My Ghetto

Duality of self, separation from wholeness.

2010-06-22T00:51:00.002-04:00

I've been listening to Underoath for the better part of a decade now, and while it sometimes surprises me that I continue to play their records so frequently, all I have to do is listen to them again to realize why that is. Their music speaks to me on a deep level that most other musicians have been unable to reach. I'm still not at a point where I will tell people that they are one of my favorite bands, but in real terms, I probably play their records more often than those of the bands I do claim as favorites. This feels strange to me, for a variety of reasons. For one, as an agnostic with tendencies towards atheism, it's odd to feel such a deep connection to the music of an openly Christian band who regularly make reference to their religion in their lyrics. Furthermore, Underoath are generally regarded as music for teenagers who shop at Hot Topic. Their music is not regarded as serious, and the emotion that fuels it is seen as immature. The genres in which they can most easily be filed--metalcore, emo, screamo--are also seen as insubstantial; rockcrit types write them off as insubstantial, commercial in that they appeal to superficially rebellious teens who, again, will outgrow them by the time they're out of college.

And yet, for all that, I cannot help but love Underoath. The standard state of my emotions is also lumped into that immature teenaged pigeonhole, regardless of the fact that I'm in my mid-30s; our society's discussion of such things has no way of dealing with emotional problems that carry past adolescence besides labeling them as arrested development, which is a fact that I consider a failure on society's part. There absolutely is validity in the idea of emotional struggles continuing well into adulthood, and being part of our lives for most if not all of the time we're alive. I think maybe it even helps that Underoath are Christian; within a religious framework, they are given much more freedom to discuss issues like this openly and without risk of condemnation. In fact, I see Underoath's mindset as particularly advanced in light of the typical Christian mentality in America. Where a lot of American Christians follow the hard-right political party line of evangelical Christianity, buying into an idea of spiritual materialism that seems explicitly opposed to the teachings of Jesus Christ, Underoath have openly advocated for liberal political positions. Vocalist Spencer Chamberlain has also talked in interviews about his struggles with drug abuse and mental illness. That's probably why I've seen myself in so many of the songs they've written; their album Define The Great Line was a concept album about struggling with suicidal impulses, and finding the hope and the will to turn away from those thoughts and believe that life was worth living. This sort of doubt and struggle is something that mainline American Christianity usually has no room for. You won't find most religious figures admitting to any sort of doubt--they're all about their solid, unshakable faith. Underoath are a band who manage to straddle the line between religion and humanity, between faith and doubt, and when they speak from that position, the things they say and the emotions they express are ones that I relate to.

Their most recent album, Lost In The Sound Of Separation, has been harder for me to connect with than the two that came before. They're Only Chasing Safety was the first album to feature Spencer Chamberlain on vocals, and the first one that I really loved. Previously, with Dallas Taylor still on vocals, they'd done an album called The Changing Of Times, which featured one song I'd really liked, "While The Sun Sleeps." On that song, drummer Aaron Gillespie did some melodic vocals which, when contrasted with Taylor's screaming vocals, sounded pretty great to me. I loved the way they mixed melody with heaviness on that song. When the rest of the album was much more straightforward in its heaviness, though, I couldn't find as much to get into. The introduction of Chamberlain into the band on They're Only Chasing Safety really helped, though. Once Chamberlain was in the band, he and Gillespie traded off on vocals more often than not, and all of the songs focused equally on melody and heaviness. Sometimes it seemed a little silly for the band's drummer to sing quite as much as he did on that album, leaving the actual singer with little to do, but a more equitable balance was achieved on Define The Great Line. That, coupled with lyrical topics that reached me on a deep level, made it my favorite Underoath album thus far.

Lost In The Sound Of Separation had a lot to live up to, and while I was very excited for it, and rushed right out to buy it, I was always prepared for it to be a letdown. I liked it when I got it, so it wasn't a total disappointment, but when compared to the two previous albums, I found it a bit harder to get into. For that reason, once I got over the novelty of a new Underoath album, I put it aside, and went back to spending a lot more time with They're Only Chasing Safety and Define The Great Line. Even though I certainly liked it, I don't think I ever connected with Lost In The Sound Of Separation the way I had connected with those two. When I was playing Underoath this moring, it was They're Only Chasing Safety that I put on. But tonight, I thought about how long it had been since I played Lost In The Sound Of Separation and decided to give it a listen again. And tonight, I heard a few things in it that I'd never heard before--things that helped me find a way into an album that had previously been somewhat of a mystery.

The Changing Of Times was the first Underoath album that attempted to introduce melody into their sound. The focus was generally on heaviness, though, and the album suffered as a result. Lost In The Sound Of Separation is the heaviest, least melodic Underoath album since The Changing Of Times, but it would be inaccurate to say that it suffers. Five years ago, it seemed that their songs were effective in direct proportion to how melodic they were. In the intervening time, though, Underoath have learned to make their heavy parts just as interesting as their melodies, perhaps because, with the focus on heaviness decreased, they had to make those parts count. The result is that when, on Lost In The Sound, they decided to focus more energy on being heavy, they were able to apply lessons they learned in the interim, and make the songs better than they would have been in 2003.

That said, the melodies were the most accessible elements of Underoath's songwriting on the previous albums featuring Chamberlain on vocals. Whenever a chorus came around, Gillespie would take the vocal lead, with Chamberlain reduced to occasional screams as counterpoint, or punctuation. Those choruses were the payoff to the buildup in momentum generated by the heavy riffs. On Lost In The Sound, the choruses are often just as heavy as the verses. In fact, there are songs here on which Chamberlain's screams are the only vocals. Opener "Breathing In A New Mentality" is one of these, and while terms like "emo" are frequently used to describe Underoath, there's nothing emo about this song. This is straight up metallic hardcore. As previously mentioned, Underoath have learned to use heavy parts to build tension and increase momentum. On this song, though, they are not building towards a melodic chorus. Instead, the buildup, which is fed throughout the first half of the song by a fast hardcore drumbeat and Chamberlain's howling vocals, is leading up to a neck-snapping mosh breakdown that hits 90 seconds into the album. The riff chugs in fits and starts, seeming more appropriate for desperate flailing than anything as structured as the sort of fist-swinging martial arts moves that dominate the mosh pits at the kind of shows Underoath play. That desperate flailing is there in Chamberlain's lyrics too: "Oh God, my hands are shaking again," he screams, ordering himself to "calm down" as he narrates his panic: "I can't feel the floor, and my vision takes its toll on me. There must be some kind of mistake." This sounds like the narrative of a drug trip gone wrong, and considering what Chamberlain has revealed about his struggles with addiction, there's good reason to interpret this song that way. As it ends, he attempts to give himself a pep talk ("They say I'll never change--I'll prove them wrong"), but ends up on the floor, begging for mercy: "Clean me up, show me how to live. Let me start again."

Without pause, the band slams into the second song, which is given a long and thought-provoking title: "Anyone Can Dig A Hole But It Takes A Real Man To Call It Home." In light of the way the song starts, it's impossible to take this title as anything but sarcasm. "I'm no leader, I'm just a mess," Chamberlain screams as the band blasts through an uptempo hardcore riff. "That's not the way it's supposed to be, but it's the way it is." It's not clear what he's blaming himself for here, but there's obviously blame being placed as he ends the first verse with the line, "I've led us all astray again," then screams "Oh, how the plot thickens!" over a guitar lead that flows into the next riff. The lines he sings on the next verse strike me as particularly poignant: "We always assume the worst. I'm afraid no one's listening anymore." This is a feeling I know all too well. And the song continues in this vein for its entire first half until, at the end of the second verse, Chamberlain screams, "I should have been gone so long ago." At this point, the music drops back into a quiet, pensive lull for the first time on the entire album. Aaron Gillespie is still keeping time on his drum kit, tapping the rims of his snare and floor tom, but other than some feedback and volume swells from one of the guitarists, this is all we hear for about 10 seconds. And then, for the first time on the album, he begins to sing.

On previous Underoath albums, Gillespie and Chamberlain's vocal parts were so evenly balanced that they generally just finished each other's sentences and combined in other ways to sing a unified vocal narrative. They still do this most of the time on Lost In The Sound Of Separation, but with Gillespie's vocals appearing less often, it opens the door for his vocal parts to take a different role. On "Any Man Could Dig A Hole," his voice seems to represent a different point of view than is expressed by Chamberlain. It's tempting, in light of the Christian slant of Underoath's lyrics, to see Gillespie as the voice of god (in the same way that Dan Hoerner's backing vocals on Sunny Day Real Estate's "Song About An Angel" represent the voice of god speaking to lead vocalist Jeremy Enigk's human character), but the lyrics don't support this interpretation. Gillespie is here representing another side of the same character that Chamberlain is playing--and if Chamberlain is singing from his own point of view, then Gillespie is the positive voice in the back of his mind, providing counterpoint to the panicked doomsaying that is running things up front.

Gillespie's vocals begin during the quiet drum break halfway through "Any Man Could Dig A Hole," and while this is probably a trick done in post-production, it sounds like he's singing from the back of the room in which the band is playing, and his voice is being picked up by the mics on his drums. "I can't get away from it all," he sings, his voice echoing through the airspace taken up by the song. "I messed up like I always do." And suddenly, the entire band is playing again, and Gillespie's voice has jumped to the forefront of the mix. "I gave you nothing, I took you nowhere, but you're still listening." Of course, this is a prayer. And yet, for an agnostic like myself, it seems like something else entirely. If Chamberlain's vocal in the first half of the song is self-flagellation, a desperate plea for forgiveness, Gillespie's vocal here is a recognition that, regardless of whether he deserves it, he still has the love and support of his friends. I've been struggling a lot lately with an inability to be the best friend I can be; I haven't been there for people, and when I am around, I feel like a drain on the energy of everyone in the room with me. Social interactions are hard for me at the best of times, and lately, I feel so desperately lonely and unable to connect with other people that, when I do get around other people, I find myself taking actions to alienate them and embarrass myself. Sometimes it is truly incredible to realize that my good friends still love me, still want me around, even in spite of how hard I can be to deal with. What Gillespie is expressing here is something I feel quite often, even though I can be terrible at expressing it.

The "separation" of this album's title is clearly a reference to separation from god, from a completeness and perfection that humanity keeps from all of us. To someone who believes in the Christian religion, this perfection is something that they hope to achieve after death, but will by definition prove to be elusive in life. And yet, they feel they must always try to be a good person, to get as close as they can to living a perfect life, so that they can be worthy of god's love and respect. I don't know about any conception of god, but for me, this struggle is reflected in my struggle to be worthy of my own love and respect. My ideas of what's right, what's good, and how I should be living all shift and change constantly, but I'm always trying to be as close to them as possible. And again, because I am human, I know I can't ever fully get there. In this way, I feel a kinship with the struggles of Christians, even if I don't believe in their god. And Underoath spend much of this album attempting to capture the duality of the human condition, the distance between perfect ideal and imperfect reality.

One of the most interesting ways in which they focus on this separation has nothing to do with lyrics. "Emergency Broadcast: The End Is Near" is the first Underoath song that I've ever heard that can only be fully understood when heard through headphones. Aaron Gillespie's drums are separated into two tracks and panned to the extreme left and right of the stereo mix; it sounds like there might be two different drum parts being played, but at first, you can't really be sure. It might just be a post-production effect. But as the song goes on--and it is the longest song on the album, nearly six minutes in length--differences in the two drum tracks become obvious. In one speaker, there will be a fill, while in the other speaker, the drums just keep playing the beat. At one point, during a short bridge, the two different drum tracks keep time in two completely different rhythms, both of which are appropriate for the part, but in combination are quite disorienting. Overtop of this multiplicity of beats, the rest of the band plays a dark, tribal rhythm that fits well with the percussion overload. Lyrically, Chamberlain struggles with the fact of his mortality, and the mortality of all things. But he doesn't come from the typical Christian perspective indicated by the song's title. This is not a Revelation-inspired pre-apocalyptic rant. No, in fact, it seems to be a political song. "We will be the new ice age. We will be the new plague. Disguised as a colony, we will wipe them all away. Feast your eyes, or just rip them out... We are the cancer. We are the virus." I can imagine Gehenna singing these same lyrics, the inherent despair in their pessimistic view of the human takeover of the Earth offset only by the song's final line: "Tell me it's not too late."

"We Are The Involuntary" is one of the album's best songs musically, and in giving the album its title, also makes overt reference to reaching for something divine. This one is about religion for sure. So why do I feel such a connection with it? "Hands in the air and love at our sides, there's got to be something bigger." I may not be reaching for divinity, but I feel this same desire in my life a lot of the time. It is hard to go through day after day feeling like your actions have no purpose. It's hard to deal with your life seeming meaningless, like you're just staying alive because of the survival instinct common to all animals. I've never been someone who was satisfied with being well-fed and comfortable. I want to be putting something into the world to make it a better place. Every time I go a day without writing, without using the talents I have to give, I feel like I'm wasting the day. "Under the glass behind it all, watch us crawl so fearfully," Chamberlain sings on "We Are The Involuntary." It's true--this is much of the human condition. Struggle, failure, fear, and regret. But there is another side to what we're capable of, and "We Are The Involuntary" showcases that side as well. For the first half of the song, Chamberlain sings all of the words over heavy, pounding verses and quieter but still dark and understated choruses that are more like a bridge than a true chorus. Halfway through the song, things start to fall apart, with the guitars degenerating into feedback as the drums are left to carry on by themselves. Chamberlain is screaming over this part, but even his voice isn't enough toe keep things together, and finally everything stops. After a few seconds of unstructured feedback, Gillespie's voice, almost inaudible, counts the band back in, and they launch into a heavy breakdown over which Chamberlain screams the album's title. And then the song changes completely. The guitars begin playing an understated melody, and Aaron Gillespie begins singing the lead vocal. The "hand in the air" line quoted at the beginning of this paragraph is his first line, and it's fitting that the song's emotional tone changes completely as he starts to sing it. "I'll come up for peace, I'll come up for truth," he continues, focusing on the positive things that make life worth it. Here again, we have opposite thought processes existing simultaneously, with Chamberlain and Gillespie representing the negative and positive sides of the same issue. These songs document the separation.

"Coming Down Is Calming Down" was my favorite song on this album the first time I heard it, and it still is a year and a half later. Unlike most of the songs on Lost In The Sound Of Separation, "Coming Down Is Calming Down" would not seem out of place on the previous Underoath album, Define The Great Line. Its musical structure is more akin to those used on that album, with heavy verses contrasting, and building towards, melodic choruses. Lyrically, it also fits with Define's songs of personal struggle, stepping away from the duality explored on much of this album to have Gillespie and Chamberlain speak in one voice again, seeking solace and reassurance in dark times. Therefore, I suppose, the song that I like the best on this album is not nearly as thematically linked to the rest of it as it is to the earlier Underoath work that I always liked better anyway. That's OK, though, because "Coming Down Is Calming Down" provides a more accessible way into an album that can be a bit inaccessible at first. If there hadn't been a song like this on here, I might have been a good bit more disappointed with this album than I otherwise have been. I might not have stuck with it long enough to make the connections I've made to it tonight.

But let's talk about this song for a minute. I don't know why it is that I've always related so strongly to Underoath's lyrics about depression and anxiety, since they are generally expressed as prayers to god. My best guess is that it's easy for me to transpose the pleading tone taken in "Coming Down Is Calming Down" and other, similar songs from one addressed towards a divine figure to one addressed to friends and potential friends. A lot of times, my depression takes the form of feeling like no one is listening, no one cares, and no one understands. I'm sure the more erudite cultural critics would consider such feelings, when expressed in song, cliched and immature. But when those musical expressions ring so true, and connect so deeply, not just for me but for many other listeners, it seems uncharitable at best, callous at worst, to turn up one's nose at songs that make thousands of lonely people feel a little less alone. When Aaron Gillespie leads into the chorus of "Coming Down Is Calming Down" by singing, "I've been losing my footing here," I know what he means. All too frequently, I sing along with it not just because I like the melody but because I've been feeling the same way lately. That isn't the line that hits me the hardest, though. What really gets me is what Chamberlain screams in the second verse: "I put my words out there for you to hear, but they never made much sense to you." This is my worst fear--that all of the writing that I do will never amount to anything. This is why I don't actively solicit paid writing jobs. I don't have enough confidence in what I do to believe that I deserve to make my living from it. Everything I've ever done for anyone else has been coincidental, something I've fallen into rather than something I actively tried to achieve. I'm terrified that if I worked towards making my words a way to keep me alive, that I would fail. I don't want to be a failure at the only thing I love to do, at the only thing that's ever made me feel like a worthwhile human being whose existence was justifiable. So when I speak, I do it quietly, in a little-used corner of the internet. I try to disturb as few people as possible. I want to believe that I deserve better, but I desperately fear that even this is too much to ask for.

There is no perfect version of me, not attainable through prayer or worship or any sort of blessing that will occur after I'm dead. At least, I don't think so. But I can't stop trying to believe that there is some better version of me, that I can improve, that I have free will and the ability to conquer my fears, to transcend my current lowly, struggling state. While I'm here, the music of Underoath makes me feel better, because they admit to their own doubts and speak their own fears aloud. More important, though, is the fact that they never lose hope. Even on an album that mostly focuses on Spencer Chamberlain's desperate, panicked screams, Aaron Gillespie's clean, melodic vocals step in on occasion to offer a hopeful, positive counterpoint. When I listen to Underoath, I feel like someone understands. But I also feel like things might get better. Maybe I am separate from the best version of myself that I can be, but in the music of Underoath, I find hope that I can get there someday. This gift, given freely, has such importance for me that any disagreement over religion pales in comparison. I'm sure I'll keep listening for a long time to come.

In/Humanity and alienation.

2010-04-03T01:15:00.002-04:00

In/Humanity were from South Carolina in the early 90s, and at that point in hardcore's history, I would imagine that it was pretty lonely being a band in that style from that part of the United States. In/Humanity weren't your average hardcore band, either; from their earliest recordings, their lyrics indicated intelligence, insight, and an unique perspective into the issues of the day. On their first LP, The Nutty Antichrist, they released such songs as "Embrace Androgyny," "Southern Swastika" (a protest against the fact that their state still flew the Confederate flag atop their statehouse [it must have been so hard to be a punk in South Carolina back then]), and "Fuck the Death Penalty, Let's Compromise" (on which they advocated allowing convicted murderers to choose whether to be executed or to spend life in prison). They also showed a cynical, prankster-ish streak, though, as other songs, like "Teenage Suicide--Do It!" and "Stupid Children" made only too clear. The album ended with the title track, on which singer Chris Bickel told an anti-Christian joke that used his own name: "Jesus knocked at the door to my heart, said, 'Chris Bickel get out here right now!' Satan answered the knock at my door, and said, 'Chris Bickel doesn't live here anymore'." The lyric sheet contained a note encouraging the listener to insert their own name into the appropriate part of the song.

While Nutty Antichrist made it clear that there were intelligent and creative minds behind In/Humanity, its music was, for the most part, pretty conventional hardcore. It was very fast, featuring borderline blastbeat drumming on some tracks, and some interesting songwriting choices (the breakdown on "Stupid Children" and the false ending on "Teenage Suicide" stand out), but compared to some of In/Humanity's peers in the chaotic hardcore scene of the time, such as Antioch Arrow or Universal Order Of Armageddon, what they were doing on The Nutty Antichrist wasn't that weird at all. That started to change on the EP they released inbetween their two LPs, Your Future Lies Smoldering At The Feet Of Robots, on which they got slower, heavier, and above all, weirder. "Modern Hate Vibe" mixed standard fastcore verses with a chorus that was simultaneously melodic and disturbing, as a chorus of off-key voices low in the mix harmonized with Chris Bickel. They warbled and shuddered as they did so, sounding like a tape that had been dropped underwater. "Burn It To The Ground" was nearly four minutes long, an unheard of length for In/Humanity, and it based itself around a foreboding bassline that turned into a full-on headbanging breakdown on the choruses. In/Humanity had never seemed like a mosh band before, and they really didn't now either--the entire EP was a frightening listen, which made me too nervous to even contemplate dancing.

All of this was just a prelude, though, to their second and, it turned out, final LP, The History Behind the Mystery. That record centered on a murder mystery, the plot of which was told over the course of the last three songs on side one. Most of the plot was enumerated in the first song, "Mystery Solved--The History Behind the Mystery." The lyrics of this song consisted of short declarative sentences that would have fit well in a children's book, but for their morbid subject matter. "Ronald got up. Ronald found James. Ronald saw that James was dead. Ronald yelled. Everyone ran to Ronald. The others saw James. Everyone talked." The lyrics go on in this fashion, telling of cops and doctors and accusations and shootouts. In "The Execution of Clive," a much more standard hardcore song than the creepy, meandering "Mystery Solved," the butler is accused of the murder, attempts to flee, and is shot to death. But the real climax of the story is in the final song, "New Discarded Evidence In The Case." "James was so lonely. James only had his health. James was so lonely. James probably killed himself."

Basing an entire record around this bizarre version of a murder mystery seems to fit In/Humanity's mindset at this point in their careers. The real point they are making with the murder mystery is a despairing one, about the pointlessness of existence, and the seeming impossibility of making a real connection with another person. They begin making this point with the record's opening track, "If It's Wrong It's Real." Later, when creating a CD discography collecting their out of print vinyl releases, they changed the order of the songs completely and did some pretty serious remixing. At that time, they added a lengthy introduction to the song; the version on the original LP doesn't contain the sample. The sample is of a Satanic priest intoning an Aleister Crowley quote, "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law," and then leading a congregation in repeated chants of "Hail Satan!" Despite not having been a part of the original song, it's a fitting introduction. There is Satanic imagery all over the album's art, from the box of 666 cough syrup on the cover to the pentagrams that festoon the lyric booklet, the entire album is awash in the visual paraphernalia of Satanism. The LP comes with a 33 RPM 7 inch EP, which contains four more songs, collectively titled The Anakrinomphicon Quintilogy. That EP is so bizarre that it makes the main LP seem pretty conventional (which it’s not, at all). It also contributes significantly to the album’s visual theme of Satanism. No doubt In/Humanity would have told you at the time that this was all a joke, or at least intended somewhat ironically. In the clear invocation of Anton LaVey's Church Of Satan rather than a more pagan vision of Satanism a la Black Widow, my theory is that In/Humanity are making some sort of reference to humanity's innate selfishness. And I can't tell if that's a positive or a negative thing in their eyes--on the surface, they always presented themselves as taking a negative attitude towards humanity as a whole (see "Teenage Suicide--Do It!"), but the despairing emotional undercurrents that threaten to completely overtake both the lyrics and the music on The History Behind The Mystery make me think that this "hatred of humanity" pose is just cover for deeper pain.

Pain is the entire focus of "If It's Wrong It's Real." The explanation of the song’s lyrics that is given in the album’s liner notes simply reads “Suicide note.” The song begins with mournful strings playing a two-note drone, under which drummer Will Z. and bassist Ben Roth play an understated vamp. When Chris Bickel and guitarist Paul Swanson join in, though, the song seems to change completely, even though Swanson's guitar is playing the same slow two-chord melody that had been previously played by the string section. It's been transformed into a distorted howl, though, and Bickel adds a howl of his own, screaming in rhythm with the pulses of the guitar chords in a way that makes it sound like he isn't even saying any words. He is, though, and what he's screaming is one of my favorite lyrics ever:

I once said that I'd calm down if you'd be there when I came down.

It's hard to talk about this line, because it has such an intensely personal meaning in my own life, and I don't want to force that interpretation on words written by someone else, who may have meant something completely different than what I took from it. And yet, I feel like this line (and the lyrics to this song as a whole) have had so much meaning in my own life that even if I'm totally off-base in my perception of its meaning, it has to have some validity, some importance. I will proceed with this writing as if that's true.

I've spent plenty of time in my life struggling hard with lack of self-esteem, with depression so intense I could barely get through the day, with overwhelming desires to take my own life. The line I quoted above is a remarkably brief summation of how I often feel in relation to other people in my life when I am at my worst. I know it's wrong; I know that I don't have the right to lean on others, to make them responsible for my self-worth at times when I can't be responsible for my own. I know that I can't expect people to always be there for me, and I know that I can't expect to ever get past my feelings of depression and worthlessness if I can't believe in myself enough to not need the support of other people to stay alive. And yet, when you feel that crappy and you know you're on your own, it can be easy to point the finger at others, even if it's just in your own mind. It can be particularly easy to look to former lovers, people who were supposed to be there for you in a closer, more thorough fashion than anyone else, and blame them for your current emotional state. "You said you would be there for me, and you lied," you might find yourself thinking. "You were supposed to keep me from getting to this point, and you abandoned me." I have played out such imaginary conversations with exes in my head, knowing all along that the thoughts I was directing at them were invalid, that I had no right to expect such things of them. And yet, when you're at your worst, it can sometimes feel better to point the blame at others instead of admitting that it truly lies with yourself. (This problem is one of the things I started therapy in order to deal with. I'm happy to report that it has been working so far.)

When I feel this way, I know it's wrong. Chris Bickel does too. As the song progresses, it moves from the brutal, distortion-driven version of the string section's slow, mournful mantra into a faster, more conventional hardcore riff. That riff still sounds dark and ominous, due to the droning feedback and reverberating strings that still hover, deep down in the mix, throughout even the most energetic parts of the song. But it is fast, angry hardcore, even if Bickel has turned that anger inward. "All bliss is gone," he screams. "All love I kill." When feeling abandoned by someone who was supposed to love you, it's tough to face the fact that your own neuroses were often what drove them away. And yet, that fact can be impossible to escape. If you killed the love in the other person's heart, you might not want to admit that, but you know you did it. You always know. "All love I kill, and this is wrong," Bickel screams, further excoriating himself. "But if it's wrong, I know it's real," he finally declares, revealing the sentiment behind the song's title. Doing the wrong thing is often all that a depressed person understands. They (I) get comfortable with loneliness, fear of judgement, feelings of being outcast by society, and they stop knowing how to deal with the alternatives. Feeling wrong, feeling bad, is comforting, because it's what we're used to. If it's wrong, I know it's real.

The second side of The History Behind The Mystery only further emphasizes the mood created on the first side. "Too Drunk To Molotov" is a harsh attack on punk rock's ostensible status as a revolutionary counterculture. "We will fight them in the streets," the song begins, stealing the title of Minneapolis crust band Code 13's second EP to launch a criticism of the sorts of kids who had that EP in their collection. "Punk rock's nothing more than a Halloween costume contest to you," screams Bickel. "You're more concerned with the contents of that 40 bottle than the actual bottle's uses as an implement of state smashing destruction." One can imagine the sorts of punks that this song is about not being able to decipher what Bickel means with this complex statement, which again seems to be his entire point. The song's final line is screamed over a breakdown on which Paul Swanson plays zooming, descending chords that make it sound like his guitar is sick. "Too drunk to fuck shit up!" Bickel screams over Swanson's woozy guitar accompaniment, which manages to do a perfect sonic imitation of some kids in a spiked jean jacket staggering around with a 40 bottle in his hand.

On "No Thanks Mr. Roboto," Bickel references Styx to protest against his feelings of dehumanization. "I'm now a robot more than a man," he claims. "Lost my emotions to parts from Japan." The entire song makes references to lines from Styx's song "Mr. Roboto," and anyone familiar with that tune will be able to pick out those references easily. However, to hover over the lyric sheet trainspotting Styx lyrics misses the song's point. Again, that point is buried in the final line of the song, where it is easy to miss its importance. "You're in the ground and have been there for weeks," Bickel screams. "And now I can't hide the rust on my cheeks." Is this song really about someone attempting to deal with death through denial of their emotions? Well, it could be about a lot of other things too, and it probably is. But the final lines make a lie of all of the previous claims to no longer have emotions, and therefore kind of invalidate all of Bickel's previous protests of feeling dehumanized. Maybe it's more something he wants than something he's actually experiencing. Maybe his emotions are too hard to deal with, and he's trying to wish them away. I've wanted that many times in my life, and like Bickel, no matter how hard I wished, it never worked.

The History Behind The Mystery's clearest statement of alienation, of loneliness and inability to connect with others, is far less metaphorical and more literal than any other song on the album. It is the penultimate track on the album, and it's called "We're Sick Of Music And We Hate Each Other." As an expression of the way being in a band with someone can cause frustration, resentment, and eventually outright hatred for them to breed within you, it is far too accurate to have been intended seriously. "Thought you were a brother, thought you were a friend," Bickel begins. "But you told me something that I didn't like. What you said about me... was it out of spite?" In these two lines, which come near the beginning of the song, Bickel hits directly upon the problems that specifically afflict relationships involving people who struggle with depression. On one hand, there is the inability to take criticism. On the other hand, there is the constant fear of judgement, of secret hatred that is never revealed, of people laughing at you behind your back. Bickel might know that he's wrong to hold a disagreement with a friend against that friend on a permanent basis. He might equally know that his fear of being judged is paranoia that he shouldn't seriously dignify. And yet, those feelings remain. They grow, and they fester. Until: "Now I think you're a fucking jerk. You fucking fucking fucking jerk." This is where the song gets a bit silly. "Fuck you, Chris Bickel, fuck you, Paul Swanson, fuck you, Will Z., fuck you, Ben Roth," Bickel screams, finally dissolving into a frantically repeated chorus of "Fuck you"'s--16 in all. The fact that he names himself, and in doing so gives equal weight to the frustrations of his bandmates with him as he gives to his own frustrations with them makes the song seem less from Bickel's viewpoint than an ironic view of the tensions that exist within bands after they've been together for a long time. At the time, I took it as a joke. How could they have written a song as self-aware as this and still have been serious? And yet, In/Humanity only survived long enough to record one more EP--the truly bizarre Occultonomy. And even on that EP, Bickel and Swanson had replaced the band's rhythm section, bringing in two new members for a final incarnation of the band that still wasn't able to stay together for more than a few months. "We're Sick Of Music And We Hate Each Other" may have been intended as a joke, but it almost certainly also expressed some real, if buried, emotions.

In/Humanity - "If It's Wrong It's Real," "Teenage Suicide--Do It!," "The Nutty Antichrist," "We're Sick Of Music And We Hate Each Other"

Brave men run away from me.

2010-02-14T11:19:00.002-05:00

Sonic Youth have been around for a very long time now, and the critical discussion around them as an important influence on the modern alternative rock world has coalesced around a few of the most influential moments in their career. Daydream Nation, of course, and Dirty, Murray Street maybe, definitely "The Diamond Sea." The unfortunate corollary to this fact is that huge swaths of their career are rarely discussed anymore. Amongst my friends, I notice that even the diehard fans only have a few of their records. And maybe it's my completist streak that's unhealthy and not their ability to get by with only three records by their favorite band, but either way it makes it hard for me to have quality discussions of the Sonic Youth album that has stuck with me the most over the last few years. No one I know has ever heard Bad Moon Rising.

But I want to talk about Bad Moon Rising here now, because I'm going through yet another one of my phases in which I play it every day, sometimes multiple times a day, and the more I play it, the deeper it pulls me in. There's so much in this record, I almost don't even see it as just a record anymore. It's like a 3D movie if 3D actually did what it's supposed to do: put you right in the middle of the movie, like it's not happening in front of you but all around you. That's how Bad Moon Rising makes me feel. I put it on and sink into a huge, surrounding atmosphere. Bad Moon Rising is structured like one continuous fever-dream reverie, a huge floating universe in the space between chords, a swirling vortex of alienation and horror and glorious transcendence, sending the listener flying through disparate emotions in close proximity, sometimes delivering all of them at the same time and leaving you to sort out how you actually feel. The band intended it to be an American travelogue of sorts, taking the name from Creedence Clearwater Revival's 1969 slice of hoodoo rock n' roll Americana and inspiration for the album's most famous song from the Charles Manson murders that the Creedence song seemed to predict. Anything you read about this record will tell you in detail about its attempt to reflect the dark side of middle American culture.

The reason Bad Moon Rising has stuck with me for so long, though, is not so much because of the resonance of its intended subject matter as because I have found a more personal meaning in its collection of songs, one that might not be borne out by the intended subject matter but is present in the music regardless. There are plenty of records out there designed for the listener who is questioning their place in the universe. Bad Moon Rising is not that. Bad Moon Rising comes from a place where the realization that there is no place where you will fit in has long since passed.

I'm writing this post on Valentine's Day, which I will spend alone, as I have for years. Valentine's Day ends a season that I sometimes think of as "the suicide holidays," and though I have obviously not yet killed myself I imagine that if I'm ever to do so it will happen sometime during this part of the year. When it's cold outside I already have trouble with depression, as the cold makes me want to stay in the house, and staying in the house makes me feel more alienated than I already do on a day to day basis. But then there's Christmas, and really the entire period between Thanksgiving and Christmas, the huge consumer-culture push that focuses on familial connections in order to inspire cash outlays. I was working in a mall for that period of this year, so I couldn't escape it. I worked at a kiosk outside a jewelry store and a lingerie store, which collaborated to remind me daily that there was no romantic love in my life. I spent as little time at my parents' house over the actual Christmas holiday as I could, but I really can't be around my family at all without constant forcible reminders of our dysfunction, our inability to relate to each other. And then there was New Year's Eve, a time for drinking and celebrating the end of a year, which always seems so perverse to me. The end of a year just reminds me of all of the goals I set for myself and didn't meet. And then my birthday comes towards the end of January to reinforce that reminder all over again. Another year older, and what do I have to show for it? Time to accomplish things grows ever shorter. Finally, there's Valentine's Day, which reminds me once again that there is no romantic love in my life, this time twisting the knife a little bit with all of the visions of happy couples I must endure. I guess the fact that I'm writing this means I ran the gauntlet for another year, which is a worthy accomplishment, but makes me feel no less alienated from the world around me.

Bad Moon Rising begins with "Brave Men Run," and although that song is preceded by a short "Intro" that is labeled as a separate track, it's really just the beginning of that song. "Brave Men Run" begins with layered guitars playing interlocking chiming melodies, and when the drums and bass come in after a short pause, the entire band plays a midtempo riff that spirals upward gloriously, sounding like the basis for a gorgeous heavy-guitar pop song. However, just at the climactic moment, Thurston Moore loses the melodic thread completely, beginning to saw at his guitar strings wildly and causing the entire riff to derail. It plunges downward into an ambient bridge, and as Thurston and Lee Ranaldo pick out occasional disconnected melody lines, the bass and drums carry the song out into what feels like open space, aurally speaking, removing any riff-centric basis for the song and leaving a wide ambient area for Kim Gordon to deliver her vocals. It's only when this point is reached that she begins singing, and while the words escalate, bringing the song to a climactic point in which Kim howls its title, then expounds on the phrase: "...in my family, ...into the setting sun, ...into captivity..." Thurston and Lee are still playing their guitars behind her, but what they're playing has nothing to do with rhythm or melody or riff or anything--it's all just disconnected notes, accents as textures, with the bass and drums still carrying the rhythm of the song as they have throughout the vocal section. Finally, even the drums stop, and as Kim continues to play the first few notes of the bass riff, she whispers, "Brave men run away from me."

The entire song fades out here, but not into silence; instead, it disappears into a tape loop of the locked groove that ends side four of Lou Reed's guitar feedback symphony, Metal Machine Music. An album seen by many as directionless noise, I've always found Metal Machine Music to be beautiful, and I know I've come upon a kindred spirit when I run into someone who agrees. It makes me think that Thurston Moore and I would have some things to talk about if we ever met (which we never will). The origin of the Metal Machine Music tape loop's appearance on Bad Moon Rising was an onstage dilemma faced by Sonic Youth in their early days of being too poor to buy multiple guitars. They used different tunings for every song, and needed things to keep their live audiences occupied (and drown out hecklers) during the lengthy tuning breaks between songs. The tape loops ended up on the album, and indeed, "Society Is A Hole" seems to take its rhythmic basis more from the oscillating Lou Reed guitar feedback than from anything the band is actually playing. Because of that, the song starts before "Brave Men Run" really ends, and everything played by an actual member of the band during the song seems more like an accent added onto that basic foundation of looping noise.

"Society is a hole," Thurston sings, making his own alienation into a pun that works precisely because no attention is ever called to it. Bad Moon Rising doesn't always provide lyrical backing for my repurposing it as the soundtrack to my alienation, but on this song, it does so in spades. That said, I can't do much rational explication for lines like "You got big big hair and everybody's scared," or "My friends are girls wrapped in boys." You either know what those things mean or you don't, I'd say. Thurston intones all of these lines in a mournful monotone, sounding almost like the old hillbilly singers of the early 20th century, only without even a semblance of melody to guide his voice. It's as if a nightmare version of the Singing Brakeman Jimmie Rodgers only had the clanging rattle of the train's wheels to sing with, and had to stay with the same note all the time or risk going off-key. When Thurston isn't singing, the tape loop underneath Bob Bert's tapping cymbals and Kim Gordon's three-note bassline slides into the front of the mix, going against the grain of the song's actual tempo with its repetitive one-two rumbles and hums, sounding like train wheels clacking over tracks in super-slow motion.

The song ends when this tape loop is submerged under a horrible recording of "Not Right" by the Stooges, taped from a record player that seems to skip at least every third revolution, and making a three-minute song go by in less than a minute. As I said, it sounds horrible; the strums of the guitar distort into chopping scratches, and the beat is entirely inaudible. For young fans in the mid-80s who'd never heard the Stooges, it must have been impossible to figure out what this even was. But then, you could say that about the entire album.

The totally fucked incidental-music version of "Not Right" soon fades into a sound that I first thought were church bells. It soon becomes clear, though, that these are the dulcet strains of "I Love Her All The Time," its guitar riffs all consisting of shaking, rattling guitar strings and scraping atonal sounds. I don't know that this song is played entirely by beating on guitars with drumsticks and shaking them in front of amps that are feeding back, but if there are any actual strummed, chorded guitar parts, I don't hear them. Instead, there is Kim Gordon's two-note bassline, that moves from a note identical to the ones the guitars are spitting through feedback to a lower note that sounds sick, as if its ever-so-slightly out of key. It may be, since Kim Gordon has always played her bass in standard tuning, no matter what kind of weird tunings Thurston and Lee come up with for their parts of any given song. This note might be the closest she can get to an on-key note. It works for the song, though, as it is but one of several elements that make "I Love Her All The Time," however sincerely it was written (and I assume it was a sincere love song from Thurston to Kim, as the two of them got married around the time it was recorded), seem like a fucked-up parody of a love song. As ambiently constructed as "Society Is A Hole," "I Love Her All The Time" has even less of a foundation to build on, lacking even a tape loop to pull the whole thing together. The guitars ring like bells, scrape like wrecked cars on cement barriers, groan like dying dogs, but never create any sort of melody. Thurston's vocal doesn't pick up that slack, either. He's at least gasping in two different notes on this song--notes which, by the way, oppose rather than harmonize with the two notes Kim is playing on bass--but there's still more atonality to his singing than anything. Then halfway through the song, the whole thing implodes like a punch to the gut. Kim starts playing much lower notes, Thurston and Lee go into full-on feedback mode, and Bob Bert pounds his floor toms with abandon. If you're playing the record loud (and I always am), it feels like your entire apartment is shaking, like your speakers will drop through the floor into your downstairs neighbor's place if the pounding doesn't stop soon. It does stop--too soon, in fact, because if I'm listening to this record I'm probably praying for destruction--but that gut-churning middle section gives the lie to any conception of "I Love Her All The Time" as nothing more than a sincere love song. As does the end of the song, for that matter, as the drums during the final verse become nothing more than random crashes on a cymbal here or there before stopping completely, along with the bassline and any semblance of song form, at the end of that verse. There's still at least another minute of the song left, though, and it's all just sick, bent, grinding feedback. The guitars don't sound like they're in love; they sound nauseated.

Side two begins with "Ghost Bitch," which, like "Society Is A Hole," constructs its rhythm around noises that remind me of a train. Sonic Youth are the sort of band to sample the sounds of a train, and in fact did so on their next album, Evol, forming half of the song "Secret Girl" around a recording of a train going down a track. "Ghost Bitch" doesn't have clickety-clack noises, though--instead, a repetitive feedback howl that occurs at the top of every measure for the first half of the song sounds exactly like the horn of a train bearing down on a car that has stalled out on railroad tracks. It repeats for several minutes, but it's impossible to get used to. It sounds frightening. When I'm playing this album loud (and I always am), I feel like I need to move out of the way of something. But then, I react to a lot of stimuli in that way. I jump at shadows and irrationally fear strangers and dark places I haven't been in before. "Ghost Bitch" functions like a horror movie for me, allowing me to work through my issues with fear in a safe environment where I know I'm not really in any danger. It's not the only song on Bad Moon Rising that has this function for me. I play it louder and louder, just like I watch scarier and scarier horror movies, always pushing my limits, seeing how much I can stand before I have to stop. And then I'll try again later.

"Ghost Bitch" isn't really scary until halfway through, though. The train-coming noises are tough, as are Kim's muttered lyrics, in which she spools out ominous imagery: "Locking arms side by side, crouch down before the fire's light." But then, after the first verse, the song finally kicks all the way in, with Bob pounding on his toms and Kim yelling: "I still remember their savage cries... faces painted in joyous fright!" Thurston and Lee increase the intensity of their feedback, no longer stopping and starting the train noise but carrying it on constantly in the right speaker as the other guitar scrapes and screeches in the left. Under it all, Kim's bass rumbles, playing no intelligible notes but instead a dark bed of sound that deepens the horrific feel the song creates. "You're the first day of my life!" she screams at the end of the verse, and everything cuts out except feedback, which spirals upwards and seems like an ending until Bob Bert, who'd leave the band after this album to play a drumkit consisting mostly of pieces of metal in Pussy Galore, pounds on a piece of sheet metal and a floor tom and is echoed by strikes against guitar strings that reverberate with the metal sounds so completely that it's impossible to tell where one ends and the other begins. This outburst also trails off into spiraling feedback, which is chopped off without warning in favor of pounding toms and a background loop of church bells.

Thus begins "I'm Insane," a roundabout personal manifesto driven by repetition. Drums thud, guitars saw on staccato chords, the bassline mostly consists of one note repeated over and over (sometimes replaced by a higher octave of the same note). Atop it all, Thurston recites a poetic lyric consisting of foreboding, disconnected images. Beneath it all, the church bells, ringing at the edge of hearing, usually inaudible but always texturally present. "A steaming swamp. A troubled heart. The sky is red. I can't stop running." Thurston's lyric has a narrative quality to it, but doesn't go anyplace that you could plot out on a map. Instead, it escalates along with the music, carrying its repetition toward a climax that never quite arrives, building up and then building down, all without ever really changing. "I'm Insane" distinguishes itself from the majority of Bad Moon Rising by creating the same sort of hovering, spacious feel that is common to most of the album, but without leaving much of any space between its instruments. The mix for this song is thick, but the repetition of the song's construction opens up a different space inside the head of the listener, seeming to go on forever even as it ends after only four minutes.

If "I'm Insane" goes on forever, "Justice Is Might" never seems to start. Flowing naturally from what remains when most of the instruments in "I'm Insane" have trailed off to a stop, "Justice Is Might" builds up around a loop of feedback that works the same as the Metal Machine Music loop worked in "Society Is A Hole," although I'm pretty sure it's a loop created by Sonic Youth themselves, not one cribbed from another record. Over that loop, Thurston, speaking through distortion effects, announces the song as if he's a hardcore frontman explaining the political content of the song the band is about to play. As a veteran of the hardcore scene, I know all about these introductions, which sometimes stretch on a good bit longer than the actual songs they introduce. And sometimes they're incoherent, too, though never quite as incoherent as Thurston's translated introduction is revealed to be. "This song is called 'Justice Is Might,' it's about sonic life," he stammers out, before going on to explain that "you have a genius and a sex maniac living together taking lots of drugs and fucking all day, and it's just like... staying at home and risking your life." This introduction is the first two minutes of this four-minute track, and what follows it might just be Sonic Youth's version of a one-minute hardcore song. As Bob plays a rumbling beat on his toms, Lee and Thurston chop out what might be a two-chord riff if it originated in an insane asylum on Venus. "I know it's wrong, but that is all right," Thurston declaims. "As long as it's strong, it's just that it might." He repeats the song's title twice, and then it's over. But not really, as now we get another minute and a half of trailing feedback over which he continues to repeat the song's title through the same distortion he used to introduce it. "Justice Is Might" feels like the auditory version of watching a hardcore show through the eyes of Pablo Picasso. This is the reflection of a very unique, some might say twisted, perspective, applied to the hardcore scene. And yet it comes from Thurston Moore, who did time in the NY hardcore band Even Worse before forming Sonic Youth and has played guitar in recent reunions of Negative Approach, the member of the band who most appreciated what hardcore had to offer on its own terms, as a musical form and a culture. And yet, how can it seem weird to me, a fellow hardcore veteran who finds the whole thing both brilliant and absurd, inviting and alienating? I understand exactly what he means. In fact, the song's title is most easily understood to mean "might makes right," but because I was looking for puns and double-meanings after seeing the title "Society Is A Hole" on Bad Moon Rising's back cover, I read the word might as synonymous with "may be" for years. It seems like Thurston might intend this too, as the lyric "It's just that it might" recasts the word in the same meaning, and also thereby influences the reading of the title. Maybe it's all a reference to the way the hardcore scene carries itself as if it knows all the answers to all of society's problems, but never is able to solve the problems that exist within it.

The conclusion of this album is its climactic moment, and "Death Valley 69" stands apart from almost everything that has come before, as it forsakes the floating atmosphere of the rest of Bad Moon Rising in favor of a simple, pounding riff that separates itself from hardcore or metal only by the stop-start cadence with which Sonic Youth plays it. Instead of flowing out of the song that has come before, "Death Valley 69" follows the only stretch of silence on the whole album (other than the side division), Bob Bert kicking things off with a stick-clicking four count and the whole band slamming into the riff like they're trying to kill their guitars. "Death Valley 69"'s riff-based construction is the mirror image of the album's beginning, "Brave Men Run" opening with a solid riff just as pretty and upbeat as "Death Valley 69" is ugly and dark. The entire band works together to pound the already memorable two-chord riff into your brain so deeply that it can never be dislodged. While they do so, Thurston sings the song's frightening lyrics from the point of view of Charles Manson. "Coming down," he yells. "Sadie, I love it." The verse is followed by a careening instrumental chorus, and then even "Death Valley 69" has an ambient breakdown, on which Thurston and Lee's guitars step into the background, ringing and shaking as Kim Gordon's bass and Bob Bert's rolling toms swirl around your head, creating an atmosphere that goes beyond foreboding into full-on terror. Meanwhile, Thurston as Charlie Manson is joined by guest vocalist Lydia Lunch in the role of Manson killer Sadie Mae Glutz. They sing almost in unison, constructing a dual narrative that is constructed in a creative manner; at one point, Thurston sings "I got sand in my mouth" as Lydia sings "You got sand in your mouth." Then on the next line, Thurston sings, "You got sun in your eyes" as Lydia sings "I got sun in my eyes." But any discussion of this kind of thing avoids the song's dark heart--a matter-of-fact description of a murder committed by both Charlie and Sadie. Lydia Lunch sounds like she's taking an almost sexual pleasure in the act, while Thurston perfectly captures the vicious joy of an unrepentant killer. By the end of this long, creepy interlude, when Thurston says, "She started to holler, so I had to hit it," and Lydia is goading him on, screaming "Hit it!" over and over, the frantic terror is almost too much to bear. Just before everyone freaks out and turns the record off, the band slams back into the song's main riff, but this is not salvation, as the song's final verse is even more frightening, as Thurston repeats the song title over and over while Lydia screams incoherently. There's more fright packed into this five-minute avalanche of a song than most horror movies put into two hours. And this was the album's single! I first heard it on the radio, in fact. The college station played it in the middle of the night when I was 14 years old. It kept me awake for hours.

But really, what better way to end an album constructed entirely around alienation and existential horror than with some actual terror? "Death Valley 69" merely gives voice to sentiments that are implied but not spoken in all of the other songs on Bad Moon Rising. I'm not saying I relate to songs written from the point of view of a serial killer--in fact, it's just the opposite. I think what Sonic Youth reveal in "Death Valley 69" is the underlying fear of all alienated souls--that this world will be too much for them. That feeling like there's nowhere that you belong is something you can only deal with for so long before giving up entirely. And what happens when you give up? Do you attack society as a (w)hole through violent, antisocial acts? Or do you let the suicide holidays win? It's not a question to which there is one permanent answer. You can only answer it in terms of the day, maybe even the hour, that you are living through. And hope that the answer you come up with does indeed involve you living through it.

Finally got to see Gehenna.

2010-01-17T10:32:00.003-05:00

Last week I attended what has become an annual event in the Baltimore hardcore scene: Dom of Pulling Teeth's birthday show. The highlight for me this year was an actual performance by the elusive and infamous West Coast hardcore band Gehenna. Two years ago, they were also scheduled to perform, so I drove up for that show too. Gehenna cancelled, as was their wont at the time, but Starkweather did play, and absolutely blew me away, so I was glad I attended. This year, I figured Gehenna would cancel again, but I was happy enough about seeing Integrity and Ringworm, so I didn't feel too bad about the fact that once again, I'd go to a show that one of my all-time favorite bands was scheduled to play, and not actually get to see them.

But then, surprise surprise, Gehenna did show up. Dom posted on the internet two days before the show that he had picked them up from the airport, that they would definitely play. I was excited, but also nervous. Gehenna have a reputation for onstage antics that goes beyond just "being brutal" or whatever. As my friend Brandon has pointed out, they're almost an urban legend of a band. Everyone in the hardcore scene who has heard of them at all has heard the stories about singer Mike Cheese attacking audience members and laying waste to venues, even supposedly stabbing someone midset, a story of which I've heard so many different versions that at this point I don't believe any of them. Mike Cheese has fueled the fire where this sort of talk is concerned for many years himself, giving interviews in which he said intense, provocative things about both his philosophy and his behavior, things like this:
Q: When you hear about people in bands like Nirvana, Pennywise, etc. dying from overdoses, what’s your reaction?
A: I hope our band ends up like that. I couldn’t give a flyin’ fuck. Suicide is the only answer anyways. Just do it. Kill everybody.

The above is the only available Gehenna live footage from their prime days as a popular hardcore band. Nothing truly terrifying happens here, but as you can see, they were an exciting and violent live act. It may just have been performances like these combined with inflated rumors that created their mystique, or it may be that some of the stories really are true--I can't comment with any authority at all. But I can tell you that the potential for live terror and violence seems to be the main reason a lot of people want to see a Gehenna show these days. There was a show in California a few years ago that attained a level of infamy, where Gehenna showed up to the venue with only two members after the rest of the band had quit on them the night before. The two members set up a bass amp onstage for their set, played a hip hop song through it, and sat eating a burrito and smoking a blunt while the song played. That was their set. [Description paraphrased from this message board thread, which also includes Nate Newton of Converge telling a few entertaining Mike Cheese stories. Worth a read.]

While we were driving up to Baltimore, my friend Brandon mentioned the burrito set, and I started talking about how disappointed I'd be if that sort of thing happened when they played Baltimore. I've loved their music for over a decade, and I really wanted to see them play some of my favorite songs. A few years ago, I tried to capture some of my feelings about Gehenna, their music and their mystique in a piece of writing that I scribbled into a notebook and forgot about for a while. When I found the notebook in fall of 2008, I transcribed the piece exactly as I'd written it and posted it to tumblr. It was one of the first things I ever posted on that site, long before I started using it regularly. Here's some of what I wrote at the time:

Gehenna embodied the dark, anti-social worldview that was the eternal starting point for CrimethInc’s quest for romance. Even when they had just started and were still more like a straight edge moshcore band than anything else, their songs didn’t focus on anything so mundane as straight edge or beefs between ex-friends, like most bands of that stripe. Instead, they took the deep-ecology principles of hardline as a jumping-off point for condemnation of the entire human race, condemning all civilizational development as shit and hurling contempt at all responsible (including, presumably, themselves). By their third EP, their music had sped up to a frenetic tempo that made youth-crew seem slow but was still just this side of the inhuman speeds of power violence—-which allowed them to retain an essential human quality to their sound, even as Mike Cheese’s lyrics were moving further all the time into paranoid, Lovecraftian flights of fancy. Cheese’s guttural vocals were closer to the sounds one would expect to emanate from the throat of a monster than from anything human, and this fit well with his outsider’s perspective which seemed to regard itself as separate, in some respects below, and yet eternally more intelligent than the human masses that surrounded it. In songs like “Birth of Vengeance”, “Covet Thy Crown” and “Crush Opposition”, this outsider gave every indication of being prepared for and on the verge of launching an assault on civilization as a whole—-an assualt civilization seemingly hadn’t a prayer of withstanding.

This defiant stance of disdainful outsider fit perfectly with CrimethInc’s constant romanticization of struggle for food, shelter and, seemingly most importantly, freedom from mainstream society’s arbitrary restrictions. Truthfully, I couldn’t relate to Inside Front’s endless references to poverty and homelessness any more than I could relate to Gehenna’s hazy images of mythological zombie armies. And to be really truthful, it’s always seemed to me that a fair amount of gilding the lily must have gone into those stories in Inside Front—-after all, the thick newsprint magazine in which I read them came out on a regular basis for years. But there were emotions underlying all of this fiction, emotions that I understood and related to, that seemed true even if their circumstances did not: alienation and depression.

Before Gehenna played, I prepared myself. I took off my jacket and tied it around my waist. I took the lens cap off my camera and put it in my pocket. I didn't want to give myself anything that I could potentially lose once the band started playing. Of course, there was always the risk that my camera would get broken, but I was willing to take that chance in order to get pictures. There were hanging PA speakers on either side of the stage, about six feet off the floor, and I chose to stand underneath the ones on the left side of the stage. I didn't want to be out in the middle of the floor, because I figured that the violent dancing that was bound to occur would be happening out there. I didn't want any part of that. I also didn't want Mike Cheese to attack me. I figured I was minimizing my chances of that happening by standing off to the side. Yeah, I know, I'm a wimp. Fuck it, I've never pretended otherwise.

Most of the pictures I got didn't turn out too great. My camera is new to me--my dad gave it to me a few months ago--and I'd never used it to take pictures at a show before that night. Obviously I still have a lot to learn about its proper use. The picture above, the one that actually looks good, was taken from this brooklynvegan.com post. The rest of the pics on this page are my own efforts, for better or for worse.

When Gehenna hit the stage, Mike Cheese immediately started yelling about how he wasn't going to play until someone brought him some dope. He kept yelling about this between songs (and sometimes during songs) throughout the set. The band did go ahead and play, so it's tough to know how serious he was about this demand. I'll get more into that aspect later. Anyway, they opened with "83%," the first song on their first record, which is very heavy and moshy. Considering how far their sound has gotten from that style in the past decade or so, I was surprised to see them play this song, but it's one of my favorites by them, so it was a pleasant surprise. Mike Cheese jumped off stage and ran around in the front to get the crowd moving, but aside from a bunch of the sort of dudes who live to mosh at shows and don't care if they get hurt, most people just got out of the way. I think everyone was a little afraid of Mike Cheese. Within 30 seconds of the set's beginning, he'd shoved a well-known Baltimore area show videographer off the stage, and halfway through the first song, he did a really brutal stagedive onto about a dozen people standing immediately to my right. In fact, I saw him coming and took a step to the left, which is probably the only thing that kept me from being taken out as well.

Cheese was not the blur of constant motion that some stories about him had led me to expect, but that may speak more to his having gotten older and become a less frequent stage performer as it does to potential hyperbole in those stories. He'd have sudden outbursts, but most of the time, he stood still onstage and sang. That doesn't mean he was any less intense as a performer, though. The look in his eyes was terrifying. Despite the fact that he might have been standing still at any given moment, he always looked like he might be one second away from attacking you. As I write this it seems kind of ridiculous to say, but at the time, I was afraid to meet his eye. Whenever he'd look in my direction from the stage, I'd slide underneath the PA speakers so as to keep myself out of his line of sight. It felt like looking him in the eye might be interpreted as a challenge, and I didn't want to see how I'd fare in the event of such a thing.

A few songs into the set, during one of his rants about the fact that no one had brought him any dope, he charged off the stage into a backstage area that was on the other side of a curtain from where I was standing. I could hear commotion going on back there, but by the time I peeked around the curtain to see what was going on, it was impossible to see anything besides a scatter of equipment cases and a bunch of security people. Cheese ended up back onstage after a couple of minutes and the show continued--which makes it sound as if the band had stopped while he was offstage, which they didn't. They played an excellent set that lasted about 20 to 25 minutes and included quite a few songs that I knew--"Swarm/Deadshell," "Win By Attrition," "To Lay To Waste"--as well as some new material that I remember being faster than anything I'd heard them play before. Some mention has been made on Mike Cheese's blog recently of an upcoming 10 inch entitled "This World Is A Shithole," so perhaps these songs are material that will eventually materialize on that record. Or maybe it won't show up until years from now and will contain completely different songs; it's tough to tell with these guys.

Where the band was concerned, I'm pretty sure that the guitarist was the same guy who played guitar for them in the video I posted above of them playing "Swarm/Deadshell" back in the day. I can't be sure, though. I was expecting Mike Rhodes, longtime bassist, to still be in the band, but the bass player and drummer were both young longhaired guys who didn't seem like they'd been in the band very long, so hey, maybe not. I was particularly impressed with the drummer, who had a fast and ferocious style that stood out as being far better than the drumming on the most recent Gehenna records, Upon The Gravehill and the Lands Of Sodom EP. I hope they are able to keep this drummer around for a while, as he is definitely an upgrade.

The set ended with "First Blood," the opening track from their second LP, and my personal favorite of their releases, Negotium Perambulans In Tenebris. I had been headbanging and dancing around a little bit at some points during the set, but I freaked out a little bit during this song and sang along to most of the words at the top of my lungs. I was surprised I even remembered as many of them as I did. It's obviously been a long time since I was singing regularly in a hardcore band, because my throat was blown out completely after singing along to one two-minute song, and it's been sore off and on ever since. In fact, I may have given myself a cold. Pathetic, I know.

After the set, Brandon and I talked about our different perspectives on it. He'd stood in the back and watched from a safe distance. He made a comment that I thought had some truth to it, that Mike Cheese has built up such a reputation as an insane live performer that some of the stuff he does now is intended more to scare and impress people than to actually hurt them. From where Brandon was standing, he'd had a good vantage point to watch Cheese throw a chair and a mic stand into the crowd at different points (neither of which I'd been able to see from where I was standing). He said he was pretty sure Cheese wasn't actually aiming for anyone. Of course, we also talked about the fact that, for a bunch of guys from California, it'd probably be massively inconvenient to get arrested in Baltimore, and therefore maybe he'd toned things down a little bit. I couldn't help but bring up how intense and scary the guy had seemed onstage, though, and the intimidating look in his eye. In the end, it's at least my opinion that it's a little of both--Cheese is probably kidding or playing things up at times, as with the constant between-song screams of "Where's the fucking dope?" which seemed at least somewhat tongue-in-cheek. For the most part, though, I really do think the dude is crazy and just doesn't give a fuck what happens. I love the music that he and his band produce, and it's a direct result of that mentality. To some extent, I even enjoyed being frightened and intimidated by his live performance. I don't think I could ever live the way he does, though.

["83%," 1/10/10, filmed by an audience member]

One thing I forgot to mention: I did actually meet Mike Cheese earlier that night. He was selling Gehenna's merchandise himself, and he had a big display of their "Die High" series of t-shirts (click the image for a much bigger version of the pic):

I bought the Ol' Dirty Bastard shirt, which features a GG Allin quote on the back: "Live fast. Die." I'm not a fan of GG's music, but I did think that was the best of the three quote possibilities, and ODB is definitely my favorite of the three guys pictured on the front (though I also like Belushi a lot). Mike Cheese was very calm and friendly when I talked to him, and struck me as a nice guy. I figure he's less like GG Allin than people sometimes imply, and more like that dude you know from around who is really cool and into a lot of the same awesome things you like, but parties way harder than you and will get you in trouble if you try to keep up with him. After I bought the shirt from him, he told me to "stay high," and I figured it'd be better to just not bring up the fact that I'm straight edge. He reminds me a lot of a guy I used to know, who moved out to the West Coast several years ago. He sang in a band called PCP Roadblock (you can get an idea of what they were about by watching this video). He was a really nice guy, and we got along really well, but when he was partying, I stayed the hell out of the way.

For more information about Gehenna, read these interviews, which are reprinted on their Myspace:

Vomitose interview
Noise Mag interview (in English and French)

Some Gehenna interviews out there are pretty worthless but these are both interesting and informative.

And of course, you can check out studio versions of their music at their Myspace page.

2009: The Year In Review (Part One).

2010-01-08T16:06:00.002-05:00

OK, I'll admit it: I've been neglecting this blog for quite a while. There are a number of reasons for that, one being the amount of writing I'm doing on Tumblr, where I have both a personal page and themed blog called Nuggets Of The Future (which had its genesis in a post a few months ago on this blog. You'll have to follow me there if you want to see frequently-updated posts, but no worries--I'm still going to post here.

This post, in particular, will kick off a series that will probably last all month, in which I write (relatively) short reviews of every new album I heard in the year 2009. I like the idea of doing this a lot better than the making of "top however-many albums" lists at the end of every year. Those lists get tough to make, because other than the first 5 or so, it can be tough to say which albums you really think do or don't deserve to be on them. I always have a lot more records I like in any given year than I have slots on a list to fill, and in hindsight, the choices of which albums to include at #13 or #17 always seems so arbitrary. In order to replace that arbitrary feeling with something much easier to understand and learn from, I present the following reviews (as well as the ones that will fill the 4 or 5 related posts to follow):

The Entrance Band - The Entrance Band

2006's Prayer Of Death, released under Guy Blakeslee's former solo-project moniker Entrance, was the Entrance Band's actual debut LP, and it was a glorious clusterfuck of chaotic boogie riffs and atonal violin sawing, the sort of thing that would appeal to fans of the first Velvet Underground LP (and without forcing them to sit through any Nico vocals). That album was obviously transitional in nature, though, so the fact that The Entrance Band is a much more organized, better produced, conventional blues-rock album isn't all that surprising. It is somewhat disappointing, though, and that disappointment is crystallized by a new, cleaned-up version of Prayer Of Death's opening track, "Grim Reaper Blues." Where the old version sounded like something broadcast from another planet, this new version sounds almost conventional, as if with only minor tweaks (none of which would need to affect the production), it could show up on classic rock radio tomorrow. And the thing is--it's still the most interesting song on the record. The problems with the production on that song are at least somewhat offset by the song's fascinating construction and awesomely bizarre riffing. Without that riffing, though, the remaining elements that made Prayer For Death so interesting to me are completely absent. I was excited when I found out there was a new Entrance Band album, because I was hoping to have another record's worth of Prayer For Death's awesomeness. As it is, though, this new record just doesn't hold up in comparison.

The Network - Bishop Kent Manning

Absolutely tortured freakout of a metalcore record here. Their first LP, This Is Your Pig's Portrait, was a bit disorganized. As I recently learned, this is probably due to their not having had a full-time vocalist on that record, and using a bunch of different friends and band members who normally played other instruments, so that no two tracks featured the same singer. They've got a steady lineup now, and instead of sticking with the chaos of their first album, this one goes in a more measured direction. What that translates into is lots of tortured screaming and slow-burn riffs, alternated with frantic headbanging riffs that manage to sound like insanity despite being, for the most part, perfectly comprehensible midtempo stuff. For those who felt that A Life Once Lost were never the same after The Fourth Plague: Flies, this record will hit the spot in a big way.

Slayer - World Painted Blood

Slayer hold a permanent position in my top 10 or 20 bands of all time, but in stating that, I must also admit that the apex of their career is long past. Their first five albums, and especially the three-album stretch between Reign In Blood and Seasons In The Abyss, set their legacy in stone, and any of the albums they've done since then have seemed almost anti-climactic. Even the best of them, 2001's God Hates Us All, wasn't quite on the level of those three classics. It was, however, a worthy sequel to Reign In Blood's all-killer-no-filler aesthetic, even with 90s era replacement drummer Paul Bostaph in the fold. Now, original skin-pounder Dave Lombardo has returned, which raises expectations through the roof. And yet, it is just at this point that Slayer trips up. World Painted Blood isn't terrible by any means, and I can even enjoy it when it's on, but the riffs here are subpar on the whole. It sounds like they're overthinking it, like what came naturally to them in 1986 now requires concentration to recreate. But as Neil Young will tell you, "The more you think, the more you stink." That adage is proven on this record, as riffs designed to be direct sound dumbed down, a production intended to sound raw and immediate makes the record sound like an unfinished demo, and a string of uptempo tracks designed to come across as focused just get boring. It's as if Slayer knew they were getting old, and felt that they'd have to work extra hard to prove to everyone that it wasn't affecting them. But in working extra hard, they only made it obvious that they aren't what they once were. I don't think Slayer is capable of making a BAD album, but this is the closest they've come to mediocrity, and that's a sad thing to see.

Dananananaykroyd - Hey Everyone

I never would have expected to hear a band that combines insanely upbeat poppy emo of the post-Cap'n Jazz stripe with the spastic art-core of the Blood Brothers, and yet, here are Dananananaykroyd, coming out of Glasgow and blowing my mind with a potent genre cocktail that I can't stop listening (and dancing) to. There are six members of this band, with the standard two guitars/bass/drums rock band lineup augmented by both a full-time singer and a guy who switches between singing and playing drums. The dual-vocal songs, especially "Watch This!", which is both an introduction and a sort of manifesto for the album and band as a whole, feature interplay that avoids conventional structure in favor of excited simultaneous rants. Both singers babble and scream, tripping over each other's words and lines in a manner that heightens the excitement of the song. But at other times, when the band is in their dual-drum lineup, the increased focus that it provides allows them to tap into even more potent melodies. The unstoppable bounce of "Totally Bone" only increases in intensity due to the driving percussive clatter on which the whole song is based. Meanwhile, "Black Wax" is constructed around a delicate melody without much heaviness at all. Yet both singers sing on it, and there are definitely moments when both of them are amped and in full freakout mode. It seems like Dananananaykroyd are willing to try anything that even sort of fits in with their mission, and as a result they sometimes veer so wildly within a song that they can make it seem like two different ones. It all works, though, and that's the important thing. This record is a nonstop blast, and whenever it ends, I just want to start it over again. What higher praise can I offer than that?

Passion Pit - Manners

There's a point that comes in the evolution of any particular subgenre of the indie scene, where the bands being produced by that subgenre become nigh-indistinguishable from their mainstream counterparts. With indie-techno-pop, that point has been reached, and Passion Pit's Manners is, even more than anything previously produced by LCD Soundsystem, completely indistinguishable from the sort of stuff they play in discos and on top 40 stations. Which all sounds like a condemnation, if you proceed from the first principle that indie is always better. But who says it is? The indie mentality, as an opposition to major labels and their privileging of monetary earnings uber alles, is dead and buried. With no political ideals left to fight for, that makes indie nothing but a genre. And when an indie band produces an example of a mainstream genre that can compete not only within the indie subset of that genre but right up there with the mainstream versions, shouldn't we be celebrating that? Passion Pit's "The Reeling" is the best dance single I've heard since Lady Gaga's "Poker Face," and the rest of this album, once I finally gave it a chance, proved to be full of additional examples of pure techno-pop nirvana. From the little-kid group chants on "Little Secrets" to the falsetto "na-na's" on "To Kingdom Come" and the ringing guitars on "Make Light"--which point back to the group's indie heritage no matter how deeply buried in the mix they are--this record is crammed full of pop music delights, and everyone short of the most diehard rockists should be able to appreciate them.

Four Tomorrow - Four Tomorrow

Four Tomorrow are from Japan, and have absolutely no profile in my native United States. However, because I know gamer dudes and other people who follow Japanese pop music, I occasionally hear Japanese bands I'd never come across otherwise. Four Tomorrow was the one band that that process led me to this year, and like Sambomaster, whom I discovered a few years before in the same manner, I find in their music a kind of joyous exuberance that you very rarely come across in American bands. Algernon Cadwallader have a bit of it, Cap'n Jazz had it when they were around, but I'm hard pressed to come up with examples other than those. That exuberance comes out in Four Tomorrow's choruses, which generally involve multiple members of the band shouting frantically, and in their frantic performance of uptempo punk riffs that might sound considerably more sedate in the hands of some other band. The guitars are jangly rather than distorted, but the punk influence is nonetheless at the forefront; it's because sometimes, playing something sloppily but with heart is more perfect than nailing it with technical perfection. Four Tomorrow's songs are ramshackle in construction, and played so quickly that you get the impression of all the members jumping around and falling all over themselves in the studio, just like they do in live situations. But their intrinsic jubilance, their incredible excitement at the very fact that they're a band that's playing songs, is impossible to escape. For that reason, Four Tomorrow's debut album is an infectious thrill.

Manic Street Preachers - Journal For Plague Lovers

At this point, it's hard to even talk about the Manic Street Preachers in terms of their sound. They're the sort of band that I use to explain other bands. I found out how inconvenient that could be earlier this year, though, when trying to explain The Cribs to a friend of mine by saying that they sounded somewhat like the Manics. He'd never heard the Manics, so the reference meant nothing to him. Fortunately, we could hit up Youtube and watch some Generation Terrorists/Holy Bible era MSP videos, and he immediately learned what I was talking about. When writing a review that attempts to encapsulate a band's sound WITHOUT sending the reader to Youtube, things get a bit harder. Part of what's weird about it is that all of the reference points I want to cite post-date MSP: mid-90s Britpop, post-Y2K Britpunk revival (think Libertines/Dirty Pretty Things), and oh, here's one that goes back farther--British glam-rock from the 70s, like T. Rex or Gary Glitter. Roll all these things up into a ball, and you've got the Manics, though that's only half the story, at least for their best material. Because their best material featured lyrics by rhythm guitarist Richey Edwards, who used his unique worldview and remarkable wit to give the Manics a verbal personality that was unmatched on the British alt-rock scene in the early 90s. Tragically, Richey disappeared in February 1995, never to be seen again. Fans, family members, and even the rest of the band have long held out hope that he'd reappear, but it hasn't happened yet, and hope's a hard thing to keep up after 14 years. Journal For Plague Lovers, then, is an attempt at closure, a trip through the notebooks Edwards left behind when he disappeared, in order to yield one last album featuring his lyrics. There are some gems here, too: "Only a god reserves the right to forgive those who revile him," from the title track; "crucifixion is the easy life," from "Doors Closing Slowly;" and "Jackie Collins Existential Question Time"'s excellent chorus, "Mommy, what's a sex pistol?" Surviving members James Dean Bradfield, Nicky Wire, and Sean Moore rise to the occasion musically as well, producing some of the band's best music of the past decade, if not longer. Still, though, it's kind of a sad thing to hear, no matter how great a record it is. Even more than the other records they've done since Richey Edwards' presumed death, it is this one that most makes one wish he was still alive, simply by pointing out how much he contributed when he was.

Sonic Youth - The Eternal

I guess the career renaissance that Sonic Youth experienced this decade is becoming something I'm used to. I say that because, unlike the three albums that preceded it, The Eternal did not shock me with its goodness, its solidity. When I had hated everything since Experimental, Jet Set, Trash and No Star, Murray Street was mindblowing--an actual good Sonic Youth record! I thought the time for those was over! Sonic Nurse and Rather Ripped also got my blood flowing--and more importantly, got me to head for the record store with cash in hand, something I didn't hardly do at all in 2009, the year of my personal economic upheaval. Even if I had bought The Eternal, though, I'm not sure I would have played it anywhere near as often as I played the last three Sonic Youth albums. For one, as I said back at the beginning of this paragraph, I've gone back to expecting good records out of Sonic Youth. For another, as solid as The Eternal is, as much as it can stand up on an overall quality level to any of the past three Sonic Youth albums, it has considerably less memorable moments. There aren't any songs on this album that get stuck in my head the way "Pattern Recognition" or "Karen Revisited" or "Or" did on those last three records. It's a very solid album, but I think that solidity comes out as uniformity rather than a collection of peak moments, which leaves me with quite a bit less to take away, even if I do enjoy this album every time I put it on (which doesn't happen all that often). I'm not sure if the fault is mine, for not listening enough, or Sonic Youth's, for making an album that blends into the background a bit too easily. Regardless, this album didn't stick with me the way a lot of their albums have over the years, and while I don't think it's bad, there's definitely something missing here, the absence of which keeps it from attaining the level that the best Sonic Youth stuff easily reaches. [P.S. - I had forgotten that I actually do get "Thunderclap for Bobby Pyn" stuck in my head on occasion, which doesn't change my overall feelings about the album but deserves to be noted.]

Japandroids - Post-Nothing

This is the sort of record that, when it gets hyped, reminds me of how different my listening patterns are from the indie-rock mainstream. When it started getting big, I listened to it, and found it to be a fun record for the most part, especially on the uptempo songs. In fact, starting with "The Boys Are Leaving Town" followed by "Young Hearts Spark Fire," but ending with "Crazy/Forever," "Sovereignty," and "I Quit Girls" may be the only really obvious wrong thing about this record that I can point to. It starts with a glut of energy and ends with a glut of slowed-down haze. The songs should have been sequenced better, and unlike Counting Crows' 2008 effort, Saturday Nights and Sunday Mornings, there wasn't even a thematic reason not to. But whatever, getting away from sequencing and into the songs themselves, yeah, this is fuzzy bassless guitar-pop, and it's pretty well-done. However, for all the babble about noise and distortion among the indie rock faithful, it didn't seem all that noisy to me. Everything is relative, though, and this is an obvious case of my relativity being different from theirs. Bands like Wavves and No Age and these guys probably do seem like a wall of noise overload to kids who spend a lot of time listening to Animal Collective or Grizzly Bear. For dudes like me who spend a significant amount of time listening to Every Time I Die and Das Oath, Japandroids still seem pretty melodically oriented. So, that was a weird thing for me about listening to the dialogue around this record, but it doesn't mean it's any less good. One thing that I did feel made it a bit less good was a discovery I made when I saw these guys play on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon: their songs are, lyrically, insanely repetitive. They played "Wet Hair" on Fallon's show, and hearing the vocals without distortion for the first time, I realized that the song only has three lines, which are just repeated over and over and over again. I'd have to say that the vocal distortion on the album works in their favor, since it kept me from realizing that for several months. If I'd noticed that on first listen, I would probably have liked this record a lot less. And really, I don't love it; when I want to hear a distorted pop record, I generally have many more interesting specimens to turn to. But it's not bad, by any stretch.

Jemina Pearl - Break It Up

So right after the release of their second album, teenage Nashville punk band Be Your Own Pet fell apart. The only people left standing were singer/co-founder Jemina Pearl and drummer John Eatherly, who'd only been in the band for a short period of time. Frustrated but undaunted, the two of them began recording songs together, with Jemina singing and John playing all of the instruments. Eventually, they ended up with enough material to release an album, and Break It Up was the result. To a great extent, it sounds like the third Be Your Own Pet album; the majority of the songs are the same sort of catchy but snotty melodic hardcore/punk that made Be Your Own Pet so fun and memorable. However, there are additional sounds to be found here. "Ecstatic Appeal" is a disco-punk hybrid with a beat like Blondie's "Heart Of Glass" and wonderfully retro glittering synth noises augmenting the rhythm guitar riffs that propel the song. "Nashville Shores" is slower and poppier than most of the tracks on the album, and its chorus features triple-tracked harmonies from Jemina. Unfortunately, the 50s-ish ballad "I Hate People" is a less successful departure, and while one would expect a Jemina Pearl-Iggy Pop duet to be a smashing success, even the combination of the two of them can't overcome the schmaltzy monotony of the song's music. Thankfully, it's the only dud the album has to offer, and it's more than made up for by propulsive bubblegum-punk hits like "Heartbeats," "Band On The Run," and "So Sick," the latter of which closes the album with the sound of Jemina, John, and a studio full of friends energetically making vomit noises. This whole record sounds like it was a blast to make, and it's every bit as much fun to listen to. Jemina and John have recruited a band to play the songs live, and are now on tour. One hopes that regardless of what they call it, they'll keep making fun, energetic music like this.

End of Part One; More to come in a few days!

Can I drive you home?

2009-10-20T19:46:00.003-04:00

Engine Kid are interesting to me by virtue of the fact that people pass them over so completely. Considering singer/guitarist Greg Anderson's formidable stoner-rock resume--he's been in Goatsnake, Sunn 0))), and Thorr's Hammer, among quite a few others--you'd think that people would be interested in checking out his earlier bands, especially when they are as musically interesting and tough to pin down as Engine Kid were. Maybe that's the whole problem; unlike anything Anderson is involved in currently, Engine Kid were by no means stoner rock. In fact, though they spent a good bit of time being heavy, their sound was kind of all over the place, as we will discuss shortly. They're a bit of an acquired taste, and that's probably true even for those whose tastes are esoteric enough to draw them to Sunn 0))). Despite all of that, I generally think of Engine Kid as the best band Greg Anderson has ever been a part of. And their final, double-length LP, Angel Wings, is their true masterpiece.

For whatever reason, the vinyl version of Angel Wings features a very different running order than the cassette and CD versions. The tendency among collectors is always to regard the vinyl version as the definitive one, and any deviation from the state of the vinyl to be ersatz. I have this tendency myself, but this once I'm going to go against my usual feeling and take a stand for the cassette/CD running order as the correct one. It might help that I owned the cassette first, and therefore had a chance to get used to it, but I feel sure that even if I'd first acquired the vinyl, I would have understood that the order that placed "Windshield" as the album's opening track is the superior one.

Engine Kid spend a lot of time on Angel Wings being heavy, in intricate and fascinating ways. However, "Windshield" is quite different from anything else here, and plays a somewhat cruel trick on the listener and his/her expectations. It starts out very quietly, with guitar and bass playing a soft, undistorted melody, over which Anderson sings. "In the back of my car, I spent the night," he tells us, and the extreme quiet of the music mirrors the feeling of a groggy early morning, waking up to rays of sunshine in your eyes. He ends the verse by singing, "Sunshine stung my eyes, coming through the windshield," and then the drums come in, slightly increasing the volume of the track as they play along with the guitars and bass. After a brief instrumental passage, there's another quiet verse, and when this one ends, the volume suddenly increases. It's not just that all of the musicians start playing loudly--Anderson singing overtop of the music about being "wakened by a passing train"--but that the track was mixed to get significantly louder at this point. You've been turning up your stereo to hear the quiet verses, and now you get knocked over by a sudden, seemingly intentional volume increase. As soon as it's started, though, the whole loud chorus stops, and there's the briefest second of silence, after which the guitar and bass start playing quietly again. There's one more brief quiet verse, but as soon as you've adjusted to the volume dropping out, it comes back in, even louder and heavier than before. Musically speaking, the band is now playing with about the volume, distortion and heaviness they will use throughout the album, but with Anderson singing rather than screaming overtop of it, repeating, "Can I drive you home?" over and over, the part doesn't sound heavy but rather emotionally intense, with the loud guitars emphasizing the pleading emotional tone of the vocals. It's almost like something Sunny Day Real Estate would do, and I'm sure it's a total surprise to someone who would buy this record expecting stoner rock. At least when it begins the album, it fits as a sort of introduction, bringing you in slowly rather than flinging you right off the deep end. Placed inbetween two other songs on the record, as it is on the vinyl, I'm sure the contrast is even more jarring.

The next nine songs are more in line with the typical Engine Kid sound, which is somewhere between Black Sabbath, Don Caballero, and Rodan. There's still plenty of space for exploration within that sound, though, and the gamut of tracks on Angel Wings makes that abundantly clear. Engine Kid shift from short, heavy instrumental tracks like "Nailgun," "Herbie Hancock," and "A Quinn Martin Production" (the latter of which is an unlisted hidden track on the cassette and CD, and only given a title on the vinyl); to epic explorations that move through multiple moods and time signatures and often stretch to 7 and 8 minute lengths. "Lies Like Knives" is one of these latter epics, and is a dark, ferocious beast with the power of a nighttime electrical storm. As the rhythm section switches between different pounding breakdown riffs, Greg Anderson screams the song's title over and over, wrenching brutal chugging chord sequences from his guitar, which sometimes sounds like a churning piece of heavy machinery and other times falls apart into feedback. This song is probably heavier than anything I've heard on a Goatsnake record, and approaches Sunn 0))) territory at its wildest.

"Expressionists" starts with a strange sequence of riffs that stop and start, propelled by a drum part that fills the empty spaces with rolls that seem unplanned and barely held together, but always fit perfectly into the underlying rhythm. Said underlying rhythm becomes clear after about 45 seconds, when the band finally starts playing together as a unit, with bassist Brian Kraft taking his only lead vocal on the album. His voice is much softer and quieter than Anderson's typically is, but doesn't reach the melodic heights Anderson hits on "Windshield," either. His vocals mix with the chaotic music in a fashion most reminiscent of intricate hardcore bands like Unwound or Drive Like Jehu, a sound that was at its peak in 1994, when Angel Wings was recorded.

"Jumper Cables" is another song that is less heavy than mathematically complex, beginning with a long, ominous section in which Greg Anderson talks rather than sings, narrating a story in the fashion of Slint vocalist Brian MacMahan before beginning to scream when the song gets much heavier around the two-minute mark. Its abrupt transitions from loud to quiet are nothing new for heavy, metallic post-hardcore bands, but the way Engine Kid fit the parts of "Jumper Cables" together makes the whole thing work, achieving the integration of Slint and Rodan's epic horror movie narratives and the pounding, noisy crescendoes that those bands rarely bothered to write.

"Anchor" begins with bagpipes, which soon give way to another quiet, foreboding riff, over which Anderson mumbles bizarre, disconnected imagery. Once this song gets heavy, though, it very rarely returns to the quiet moments, instead locking into a tremendously complicated series of interconnected heavy riffs that fit together in ways not immediately obvious to the listener. This is pure math-rock at its heaviest, with Engine Kid using stops and starts to make the whole thing that much more tortured. By halfway through the song, Greg Anderson is struggling to spit out lyrics like "Dog brain--take the A train," as the instruments--including, one must assume, his own--bark out disconnected chords, chopping his lyrics apart at seemingly random but obviously planned-out intervals. Each of these choppy verses ends with Anderson screaming over silence, "...and never come..." On the word "BACK!" the whole band is suddenly playing again, sweeping his vocals away on a powerful tide of heavy noise.

The album ends with a 13 minute cover of John Coltrane's "Ole," which is the spiritual opposite of its opening track, "Windshield." Where that song was Engine Kid at their most accessible, presenting a melodic, emotional indie rock song not that far removed from the sound of, say, Sunny Day Real Estate [Random trivia: Greg Anderson and SDRE bassist Nate Mendel were both in a straight edge hardcore band called Brotherhood in the late 80s, when both were teenagers], "Ole" is Engine Kid at their farthest out, taking their mathematically inclined metallic post-hardcore aesthetic to its logical conclusion: dark, pounding, free jazz. Earlier in 1994, Engine Kid had released a split LP with Iceburn, and Iceburn's contribution had been two 15-minute tracks in which they explored different variations on a theme from Stravinsky's "The Rite Of Spring." While Engine Kid were not anywhere near as far-out as Iceburn tended to get, it's not hard to imagine how hearing those Iceburn tracks might have influenced the decision to record "Ole." The trio of full-time Engine Kid members basically relegate themselves to the rhythm section during the song, bringing in Bill Herzog [still a Sunn 0))) collaborator] to hold down the groove on upright bass, and John Phelps and Tim Midgett of the band Silkworm to play alto sax and trumpet, respectively. Phelps and Midgett are all over the place, soloing throughout the track, but they are strangely sidelined by Engine Kid themselves, who stick to the basic chords of the song but slowly play them more and more heavily, until their rhythmic pounding has made you forget all about the horns. Using distortion pedals and the unrelenting style that they've learned from hardcore and metal, they create a powerful rhythmic pulse of a variety rarely, if ever, heard in straight-up jazz music. They don't turn "Ole" into a hardcore or metal song, though; they preserve the feel and structure of the Coltrane original, honoring it with a new, updated take on it even as they make clear, by virtue of the energy and emotion they pour into it, how much respect they have for the original version. It could be said that they breathe some much-needed life into a mostly dead genre here. That is, one could say that if it were clear that it had an effect on jazz as a whole. Fifteen years after its release, just the opposite is true: it's clear that it had no effect at all.

Engine Kid are a band of extreme shifts in genre, mood, and tempo, and no matter what feel they are exploring on a particular song, they always create a challenging piece of music. Considering Greg Anderson's more recent rise to fame, perhaps it would be most correct to say that Engine Kid were ahead of their time. Or maybe the problem is that they haven't been packaged correctly, or put in front of the right group of people, to find their natural audience. Whatever the explanation, though, it remains true to say that Engine Kid deserve much more credit than they get, if not for being influential, then at least for being a creative and consistently excellent band.

Engine Kid - "Windshield," "Anchor," "Expressionists"

ENGINE KID - "Windshield" from Revelation Records on Vimeo.

Nick And Norah's Mediocre Playlist.

2009-10-07T02:36:00.001-04:00

I think it was with "Nick And Norah's Infinite Playlist" that the prevailing tide of opinion, at least in indie and alt-rock circles, turned against Michael Cera. Sure, there had been some complaints about his characters in "Superbad" and "Juno," that he was just recycling Arrested Development's George Michael character over and over. But you could still find some people to defend both of those movies, and plenty of people willing to defend the earlier "Garden State," in which the Michael Cera role is played by proto-Michael Cera Zach Braff. "Nick And Norah's Infinite Playlist," though, was greeted with derision in every place I read or heard people talking about it. Maybe the film found its audience in a younger cross-section of wide-eyed teenagers, or maybe it was just a flop; I haven't seen the numbers, so I don't know. But in the demographic group that was its target market, it seemed to be universally hated.

I didn't rush out and see it, so I didn't know the exact reason for all the hatred. But I could make an educated guess. These kind of accelerated nostalgia movies have been pretty popular lately, and the thing they do--selling a romanticized portrayal of who you are right now back to you--is a risky move. It's easy to go too precious (or maybe too silly) and make everyone want to barf ("Juno"'s mistake according to those who didn't like it). It's easy to go too mawkish and make everyone hate themselves for seeing themselves in the characters ("Garden State"'s tragic error). Walking the tightrope between the two, striking the right notes without overdoing it, is tough, and it doesn't seem like anyone from the indie-rock generation has quite done it yet.

The accusation I heard about "Nick And Norah" was that the characters were such dorky, wussy little indie rockers that everyone watching the film just wanted to shake them. Particularly Michael Cera--I kept hearing about how his character needed to "man up." Maybe this was what activated the masochistic streak in my brain, or maybe it was just that I had to see what it was about this movie that made everyone who saw it hate it so much. Regardless, the more I heard bad things about this movie, the more curious about it I got.

I wasn't going to go out of my way to see it, but I'm unemployed right now, and my Netflix account is still working, so I took advantage of the Watch Instantly feature and booted it up on my laptop tonight. And I was expecting downright horrible trash, which is probably why I found myself at least somewhat pleasantly surprised. It's really rare that movies, or any works of art, that people condemn as godawful are actually as bad as everyone says. Usually they're only mediocre, and when you're expecting awfulness, mediocrity can be a pleasant surprise. I'm not saying "Nick And Norah" was mediocre either, by the way. I didn't love it, or even like it all the way through, but my analysis of it is more complicated than that.

Let me warn you right off that I'm going to get spoilerific from here on in; I really have to if I want to make my points. There are a few twists in the movie's plot that I'm glad I didn't know about in advance, so if you want to watch this movie at some point, you might want to skip this review until you've done so.

OK, now that that's out of the way: "Nick And Norah's Infinite Playlist" begins with separate introductions to our two titular characters. Nick (Michael Cera) plays in a band, currently called the Jerkoffs, in which he is the only non-gay member. He's been broken up with his last girlfriend for over a month and is still desperately pining for her. The ex-girlfriend, Tris, goes to school with Norah, and Norah has developed the habit of grabbing the mix CDs Nick makes for Tris out of the trash when Tris throws them away. This has made her curious about Nick, whose musical taste she really likes.

That evening, Nick's band has a gig opening for Bishop Allen. This is where my first big problem with this movie comes in. The setup for Nick, Nick's band, Norah, Norah's drunken best friend Caroline, and Tris to all end up at the club together is that the enigmatic but popular local band Where's Fluffy are playing a secret show somewhere in town that night, and they're all looking for the gig's location. The Where's Fluffy plot thread runs throughout the movie, and it's totally lame. This is supposed to be a somewhat realistic movie about indie kids, right? I guess that's questionable, since about 25% of it deviates dramatically from that template, but whatever, that's what it is most of the time. The Where's Fluffy thing, though, is a plot device out of some completely unrealistic 80s movie. It makes me think of "Empire Records" or "Ferris Bueller's Day Off," and as much as I love both of those movies, "Nick And Norah" sets itself up as a different sort of movie, and the sort of plot threads that work well in 80s movies just seem unnatural and shoehorned in.

But whatever, everyone's at the club together, Norah and Nick meet and hit it off, and Tris gets jealous (even though she's there with a new boyfriend). This sets up the intrinsic conflict of the entire movie--the decision to move towards a new and interesting but uncertain possibility, or to try and stick with a previous love interest for a while longer even though it's not really working out. I think this is a great idea around which to structure a movie about teenagers/early-twentysomethings, and a lot of the things that happen in "Nick and Norah" could have happened in a really great movie about this exact concept. The problem here is that the execution is all wrong. I find myself liking most of the characters in the movie--though, truth to tell, Nick's passivity is a bit problematic and probably explains a lot of the grief Michael Cera got about this movie. I can't deny that the frustratingly weak-willed indie boy stereotype has a grain of truth in it, and even that some of the passive things Nick does in the movie ring true (though others definitely don't), but it's a frustrating experience to watch it go down. In a way, I feel like there's a perverse streak running through "Nick And Norah"; like the writers and director intended to create a certain amount of frustration with the characters in their audience. There's a lot more honesty in watching Nick and Norah be passive, refuse to take risks and act on their feelings, and visibly give up (as both characters do multiple times over the course of the movie) than there is in typical romantic comedies, where characters say and do the things that you only wish you would say or do in the same situations.

Again, the problem is execution. Every tiny little moment in which this movie extracts a grain of uncomfortable truth from a human interaction is immediately overwhelmed by half a dozen awkward, overdone bits that all pile overtop of the honest moment and drown it out. Sometimes this happens due to the filmmakers' attempts to throw jokes and comic relief into the film, which never works, and sometimes it's because they force some indie cliche or another and just end up with yet another out-of-place "Empire Records" moment. By the way, I was uncomfortable with how little distinction there seemed to be between the indie scene that was being portrayed and the totally mainstream attitudes and behaviors of many of the characters. I admit that I might just be showing my age, because it does seem like the indie scene circa 2009 is a lot more business-oriented and mainstream than it was when I first got involved. My feeling, though, was that the filmmakers got it wrong, and that made it hard for me to suspend my disbelief at points.

Things started to improve over the last quarter or so of the movie. There was about a 20 minute period in which Nick and Norah interacted by themselves instead of in a crowd, and for the first time in the entire movie, I got drawn in. I stopped wondering when the next stupid thing that would strain my suspension of disbelief was going to happen, and instead found myself caring about and relating to the characters. If the whole movie had been as well-done as this section was, it would have been quite good. Even this section was sort of invaded by the movie's regular detours into corniness, though. There was some sexual contact between Nick and Norah, and while I appreciated the directorial decision to focus on the musical equipment in the room rather than showing the sex scene, there were still hints back to obnoxious earlier dialogue about Norah's never having had an orgasm, which tarnished the scene a bit.

Based on talk I heard before seeing the movie, I had expected the whole thing to end without Nick and Norah getting together, and for the lack of connection between the two of them to be specifically Michael Cera's fault. There were points where it seemed like that's where things were going, and I wasn't happy about that, but in the end, Nick and Norah did hook up, and it seemed like the characters would start dating. Both of them took the risk and ditched their not-quite-exes, rather than staying locked into the cycle of someone not liking them but not wanting them to move on, either. Falling into that cycle is a common problem, more common than people like to admit, and it's good to see a movie at least trying to tackle these issues. A different movie, a better movie, would have done so a lot more successfully than "Nick And Norah's Infinite Playlist" did. As it is, "Nick And Norah" is a film in which two likeable characters, both of whom are uncomfortably lifelike at times, do their best to wade through a surfeit of implausible plot points. Their success is intermittent, at best. The same could be said for the entire movie.

The nuggets of the future?

2009-10-01T22:08:00.002-04:00

I've got a new car, for the first time in almost a year. It's been a strange adjustment, because only now, after having it for a few weeks, am I starting to realize that I can go to places in 5 minutes that took me half an hour to reach on my bike, which makes me a lot more likely to actually go to those places. As a result of that realization, tonight I decided to go to Sheetz and score some food from the automated touch-screen menu thing, which I love.

Here's what this post has to do with music: I have a cassette player in my car. When I say it's new, I really just mean it's new to me--it's from 1996, a year back when it didn't yet seem that weird to put a cassette player in a car. These days I imagine that most of the ones that are still in use are just being used to run adapters plugged into Ipods, but I'm old enough and enough of a packrat that I still have the huge collection of cassettes that I built up starting in my childhood (the mid-80s) and continuing until about 2005, when even used cassettes started disappearing from record stores. Since I got this car less than two weeks before becoming unemployed, I couldn't spare the cash to buy an adapter for my Ipod, so right now I'm driving around listening to tapes. These days I mostly listen to music on my computer (for better or for worse), so a lot of the tapes I've pulled out in the last couple of weeks for driving music are things I haven't heard in years.

Tonight I was listening to a mix tape I made in 2003 or thereabouts, close to the end of the era in which I listened to cassettes on the regular. I was just starting to burn CDs regularly, and when I got a car in spring 2004 that had a CD player in it, I started listening to those burned CDs whenever I was away from my computer. My walkman started gathering dust, as did my cassette collection in general. The mix tape I was listening to tonight might be the last mix tape I ever made, and if it's not, it's close to it. Anyway, I was listening to the tape in the dark, and couldn't really check the tracklist, so it was fun trying to figure out what I was hearing as each new song came on. Some of them were immediately recognizable tunes that I still listen to today, but others were things I hadn't heard since not long after making the tape. The track listing spoke well for my tastes six years ago, because none of the songs I'd forgotten about made me think, "What was I thinking with this song?" Instead I kept thinking, "I forgot how good this song was!"

The song that blew my mind the most tonight was one I heard as I was getting home. I recognized it immediately despite having not heard it in years, because it was very distinctive. The song was "Til The End" by Haven, from their album "Between The Senses." I'd bought this album from Tower Records, back when they were still around. I used to like going into Tower and listening to all of the CDs they had on the listening stations. They used to have one particular listening station that was all CDs priced at $9.99 or less, and I found a lot of awesome albums by random bands that I'd never heard of on that station. Haven came from there, but so did the first Ours album, The Coral's "The Invisible Invasion," and "Interventions And Lullabies" by The Format. Some of these are still remembered now, but that Haven CD isn't one of them. It may have been issued by a major label, but it wasn't a success, even on a cult level. The band released one more album on their British label, which wasn't picked up in America, and then broke up. Their website is a dead link these days, and as I listened to "Til The End," I had the passing thought that I'm probably the only person who still remembers it.

That's when I had the epiphany that I referenced in the title. On some level, I thought, isn't Haven comparable to the bands that took part in the garage/psych explosion of the 60s? Haven's sound mixes the leftovers of 90s alternative rock with a strong shoegaze influence and a wide-ranging vocalist who obviously took some cues from Jeff Buckley. In the wake of the success of bands like Coldplay and Travis, a lot of bands that sounded exactly like this were probably getting signed. Ours, who I mentioned earlier, were along the same lines, though with more of a Smashing Pumpkins influence. There are plenty of others I could cite, too, going back to the post-Nirvana grunge gold rush and moving forward up to right now, with the current attempt to find the new My Chemical Romance and Fall Out Boy in full swing. A lot of these bands are completely forgotten within 5 to 10 years of their first release, and while many of them make albums that are inconsistent at best, most of them will have at least one really good song buried somewhere in their discography.

Take Haven, for example. "Til The End" is the third track on "Between The Senses," and other than the opener, "Let It Live," it's the only track that really stands out. If I'd chosen to listen to tracks 5 and 7 instead of tracks 1 and 3 when this CD was on Tower's listening station, I probably wouldn't have bought it. But considering the joy I still get out of "Til The End," I feel like it was a worthwhile purchase. The song starts with a quiet single-note guitar intro, over which vocalist Gary Briggs croons the first verse. The lyrics aren't too great, and he mostly repeats the same verse and chorus throughout the song, but when the rest of the band joins with the lead guitar halfway through the verse, the mixture of the simple minor-chord riffing with the melodic lead guitar and Briggs's high, crooning vocals creates an understated yet catchy feel. As the song moves into its pre-chorus, the drums become more powerful, and push things towards a stronger, more driving chorus. However, Gary Briggs never sings any more forcefully. Instead, he goes higher, adding to the passion of the chorus by hitting surprising soprano notes. My favorite part of the entire song is when, on the chorus, he sings the line "Lately I'm sure, words won't implore you to stay," emphasizing the internal rhyme on the words "sure" and "implore" by hitting an impossibly high falsetto note on the first word, then moving to an even higher harmony on the second word. These kinds of vocal tricks won't be for everyone--if you can't handle a bit of fey grandiosity, you're better off with a Husker Du record--but if you can get on their wavelength, Haven have a lot to offer. At least on this song.

And that's the kind of story that I've discovered most of the time when I've gone digging deeper into the careers of garage/psych bands from the 60s who have one or two songs that I fucking love. Take the Count Five, for example, whose "Psychotic Reaction" is one of the most famous Nuggets of all time. Lester Bangs, in his "Psychotic Reactions And Carburetor Dung" essay, promised me an entire album of garage awesomeness where that first single came from, but when I hunted down the Count Five's other recorded work, I mostly got embarrassingly inept crap (though I will give credit to "Double Decker Bus"). I should have known not to trust Bangs on this one, though, considering that the rest of the essay discussed four other Count Five albums that unfortunately never existed. Anyway, the point is that, like Haven, Count Five's career didn't have much depth to it. They're remembered for one song, and that's probably all they should be remembered for. So who's to say that, in 20 more years or so, there won't be a similar movement to preserve fondly the memories of all the lesser alt/pop/rock bands from our own time? I sure hope there is, at least. I'd love to hear a four-CD box set of post-grunge pseudo-Jeff Buckley shoegazers, each playing their one good song. Of course, by the time all of this happens, the box set won't be CD, but whatever format comes two steps after blu-ray, and I'll be experiencing a four-dimensional virtual reality immersion that makes me feel like I'm playing bass for whatever band I'm listening to. Which sounds pretty cool, come to think of it.

Haven - "Til The End" and "Let It Live"

"Every man and woman is a star," or Lady Gaga: An Exhaustive Exegesis.

2009-09-20T15:10:00.005-04:00

1. The Image

"Listen!" She held my arm and squeezed it tightly.
A low, rhythmic fusion of melody had been coming from the plants around the shop, and mounting above them I heard a single stronger voice calling out, at first a thin high-pitched reed of sound that began to pulse and deepen and finally swelled into full baritone, raising the other plants in chorus about itself. I had never heard the Arachnid sing before. I was listening to it open-eared when I felt a glow of heat burn against my arm. I turned and saw the woman staring intently at the plant, her skin aflame, the insects in her eyes writhing insanely. The Arachnid stretched out towards her, calyx erect, leaves like blood red sabres.

--J. G. Ballard, "Prima Belladonna"

I'd like to believe that I'm immune to peer pressure. I'd like to think that I can make decisions on my own, without worrying about what my friends or random strangers will think of me if they know, for example, what records I listen to. But let's not kid ourselves--we're all at least somewhat affected by the things that our tastes say to other people. As a guy who grew up in the hardcore scene, I've been socialized by my surroundings--and, to be fair, my own tastes--to hate any sort of modern commercial pop music. At this late date, it's become acceptable to profess my fondness for certain Madonna singles publicly, but the more hardline among my peers will look askance at me if I do even that. Anything that's coming out right now, of course, is seen as total trash. You can get away with liking mainstream hip-hop singles (even though mainstream hip-hop no longer comes anywhere near being the best the genre has to offer), and maybe a Justin Timberlake song here and there, though even that's pushing it. And mainstream pop, of the sort that pleases the former TRL crowd? Forget it! It's an a priori assumption that all of that stuff is crap, and if you even give it the time of day, something must be wrong with you. So, for all of these reasons, the cards were stacked against my ever giving Lady Gaga's music even half a chance.

She drew my attention anyway, though it took a while. I'd heard about her in Rolling Stone when she released "Just Dance," but never listened to the song, and then when "Poker Face" became ubiquitous, I eventually had to listen to it to figure out what someone who'd referenced it in a conversation was talking about. At first, the knee-jerk negative response to top-40 pop music kicked in. Usually, that's all it takes for me to spend the next decade telling everyone I hate Lady Gaga. Hearing "Hit Me Baby One More Time" was all it took where Britney Spears was concerned. But in the weeks after hearing "Poker Face," I found myself strangely drawn to Lady Gaga. And maybe this is shallow, but it wasn't because of her music. It was because of her clothes.

Sure, female pop stars always dress provocatively--it's basically a prerequisite for the job. But Lady Gaga's look is different than the standard "look at me, I'm young and pretty" sales pitch that wardrobe designers go for. There are multiple themes running through the fashions she tends to wear in public, and foremost among them is an alienated, futuristic vibe that makes me think of cyberpunk. She seems to have stepped out of a William Gibson novel. The frequent use of headgear, appearance-changing makeup, sunglasses and even fingers artfully concealing part of her face makes her seem remote from the viewer, cut off from any real connection due to a deliberate obfuscation. She pairs all of this with elaborate bodysuits and jackets that cover the top half of her body but typically leave her legs as bare as they'd be if she were wearing a bathing suit. On one level, all of the skin that is bared is quite sexy. Taken as a whole, though, Lady Gaga's look reveals her body and presents it for adoration even as it guards her face, her emotions, and by extension her entire private life, against outside invasion. You might be able to fuck her, but you will never, never know her.

I hadn't processed all of this on a detailed level when I started following her every move in the press, though. I was just interested in seeing what Lady Gaga was wearing this week. She obviously put a lot of thought into her outfits, and regardless of whether I had any appreciation for her music, I could appreciate the aesthetic she was communicating through her personal appearance. A cover story in Rolling Stone made it clear to me that she wasn't just some dumb pop singer, either--she referenced people like David Bowie and Andy Warhol, and explained her organization Haus Of Gaga, who handle Gaga-related fashion and artistic issues and seem at least somewhat like Andy Warhol's Factory. Then she started making headlines by wearing outfits that were outlandish even by her standards: a bizarre model solar system-like headpiece on Ellen DeGeneres's show, a dress made entirely of Kermit The Frog dolls on German TV... crazy shit. I started to speak instinctively of Lady Gaga in glowing terms, which occasionally caused frantic backtracking when someone would call me out: "You actually like that crap?" I'd stammer and blush, denying any interest in the sort of vapid commercial pop that I still considered Lady Gaga's music to be... and then the next day when a new Lady Gaga-related story showed up in my RSS feed, I'd be just as stoked as I'd been the day before.

The tension between these two divergent opinions was bound to come to a head at some point, and it finally did this week.

2. The Video

Before she had an audience, it was just Gaga and her mirror. And for a while, it got weird. Four years ago, she was living on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, after leaving school and her parents' financial support. In her shitty little apartment, she would order a bag of cocaine from a delivery service, get high, and work on her hair and makeup for hours. She'd get it perfect, and then come down from the coke and do it all over again. "It was quite sick," Gaga says with a barely concealed note of pride. "I suppose that's where the vanity of the album came from. It was just like this very special moment that I had with myself where I could feel confident and feel like a star. Sometimes I look back on it and I miss it in a way."

--Brian Hiatt, from Rolling Stone, 6/11/09

The above was the first picture I saw from the VMAs on the morning after they happened. I'd heard about the whole Kanye West/Taylor Swift thing (and as cool and iconoclastic as it is on the internet to take Kanye's side, I've gotta be a square for once and say he was being a dick), but in the excitement over that I forgot about the other event from the evening that I'd been curious about. I looked at that picture in my RSS feed and thought, "Oh yeah! Lady Gaga played on the VMAs last night." If you hadn't already guessed, that's her between Perez Hilton and Beyonce, with the crazy fur headpiece on. That was only one of several outfits she was photographed in over the course of the evening (more to come as this entry progresses). Anyway, Gaga had been talking up her VMA performance, promising something on the level of Madonna's 1984 performance of "Like A Virgin." I didn't really feel guilty about how stoked I was to see what she'd done; after all, this was a video performance, meaning it was just as much about image as music. I expected to hate the song, but there'd probably be a lot of interesting visual shit going on.

If we're going to talk about the VMA performance, though, first we have to talk about Lady Gaga's video for "Paparazzi," the song she performed. The eight-minute clip, directed by Madonna collaborator and former Bathory member (!) Jonas Akerlund, was released in full on youtube, but trimmed down for airing on music video channels, due not only to length but violent and erotic content. It begins with establishing shots of a beautiful mansion in the countryside. Sounds of surf in the background mingle with the faraway sound of someone playing a piano. Overtop of all this, we get retro-style title cards, which give the impression that we're watching a short film produced around 75 years ago. Interior shots mix images of money and diamonds scattered about carelessly with newspapers featuring headlines that proclaim Lady Gaga to be the #1 artist of the moment. Eventually the camera arrives at a bed, in which Gaga and her lover (played by Alexander Skarsgard) recline, curled up together. A short bit of dialogue (in French, with English subtitles) leads into a passionate makeout session, during which Skarsgard picks Gaga up and carries her out onto a balcony overlooking the ocean. He perches her on the balcony's rail, and the first sinister note of the video is struck, as unseen cameras snap pictures of them making out. After a few seconds, Lady Gaga realizes that Skarsgard is attempting to force her to look in a certain direction for the benefit of the cameras, and starts struggling. When Skarsgard won't let her go, she picks up a wine bottle and bashes him on the head. He retaliates by dropping her off the balcony, and she falls multiple stories, seemingly to her death. At the bottom of the drop, photographers--paparazzi--gather around her body, exclaiming delightedly, and newspaper headlines whirl into the foreground: "Lady Gaga hits rock bottom!" they proclaim. "Lady Gaga is OVER."

From here, the music starts, and the rest of the video depicts Gaga's return from death's door, her recovery, her return to her boyfriend's side, and her murder by poisoning of the boyfriend. At the end of the video, she heads off to jail, defiant and unrepentant, as newspaper headlines proclaim: "She's back!" "We love her again!" and "She's innocent!: Police investigate Lady Gaga." The commentary embedded in this video about celebrity culture--the hangers-on willing to sell out privacy; the callousness of the media where personal lives are concerned; the way fan appreciation for a celebrity seems connected only to interesting behavior, regardless of the moral implications of that behavior--strikes me as dead-on, which is surprising coming from an artist that has only been in the public eye for about a year. One can imagine that Gaga spent plenty of time in her pre-fame years studying pop stars, figuring out what to be careful for, and how she'd do things differently. The images of crippled, seemingly dead models and actresses that litter the video can sometimes be questionable--a more precise portrayal might not have flirted with the line between commenting on the exploitation of female vulnerability and engaging in that exploitation--but when tied in with the rest of the video, it's clear the message she's trying to send.

Lady Gaga - New Music - More Music Videos

The VMA performance of "Paparazzi" encapsulates these themes and takes them in a different direction. The performance's narrative picks up with Lady Gaga lying shattered at the bottom of that balcony, and seems almost like a deleted scene from the "Paparazzi" video. The stage is elaborately decked out, with staircases on either side of the stage leading up to a raised platform that evokes the balcony in that video. Gaga never ascends the stairs herself (though I believe some of her dancers do at some point); it's really just there to evoke the scene in the video, to put the viewers in that headspace. I find it interesting that she made that choice in light of the fact that many viewers of the VMA performance may not have seen the full version of the video. I like that, though. Instead of spelling everything out and dumbing it down so that every viewer is guaranteed to get it, she's forcing people to work for a detailed understanding of her art. There's an ongoing stream of information being communicated here, and if you put the pieces together, you'll get more out of it than someone who doesn't pay much attention.

Before the song begins, she sings a snatch of the chorus to another of her singles, "Poker Face," then sings, "Amidst all of these flashing lights I pray the fame won't take my life." This is not a lyric from any one of her songs, but references lines from several of them. As she reaches the last word of this lyric, the music kicks in and the song begins in earnest. We only see Gaga and her backup dancers during the performance, so I'm inclined to think that all of the music and backing vocals were pretaped, but they also sound different from the album version, so I think she taped a new version of the song for this performance. I suppose it's an important enough occasion to merit such a thing; after all, she may never be on the VMAs again.

The song opens with Gaga lying on the floor at the bottom of one of the staircases, and as she sings the opening lines, her dancers lift her into an upright position. Both the dancers and Gaga move as if her legs are broken or otherwise immovable, and once she's standing, her first few dance steps are awkward. However, once the dancers join with her, moving in sync with her jerky motions, the dance they're doing suddenly seems funky, syncopated rather than awkward. Gaga doesn't move as much as the dancers, which makes sense, as she is clearly singing the song live. Her vocals are strong and powerful, and she uses a different melody than on the album version, with less high notes, which helps her avoid moments in which her voice might sound thin or slight. There are a couple of points during the set when she sings more quietly, relying on the taped backing vocals to cover for her, but it's understandable, because she's still doing a dance routine that is at least somewhat complicated. The fact that she's willing to sing the song live, instead of doing what so many artists in her genre do and lipsyncing in order to concentrate on their dance routine, is something I find quite admirable.

During the second verse, one dancer wheels another one onto the stage in a wheelchair. As this is happening, Lady Gaga grabs a crutch and incorporates it into her dance routine, crutching rhythmically out onto the catwalk. Towards the end of the second chorus, she tosses the crutch away, suddenly able to move healthily again. The song moves into the bridge, and this is when things really get interesting. At the end of the bridge, there are an extra four bars added before it goes back into the last chorus. There's been a grand piano sitting at stage left this entire time, and now Gaga runs to it. Kicking her left leg up onto the keyboard of the piano, she bangs out a wild, elaborate solo on the higher registers, throwing her head around wildly as she does so. At this moment, she seems to be channeling Little Richard or Jerry Lee Lewis, and the MTV cameras cut to Puff Daddy sitting in the audience, looking completely dumbfounded.

When the camera returns to Gaga, she cuts off her solo early in order to get into position for the final chorus of the song. As she sings its first line, blood begins flowing from somewhere beneath her skintight half-shirt, covering her naked belly and dripping down over her bikini briefs and fishnet stockings. As this happens, Gaga's voice seems to break, and she delivers the line "I'll follow you until you love me" as if she's about to burst into tears. I have no idea how sincere this is, whether or not it's just a trick she's doing with her voice in conjunction with the blood, but regardless it's powerful. As she continues singing the chorus, she nearly screams the second line, rubbing her hand into the blood on her belly and smearing it over her face before dropping to her knees on the catwalk. The blood is all over the place now, and the dancers slip on it (perhaps in choreographed fashion) as they gather together to carry Gaga back to the spot where she'd been lying at the start of the video. After singing the last line of the chorus, the dancers lower her to the ground and surround her in a sinister fashion as she moans and wails. Finally, a cable that she's holding onto with one hand raises her slowly up until she's dangling six feet above the stage by one arm, staring at the crowd with a blank expression and fake blood smeared on her face, in her eyes. As the song ends, she drops the microphone to the stage with an audible clatter, and the sound of popping flashbulbs blasts through the PA. The final image of Gaga's blood-covered face sends chills up my spine.

I've argued with a lot of people on the internet this week about what this whole performance means. No one denies that the imagery is powerful, but by mixing violence and damage in with eroticism and lyrics about obsessive love, some have argued that Lady Gaga is merely selling the sexual aspects of violence against women, profiting from a damaging and all-too-common evil. To me, though, it reads as something completely different. The key here is the newspaper headlines in the original "Paparazzi" video, and their completely amoral reactions to the events that occur in the video. It's clear what drives them--profit, at the expense of any human consideration for the subject of their reporting. In the VMA performance of "Paparazzi," Gaga pushes that point further, confronting everyone watching with every time they clicked excitedly on a link to a youtube video of a popstar meltdown, or drooled over a TMZ story about Britney Spears being taken away in an ambulance. As with the original "Paparazzi" video, she's making less of a reference to her own personal life than to that of the Britneys, Lindsays, and Parises of the world. Her career has just gotten rolling in the last year or so, and she hasn't had to deal with the media really turning on her yet. But she's prepared; she's seen it happen to the other women who've been in her place before, and she's pre-emptively throwing it in the face of her audience. "We bleed for you," she's saying. "Are you not entertained?"

There's one more video that I'd like to show you before we move on to the music. "The Brain" is an 80 second introductory film that was shown as an interlude during recent Lady Gaga shows, part of a short film cycle that also includes films entitled "The Heart" and "The Face." In this video, she plays a character named Candy Warhol, an emotionless pop star who responds to her manager's queries about obsessive grooming by explaining that pop ate her heart and her brain. "What will you live for, Candy?" he asks. "I want the fame!" she repeats over and over as a snatch of her song "LoveGame" plays in the background. This video cuts to the heart of Lady Gaga's central theme: the machinery of the music industry and its tendency to hollow out the lives of those who partake in it. By portraying a character whose personality is destroyed, who leaves behind merely a hollow shell to be adored by the masses, Gaga attempts to protect her true self from the music industry's worst tendencies. Forewarned is forearmed, and her armaments involve exacting control over her image. She isn't allowing herself to become Britney Spears, whose onstage dancing and offstage personal calamities are equal fodder for the celebrity industry. Instead, by controlling her image, Gaga at least attempts to control the way the media talks about her. For her trouble, she's been falsely labeled a hermaphrodite, but she's also created some of the most interesting pop images since the days of Madonna's "Truth Or Dare." This then, is her art, or at least is a large and important part of it.

3. The Music

The lights had been turned out, but a brilliant glow filled the shop, throwing a golden fire on to the tanks along the counters. Across the ceiling liquid colours danced in reflection. The music I had heard before, but only in overture. The Arachnid had grown to three times its size. It towered nine feet high out of the shattered lid of the control tank, leaves tumid and inflamed, its calyx as large as a bucket, raging insanely. Arched forward into it, her head thrown back, was Jane. I ran over to her, my eyes filling with light, and grabbed her arm, trying to pull her away from it.
"Jane!" I shouted over the noise. "Get down!"
She flung my hand away. In her eyes, fleetingly, was a look of shame.

--J.G. Ballard, "Prima Belladonna"

So what, then, of the music? If Lady Gaga's art is so heavily wrapped up in her public face, in her performances and promotional videos, is her music merely a sidenote? Is it even worth considering? To say "no" would be to say that it's worthless, run of the mill pop music that doesn't even manage to distinguish itself from a typically mediocre genre. That's a strong statement, and were it true of Lady Gaga, I might continue to be fascinated by her media presence, but I'd never really be able to give her credit as a truly talented performer. I had to find out what I really thought about her music. I downloaded the first version of her album, The Fame, that I could find, and ended up with a 23-song brobdingnagian monster of a special edition. That seemed quite excessive, so on initial listens, I only played the original 14-song running order of the album. I played it a lot, too; partly because I was trying to form an opinion of what I was hearing, and partly because the more I listened to it, the more positive said opinion became.

Say what you want about Lady Gaga, but one thing no one can take away from her is her ability to write incredibly infectious earworms. She actually got her start writing songs for Britney Spears and the Pussycat Dolls before making an album of her own, but it's clear that she saved her best material for herself. An important facet of The Fame is how little influence it seems to derive from R&B, which ordinarily looms large in the backgrounds of top 40 pop singers. Compare her music to that of Beyonce, or Christina Aguilera, and the difference becomes obvious. Lady Gaga's music is instead based in European electronica and the cold, emotionless extremes of 80s synth pop. I'd much more expect to find Heaven 17 albums in her record collection than albums by Michael Jackson. She also bears the distinctive stamp of Berlin-period David Bowie, and takes her name from the title of an 80s-era Queen single, "Radio Ga Ga."

If you've watched all of the videos I've posted thus far, you've heard "Paparazzi" enough times to notice all of these influences within it. Indeed, I don't think I would have explored her music any farther myself if I hadn't noticed them. Once I'd watched the VMA performance video a few times, I found that "Paparazzi" was stuck in my head. That occurred the day before I downloaded The Fame in its entirety, and at that point I merely downloaded the studio version of "Paparazzi" and threw it onto a mix CD. The studio version was a decidedly different creature from the live version, and not only because of Gaga's calmer, more controlled vocal performance. There's also quite a bit less instrumentation on the studio version--the beat is held down by a clacking, machine-like (yet strangely funky) drum machine beat, and above it swirl layers of synths and keyboards, but the midrange frequencies are strangely empty. The effect is similar to that of Prince's "When Doves Cry," which originally featured a bass track that Prince later removed from the final version. Maybe there never was a bass track on "Paparazzi," but without one, the song feels like it's missing a piece, right about where its heart should be. "Paparazzi" is ostensibly a love song, and the Rolling Stone article tells me that it's about an ex-boyfriend of Gaga's who played in a band with a following of its own. She saw herself as a star in the making, and yet when she was around this boyfriend, she felt more like a fan, someone who subverted herself to him and his own fame. If this is what inspires "Paparazzi"'s lyrics, it's easy to condlude that Gaga's relationship with this band boy was an unhealthy one. The lyrics resemble those of another obsession-disguised-as-love classic, "Every Breath You Take" by The Police. Think back to the moment when her voice broke during the VMA performance; regardless of whether that moment was real or staged, it added a resonance to the line she was singing. "I'm your biggest fan, I'll follow you until you love me." It's one kind of dysfunction to feel that way about a pop star that you don't know personally. It's another to have that sort of reaction to someone you're in a relationship with. When she informs this boy that she'll "be your girl, backstage at your show," and in so doing, completely sublimates her own will and independence to him, it seems so out of character for Gaga, a supremely self-confident pop star with lofty ambitions. The fact that "you're my rock star between the sets" seems little reward to receive in return for this kind of self-sacrifice. Perhaps this is why Rolling Stone reports that the affair didn't end well.

I was concerned that no other song on the album could live up to the quality of "Paparazzi," but those concerns evaporated as soon as I played it for the first time. Opening track "Just Dance," also Gaga's first single, is supremely catchy, a bouncy uptempo club banger that sounds like an appropriate soundtrack for the behavior the lyrics describe. "I've had a little bit too much," is how the song begins, Gaga matter-of-factly documenting the excessive substance abuse that was a big part of her life not long before The Fame was recorded. That's what the entire song's about, in fact--as Gaga stumbles around the club, unable to find her drink, her keys or her phone, wondering why her shirt is turned inside out and confused about where exactly she is, she's unable to muster the ability to care. "Just dance, it'll be OK," goes the chorus, and she pitches herself back onto the floor, painting a picture of herself as the epitome of epicurean clubkid denial. I know a lot of people who party like this now, or at least have spent a few years of their lives doing so. It's scary to know that your friends take these sorts of risks, and a lot of the time, I can't stand to be around for it. Nonetheless, without judging it as positive or negative, Lady Gaga depicts it accurately, which makes sense, as she's admitted to having lived this lifestyle herself.

The guest appearance of Colby O'Donis on this track, taking a guest verse as he dances up to our protagonist and babbles about how he "ain't gonna give up, steady trying to pick it up like a car," sounds at first like your typical guest verse from a rapper on a female pop star's upbeat single. However, when you think about what role he's playing with his lyrics, it becomes clear that what he represents in the narrative of "Just Dance" is one of the dangers that might befall a wasted party girl on her own at a club. "I'm gonna hit it, flex it and do it til tomorrow," he proclaims, and then informs Gaga that "There's no reason why you can't leave here with me." And yet, there are obvious reasons why doing so might be a terrible idea for our heroine. A wasted girl who has been separated from friends and communication devices is easy prey for the sort of dude who looks to take advantage of drunk girls. The fact that this possibility is never discussed in the song makes it sort of scary, if you think about it too much. And yet, when Gaga returns to lead vocal duties for the last verse, she's obviously into the idea (at least in her current inebriated state). This verse underlines the point--that this song is not about careless fun but risky behavior and the denial necessary to continue with it. By contrasting such lyrics with a tremendously upbeat backing track, Gaga pushes these implications into the background, but they're still there, and this won't be the last time that she constrasts music and lyrical content to make a point.

"Poker Face" is another track that's been a big hit from this album, and I'd heard it in passing before even discovering "Paparazzi." The first half-dozen times I heard it, I hated it. Hearing it in context with the rest of the album, though, made clear to me its perverse genius. The thing I hated the most about it, what kept me from appreciating any of its other positive qualities, was the way the melody on the verse stuck almost exclusively to one note. My first response to this anti-melody was to condemn it as lazy and annoying. I saw it as a poorly written song and nothing more. However, I experienced an epiphany the seventh or so time that I heard it, and suddenly it seemed brilliant to me. The perversely unmelodic verses are designed both to reflect the song's lyrical content and to subvert a ubiquitous convention of popular music. In a move that is reminiscent of "Man-Machine" era Kraftwerk, Gaga has used a monotonous drone to create a verse melody that renders her voice completely emotionless. It's no coincidence that she's singing lyrics that use poker references as a metaphor for manipulating her boyfriend. "Luck and intuition play the cards with Spades to start," she says, "and after he's been hooked I'll play the one that's on his heart."

In the Rolling Stone cover story, the writer made reference to "Poker Face"'s lyrical content, and stated that the song is about Lady Gaga trying to sleep with another girl without her boyfriend finding out. I was surprised to read this, and even knowing it now, I can find almost nothing in the lyrics that points to the involvement of the second girl in the song's narrative. Instead, the lyrics focus on the relationship between Gaga and her man, and it's clear that she sees this relationship as one in which she must always maintain the upper hand. A big part of doing this involves concealing her emotions from her lover. And even though I find this take on relationships to be quite unhealthy, I can't help but admire Gaga for her skill in evoking it within a song. It's kind of fascinating every time the song switches from the monotonous/emotionless verses into the chorus, which seems to explode outward from the rest of the song with its sudden, overt vocal melody. "You can't read my poker face," Lady Gaga taunts her man at the chorus's apex. When the song reaches its bridge, after the second chorus, Gaga almost seems to over-emote, talk-singing "I won't tell you that I love you, kiss or hug you, because I'm bluffing with my muffin." Here it's safe for her to express her emotions--and betray the slightest hint of a Noo Yawk accent (Gaga hails from Yonkers)--only because her vocals are heavily processed, giving her an unnatural effect to hide behind. Ultimately, she feels she must keep her feelings hidden in order to get what she wants.

"Eh Eh (Nothing Else I Can Say)" is the first song on The Fame to move away from the Euro-techno-electro basis of most of her songs. Instead of evoking Britney as produced by Kraftwerk, "Eh Eh" sounds like a great lost Madonna single. And if it wouldn't be a huge reach to compare "Just Dance" to "Ray Of Light," "Eh Eh" is a song that would be right at home on "Immaculate Collection," slotted between "Crazy For You" and "Into The Groove." It'd be a stretch to call it slow, but the bounce of her other singles is missing, and it has a more wistful, midtempo feeling. The synth sounds aren't quite as dated as those on early Madonna singles, but they are comfortably retro, and Lady Gaga's relatively conventional vocal bears no trace of the Germanic coldness that comes through in "Poker Face." It took me a while to adjust to this song, even in the context of this commercial pop album, because it's a different sort of commercial pop than Gaga is attempting on most of the album's other tracks. It's almost like she decided to see if she could shed all of the less mainstream influences she brings to the making of a pop record and still make a good song that would have fit right in on Casey Kasem's American Top 40 back when she and I were children. Based on the evidence, it appears that she can.

I've never traditionally been a fan of Gwen Stefani and her band No Doubt, but I have to admit that the closing track on The Fame, which bears a strong resemblance to No Doubt, is one of my favorites on the album. The instrumentation is based in traditional rock--multiple guitar tracks, acoustic drums, keyboards playing conventional keyboard roles as well as that of a synth (though still no bass)--which might not seem so weird were Gaga's backing tracks not typically a million miles away from such sounds. The upstroked guitar riffing and vaguely calypso percussion sounds make me think of Blondie's "The Tide Is High," and Gaga's vocal performance lands somewhere between "Hella Good" and "Spiderwebs" on the Gwen Stefani meter. A song that both sounds this much like Tragic Kingdom and also this good almost makes me want to go back and listen again to those early No Doubt LPs. On the other hand, it's obvious to me that Gaga's version of No Doubt is missing the annoying, overly singsong melodies that always drove me away from No Doubt in the first place, so I'm going to avoid doing anything drastic.

"Brown Eyes" is another unique track hidden towards the end of The Fame, and its piano-based balladry for some reason calls to mind Queen jamming with Fiona Apple. The snarling, distorted electric guitars that double the main melody laid down by the piano are straight-up Brian May, that's for sure, and the synths take such a background role on this track that it doesn't really even sound like a Lady Gaga song. It makes more sense in the context of the rest of the album once you know that Lady Gaga originally had a Def Jam record deal, back before she started tinkering with electro stylings, as a piano-playing singer-songwriter. Apparently she got bored with what she was doing in the middle of making her first album, started experimenting with Euro-techno sounds, and so confused the folks at Def Jam that they dropped her rather than see what she could do with her new material. Probably a mistake on their part.

What might have been dept: the above was filmed at a Marc Jacobs fashion week party, the night after Gaga's VMA performance. It's her playing a completely different arrangement of "Poker Face," by herself on a grand piano. The excessive crowd noise mars the performance slightly, but for me it's worth it just to see her outfit. That headdress! The bright red see-through lace bodystocking! The makeup job that makes her seem to be crying tears of blood! Incredible. I'm also a fan of the point in the song where she switches to French lyrics in honor of Paris resident Marc Jacobs. And really, I hope she releases an album like this at some point in the future.

When I was talking about "Poker Face," I didn't mention one line in it that I find rather amazing: "When we make love, baby, if it isn't rough it isn't fun." Of course, just in case I forgot, there's an entire song about this very topic, much later in the album. "I Like It Rough" isn't anything too much different from the other Euro-techno/Berlin-synth-pop stuff that Lady Gaga does elsewhere on the album, but it's both delightfully risque and quite catchy. There's an electric guitar track mixed into the choruses that adds a nice extra layer, and the monotonous vocal technique from the "Poker Face" verses shows up on the bridge, though instead of having lyrical resonance, this time it's just a neat technique. I'm also kind of a big fan of "Money Honey," which has a blatantly materialistic lyrical slant that I can't help but take as at least somewhat tongue in cheek. "It's good to live expensive but my knees get weak intensive when you give me kisses," Gaga proclaims to her lover. It's like she can't decide whether she's more stoked about the money or the sex. The part that really gets me, though, is when she mentions "enjoying some fine champagne while my girls toast." I can't help but think she means "girls" in the Li'l Kim sense. Maybe my mind's just in the gutter, but if Gaga takes as many pains as she does to remind us all that she likes it rough, it's easy to believe that her mind is in the gutter too.

There are a few other songs on this record that I haven't mentioned, for the reason that I'm not as excited about them. While "Boys Boys Boys" has a really catchy verse, the chorus is just a bit too early-90s techno for me; it sounds lifted from a Robyn S single, like the long-lost sequel to "Show Me Love." Which is rad if that's your kind of thing--it's not mine. Speaking of stuff that's not my cup of tea, let's talk about "Starstruck," which features a guest appearance from Flo Rida. I guess this is Gaga's southern rap track, and I respect her right to do one. In fact, I have to admit that it's better than the lion's share of southern rap that I've heard. Sadly, though, that's not saying much. Flo Rida's guest verse is noticeably inferior to Gaga's verses, but the overly simplistic beat and laser-like deet-deet synth sounds drive me nuts. She gets the southern rap genre down with the production, and Flo Rida nails the flow, but none of that seems worth doing in my eyes. The only thing I like about this song is Gaga's introductory vocal, which is so heavily autotuned that it sounds like a decaying cassette. That's a neat effect. I wish she'd used it on a better song.

There is also one single on this album that I haven't been able to get into at all, and that's "LoveGame," the one a lot of people seem to know as "the disco stick song." "Disco stick" as a synonym for penis is pretty inventive, so she again gets credit for that. In fact, even with the songs I don't like on this album, it seems more to be a case of me not liking the thing she's trying to do than her doing a bad job of it. But really, "LoveGame" doesn't offer much in the way of melody. It's kind of a generic song, and the only time on the entire album when I feel like she's not only doing something that Britney Spears would do but doing it just as uninterestingly as Britney would do it. She should have given this track to the Pussycat Dolls or somebody, because it drags down the quality of the album as a whole.

There's only one more song on this album that I really want to talk about, and it's among my favorites. The Fame's title track is somewhat unique on this album in that it's driven by a repetitive guitar riff, one that is about as close to the main riff in Elastica's "Connection" as the Elastica riff was to Wire's "Three Girl Rhumba." I don't imagine Elastica, or Wire for that matter, will be suing Lady Gaga, as the bleeping synths and driving drum-machine beat take the song in a different direction than either Wire or Elastica were trying to go, but it's an interesting reference nonetheless, and I can't help but wonder if it's intentional. Gaga would have been about 7 when Elastica had their big hit single with "Connection," and her pre-fame days on the New York club scene were probably enough to make her aware of Wire, so I can't really rule it out. Regardless, the song is catchy, and makes excellent use of guitar riffing (which I'd like to hear a bit more often from her--but of course, I would say that). Like the lyrics to "Just Dance," "The Fame"'s lyrics document a clubkid attitude of epicurean denial, though this time focusing on a different aspect. "All we care about is runway models, Cadillacs and liquor bottles," Gaga declares during the first verse, and later announces during the chorus that "we wanna live the life of the rich and famous." This song comes from a far different perspective than that represented in the "Paparazzi" videos, but it's easy to tell that they're two sides of the same coin. Like Neil Young, who wrote "Out Of My Mind" for the first Buffalo Springfield album before anyone knew who he was, Gaga was already aware of both the triumph and tragedy inherent in being famous. Once she had the kind of national attention necessary to put across a message about the problems of celebrity culture, she used that platform to great effect. But back when she was still making the record that would grant her "The Fame" she desired, she chose to focus on the good things that said fame would put her in line for.

In fact, it might be this element that I like the most about Lady Gaga's work as a whole. Her image, her music, her videos, all of them combine to put across a multi-faceted message that encompasses both the good and the bad aspects of the pop culture she's part of. She also combines the mainstream ideas of high and low art, mixing bizarre futuristic costumery, experimental filmmaking, and references to Warhol with unapologetic commercial pop music. The ultimate result is that she points out both the absurdity of the distinctions people continually try to draw between high and low art (in my humble opinion, there is no such distinction--that's a judgement call, and I'm making it); and that we both grant too much power and authority to celebrities, and expect way too much from them. Gaga's ability to point out these contradictions not only overtly in interviews, but more subtly within her work, demands a respect from her audience that many people seem unwilling to give. In a lot of conversations I've had over the past couple of weeks with people who find Lady Gaga distasteful, I've had to defend her from accusations of being vapid, uninteresting, attention-seeking, and above all, lacking in any coherent unifying message. Right wing conspiracy theorists blame the Illuminati, while more typical members of my peer group see her as the product of a faceless and powerful music industry, but no one wants to consider the possibility that Lady Gaga was smart and resourceful enough to come up with her image herself. "You're reading too much into it," people tell me. "You see what you want to see, but those messages aren't actually there." It seems to me that a great deal of this antipathy stems from the perception of Lady Gaga as low art, as cheap entertainment for the masses that therefore must be devoid of any intellectual quality. Even as a Madonna-loving teenager, I held a lot of these same preconceptions, and it took a lot of intense conscious thought to work through them and come to my current viewpoint. These are socially-condoned messages about art that lead people to see things in this way, and I understand that. However, people are eventually going to have to shed all of these prejudices if they want to be able to evaluate art, and indeed the world in general, in an accurate manner. Lady Gaga is merely the latest in a long line of pop culture artists who subvert the divide between the high and low art divide, and I can only hope that, in doing so, she will open the minds of impressionable teenage girls (and others) who have not yet realized just how wide open their potential is, how many different paths in life are open to them.

If all goes according to plan, Gaga won't have much time to relax for the foreseeable future."I feel like I have so much to do," she says. "The whole world sees the number-one records and the rise in sales and recognition, but my true legacy will be the test of time, and whether I can sustain a space in pop culture and really make stuff that will have a genuine impact."
She wants to make "museum-worthy" art out of pop--an ambition probably better left unstated. But more important, she wants to inspire her fast-growing fan base--which now ranges from downtown drag queens to suburban eight-year-olds--to find their true selves, to shoot their fear in the face. "I operate from a place of delusion--that's what The Fame's all about. I used to walk down the street like I was a fucking star," she says, her voice rising. "I want people to walk around delusional about how great they can be--and then to fight so hard for it every day that the lie becomes the truth."

--Brian Hiatt, from Rolling Stone, 6/11/09

Sleeping too much.

2009-09-13T04:04:00.004-04:00

When I'm depressed I tend to sleep a lot. It's all I can do to work through the obligations life sets for me, make it through work, run whatever errands I need to do, then come home and stumble into bed. Sleep 12 hours, wake up just in time to grab a shower and stumble into work late. When I'm at my worst, it's hard enough to face life during the hours I have to be awake without subjecting myself to hours more of slow mental torture. Instead I fall into bed and dream of a better life. And then waking up sucks that much more.

I wrote about Armor For Sleep's first album on this blog years ago, but I didn't go into much detail at the time. I just said that it was really good and moved on. As of tonight, I hadn't thought about it in at least a year. But then tonight, I was hanging out with some people and one of them mentioned Armor For Sleep. Suddenly it all came rushing back. "God, yeah, I loved their first two albums," I said. Not much more was discussed at the time, but I already knew at that point that I was going to go home and listen to "Dream To Make Believe" before bedtime.

And tonight, I can't sleep. I have to be at work in eight hours, which means that I can't realistically expect more than six hours of sleep. Instead of going to bed, though, I'm sitting up typing, getting down all the thoughts running through my head right now as I play through "Dream To Make Believe" for the second time in the past hour. Maybe if I write it all down, my brain will let me sleep, at least for a little while.

This album has lost none of its power on me over the last few years. It's still an excellent musical work that combines melodic emo with echoing, dreamlike guitar sounds that resemble a wide range of artists, from Hum to The Chameleons. The vocals are still beautiful, filled with melancholy, and evocative of loneliness and of resignation to unhealthy emotional states. But what's really jumping out on me this time is the lyrics.

"Dream To Make Believe" isn't a concept album like the followup, "What To Do When You Are Dead," was. Nonetheless, there are strong themes running through its lyrics, foremost among them that of sleep and dreaming as an escape from an uncomfortable reality. In my last blog entry, I talked about the lyrics to "Brick By Boring Brick" by Paramore, a song with a message that I consider positive. It's about rejecting illusion in favor of reality, even when reality isn't that great. This is something that I, at my noblest moments, strive to do. Armor For Sleep's lyrical content is far more reminiscent of my behavior at my weakest moments. I certainly wouldn't consider this album to have a positive message for anyone, but it too has its place, in that it reassures people like me that we aren't the only ones who go through this sort of thing.

The first song on the album (other than an instrumental intro bearing the name of the band) is the title track, "Dream To Make Believe." "It's funny how things work out," the lyrics begin, and from that first line, two things are clear: our narrator is looking back with regret on the end of a past relationship, but he doesn't want the former object of his affections to understand the depth of his emotion. "The ones we need don't know we're there," he says next, but you can be forgiven for wondering if he's ever spoken his needs out loud. The rest of the first verse is a subtle but masterful metaphor: "If I were sand and you were ocean, the moon would be what pulled you to me." In other words, need is a side issue. Any experience he had with this previous lover happened as a result of circumstances that he couldn't influence, and he could no more have kept this lover by his side than he could have brought her to him in the first place.

The first verse, to be fair, is somewhat nebulous. Fortunately, the rest of the song is far more immediate, none of it moreso than the chorus. "I wake up and think dreams are real," he sings. "I sleep so I don't have to feel the truth--that you can never be the one person who won't ever forget me." It's depressing and vaguely embarrassing to admit this, but one of my most common dreams when I am at my most depressed is a dream in which I have started dating someone. We're still in the honeymoon phase, everything is going great, and I actually feel like someone is into me. Then I wake up. That's the worst feeling in the world, to wake up from a dream like that. It crushes you. When I hear the line "I wake up and think dreams are real," this is the first thing I think of. It's a terrible experience, one that I am all too familiar with.

The second verse flirts with a theme that is more fully explored on "What To Do When You Are Dead"--suicide. "I hope that dreams come when I die," he sings, "So we can talk." I know it's ridiculous to think that you'd need a post-death dream in order to create the circumstances in which you could talk honestly to someone, but I've also felt that way plenty of times about even my best friends. "I'll ask you how your life worked out. I'll never know that I'm just dreaming." The seductive picture this paints is the flip side of "Brick By Boring Brick"--this right here is the pleasant illusion that can take you away from a crappy reality. These dreams exist, and for a depressed person, they can be far more comforting than real life. The song ends with a single line repeated many times: "Let me sleep some more."

I'm also a huge fan of the song "My Town," which is sort of about sleepwalking and sort of about disorientation, but really, at bottom, it's another song about depression. That's not necessarily clear at first, but during the bridge, the singer leaves no room for doubt: "This is the end of keeping it in. They'll all know how I feel." When you feel fucked up enough to start losing concern for the consequences of your actions, that's when depression is most dangerous. "My Town" is a catchy, poppy song with more obvious use of keyboards than most of the songs on this album, but its sunny exterior hides a dark heart.

The song that follows it, "Wanderer's Guild," has a darker sound, and sounds like it'd be more appropriate a song, musically, to be about cutting loose and letting everything out than "My Town" was. Instead, it's a song about repression, about hiding everything you're really feeling from the people who care about you. I don't know if this is just something that everybody does, but I can tell you that I do it quite often. I worry that if I let people know how I'm really feeling, I'll scare them away or otherwise make them stop wanting to be my friend. And then I bottle my true feelings up, and make myself feel even worse. Apparently I'm not the only one who does this. "You should be downstairs with them," the singer tells his friend. "Listen, I'm fine now," he repeats over and over during the chorus, following this declaration with a robotic attempt at propriety: "I don't want to talk right now. Thank you for your concern." The song's lyrics never make clear what's really bothering him, but I don't really even think it matters. After all, sometimes when I'm depressed, I have no idea why. Sometimes I never figure it out.

The most lyrically depressing song on this album is tough to pinpoint, but a leading contender is "Frost And Front Steps," a song that seems to encapsulate a moment in a crumbling relationship. In the first verse, the singer is ready to leave the party, but his date isn't. Eventually, he drifts out the door, maybe trying to prod her into coming along, but instead, she lets him sit out on the front porch while she continues to hang out. "I hear you inside," he says from his position out front. "You're laughing the way you do when I'm not there." He knows that she's probably just as glad not to have him in close proximity, but he doesn't seem to know exactly what that means. We've all been through that moment, towards the end of a relationship, where it seems like no one is admitting that things are unfixable, but everyone's become aware of it. It can be hard to know how to take the next step. The singer struggles with this very fact: "I think that maybe I should just get up and drive away," he says at one point, lamenting the fact that he's getting colder than he expected to, sitting out on the front porch waiting for his date to come out of the party. Even a song on this record that is written in the context of an extant relationship is still a song about being alone in the end. What's more, the fact of a relationship existing that obviously will not exist soon makes it even more depressing than the songs that are purely about loneliness. You almost want the singer to get up off the steps and drive away in his warm car, just so he can assert some control over his own life. But you know he won't... because when that sort of thing happened to you, you never did either.

I'm at the end of what I had to say about this album, and I'm tired enough to go to bed. That worked out well. I had a decent day today, too. I can't help but feel, though, that the depression will be back. I hope I don't fall into the patterns that these songs discuss, but the potential is always there.

Armor For Sleep - "Dream To Make Believe" and "Frost And Front Steps"

Paramore, past and future.

2009-09-01T22:03:00.004-04:00

I wrote about Paramore on this blog before, almost exactly a year ago, in fact. At the time I wrote that entry, the only album by Paramore that I was even aware of was "Riot!", their big mainstream breakthrough. Only in the last month or two have I even learned, in fact, that they had a previous album, "All We Know Is Falling." And it's only been three weeks or so since I finally went ahead and listened to that record.

I really blew it by waiting so long to do that. From the very first time I heard it, I could tell that it was a better album than "Riot!", which I'd always found a bit inconsistent. In comparison to that album, "All We Know Is Falling" is far less pop-punk, and far more emo. I know that Paramore have been covering Sunny Day Real Estate's "Faces In Disguise" in recent live sets, and while I took that to be a good sign, I also found it rather surprising. With the new perspective I've gained by hearing their first album, though, it's a good bit less so. Emo has been in their DNA from day one, apparently. Take "Emergency," the single from this album, and the first track I heard from it. It begins with a single-note guitar line, which quickly leads into an energetic verse riff. Those two parts alternate over the course of the first verse, and while both are melodic, neither are ever poppy, instead having a more downbeat, melancholy feel. When the song finally does reach the chorus, it explodes, but not into the sort of upbeat, sugary chorus that marked the best songs on "Riot!" "Emergency"'s chorus is more the sort of octave-chord crescendo that you'd expect to find on a Mineral album. Hayley Williams's excellent singing voice is put to great use here, as she reaches for and effortlessly attains the sort of high note that most emo singers are incapable of. "I've seen love die way too many times when it deserved to be alive," she sings, and while that might just be a case of stretching a metaphor a bit too far (especially when she follows it with the line "I've seen you cry way too many times when you deserved to be alive," which doesn't even really make sense), there's real emotion at the heart of it, and over the powerful chorus riff, that's enough to make it work. The excellent half-speed solo that comes after the second chorus, over which Hayley quietly croons, is even awesomer, and reminds me of a lot of the bands I was listening to back in the late 90s. It's kind of insane--I had no idea that Paramore were capable of this kind of greatness.

If anything, the next song, "Brighter," is even better. Again, they contrast verses driven by melodic, undistorted lead guitar lines with a driving chorus over which Hayley sings some amazing high notes, but rather than coming across as repetition of a formula, it just seems like Paramore are upping their musical intensity. "Brighter" is slightly slower than "Emergency," but the contrast between verse and chorus is more drastic, and both the guitars and the vocals seem to be reaching for more on the chorus. As Hayley sings the lead vocal part on the chorus, the guys in the band back her up, quietly singing a "whoa-oh" harmony part that might have been cheesy in lesser hands but instead is a perfect counterpoint. The best part, though, is the bridge that follows the second chorus. As one guitar launches into a beautiful lead line, the rhythm section drops into an awesome chugging half-speed breakdown. I love it when bands combine melody with heaviness in this manner; it creates a tense, emotional mood that is perfect for songs about the sorts of topics that emo bands often deal with--breakups, loneliness, you know the deal.

Which reminds me: I haven't mentioned the lyrics to "Brighter" before now, and I really should, especially if I'm going to point out weaknesses in other lyrics on the same album. "Brighter" has no such weaknesses; its lyrics are about a relationship that might be ending, and Hayley captures perfectly the way it feels to have someone you love consider leaving you. "If it ends today," she sings on the first verse, "I'll still say that you shine brighter than anyone." She cares too much to hold a grudge. I've been through breakups like that, and it's almost worse than breaking up with someone because you don't get along anymore. At least when you feel frustration and anger towards an ex, it's easier to tell yourself that you're better off without them. When those feelings are absent, all you can really feel is that you want them back. At the end of the chugging bridge, Hayley asks, "If you run away now, will you come back around?" Then, over a brief return to the verse riff, she says, "If you run away, I'll still wave goodbye, watching you shine bright." When the whole band crashes back into one last chorus, Hayley nearly screaming, "Must we go there? Please, not this time," it's enough to break your heart.

(Sorry about all the screaming teen girls in this video, I know it's annoying)

There are several other songs on this record that are just as good as those two, from the opening title track and the closing ballad "My Heart" to a song called "Whoa," which I expected to be lame just because it has, let's face it, kind of a crappy title. But even though the lyrics aren't really much better than the title, it doesn't matter, because it's just too catchy to be denied. "Whoa" points towards the eventual sound of "Riot!" more than the other songs on "All We Know Is Falling," but it's more like the better songs on that record. In fact, even the worst songs on this record are still better than "Riot!"'s lesser lights. Once I realized that, I couldn't help but think that my worst fears about the new Paramore album were probably going to come true, that if the transition between their first two albums led them from emo to pop-punk, the transition from their second to third album would probably leave them a full-on pop group. I didn't want to see them create their own version of "Infinity On High," but I feared it was inevitable.

A few weeks ago, I was in Philadelphia for about 16 hours, hanging out with some internet friends from up that way. At one point, we were all at an awesome dive bar with an internet jukebox, and one of my friends and I started talking about Paramore. I mentioned my fear that their new album would suck, and he told me about a song they'd contributed to the "Twilight" soundtrack that he'd really liked. As it turned out, the bar's internet jukebox was able to play the song in question, and he put it on. It wasn't "Decode," the song from that album that everyone seems to know, but "I Caught Myself," which I'd never even heard of. It sounded pretty good when it started, but it wasn't until the last minute or so of the song that I really fell in love with it. Don't get me wrong, the acoustic verses are pretty great, but there isn't that much of a chorus. In fact, the song is structured more like a Sunny Day Real Estate song than anything else I've heard Paramore do. It's mostly built around a repeating melodic riff, which ebbs and flows in intensity, until finally, with about 45 seconds left in the song, the distortion kicks in and Hayley starts singing the way she did on the choruses of those first-LP songs. Better yet, for the last few seconds of the song, the drummer drops back to half speed, and the bass and rhythm guitar get heavier, pounding on the last few chords as Hayley nearly screams, "Now I know what I want. I should have never thought!" I'm not sure what the rest of the song is about; the other lyrics have never really caught my attention. But that awesome, dramatic ending was enough to make me fall in love with the song, which I have listened to many times since that night in Philly, and which I love all the way through now. I like "Decode" well enough too, but if that were Paramore's only contribution to the "Twilight" soundtrack, I probably wouldn't be feeling that great about their new album. But for the past few weeks, I've really been looking forward to it.

Now, in the last week or so, songs that will actually be on the new album are starting to leak out in dribs and drabs. The first to show up was "Ignorance," which featured an entertaining video in which the band performed in a closet, Hayley precariously balancing on the bass drum in order to sing into a bare, dangling lightbulb as if it were a microphone. "Ignorance" is more like the songs on "Riot!" than anything else I've heard from Paramore lately, but thankfully, it's not sugary. Instead, there's a real punk-rock bite to this song, as the guitars are distorted throughout, the drumming is fast and furious, and the chorus features chugging rhythm riffs and a backing vocal track of Hayley yelling underneath her more melodic lead vocal. I'm really into it, and with this song representing the more punk end of the spectrum and "I Caught Myself" the more emo side of things, I can safely assume that the new album's gonna rule, perhaps even more than "Riot!" did.

It's funny--I damn near wrote this blog post a week ago. I don't really know what stopped me, although with my writing there always seems to be some sort of mental block working its evil magic. As it turns out, though, this was for the best, because sometime in the last day or two, I discovered another new song on the internet. Apparently Paramore taped an appearance for MTV Unplugged back in June, and as part of it, they played not only "Ignorance" but another new track called "Brick By Boring Brick." The unplugged version of that song is the only one you can find online right now, so I recognize that I'm not judging this track by the version that will be on the album, but still. Holy fucking shit. This song is incredible. In fact, having only been aware of it for maybe five hours now, I will go out on a limb and say that it's the best Paramore song I've ever heard. It's more on the emo side of things, or at least appears to be in acoustic form, and has a gorgeously catchy chorus of the melodramatic, emotional sort that tends to bring a tear to my eye (yes, I've always been this emotional, why do you ask?). But what impresses me the most about it is the lyrics. I've never really considered Hayley Williams all that great at writing lyrics, and if I remember correctly, the most praise I had for them in my post about "Riot!" was that they were generally inoffensive. "Brick By Boring Brick" blows all of that wide open. I mean, maybe this is just a sign that she's maturing (she's actually gonna be 21 in a few months!), but the lyrics to "Brick By Boring Brick" are the most complex, nuanced, and emotionally dead on lyrics I've heard from her. This is miles away from "Misery Business," that's for sure.

The song begins with Hayley telling us of a girl who "lives in a fairytale," and has "forgotten the taste and smell of the world she left behind." Eventually, in the second verse, her prince comes to save her, but "it was a trick, and the clock struck 12." Apparently the prince was an illusion all along. And this is where the real point of the song comes. "Make sure to build your house brick by boring brick, or the wolf's gonna blow it down," Hayley sings, and she's making what I consider to be an excellent point: reality, no matter how humdrum, no matter how unfulfilling, is always better than a beautiful illusion. "You built up a world of magic, because your real life is tragic, but if it's not real, you can't see it with your eyes or feel it with your heart." This is something I've struggled with a lot over the course of my life. Hell, look at me now--I haven't had a successful date in something like two years, haven't had a girlfriend in nearly five. It's tough sometimes, because god knows I get lonely, but the last thing I want to do is bury myself in some illusory escape, spend all day on instant messenger talking to lonely girls on the other side of the country from me, or roleplay myself into a better life on Worlds Of Warcraft or some such. I've dabbled in both of those scenarios at different points in my life, and it was a relief to leave them behind, even if it was also sad as hell. "Go get your shovel," Hayley sings on the chorus. "We'll dig a deep hole and bury the castle." This is brilliant shit. This is the kind of thing that even I, at 33, need to hear from time to time. And I definitely think it's a positive message to send out to all the insecure teenage girls who are blasting Paramore in suburban bedrooms all over the country even as I type.

The new record is called "Brand New Eyes." It comes out on September 29th. I for one cannot fucking wait.

Paramore - "Brighter," "Whoa," "I Caught Myself," and "Ignorance"

Cycle-delic sounds.

2009-08-31T22:49:00.002-04:00

A few years ago, I posted something on here about Davie Allan And The Arrows, in which I compared and contrasted Davie Allan to Dick Dale, and called him King Of The Motorcycle Guitar. Don't get me wrong, I stand by that completely, but I've recently learned that I didn't know the extent of Davie Allan's awesomeness back when I wrote that post. It's because I took the lazy way out, really--I had downloaded the 40-song double disc anthology of his work, "Devil's Rumble," and then discovered that the anthology would fit on a single burned CD-R if I cut one song from it. That song, "Cycle-delic," was 7 minutes long, over twice the length of anything else on that compilation. I should have known that it was something special based on that alone. But instead, my desire to save CD-R space won out, and I burned "Devil's Rumble" minus "Cycle-delic" to one disc.

Fastforward to sometime in the past 12 months or so. The record store near where I work, having read the writing on the wall where CDs are concerned, has really stepped up their selection of new vinyl, including quite a few awesome garage rock reissues. I discover a brand-new shrinkwrapped reissue of Davie Allan's classic 1968 LP "The Cycle-delic Sounds Of Davie Allan And The Arrows." I can't resist. I spend the $16 they want for it, and I bring it home. There, I finally learn of my much earlier mistake where the song "Cycle-delic" is concerned.

The first song on the album is "Cycle-delic," that song I spurned before due to time constraints. Literally every song on "Cycle-delic Sounds" was eventually collected on "Devil's Rumble," so at this point, "Cycle-delic" itself is the only song on the LP that I don't know intimately. It jumps out at me, the second I put the album on, as a revelation. It's been a good year or so since then, though, and even though I now know it just as intimately as I know the entire rest of the album, it still stands out to me. This 7-minute epic is without a doubt Davie Allan's magnum opus, containing not only the most extreme fuzz solos he ever laid down but also the most dramatic deviation from his typical song construction formula.

First of all, rather than featuring the sorts of verses and choruses that typically alternate on an Arrows track, "Cycle-delic" is based around a simple, repetitive riff that the rhythm section keeps playing throughout most of the song. Its minimal chord changes and unceasing pulse presage Krautrock in some ways, though there's still plenty of the surf-guitar instrumental foundation that connects it back to more typical Arrows work. Within 15 seconds or so, after a few brief repetitions of the song's base riff, Davie Allan launches off into the ether. He's both overdriving his amp to a ridiculous extent and manipulating the hell out of a wah-wah pedal, combining the two sonic manipulations to make his guitar sound like it is both on fire and screaming for its life. This first solo lasts until about 1:30, at which point it is joined by a free jazz saxophone that would sound right at home on John Coltrane's "Ascension" LP. Allan keeps soloing behind it, and when it drops out after 30 seconds or so, he goes into even more extreme guitar destruction, culminating in a passage, at about 2:45, where it sounds like he's yelling into his pickups. If that's what he's doing, he's frantically working his wah-wah pedal at the same time, so whatever vocalizations he's delivering are completely incoherent, but that just makes the whole thing even cooler.

Finally, the rhythm section drops back into a vamp, and while the drummer keeps time with his kick pedal, a harmonica solo begins. Allan just feeds back aimlessly at the beginning of this solo, but after a couple of measures, he and the harmonica player begin exchanging phrases, Robert Plant/Jimmy Page style. Davie tires of this quickly, though, and slamming his wah-wah pedal back down, he takes the song over once again. The rhythm section, presumably led by excellent rhythm guitarist/songwriter Mike Curb (though I'm actually guessing at this, since individual credits are absent from "Cycle-delic Sounds"), follows Davie's lead, and back into the frantic, pounding pulse we go, carried by sheets of guitar noise and crackling tambourines.

This whole thing still isn't over, though, and at about 4:25, the first real change in the main riff occurs, as the Arrows switch into a start-stop chug riff that builds to a crescendo before dropping down into a much quieter repetition of the original riff. Finally, at maybe 5:20 or so, the rhythm section drops out completely, except for the periodic ringing chime of what might be a triangle or a bell of some sort. Davie quit soloing and dropped out of the mix completely at about the point when the band got quiet, but now, as they cut out, he comes back in. There's no real rhyme or reason to what he's doing by now, his sinister, howling sheets of fuzz noise having lost all connection to the rest of the song some time back, and he finally quits playing completely at the same time that the rhythm section drops out. Now all that's left other than that repeated chiming sound is Mike Curb, playing a gorgeous melodic arpeggio all by himself.

This is perhaps the most striking portion of the entire song, representing as it does a complete departure from the normal working methods of Davie Allan And The Arrows. Never before have they left behind their driving, fast-paced rhythms. Never before have they opened a song up as widely as this. The effect is panoramic, as if the camera has just pulled back from a closeup shot of some speeding biker on a mountain road to a much wider angle that shows the entire landscape, and how comparatively tiny the biker is within it. The fact that this sudden departure from the norm works so incredibly well, indeed takes my breath away every time I hear it, is a testament to the talents of Davie Allan and the rest of the Arrows. A few seconds after this dropout, Davie adds a fuzzier harmonizing arpeggio to what his rhythm guitarist is playing, and soon he's brought the rest of the band back in for a quickly building crescendo that caps off the entire amazing song. I never tire of hearing it, and in fact, I've played it through at least a dozen times while writing this entry.

Davie Allan And The Arrows - "Cycle-delic"

That link also contains Davie's most famous single, "Blue's Theme," just so you can hear the difference between "Cycle-delic" and his usual work. Of course, you can also do that at the above video clip, the opening credit sequence of "The Wild Angels," over which "Blue's Theme" plays. The character Peter Fonda plays in "Wild Angels" is named Blue, so it's an appropriate time in the film for that song to play. By the way, any of you who haven't seen "The Wild Angels" should really go hunt it down.

One more thing: Davie Allan is still performing and recording music to this day, which is something I didn't know until googling him while writing this entry. His website is davieallan.com, and he'd love to sell you copies of "Cycle-Delic Sounds" as well as many other releases that he's done over the years. Most CDs are $12.50 postpaid from his website, which is quite reasonable, so hit him up, why don't you? I can assure you that I will, as soon as I can afford to. After all, there's a lot more where this came from.

Finch, by Jeff VanderMeer

2009-08-15T11:30:00.002-04:00

In City Of Saints And Madmen, Jeff VanderMeer first introduced readers to Ambergris, the mysterious, otherworldly city of the book's title. Considered by VanderMeer to be a mosaic novel, City Of Saints was just as easily interpreted as a book of short stories, containing as it did a historical pamphlet about Ambergris, a case study of an inmate in a mental institution, a treatise on freshwater squid, excerpts from a book of art criticism, and a story written in a complex code, as well as several somewhat more conventional stories that straddled the boundary between horror and dark fantasy. As the title indicated, though, what all of the shorter works featured had in common was their setting. VanderMeer returned to this setting with Shriek: An Afterword, a fictional biography of Duncan Shriek, the historian whose pamphlet about Ambergris had been included in City Of Saints And Madmen. Duncan's sister, Janice, wrote the original text of the biography, which was interspersed throughout with editorial comments from Duncan himself. And now, after two highly unusual books set in Ambergris, VanderMeer completes the trilogy with Finch, a hardboiled detective novel with a straightforward, linear structure. I'll say this for VanderMeer; he always keeps his readers guessing.

Finch takes place about a century after Shriek: An Afterword, at a time when the mushroom dwellers of Ambergris have taken over the city. The mushroom dwellers, more informally known as grey caps, lived in Ambergris before humans arrived there. They are around four feet tall, with grey skin and large heads that make them look like a cross between humans and mushrooms. The history of Ambergris is fraught with conflict between human settlers and the mushroom dwellers, as detailed in City Of Saints And Madmen. For our purposes it is enough to acknowledge that the relationship between humans and grey caps is a hostile one, and none of the human residents of Ambergris are happy to be living under grey cap rule.

John Finch, our protagonist, is a detective in the police force run by the grey caps, and is therefore caught between two sides, neither of which trust him. At the beginning of the novel, he's assigned to investigate a double murder, in which the victims are a human man and a mushroom dweller. The murder of a grey cap is unheard of, and Finch's superiors take a keen interest in the case. But investigating a murder for the grey caps has some unusual and disturbing elements. Finch must ingest fungal growths called memory bulbs that the grey caps have caused to sprout from the heads of the victims. By eating them, Finch is given temporary access to the memories of the victims, though in an onrushing flood that doesn't really make sense. The experience leaves Finch shaken and confused.

Finch is uncertain how to approach the task he's been given in a manner that will both provide results and keep him out of trouble. The grey caps and their fungally-modified human agents, the Partials, are breathing down his neck at all times. They don't hesitate to threaten both he and his loved ones, sometimes for reasons Finch can't understand. The case he's investigating is equally opaque, and his investigation takes him in random directions that don't seem to have any connecting thread. He deals with events that seem fraught with meaning he can't divine, comes across objects that may be important clues or meaningless junk. At every turn, he runs afoul of some new faction: rebel groups opposing the grey caps, secret agents for rival states with their own territorial agenda, and others whose roles aren't so clearly defined. Underneath it all, there is the sense that powerful forces are being marshaled, though to what end is unclear. His foreboding predicament is reminiscent of 40s noir films, in which protagonists like Robert Mitchum in "Out Of The Past" or Tom Neal in "Detour" seemed unable to do anything to halt their downward spiral. There's a more surreal edge added to Finch, though, by the disturbing environment in which it takes place.

Ambergris had previously been a modern city, with motor vehicles, electricity, and a vibrant night life that revolved around art, theater, and music. The grey caps were always able to exert some control over the hot, tropical environment of Ambergris. They used their bond with fungal organisms to control varieties of spores and mushrooms, generating a constant low-grade attack on the human city. However, it is only now that they've risen from their longtime subterranean redoubt to reclaim the city that was once theirs that the fungi have really taken control. VanderMeer's descriptions of streets and buildings infested with tiny organic life makes me think of some of David Cronenberg's earlier films; the parasites in "Shivers," the bizarre organic modifications of "Rabid" and "The Brood," even the strangely alive-seeming video game systems of "Existenz," create the same sense of creeping unease that VanderMeer has created here. This is a world in which nature itself seems hellbent on the destruction of humanity.

By setting a noir detective story in this cryptobiological dystopia, VanderMeer creates a novel that is both mystery and fantasy of the darkest sort. Indeed, there are several points in Finch that veer into outright Lovecraftian horror. By the latter half of the book, Finch has realized that the case he's been given is much more deeply rooted than he had any way of knowing. Meanwhile, readers will learn details that reinterpret the events of VanderMeer's first two Ambergris novels in surprising ways. Finch begins as a detective story, but becomes much wider in scope, eventually encompassing the entire history of Ambergris. It both embodies and subverts its chosen genre, and is an excellent conclusion to a fascinating and original trilogy.

Val Lewton's "Cat People."

2009-07-26T10:34:00.002-04:00

"Cat People" was the first of Val Lewton's ten or so classic horror movies of the mid-40s. These films attained their classic status despite being made as quickie B movies with low budgets, short runtimes, and an almost complete lack of star power in the casting. What made them different, what made them important, was Val Lewton himself, who had innovative ideas about horror and suspense and the way to portray them onscreen, as well as an active imagination which provided him with interesting and original storylines.

At least, this is what I've always heard. I only saw "Cat People" for the first time last night, and I'd never seen any other Lewton films before. Until last night, therefore, I wasn't sure whether the standard line about Lewton was righteous praise or overblown hype. Now that I've seen "Cat People," though, I'm convinced. I'm going to be hunting down more of his films as soon as I can.

The plot of "Cat People" centers on a young Serbian immigrant to New York, Irena Dubrovna, who is played by the enchanting French actress Simone Simon. At the beginning of the film, while making sketches of a panther held in captivity in the Central Park Zoo, she encounters a young man named Oliver Reed, played by Kent Smith. She and Oliver begin seeing each other, and soon fall in love and get married, but always, Irena fears her own desires and passion for Oliver, and will not even kiss him, let alone make love to him. She tells Oliver a story of her village in Serbia, about how a group of Mamelukes took it over for a while, and how King John of Serbia had to retake the village and drive the Mamelukes out. When he did, he found that the people of the village had become corrupt and begun worshipping Satan, and that the women had become witches and developed the power to turn into large, predatory cats (like the panther in the zoo). King John killed many of these corrupt women but the most powerful of them escaped to the mountains. Irena tells Oliver that the evil of these cat women still haunts her village to this day, and makes clear that she is afraid that, if she ever physically expressed her own passion for him, she'd turn into a cat herself and tear him apart.

Maybe a 1940s era audience would see this line of thought differently, but to me it seems full of psychosexual symbolism. Irena is really just a woman who fears her own passions, and any element of her personality that is easily contained and controlled. She fears expression of any emotions other than the most sensible, because she thinks they'll destroy her ability to behave in a socially acceptable manner. What she fears is the possibility that her deep-down true self is something other than the charming, genteel woman that, in the company of others, she portrays herself to be. And regardless of how clear this would have been to 1940s audiences, it's certainly clear to Val Lewton, who spends the rest of the movie expanding on a central question: Is Irena really able to turn into a cat? Or is it all in her mind?

The plot thickens with the contrasting of Irena with Alice, played by Jane Randolph. Rather than having that old-world sensibility that drives Irena, Alice is a modern, independent woman, as close to the feminist model as would have existed at this point in American history. She's a brassy dame who dresses fashionably, cracks jokes with the guys, and works in Oliver's office, where she is basically the equal of the men who work there. She and Irena get along well enough at first, but as Irena and Oliver's relationship becomes more difficult, more fraught with tension, Irena's perception of Alice changes. It's Alice that recommends the psychotherapist, Dr. Judd, that Irena sees, but Irena doesn't know this until after her first visit. When she learns that Oliver has discussed with Alice the problems that are occurring in their marriage, she feels angry at having her secrets disclosed to another woman, but also threatened by Alice's awareness of her vulnerability.

Sure enough, Alice soon proclaims to Oliver that she loves him. It doesn't seem that this is an overt attempt by Alice to take Oliver away from Irena, as she continues to try and help him fix his relationship with Irena for a while afterwards, but one can't help but think that she's also taking advantage of the fact that his relationship with Irena is more vulnerable at this point, which makes Oliver a more receptive target for the affections of another woman. For the rest of the movie, as Irena becomes more and more distracted from her daily life and fixated on the panther in the zoo, the contrast between her and sensible, self-possessed Alice becomes more pointed. Oliver begins to spend more time with Alice, both at the office and in more social situations, and, while nothing untoward happens between them, this nonetheless pushes Irena further and further towards distraction.

Irena's anger at Alice leads directly to the film's most frightening sequences. One occurs when Alice and Oliver share a post-work meal at a diner near their office. Irena has followed Oliver to the diner, and spies on the two of them from outside. When Oliver and Alice go their separate ways after finishing their meal, Irena follows Alice, who walks home down empty streets, moving from pools of light thrown by streetlamps into sections of complete darkness. These moments of contrasting light and dark are but one of several sequences in which light and dark are used innovatively by the film's director, Jacques Tourneur. The stark, heavily contrasted feel that's created during all of these sequences seems like either a direct precursor to or the de facto beginning of the film noir movement. Considering that Tourneur went on to direct the noir classic "Out Of The Past" only five years later, the fact that he was already experimenting with noir effects makes sense in retrospect.

As Alice realizes that she is being pursued and, becoming afraid, walks faster and faster, we are never shown what pursues her. Irena is behind her at one point--we hear her echoing footsteps--but by the time Alice has become afraid, all we see is Alice herself. So what is behind her? It's never certain, because just in the nick of time, a bus pulls up and bears Alice away. Even in later scenes, when we do see something that looks like a panther, it's always briefly and indistinctly. And even then, there's also the possibility that Irena has let the panther from the zoo loose, rather than turned into one herself. During her visit with Dr. Judd, he says something that sticks with her--that many of us carry a desire to "unleash evil upon the world." Irena recognizes this desire inside herself, and that the battle with this desire is the same battle she wages to keep herself from succumbing to her passions.

Dr. Judd and his theories are themselves a pretty interesting element of this film. Horror movies are often driven by a deeply conservative impulse, and one of the main ways in which that impulse is expressed in horror movies is by treating the ideas of psychotherapy with contempt. There's plenty of room for Val Lewton to take that route in "Cat People," and what's noteworthy is that he avoids it. Dr. Judd tries to tell Irena that her fears of transforming into a vicious cat are all in her mind. In fact, he basically echoes the subtext of the entire film, telling Irena that she's really afraid of giving in to her passions and desires and, in so doing, losing control of herself and her life. There could be cognitive dissonance here between text and subtext, resulting in the audience dismissing the subtext with cries of "But she really CAN turn into a cat!" It speaks well for Lewton that he has not allowed the audience to draw that conclusion, maintaining an air of ambiguity that forces us to consider Dr. Judd's theories with at least a somewhat open mind. After all, we really don't know if Irena can transform into a cat.

The ambiguous treatment of psychotherapy in the film ties in well with Lewton's treatment of the main characters in the film. We are shown all of the main characters in a variety of situations, both alone and interacting with others. If any character in the film is the evil figure of a traditional horror film, it is Irena herself, but Lewton does more to make her a sympathetic character than he does with anyone else in the film. In particular, the men of the film, Oliver and Dr. Judd, would traditionally be seen as the heroes, they who maintain control and restore order. However, Oliver seems more overtaken by events than anything. He's a solid person without too much emotional depth, and he seems to understand neither Irena nor Alice on any deeper level. Dr. Judd portrays himself at first as the helpful psychotherapist, only interested in helping Irena, but as the film continues and she struggles more and more with her fears of her potential transformation, Judd grows impatient and frustrated. At one point, he berates Irena for "verging on insanity," and uses the possibility of his having her committed as a threat. He appears intent in this scene on frightening Irena into sanity, while at the same time acting as if her potential descent into madness is the willful behavior of a recalcitrant child rather than something that should by definition be out of her control. This is another scene that could be used by Lewton as an opportunity to show contempt for psychotherapy, but instead, the scene reflects badly on Dr. Judd as a person.

Finally, there's Alice. While the plot of the film sets her up as Irena's adversary, she is portrayed almost as sympathetically as Irena. While we know from early on that she has her own desire for Oliver, she continues to support him in his attempts to treat Irena properly. She and Oliver never do anything that constitutes Oliver cheating on Irena; Alice never even tries to kiss him, instead acting throughout the film as his friend rather than as a potential lover. As the closest thing the time period had to a truly liberated woman, what Alice represents is something that Irena could be if only she would let go of her fears. Alice is in touch with her feelings, secure in herself, and unafraid to express herself even when it means being less than perfectly genteel. The contrast between the two characters is interesting in part because it seems impossible to imagine Irena going from where she is to where Alice is. In many ways, it seems, she is a prisoner of the ideas she was raised with, the opposite of a "liberated" woman, even though she also has a career independent of Oliver's (as a fashion artist). She knows this too, lamenting to Oliver early in the film that she envies the women she sees on the street every day. "They are happy, and they make their husbands happy," she tells him. "They are free." She knows she is not free, and she knows that she is imprisoned by things that lie within her; what she never understands is something Dr. Judd tells her early on--only she can set herself free.

