Ç March 2008 | Main | May 2008 È
April 18, 2008
SAD DAY
There are, I suppose, three kinds of people in the world:
1) Those who like the "guy with a guitar" Bruce Springsteen on NEBRASKA, THE RIVER, DARKNESS ON THE EDGE OF TOWN, THE GHOST OF TOM JOAD, and DEVILS & DUST
2) Those who like the New Jersey street band kitchen sink kaleidoscopic* stylings of Bruce Springsteen on BORN TO RUN, THE YOUNG, GREETINGS FROM ASBURY PARK, BORN IN THE USA, and, last year, MAGIC.
3) Those who don't like Bruce Springsteen.
I prefer 1, but am always up for the Boss to swing back with 2 - if DEVILS & DUST was brutally stark in its sympathetic populism, MAGIC was the kind of music the characters of that casualty-filled wasteland might entertain themselves with.
As for you 3 people. I don't get you and I don't want to get you.
But either way, you shouldn't be sad that Danny Federici, the keyboard player for the E Street band died. Say what you want about HUNGRY HEART, but it captures that "We may as well be dead, but we're sure as hell alive" spirit of the best upbeat Springsteen.
Since its raining in Memphis, here's more moisture for the wet blanket: About a month ago Anthony Minghella died. Minghella is not exactly David Lean, but he's certain not Michael Bay. In the last ten years, Minghella directed THE ENGLISH PATIENT, THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY, COLD MOUNTAIN, and BREAKING AND ENTERING - while the last was curiously boring and unwatchable, the first three are unapologetically epic in a way that most movies ever don't try or attempt and fail miserably. I remember being blown away by finding out that the script for PATIENT was only 90 pages long - the rest was atmosphere, sweeping shots, glances that say more than words.
I liked COLD MOUNTAIN, but it missed the modern classic status it seemed to be going for. The only vivid detail I can remember is that Jack White was in it, and at one point he played the banjo. But THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY is really masterful film - it may be the best Alfred Hitchcock movie that Alfred Hitchcock didn't make (suck it, Brian De Palma!) - it creates suspense and mystery around character and doesn't let those characters hide in the places they want to. I remember liking it in the movie theater, but last year I found a copy in the bargain bin at Target ($7.99!) and picked it up. I was blown away by the period details, the beauty of the scenery, the way Minghella photographs Jude Law so that he's at times angelic, at others demonic - exactly the twisted perspective that Matt Damon's Ripley shifts back and forth between.
But I recently got a little misty for Minghella because of his work in the occasionally excellent Jim Henson's THE STORYTELLER series. As a fifth grader, I caught an episode that Minghella wrote called "The Soldier and Death." I remembered the story for all of my young life, and would occasionally tell it around campfires. Minghella takes the mystery of a fable and turns it into a remarkably linear story - where each obstacle gives the hero an increasingly exciting new dilemma.
Minghella will be missed. I have the feeling he had another Oscar in him. His movies were big, spectacular, and unrelenting visual.
* - I have no idea how music can be "kaleidoscopic" but it sounds right.
Posted by Andytown at 02:04 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
April 10, 2008
CHINESE DEMOCRACY!!!!!!
From the AV Club:
(Which, if you haven't figured, is the equivalent of CNN for me: it's where I get my news)
The NME reports that Axl Rose has finally turned in Chinese Democracy to his label Geffen Records. Geffen confirmed they have the album, and the label is currently negotiating money and rights issues with Rose. The album so far has cost $13 million and been in the works for 14 years, which means Chinese Democracy is the same age as some A.V. Clubbers back when the Use Your Illusion albums came out in 1991. It is rumored that a Guns N' Roses reality TV show is set to be broadcast to coincide with the release of the album.
BOSS! Recently I watched an UNDER REVIEW documentary on the USE YOUR ILLUSION albums, which reinvigorated my love for the last great hair band of my lifetime. Of course, GNR is so much more, but they are also so much awesome.
This is not the first time I've chronicled the legacy that is CD's production. But the move to Geffen shows just what a wicked snowball-down-a-hill momentum this thing has - it doesn't matter if its good, it just has to exist.
I'll buy it.
By the way, I wonder what Tracii Guns is up to?
Posted by Andytown at 05:58 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 08, 2008
DIG, LAZARUS, DIG!!
There are few artists working in any medium whom I revere as much as Nick Cave. I admit I got into him late in the game, but I've been devouring everything he's done. I think of him like other late discoveries: Richard Yates, Francois Truffaut, John Milton, Randy Newman, Leonard Cohen, Milan Kundera, Wallace Stevens - all have expansive bodies of work that I am still skimming the surface of.
While you'll probably need to read the ridiculously expansive series of articles about him on the Wikipedia, I'll summarize as briefly as I can. Cave started out as an Aussie Punker with the noise band Birthday Party. Their albums are dissonant, kind of awesome, and ultimately unlistenable. While I like a few of their tracks (like "Zoo Music Girl"), I mostly turn it on when I need to fill the room with sound, which is rarely.
In 1984, and seriously on the smack, Cave disbanded The Birthday Party and formed the Bad Seeds. There are very few permanent member of the Seeds, but for Birthday Party-er Mick Harvey has been with Cave since the 70s. In '93, a move I think is pivotal, the Dirty Three's Warren Ellis signed on to be a member.
I think that a lot of serious Bad Seed fans will disagree with me, but I greatly prefer the more mellow, meditative, lyrical, gloriously pretentious, and brutally honest pairings with Ellis to the rougher, harder work that preceded it. Ellis is a weird genius - he and Cave recently composed the (awesome) score for that Brad Pitt JESSE JAMES movie. My favorite album of the Ellis-inspired Seeds (and one of my favorite albums ever) is one a lot of Cave nuts disparage, the transcendent spiritual question mark of a concept album, THE BOATMAN'S CALL.
Here is that album's powerful, prosaic, and weighty opening track, "Into My Arms."
Cave is many things: grime poet, allusionist, anachronistic troubadour badass, Aussie punk rocker obsessed with aborigines, novelist, screenwriter (he wrote the unusually grim and violent Revisionist Western THE PROPOSITION), blues freako, unapologetic misogynist, lovelorn contemplative, and street philosopher. He's the bastard child of Abelard and Dusty Springfield. He's impossible to pin down: 1996's MURDER BALLADS is as gruesome, unforgiving, and realistic as 2004's THE LYRE OF ORPHEUS is ambiguous, optimistic, and poetic.
This video of "Breathless" from ORPHEUS is a perfect example of how hard it is to pigeonhole Cave.
After ORPHEUS, the Bad Seeds took a four year hiatus. In the meantime, Cave, Ellis and two of the Bad Seeds strangely started their own side project: Grinderman and their self-titled album. I'm glad they did, because its more rocking than ORPHEUS and 2003's NOCTURAMA, and 2001's NO MORE SHALL WE PART. It featured one of my favorite songs of 2007, "Go Tell The Women."
This week brings his latest, DIG LAZARUS DIG! It's pretty great. This review from the AV Club sums up most of my feeling. I like the way he is described as having a "friction between muck and majesty" (but disagree that this album doesn't have a little of that, even without the piano.) Some of the songs on DIG have Cave's patented brilliance - "We Call Upon The Author," in particular, is typically informed with literary references and bawdy humor. And while it continues in the Grinderman vein of rockin' more than pontificatin', it still manages enough profundity to satisfy the pretentious part of me that thinks music is supposed to, you know, mean something.
With that, here's the title track:
Posted by Andytown at 08:32 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack