring in the documentaries - Death was damned good.
4. Frozen - not the greatest music, but very cleverly used, a neat idea
5. Much Ado About Nothing - cause I remember it...

Cinematography:

The nominees in this category come fairly close to actually matching what was on the screen this year. They are all fine choices. I suspect Gravity wins, because it's the most gimmicky - but you have some interesting films here. Points to the academy... There were lots of great looking films last year to choose from.

My Top 5:
1. Tabu
2. Inside Llewyn Davis
3. Nebraska
4. The Great Beauty
5. Computer Chess (cinematography should not just be about beauty - it should be about the most effective use of photography in a film - and the hideous video of this film is very effective. It's very funny, for one thing, and making cinematography funny is an accomplishment in itself.)

Foreign:

I saw two of these, and probably should have seen a couple more - Great Beauty and The Hunt are both excellent - The Hunt probably the better film.

My Top 5:
1. The Act of Killing
2. Beyond the Hills
3. Blue is the Warmest Color
4. a Touch of Sin
5. Apres Mai

Documentary:

I saw one of the nominees - I don't think The Act of Killing has a chance, but you can see what I thought of it. I don't know if I can justify a top 5 - though I saw more than 5. Might as well, right?

My Top 5:
1. The Act of Killing
2. 56 Up
3. Stories We Tell
4. A Band Called Death
5. Tim's Vermeer (though I don't know if it was actually released anywhere last year...)

And some of the other categories:

Editing:
Never mind the academy, I guess. I liked - Upstream Color... The Grandmaster... An oversimplification of Her Beauty (often an exercise in editing...) As well as many of the films I have listed in categories above. But I did want to work those in somewhere.

Animated:
The Wind Rises just made it here last week - I am going to see it tomorrow. I assume it is the best and should win on principal. Probably won't. I liked Frozen, certainly - Despicable Me 2 was quite good as well. From Up on Poppy Hill was a lovely film as well...

Sound:
I don't know what the academy is up to - there was a Kiarostami film in the theaters last year. And A Wong Kar-wei film... and films like Upstream Color and A Touch of Sin and Inside Llewyn Davis and Computer Chess all did great things with sound. What can I say?

Film Posts 2014 Onwards

Later getting this up than usual - and rather slow so far posting anything. But I do find it useful to have an index of what I have posted... That is this.

UPDATE 2015: I have not been posting as much movie material as I had been - so this year's posts are going on to last year's index. Which didn't have a whole lot...

Update 2017: I have neglected this post, but more than that, neglected the blog. I think the last review I wrote was in August 2015 - things have been very quiet here at the listening ear...

Occasional Pieces & Longer Pieces:

2/3/2014: Philip Seymour Hoffman obituary
7/14/2014: Bastille Day with Jacques Rivette.

4/3/2015: Manoel de Oliveira obituary.
5/14/2015: Link to Film Preservation Blogathon.

1/4/2016: Edward Copeland obituary
1/30/2016: Jacques Rivette Obituary
9/2/2016: Allan Fish Obituary (and Gene Wilder)

For WITD Countdowns:

8/20/2014: Chikamatsu Monogatari for the Wonders in the Dark Romance Countdown.
9/5/2014: Love Me Tonight, for the romance countdown.
9/23/2014: The Shop Around the Corner, also for the countdown.

7/9/2015: Let The Right One In - part of the Childhood Films countdown at Wonders in the Dark. Cross-posted.
9/7/2015: Germany Year Zero (posted here 9/15), also posted at Wonders in the Dark, part of the Childhood Films Countdown
9/15/2015: Ivan's Childhood, also at Wonders in the Dark, from their Childhood Films Countdown.

7/12/2016: Plan 9 From Outer Space for WITD's Science Fiction Countdown.
8/13/2016: Things to Come, for WITD
8/18/2016: Island of Lost Souls, for WITD; 8/19/2016 - Musical Follow up to the same.
10/5/2016: Alphaville for WITD

Polls, Lists, Memes, and so on:

1/2/2014: 2013 Lists
3/1/2014: Oscar comments and my picks for categories

1/17/2015: Best of 2014.
2/22/2015: Oscars and categories.
7/13/2015: Halftime Report
10/27/2015: Mr Dadier Back to School Quiz
10/31/2015: Halloween Quiz.

2/14/2016: Best of 2015

Reviews:

2/10/2014: Inside Llewyn Davis
11/9/2014: Citizenfour reviewed, and comments on the Berlin Wall.

2/2/2015: Roundup: A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night; Princes Kaguya; Inherent Vice; r. Turner; Two Days One Night; Selma; Duke of Burgundy;
8/5/2015: Summer Films - big roundup: Don't Think I have Forgotten; Look of Silence; Do I Sound Gay?; Tangerine; Mr. Holmes; Amy; Big Game; Testament of Youth.

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