On the surface, "Cat People" is a horror film, one with an original premise, innovative direction, and some truly terrifying scenes. It deserves its reputation as a horror classic. But it's also, at its heart, a tragedy, the story of one woman's fight against the less appealing aspects of her nature. It speaks well for Val Lewton that he seemed to know this, that his film ended up with this subtext not by happy accident but through careful design. I definitely want to see more of his work now.

As for "Cat People," I wouldn't feel right revealing how it all ends for Irena, Oliver, Alice, and Dr. Judd, as you deserve to experience it for yourself. But regardless of the resolution, which does remove a great deal of the ambiguity that permeates most of the film, the tragedy at its heart remains. "Cat People" is not only a horror film but a feminist, even a humanist, parable. Life is hardest for those, like Irena, who cannot accept and love themselves for who they are.

Movie Diary: Three short films by Kenneth Anger.

2009-07-14T01:35:00.002-04:00

A couple of years ago, a friend of mine gave me a DVD called "The Films Of Kenneth Anger, Vol. One." It includes five of his earliest films, most notably "Fireworks." I was very excited to get the gift, but for whatever reason, wasn't in the right mood to watch it until tonight. I saw the first three of the included films tonight, following the viewing of each with its commentary track by Anger.

FIREWORKS is Anger's earliest extant film, made in 1947, when he was 20 years old. What I'd heard about this film before I saw it related primarily to its homoerotic content, and its place in the history of queer cinema and the representation of homosexuality in culture. Anger was arrested on obscenity charges at the time of release, but was acquitted, as the court judged the film to be art. I definitely agree that it is, and a fascinating piece of art at that. A lot of times, when I'm about to hear a record, or see a movie, that I've been hearing about for a long time, I prepare myself for an inevitable disappointment, as they are almost never as interesting to hear or see as they were to read about. This is definitely not the case with "Fireworks." This 15 minute film totally lived up to its hype, and was equal parts transgressive, fascinating, and frightening. The film is based on a dream, and its plot is as vague and at times surreal, even contradictory, as dreams can be, but it nonetheless paints a powerful picture. Anger is the star in addition to the writer and director, and at the beginning of the film, he is shown being carried by a man in a sailor uniform. This immediately cuts to him waking up in a bed in what appears to be a squalid apartment (in the commentary, I learn that it's the living room of his parents' house with all the furniture cleared out). He stumbles around the room with his shirt off and pants undone, staring confusedly at various sculptures, then gets fully dressed and leaves the apartment. He has a couple of encounters with men that he appears to be flirting with, but gets nowhere. Then a group of rough looking sailors with chains and other blunt instruments set upon him in the street, beating the shit out of him and finally tearing open his chest, inside of which, in place of his heart, is some sort of mechanical dial. More vaguely connected scenes follow, including one in which Anger lies naked and in a suggestive pose on the floor of a public bathroom (cruising reference, anyone?). Finally, the most famous scene in the film comes near the end, as a bodybuilder in a sailor uniform opens the fly of his pants to reveal a roman candle that shoots sparks triumphantly into the air. A burning Christmas tree is dragged through the character's apartment, and then he finally wakes up, to find the sailor lying in bed with him.

It's funny, I expected this film to seem tame now, 62 years after it was originally produced, and in some ways it does, but in other ways, it's just as surprising and transgressive as it always was. And if you think of the original context in which it was produced, it's even more interesting, as there are some pretty direct challenges to the viewer coded within it. One is forced to sympathize with the victim of a gay-bashing, which must have been unheard of at the time. Anger says on the commentary that the idea for the film came from the zoot suit riots of WWII era LA, but one can't help but imagine that he related the persecution of Mexican-American teenagers in those riots with similar persecution dealt out to gay men. A lot of the imagery used in the film is powerful and stays in your mind even if you are a post-milennial viewer with a completely different sociopolitical outlook than would have been standard at the time.

PUCE MOMENT, from 1949, was the least impressive of the three films I saw, and I blame that on the fact that it's actually just an unfinished fragment of a larger planned film called "Puce Women." This film was intended by Anger to be a tribute to the silent-film actresses of the 1920s, and the segment that he did complete, which makes up "Puce Moment," is a sequence in which a silent-era actress, played by Yvonne Marquis, selects a puce gown from her closet, puts it on, puts on some perfume, and takes several Borzoi dogs, which one assumes are hers, for a walk. This entire sequence is passes very slowly, with at least the first fourth of the six-minute film just consisting of gowns of various colors passing in front of the camera. This sequence has an impressive look--unlike "Fireworks," which was filmed in black and white, "Puce Moment" is shot in color, and in fact its colors are hyper-real, seeming even more overstated and glowing than those of the Technicolor process. The colors seem to burn, and when this is combined with Anger's use of variant film speeds in order to evoke silent-era film processes, it makes the whole thing seem dreamlike--a recurring theme in his work. There are fascinating elements to this film, no doubt, and I found it even more interesting that the gowns in it were donated by Anger's grandmother, who had been a Hollywood costume designer during the silent film era. The gowns in it were apparently all worn by real silent film stars. That's really cool, and the look of the film is really cool too, but I just wish Anger had completed the project. As it is, the incompleteness makes it far less interesting than it could have been, had more things actually happened in it.

RABBIT'S MOON, from 1950, was the final film that I saw tonight. I knew nothing about this one before seeing it, but it made at least as powerful an impression on me as "Fireworks." In fact, the reason for that may well have been that I was prepared for what I'd see in "Fireworks," whereas "Rabbit's Moon" took me completely by surprise. The filming for it was done in Paris in 1950, on a stage that Anger only had access to for a month. He didn't complete the entire film until over 20 years later, and produced both a 16 minute version and a 9 minute version at two different times during the 70s. The version I saw was the 16 minute version, and I found it to be sublimely beautiful. I was really surprised to even have this reaction, actually, as the movie is basically a pantomime show. The title refers to a Japanese myth that the moon has a rabbit living within it (similar to the Western concept of the man in the moon, but transformed to a rabbit due to the differing angle from which the moon is seen in Japan than in the US and Europe), and the film combines elements of this Japanese myth with the Italian tradition of the Commedia dell'arte. The main character is Pierrot, traditionally a bumbling, foolish character. He is dressed all in white in the film, which is color but appears very similar to a black and white film most of the time, as Anger uses monochromatic lighting and sets that strongly emphasize light and dark. There is a dark blue tint to the film most of the time, which takes place at night. Pierrot is fascinated by the moon and its glowing light, and the first third or so of the film is taken up by his gazing lovingly upon the moon, timidly approaching it and then dancing away, as if it's a lover playing hard to get. Throughout the film, 50s doo-wop singles play, and they worked so incredibly well as a soundtrack that it made me glad that Anger took so long to finish the film. If he'd finished it in 1950, it would have been done before these doo-wop records existed, and I can't imagine any other soundtrack working nearly as well. The lyrics of the songs coordinate somewhat with the actions in the film, the first two being "There's A Moon Out Tonight" by the Capris and "Oh What A Night" by the Dells. Very little actually happens in this portion of the film, but the sounds and images are so beautiful that I found myself riveted. All of the actors in this film were members of Marcel Marceau's mime school, and all of their onscreen behavior is very much within the pantomime tradition. I've always been someone who made fun of mimes mercilessly, who saw the entire art form as a huge joke, and it was a revelation to see it the way it was used in "Rabbit's Moon." In fact, for me, this film completely validates the existence of pantomime. The extremely stylized gestures and actions of Pierrot and the other characters are completely anti-realistic, and yet it works to tell a story that rings emotionally true, in a manner that I'd say is even more effective than many realistic portrayals.

What eventually happens is that Harlequin, the classic commedia dell'arte character of the trickster, shows up to enchant Pierrot. At first he does this with his miming of illusory feats of acrobatics. Then he conjures up a Magic Lantern, and shows to Pierrot the image of Columbine, the female trickster, who bewitches Pierrot with her beauty. Whether she is even there, or merely an illusion created by the Magic Lantern, is open to question, but regardless, Pierrot falls head over heels for her. The film's predominantly blue color scheme is broken up by her arrival, as the first images we see that are cast by the Magic Lantern (various drawn images of the sun) are all shown with a bright red background. The film returns to the blue color scheme after these images are shown, and as Columbine dances around in front of a flowing silk backdrop, Pierrot attempts to win her over by presenting her with beams of light from his beloved moon. He wants to gain her love by showing her his own favorite objects of beauty, but Columbine dismisses these as trifles, and wants something more material from Pierrot, which he of course has no power to give. Harlequin, watching all of this in the background, is amused at Pierrot's rejection and despair, and eventually joins with Columbine to make clear to Pierrot just where Columbine's interest lies. Pierrot is overcome by this realization, and experiences it as an eclipse of the moon, which is enough to make him pass out in anguish. Throughout this entire sequence, the classic Flamingos song "I Only Have Eyes For You" plays. I've always loved this song, but still, I saw an entire new dimension of it when hearing it juxtaposed with the images in the film. The echoing, atmospheric elements of its performance and production give it an air of sublime, transcendent beauty. The song only has the sound that it has due to the primitive state of the art at the time of its recording, but this is completely irrelevant, and if anything, it's awesome that that primitive state of the art directly contributed to some of the best elements of the song.

Another element of this sequence that I found sadly beautiful was in Pierrot's idealistic worship of beauty for its own sake, and his attempt to win Columbine over through tactics that would only work on someone with a like mindset. This idea resonated with experiences that I've had in my own life, as I tend to care far more about ideals of love, art, and beauty, at the expense of practical considerations like stability and financial success. This has hurt me in my past romantic relationships, and I saw myself in Pierrot, trying to present someone with completely impractical beauty and finding that such things, which seem so wonderful to myself, don't matter nearly as much to the object of my affection.

I really enjoyed seeing these films, and if anything, they exceeded my expectations. I came into this viewing of Kenneth Anger's films prepared to be shocked, titillated, and impressed by his violent, homoerotic content. I found all of that in "Fireworks," as I expected. What I didn't expect was to experience a sublime, heartbreaking portrayal of stylized beauty, as I did in "Rabbit's Moon." Seeing that side of Anger's work, and realizing that he has a lot more to offer than just transgression, made this an even richer viewing experience than I expected. And there are still two films left on this DVD for me to watch ("Eaux D'artifice" and "Inauguration of The Pleasure Dome"). I'm excited to check them out, and hopefully I'll get to them soon.

I don't have mp3s of the doo-wop songs I wrote about above, but here are some posts on my blip.fm account featuring songs from "Rabbit's Moon":

The Flamingos - I Only Have Eyes For You
The Capris - There's A Moon Out Tonight
The Dells - Oh What A Night

Movie Diary: Two Lane Blacktop.

2009-07-12T13:34:00.001-04:00

So last night I saw "Two Lane Blacktop," which came out in 1970 and had pretty much the exact vibe of "Easy Rider" only with two drag racers instead of motorcycle guys. The drag racer guys were played by James Taylor and Dennis Wilson, both of whom looked like rugged hot dudes that would hang out in my social circle (so, like stoner rock dudes). The basic plot of the movie, such that it has one (see previous "Easy Rider" comparison) was that they had a run in with Warren Oates, driving a brand new GTO, and challenged him to a cross-country race, with the winner getting the titles to both cars. For the record, the young drag racers are driving a souped-up 55 Chevy. A drifting teenage girl, played by Laurie Bird (none of the characters had names--in the credits they were identified as "Driver", "Mechanic", "GTO", and "Girl"), starts out riding along in Taylor and Wilson's car, but eventually becomes just as much of a driving emotional force in the film as the race itself, as all three of the men compete for her affections. After a little while, I started to think that the film wasn't really about a race at all, that nothing I was seeing was as it seemed, and eventually some deeper point would be revealed. Well, I won't spoil the ending or anything, and I'm not even all that sure that I know what the deeper point actually was, but things definitely mutated as the movie proceeded, and by the latter half of it, GTO and the drag racers were collaborating to keep each other's cars moving. The movie seemed less like a race and more like a collaborative cross-country trip. Again, similar to "Easy Rider," in that the drug deal that movie is ostensibly about never really seems like the point.

I really liked this movie. I'm a sucker for those New Hollywood-era barely-plotted slow-moving slices of life, and "Two Lane Blacktop" is a quintessential example of such a thing. There's almost no real dialogue, and a lot of it seems improvised (watching the commentary afterwards, I learned that a lot of it was). James Taylor and Dennis Wilson, being musicians rather than actors, could have been lame pretty faces, but their quiet, stone-faced performances actually fit the characters and the mood of the movie completely, and I think they probably did better in it than real actors would have. Warren Oates is awesome as always, and Laurie Bird... well, she's got a little bit of that annoying chirpiness of Susan George's character in "Dirty Mary Crazy Larry," but at heart her character is probably the toughest one in the movie. She definitely seems the most in control of her destiny, and the question of which of the men she'll end up with is answered only by her, and never by the men competing with each other. In her own quiet way, she's a far more feminist-positive female lead than you'd expect in a film like this, especially one made 40 years ago.

This movie isn't quite as metaphysical as "Vanishing Point," and it's not as weird as "Easy Rider" gets at points, but I'd say it's very similar to both, and fans of either one would probably really dig it. I sure did.

The Jonas Brothers are capitalist pigs.

2009-07-11T18:10:00.002-04:00

From an article in a recent issue of Rolling Stone magazine:

"Though the JoBros' backing band and crew will travel in a fleet of 13 buses trailed by 19 trucks of gear, the boys will fly from city to city with their parents and management on a leased 767, making frequent overnight trips back to [their home in] Dallas. The 53-date outing features their most elaborate and expensive production yet--a multi-million dollar traveling theater-in-the-round, conceived in large part by the trio's hyperactive 21-year-old guitarist, Kevin. Last December, Kevin flipped over a circular couch in their dressing room in Mexico to demonstrate his vision for a round stage with pieces that raise and lower like pizza slices."

This kind of thing both blows my mind and appalls me. I understand that the Jonas Brothers have huge mainstream appeal, that they perform to stadium crowds every night, and that they need equipment that can pump out the kind of volume that allows all of that crowd to hear what they're doing. For this reason, I don't think it would be unreasonable to take two or three buses for assorted band and crew, plus several trucks for equipment, on a national tour. But when we're looking at a total of 32 road vehicles as well as a small chartered plane to whisk the stars of the show in and out, so that they can avoid the "rigors" of over-the-road travel, things have long since passed out of the realm of excuse. I noticed a similar phenomenon when reading a recent RS article about Aerosmith, in which it was chronicled without surprise that each band member has their own entire tour bus. There are five people in Aerosmith; you mean to tell me that they couldn't all fit on one bus? There's no reason for this kind of lavish expenditure. People complain about how the cheap seats at mainstream rock concerts these days will run you over $150 apiece; this is why!

Another thing about the quoted excerpt above that I find appalling is Rolling Stone's complete detachment from the implications of the facts they're reporting. It's like "Lifestyles Of The Rich And Famous" was back in the 80s: a breathless chronicle of the lavish expenditures that are effortlessly afforded by the super-rich. Rolling Stone might elsewhere run an item about the shamefully high ticket prices in today's live music industry (in fact, there's one in this issue!), and they might even occasionally note the problematic carbon footprints of large-scale touring efforts by mainstream pop music acts, but they'd never let that sort of vague attempt at journalistic responsibility bleed over into their puff-piece features about teenybopper acts, would they? Apparently not. It's ridiculous. And before you ask, let me just assure you that, if it weren't for the high quality of political journalism and commentary that they publish (especially the work of Matt Taibbi, who has an excellent piece about the corruption of Goldman Sachs in this same issue), I would have cancelled my subscription years ago. Where music is concerned, Rolling Stone has long since lost all credibility.

Taking Back Sunday are new again.

2009-07-09T23:13:00.003-04:00

I had cause to be nervous about the new Taking Back Sunday album, and it's a cause that I've had before. For the third time in four albums, they've had a major lineup change, and just as in previous cases, I was worried that this change would ruin their sound. Previously, after their excellent first album, "Tell All Your Friends," a rift between main vocalist Adam Lazzara and guitarist/second vocalist John Nolan led Noland and bassist Shaun Cooper to quit and start their own group, Straylight Run. Internet rumors led me to think that Nolan was the injured party in the split, and that Lazzara was the one who acted like a dick and caused the whole thing. And you can read all about my feelings at the time by scrolling all the way back to this blog's very first post, from five years ago. Funny how that works, isn't it? Anyway, Nolan's essential role in the band was filled by former Breaking Pangaea guitarist Fred Mascherino, and TBS went on to make what is still my favorite album by them, "Where You Want To Be." So at least in that case, I needn't have worried.

But now, two albums later, previous saving grace Mascherino has left the band. This felt like real cause for worry. Could they possibly get lucky twice? Or, really, three times? After all, on their out of print and little-heard self-titled debut EP, their lineup had been completely different even from that of "Tell All Your Friends." Original vocalist Antonio Longo sang on that EP, and on the first of two sessions, the backing vocalist role had been filled by bassist Jesse Lacey. If you think you recognize that name, you're right--he left TBS after recording only two songs with them in order to front the band Brand New, with whom he's had a successful career that lasts even to this very day. His leaving prompted the original saving-grace arrival to Taking Back Sunday, that of Adam Lazzara, originally the band's bassist and backing vocalist. After that first EP, when Longo left the band, Lazzara switched to lead vocals and Nolan took the backing vocal role. So really, being able to replace Mascherino on backing vocals would constitute being lucky a good bit more than twice.

Maybe they realized they'd pushed their luck to the breaking point, and that's why new second guitarist Matthew Fazzi seems not to sing at all on TBS's aptly named fourth album, "New Again." There are a few instances of backing vocals on the album, though generally only on the choruses of songs, and even then they are mixed far in the background and appear to just be additional tracks of Lazzara rather than anyone else. Maybe this just means that Fazzi joined the band too late to be written into the songs from this album, but regardless, the loss of a vocal foil for Lazzara changes the Taking Back Sunday sound in very significant ways. A lot of what made the best songs on their previous albums so great was that vocal interplay, as on "There's No 'I' In Team," from "Tell All Your Friends," in which John Nolan's vocals constitute the other half of a conversation/argument with Lazzara's vocals, or on "A Decade Under The Influence," from "Where You Want To Be," in which Adam Lazzara narrated an uncomfortable car ride while Fred Mascherino, often singing at the same time as Lazzara, gave voice to Lazzara's unexpressed feelings ("I've got a bad feeling about this").

The closest "New Again" comes to this sort of vocal interplay is on "Swing," which was the first song on the album to really catch my attention. During the verses of the song, as Lazzara sings his lead vocals, a low, quiet backing vocal repeats the phrase "How long," which Lazzara responds to: "...before I'm just a memory? ...before you can't remember me?" I wish the backing vocals weren't mixed so low, but I'll take what I can get, and they work well the way they're used. The chorus is very effective too. Lazzara sings of a frustrating relationship, in which he, the hopeless romantic that's always willing to take the risk, can't get the object of his affections to take the chance on romance. He urges her to go for it, but phrases the taking of the risk in the form of a punch: "Lover, lover on the fence, bat your eyes, ball your fist and swing." As he reaches the final word, multiple backing vocals swirl around him, repeating "swing" several times in different harmonic variations. It's a gorgeous sound, and probably the single moment on this album that most closely resembles the best parts of previous TBS albums. I'm also a big fan of the second half of the chorus, in which Lazzara sings, "Lover, lover, tell me this: passion over consequence--when did the latter take the lead?" With this perfectly turned phrase, Lazzara encapsulates the entire dilemma that the song revolves around, and makes clear that the cautious path has so much less to offer than the risk of romance.

"Swing" is without a doubt the best song on this album, and it attains a level of greatness that is, if not equivalent to, at least very close to the brilliance of the first three songs on "Where You Want To Be" (for my money, the best 10 minutes of Taking Back Sunday's recorded history). There are a couple of other songs on this album that also reach that level. "Summer, Man," which also features at least limited use of backing vocals (mostly delivering wordless croons), has a chorus just as catchy as that of "Swing." Over a sad, wistful minor-chord progression, Lazzara sings, "The summer is over and I doubt that I'll be seeing you around." This song, about the end of a friendship, seems to refer to Fred Mascherino's less-than-amicable departure from TBS. "Prove to the world what you already proved--that you just couldn't do it on your own," Lazzara sings, referring, one assumes, to Mascherino's solo project, which won't be as good as the next TBS record. And actually, I've heard that The Color Fred is pretty bad, but I guess I should listen for myself before I judge. Truth is, though, I don't like even thinking about this inter-band conflicts. I didn't want to have to worry about taking sides back when "Where You Want To Be" came out; I just wanted to hear more good records from a band that I'd loved. I feel the same way now. The fact that Fred Mascherino was just as essential ingredient to earlier TBS greatness leaves me with equally warm feelings for him and Lazzara. Fortunately, "Summer, Man" doesn't force me to even worry about all of this if I don't want to. It's a catchy song with exactly the sort of melancholy undertone that I like in my modern pop-emo, the stuff that reflects my own constantly roiling emotional sensibility. As I said back in that first post, I'm still feeling the emotional shocks of my day to day life every bit as intensely as I did back when I was 15, so if that leads me to love music that's typically for teenagers, then so be it. Taking Back Sunday is really good at being music for emotionally disturbed teenagers like me, which is why I love them.

Getting back to "New Again," there's one more shining light of brilliance on this album, and that is its closing track, "Everything Must Go." Taking Back Sunday haven't given any of their albums really powerful closing statements since "Tell All Your Friends," which ended with John Nolan singing over and over the opening line from Johnny Cash's "Understand Your Man" ("Don't call my name out your window, I'm leaving") as Lazzara wailed "I'm sick of writing every song about you." That moment still has the power to reduce me to tears if I'm not feeling particularly stable (and lately, I never am). The two albums from the Mascherino era, though, were stronger on beginnings than endings, and neither "Slowdance On The Inside" nor "I'll Let You Live" ever struck me as particularly strong tracks.

"Everything Must Go" is a welcome change from this trend. It's on the slower side of things for Taking Back Sunday, but avoids their tendency towards balladry, instead showcasing their heaviest chorus since "Bonus Mosh Part II," from "Where You Want To Be" (part of that best 10 minutes of their career that I mentioned earlier). The lyrics are both a narration of and an emotional reaction to the breaking off of Adam Lazzara's engagement with Eisley guitarist Chauntelle DuPree. Some elements of these lyrics resonate with similar themes from "Louder Now"'s "Miami," a track on which Lazzara seemed to be explaining to a significant other his own struggles with religion, and reconciling his checkered past with a current need for fidelity. On that track, Lazzara made comments like, "So long as you don't torture me with my past," "You just have to trust me--whoever I was then, I can't ever be again," and "The terror held in wedding bells, the comfort in 'there's no one else'." The line that stands out to me the most (in addition to a tossed off "god damn me" on the song's final chorus) is "The faith you've found I've never felt," which was printed three times the size of the rest of the song's lyrics on the album's lyric sheet. Religion was obviously a tough subject for Adam Lazzara circa 2006, one he was not at all sure of his feelings about. Now, Adam Lazzara circa 2009, on the chorus of a song he wrote about breaking up with his fiancee, snarls: "You quote the Good Book when it's convenient," and follows that with, "but you don't have the sense to tie your tangled tongue. Instead, you're slashing through the mud." If "Miami" was a song about learning to live with the less-than-perfect elements of his relationship with DuPree, "Everything Must Go" is a song about how, in the end, she couldn't do that, and neither could he. My last relationship was a long time ago (ended soon after that first blog entry about Taking Back Sunday, in fact), but it was with a religious person who ultimately couldn't handle my own agnosticism (among several other elements of my personality). Therefore, "Everything Must Go" hits close to home for me. Lazzara's frustrated listing of objects that once added up to domestic bliss and are now just trash for him to clear away ("hand-me-down couch and chair that used to be at your church--we borrowed them from there") is as wrenching for him to make as it is for us to hear. As he is about to launch into the final chorus, he asks, "Oh Lord, what have I done?" The implications are different, more sinister, than you'd normally expect from a cry to the lord, and that's only amplified by his return to the bitter line about quoting the "Good Book" when it's convenient. Oh Lord, I've been there.

There's plenty to like about the new Taking Back Sunday album. In addition to the three major highlights I've listed above, there are several other high-quality anthems here. The opening title track is a driving, catchy track that falls on the melodic hardcore side of Taking Back Sunday's musical spectrum. "Lonely, Lonely" is a more aggressive tune driven by chunka-chunk verses and a moshy half-speed bridge that would be at home on a Glassjaw album, contrasting them brilliantly with another great catchy chorus. "Cut Me Up, Jenny" has a bouncy verse riff that seems like something Jimmy Eat World would come up with, and "Capital M-E" is melodic alt-rock that does the trick for me even if its lyrics are obviously a Fred Mascherino dis.

All of this having been said, I have to admit that "New Again" is a step downwards in quality. It's certainly my least favorite Taking Back Sunday album thus far. Considering that I've adored all of their previous albums, those are hardly strong words of rebuke. Also, considering just how much I've played it since downloading it, and furthermore considering that I'm planning to buy it next time I get paid, none of this is to say that it's not good. It's a good record. I just wish it was a bit better. This album's ballad, "Where My Mouth Is," is interesting due to its forthcoming lyrical content about Adam Lazzara's drug addiction and time in rehab, but features music that only barely keeps me from reaching for the skip button. "Sink Into Me," the first single and the song that seems to get the most praise from mainstream reviewers, is relatively uncharacteristic for TBS. With a bridge driven by handclaps and shouts of "Hey! Hey!", it sounds too much like something from an alternative radio rock band that I don't dig. The chorus saves it, because you can always count on Lazzara and co. to come up with a great chorus, but in the end, it's disappointing. In fact, the first time I heard this song was on the radio, and I didn't recognize it as Taking Back Sunday. I liked it all right, but I was expecting it to be by the sort of guilty-pleasure band that I don't usually cop to liking in public (Matchbook Romance and, ummmmmm, Lost Prophets are good examples of this). When the DJ announced it as the new Taking Back Sunday single, I wasn't sure how to feel. That experience had just as much to do with my trepidation about this album as news of Mascherino's departure, actually.

One more thing I must mention--the production on "New Again" is the worst Taking Back Sunday have ever gotten, and it's almost certainly due to them attempting to get better production. They recorded "Where You Want To Be" with celebrated punk producer Lou Giordano, but the lion's share of "New Again" was produced by David Kahne, who has worked with such worthies as Paul McCartney, Sublime, Sugar Ray, The Bangles, and Stevie Nicks. I don't hate all of those artists, but I certainly don't think that a post-hardcore emo band should be going to someone who has worked with them for production. A few songs on the album were apparently produced by Matt Squire, who typically works with other commercially successful emo bands such as Panic At The Disco, The Explosion, and Thrice. I don't know who produced which tracks, but I'm highly suspicious that my favorite tracks on the album, which all tend to sound less polished and more punk, were produced by Matt Squire. I wish they'd worked with him on the entire album.

In the end, the positive factors outweigh the negatives, and I'm sure I'll continue to play "New Again" regularly for a good while. Taking Back Sunday has been one of my favorite bands of the past decade, and even if their latest album isn't quite up to previous standards, it's nowhere near enough for me to stop liking them. I'm not sure if seeing them live now would be quite as thrilling as it once would have been; after all, who sings the Nolan/Mascherino parts when they play the old songs these days? I'm also not at all sure what the future will bring for them; this album could easily be a transition record that leads to more brilliant work in the future, but it could also be the beginning of an inexorable downhill slide. Only time will tell. For now, though, I'm going to focus on the positives, and rock out to the truly great songs that are here.

Taking Back Sunday - "Summer, Man," "Swing," and "Everything Must Go"

Movie Diary: "Hickey And Boggs"

2009-06-28T15:53:00.001-04:00

A recent blog post by crime writer Duane Swierczynski led me to seek this movie out. I guess I'm in kind of a neo-noir mood, because the other two movies I have at my house right now are "Get Carter" (which I've waited two weeks to see for some reason) and "The Friends Of Eddie Coyle." Hopefully I'll get to those soon. Anyway, "Hickey and Boggs." Swierczynski mentions that you can get a clear copy of it from iTunes, but I'm not a watching-the-movie-on-the-computer sort of guy most of the time, so I went ahead and got the crappy-quality DVD from Netflix, and I'm glad I did. Yeah, seriously, I'm glad I saw a shitty transfer of it. This is a neo-noir movie, one of those sunlight noirs that you hear about from the 70s, which was a perfect time for such a movement in B-grade crime films, what with all the New Hollywood guys running around making bleak non-linear films like "Five Easy Pieces" and "Mean Streets"--which just seem to me like arthouse versions of Corman crime films from the late 60s anyway. Hell, there's some movies from the era where it's hard to decide which they even are. Look at "Vanishing Point." Is that a crime film or an art film? Sure seems like there's a thin line between the two, at least at that point in film history, anyway.

So yes, the shitty grainy transfer of "Hickey And Boggs" in which the colors are overexposed and burnt out and the titles look like they were done with a mid-80s dot-matrix printer, is perfect for the aura of burnt-out, grimy despair that the entire movie carries. It reunites "I Spy" costars Bill Cosby (Hickey) and Robert Culp (Boggs), and while I've never seen "I Spy," I've got to figure it was way more lighthearted than this. The film begins with our heroes discussing the woeful state of their finances, and how Hickey has chosen to pay the answering service instead of the phone bill, so that they can still get messages. Of course, they have to return their messages from phone booths now, but when Hickey does so, he makes an appointment for the next morning, at which a mincing queer stereotype named Rice gives Hickey a job--to locate a girl named Mary Jane. He also gives Hickey $500 as a retainer, which seems quite welcome. So he and Boggs jump into the job wholeheartedly, but what they don't know is that Mary Jane is mixed up in some serious criminal activity. She's trying to unload some stolen money from a bank job, and the mafia people who consider it their money are after her and her confederates, as are the police. Of course, Hickey and Boggs are just trying to do a job so that they can keep paying their rent. Hickey is on the outs with his wife, and is trying to win her back by showing that he can make a living and be a responsible husband and father. Boggs seems like he was in the same situation a while back, but now he's given up, htting up strip bars, getting whores, and attempting to unload his house, which has evidently depreciated in value since he got it.

The thing that gets Hickey and Boggs into trouble at first is that every lead they have for tracking down Mary Jane is someone who has just gotten whacked when they arrive for an interview. Now the cops are mad, and they get even madder when some of Hickey and Boggs's leads take them to the same places where the mafia guys are, resulting in shootouts where Hickey and Boggs don't even always know who they're shooting at, or why. Which only infuriates the cops more. Now Hickey and Boggs's PI licenses are on the line, and the papers are writing about them, which lets the mafia guys figure out who they are. And their leads for finding Mary Jane just get weirder, leading them to interactions with militant Black Panther types, even as their original client disappears on them.

At this point, things go straight downhill for our protagonists, and it'd be unfair to give away any more of what happens. But the ending is dark and grim, just as one would expect from a noir film, even one that's as well-lit and bright as this one. That Los Angeles sun is beating down on Hickey and Boggs, rather than shining warmly upon them, a fact that I felt was only driven home by the crappy DVD transfer that this film had. Duane Swierczynski associates this film with Altman's "The Long Goodbye" in both the sunlight-noir genre and the idea that both of them were showing a world that was increasingly hostile to the idea of private detectives. Hickey and Boggs have multiple conversations during this film about how their livelihood is being outmoded, and are told by a cop at one point that they're nothing but glorified process servers now. They're resistant to this fate, but in the end they can't change it. This movie is a dark, fascinating look at their attempt to nonetheless do so. Whether they succeed in the end is a judgment call you'll have to make for yourself.

Update: what I've been reading.

2009-06-22T16:54:00.002-04:00

First-person introductory paragraph: good lord, you guys. My reading habits have become a complete shambles over the last few months. I'm not necessarily a one-book-at-a-time sort of person all the time, but more often than not, I am. Occasionally I might get into a second book that I feel needs to be given priority, generally pausing in the first book and returning to it when the second book is done. Sometimes the first book gets shunted aside completely, but that's rare. Lately, though, all of this has been turned upside down. I've been participating in multiple book clubs, some of which read multiple books in each month, and, as always, buying way more books in any given time period than I have time to read. Combine that with my relentlessly expanding blogroll, the half-dozen or so magazines I attempt to follow, and my ballooning comic book subscription list, and what I've got on my hands is a full-scale onslaught of reading material, one that I'm completely incapable of keeping up with. At some point in April, I cracked under the strain--I blame Hunter S. Thompson's gargantuan collection of correspondence, "Fear And Loathing In America," about which more below--and found myself haphazardly reading 10 to 20 pages at a time in at least half a dozen different books. My mood, and therefore my desire for reading material, would change hourly, and I quit trying to keep my reading queue orderly and gave in entirely to my whims. Thus, in addition to the books you'll read about below, all of which I have finished in the last two months, I've also read portions of at least half a dozen other books, including a few I read a long time ago and was rereading (these were mostly short story collections by Harlan Ellison--see my recent post entitled "Dreams With Sharp Teeth." Sorry, no hyperlink, but it's gotta still be on the front page). Furthermore, I've delved into lengthy essays from blogs and magazines, 6 to 12 months of comic backlog, and I still have at least half a dozen half-read books kicking around my room that I have every intention of getting too ASAP. So uh, I'll keep you guys posted, but as of right now my reading habits are a total disaster, and the intermittent nature of these book posts will probably continue to reflect that. I just hope the quality of the writeups won't.

A Preferred Blur, by Henry Rollins
Henry Rollins' books of his collected journal entries become both more intriguing and more depressing as the years go on. There's still plenty of awesome travel writing and observations on politics and humanity in this book, as in all of them, but the more personal moments of this book were particularly tough on me. I guess there are two different reasons why that is: one being that I can relate pretty heavily to a lot of Rollins's issues with social interaction, whether it be with friends, girl...more Henry Rollins' books of his collected journal entries become both more intriguing and more depressing as the years go on. There's still plenty of awesome travel writing and observations on politics and humanity in this book, as in all of them, but the more personal moments of this book were particularly tough on me. I guess there are two different reasons why that is: one being that I can relate pretty heavily to a lot of Rollins's issues with social interaction, whether it be with friends, girls he is attracted to, or total strangers; the other being that, as someone who is a longtime fan of all Rollins' work, I've come to care about him as a person and I hate to read that he's having so many troubles with depression. Also, it's kind of hard to see him dealing with those issues the way he does; in this book, he talks often about how he has to minimize his time around people he cares about, how he can't even allow himself to maintain communication with women he's attracted to and DEFINITELY can't ever get into another romantic relationship, and how he can never let himself get too comfortable at home, because as soon as he gets comfortable or feels safe with someone he feels like he's opening himself up to be hurt. I can see the logic behind this strategy, especially coming from someone who has never completely recovered from having his best friend shot right in front of him (he talks extensively about his depression over Joe Cole's murder in this book, which was written 16 years after it happened). But I just can't feel all that good about it, because I feel like the man is depressed either way, and he operates on the assumption that a minimum level of depression is unavoidable and he has to function in a certain way that minimizes human contact that he might enjoy at the time. He sees all such contact as an inevitable path to even deeper levels of depression in the future, and again, I can understand that logic--it's often been that way for me too. But a lot of this book just reads like the thought process of someone who has given up on ever finding personal happiness, and that just bums me out. I don't want to think that that's what someone I have a great deal of admiration for will be feeling for the rest of his life, and--considering how much I relate to a lot of the feelings he describes--I certainly don't want to believe that this is what waits for me in the future. Reading this book was hard, mainly because it made me think that the only reason I haven't quite given up yet is because I'm somewhat younger than Rollins. I don't want to believe that but it seems frighteningly plausible.

I don't want this review to make this entire book seem like some miserable slog of a read, because it isn't. There are definitely parts of the book that are enjoyable in the extreme, and I think if I had been able to separate more from the parts about depression, I could have enjoyed reading them more than I did. Really, though, this book is quite a different animal from Rollins's more comedy-oriented spoken word performances, and fits a lot more closely with the dark, heavy lyrics he used to write for the Rollins Band and Black Flag. Well worth your time if you enjoy Rollins' writing, but go into it expecting a heavy emotional trip, because that's what you're going to get.

The Forest Of Hands And Teeth, by Carrie Ryan
This is an incredibly engaging book. I tore through it in less than one full day. It's a young adult novel, so it wasn't exactly heavy reading, but I never felt like I was reading something that was written below my level, and in fact, Carrie Ryan seems to have quite a bit of writing talent, not just where plotting and characterization are concerned (though she's certainly no slouch in either of these departments), but on a level of individual sentence and paragraph construction.

"The Forest Of Hands And Teeth" is a new take on the zombie novel, which has become a rather popular subgenre in recent years. Rather than concentrating on the zombie apocalypse, as every book about the subject that I've ever read has done, "The Forest Of Hands And Teeth" takes place several generations after the coming of the zombies (referred to as "The Unconsecrated" in the book), in a town with a strong fence surrounding it, outside of which lies the forest of the title. The forest is filled with zombies, which never seem to rot or lose their energy, instead continuing to "live" in the forest and representing a constant threat to the inhabitants of the village. This has caused the village's social structure to adapt, and the inhabitants now live in a manner similar to the Puritans of the 17th century. The cathedral is the social nexus of the town, and is inhabited by the Sisterhood, who preserve the history of the town. Marriage and continuation of familial lines is paramount to the preservation of the town--said by the Sisterhood to be ordained by God, in order to keep humanity alive in the face of the Unconsecrated.

This book is told from the point of view of Mary, a young woman of marrying age who longs to visit the ocean, even as she's told by most of the village that this is not possible, that they are the only humans left and must stay within their village forever. Mary's hand in marriage is desired by Harry, but she loves Harry's brother Travis. After the death of her parents at the beginning of the story, and after Mary hesitates to accept Harry's marriage offer, Mary's brother Jed forces her out of their family home, and she is forced to join the Sisterhood, the one fate she wanted least. However, once in the Sisterhood, Mary begins to learn more about the history of humankind as a whole and the village in particular, and begins to think that many secrets have been kept by the Sisterhood from her and the rest of the village's inhabitants. What she ends up discovering turns her world upside down, but I don't want to explain further, as there are many twists and turns of the plot in this book, and it would be easy to spoil one or another of them. Suffice it to say that the story moves farther and faster than I ever expected based on the first few chapters of the book, and stays entertaining and unpredictable throughout. I'm not sure if there'll be a sequel, though the ending leaves it open, but if there is one, I'll definitely pick it up. And even if there isn't, I'm very interested to see what else Carrie Ryan writes in the future. This book, her debut, is enough to convince me that she's very talented.

A Test Of Wills, by Charles Todd
I read this book a few weeks ago but have been doing a poor job of maintaining my goodreads page and so am only reviewing it now. I don't have a perfectly formed review in my mind the way I might have if I'd written about it the day I finished it, but I can remember enough to know that I quite enjoyed it. This is the first in a series of mysteries by Charles Todd, which take place in England in the immediate aftermath of World War I. Ian Rutledge has returned home to reclaim his job as a homicide detective, but he's shellshocked from the war and now suffers a persistent aural hallucination--the voice of one of his now-dead comrades, Hamish MacLeod, speaking to him from over his shoulder. Rutledge knows that Hamis is a delusion, but this knowledge alone is not enough to chase him away, and so he must spend all of his time being careful not to respond to Hamish's non-existent voice in the presence of other people.

Meanwhile, he's still trying to solve murders, such as the one he's sent to investigate in "Test Of Wills," of a retired Colonel. The details of the plot were interesting and unpredictable enough to keep me guessing until the very end, but what I enjoyed most about this book was not so much any of the whodunit aspects but more the characterizations of Rutledge, the suspects in the murder case, and even Hamish, Rutledge's imagined partner. Todd creates a dark atmosphere around all of these people, and shows us the more sordid aspects of their lives, which is a lot of what makes the murder's solution so tough to predict--so many of the characters seem like they could have done it. Perhaps its morbid or pessimistic of me, but I really enjoy reading books that come from as dark a perspective as this one, and I look forward to checking out more of the Charles Todd mysteries.

Starship Troopers, by Robert A. Heinlein
So this week my book club read "Starship Troopers." I of course read it when I was 12 and a few times since, none since I was in 9th grade or so. I loved it as a pre-teen. Going back to it, though, kinda ruined it. What I--and most of the book club--realized was that the society depicted within the book is basically fascist, and that there's a lot of Heinlein philosophizing scattered throughout, in which he makes absurd claims like that the juvenile delinquent scare of the 50s was caused by parents not spanking their children enough. The parts that are a space adventure/war story are still pretty good, but they are hugely overshadowed by all the ersatz philosophy. I didn't remember this at all, but nearly a quarter of the book is devoted to lectures in which Heinlein "proves" various theories based on an imagined future history that doesn't even remotely resemble what has happened in the 50 years since this book came out. And thank god, because this would be a military-run fascist society by now if it had.

The Writing Class, by Jincy Willett
At a time when I was already in the middle of several other books (just as I am right now), the bookstore where I work got a shipment of new books in, and this one looked fascinating to me. I dropped everything else I was reading in order to blow through this book in about three days, and I never regretted it for a second. At first glance, "The Writing Class" might seem like a standard cozy mystery, one structured in a similar manner to the endless craft mysteries pumped out by Berkeley Prime Crime month after month. This is far from the truth, though. For one thing, the book's mystery elements seem more secondary than like the primary focus of the book. What this story is really about is a writing class, as detailed mostly from the perspective of its teacher, a middle-aged writer named Amy Gallup who hasn't published a novel in 20 years and does editing work from home in order to pay the bills. She doesn't need the pay from teaching the writing class, but she does it as a way to have regular contact with people other than herself. The group that takes her class in the fall semester of 2007 is unusually interesting, and includes a prankster with a mean streak that gets more vicious with each passing class.

