Category: Suggestions

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Netflixed The Friends of Eddie Coyle

Seth Anderson0 comment

New Criterion Collection release of the cult classic, The Friends of Eddie Coyle (IMDb) / Wikipedia / [Netflix]


“The Friends of Eddie Coyle” (Peter Yates)

The gritty 1974 cult classic The Friends of Eddie Coyle, directed by the criminally underrated Peter Yates (Bullitt, Breaking Away), is now available for the first time ever on DVD, in a Criterion special edition. In it, classic Hollywood tough guy Robert Mitchum plays the titular small-time Boston gunrunner, nicknamed Fingers, who’s caught between remaining loyal to his criminal cohorts and turning them in to avoid jail time, and Mitchum does it with a poignant, effortless precision that makes the film’s brutal twists all the more effective. With its evocative sense of time and place, and expert pacing, Eddie Coyle is a brilliant, quintessential work of seventies American cinema.

Kent Jones writes, in part:

Offhanded fatalism is embedded in every word of every exchange, each of which alternates between hide-and-seek games and verbal tugs-of-war. The Friends of Eddie Coyle is an extremely faithful adaptation (in structure, spirit, and flavor) of the first published novel by the Brockton, Massachusetts–born Higgins, whose career as a United States prosecutor and then big-time criminal defense lawyer (his clients included Eldridge Cleaver and G. Gordon Liddy) coincided with his ascendancy as a novelist, and whose dialogue is one of the glories of American literature. “I’m not doing dialogue because I like doing dialogue,” Higgins once said. “The characters are telling you the story. I’m not telling you the story, they’re going to do it. If I do it right, you will get the whole story.” What is remarkable about the film is the extreme degree to which Yates and the producer and writer, Paul Monash, adhere to Higgins’s aesthetic, banking on the contention that if you render the action among the characters as faithfully as possible, their entire moral universe will be revealed.

And so it is. “Look, one of the first things I learned is never to ask a man why he’s in a hurry,” says Robert Mitchum’s Eddie to Steven Keats’s inappropriately relaxed arms salesman, Jackie Brown (guess who’s a fan of this movie), in what might be the film’s most emblematic bit of table talk. “All you got to know is that I told the man he can depend on me because you told me I could depend on you. Now one of us is gonna have a big fat problem. Another thing I’ve learned: if anybody’s gonna have a problem, you’re gonna be the one.” As in every good dialogue-driven film, talk in The Friends of Eddie Coyle equals action. In this case, maneuvering for leverage and self-preservation.

Nothing could be further from Higgins’s full-immersion approach to fiction than a collection of prima donna thespians vying for attention; thankfully, The Friends of Eddie Coyle is a true ensemble piece if ever there was one. It’s amazing that a star of Robert Mitchum’s caliber even considered this movie (he was originally offered the role of the bartender); that he integrated himself so fully into the ensemble and the working-class Boston atmosphere is some kind of miracle. Mitchum is on-screen for roughly half of the movie, and never for a moment does he or the filmmakers play the movie star card—no special isolated “moments,” no hammy overplaying or sneaky underplaying. Golden-age Hollywood’s most notorious bad boy arrived in Boston ready for action on every front, as amply chronicled by Grover Lewis in his Rolling Stone profile “The Last Celluloid Desperado.” Apart from the usual shenanigans (think blondes and booze), Mitchum went right to work, getting an “Eddie Coyle haircut” (which might have been executed with a lawn trimmer) and allegedly hanging out with the notorious Whitey Bulger, the prototype for Jack Nicholson’s character in The Departed, and his Winter Hill Gang. Higgins was worried, Mitchum was unfazed. “It’s a two-way street,” he told Lewis, “because the guys Higgins means are associating with a known criminal in talking to me.” Apart from a few slippages here and there, Mitchum mastered the exceptionally difficult Boston accent. More importantly, he found the right loping rhythm, the right level of spiritual exhaustion, the right amount of cloaked malevolence. If Mitchum betrays anything of himself as Eddie, it’s his sense of poetry, which, for roughly three-fourths of his career as an actor, seems to have manifested itself off- and not on-screen. But when he rose to the occasion, he was one of the best actors in movies. Thinks like a poet, acts like a jazz musician, hitting on the perfect melancholy chord progression from his initial appearance and playing quietly dolorous variations right to the end.

[Click to continue reading The Friends of Eddie Coyle:They Were Expendable – From the Current]

Sounds intriguing, consider it added to the queue, maybe the book too…


“The Friends of Eddie Coyle: A Novel (John MacRae Books)” (George V. Higgins)

Scorsese Uses Internet to Distribute Restored Films

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Awesome news, actually.

Martin Scorsese, as ardent an advocate as there is for serving up film the old-fashioned way, has decided to embrace digital distribution for movies restored by his World Cinema Foundation.

The films that the organization restores every year — often obscure titles like “Dry Summer,” a Turkish picture from 1936 — will now be available online through theauteurs.com, a Web site that calls itself a “virtual cinematheque.”

Many will be free. And a partnership with B-Side Entertainment will soon bring the foundation’s films to Netflix and iTunes.

[Click to continue reading Scorsese Uses Internet to Distribute Restored Films – NYTimes.com]

9 great movies

If I’m not mistaken, The Auteurs is a joint venture with The Criterion Collection.

Four things that were on our minds when we first dreamt the Auteurs: Number one: why can’t you just watch In the Mood for Love in an airport lounge? Number two: why is it so hard to get hold of Antonioni’s complete filmography? Number three: Wouldn’t it be great to instantly send Tati’s Playtime to a friend if you think they need it (there’s nothing like film therapy)? Number Four: why do films on the Internet look just awful? And that was that. We simply couldn’t resist the idea of everyone having their own online film library… your little cinema, anytime, anywhere… after all not everyone can make it to the Cannes Film festival… less if you are a school teacher or you live in Winnipeg (or both)… but that doesn’t mean you can’t recite all of Kubrick’s films in reverse chronological order or that you are not desperate to watch the latest Kitano film that is definitely not going to be released in your local multiplex.

And that’s our point; popular doesn’t always mean good.

Our film library is brimming with visionary films that wouldn’t fill a single cinema in Australia for a week – not even a day… but say you searched the world (all of it), you might just find an audience of a thousand for this rare cinematic treat. And we don’t think a thousand people should be ignored just because they happen to live in different time zones or far away from Australia cinemas… if someone needed to make such a precise film, it means that, someone, somewhere needs to watch it. More importantly… that someone might be you. Or Scorsese (he happens to be a member too…)

[Click to continue reading About The Auteurs]

Funkadelic Cosmic Slop Video Promo

swanksalot0 comment

A weirdly wonderful film promo from Funkadelic, circa 1973, found on YouTube. Yes, I would hazard to guess there were a lot of drugs involved.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cp4pgMOugbo

(via @joem500)

from the album of the same name.


“Cosmic Slop” (Funkadelic)

If memory serves, this was the first Parliament/Funkadelic album I bought – a gatefold LP from Westbound Records on heavy, archival vinyl. I even remember where I purchased it: a funky little record store next to Mad Dog and Beans and Les Amis on The Drag near the UT campus in Austin. Sadly, all three of these fine establishments, who have a cameo in the film, Slacker, are defunct, replaced by a Starbucks, a Subway, and a crushing sameness, so common to America in the 21st CE.

John Cale and The Velvet Underground

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“The Velvet Underground & Nico” (The Velvet Underground, Nico)

Like a lot of musical obsessives, The Velvet Underground was essential listening when I first began exploring music.

Jonathan Jones had the good fortune to check out John Cale’s exhibit in the Venice Biennale. Sounds like an interesting exhibit, but of course, The Velvet Underground’s history is always on the agenda:

It sounds at first like an electronic whine, a build-up of noise in the amplifier. Then there’s Lou Reed’s voice, young but hardened: “When the smack begins to flow, and it shoots up the dropper’s neck, and I’m rushing on my run, then I feel just like Jesus’s son.” Behind it all, there’s that strange keening, humming note. Listen to the Velvet Underground’s Heroin on headphones and you realise it’s not feedback after all, not a synthesised warble, but the rich timbre of a violin playing a single note, held for a disturbingly long time. It’s the darkest thing in the darkest of songs. If Reed sounds as if he’s made a pact with the devil, then the musician who plays that buzzing fiddle – John Cale – must be the devil himself.

[From The Velvet Underground’s John Cale on reconnecting with his Welsh roots at the Venice Biennale | Art and design | The Guardian ]

and doesn’t sound like any feel-good reunion between Lou Reed and John Cale will ever occur

Andy Warhol produced the Velvets’ first album and designed its banana peel cover. No figure in modern culture is more misunderstood than the Velvets’ manager, and nobody speaks up for Warhol more eloquently than Cale. He won’t hear a word against Andy. The Factory, he insists, was a true underground – “it was outrageously creative and vital” – and Warhol cared about, and properly curated, the Velvets. A rare bit of footage Warhol shot in the Factory shows Cale fiddling with the amplifier, while Reed strums and drummer Maureen Tucker knocks out her steady, dry beat. Warhol listened carefully, and remembered it all. “He was the one who’d remind us of an idea we’d forgotten.”

Cale is still smarting from what he sees – amazingly – as the tragic waste of the band. Warhol took them to the west coast, he tells me. While they were away, Bob Dylan’s manager took out a lease on their Manhattan venue. This was part of Dylan’s feud with Warhol, whose world is caricatured in lyrics on the 1966 album Highway 61 Revisited. Then Reed sacked Warhol and Cale. A new manager, says Cale, “appealed to Lou’s desire for glory”. In the years since, Reed and Cale have occasionally got back together – but from the furious way he talks, I’d say any further reunion was unlikely.

All through the solo career that followed, Cale has returned again and again to his Welshness. He has recorded Dylan Thomas poems, and in the early 1970s composed a nostalgic Thomas-inspired song, A Child’s Christmas in Wales. And apart from the Thomas obsession, there is a lyricism to his music, one that struggles with his severity and evokes all those years in the Welsh Youth Orchestra.


“Paris 1919” (John Cale)

If you own just one Cale solo album, Paris 1919 is my favorite.

One of John Cale’s very finest solo efforts, Paris 1919 is also among his most accessible records, one which grows in depth and resonance with each successive listen. A consciously literary work – the songs even bear titles like “child’s christmas in wales,” “macbeth,” and “graham greene” – paris 1919 is close in spirit to a collection of short stories; the songs are richly poetic, enigmatic period pieces strongly evocative of their time and place. Chris Thomas’ production is appropriately lush and sweeping, with many tracks set to orchestral accompaniment; indeed, there’s little here to suggest either cale’s noisy, abrasive past or the chaos about to resurface in his subsequent work – for better or worse, his music never achieved a similar beauty again.

Aleksandar Hemon On Chicago Places That Inspired Love and Obstacles

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Note: I lived in Ukrainian Village from 1994-19961, and Rainbo Room was one of my hang-outs as well.


“Love and Obstacles” (Aleksandar Hemon)

Nelson Algren Avenue

Aleksandar Hemon was visiting a friend in the Ukrainian Village section of Chicago in 1992 when war broke out in his hometown of Sarajevo. He extended his visit, eventually settling into an apartment nearby. “The area was completely devoid of glamour, and that suited me at the time,” the 45-year-old author says. “There was a war going on at home and my life was as far from glamorous as can be.” It was in Chicago that Mr. Hemon learned how to write in English, and he still lives there (in the Edgewater area). His 2008 novel “The Lazarus Project” was nominated for a National Book Award. His new collection of short stories “Love and Obstacles” centers on an unnamed narrator who moved from Sarajevo to Chicago in 1992. Mr. Hemon annotated a map of key places in his adopted city that influenced or inspired his fiction.

…

4. Rainbo Club at Damen and Division

In “Szmura’s Room,” Szmura and Bogdan go for a drink to this cult bar, which is perpetually going in and out of hipness. In the early ’90s it was one of those cool semidumps, before the neighborhood was despoiled by sushi bars and boutiques where falsely damaged clothes are sold, before studied negligence became fashionable. Nelson Algren used to drink there and brought along Simone de Beauvoir with whom he was having a famous affair. The locals fondly remembered her as Simon the Beaver.

[Click to continue reading Aleksandar Hemon On Places That Inspired ‘Love and Obstacles’ – WSJ.com]

[Non-WSJ subscribers use this link]

Rainbo Club

The book looks like a worthy addition to one’s library:

Aleksandar Hemon earned his reputation— and his MacArthur “genius grant”—for his short stories, and he returns to the form with a powerful collection of linked stories that stands with The Lazarus Project as the best work of his celebrated career. A few of the stories have never been published before; the others have appeared in The New Yorker, and several of those have also been included in The Best American Short Stories. All are infused with the dazzling, astonishingly creative prose and the remarkable, haunting autobiographical elements that have distinguished Hemon as one of the most original and illustrious voices of our time.

What links the stories in Love and Obstacles is the narrator, a young man who—like Hemon himself—was raised in Yugoslavia and immigrated to the United States. The stories of Love and Obstacles are about that coming of age and the complications—the obstacles—of growing up in a Communist but cosmopolitan country, and the disintegration of that country and the consequent uprooting and move to America in young adulthood. But because it’s Aleksandar Hemon, the stories extend far beyond the immigrant experience; each one is punctuated with unexpected humor and spins out in fabulist, exhilarating directions, ultimately building to an insightful, often heartbreaking conclusion. Woven together, these stories comprise a book that is, genuinely, as cohesive and powerful as any fiction— achingly human, charming, and inviting.

Footnotes:
  1. give or take [↩]

And You Shall Know Us By The Trail of Our Vinyl

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“And You Shall Know Us by the Trail of Our Vinyl: The Jewish Past as Told by the Records We Have Loved and Lost” (Roger Bennett, Josh Kun)

Ha, what a great idea for a book. I want to go to this, though $15 a person seems a little expensive.

An affinity for kitschy album covers became a quest as Josh Kun and Roger Bennett scoured attics and garage sales to collect once-loved gems. In Jewish recordings from the 1940s-1980s they discovered sacred songs, Jewish mambo, comedy, folk tunes, and the “holy trilogy” of Neil, Barbra, and Barry. Their book includes commentary from writers and performers including Aimee Bender, Michael Wex, Shalom Auslander, Sandra Bernhard, Motown legend Lamont Dozier, and TV pioneer Norman Lear. With music and visual images, Josh Kun will share how these recordings speak across generations to tell a vibrant tale of Jews in America.

[From Spertus | Author Event | Booksigning]


“Hot August Night (Remastered / Expanded) (2CD)” (Neil Diamond)

The Amazon blurb says:

What started out as a mutual affinity for kitschy Jewish album covers–think Neil Diamond baring his chest hair on the cover of Hot August Night or Barbra Streisand in hot pants on the cover of Streisand Superman–soon became a quest for identity, history, and culture between the grooves of LPs.

Together, Roger Bennett and Josh Kun embarked on a thrilling journey, scouring the world to collect thousands of vinyl LPs from attics, garage sales, and dusty archives. Pieced together, these scratched, once-loved and now-forgotten audio gems tell a vibrant tale: the story of Jews in America. And You Shall Know Us by the Trail of Our Vinyl spans the history of Jewish recorded music from the 1940s to the 1980s, weaving an account that begins with sacred songs and ends with the holy trinity of Neil, Barbra, and Barry. The LPs found here are also a love letter to forgotten moments in Jewish American pop history, celebrating well-dressed cantors singing Christmas tunes, Long Island suburbanites dancing the mambo, and Chassidic prog-rockers.

The music, much of which is no longer available in any format, is brought to life through commentary from writers Aimee Bender, Etgar Keret, Michael Wex, and Shalom Auslander; performers Sandra Bernhard and Motown legend Lamont Dozier; music critics Oliver Wang and Anne Powers; and TV pioneer Norman Lear. A gateway to a forgotten kingdom of sound, the good, the bad, and the ugly of Jewish vinyl gives this aspect of Jewish culture the attention it so richly deserves.


“Streisand Superman” (Barbra Streisand)

Luck of the Draw Book Cover

Seth Anderson11 Comments

Crime Scene

Sold this image1 to St. Martin’s Press to be used as a book cover for a forthcoming murder mystery by Anthony J Cardieri. Hard cover, print run of less than 10,000, scheduled to be released by the end of the year, but I’m still fairly pleased. Received my check today2, on my birthday, so am less maudlin than normal for a birth day.

here is the preliminary mock-up of the cover, which looks like what Amazon.com has listed as well:


“Luck of the Draw: A Crime Novel” (Anthony J. Cardieri)

When Detective Deke Durgess finds himself at the scene of a brutal murder in Lower Manhattan, he has no idea that it’s just the beginning of the most prolific murder spree in New York City history, one where entire families will be wiped out by a vicious killer dubbed The Daily Killer.

The murders are being meticulously committed, with no forensic evidence left behind except for the killer’s callous calling card, a short note left on the body of the victim. The mayor and police commissioner are coming down hard on Deke to make progress, but Deke and his team of detectives and FBI agents are at a standstill until a series of events, and one misstep by the killer, leads them toward cracking the code in the victim selection pro – cess. Believing he knows where the killer will strike next, Deke sets up a sting operation, only to be slapped back down as the killer turns the tables on him, forcing the police department to take a good hard look at its own finest.

Anthony J. Cardieri’s first crime novel is an adrenaline-charged ride through the streets of New York.

About the Author

ANTHONY J. CARDIERI has worked for the city of New York for the past 18 years and currently serves as District Superintendent in the Department of Sanitation. He lives with his wife and three young children in New York City.

Buy a copy! Support the arts! Whoo hoo!!

Footnotes:
  1. the image was of an actual murder that took place about a block from my apartment [↩]
  2. $800, if you are curious [↩]

Bob on Obama

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“Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance” (Barack Obama)

Bob liked Barack Obama’s book enough to support him in 2008.

Bill Flanagan: In that song Chicago After Dark were you thinking about the new President?

Bob Dylan: Not really. It’s more about State Street and the wind off Lake Michigan and how sometimes we know people and we are no longer what we used to be to them. I was trying to go with some old time feeling that I had.

BF: You liked Barack Obama early on. Why was that?

BD: I’d read his book and it intrigued me.

BF: Audacity of Hope?

BD: No it was called Dreams of My Father.

BF: What struck you about him?

BD: Well, a number of things. He’s got an interesting background. He’s like a fictional character, but he’s real. First off, his mother was a Kansas girl. Never lived in Kansas though, but with deep roots. You know, like Kansas bloody Kansas. John Brown the insurrectionist. Jesse James and Quantrill. Bushwhackers, Guerillas. Wizard of Oz Kansas. I think Barack has Jefferson Davis back there in his ancestry someplace. And then his father. An African intellectual. Bantu, Masai, Griot type heritage – cattle raiders, lion killers. I mean it’s just so incongruous that these two people would meet and fall in love. You kind of get past that though. And then you’re into his story. Like an odyssey except in reverse.

BF: In what way?

BD: First of all, Barack is born in Hawaii. Most of us think of Hawaii as paradise – so I guess you could say that he was born in paradise.

BF: And he was thrown out of the garden.

BD: Not exactly. His mom married some other guy named Lolo and then took Barack to Indonesia to live. Barack went to both a Muslim school and a Catholic school. His mom used to get up at 4:00 in the morning and teach him book lessons three hours before he even went to school. And then she would go to work. That tells you the type of woman she was. That’s just in the beginning of the story.

BF: What else did you find compelling about him?

BD: Well, mainly his take on things. His writing style hits you on more than one level. It makes you feel and think at the same time and that is hard to do. He says profoundly outrageous things. He’s looking at a shrunken head inside of a glass case in some museum with a bunch of other people and he’s wondering if any of these people realize that they could be looking at one of their ancestors.

[Click to continue reading Bob Dylan on Barack Obama, Ulysses Grant and American Civil War ghosts ]

One of these days I’ll read the President’s books.

Jimi Hendrix reality TV footage to be released by his estate

Seth Anderson2 Comments


“The Jimi Hendrix Experience” (The Jimi Hendrix Experience, Jimi Hendrix)

I’d watch that, if it isn’t horrible.

Candid, “reality TV”-style footage of Jimi Hendrix at home, backstage and “hanging out” will soon be released, according to the late musician’s sister.

The footage dates from 1969, when a camera crew followed Hendrix for a month, catching him both on and off stage. The Hendrix estate will release the footage in a DVD later this year, as part of a new deal with Universal Music Publishing Group.

[Click to continue reading Jimi Hendrix ‘reality TV’ footage to be released by his estate | Music | guardian.co.uk ]

and I wonder why the Hendrix estate is blocking the making of a bio-pic? Are they working on their own? or what?

Experience Hendrix have “10 more years of Hendrix music” in their archives, according to Janie. “Currently I am in the studio transferring tapes of Band of Gypsys performances that have never been released before,” she said, referring to Hendrix’s final band. The company plans to release at least two albums this year, and a Jimi Hendrix Experience concert DVD of the band’s Royal Albert Hall gig in February 1969.

The Hendrix estate has continued to block attempts to make a Jimi Hendrix biopic, most recently refusing to license any music to a proposed film starring Outkast’s Andre 3000.


“Electric Ladyland (w/dvd)” (Jimi Hendrix)

plus there is this:

Fourteen acoustic demo songs by Hendrix, recorded in 1968 and traded to a neighbour in exchange for milk and sugar, are to be auctioned in April. The battered, coffee-stained green box contains 1,800ft of quarter-inch tape, from when Hendrix was working on his third album, Electric Ladyland.

The songs mostly feature Hendrix playing solo acoustic guitar. Though he covers Dylan, he plays Tears of Rage and not the now-classic All Along the Watchtower, which appeared on Electric Ladyland. A few tracks include an unnamed harmonica player.

Hendrix gave the tape to Carl Niekirk, who owned a photography studio beneath the rocker’s Brook Street, London flat. “It was a constant stream of people coming and going and partying,” Niekirk told the Independent. As the flat and studio shared an entrance, the photographer would often have to let in Hendrix or his guests – including George Harrison.

One day, Hendrix asked Niekirk if he could borrow some sugar. When the photographer took it up, the rock star gave him the tape. “Because I asked him, he just gave it to me,” Niekirk said. “As simple as that.”

[From Jimi Hendrix’s acoustic Electric Ladyland demo tape to be auctioned | Music | guardian.co.uk ]

which took decades of legal wrangling before it could be released

More Satchmo

Seth Anderson0 comment

More Satchmo is a good thing, an essential thing, in fact.

After virtually inventing the lexicon for jazz soloists with his epochal Hot Five and Hot Seven recordings, Louis Armstrong set up shop at Decca Records in the mid-thirties. The Armstrong Deccas have not fared as well as their forebears, having been knocked about on compilations of dubious legality and dogged by various aspersions—mainly, that Armstrong had become a puppet for his manager Joe Glaser, who had turned Armstrong into a happy-go-lucky song-and-dance man ready to ham it up on cue.

     But as “The Complete Louis Armstrong Decca Sessions, 1935-1946” (Mosaic Records) attests, Armstrong wasn’t one to be intimidated by his past. The corking take on “Struttin’ with Some Barbecue” makes the Okeh version seem positively weak-kneed, with Armstrong’s big band ripping through the breaks. Armstrong the vocalist is arguably at his apex here, and it was through his vocalizations that Armstrong’s chamber jazz took on a second life as pure pop manna. “On the Sunny Side of the Street” is a glorious hybrid: a mix of Stephen Foster-esque Americana and unprecedented vocal inflections that must have pricked up the ears of Elvis Presley and Bob Dylan. The Decca sessions even venture into hardcore R. & B. terrain, once the drummer “Big” Sid Catlett turns up. A fleeting discographical presence over his career, Catlett was at his best with Armstrong, his offbeat accents on “Baby Won’t You Please Come Home” presaging soul’s infatuation with syncopation.

[From More Satchmo: Recordings: The New Yorker]

Looking forward to my copy of this, once the CD becomes available.

Org Porn

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“Everything (almost) In Its Place: Control Chaos, Conquer Clutter, and Get Organized the Buttoned Up Way” (Alicia Rockmore, Sarah Welch)

Amusing.

Negative self-image. Fantasy-induced over-spending. Marital tension. A new kind of airbrushed fantasy-land is wreaking havoc on our homes and our psyches: org porn. “Org porn is that glossy, airbrushed fantasy world where everything is pristine, serene and perfectly in order, sort of Playboy, but with chore charts and name-plated cubbyholes,” said Sarah Welch. “It’s everywhere you look these days: in magazines, coffee table books, advertisements, and TV shows. And when consumed in excess, it can lead to feelings of inadequacy, binge spending on organizational products, and even marital discord.” The authors [ Alicia Rockmore and Sarah Welch] have interviewed hundreds of women on the topic of organization and an astounding 80% of them feel they fall well short of the mark when it comes to getting organized.

“Don’t get us wrong, gazing at beautiful images of meticulously organized rooms, perfectly displayed collections, color-coordinated closets, flawless family schedules, pristine kitchens, tidy mud rooms, and picture-perfect work spaces can be titillating — even meditative. There’s a reason we call it ‘org porn,'” said Alicia Rockmore. “But when they become the primary yardstick by which you measure your own general state of organization is when it becomes unhealthy. An airbrushed land of perfect organization cannot be sustained in this messy, unpredictable world called real life.”

Chasing perfection fuels something the authors call “organizational inertia,” a type of paralysis that makes it virtually impossible to get started. Nearly every woman surveyed for Everything (Almost) In Its Place agreed that the most difficult part of getting organized was knowing where to start. If perfection is the objective, that paralysis makes sense. Keeping your house, work and schedule magazine-ready requires a superhuman effort to achieve and constant, superhuman vigilance to maintain. The goal of getting organized isn’t necessarily to have everything picture-perfect, but rather to eliminate inefficiency, so that you have more time to do what you actually want to do.

[From Are Women Addicted To Org Porn? ]

Anyone who has visited my home or office knows that I am not addicted to organization, unless absence of organization is sign of addiction too. Clutter is Us could be our motto. Luckily, finding bits of information is relatively easy when the information has been digitized, so life has gotten better in that regard. Digital music has been a boon as well, actually. Finding the right album was more difficult when I had to flip through stacks of vinyl. Now if I could only figure out how to digitize my refrigerator…

New Bob Dylan Record Imminent

Seth Anderson1 Comment


“Tell Tale Signs: The Bootleg Series Vol. 8 (Deluxe)” (Bob Dylan)

Bob Dylan -Together Through Life album cover

New Bob Dylan record imminent, untitled as of yet1

I’m listening to Billy Joe Shaver/And I’m reading James Joyce/Some people tell me I got the blood of the land in my voice, Bob Dylan sings in a leathery growl, capturing the essence of his forthcoming studio album — raw-country love songs, sly wordplay and the wounded state of the nation — in “I Feel a Change Coming On,” one of the record’s 10 new originals.

Set for late April, the as-yet-untitled album arrives a few months after Dylan’s outtakes collection Tell Tale Signs, and it “came as a surprise,” says a source close to Dylan’s camp. Last year, filmmaker Olivier Dahan, who directed the 2007 Edith Piaf biopic, La Vie en Rose, approached Dylan about writing a song for his next feature. Dylan responded with “Life Is Hard,” a bleak ballad with mandolin, pedal steel and him singing in a dark, clear voice, “The evening winds are still /I’ve lost the way and will.” (The song appears in the film My Own Love Song, starring Renée Zellweger.)

[Click for more details about Dylan Records Surprise ‘Modern Times’ Follow-up : Rolling Stone]

I’m sure every music critic will rave about the album soon enough, regardless if it is any good or not. And I’m sure I’ll buy it as soon as it is available, regardless if the album is a spicy Texas border-town musical pozole like a second coming of Doug Sahm or just wheezy accordion tunes played by somnambulists.


“Modern Times (Special Limited Edition)” (Bob Dylan)

His Bobness says the album will be “in the spirit” of classic Chess and Sun Records, and different than Modern Times:

The new record’s very different from Modern Times which was a number one hit. It seems like every time you have a big hit, the next time out you change things around. Why don’t you try to milk it a little bit?

I think we milked it all we could on that last record and then some. We squeezed the cow dry. All the Modern Times songs were written and performed in the widest range possible so they had a little bit of everything. These new songs have more of a romantic edge.

How so?

These songs don’t need to cover the same ground. The songs on Modern Times songs brought my repertoire up to date, and the light was directed in a certain way. You have to have somebody in mind as an audience otherwise there’s no point.

What do you mean by that?

There didn’t seem to be any general consensus among my listeners. Some people preferred my first period songs. Some, the second. Some, the Christian period. Some, the post Colombian. Some, the Pre-Raphaelite. Some people prefer my songs from the nineties. I see that my audience now doesn’t particular care what period the songs are from. They feel style and substance in a more visceral way and let it go at that. Images don’t hang anybody up. Like if there’s an astrologer with a criminal record in one of my songs it’s not going to make anybody wonder if the human race is doomed. Images are taken at face value and it kind of freed me up.

Footnotes:
  1. update: according to bobdylan.com, might be called, “Together Through Life” Still seems a bit cryptic, which translates as – might have a name change [↩]

Monk with mikes: A jazz history

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“The Thelonious Monk Orchestra at Town Hall” (Thelonious Monk)

On the short list of American musical geniuses, Thelonious Sphere Monk is certainly included.

The cardboard boxes are everywhere, stacked almost to the ceiling, in the Manhattan loft where W. Eugene Smith, the renowned American photojournalist, once shared living space with Hall Overton, an obscure composer and pianist. Inside the boxes are wigs, maybe thousands, the inventory of a Chinese business that now holds the lease. Nothing about this nondescript building in the flower district betrays its decade-long history as a bustling clubhouse for the jazz scene, beginning in the mid-1950s.

So it takes some effort to picture Thelonious Monk, one of jazz’s great composers, pacing these floorboards early in 1959 as he prepares for his momentous large-group debut at Town Hall, which would help lay the groundwork for a career beyond clubs. It takes imagination to place him and Overton at a pair of upright pianos, hashing out chord voicings for one after another of his songs. But these things did happen; that much we know from an extraordinary cache of tape recordings made by Smith, who had wired most of the building with microphones.

The Monk-and-Overton tapes account for just a fragment of some 3,000 hours of material amassed by Smith from 1957 to ’65. Because of the light they shed on both musicians, their value is inestimable. Monk, famous for his cryptic silence and cavalier methods, comes across as exacting, lucid, even voluble — an eccentric genius, yes, but also a diligent one. Overton, enlisted to orchestrate Monk’s knotty compositions, is revealed as a patient amanuensis and a brilliant foil.

“What’s obvious is their mutual respect, and the extent of their precision,” said the pianist Jason Moran, 34. “It’s crazy to hear how specific everything was.”

Moran is among a handful of people to have listened to the loft recordings at Duke University’s Center for Documentary Studies, which is in the process of cataloguing all of Smith’s tapes. On Friday, as part of a 50th anniversary celebration of the Town Hall concert, Moran will perform a postmodern tribute, complete with excerpts from the tapes. Together with a concert on Thursday — a more literal re-enactment led by the trumpeter Charles Tolliver, which will be broadcast live on WNYC-FM in New York — it’s among the more anticipated jazz events of this year.

[Click to continue reading Home life with mikes: A jazz history – International Herald Tribune]

I assume these recordings will find their way to a box set at your local jazz store: I know I’ll be anticipating listening to them.


“Complete Prestige Recordings” (Thelonious Monk)

Godz I love the Pogues

Seth Anderson0 comment

Broke down and replaced my original five classic Pogues albums1 with the reissues put out by Rhino, circa 2004. Whoa, what a difference. The bonus tracks are nice, pleasant additions to the oeuvre, but the sound quality of the songs I know so well is the real notable difference. The original discs sound was quite muddy, the Rhino reissues are much, much brighter, and individual instruments are discernible. Whoo hoo! Thanks, Rhino.


“Red Roses for Me” (The Pogues)


“Rum Sodomy & the Lash” (The Pogues)


“If I Should Fall from Grace with God” (The Pogues)


“Peace and Love” (The Pogues)


“Hell’s Ditch” (The Pogues)

Awesome. The Pogues have been in my personal musical pantheon since I picked up a vinyl copy of If I Should Fall From Grace From God, and referred to it as, “If I Should Fall From God With Grace” in public, building that title into a poem, lost to the ages. Blame the inebriants. I turned out to have picked up on a wavelength that paralleled my own predilections: literate, punky folk with an Irish bent. This is not trad Irish, this is not Radio Clash, this is The Pogues. How can you go wrong with a band who originally titled themselves Pogue Mahone which translates from Gaelic to “Kiss my arse”…

In retrospect, If I Should Fall was The Pogues last great album, but there are good songs on both the releases that followed (Peace and Love and Hell’s Ditch). I wore the grooves out, playing these albums again and again, slurping beer, whiskey and wine.

Of their other great album, Rum, Sodomy & The Lash, I’m copping Mark Deming’s review because I’m feeling suddenly reticent:

“I saw my task… was to capture them in their delapidated glory before some more professional producer f—ked them up,” Elvis Costello wrote of his role behind the controls for the Pogues’ second album, Rum Sodomy & the Lash. One spin of the album proves that Costello accomplished his mission; this album captures all the sweat, fire, and angry joy that was lost in the thin, disembodied recording of the band’s debut, and the Pogues sound stronger and tighter without losing a bit of their edge in the process. Rum Sodomy & the Lash also found Shane MacGowan growing steadily as a songwriter; while the debut had its moments, the blazing and bitter roar of the opening track, “The Sick Bed Of Cuchulainn,” made it clear MacGowan had fused the intelligent anger of punk and the sly storytelling of Irish folk as no one had before, and the rent boys’ serenade of “The Old Main Drag” and the dazzling, drunken character sketch of “A Pair of Brown Eyes” proved there were plenty of directions where he could take his gifts. And like any good folk group, the Pogues also had a great ear for other people’s songs. Bassist Cait O’Riordan’s haunting performance of “I’m a Man You Don’t Meet Every Day” is simply superb (it must have especially impressed Costello, who would later marry her), and while Shane MacGowan may not have written “Dirty Old Town” or “And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda,” his wrought, emotionally compelling vocals made them his from then on. Rum Sodomy & the Lash falls just a bit short of being the Pogues best album, but was the first one to prove that they were a great band, and not just a great idea for a band.