To tell you any more of the plot than this would be criminal, and with that in mind, please do not read the back of this book, as it spoils something that happens two-thirds of the way through it. But do read this book, as it is full of fascinating characters that are lifelike and multi-dimensional, and who have very entertaining interactions. There's also some interesting stuff about the art and craft of writing, which you the reader may find yourself learning alongside the students in the writing class. Perhaps my favorite element of this book was its casual but effective realism; none of the characters are living perfectly happy, fulfilled lives, but none of them seemed like overly maudlin sufferers, either. They just come across as real people, with the sorts of ups and downs that play out in normal lives.

I wouldn't consider "The Writing Class" to be literary in any real way, but I do feel like it's an incredibly well-written book. A lot of more literary writings that I've read in my life have seemed almost to beat you over the head with their brilliance. They may be full of beautiful sentences, but those sentences almost seem to get in the way of the story they're telling. In "The Writing Class," Jincy Willett displays a much more subtle form of talent, writing quietly eloquent sentences full of intelligence and wit that could escape a reader's notice completely if they weren't looking for them. She proves that a writer doesn't have to write a big, important book to display a ton of talent. This is only her third book in over 20 years; here's hoping she writes more soon.

Fear And Loathing In America: The Gonzo Letters Volume II, 1968-1976, by Hunter S. Thompson
This huge tome of Hunter Thompson's correspondence took me approximately two months to read, but that doesn't mean that I didn't like it. In fact, I enjoyed it quite a bit. However, the format leant itself to being put down for extended periods of time before returning to it. There's not much of any connection or narrative flow between one letter and the next, and most of the time, the other half of Thompson's correspondence is not reproduced here, so the reader is left to guess at what exactly has inspired him to hurl invective at this person or that one. That's most of what he does in this book, too--hurl invective, both at people he likes and people he's sincerely angry with. His correspondence with Oscar Acosta is full of such rancor, and moves over the course of the book from seeming like good-natured bickering between friends to real animosity. One wonders if Thompson and Acosta would have worked out their differences over time, were it not for the latter's untimely disappearance.

It's a lot of fun to read each individual letter, especially the lengthier ones that delve into more complicated thought processes that Thompson was working through at various stages of completing books or articles. There are several detailed outlines herein for books that were never completed, all of which are entertaining, but also of course frustrating due to the fact that we can't go read those books in full. There are also many interesting arguments back and forth between Thompson and his various publishers, in which we learn his exact feelings (generally predictable but hilarious fury) about the various edits and bowdlerizations he was forced to suffer throughout his career. It becomes clear that Thompson always took his writing very seriously, and had a lot invested in his work being read exactly the way he intended. He also got very frustrated with those who saw his "gonzo" style as just an excuse to make shit up. As far as Thompson was concerned, he was telling the truth in all of his pieces, even if he didn't always use a format that was approved by standard journalists of the time.

I wouldn't really recommend reading this book to anyone who isn't well-versed in Hunter S. Thompson's writing career; in order to be most properly enjoyed, the reader should probably already be familiar with "Hell's Angels," "Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas," "Fear And Loathing On The Campaign Trail 72," and "The Great Shark Hunt," as work that ended up in all four of these books is discussed in detail here. As I said, not that much information is given to the reader outside of the actual text of the letters, so it'll be a lot harder to keep up if you haven't read those books. If you have, though, and you're interested in an even deeper examination of Thompson's life and mindset during that period of his career, "Fear And Loathing In America" will provide you with a very entertaining read. And honestly, you'll probably be better off setting it aside every now and then and cleansing your palate with something a bit lighter before returning. Trying to take this whole book in one fell swoop would probably amount to biting off more than one can chew.

Consider The Lobster, by David Foster Wallace
I took a long time to finish this book, primarily because it was a set of essays and I often took breaks inbetween them. Also, because I've been reading way too many books at once lately, which has led me to feeling overwhelmed and then ignoring all of the books I'm reading in favor of starting yet more new ones, or just reading magazines and comic books, or rereading stuff I've already read... whatever, the point is that it took me forever to finish this book, but absolutely NOT because it wasn't amazing. It is amazing, just like "Infinite Jest" is amazing. It seemed like it would be a complete departure from that brobdingnagian novel, simply by virtue of the difference between formats, but I ended up finding a lot of common threads between the two. Now that David Foster Wallace is, unfortunately, no longer with us, I feel a bit more confident in describing certain of his themes as universal to all of his work, and it seems like those universal themes were just as present in his essays as collected here as they were in his magnum opus, "Infinite Jest." Asking me to specify the themes might result in a bit of evasion though, really just because I'm afraid that I'll describe them badly enough that I end up being wrong. But what the hell: sincerity, compassion, the desire among all humans (and maybe even non-humans) to connect with one another, to feel part of something greater than oneself. This shows up in all sorts of places in this book, from DFW's profile of a right-wing radio talk show host (John Ziegler, he of more recent "How Obama Got Elected" fame), to his review of a dictionary of English usage, to his description of two weeks spent on the campaign trail with John McCain during his 2000 run for president. And in fact, it seems like Wallace's main beef with the John Updike novel he reviews negatively in this collection is its protagonist's narcissistic inability to connect with anyone/anything other than himself/his penis. A lot of times, I see reviewers make allusions to some sort of post-modern ironic-detachment sensibility when they write about David Foster Wallace's oeuvre, and I must conclude that these people just don't get it. If anything, I see DFW's writing as coming from an anti-ironic-distance perspective. He wants us to talk more, and more honestly, with each other. And in light of his depression and ultimate suicide, it seems to me (though I may be overstepping my bounds here) that this impulse in his writing stemmed from a desire to talk openly and honestly, and make connections, with those around him. I don't know if it'd be any comfort at all, but he connected with me when I read "Infinite Jest," and I'd say he's connected even more with this fascinating and brilliant collection of essays.

Burning Fight: The 90s Hardcore Revolution In Ethics, Politics, Spirit And Sound, by Brian Peterson
I feel compelled to give this book four out of five stars simply by virtue of its existence. As someone who grew up in the 90s hardcore scene, who found the whole era to be vital and fascinating, to be filled with musical experimentation and growth on personal and community levels, I've always hated the standard line about how hardcore died in 1986 (or whenever Steven Blush said), about how it just got easier to be a hardcore kid after that, and the music therefore got worse and the kids got wimpier. That's damn near the opposite of my personal experience of the 90s scene, and I've long wanted to write my own book debunking that personal myth. So I'm very glad that Brian Peterson got the ball rolling with his book. That said, I don't feel like "Burning Fight" obviates my own need to write a book about the subject, because the fact is that this one just isn't that good. Peterson, who ironically teaches high school English, is not what I'd consider a good writer, and I'd even feel like I was gilding the lily a bit to call him mediocre. Fact is, the guy is a barely capable wordsmith whose thankfully infrequent interjections of narrative read like the sort of high school senior thesis that might get you a B if your teacher grades on a curve. The passages Peterson wrote for the book are as free of insight as they possibly could be, and tend to explain band after band, movement after movement, in the same tired language. I swear Peterson mentions the Bad Brains and the Cro-Mags as sonic references for at least a dozen different bands, none of whom sound anything alike. It seemed at least somewhat legitimate when he first said it about 108, who are first in the alphabetically-ordered section of interviews with various bands; 108 were definitely influenced hugely by both of those bands. When he brought the same two bands up 300 pages later in a discussion of Unbroken, though, I damn near threw the book across the room. It's lazy writing, pure and simple. And to expand on that theme, 90% of the book is structured like an oral history, leaving the bands and kids who were there to fill in the gaps and provide insight into the subjects that Peterson doesn't explore in any depth himself. It's the luck of the draw as to how much insight the quotes provide, and for every intelligent, well-spoken person in the book, such as Jes Steineger of Coalesce, Vic DiCara of 108, or Norman Brannon of Texas Is The Reason, there are 20 more people whose quotes serve only to demonstrate how little thought they've given to the questions Peterson is asking. Sometimes two quotes on the same page about the same subject will have completely contradictory viewpoints, and while this is interesting in that it shows the multiplicity of opinions and perceptions in the scene at the time, it ruins the narrative framework of the section and makes it very hard to understand what sort of conclusion we're supposed to draw. I feel like a lot of the reason that I was able to get something out of this book was because I was there during those times myself, and could add what new information "Burning Fight" provided me to my own memories, knowledge, and insight. It helped me complete my picture of the scene during that era, but if I were coming into this book with no foreknowledge of the time, I don't know how accurate or fleshed-out the picture I'd get would be.

One thing's for sure: the 30 or so band interviews that make up the lion's share of this book, while doing even more to completely undermine any narrative framework established in the more universal opening chapters than was already done in those chapters themselves, were far more interesting, insightful, and entertaining than the opening sections. While the opening chapters were the sort of slog that I only endured because I was having trouble admitting how far short of my expectations this book had fallen, the band interviews were very interesting and kept my attention throughout. Really, though, they made this book far more like a big fat zine than any real history of an era, and if you want a book that really does a great job of encapsulating 90s hardcore on that level, you're better off with Norman Brannon's "The Anti-Matter Anthology." Or, perhaps, the book about all of this that I'm gonna write in another few years. [Famous last words.]

The death of true spirit.

2009-06-16T20:30:00.003-04:00

I've been reading the book "Burning Fight: The 90s Hardcore Revolution in Ethics, Politics, Spirit, and Sound" by Brian Peterson, lately, and it's led me back to a lot of the records and bands I loved when I was deeply immersed in the hardcore scene during the 90s. I mean, not that I ever really go too long without listening to stuff from that period, but still. It's led me back to some slightly different bands than the ones I return to most often, too, and that seems to be the result of Peterson prioritizing different elements of that era than I do. For me, the progression on a purely musical level, the experimentation in sound, that characterized the era is the most important thing to talk about where it's concerned, with the emotional evolution of the community running a close second. Politics, religion, and some of the other elements that he focuses on in this book were definitely important, and I recognize that, but they aren't the pieces of the puzzle that capture my attention most closely.

I have a lot more than just that to say about "Burning Fight," and I wouldn't be surprised if I devoted at least one full post to it at some point in the future (once I'm finished reading it), but right now, I want to concentrate more on a specific thing that I've learned from "Burning Fight," something that I've probably always known on some level but never consciously considered before. About two thirds of "Burning Fight" is devoted to interviews with various important bands from that time period, and while I do not have a problem with the bands Peterson chose to include, I am struck by the difference in reputation that some of these bands have in the eyes of today's hardcore scene, as opposed to others. Some of them--Shelter, Inside Out, Avail, and Integrity are all good examples--are well-remembered, well-respected, and influential in today's scene. Others, though, are almost entirely forgotten. Spitboy, Groundwork, Los Crudos, and Downcast are the most prominent examples of the latter group, and I don't think this is a coincidence; out of all of the groups profiled in "Burning Fight," these are the bands that were most devoted to remaining underground, keeping their bands separate from any hint of the mainstream, any hint of hardcore-scene-as-business.

Back in my teens and early 20s, I was just as deeply immersed in the underground as these bands were. I went to shows that were held in basements, at which bands got paid in gas money and sold cheaply produced records with xeroxed and silkscreened covers. I loved that scene, loved that it was such a tight-knit community with so little of an air of separation between band and audience, and thought the music coming out of it was brilliant. At the time, I didn't question whether there was a wider audience that this scene should be reaching and wasn't. After all, it was reaching me, so whether it reached other people too wasn't something I really needed to worry about. Plus, the strictures of the DIY ethic that all of us observed in that scene really prevented these bands from getting but so far. The zeitgeist of the scene was such that it enforced an incredibly strict code of self-reliance. While in some parts of the punk scene, the definition of selling out revolved around signing to a major label, within the smaller community of the DIY hardcore scene, even releasing your band's records with a barcode on them, in order to make them easier to stock in stores, was seen as a betrayal.

In contemplating the fate of bands like Groundwork, Downcast, and Los Crudos now, it seems to me that the DIY hardcore scene from which they emerged was largely a victim of its own success. There were, at least ostensibly, far nobler reasons for the strict enforcement of the DIY code as it was defined at the time, but one can't help but note upon reflection that other consequences of that enforcement, intended or not, were parochialism, balkanization, and the violent rejection from the community of anyone who became too successful. "Burning Fight" provides at least one great example of the latter--Avail, who were so well loved at one point that they graced the cover of HeartattaCk #4 (more on HeartattaCk momentarily*), were completely ostracized from the scene by the time their third album came out. They hadn't signed to a major label at the time, and in fact never have, even to this very day. But by signing to Lookout Records for their second album, and by doing very well on that more visible but nonetheless completely independent label, Avail grew to a level that the basement show DIY scene no longer wanted anything to do with them. Tellingly, the same decisions that enabled Avail to make their band a self-sustaining endeavor also moved them out of the favor of the DIY scene.

Obviously, the success that Avail enjoyed in the late 90s, and still enjoy to some extent, is not the success that I meant when I described DIY hardcore as a victim of its own success earlier. What I was talking about at that time was the fact that that scene's code of self-reliance had the goal of separating it completely from any larger, more well-known or easily discovered musical underground. It became less and less accessible to newcomers, and as kids grew older and dropped out of the scene, the amount of younger kids who came into the scene to replace them grew smaller and smaller. At least in Richmond, where I live, the whole thing seemed to implode around 2003. Somewhere around a dozen bands all broke up in the same six-month period, and suddenly there were only two or three active bands left in the scene. Things rebounded within a couple of years, but it was different. In the late 90s, the emphasis on socio-political issues as well as on strict DIY guidelines made people feel like more and more rules were constantly encroaching upon their ability to speak and act freely. I'm not saying that all or even any of these ideas, characterized by detractors as PC, were wrongheaded or overly enforced, and I'm not saying that there weren't problems in the scene that had given rise to the emphasis on these ideas. I'm not even going to make the objective statement that things went too far. What I will say is that things went too far for a lot of people. People new to hardcore who might have been inspired to be part of the basement show scene in 1995 were, by 2003 or so, feeling like they'd be better off joining some other, less strict, scene. And a lot of the people who'd been around for a long while were getting burned out by the constant conflict, and either dropped out entirely or moved on to other subsets of the scene in which things were more relaxed.

It may not seem this way from reading the last paragraph, but I actually think that this outcome was a bad thing, on the whole. Sure, the dogma was overdone to an insane level, and sure, something had to give. In the summer of 1999, I traveled across five states to go to a music festival, only to have a dozen of my friends get kicked out halfway through because they'd made a joke about one of the more poorly-defined political causes being emphasized by the fest's organizers. This led me to get into an hour-long argument with organizers and members of some of the bands I'd come to see in the middle of a hallway. At points, it felt like as many as 100 people might have been watching me have an incredibly stressful argument over something that never seemed to me even worth the expended energy. I'd put over a hundred dollars into driving to the fest, paying my way inside, and feeding myself for the weekend, and for at least those couple of hours, I wasn't having anything remotely resembling my idea of a good time. It cast a pall over the whole weekend, to be honest, and I wasn't even one of the people who got kicked out. So yes, without a doubt, a lot was wrong with the dominant paradigm in that scene.

But there was a lot that was right about it too. A lot of the political, emotional, and spiritual issues explored by the community at large during the glory days of that scene were incredibly important, and needed to be dealt with. What's more, the decision to emphasize political consciousness as the most important defining element of the scene enabled a lot of people to engage in musical experimentation that pushed the state of hardcore and music as a whole forward. All of this was great. And all of it was lost when the dogma overrode the positive aspects and the scene withered away and died. What's more, the bands (and zines, and artists) who were part of this tiny but richly creative subsection of the scene were mostly forgotten too. That was what reading "Burning Fight" led me to realize. When I saw Downcast right next to Disembodied, and thought of the difference between these bands' respective legacies, it brought home to me just how much has been lost, and how rare it'd probably be to find a 19 year old kid in the scene today who has ever even seen a copy of Downcast's LP.

I'm not sure if things could have been done differently, nor if it's really even fair to say that the scene that spawned bands like Downcast and Spitboy doesn't exist anymore. Whatever does exist probably takes some extremely isolated form that has no effect on the larger hardcore scene, though, and I would expect that it's nigh-impenetrable to outsiders. The more widely available hardcore scene, the one that is accessible to kids trying to find something outside the norm, is no more political than the metal scene, and replicates a lot of the same troubling interpersonal dynamics of mainstream society that are also replicated by the metal scene. Nowhere do I see something truly analogous to the hardcore scene I grew up in.

I don't know what to do about this, nor whether there is even anything I can do. All I can really think to do at this point is to try and preserve the history of the scene I was part of. It's for that reason that I want to write a book of my own about 90s hardcore, one that captures my own perspective about what's important and worth preservation ("Burning Fight," for all its positive qualities, has a very different take on this era than my own). And it's for that reason that I've decided to write in this blog specifically about Downcast, a band that deserves far better than the minimal recognition that history has given them.

I'll get into my specific thoughts about Downcast in another entry, to follow later this week.

(*--HeartattaCk fanzine will be explained more thoroughly at that time, too.)

Dreams With Sharp Teeth.

2009-06-11T01:28:00.003-04:00

I've never really been a guy who had heroes. I don't look to other people for inspiration or motivation, per se. Nonetheless, there are people out there in the world, some living, some not, who have provided those things for me at certain points in my life. They've influenced me, maybe to go in the direction with my life that I have, or maybe just to believe in myself a little bit more than I otherwise would have, and regardless of how actively they influence me now, I'll always think of them fondly, because of the positive effects they had on me at some point. I see these people as "my people," a small, select group that are on my team--or, as the case may be, I'm on theirs. Henry Rollins is in this group, and so is Baltimore Colts quarterback Johnny Unitas. Peter Parker is totally on this list, even though he's not real, and none of his creators or writers would make the list. But I'm not here to talk about any of those guys; at least, not tonight. I'm here to talk about Harlan Ellison.

I've felt like Harlan Ellison was one of my people ever since I first encountered his writing, at the age of 11. I had to run downstairs and check my copy of "Harlan Ellison's Watching" in order to verify that, and it informed me that that first film review essay that I read by him was published in the July 1987 issue of The Magazine Of Fantasy And Science Fiction. That was the first issue I received when I subscribed to that magazine (through the Publisher's Clearinghouse, if I remember correctly. God, remember those big yellow sweepstakes envelopes? Am I dating myself?), and I was 11 that month, so there you go. Anyway, Harlan's exuberant essay style drew me right in, got me thinking, and got me laughing. Here's a choice bit from that first column:

"Woody, that brave little beast (as Moorcock once called your humble columnist), was the fauna (or was it faunum?)(what the hell is the singular of fauna?)(who the hell am I?)(it only hurts when I screw the electrodes too tightly, doctor) who saved all of us from the cockroaches, but to buttress my new faith in the human race you also have to thank the flora called Audrey."

I barely knew who Woody Allen (the Woody in question) was at the time, had no clue who Moorcock (Michael, author of the Elric saga, which I'd love in less than two years time) was, and understood that "Little Shop Of Horrors" was a remake of a 60s film but not who Roger Corman was. But I was enjoying reading these little rants, which, unfortunately for me, only seemed to make every third or so issue of the magazine. What really blew my head wide open, though, was his February 1988 column, which savaged both Mel Brooks's "Spaceballs" and the juvenile sense of humor (plus total lack of wit) of the sci-fi fan community at large. By now, I was 12, which certainly seems quite an advanced age when you're living in it but seems from my 21-years-on vantage point almost impossibly young. But regardless of how mature I really was, I connected with what Harlan was saying. I was tired of morons and bad puns too. After all, I was a 12 year old boy. That was the level of humor I was surrounded by. But really, I was just inspired by Harlan's pure, incendiary rage. I pretty much hated everyone I knew at that age, and though I would never admit it then (and probably wouldn't now, under any other circumstances), the real reason I hated them so much was because I was better than them and yet all they did was push me down and tell me I sucked. I was torn between believing them and knowing how wrong they were, and I still am. Harlan Ellison had a tremendously powerful literary voice, and the righteous fury that he expressed with it struck a chord deep within me. I'm not sure if it was he or Stephen King who first made me feel like I wanted to be a writer, but the two of them were definitely the first examples I had, the first two writers I unconditionally loved.

Since those days, I've moved through phases where Harlan is concerned. Sometimes I devour his stuff insatiably, and at other times I go for years without reading anything by him. I have nearly a dozen of his books, and I feel ashamed to admit I've only read a little more than half of them. But no matter whether I'm reading him that week or not, I always think when I hear the name Harlan Ellison--"That's my man right there."

The reason I'm telling you all of this is by way of introducing a documentary called "Dreams With Sharp Teeth," which was released last year and aired earlier this month on the Sundance channel. Of course, I saved it to my DVR, and as soon as I got the chance, I watched it. Tonight, I watched it again, my second time in less than a week. It's reignited a fire in my guts for the work of Harlan Ellison, reminded me of every reason that I loved him so much back when I was 12--and, really, still do.

I'd love to tell you that "Dreams With Sharp Teeth" is a brilliant documentary. It sure seems that way to me. However, I'm a particularly biased audience, and not just because of my Ellison love. It's also because I'm predisposed to like documentary films, regardless of their quality or subject. I'm a process nerd; I like hearing about how things happen, and especially about how artists and creative types come up with their work. Sometimes I feel a bit weird about this, like I'd rather read a book about how a movie was filmed or an album was recorded than watch the movie or listen to the album. And sometimes, that's probably true. Should I feel guilty? I don't know. But the truth is that I have trouble, at this point in my life, engaging with the work of Harlan Ellison, because I don't really do too well with short stories. I prefer a novel, one with a world that I can get lost in and not resurface until I've read the whole thing. Short stories want you to resurface in 10 or 15 pages, then plunge right back into a completely different world. That's tough for me to do. It's not really how my narrative imagination works. This is also probably why a lot of my Harlan Ellison books are only half-read; it's not the novels or the essay collections that suffer from that problem, it's the short story collections.

So then, of course I think "Dreams With Sharp Teeth" is brilliant. It gives me a look into the philosophy, the personality, the life and times of one of my favorite writers. It's a document of process, and of the little details that came together to form the character that Harlan Ellison is. And to top it all off, it actually makes me want to read his short stories. There are several spots within the movie, gaps in the narration, that are bridged by shots of Harlan reading from one story or another of his. All of them are absolutely gripping. That amazing voice of Harlan's, which came through in his film reviews so well that it grabbed the attention of an 11 year old boy (and hasn't completely let go anytime since), is present in his natural speaking voice. He reads his stories like he's speaking off the cuff, saying the words for the first time, and in so doing, breathes life into them that makes you want to stop the movie right then and there and go read the rest of the story he's just read from. I own several of them in one collection or another, and since watching "Dreams With Sharp Teeth" for the first time, I've located my copies of "'Repent, Harlequin!' said the Ticktockman," which I'd read before (and loved), and "All The Lies That Are My Life," which I'd never read before, and now can't believe I'd missed for the 15 years since I bought the collection in which it appears (also named "Dreams With Sharp Teeth").

God, I'm afraid I'm making a hash of this whole thing. I'd love to have some obvious, linear narrative in my head for this rambling appreciation of both the writing of Harlan Ellison and the documentary about him, but I don't. I'm just jumping from one thing to another willy-nilly, in whatever order they come to me. But hey, at least I'm writing. As some of you will no doubt have noticed, this has been hard for me to do lately. I've left this blog un-updated for most of the past two weeks, and before that, I was posting those short movie diary things that I write with almost no forethought. I haven't even done movie diary entries for the last two movies I've seen, and I think they might just get skipped. This bothers me on an obsessive-compulsive level, but I think this time I'm gonna fight through the compulsion and let it go. Best to just keep typing, getting out what's in my head and keeping the flow moving.

I was originally gonna write this entry last week, after seeing "Dreams With Sharp Teeth" for the first time. I had a lot to say, and was feeling inspired both to read Harlan Ellison stories and to write. Harlan always inspires me to write--that's one of the great things about reading his stuff. He makes writing seem both falling-off-a-log easy and set-the-world-on-fire important, and if I feel guilty when I don't write anyway, I feel twice as guilty if I'm thinking about what Harlan would say if he knew. I know, I know, like he would care what some 30-something blogger who has barely even tried to get published was doing... and yet, I feel like he would. I feel like he'd tell me that if I wasn't pounding on that keyboard every day, I was wasting my potential and my life. And he'd be right, god damn it, that's the worst part. I know I could do this every day if I could just fight through my own ennui. I've always got something to say, and the hardest part is always just making myself sit down in front of the keyboard and fire up the word processing program instead of checking my fucking email for once.

Harlan Ellison never holds back on anyone, and that's one of the most interesting aspects of his personality documented in "Dreams With Sharp Teeth." In particular, the first third or so of the movie is gut-bustingly funny, listening to Harlan tell stories about mailing dead gophers to publishers that fucked him over, and reading the riot act to TV producers who didn't want to give him his due (monetary, creative, or both). The man seems to have a vigorous love-hate relationship with everything in the entire world, and as he admits early on, pretty much everything makes him angry. His problem is that he has tons more intellect than patience, and not only can he slice through the world's bullshit like a hot knife through butter, he can't stand the fact that he's then left sitting there waiting for the idiots to catch up. This is another thing I love about Harlan. He's always been someone willing to stick his neck out for what he believes, to call out the rest of the world on their shit, and to let his ass get beaten if that's what's necessary to stand up for what he honestly believes is right. I could draw parallels to my own life, most efficiently to the time I got beaten up by 20 tough-guy hardcore kids because I "talked shit" about their "crew." I was tired of seeing people get beaten up at shows because they didn't know the right people. I was tired of watching a bunch of assholes intimidate an entire room just because nobody wanted to be the one to get punched. Harlan would understand exactly why I stood up and said things when no one else would, why I basically put myself on the line to take one for the team, to be the guy who got punched for saying things that everyone else felt but were afraid to say. Harlan marched with Martin Luther King in Selma, Alabama--you think a bunch of crew kids would have scared him? And you've gotta respect a guy who stands 5'5", weighed maybe 110 pounds in the prime of his life, and yet never backed away from a fight.

In fact, during the course of "Dreams With Sharp Teeth," it's this toughness in the face of all easily observable adversity that introduces the flip side of Harlan's personality--a deeply vulnerable sensitivity, that of a person who grew up his whole life being told he was inferior. He was a Jewish kid born in small-town Ohio in the 30s, back when anti-Semitism was pretty much the norm, and all the other kids in his class towered over him. Plus he had a big mouth, and the combination of the three factors surely sealed his fate where bullies were concerned. Maybe they thought if they beat him up on the schoolyard enough times, they'd cow him into submission. If anything, it had the opposite effect. The more shit Harlan had to take, the more determined he became to take no shit from anybody. He'd show them all what he was made of. And he did--going on to be one of the most respected writers of the 20th century is not too shabby. But then, in one of the interstitial bits, he reads from a piece he wrote when he was 35 years old, entitled "One Life, Furnished In Early Poverty." He talks about how he went back to his old hometown, having finally become the success that they always said he'd never be, seeing all of his old school bullies worn down and working dead end jobs. But instead of feeling vindicated in his triumph, the whole thing just depressed him. I can't really explain the feeling that he's describing in that short excerpt, but I sure have felt it.

I think maybe I'm losing the thread here, so let's just wrap this up. "Dreams With Sharp Teeth" is a tremendously engaging film, documenting as it does the fascinating life and brilliant work of an endlessly entertaining man. With the sort of off the cuff storytelling prowess Harlan displays throughout this film, not only in recently filmed interviews but in archival material going back several decades, it's clear that the movie could have been amazing even if all it contained were shot after shot of Harlan ranting, raving, and reeling off anecdotes. But there's so much more than that here. Throughout the stories of his triumphs and struggles, his fighting with fandom and extoling the virtues of other brilliant writers, his successful TV work and his many lawsuits against various major Hollywood players (check out the bit about him suing James Cameron and winning), runs a deep, unifying thread. Harlan's entire life is a consistent embodiment of his personal philosophy. This man, raised Jewish and now proudly atheist, has a fierce moral code, and cannot break it or allow others to do so. He's angry all the time, but he uses his anger towards a very noble goal--that of ensuring that he and his fellow humans are all treated fairly. Underneath all of his curmudgeonly behavior, he's an incredibly sensitive person, and he just can't stand to sit idly by, watch people do the wrong thing, and not do something to try and stop them. At the end of the movie, he says something about the fact that he's extremely hard to live with, and that most people would blow either his or their own head off if they had to. But then, as the credits roll, he tells a great story about a man coming upon an ant lying on its back in the dirt, raging at the sky. The ant tells the man that he's heard that the sky will fall. The man asks him what good his current course of action can possibly do, and the ant looks up at the man and says, "I do what I can." Harlan does what he can, and while he may not accomplish everything he wants to accomplish, he sure has managed to create an incredible body of work. Long may he rage.

Movie Diary: Lars And The Real Girl

2009-05-30T00:21:00.001-04:00

So hey, for a variety of personal reasons, I've been really bad at keeping up on the book/movie updates I've committed myself to writing. Since I don't have to work today, I figured catching up would be a worthwhile thing to do, and in the interests of getting that happening, here's something about a movie I saw last week. For the record, I don't know what it will be, but I swear to god my next post will NOT be a movie diary post. SWEAR to GOD.

"Lars And The Real Girl" was not quite what I expected. It features a lot of awesome indie-film talent: Ryan Gosling (Half Nelson), Paul Schneider (All The Real Girls), Emily Mortimer (Lovely And Amazing), Patricia Clarkson (The Station Agent)... that alone was enough to make me want to watch it. I was less sure about the movie's premise, something involving a socially awkward guy getting a realdoll. I wasn't sure whether they'd play it for humor, or whether it'd be more like the indie movies I know the cast from, or what. Turns out, kinda both. Lars (Gosling) is convinced, when his realdoll arrives, that she's a real person. He introduces her to his brother Gus (Schneider) and Gus's wife Karin (Mortimer) as a real person that he met on the internet. He seems to have no idea that she's a doll. Gus is mortified, and somehow feels like he's to blame for his brother going crazy. Karin calms him down and convinces him to take Lars to the doctor, which they do. The doctor (Clarkson) decides that Lars is not crazy but merely suffering from a delusion, and tells Gus and Karin they should go along with it. Not only do they do this, they manage to convince a large portion of their small town to do so as well.

The first half or so of this movie has a lot of moments that are hilarious due to sheer awkwardness, but the part of it that I found really interesting was later on, when the entire town seemed to grow used to Lars and his realdoll girlfriend. People start to talk about "Bianca" as if she's a real person, and integrate her into local life. That's when it gets really interesting--less funny and more in line with the sort of character-based slice-of-life indie film that I know the actors in this movie from. It's easy for a movie like this to go for the awkward laughs throughout, and I think the filmmakers took a real chance in trying to move beyond that, to a more sympathetic treatment of the entire issue. Now, in getting there, a few different things were depicted that strained the limits of plausibility for me, especially during the last 20 minutes or so of the film. I won't explain further in the interest of avoiding spoilers, but I will say that ultimately I was still able to suspend disbelief and enjoy the movie. It wasn't quite what I thought I was getting into when I rented it though, so if you decide to see it, keep that in mind.

Movie Diary: Harold And Kumar Go To White Castle.

2009-05-22T17:40:00.001-04:00

This entry was written at least a week ago. I've been having trouble writing anything. Depression or something. You know the story. I'll be back at full strength soon, I hope.

Last night I finally saw "Harold And Kumar Go To White Castle" for the first time. I know this is a quintessential comedy in many circles, but I was old enough when it came out to be living on my own but still young enough to be focusing all of my attention on things like punk rocik shows, so I ended up missing it completely. And maybe I would have had a different reaction if I'd seen it when it was new and not already canonized as a classic of stoner comedy, but ultimately I just found it underwhelming. While I can handle movies that play fast and loose with continuity and plausibility, especially in the comedic realm, movies tend to lose me if they get too cartoonish, and Harold and Kumar doing things like riding a cheetah and catching a lift with a tow truck driver covered in festering boils were a bit too much for me. There were funny parts, don't get me wrong, but it just didn't hold together all that well for me. I like quite a few more stoner comedies than people might expect, but I just can't rate "Harold And Kumar Go To White Castle" alongside such classics of the genre as "Up In Smoke," "Dazed And Confused," and "Dude, Where's My Car" (yeah, I said it). It's closer to the B-list of the genre: "How High," "Half Baked," etc. Not bad, but not something I'm going to pull out and rewatch when I'm bored and need a laugh, and since that's the true measure of a successful comedy, I gotta say "Harold and Kumar" falls short.

Movie Diary: Mirrormask.

2009-05-14T15:47:00.002-04:00

Oh hey, I almost forgot, I saw "Mirrormask" on Thursday. Not optimal viewing circumstances, specifically because I was falling asleep throughout the first half of the movie. I eventually woke myself up by chowing down on some overly sugary strawberry Whoppers candies, but there are still parts of the movie that are pretty unclear to me. I don't think it was nearly as big a deal with "Mirrormask" as it would have been with a lot of movies, though. To be honest, the plot struck me as incredibly cliched. It seems like every fantasy novel or movie aimed at the pre-teen set features the same basic plot (other than the Harry Potter series, which still contains some of these elements)--13 year old protagonist discovers doorway into alternate universe, must go on quest within alternate universe to save important alternate universe public figure in order to return home. Said quest generally ties in with the protagonist's real life, too. See "The Talisman," "The Wizard Of Oz," many many others. China Mieville's recent young adult novel "Un Lun Dun" actually pokes fun at many of these cliches, which is one of many reasons that I want to read it. But anyway, let's get back to talking about "Mirrormask." Specific details of cliched plot: Helena is a 12 year old British girl whose parents run a small-time traveling circus, and who grudgingly helps out with the circus as a juggler/errand girl, even though she'd rather be drawing most of the time. When not doing the circus, she and her family live in a totally grungy and bleak high-rise tenement building that looks straight out of a J.G. Ballard novel, and she papers the walls of her room with drawings of fantastic landscapes. One night, Helena's mother is taken ill during the circus, and is rushed to the hospital. She needs emergency surgery. The next day, Helena wakes up in an alternate fantasy world where she looks just like the Black Queen's daughter. Said Black Queen's daughter has apparently tired of her controlling mother, and used something called The Mirrormask to switch places with Helena and move into the real world, while pushing Helena back into her alternate fantasy world. Doing so has also caused the White Queen (who looks just like Helena's mom, as, for that matter, does the Black Queen) to fall into a coma. Now Helena must find the Mirrormask herself in order to set everything to rights.

The plot is ridiculously predictable from there on, and I think I would have liked this movie a lot more if I hadn't been able to predict every single thing that happened. That said, the point of this movie seems to be less the story (written by Neil Gaiman) than the incredible artistic set design and direction by artist Dave McKean. And it is a beautiful movie. Helena finds that the world she's been transferred into is much like her own drawings, only more elaborate and colorful. In fact, whenever she finds a window and looks through it, she sees out of windows in her drawings, pasted on her walls, and can watch the Black Queen's daughter living her life, behaving like some sort of evil twin and screwing everything up. The landscape she travels through on her quest is fascinating to look at, but now, thinking back about the movie and trying to write about it, I keep getting hung up on the cliches of the plot. I know I enjoyed myself while I was watching this movie, but I feel like it wouldn't hold up to repeated viewings unless you were strictly watching it to look at the art. Since I tend to have more respect for the writing talents of Neil Gaiman than to think he would turn out cliched crap like this (an opinion that I know is not universally held), I can only figure that he was more writing this movie to showcase the visual talents of Dave McKean than because he'd had a brilliant idea for a story that he couldn't wait to write down. Apparently McKean helped with the original story concept, too, so who knows? Maybe the cliched elements were more McKean's idea. Either way, though, this is not a movie for people who go to movies to hear new and original stories. If you're someone who can sit through a thousand iterations of the same basic story idea and love them every time, and/or someone who can enjoy a movie for how it looks even if the story itself isn't that great (fans of Michel Gondry's "The Science Of Sleep," I'm looking at you), go ahead and give this one a whirl. Personally, though, I wasn't exactly impressed.

Note: It actually took me so long to post this that the Thursday referred to in the entry is a week ago. I wrote the entry last Saturday and took 5 days to post it. The blog will probably carry on in this lackluster fashion for at least a little while longer, unless something really unexpected happens to pull me out of the depression I'm in right now. Sorry about that, guys. Maybe I'll feel better tomorrow.

Movie Diary: Observe And Report.

2009-05-09T12:01:00.000-04:00

Two nights ago I took advantage of my Criterion Club membership, which provides $6 Tuesdays at the movie theater three blocks from my house, in order to see "Observe And Report." It was only playing at 10:05, and the guy who sold me my ticket told me that I was lucky to be seeing it, since they were showing it one more time the next night, then cutting it down and returning it to make room for the new "Star Trek" film. I really don't think it was out for more than two or three weeks, and I was one of three people who saw it on Tuesday, so I'm thinking it must have bombed. I can see two pretty obvious reasons for that: 1) people expected it to just be Seth Rogen in a "Paul Blart: Mall Cop" retread, and didn't figure it was worth seeing. That's understandable, considering the way the trailers presented it. 2) That's not what it is at all, and in fact it mixes its already-dark comedy with some downright fucked up stuff, which means that the sort of people who hit it on opening night looking for a new "Knocked Up" or "Superbad" probably went away horrified and warned their friends away from it.

Neither of these ideas made any impact on my wanting to see it. Having seen writer/director Jody Hill's recent HBO series, "Eastbound And Down," I knew what to expect from him--comedy that sometimes pushes too far into not-funny-anymore awkwardness, mixed with the occasional moments of depressing pathos. The kind of thing that would put off seekers of "Superbad"/"Paul Blart" type hijinks immediately. And in fact, Hill and Rogen take things quite a bit farther in "Observe And Report" than they were ever taken in "Eastbound And Down." The basic plot is as follows: Rogen runs mall security, and when a parking-lot flasher and a midnight thief both strike the mall in the same week, he's determined to solve the crimes, and resents the intrusion of an actual police detective (Ray Liotta). Meanwhile, he's also got a crush on a blonde bimbo who works the makeup counter in the mall department store, and when the flasher flashes her, Rogen goes into overdrive to protect and impress her. He manages to also coerce her into going on a date with him, but she's not really that into it, and then he stops taking his meds... upshot is, dude goes completely off the rails, and the later parts of this movie are more like "Travis Bickle: Mall Cop" than anything the trailers might have led you to expect. I enjoyed watching the movie, and laughed my ass off at parts, but other parts were shocking, and I think only someone with a truly sick sense of humor could find the whole thing funny.

In the end, I don't think the problem with "Observe and Report" is anything relating to its actual quality; it's more just that it's not easily categorized. People who walk into it expecting dumb mall-cop slapstick will be surprised and probably frightened. People who come in looking for post-Apatow Seth Rogen comedy hijinks won't be frightened so much as weirded out. I think only people who walk in expecting a weird movie that doesn't fit into any one category are going to be able to get on this film's wavelength. Jody Hill's previous movie, "The Foot Fist Way," was far more of a cult movie than any sort of mainstream success, and I have a feeling that the same will be true of this one. That said, the guy's got talent, and this is a good movie, despite it not conforming to expectations.

Movie Diary: The Burbs.

2009-05-01T03:10:00.000-04:00

Lately, at night, after I've watched my typical hour or so of political TV that I DVRed earlier that evening, I've been wanting to watch something, but never feeling like diving into a full-length movie. Usually I'm just fucked on this score, because once I watch the political/news TV shows I tape every day, all I've got on DVR is a shitload of movies. And that's still true right now, but there's one movie in particular that I DVRed last week, and now I'm falling into the habit of watching a scene or two before going to bed, maybe catching 15 minutes of it at a time. I'm a bit more than a third of the way through it now.

That movie is "The Burbs," a horror/black comedy hybrid released in 1989 and directed by Joe Dante, who explored the line between those two genres in several movies back in the 80s, most notably "Gremlins." "The Burbs" is far more on the comedy side of things than "Gremlins," though the horror elements are present throughout, often showing up at a point when you were just about to be lulled into thinking of it as a straight 80s comedy. I'm not sure how well-known this movie is, or how well-regarded. All I know is that this is one of very few movies that I saw and loved when I was a kid that has remained in my all-time top 10 all the way into adulthood. I first saw it when I was 12, and have probably seen it 50 times since then, at first due to repeated rentals on weekends when I was in high school and later as an edited version that I taped off network TV (oh, the 80s). This is my first time seeing it since probably 10 years ago, if not more, and it amazes me how well it holds up, and how little of my love for it is really just rooted in childhood nostalgia. Tom Hanks is the protagonist, a family man who lives on a cul-de-sac and is puzzled and disturbed by the erratic behavior of his new neighbors. The supporting cast is great too, though--Carrie Fisher as his wife, Rick Ducommun as the obnoxious neighbor who nags Hanks into supporting his own nosiness, Bruce Dern as the frantic, military-fixated Vietnam vet across the street, Corey Feldman as the stoned teenager who lives elsewhere on the block, and Henry Gibson and Brother Theodore as the bizarre neighbors, among others, all add greatly to the fun of this film. The plot is well-constructed, the comedic parts are still hilarious even now that I'm all grown up, and there are some great five to ten minute scenes that almost stand on their own in their hilarious-yet-scary awesomeness. Tonight I watched the scene, rather early in the movie, in which Hanks, Dern, and Ducommun are running around the neighborhood spying like the nosy neighbors they are, to Feldman's great amusement, when suddenly some truly bizarre shit happens at the neighbors' house and validates all of Ducommun and Dern's neighborly concerns. It's a note-perfect scene, alternately hilarious and terrifying, and when it was over, I didn't even want to watch any more of the film. I turned it off, and I'll get back to it tomorrow. It's not like this movie has anything new to reveal to me, considering how many times I've seen it, so it's not at all hard for me to go away from it and come back. But nonetheless, I'm really enjoying watching it a scene or two at a time, just reveling in how awesome it is.

I dunno, maybe I'm insane, but I don't think I could ever get tired of this movie.

Movie Diary: Leatherheads

2009-04-25T13:19:00.000-04:00

The movie I most recently watched was "Leatherheads." I know you guys are probably used to me giving movies really good reviews, and think that I just like everything I see, but let me tell ya, it's just not the case. More often than not, there are so many movies out there that I haven't seen and am almost certain I will like that I just direct my viewing habits towards those rather than anything I'm even slightly unsure about. Every once in a while, though, I do take a chance on something I'm on the fence about, and sometimes, those movies burn me. This is one of those cases.

It's sad, because "Leatherheads" has a lot of things going for it, at least where I'm concerned. It's a period piece that takes place in the roaring 20s, and I'm generally a sucker for any period piece taking place more than 50 years ago. Also, it's about football, and I love football. Furthermore, it stars George Clooney and John Krasinski (aka "The Office"'s Jim Halpert), and I think both of them are very talented. On the supporting actor front, the movie also features Jonathan Pryce, who was great in "Brazil," and uh, Renee Zellweger, about whom, suffice it to say that I'm not a fan. Oh, and Clooney directs, and I've liked his previous directorial efforts ("Confessions of a Dangerous Mind," "Good Night And Good Luck") quite a bit. But none of that was enough to elevate this picture above the mediocre level at which it remained throughout. I guess it would be fairer to say that it had constant ups and downs, and in fact, there were moments in the movie that made clear to me that there was a potentially better movie buried underneath the uneven one I was seeing, trying desperately to get out. I really liked, for example, a scene in a speakeasy during which a football team and a group of military men first get into an all-out barfight only to later end up gathered around the piano singing WWI fight songs together. There was real emotion present in that scene, if only for a second. That was really the story of the entire film--emotion, realism, shining through for a second, only to be swiftly swept away by cliche plot developments and overly obvious setups for jokes that just weren't all that funny. The movie was too slow to work as the sort of action-comedy popcorn sports films that we all know and love from the 80s, but where I suppose the slow parts were intended to interject nuance and drama, they often just felt out of place.

In the end, I felt like this movie couldn't decide whether it wanted to be "A League Of Their Own" or "Major League," and therefore didn't succeed in either respect. It's neither fish nor fowl, and I guess the best I can say for it is that it's an ambitious failure on Clooney's part; he obviously challenged himself, and tried to reach beyond what he'd previously done. Unfortunately, he didn't quite make it, and he might do better in future to rein his ambitions in a little. Or at least to avoid sports films.

Is this fun for you?

2009-04-22T16:29:00.004-04:00

I'm not a guy who is ever really up on current musical trends. I just don't pay that much attention to whose album is coming out, or what singles are the big buzz tracks on MTV or, for that matter, Pitchfork Media. Generally, if I know about something that's popular, I either found out about it way before anyone else did (in these cases, because the band put out several tiny indie albums, and I heard one or more of them), or long after everyone else did (because I just wasn't paying attention). Usually, in fact, it's the latter, and I have to fight my way upstream against some cultural backlash or another, repeating over and over, "No seriously, that record is really good!" I think I've got a chance to get ahead of this one, though, and I'm going to jump on it with both feet.

I first heard of Ida Maria in the review section of Rolling Stone. They reviewed her debut LP, "Fortress Around My Heart," sometime in the last couple of months, and called it "caffeinated Scandinavian garage-rock with a sonic resemblance to the early Pretenders and an abundance of drunkenly confessional lyrics" (I'm paraphrasing). It sounded so right up my alley that I downloaded the album immediately, and what do you know, it was fucking great. I played it a few times over the next few weeks, but, as is standard for me, I was coordinating an influx of many other tunes into my life at the same time, and so it got at least somewhat lost in the shuffle.

Today, though, a guy who posts on a message board where I also post was writing about videos he was watching on MTV, and he caught an Ida Maria video, for her song, "I Like You So Much Better When You're Naked." He took a dismissive attitude towards it, to which I responded defensively that her whole album is great. As I was typing that, I thought, "...and I haven't listened to it enough, either." So I immediately turned off whatever I was listening to and queued up my digital copy of the Ida Maria album.

Like I said before, I thought it was great from the first listen. That stated, it hadn't really made an emotional connection with me quite yet. As I listened to it this morning, though, that connection was finally made, and made in a big way. Every time it's ended since, I've found myself starting it over. Not only is it an awesome record, it goes by way too quickly and leaves me wanting way more than I get from it. "Fortress Around My Heart" contains only 10 songs, all of which come in somewhere between two and a half and three and a half minutes, so that the whole album is just a shade under half an hour long. In an age when bloated, ridiculous 65 to 75 minute albums are the standard, it's a relief to run across a record that's this tight and focused, but every time it comes to an end, it kills me. I just got this thing, and already I want more. By the time she does another album, I'm going to have played this one completely to death.

That's OK, though, because I can't see myself getting sick of these songs. They're just too good. For starters, there's the single that my message board friend saw on MTV this morning, "I Like You So Much Better When You're Naked." Its cheeky title and bouncy, upbeat music--which certainly does have more than a little resemblance to first-LP Pretenders, but probably a bit more to The Muffs or fellow Scandinavian female power-poppers Sahara Hotnights--might give the impression that it's a fun track about the joys of meaningless sex, but there's actually a lot more going on here. Ida Maria doesn't sing the lyrics like they're anything deep or poignant, instead singing in a peppy tone that often sounds as if it's about to dissolve into a bout of giggles. Clearly, she's had a few drinks. But as the lyrics make clear, the drinks were more in the spirit of liquid courage than an evening of fun.

She begins the song by declaring her inability to come up with anything to say: "All the clever things I should say to you got lost somewhere between me and you," she announces, then follows that up with a matter of fact declaration: "I'm nervous. I don't know what to do." She fumbles for something with which to fill in the space: "Light a cigarette. I only smoke when I'm with you." Now the music, never exactly sedate on this track, kicks into a higher gear, seeming to sweep Ida Maria along with it. As her backing band sings some classic punk-pop "Whoa-oh" backing vocals, she vents her frustration: "What the hell do I do this for? You're just another guy!" Then she giggles a little, and admits, "OK, you're kinda sexy," but hastens to add, "But you're not really special!" Now though, as the music drops back into a vamp, the time has come to lay it all on the line: "But I don't mind if you take me home--come on, take me home. And I don't mind if you take off all your clothes--come on, take 'em off."

At this point, we've reached the song's big payoff. The band comes back in at full power, backing Ida Maria up as she sings the chorus, in a joyful tone, at the upper end of her register. "I like you so much better when you're naked!" she sings, then follows this line with the ultimate giveaway: "I like ME so much better when you're naked!" As the chorus ends with a speedy, chugging bridge riff, she yelps and hollers "All right!" as if she's having a blast, and maybe that's enough to cover for what's really going on here, at least in some people's eyes. She's admitted what's really up already, though, and now she has to hope she can distract us from it. The narrative of this song leaves us with two possibilities: either Ida Maria has a completely irrational crush that she can't figure out but also can't get rid of, or she likes this guy way more than she wants to. Either way, she's frustrated with her crush, and she feels nervous about trying to make a real connection with this guy, so she goes for what seems like the path of least resistance: throw herself at him, and ignore her feelings of uncertainty and attraction in favor of pure, simple sex. If nothing else, once the guy is naked and, by extension, vulnerable, she'll feel a bit more in control of the situation. I'm sure this kind of thing seems like a great idea when you're at the club and you've had a few drinks; in fact, I know it does, because I've seen friends of mine act it out many times. Really, though, it usually just leads to a bigger mess in the morning. Nevertheless, Ida Maria's musical exploration of this dilemma makes for a really excellent song with an incredibly catchy hook.

It's hardly the only one here, though. Opening track "Oh My God" is another peppy, upbeat slice of garage-pop that, again, puts the lie to its uncertain, contemplative lyrics. This one tells way less of a story than does "I Like You So Much Better When You're Naked," mostly consisting of Ida Maria repeating lines like "find a cure for my life" and "put a smile on my face," but revolving around a chorus in which the exclamation "Oh my God!" is hardly metaphorical. "Do you think I'm in control? Do you think it's all for fun?" she cries to the heavens, finally asking quietly, "Is this fun for you?" before tearing back into a final chorus that is even more intense than all that have come before, and which ends with wordless screaming and flailing at instruments by the band and Ida Maria herself (who plays rhythm guitar in the four-piece band that backs her on this record).

"Louie" is a jauntier, less punk-sounding track with acoustic guitars thrown into the mix as well as electrics, but it's still quite engaging, keeping the tempo quick in a manner that recalls folk-influenced groups like the Violent Femmes. Ida Maria's still singing about her troubles, though; she tells the "Louie" of the title that she's being evicted in the morning, and wonders if he's "got room for me." "I know I'm always drunk as can be," she sings without any hint of shame, and it's endearing enough that one can imagine Louie being persuaded to let Ida Maria crash on his couch for a few days. One can also imagine her stumbling in at 3 AM a few times and making him regret it, but in a way, this is part of her charm.

There are some more openly serious songs on the album, songs that don't cover for their lyrical complexity with upbeat tuneage and jaunty, singalong choruses. A great example is "Forgive Me," which moves quickly but uses minor chords in a manner that changes the musical tone to one more reminiscent of Maximo Park. This is a fitting musical choice for the single song on the album that focuses entirely on lost love and a relationship come to a bad end. Ida Maria's lyrics, directed towards a former lover, are knowing and accusatory. "You read about love in a book somewhere. Then you read out loud what you found in there. And you had me for days and you had me for months." Now, though, Ida Maria feels that she's finally learned what this boy was really like. And he doesn't have her anymore. She's pissed now. It's on the second verse that she really lets loose on the guy. "I'm treated with cold, cold kisses, and I'm treasured like an old piece of junk. I call you up to say I love you; you only call me when you're drunk." Her voice drips with bitter sarcasm on the chorus, and when she sings, "Forgive me for running down your door," she knows that she's not the one who needs to be forgiven. She ends the final chorus by declaring, "I promise I won't do that anymore," but on this particular line, she sounds less angry and more sad and resigned. It's a hint of what lies beneath the anger, what fuels it all in the first place.

While a lot of the songs on "Fortress Around My Heart" feature lyrics in which Ida Maria reveals insecurity, frustration, and depression, she doesn't usually come straight out with it the way she does on "Forgive Me." Instead, she couches it in the terms she uses on "I Like You So Much Better When You're Naked"--humor, an outwardly upbeat presentation, and most of all, sheer cheekiness. While, musically, this album is a long way from the sound of "Reading, Writing, And Arithmetic" by The Sundays, lyrically, Ida Maria has much the same attitude as The Sundays' Harriet Wheeler. It's as if she's saying, "My life's a bummer, but if I take a step back from it, it's kind of funny."

The song on the album that most clearly represents this viewpoint is "Queen Of The World." It starts with a slow intro, over which Ida Maria begs, "Whiskey, please, I need some whiskey." But before too long, it's picked up speed to the typical upbeat tempo in which much of this album is played. As it does, the band launches into the chorus, and Ida Maria declares, "I'm the queen of the world!" only to follow that line with: "I bump into things. I spin in circles." "Why can't I stay like this?" she begs, then transitions into a second verse that is quicker than the first with the request, "Bring me home." "I've got no plans for tomorrow," she explains, then launches into a classic overshare: "I've got no plans in sight. In fact, I'm free this week. I'm free this month. I'm lonely this year. I'm lonely forever." Realizing how bad that sounds, she throws herself back into the chorus: "But today, I'm queen of the world. I bump into things!" It's cute, it's amusing, and it rings oh so incredibly true. God, if I had a nickel for every night I've had that turned out like that...

The album's final track, "See Me Through," is a huge tonal shift from the rest of the record. There are no punk or even rock elements to it, and in fact, it sounds more like the mellowest songs on Feist's "The Reminder" or Fiona Apple's "Extraordinary Machine" than anything else on this album. However, it's a fitting close to the album, summing up as it does all of the emotional difficulties detailed throughout, and doing so in such a manner as to remove any doubt as to Ida Maria's sincerity. Over quiet acoustic guitars, soft, occasional piano notes, and muted cymbals, she turns her attention to God, just as she did on the album's opening track. This time, though, instead of being frustrated, she sounds desperate. "Oh God, when's the time for me>" she asks of the almighty. "When will you see me through? My mind is eating my heart out. My heart is beating my mind up." It's stunning to hear something like this, a naked cry for some sort of sign that there is a benevolent higher power running this whole show, on an album that has spent most of its time dishing out high-energy punk-pop. If we've previously only been given peeks beneath the surface, "See Me Through" is the veil being forcefully ripped away to show us the beating heart at the center of this record. And at that heart is uncertainty. Ida Maria has a desire for something real to believe in, but that desire is not enough to stave off the evidence of her experiences, and what those experiences have left her with is doubt. "Oh God, I can't believe in you just because I'm afraid you're true," she sings over and over as the song and the album ends, rejecting Pascal's wager in a tearful tone that makes clear that such abstract philosophical concepts are the furthest thing from her mind at that moment. What Ida Maria really wants is what Christopher Simpson asked for over a decade ago on the first Gloria Record LP: "I just want something beautiful to happen here right now." Tellingly, the line that preceded that line on the Gloria Record's "Torch Yourself" is "I just want to trust someone so badly." Underneath the upbeat, caffeinated bounce of her usual music, one can imagine that this is what Ida Maria wants too.

Ida Maria - "I Like You So Much Better When You're Naked," "Forgive Me," and "Queen Of the World"

Rollins Band Part 1.

2009-04-20T18:10:00.006-04:00

I'm not in peak physical shape right now, folks; I know, when am I ever? But right now I'm doing badly even for me. Last night, while riding my bike across an intersection, I got hit by a car. The guy driving was trying to make a left turn right after his light had turned red, and I'd started across the intersection the second the light turned green. The upshot was that he hit me and I rolled across his hood and landed squarely on my right arm in the middle of the street. My arm isn't permanently damaged in any way, and as you can see, I can still type, but if I do so for too long, it really starts to hurt, even more than it does when I'm sitting still. So I'm going to break this entry, which I've wanted to write all weekend, into several parts. Hopefully this can keep me from writing too much at a crack and making my arm hurt any worse than it has to, but who knows how well I'll be able to restrain myself. I'm not exactly known for restraint.

It's been that sort of week, to be honest. Things haven't been terrible, they've just been troublesome enough to make everything seem like a slog. I'm getting around by bike exclusively, and have been for nearly six months, ever since my car died. That's not always a huge problem, but it's been raining a lot this week, which always makes riding a pain in the ass. And now I get hit by a car, just to add actual injury to celestial insult. Meanwhile, I've been feeling lonely and depressed, isolated from my friends, unable to connect. It's been hard to break out of my shell and even make myself try to connect with the people I care about, and then when I do, I don't say the things that are really on my mind. I can't connect with their conversations and I can't start any of my own. It's easier to stay at home when I feel that way. And when I have stayed home lately, I've been listening to the Rollins Band.

I know there are a lot of people out there who don't give the Rollins Band much credit. Henry Rollins is generally considered to be the person who ruined Black Flag, which is doubly funny to me, first because it was obviously Greg Ginn who controlled Black Flag's creative direction throughout, and second, because the later Black Flag stuff was often just as brilliant as the early work. Besides, if it were Henry's fault, wouldn't Ginn's instrumental post-Flag band Gone have therefore ruled? Whatever, it's a stupid argument, but it leaves a lot of people feeling very comfortable with a blanket condemnation of the Rollins Band, sometimes without ever even having heard them.

I, on the other hand, have listened to them a lot over the years. Actually, I heard the Rollins Band before I even heard Rollins-era Black Flag. I had a tape with "Everything Went Black" on it, dubbed from a friend, but that and a couple of Keith Morris era tracks on mixtapes were all I'd ever heard by them when that same friend put "What Have I Got" by the Rollins Band on a mixtape for me. To put it bluntly: that song blew my mind. It begins with silence, into which Henry quietly speaks: "I've got a wantless need." As he says "want," the band slams onto a single chord with full force, then immediately drops back out. A second later, Henry speaks again: "I've got a thoughtless mind." Band again slams down, this time on "thought." You see the pattern here, right? They go through it twice more, Henry telling us, "I've got a needless want," and finally, "I can't..." SLAM! "Unwind." At this point, we're 25 seconds into the track, and the band has played a total of four chords. Other than those chords and a few short statements from Henry, the song has consisted of extended silences. But then, still backed by nothing but silence, he begins to scream: "I've got a heartless hate!" Sure enough, on "heart," the band comes in, but this time they don't stop, instead plowing forward into a midtempo groove that is equal parts blues and 70s era metal, only with every bit of distortion you'd expect from a hardcore record made in 1989. "Whoa!" I thought upon first hearing this, sitting in the backseat of my parents' car, listening to it through my Walkman headphones. I don't remember where we were going, but I doubt it was anywhere I wanted to be. I was a depressed, repressed teenager, unsure of who I was and what the hell my purpose in life could possibly be. I spent most of my time frustrated, especially the portion of that time I had to spend in the company of my parents, my teachers, or really, pretty much anybody. Even my friends, even the ones who listened to cool music just like I did, didn't seem like they really understood where I was coming from. When Henry Rollins screamed lines like "I am a clenched fist looking for a wall to kiss," I knew exactly where he was coming from. And the song's chorus, in which Henry alternately answered the song's titular question with "I've got everything," and "Nothing much at all," rang true to me on a level I didn't even quite understand myself.

I was equally blown away by the playing of his band. Sim Cain's drums seemed to explode out of the speakers, every snare hit seeming on the verge of blowing out my eardrums. Andrew Weiss's grumbling bass had a distorted fury that I'd never heard in a low-end instrument before, and teamed with Chris Haskett's equally furious, distorted guitar to lay down intertwining blues-based licks that were simultaneously total walls of noise and extremely musical. It was obvious that all of these guys were incredibly proficient musicians, but there were multiple points on "What Have I Got" alone where they chose to forsake their musical training in favor of total noise. I couldn't tell whether the birdlike screeching noises that ended the midsong guitar solo were made by guitar or bass, but what I did know was that they sounded singularly unrestrained, and made it obvious that Haskett and Weiss weren't playing a solo to show you how good they were at their instruments but instead to try and push the song to a higher level, to express the same emotions captured in Rollins' angst-ridden vocals without ever opening their mouths. It sure seemed like a success to me.

In fact, I had to have the album. My friend had copied "What Have I Got" onto my mixtape from a caseless CD copy that he'd inherited from an older family member. You see, where I lived in high school, the main employer for the local unskilled labor market was Nimbus Manufacturing, a CD plant that did a lot of pressing work for such companies as Caroline and Relativity, who pressed a significant portion of the independent hardcore, alt-rock, and metal albums being released in the late 80s and early 90s. Everyone with extended family in the area had at least one family member who worked at Nimbus, and everyone had someone they could get rejected CDs, CDs with flaws in their art, through. My friend was always loaning me CDs by awesome bands he'd discovered, and they invariably had no cover. This was how I first heard Primus, the Flaming Lips, and even Can (more about that in another entry, sometime), and it was also how I obtained a dubbed copy of "Hard Volume" by the Rollins Band.

There are a lot of things that I know about that album now that I didn't know then. For example, "Hard Volume" was the last of three albums the Rollins Band had contractually agreed to give their label at the time, Texas Hotel. They hadn't had good experiences with their first two albums on the label, "Life Time" and the half-studio half-live "Do It," and therefore decided to hold back the two songs they considered their best at the time of "Hard Volume"'s recording. Those two songs, "Tearing" and "You Didn't Need," were later released on "The End Of Silence," The Rollins Band's first major-label LP, and "Tearing" was even a popular video on MTV for a while. Whatever their reasons for not putting these songs on "Hard Volume," I'm glad now that it happened that way. "Tearing" and "You Didn't Need" are both on the melodic side of the Rollins Band's sound, and with them out of the way, "Hard Volume" concentrates mostly on longer, darker songs. In fact, opening track "Hard" notwithstanding, "Hard Volume" is an intense, frightening primal scream of an album. "Hard" is an upbeat anthem about staying positive and not letting life grind you down, but as soon as that song ends and "What Have I Got" begins, "Hard Volume" descends into a deep-blues deathtrip that never really lets up.

Listening to "Planet Joe," the fourth track out of seven, is like being bludgeoned steadily for almost five minutes. The song begins with feedback, but after 22 seconds, at no audible prompting, the entire band joins together to begin pounding on one chord. They chug twice, then rest for two beats, then do the doubled chug again. And that's pretty much the song. CHUG CHUG. CHUG CHUG. CHUG CHUG. There is a moment, about two minutes in, where the band breaks away from this rhythm to play an actual riff, but after four lines, they drop right back into the chugs. This is the closest the song comes to an actual verse, and it happens again towards the end, but seriously: most of this song is just the band chugging twice on one chord, pausing for two beats, and then doing it again. It's fucking intense. And what keeps it from being monotonous, what takes it from heavy to downright scary, is Henry Rollins's impassioned vocal. "I don't need no friend to tell me who my friends are," he begins, singing over the constant one-chord chug as if the band is playing something much more conventional. "I don't need some pig to tell me what the rules are." He fairly spits the word "pig" out of his mouth, summing up contempt for cops and all figures of authority who push people around just because they can. When the song really gets intense, though, is after the first more conventional verse, when the band has returned to chugs, and Henry screams, "Been pushed too far! Been pushed too hard! Locked down! Locked down! No! No! No!" I read Rollins's lyric collection, "Unwanted Songs," years and years after first obtaining this record, and learned from it that "Hard Volume" had been recorded just after a tour, and that Rollins had pushed his voice nearly to its limit. He commented in the book that you could hear it straining on some of the songs on this album, and he's right. But back in 1989, when I first heard this album, I had so little knowledge of Rollins's voice that I had nothing to compare it to. I thought the throaty, higher-pitched scream that comes out of him at various points on this album was just how he sang. What's more, I loved it, particluarly on this one section of "Planet Joe." His voice never quite cracks, but as he screams, "Been pushed too hard!" he sounds not so much angry as upset. You can hear in those nearly blown-out vocal chords the sound of a man with his back against the wall. At this point, as well as on several others on "Hard Volume," Henry Rollins sounds like he is positively at the end of his rope. "Planet Joe"'s last line is "This lonely ghetto, it's ugly," and the last 20 or so seconds are just him screaming "ugly" over and over again, over the same repeated chugging that began the song. It's terrifying.

The next track, "Love Song," is even scarier. It's mostly quiet, especially for the first half of its six minutes, but in some ways, that just makes it even more intense. Over a quiet bassline, start-stop tribal drumming, and ambient guitar feedback that is barely present at all for the first quarter or so of the song, Rollins whispers, mumbles, and gasps out the phrase, "I want you. I hate you." These six words are almost the only ones in the song, but he puts so much into their delivery that it doesn't really matter. He grows more focused, and his delivery more frenzied, as the music slowly builds behind him over the first half of the song. By two and a half minutes in or so, he's growling between repetitions of the line, even as his voice never rises above a low snarl. Things change at about the halfway point of the song, though, as the music finally reaches a crescendo and goes into a bluesy dirge. Now Rollins is pleading: "Put your hands on me. Put your mouth on me. Touch me. Make me real." But he continues to return to his previous, repeated incantation, even as he begs for some sort of connection. Finally, at a point when the music is swelling towards a crescendo, he provides an explanation of sorts: "I don't want you because I hate you, I hate you because I want you." He feels trapped by his own desire, stuck in a feedback loop of desire and frustration by feelings he would rather be rid of. As a 15 year old boy who'd never been touched by a woman who wasn't a family member, this made a ton of sense to me. And now, as a 33 year old man who hasn't even kissed a woman in over two years, it makes even more sense. Funny how things come full circle, isn't it? Back to the song: this explanation on Rollins's part seems to trigger a crescendo in the music, and as Sim Cain bashes out elaborate rolls and fills, Haskett and Weiss both deliver solos of sorts, consisting more of feedback than anything else. Overtop of these, Rollins screams, gibbers, and howls incoherently, sounding like a caged animal. The last minute or so of this song sounds like the soundtrack to the climactic scene of a horror movie.

But the real heart of darkness on this album is its penultimate track, "Turned Inside Out." This song, out of all of them here, sounds most like an improvisation rather than an actual constructed song. This could also be said of "Love Song" and "Planet Joe", but at least both of those songs have some musical changes around which they are constructed, however loosely. "Turned Inside Out" is just one riff, being played over and over for close to seven minutes. The blues and metal elements that show up on this album's more structured songs are present in this riff, but at its heart, it's more about plodding dirge than anything else. Sim Cain's beat anchors the entire thing, and he keeps the song on track even at points when everyone else in the band seems trapped inside their own private hell. Andrew Weiss and Chris Haskett have a simple two-chord structure within which to work, but for much of the song, they ditch these chords in favor of shrieking white noise and sheets of distortion. Really, though, all of this is just the background over which Henry Rollins proceeds to completely lose his shit. His strained voice is pushed to the limit on this song, which is best described as a sequel to his version of Black Flag's "Damaged I." On that song, instead of singing the lyrics that Dez Cadena had sung on its previous recording, Rollins improvised some combination of a tirade and a PTSD flashback relating to his repressive military upbringing. "Turned Inside Out" appears to be much the same sort of thing, only related to a different, more nebulous subject. My best guess, considering how many of the songs on "Hard Volume" relate to unhealthy, destructive relationships, would be that this song is a response to some sort of breakup. But really, who knows? What is clear from the lyrics to this song is that Rollins feels like people see him as some sort of monster, a person to be shunned except when he's put on display for mockery. He doesn't say this in terms nearly that clear, though. Instead, he begins with, and returns to, a seemingly prewritten phrase, "Turned inside out for all to see," and then departs on unorganized tangents that, at points, resemble the ravings of a psychopath. At one point, about halfway through the song, he screams the word "freak" over and over, at least 20 times, his voice eventually dissolving into an animal howl. He then switches roles, to that of behind the scenes tormentor: "Get up. Get up! Get up!" he repeats, then repeats "Entertain me!" several times. The next thing he says is "Laughing," then begins repeating the word, drawing out the first syllable in that schoolyard cadence in which little boys the world over say, "HA-ha!" This sequence is interesting in that Rollins manages to transition through three different roles in about 30 seconds' time, going from the ridiculed creature in the cage, to that creature's tormentor, to the onlookers, amused by the creature's pitiable state. I find this section of the song both harrowing and fascinating. When I hear Henry Rollins losing his shit in a studio, I think of all the times I've felt that way too. I think of how cathartic it used to be for me when I myself would do the same sorts of things, back when I sang in a band, and in some ways, merely hearing his experience of that catharsis transfers some of it to me. Life has been hard for me over the past few weeks, and when I listen to someone who sounds completely at the end of his rope freak the fuck out over a noisy, distorted blues/metal dirge, it helps. I feel a little bit better. At the same time, a song like this is frightening for me. I may feel at times like I'm close to the edge, but "Turned Inside Out" is the sound of someone who has gone over that edge and is dangling over the abyss. I know what it's like to be there, but I don't want to go there again.

To me, songs like these are a powerful expression of a sincere emotion that is nearly impossible to deal with. Considering how much trouble I've been having just trying to hack life lately, I rely on records like this to help me through, to make me feel better when I'm down. I know that there are a lot of people out there who hear this sort of thing and can't help but laugh at it. They see it as pointless melodrama. I can't really imagine seeing things that way. I'd rather put myself out there, be real, and make a fool of myself in some people's eyes than hold back for fear of what others might think. I know there are a lot of people who would hear a record like "Hard Volume" and see it as a lot of scenery-chewing hot air. I know that there are people who can't get on the level that Rollins Band are coming from on this album, or who refuse to even try. But even if it would make me seem cooler, more self-possessed, more confident, I'd rather not be like those people. I'd rather have an emotional experience listening to Henry Rollins scream about how this world is ugly and he wants to punch a wall than find the ironic distance necessary to chuckle at the whole thing, as if I'm so above it all. Because I'm not. I'm just as fucked up and full of pain as Rollins was when he made this album. If that makes me uncool, so be it. I'd rather be real than cool.

Rollins Band - "What Have I Got" and "Turned Inside Out"

Movie Diary: Wall-E.

2009-04-16T21:14:00.000-04:00

OK, here's a post I need to get out of my system before I wait too long and it fades in my memory:

The night before last, I saw "Wall-E." I liked it a lot, but it's hard to feel like there's much of worth to say about a movie like this, that everyone and their 6 year old nephew has already seen. I mean, is there any reason for me to post even the shortest of plot summaries here? I think not. You all know what it's about. I do have a few thoughts I'll go ahead and share, though. First of all, I really liked how little of the movie relied on any sort of complex dialogue. The two main robots have about half a dozen words that they say, between the two of them, and yet they never seemed lacking in their ability to communicate with each other and with the audience. I felt even at the time I first heard about it that the outrage from the fat-acceptance community about the people on the spaceship was misplaced, and now, having seen the movie, I'm certain that it is. The fact that the human characters in this movie had all ended up fat made perfect sense in light of the setting and environment they lived in. It was more the fault of the Wal-Mart-ish corporation that dominated their lives than anything they personally had done. And on a happier note, I loved watching Wall-E do his little dances along with his old musical video ("Hello, Dolly," apparently), and I thought it was hilarious when Eve joined in and nearly brought Wall-E's house down. The movie surprised me with its humor throughout; I wasn't expecting nearly as many laugh-out-loud moments as there were. And by the way, the moments of interaction between the spaceship's captain (voiced by Jeff Garlin, whom I'm always glad to see getting work) and Auto, the autopilot robot, were pretty great too. I also enjoyed the little cleaner robot and his quixotic quest to clean up all of Wall-E's tracks. Hell, I just had a blast throughout this whole movie. At this point, I'd say "Wall-E" has displaced "The Incredibles" as my favorite Pixar film (though, come to think of it, I still haven't seen "Ratatouille", and I really should).

Oh, and by the way, "Wall-E" was amusing and all, but one of the cartoon shorts on the DVD, "Presto," about a magician with a magic hat who doesn't feed his pet rabbit before he does a show and ends up having to deal with constant sabotage from the rabbit as a result, was an absolute scream. I pretty much didn't stop laughing throughout that one. If you haven't seen it, you must take the 5 minutes and watch it on Youtube. Trust me, it's SO worth it.

The week in books.

2009-04-16T10:51:00.001-04:00

Krautrocksampler, by Julian Cope
I was very fortunate to get the opportunity to read this book at all. Back when British postpunk/psychedelic musician Julian Cope self-published this book in the mid-90s, it sold quickly and soon went out of print. He's done a couple of reprint editions since then, but there just aren't that many copies of this in existence, and since it is currently out of print, any that are for sale tend to go for upwards of $100. I wasn't willing to pay that much, but due to the good graces of the internet, I was recently able to locate a .pdf copy that was available for download from a blog.

I'm so glad I did. I had an absolute blast reading this book. While it was every bit as informative and entertaining as my most recent music-history read, Simon Reynolds' "Rip It Up And Start Again," Cope's book is far shorter--only about 150 pages total--and read less like a scholarly work and more like a nonstop thrillride. If Reynolds is comparable to Greil Marcus, then Cope is more like Lester Bangs, filling every page of his book with overbrimming enthusiasm and out-of-control stream of consciousness rants about all of the great Krautrock records he grew up listening to. He couches these rants in a framework of the genre's history, and does a very good job of delivering a primer for all those (like myself) who are only vaguely aware of the circumstances in which these records were created. Cope explains how "Krautrock", far from being the derogatory term many have taken it to be, was actually a self-created label jokingly applied to their own records by many bands of the genre--Faust even going as far as calling the opening track on their fourth album "Krautrock." He explains the genre's roots as well, pointing to such disparate influences as the West German-based group of American GIs The Monks, 20th century German minimalist composer Karlheinz Stockhausen, and The Velvet Underground as essential building blocks for what came to be known as Krautrock. He further details the movers and shakers of the genre, both those who were inextricably linked to one project (Edgar Froese of Tangerine Dream, the members of Can and Faust) and those who bounced around from band to band willy-nilly (Klaus Schultze, Manuel Gottsching, Klaus Dinger), and tells the hubristic story of Rolf-Ulrich Kaiser and his manipulative power trip as the mastermind behind the Cosmic Jokers.

Above all, Cope expounds gloriously upon the merits of nearly every album he mentions, creating within his reader an insatiable urge to hear them all with such sentences as: "What the hell is going on in that song? Something scary is implied but the meaning always eludes me." and "Fuck Jim Morrison's ridiculous 'Renaissance Man of the Mind' description. That was just an excuse to be a fat slob. That was just an existentialist knee-jerk. No. No. No. These freaks were fit. Superhuman. Superman. They were here to go. But all in good time." (Those excerpts pertaining to Amon Duul II and Ash Ra Tempel's collaboration with Timothy Leary, respectively.) I tried so hard not to get out of control, not to toggle constantly between the .pdf and my downloading program, recklessly cueing up every new album Cope mentioned. But in the end, I couldn't restrain myself. I've downloaded at least 30 Krautrock albums in the last 24 hours, and I don't even want to think about how frustrating an experience reading this book would have been back in the days when I couldn't do such a thing, and had to hit up record stores in the often-fruitless quest to locate some of thse obscurities. Rest assured, I will eventually buy many of these albums (the Can and Neu! albums alone have been on my list for years). But it is a relief to get to hear them right now, and even more of one to discover that Mr. Cope is almost always justified in his effusive praise. This truly is a musical genre inhabited by an embarrassment of riches. And there is no better book to read in order to get excited about discovering all of them. Check this thing out--but try to avoid getting soaked on Ebay in the process. Some judicious Googling will work wonders.

Poisoned Cherries, by Quintin Jardine
I have mixed feelings about this book, and I think some of the negative feelings I have might have been alleviated had I read the five previous books in this series before reading this one. There are some series, especially in the mystery genre, where a new reader can just jump in wherever they feel like it, and still get every bit of enjoyment from the book they'd have gotten if they'd read all the previous books. I don't think that's true of Jardine's Oz Blackstone series, though. The entire first third or so of this book was devoted to subplots that had continued from previous books. Oz, a former detective now turned movie star, has tried to reconcile with his wife, Primavera, but she has left him for another man, which makes him feel better about the fact that Susie Gantry, whom he slept with while on his honeymoon (!), is now having his baby (!!). Oz is so charmed by the baby, and surprised by his affections for Susie, that he commits to a relationship with her by the time the baby's been around for a week or so. Meanwhile, other women are throwing themselves at him--old flames, co-stars in his new movie, even his not-yet-ex-wife--and he finds it hard to resist them, womanizer that he has traditionally been. Oh, but he must! Think of the children!

The whole time I was reading this section of the book, I was thinking two things. 1: Is there going to be a mystery in here somewhere? and 2: Jeez, every woman this guy meets tries to jump in the sack with him. Seems like a textbook case of wish fulfillment on the author's part, as does the fact that Oz is starring in a movie that's an adaptation of one of the novels in Jardine's other crime series, featuring Detective Bob Skinner. And you know, more power to him I suppose, but the fact is that the women just kept throwing themselves at Oz to the point where it really upset my ability to suspend disbelief. By halfway through the book, when the sixth or seventh woman in a row seemed determined to set an aggressive course for his bedroom, I was thinking, "Oh, well, of COURSE! After all, every woman in the world wants to fuck Oz Blackstone!"

That was the part that no amount of previous series reading would have made better. Who knows, maybe it's like that in every book, and if I'd started with the first book, I never would have gotten to the sixth. But even that would have been something I could have worked with if there wasn't so much of the story that I had no involvement in, and therefore no real interest in. As I said, there was no real mystery until 100 pages in or thereabouts, when the mysteriously reappearing old flame (who throws herself at Oz on multiple occasions, natch) discovers the body of her ex-fiancee and business partner. Oz is convince that she didn't kill him, but the police are just as convinced she did. After a while, other bodies start turning up, in a pattern that seems obvious to Oz, but is missed completely by the police because they don't have the information that Oz has--information that, if revealed to the police, could get his old flame, and even Oz himself, into all sorts of additional legal hot water. So Oz has to figure out who is committing the murders before the poliice charge his ex with them, or turn up any unsavory details, or both.

Once the main plot of the book got going, I'll admit that I did enjoy it a good bit more than I had towards the beginning. I still found the main character's unfortunate combination of rampant egotism and seeming irresistibility to women annoying, and had trouble liking him as a protagonist, but the process through which he solved the mystery was enjoyable to read, the action scenes were engrossing, and the plot kept me guessing right up to the end. However, the detailed subplots that tended to relate to incidents that had occurred in past books, which I knew nothing about, were distracting, and at risk of belaboring the point, I found several aspects of the main character unappealing. This book was OK at best. I doubt I'll read more by the author, at least not anytime soon.

Get out of my fucking face.

2009-04-15T16:39:00.003-04:00

Sometimes depression sneaks out of the shadows when I least expect it, and sometimes it brings with it unpredictable compulsions, especially where music is concerned. This is the closest I can get to an explanation for the fact that, suddenly, in the middle of a period in which I was listening to nothing but Krautrock (related post hopefully forthcoming) and late 80s midwestern college rock (see "Adventureland" entry), I wanted to hear nothing but the second Pearl Jam album, "Vs." Digging through my crates and crates of unorganized cassettes is always a pain in the ass, but I hunted it up, and I've been playing it for the past two days to the exclusion of almost everything else.

"Vs." is a transitional album for Pearl Jam, released at a time (1993) when they were on top of the world and could do pretty much anything they wanted. The problem for them was that they weren't sure exactly what they wanted to do, a state of mind that is reflected on "Vs." In fact, my copy of the album appears to be self-titled, for exactly that reason. The album was originally due to be titled "Five Against One," but the band changed their mind on that title so close to the album's release date that, while it was possible to remove the title from the album's artwork, there wasn't time to get the new title, "Vs.", inserted into the artwork before the album's release. Therefore, the entire initial pressing of the album bears no title at all. Considering that it sold nearly a million copies in the first week of its release, I'm sure my title-less cassette copy isn't rare at all (and that, even if it were, it wouldn't be valuable, because it's a cassette), but it's still interesting to look at, and see that telltale sign of Pearl Jam's uncertainty as a band at this point in their career.

Where the sound of "Vs." is concerned, that uncertainty barely comes through at all. Despite the fact that there are obvious differences from song to song that point to a gradual evolution in their sound (differences we will discuss later), the whole thing still feels unified enough to hold together remarkably well. In fact, I'd say that "Vs." was the last Pearl Jam album with a consistent, unified feel until the release of their true self-titled album, 13 years later. The roots for all of Pearl Jam's various sonic offshoots are present on this album, but they're all still close enough together to fit well next to each other.

Pearl Jam's initial sound, the mix of postpunk alternative rock and 70s hard rock that was characterized as grunge, is also pretty well represented on this album. "Dissident" and "Daughter" are good balladic sequels to the first album's "Black" and "Jeremy," while uptempo rockers like "Go," "Animal," and "Glorified G" follow the template set by the first album's "Evenflow" and "Alive." These aren't the songs I'm interested in talking about, though. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy all of them; in fact, the song on the album that I come closest to disliking, "Rats," is still halfway decent. I just don't think that these songs represent the most interesting aspects of "Vs."

The song that's always meant the most to me on this album is "Rearviewmirror," a song that strips away a lot of the overtly grungy elements present on the album's other uptempo rockers and focuses on a driving but overall melodic sound. Although the album lists all songs as group compositions, references I've read online state that Eddie Vedder wrote the music for this song by himself, and that he plays guitar on it as well as singing. Learning this helped me to understand what makes this song so appealing for me. In 1993, I was getting pretty heavily involved in the underground hardcore scene, and was particularly into bands typically given the "emo" tag at the time, such as Fugazi and Rites Of Spring. From reading press about Pearl Jam at the time, I know that Eddie Vedder was also pretty into bands like Fugazi at that point, and so I can imagine that they had an influence on his songwriting. "Rearviewmirror" was the first of quite a few songs contained on the Pearl Jam albums of the 90s that sounded to me very similar to a lot of the more underground, hardcore-related bands I was listening to at the time. There was always a bit of a guilt trip coming from my hardcore friends when I would spend money on a new Pearl Jam album instead of buying another hardcore record or whatever, but I felt justified in doing so by those songs. "Brain Of JFK," from "Yield," is one that comes immediately to mind, as does "In My Tree," from "No Code," and both "Whipping" and "Corduroy" from "Vitalogy." Even "Light Years," from "Binaural," one of the only songs on an overall-mediocre Pearl Jam album, stuck with me precisely because I could imagine a band like Sunny Day Real Estate doing a very similar song.

"Rearviewmirror" begins with a catchy but understated verse. When Eddie starts singing, he sounds almost conversational. "I took a drive today," he sings, over music that sounds like the perfect accompaniment for driving. "Time to emancipate." Interesting choice of words here. "Emancipate" is a word that refers to gaining freedom, historically from slavery, but in a modern American context it's more often used to refer to a child being freed from the legal custody of their parents. In fall 1993, when "Vs." was released, I was 17 years old and beginning my first semester of college. While I wouldn't technically be an adult for three more months, it felt like I'd finally gained freedom from my parents, who had made living with them during my teenage years (and really, for most of my life) very hard. This is but one of many lyrical parallels between this song and my life at the time it was released. "I guess it was the beatings that made me wise," Eddie sings next. "But I'm not about to give thanks, or apologize." To this day, I feel like I learned some important life lessons at the hands of my parents, things that perhaps people with happy childhoods never learn. I'm glad I know these things but sometimes the burden of that knowledge feels crippling. Maybe that's what has been calling my mind back to this song recently; lately I've been feeling almost paralyzed by the potential negative repercussions of my actions. I don't want to explain any more than that. I'm glad I know what I know but I'm not thankful to my parents for those lessons because they hurt then and they hurt still. And I may sometimes regret being the person that I am but I'm not going to apologize, either.

When the song moves from the first verse into the pre-chorus, an element of tension is added to it that never quite dissipates. The driving bar chords played by Vedder and Stone Gossard's rhythm guitars are intensely propulsive, but the way they mix with Mike McCready's single-note lead, which adds a melody that's tinged with a wistful sadness, creates a feeling in the song as a whole of depression and self-doubt combined with an intense desire to break free of frustrating limitations. Over this chorus, as the music seems to push towards a moment of confrontation, Eddie sings, "I couldn't breathe. Holding me down. Hand on my face. Kissing the ground." The thoughts expressed in these lyrics are left incomplete, but it's easy enough for the listener to fill in this narrative of oppression, and to understand what's happening, even with chunks of phrasing obviously missing. The feeling of an inability to breathe, even a metaphorical one, the feeling of constant repression, is a familiar one. The next two lines are even more moving. "Enmity gauged, united by fear." I think fear might be one of the driving forces of my life, and my parents were the original inspirers of such feelings. "Forced to endure what I could not forgive." What is that line, if not a perfect description of family life?