Too bad I never saw them perform live in their glory, the one time I had tickets (at the late, lamented Liberty Lunch in Austin), I got too drunk on Bushmills, and slept past the festivities.

The liner notes of the reissues contain poems and essays by friends of the band like Steve Earle and Tom Waits, and description of how Alex Cox, recent auteur of Repo Man, volunteered to make a music video of “A Pair of Brown Eyes“, seen here sans audio track due to “copyright complaint” or some such bullshit. A shame, as this is an excellent little film.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jxz15nGkzAA

Can you tell I’ve tippled?
Continue reading “Godz I love the Pogues”

Footnotes:
  1. triggered by a realization that the only version of a Pogues song played in the police wake in The Wire Season Three – Body of an American – in my music library was not an high quality MP3, but rather a Napster-era download. Talk about crappy sound… [↩]

Troubadour : K’naan

Seth Anderson1 Comment


“Troubadour” (K’naan)

Never heard of this artist, but sounds interesting enough to check out.

Barry Walters of Rolling Stone writes:

Somalia-raised, Toronto-based rapper K’naan thinks like Bob Marley, flows like Eminem and mixes African music with conscious hip-hop, unabashed pop and even metal. The results are usually catchy and interesting: On “ABC’s,” K’naan contrasts North American gangster fantasies with his war-torn childhood, trading verses with old-school MC Chubb Rock, and then rocks out with Metallica guitarist Kirk Hammett on “If Rap Gets Jealous.” Over the timely upbeat funk of “Dreamer,” he sees the utopia of John Lennon’s “Imagine” through a hip-hop lens: Troubadour is K’naan’s unique vision made real.

[From Troubadour : K’naan : Review : Rolling Stone]

Amazon’s blurb:

The name alone conjures up images of unbridled destruction, merciless warlords and ruthless terror. A place where nobody–children, the elderly, religious figures–is safe from the atrocities of war, and where the idea of “childhood,” where 8-year olds handle AK-47s like toys, exists in chronological terms alone. When Forbes magazine recently unveiled their “Most Dangerous Destinations,” Somalia–above Iraq and Afghanistan–topped the list. But it’s also “The Nation of Poets,” where a poem can both inspire peace and end wars. Where every weekend, regardless of the climate, one can find a play or concert at a local theatre.

Growing up, it was both of these Somalias that informed musician/emcee K’naan Warsame, whose sophomore album, Troubadour, is released this February. The grandson of Haji Mohamed, one of Somalia’s most famous poets, and nephew of famed Somali singer Magool, the emcee is creating his own musical path through reggae, funk, pop, soul and, above all, hip-hop.

Recorded primarily in Kingston, Jamaica, at the legendary Tuff Gong studios and Bob Marley’s home studio, Troubadour is a hip-hop album like no other. With contributions by Damian Marley, Mos Def, Chubb Rock, Vernon Reid, and Adam Levine (Maroon 5), K’naan successfully blends samples and live instrumentation for a sound that’s rooted in both traditional African melodies and the classic hip-hop tradition.

It would be easy to brand K’naan with the “political rapper” tag. But that’d be both easy and disingenuous. K’naan’s lyrics lie in stark contrast to emcees that use their medium as a pulpit to promote their beliefs. “My job is to write just what I see / So a visual stenographer is who I be,” he rhymes in “I Come Prepared.” Doubtless, K’naan is not without his opinions, but songwriting always comes before sermons.

On Troubadour, events like these don’t need to be glorified or exaggerated for the sake of art. “I think there are some people that are struggling in ‘hoods [in Canada and America], but it is so much harder and so much more violent [in Somalia],” says K’naan. “If you want to be like, ‘I’m from the hood. We got it rough. We got gats,’ I think you should know the alternative exists. I’m speaking in the same language of hip-hop which decidedly speaks about rough neighborhoods. So if there is a place for rough neighborhoods, then here comes the Mother of Rough Neighborhoods.”

Troubadour represents the sum of these experiences and more. Having spent the better part of the last two years on the road, soaking in everything from Bob Dylan to Fela Kuti to Talib Kweli, K’naan here releases the sonic document of an artist who has a lot to share now, but clearly a lot more to come. For anyone who’s said that hip-hop has nothing left to say, Troubadour proves that it all depends on where you look.

Good stuff