I'm finding it hard to write about my feelings where this song is concerned. As I was typing the previous paragraph, I kept thinking, "What's the point? These people can look up the lyrics themselves. They don't need me to tell them what they mean." Nevertheless I will continue, as I think it's important to try to get across the way this music makes me feel, in order to make clear that it is important music. Even Pearl Jam's fans often seem dismissive of the deeper emotional content of their music, or at least that's how it often feels to me. I feel like people who look for that sort of thing in their music tend to dismiss Pearl Jam as music for jocks, and miss the fact that there is a lot of sincerity and real emotion packed into their songs, and that they have always tried their hardest to connect on a real level with anyone listening to their records. Maybe I'm projecting a bit, or assuming too much--that if I heard a sincere emotion in a record where most people didn't, it must be there, and they must all be missing it. I'm really not sure. But ultimately, I don't know that it matters. I know what I was able to gain from listening to these songs, and if the things I hear are there for me, they can be there for other people if those people are open to them.

Getting back to "Rearviewmirror" (which I now feel better writing about, so thanks for indulging me with that previous paragraph): there is no first chorus to the song, so after the first pre-chorus, the song moves right into its second verse. The tension from the first verse and pre-chorus remains embedded within it, but when Eddie sings the second verse, he returns to the more even, conversational tone he struck in the first verse. "I seemed to look away. Wounds in the mirror waved. It wasn't my surface most defiled." I'm not going to explain that. You know what it means. Besides, the second pre-chorus is what's really interesting here. The first two lines of it are completely different than they were the first time, and it's the second of those two lines that I find most interesting: "Fist on my plate. Swallowed it down." There's a powerful image here, but it's not one that makes that much linear sense. What does it mean that there was a fist on his plate, assumedly served to him as dinner? I'm not exactly sure, and my tendency is to take it overly literally and think about how hard it was to eat dinner with my family, how stressful my mother made it for me every time. I can imagine that everyone who hears it will have their own interpretation, but no matter what it meant to Eddie, I like the image a lot and I'm glad he used it.

The next two lines of the pre-chorus are very similar to the third and fourth lines in the first pre-chorus, but what's interesting are the small, almost unnoticeable, differences between them. When, on the first pre-chorus, Eddie sang, "United by fear," here he sings, "Divided by fear." And more importantly, on the final line, where he sang "Forced to endure what I could not forgive," now he sings, "Tried to endure what I could not forgive." It's an interesting contrast in that it points out how hard it can be to endure abuses of an emotional nature. Just because one is forced to endure them, in that one is not given an escape, that does not mean that one will succeed in enduring them. It's easy to break under the pressure of such things. It's not that surprising when people come out the other side of such abuses a mere shadow of their former selves. I hope I'm not dipping too far into the realm of cliche, but regardless I think it's the truth.

The emotional tension of the song as a whole has only further increased during the second verse and pre-chorus, and there's a break of sorts after the second pre-chorus, in which the beat drops out and the whole band vamps for a couple of measures, seemingly steeling itself for what is to come. When they finally launch themselves into the song's only chorus, it feels like the level of tension cannot be increased much further without some sort of explosion. Sure enough, that explosion comes on the chorus's final line. Eddie sings the ten-word chorus in such a way to stretch it out over four lines, his voice rising in pitch and intensity as he goes, repeating words as necessary in order to lay the last two words over the musical crescendo of the chorus's final line. "Saw things... clearer... once you were in my..." and here he fairly screams the song's title: "REARVIEW MIRROR!" This scream is at the top of his vocal register, and if I'm honest, it's slightly above the top of mine. I have a very clear memory, from the spring of 1994, driving back to my college after spending spring break at my parents' house, working through the stresses of the past week by playing "Vs." at top volume and singing along with the entire album. When Eddie screamed this song's title, I tried to scream along with him, and damn near blew my voice out completely. I can still remember how much it hurt my throat, but also that, in a fucked-up way, it felt good to hurt myself doing something like that.

There's one more verse in the song, and after the musical and emotional crescendo of the chorus, you might expect it to lose some intensity. It doesn't happen, though. It's less like a climactic moment and more like a moment that blows the song wide open, allowing it to carry on with the intensity of the chorus through the final verse, with all three guitarists slashing at their strings as drummer Dave Abbruzzese pounds away at his kit with a furious energy. "I gather speed from you fucking with me," Eddie sings. "And before long, I'm far away." That line always felt the best when I heard it as I was driving away from my parents' house. The song's last line is most interesting for its parallel with the song "Daughter," which comes earlier on the album and which ends with the line "The shades go down" repeated several times. The final line of "Rearviewmirror" is "Finally the shades are RAISED," with "raised" written in all capital letters on the lyric sheet. It's strange to say, but I actually never noticed this song's seeming link to "Daughter," a song about a child feeling unable to rise to the expectations of a parent, until this most recent return to this album. I guess maybe "Rearviewmirror" really is a response to the damage parents inflict on the psyche of children, and it's not just something I see in the song because of my own history. That's cool if it's true.

There are other interesting songs here that are worth talking about. "W.M.A.", which stands for "white male American," ends side one with a tribal sounding, drum-heavy workout that, when I was younger, was one of my least favorite songs on the album. I'm not sure what's changed for me this time around, but after listening to it several times through over the last couple of days, I've seen something really awesome about it. Its emphasis on percussion presages some of the songs on "No Code" and "Yield" that took advantage of the drumming talents of Jack Irons, who replaced Dave Abbruzzese when he left the band after "Vitalogy." While I certainly don't want to denigrate the talents of Matt Cameron, who joined for "Binaural" and has been with the band ever since, I sometimes wish Jack Irons hadn't felt the need to leave Pearl Jam (which he did in 1998 due to his dislike of Pearl Jam's intense touring schedule), as I found his contributions to Pearl Jam's sound interesting and unique. That said, "W.M.A." proves that Irons wasn't the only drummer they ever had who was capable of such percussion workouts.

Apparently "W.M.A." was written after a white cop hassled a black friend of Eddie's outside their recording studio but didn't give Eddie any trouble at all, despite the two of them being together at the time. Eddie's frustration with this incident comes through very well in the song, particularly on the song's choruses, where he screams "Police stopped my brother again!" over and over. Maybe it was this passion that I missed in the song before. While Eddie's vocals are quiet and lower in the mix on the early verses of the song, he fairly screams his lines on the choruses. The song is largely driven by percussion and bass guitar, with the lead and rhythm guitars mostly adding additional layered textures on top of the melody played by the bass and the intricate rhythm of the drumming. There are obviously multiple layers of percussion on this song, which doesn't make Abbruzzese's main beat any less impressive, as it is obviously complicated and tricky even on its own. However, the emotion of the song is increased by some of the percussive layers, particularly on the choruses, when a second drumkit, playing a simpler beat that emphasizes the snare hits, is tracked in overtop of the main drum rhythm. This second layer of pounding, especially on the 1s and 3s of this 4/4 beat, allows the song to gain a more driving, intense feel without in any way diminishing its rhythmic complexity.

"Blood," which begins side two, is often referred to as one of the funkier tracks on the album, but that's not at all what I see in it. Instead, I find myself focusing on its choruses, which again feature Eddie delivering an intense, screaming vocal. This is true of several other songs on the album, including both of the others I've discussed so far as well as at least one other that I will get to later. However, his screams on "Blood" are on a whole different level of intensity. This song's midtempo rhythms are played with a pounding intensity that reminds me more of hardcore than anything else, particularly a lot of the thrashy, midtempo bands I was listening to in the early 90s. I'm not saying that this is Pearl Jam's 108 moment or anything, particularly considering Mike McCready's wah-wah heavy lead guitar track on the song, but it comes about as close as they ever get to that sort of thing. Really, I think it just might be comparable to Rage Against the Machine, another band of the era that mixed funky accents into a thrashy, midtempo hardcore base. Eddie's vocals on the verses are sometimes rather understated, and certainly bear no resemblance to Zach De La Rocha's rapping cadence (and thank god for that), but still, the comparison to Tom Morello's guitar playing and De La Rocha's more intense choruses is obvious. To me, this song is the first (or maybe the second, if you count the first album's "Porch") indicator of the more straightforward hardcore direction that certain later songs of theirs (most notably "Spin The Black Circle") would take.

The last three songs on this album also interest me, all for different reasons. "Elderly Woman Behind The Counter In A Small Town" jumped out at me as soon as I got this album. For one thing, it was the only song on the album with a title longer than one word (if you don't count "Glorified G," with its second word being one letter, or "Rearviewmirror," which had its second word combined with its first). For another, it was the album's only completely acoustic song (though "Daughter" was close). For a third, it was an acoustic ballad that didn't sound like previous examples of the form as dispensed by Pearl Jam and other grunge bands of the era. I feel like this song points the way forward to tracks like "Off He Goes" and "Red Mosquito," from "No Code," or "Wishlist," from "No Code." It's hard for me to point to the difference between this song and songs like "Daughter", the previous album's "Black," or, say, "Hunger Strike" by Temple of the Dog (which wasn't even acoustic, but bear with me here). The song's lyrics tell a heartbreaking story from the point of view of someone who has always taken the path of least resistance and made the easy choices in her life, and now looks back and feels that she's lost out on all of the opportunities she's ever had. The thing that seemingly brings this home to her is a visit from a former companion, one who presumably made a different choice. I think, when I was a teenager, that I keyed into the emotion of this song without completely understanding what the lyrics meant. That wistful, lonely feeling that the song exudes is one I've always been able to understand. Now that I'm older, though, I look at my own life and wonder if I've ever truly challenged myself. I struggle year after year to focus on being a creative person, on making music and writing various things, and I never really feel like I get much of anywhere. But is that my fault? Am I too scared to risk taken the paths that might offer resistance? And is it too late for me to change? I'm only 33 but it's hard not to see myself as too old, as having squandered opportunities that I can never get back. I think I understand this song a lot more now than I did back then.

The album ends with "Indifference," a dark, quiet song that is another I never liked that much until this recent return to "Vs." The mix of quiet lead guitar lines with more prominent organ and softly tapped percussion and cymbals provide the perfect emotional tone to back Eddie's somewhat resigned lyrics. In them, he juxtaposes expressions of his own passion with the repeated question, "How much difference does it make?" "I will scream my lungs out until it fills this room," he sings at one point, and at another, "I will stand arms outstreched, pretend I'm free to roam. I will make my way through one more day in hell." For me, the personal revolution is the only one that makes sense anymore. When I was younger, I thought that I could get involved in the kind of radical political activism (a fancy word that just means "work") that involves protesting, carrying signs, and other, sometimes more dangerous, forms of "direct action." I no longer believe in such things. I'm willing to knock on people's doors and ask them to vote for Barack Obama, because I really do think he was a better candidate for president than John McCain. I'm glad my state's electoral votes went in his favor, but now that he's president, I'm not all that surprised that he's not doing everything the way I'd hoped he would. I don't expect perfection, and I don't believe that it's possible to even attain something that's somewhere in the neighborhood of perfection. If things can be made slightly better, then I figure that's about the best I can hope for. Where I'm trying to make things better in my life is on a personal level, and maybe on a social level, with the people in my immediate vicinity on a day to day basis. But even that feels somewhat pointless, not to mention presumptuous to even consider attempting to change the ways other people think and act. As if I know any better than they do what should be done in any given situation. Really, I just want to make my own life better, to make it something I can enjoy rather than just endure. I'm not too sure how to do that, and I'm not sure that anything I try can make a difference. But if nothing else, at least I'll know I tried. At least I gave it a shot.

"Indifference" may be the final track on "Vs.", but I think the song that comes immediately before it is the real climax of the album. "Leash" is a song that dates from Pearl Jam's earliest shows, and I'm not sure why they didn't include it on "Ten," but I'm glad they didn't, because I think it fits much better on "Vs." There are elements in the rhythm guitar parts of the same emocore influence that show up on "Rearviewmirror," though it's far less emphasized on "Leash," a song with a very traditionally grunge-sounding lead guitar from Mike McCready. Eddie's lyrics are simple, especially on the verses. "Troubled souls unite. We've got ourselves tonight" are the two lines that constitute the entire first verse, but although they are simple, there's a powerful message there, especially when combined with the first pre-chorus: "I am fuel, I am friends. We've got the means to make amends. I'm lost, I'm no guide--but I am by your side. I am right by your side." This song is written in such a way as to come across like a hand held out, in spirit if not in fact, to all the troubled kids out there who picked up this album. I can remember this meaning a lot to me at age 17.

The second verse appears to focus the song's message more specifically. "Young lover I stand. It was their idea, but I proved to be a man." This could mean pretty much anything, but on the lyric sheet, a line Eddie ultimately chose not to sing gives a further hint: "Told me to get her pregnant." Is this a pro-choice song? That would certainly make sense, considering how vocal Eddie has been in support of that particular cause over the years, but it's never fully explained. That's OK, though; there's ultimately a beneficial effect in keeping this song general rather than specific, in allowing for as many people as possible to see themselves in its lyrics. The second pre-chorus furthers that possibility, as Eddie sings, "I will myself to find a home, a home within myself." This metaphorical declaration of independence feeds right into the song's chorus. The pre-chorus ends with Eddie singing, "We will find our way. We will find our place." As the pre-chorus transitions into the chorus, backing vocals from the rest of the band sing, "Drop the leash," as Eddie screams, "Get out of my fucking face!" And this, right here, is the moment it feels like the entire album has been building up to. As McCready eschews a lead guitar line to play the rising, euphoric-sounding rhythm guitar chords in unison with Gossard, Eddie's repeated screams of "Get out of my fucking face!" sound so incredibly life-affirming that they seem to belie the confrontational aggression of the words themselves. This might not have made sense to my parents if they heard it at the time, but this song was never for my parents, or anyone else's. The point that must be understood in order to get why that particular confrontational-sounding phrase comes across as a positive anthem, a celebratory manifesto, is because it's not that Eddie Vedder is screaming this phrase AT you, the listener--he's screaming it WITH you. I'm sure I was far from the only 17 year old, at the time and since then, who has felt the need for affirmation from people I looked up to, musicians and otherwise, in my own personal declaration of independence. "Leash" presents itself as an anthem and a full-on youth manifesto for all of Pearl Jam's teenage fans, in much the same way that Rage Against The Machine's "Killing In The Name" did when it was released around the same time. However, "Leash" isn't focused in a political manner, and it's not a statement of rebellion, per se, although I guess it sort of is, at that. What it's really about is not whether or not we, the youth, do what anyone tells us to do or not; it's about the fact that we have the choice. Our future is in our hands, and we are the only ones who can decide what we want to do with it.

The fact that Pearl Jam chose not to end the album with this youth manifesto, that they chose to juxtapose "Leash" with "Indifference," and to wonder whether there was anything to be gained from expressing our freedom, is something that makes sense to me now, to a far greater extent than it did when I was a teenager. Having said that, though, I still prefer to walk away from this album with "Leash" being the song, the message, that sticks with me. Having left my 20s behind years ago, it's hard for me to feel young anymore, but still, Eddie's exhortation, cried out over the final guitar solo in "Leash," to "delight in your youth," still rings true to me now. Regardless of how much time I might have left in my life, and regardless of how old I am and how much older I'm going to get, it's still worth it to try to get the most I can out of it. That's a tough thing to do at the best of times, and a lot of times it's easier for me to see myself as an unthinking drone who passively goes to work, comes home, eats, watches TV, pays bills and goes to bed having done nothing of consequence. However, I will continue to fight against that impulse, regardless of how much difference it ultimately makes. I'll keep trying to make something of my life until there's no life left for me. I don't always know how to do that, but what else is there?

Pearl Jam - "Rearviewmirror" and "Leash"

Movie Diary: Adventureland.

2009-04-13T18:46:00.000-04:00

So last night I saw "Adventureland," the new movie from Greg Mottola, who directed "Superbad" and used to work on "Undeclared." Unlike "Superbad," which was written by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, "Adventureland" was written as well as directed by Mottola. I was under the impression, from reading brief synopses of this movie, that it would be a goofy comedy that might be fun but wouldn't be anything all that great. However, I was hanging out with Brandon yesterday and he had already seen it, wanted to see it again, and promised that I would like it, so based on his recommendation, I decided to go with him and see it.

I'm so glad I did. "Adventureland" is an excellent movie. It's not that much like "Superbad" at all, because while it is comedic in tone for much of the film, and absolutely hilarious at points, there is also a lot of serious content in it. The plot mixes humor into what is essentially a coming of age story. James Brennan, played by Jesse Eisenberg, who was the older son in "The Squid And The Whale," has just graduated from college, and is expecting a summer-long European trip as a graduation gift from his parents. However, they have run into money troubles, and inform him that the European trip is off, and if he wants to go to grad school in the fall, he's going to have to get a summer job and save up money. He ends up taking a job at a third-rate local amusement park called Adventureland, working on the games crew.

This movie is a period piece of sorts, set in 1987, and although there are occasional period details that ring false to me (the kids drink beer out of pop-top cans of a type that had, if I remember correctly, gone the way of the dodo by the end of the 70s), for the most part the movie makes it work. In fact, I don't think the plot would work as well if it were set in the current era. The main setting for the movie is Adventureland, which is the sort of amusement park that doesn't really exist anymore. All of the ones I ever knew of like that shut down back in the 90s. It's a pretty essential part of the movie, though, so although I tend to be leery of pseudo-period pieces that take place in the relatively recent past, I think it was a good choice in this case. Also, it was a good excuse for the main characters to listen to awesome 80s era bands like Husker Du and the Replacements. Anything that allows a movie to have "Bastards Of Young" as its opening theme, and to have "Don't Want To Know If You Are Lonely" and "Unsatisfied" on the soundtrack, is all right with me.

So anyway, James starts working at Adventureland, and since all of his old friends have either moved away or are taking the European trip that he wasn't able to go on, he falls in with the other people who work at Adventureland, and starts partying and hanging out with them. He quickly becomes friends with Joel, played by the awesome and under-utilized Martin Starr of "Freaks And Geeks" fame, whom it was awesome to see in a prominent role again after all this time, and Em, played by Kristen Stewart, who was apparently terrible in "Twilight" but does a great job in "Adventureland," playing James's love interest in a subtle, understated manner. The kids work and party and hook up over the course of the summer, and the movie switches back and forth between the sort of ridiculous, hilarious hijinks that people get up to when they work unchallenging jobs with lots of downtime, and more serious moments in which the kids try to learn how to grow up and have adult relationships with each other and with their parents. The way this movie switches regularly between ridiculous slapstick comedy and dead-on moments of real human interaction might seem surprising to people who check it out expecting "Superbad Pt. 2," but those who react that way are missing what is actually an incredibly well-done and realistic movie. All of the characters, from the kids who are the focus of the film to their co-workers at the amusement park to their parents, are fleshed-out and multi-dimensional, and this combined with the movie's tonal shifts make it more like a story taken from real life than most movies I've seen. In this way, it reminds me of one of my all-time favorite movies, "Dazed and Confused." While "Adventureland" takes place over a summer instead of one night, and has a much more defined story arc than "Dazed And Confused" has (that being the awkward romance between James and Em), both movies succeed tremendously as slices of real life, inhabited by real people.

I think everyone should see this movie. Undoubtedly one of the year's best.

What I've been reading recently.

2009-04-09T13:24:00.002-04:00

I said I was going to start posting individual book reviews as I wrote them, and while that's been an easy transition to make with the movie diary entries, it has for some reason been much harder to do with the books. So now, once again, I have half a dozen or so book entries built up. And once again, I'm going to drop all of them on you at once. Maybe I'll start doing them individually after this. You'll be the first to know.

The Mystic Arts Of Erasing All Signs Of Death, by Charlie Huston
A couple of months ago, I was really excited to get this book, but since it took longer than I expected for the copy I ordered to arrive, I ended up feeding my jones for Charlie Huston books by reading "Six Bad Things" instead. As I mentioned in my review of that book, it was the first Charlie Huston book I'd read that didn't live up to my expectations. As a result, I ended up getting spooked away from this book, and once it arrived, I let it sit on my to-be-read shelf (yes, I don't just have a pile for this, but an entire bookshelf) for close to a month before finally picking it up. I just didn't want a book that I'd been so excited for to let me down the way "Six Bad Things" had. As long as I didn't actually start reading it, it was Schrodinger's crime novel, if you know what I mean.

But, well, last week I needed something to read while I waited for the signifcantly lengthier UK edition of Simon Reynolds' "Rip It Up And Start Again" to arrive (more about that will doubtless be hitting the feed in a week or so), and in spite of my misgivings, I quickly realized that "The Mystic Arts Of Erasing All Signs Of Death" was the best thing I had in the queue. So I picked it up, I started reading it, and within 20 pages or so, all of my doubts had been laid to rest. In fact, I can now report that this book stands at an equal level with Huston's previous high water marks, "Caught Stealing," "Already Dead," and "No Dominion." It might even be better than those books, in fact.

"Mystic Arts" introduces us to a new ongoing character in the Hustonverse, Webster Fillmore Goodhue, known to his friends (what few he has left) as Web. He's freeloading off his oldest friend, Chev, a tattoo artist, behaving like a complete asshole to close family members and complete strangers alike, and spending something like 14 hours a day asleep. Web's background is opaque to us at first, but one thing is clear: something is wrong in his mind.

As soon as the book starts, Web pulls a totally lame move on his friend Chev, one which requires him to get a job and pay Chev back with the quickness. He hooks up with Chev's biohazard disposal man, a large Chinese man named Po Sin, who has an opening in his business for a trauma cleaner. Maybe you're not the sort of person who has ever wondered who cleans up the mess left after a deadly car crash, or after someone has committed suicide by means of a gun in the mouth, but if you have, rest assured that there are businesses out there who earn a living doing exactly that. That's what Web is doing in order to earn the money he needs to pay Chev back, and that's what he's doing when he meets Soledad, a young woman whose father has just blown his brains out. Web is attracted to her, which is why he comes running when she needs someone to do some late-night, hush-hush trauma cleanup. That's how Web and his smart mouth get both himself and Po Sin into a really problematic situation, one that involves stupid redneck smugglers, a spoiled young man with more money than sense who fancies himself a movie producer, and large amounts of almonds. Complicating all of this is Web's own precarious mental stability, Chev's budding relationship with a cute 18-year old that Web despises, and vicious rival trauma cleaners who will stop at nothing to win their current turf war with Po Sin and his crew. Huston keeps the reader guessing, constantly adding layers to the plot and jumping back and forth from one plot thread to another, finally weaving them all together for a surprising and hard-hitting climax. In fact, I ended up missing my chance to get lunch before work last Tuesday because I just couldn't make myself put this book down without finishing it. I may have had some misgivings coming into this book after "Six Bad Things," but it turns out that I needn't have worried. Charlie Huston is not only at the top of his game, he seems to be getting better as he goes. I'll be waiting eagerly for whatever he decides to grace us with next.

Grave Sight, by Charlaine Harris
I read through this book quickly, in two settings, and was surprised at how much I enjoyed it. I read it for a book club that I am sort of a member of (only "sort of" because I only ever started reading the books they were reading because they meet at the store where I work, while I'm working), and wasn't sure if I'd get much of anything out of it. It is a book that walks the tightrope between two currently-popular genres, "cozy romance-themed mystery" and "chick-lit paranormal mystery." Not being the target demographic for either of these categories, I wasn't sure what this book would have to offer me. While it was hardly deathless classic literature, though, I did find myself enjoying it.

For one thing, I wasn't expecting it to have as dark of a tone as it had. The main character, Harper Connelly, was struck by lightning as a teenager. In addition to the recurring health problems that she's had ever since, she also gained the ability to detect corpses, and to see how they died. Working with her (step)brother, Tolliver, she parlayed this ability into a career, doing freelance work finding bodies and naming causes of death for curious relatives and others with an interest in such things. This is a rather dodgy and unreliable line of work, as the plot of "Grave Sight" shows us.

Harper and Tolliver arrive in a small Arkansas town to attempt to find a local teenaged girl who disappeared months before. She had been dating a local boy who'd been found shot and killed in some woods outside of town months before. A lot of the townsfolk think that the boy, Dell, must have shot the girl, Teenie, and then killed himself. Dell's mother hires Harper to locate Teenie's body and determine how she died, with the hopes of proving that Dell didn't kill her. Harper locates the body quickly, and determines that Dell indeed did not kill Teenie, but instead of calming the situation, this only sets the town into a more pronounced uproar, which drags both Harper and Tolliver right into the middle of it and ends up involving everyone from high school football players to the town drunk to high-powered lawyers and the local sheriff. All of these people are related, you see, in one way or another, and the nature of the town, which has everyone in everyone else's business, makes the whole thing an emotional powderkeg waiting for a spark just like the one Harper has unwittingly struck to send the whole thing sky-high.

Some of the plot points of this book seemed a bit obvious, while others seemed a little tossed-off and not explained all that well in terms of character motivation, but on the whole, I did find the story to be well-told. The characters mostly worked most of the time, and while most of the secondary ones were one-dimensional and not fleshed-out much at all, Harper and Tolliver were at least multi-dimensional, compelling, and sympathetic. In terms of quick, engaging mystery that requires little deep thought, this book did a good job of filling its role. I typically look for more profound reading material than this, and probably won't return to the series anytime soon, but all in all, it really wasn't too bad.

Sunken Treasure, by Wil Wheaton
I've been aware of Wil Wheaton as an actor since I was a kid, having seen "Stand By Me" and various episodes of "Star Trek: The Next Generation" when I was as young as 12 years old. However, I've only known of him as a writer for a very short time, since I discovered his blog about 6 months ago. Apparently this is the main focus of his creative endeavors these days, as he has several books out and has been maintaining his blog for close to a decade. I'm glad I finally figured all of this out; I've really enjoyed his blog since starting to read it recently. That's why, when he announced that he was self-publishing a short collection of writing that would make a good introduction for new fans, I went ahead and ordered myself a copy.

"Sunken Treasure" is a quick and enjoyable read that you can get through in a couple of hours before getting out of bed on a lazy Sunday morning, which is exactly how I read it this morning. And actually, I'd say that "Sunken Treasure" is probably worth it for even the long-running Wheaton fans. While it's rather short at 84 pages, only about 30 of those pages have been published in previous books of his, making 2/3 of this material new even to those who've bought all of his books. And that material is some of the most worthwhile stuff here; I particularly enjoyed the volume's longest piece, a production diary from his recent guest-star turn on the TV show Criminal Minds. This diary takes up about the last third of the book, and does a great job of giving random readers like myself who've never done any sort of acting an idea of what it's like to work on a TV show. I think it helped that I prepared for reading the book by making sure to catch the episode when it aired, so that I could compare Wil's behind-the-scenes descriptions to my memories of the finished episode (which, for the record, was quite good).

That wasn't the only thing I enjoyed here, though. The stories of Star Wars toys and arcade games that he loved as a child could have come from my own memories, while his stories about happy moments with his wife and teenaged sons made me think that maybe the domestic, family-man lifestyle isn't quite as bad as I've always imagined it to be. I even enjoyed his recap of a Star Trek: TNG episode that I've never seen, especially in the moments when he stepped back from his rather snarky recap (which, don't get me wrong, was itself fun and amusing) to share some of his personal feelings about working on the show. His heartfelt frustration at playing a character that ended up being hated by a great many Star Trek fans, and further at feeling like it wasn't his fault, that his hands were tied by writing failures and flawed character decisions, was something I found myself empathizing with. It sucks to carry the blame for something that, for the most part, is not your fault.

Ultimately, what I get from this book is that Wil Wheaton is a really nice guy with a pretty happy life. He's gifted with the ability to communicate the joys and, occasionally, the sorrows of his life to his readers in clear language that's easy to relate to. He knows how to tell an entertaining story. And ultimately, he's an incredibly likeable person, whose writing I want to read more of, as soon as I get the chance. If Wil's goal with this short sampler was to inspire more sales of his other books, well, he sure has succeeded where I'm concerned. I plan to pick up some more of his stuff as soon as I get the chance.

Rip It Up And Start Again: Postpunk 1978-84, by Simon Reynolds
This is what happened: I bought the US edition of this book back when it was released, read it, loved it. Six months or so later, I learned that the original UK edition had been cut all to hell for its US release. Something like 200 pages had been removed in order to pare the US edition down to its 400 page final length. I was shocked and appalled, but never knew quite how to get myself a copy of the UK edition, short of doing an international order through Amazon UK, which I told myself would be prohibitively expensive. So that was all there was to it, for a long time.

Then, a couple of months ago, I came into a large sum of money (four figures) with which I was free to purchase whatever I wanted. Well, in addition to paying off all of my past due utility bills and purchasing the laptop I'm currently typing this review on (a steal at $450), I went ahead and did the Amazon UK order to obtain the original, director's-cut edition of "Rip It Up And Start Again." Boy, am I glad I did. The 400 page edition that I originally read was thoroughly enjoyable, but it still couldn't compare to the author's original intention. With smaller print, the UK edition still came out to be 125 more pages than the US edition, and where the US edition included no pictures at all, the UK edition presented at least one image every half-dozen pages or so. I finally got to see the Scritti Politti EP cover depicting the squalor in which they lived, as well as photos from Throbbing Gristle and James Chance performances, amongst many other things. And the text was greatly expanded, not just in additional coverage for bands that had been unmentioned in the US text but also in additional sections, sometimes great portions of one chapter or another that were completely removed, which I was now reading for the first time. It was a revelation to me, especially since the sections that were removed often dealt with bands that I'd been far less likely to already know about than the bands that were left in the truncated manuscript.

All of this is just a comparison between two editions, though. What's really important here is the work itself, and in reading this book, the first work I ever encountered by Simon Reynolds, I found myself going from barely aware of him to being a huge fan. That experience is only amplified by reading this new, expanded edition. Reynolds is one of the best music writers I've ever read, able to integrate literate, intensely rational analysis of the ideas behind particular groups and their recorded works, with far more emotionally-centered reactions to the feel and sound that those works ultimately emanated. Reynolds is more of a Greil Marcus than a Lester Bangs, but he's able to incorporate the strengths of both of these writers as well as those of many others, including British rock critics that I'm, again, less familiar with than I should be, into an ecumenical overall approach that leaves no stone unturned in its in-depth analysis of bands, scenes, movements, and overall periods in punk/rock history. I say "periods" because this book, despite its subtitular reference to postpunk, covers a great deal more than just that few years after the dissolution of the Sex Pistols in which Joy Division and Public Image Ltd. represented the cream of the creative crop. The book delves deeply into the New Wave/"New Pop" movements of the early 80s, probing the depths of synthpop and fey British "haircut bands" to find the serious ideas and important creative moments that were at the root of a great deal of the era. In so doing, Reynolds makes a persuasive case for the likes of the "Don't You Want Me" era Human League, Duran Duran, and even Culture Club. I almost find myself wanting to give certain era-defining synthpop albums another listen. Almost.

Ultimately, that's the biggest tribute to the power of Reynolds's writing here. He not only makes me want to dig out records by groups I like that I haven't heard in quite a while, but also records by groups I've always hated. If his writing unearths a valuable truth or a worthwhile musical moment on the second Culture Club album or in Frankie Goes To Hollywood's "Relax," I feel like I should hear it again, even though I'd ordinarily tell you that I'd be happy if I never heard any of that garbage again. That's enough to tell me that this is a writer worth paying attention to. "Rip It Up And Start Again" may be the first Simon Reynolds book I've ever read, but it won't be the last.

Appaloosa, by Robert B. Parker
I read this book for a book club that normally tackles literary classics and works that we feel have some sort of resonance in the wider world. This time, though, a new member of the group picked something out, and we ended up reading this Western novel, which I personally blew through in a day. I'm not sure what motivated him to pick it, as there were really no wider cultural resonances here that seemed to me to have any significance. This is pure pulp Western, narrated by a hard-working lawman who is quick on the draw and always able to do what he needs to do to keep the peace. Of course, sometimes that means killing people. In fact, in this book, it often means killing people. Our lawman narrator, Everett Hitch, is second fiddle, though, to Virgil Cole, an even tougher, even faster, even more successful lawman who is depicted as somewhat of a sociopath. Hitch backs up Cole rather than taking the lead on any particular operations, but sometimes it also seems that he's there to keep Cole in line, to check his more violent impulses.

In this book, Cole and Hitch hire on as marshals in a town called Appaloosa, where a local rancher has killed the previous marshal and basically taken over the town. He and his men take whatever they want for free and rape and murder at will. The town is tired of the situation and expect Cole and Hitch to fix it. Which they do, at first. It's what happens after that that causes the problem.

And don't get me wrong, I enjoyed reading about all of it. It was a fun, pulpy novel about crime and violence in the old West. I like crime novels anyway, so I was pretty much guaranteed to enjoy this one. But it wasn't quite what I expected, and certainly isn't some sort of deathless work of literature. So hey, this book is pretty fun, but I can't say it's amazing or anything. Good, not great.

When Skateboards Will Be Free: A Memoir Of A Political Childhood, by Said Sayrafiezadeh
This memoir of a childhood in the Socialist Workers Party interested me mainly because of my own interactions in the past with radical political groups, and also because the author is a Gen-Xer like me (typing that makes me gag... I mean it somewhat jokingly) and I think all of us had at least somewhat alienated childhoods. So I was interested in reading about his, and although his experience was quite different from mine--absentee father; withdrawn, moodswinging mother; childhood spent mostly alone--I could really understand where he was coming from. His own inability to connect with other children sometimes had more to do with his being Iranian during a time of widespread hostility towards Iran in the United States than anything else, but still, it's something I've lived through myself. His stunted relationships with his parents were also something I could understand, even if, again, the circumstances couldn't be more different than my own.

The real reason I enjoyed this book as much as I did, though, is because of Sayrafiezadeh's writing style, which is evocative of emotion without being overwritten. He's good at staying subtle, at showing instead of telling, of giving us his perspective of a particular situation in a way that makes clear what reaction he'd have to it and why. Another interesting factor in the telling is the stuff he inserts in which he talks about his adult life, living on his own in New York, trying to make it as an actor, having uncomfortable and infrequent interactions with his parents, trying to date. And through it all, there's the thread of his indoctrination into Socialist Workers Party ideology at a very young age, forever affecting his thought patterns and making him feel set apart from everyone else he meets. This was the most interesting part, for me; I've always felt like the radical political movements that I encounter encourage the sort of blind faith that is just as often part and parcel with evangelical Christianity, and this book made it clear that this is true, or at least that it was for both Said Sayrafiezadeh and both of his parents. The way Said writes the book makes it clear that he has started to question a lot of these beliefs now, but that back when these stories occurred, his own dim understanding of them was often a source of discomfort. I feel like this book, if nothing else, once again proves that it's not a good idea to adhere too closely to one particular school of thought where politics is concerned, to make up your own mind on specific issues and not let a pre-designed ideology box in your own thought patterns. By the end of the book, you can tell that Said has learned this lesson, even if, again, he never says so. In a book that is more often depressing than uplifting, it's nice to at least come away with this one positive conclusion.

Broken Summers, by Henry Rollins
This was my second time reading this book, which collects Rollins' journal entries from 2002 and 2003, which mostly focus on the album of Black Flag covers he and his band did as a benefit for the West Memphis 3, as well as the tour they did in support of that album. This book intrigued me the first time I read it, as Rollins seemed to be moving away from the dark, misanthropic tone that often pervades in his books of journal entries. Granted, he still seemed closed off from the human race to an extent I find uncomfortable to even contemplate, but I could see some hope for him. Since that first reading, though, I've read "A Dull Roar," a more recent collection of journal entries, in which it seemed that his perspective had returned to previous high levels of misanthropy. Now, with a second reading of "Broken Summers," I see far less of the hope that I saw in my original reading. Looking back now, I'm not even sure where I was getting that. For the most part, Rollins continues to have a pretty antisocial attitude towards humanity. If anything, I can see hints in this book that he's sometimes disappointed in the bad behavior of other people rather than angered by it, but those moments of sadness are mitigated by other moments of absolute anger.

In sum, it adds up to a pretty entertaining book that delivers on what I look for in a book by Henry Rollins. His perspective on the world is always unique and interesting, and he often says things that I can relate to on a deep level. I'm not sure if this is a good thing, since the things he's saying that I relate to tend to be pretty bleak, but at least I can feel like someone understands. I admit that, in reading these books, I often find myself wishing for happiness for Rollins, but I can see that, due to his unique lifestyle, worldview, and experiences, that it will be hard for him to ever attain such a thing, or even to describe what it would look like for him. I guess this is one of the things I relate most closely to him in--I don't really know what a happy life for me would look like, either. I hope that both of us find it someday. Until then, though, I'm sure I will continue to enjoy these books of journal entries that Rollins releases onto the world every few years or so.

Movie Diary: Jandek On Corwood.

2009-04-07T23:28:00.002-04:00

This morning, I was watching video clips of Jandek's most recent show in Houston on Youtube, and discovered that a user had broken the 2003 documentary "Jandek On Corwood" down into 10-minute chunks and posted the entire thing on Youtube. I had about two hours left before I had to be at work when I made this discovery, which meant that I'd be cutting it awfully close if I wanted to watch the entire movie and still eat lunch and take a shower before work. I decided to go ahead and watch the whole thing anyway, since I've never been the sort of person to allow time constraints to stop me from doing what I felt like doing in a particular moment. Which might be why I'm often late to work. Anyway, I watched the whole thing, which marked my first attempt at watching a movie full-screen style on my laptop. I ended up pausing the movie about halfway through, at the "End Part I" title card and making lunch, then having about 15 minutes between its ending and the time when I needed to be at work, during which I made an attempt to both shower and ride my bike to work... and failed, getting to work about 10 minutes late. But enough of all these irrelevant personal details.

The movie was quite interesting and good, though I couldn't help but feel, as I felt with the recent Roky Erickson documentary, that the makers would have had a far more interesting story if they'd waited a few years. After all, within two years of "Jandek On Corwood"'s release, Jandek began performing live, and has since played something like 40 concerts. Really, though, the move to start performing live, while remaining completely uncommunicative about any personal details, is such a startling development that, if anything, it probably merits there being a sequel to this documentary. To have "Jandek On Corwood" encompass such a development would have completely disrupted the film's narrative, so I guess it's for the best that it covers the time period that it covers. That said, someone, either filmmakers Chad Freidrichs and Paul Fehler or someone else, should really make a sequel.

I found that "Jandek On Corwood" did an excellent job of capturing the atmosphere I associate with Jandek's music--sparse, foreboding, vaguely downbeat, and most of all, alien. The film used interviews rather than narration to tell what is known of Jandek's musical history, with the filmmakers talking to a variety of journalists, musicians, radio DJs, and record store owners who've had contact with the music, and even, sometimes, the man himself. It creates an incomplete yet fascinating portrait, aided greatly by the prominent use of Jandek's music throughout. The interview shots are alternated with extended sequences from the songs and albums being discussed, the music generally set to enigmatic imagery that heightens the atmosphere the music creates. Different interview subjects discuss various elements of Jandek's career, including various attempts by journalists to get in contact with Jandek himself. The entire film culminates with the playing of the only known recording of a Jandek interview, conducted by John Trubee for Spin magazine in 1985. This interview takes up the last 10 minutes or so, and it is shocking enough to finally hear the voice of this person that has been discussed in terms of his absence for more than an hour at this point in the film. What I found to be the emotional climax of the film, though, came at the very end of this interview tape, when Trubee asked Jandek about the meaning of his songs, and Jandek began talking about the song "I Knew You Would Leave," from his album "Six And Six." Accompanied by footage of waves crashing onto a desolate, rock-strewn beach under an overcast sky, Jandek explains the complex metaphor in the song's lyrics, about how rocks are ultimately worn down into sand by time and the crashing of the waves, and then how eventually even the sand disappears, and how comparable this is to the decay of relationships between humans. This, as the song plays in the background. At this point in the film, at least for me, the emotional center of Jandek's music ceased to be something that was intellectually discussed. The film suddenly became an extension of that emotion, and I found myself overwhelmed by it. It was a powerful moment, the payoff of the entire film; a moment when what had previously been a sort of text that was being analyzed instead became the thing that I, the viewer, was experiencing. It blew me away.

I know that, for a lot of people, Jandek's music seems bizarre and off-putting, and they can't understand how those of us who are fans can find anything to enjoy in it. As someone who is a fan, I find my own experience of his music hard to put into words. I can't really be sure, since I came to "Jandek On Corwood" already converted, but based on my own emotional experience with the end of the film, I find myself thinking that it might work to bridge that gap, between the uninitiated who don't understand the appeal, and those of us who experience the appeal already but struggle to explain exactly what it is. In the future, I will definitely point those who wish to understand towards this film. It's the best explanation of the appeal of Jandek's music that I've encountered thus far, and if people see "Jandek On Corwood" and still don't understand it, I can't imagine that they ever will.

Movie Diary: The Wackness.

2009-04-07T00:02:00.001-04:00

Oh hey, I saw "The Wackness" last night. I wasn't at all sure what I was getting into with that movie, but I ended up liking it. I guess I have a weakness for coming-of-age movies, though. The fact that it was a quasi-period piece about an 18 year old boy in the summer of 1994, which makes him exactly my age, as I was 18 in the summer of 1994, didn't hurt either. But this boy is different from me in a lot of ways, primarily that he's a drug-dealing Manhattanite with a fake ice-cream cart and a fondness for hip-hop that far outstrips my own. I did like a lot of hip-hop in 94, though, so a lot of the songs on the soundtrack brought back memories for me. But I liked the movie itself, too. The drug-dealing kid, Luke, has kind of a crappy home life, and he's a bit adrift in general, so he ends up in an arrangement with Dr. Squires (Ben Kingsley), the stepfather of a girl named Stephanie that he goes to school with (and deals drugs to). Dr. Squires trades Luke regular therapy sessions in exchange for pot. Squires and Luke inadvertently become friends of sorts, but when Luke develops a crush on Stephanie, and seems to have his feelings reciprocated, it drives a wedge between he and Squires. A lot more happens besides that, including one great scene where Squires and Luke hit up a bar and get wasted together, at which point they run into a hippie girl Luke sells to, played by Mary Kate Olsen of all people, and she hooks up with Squires. Really, though, the plot is pretty predictable, and it's nothing that hasn't been seen a bunch of times before. That said, I feel like the actors and script are good enough to keep the movie interesting throughout. I wouldn't recommend it to someone who doesn't typically enjoy coming-of-age movies, as it's not good enough to rise above its genre, but for someone like me, who is kind of a sucker for that sort of thing, it's an enjoyable viewing experience.