Saturday, November 12, 2005

Gentleman Jack

This isn't something I talk about often, but I just finished what I think of as a very satisfying hour hosting Audioasis on the KEXP. From 8-9, I had Jack Endino (legendary Seattle rock producer) as a guest, and he was a great interview. If you're even remotely interested in digging it, it'll be in the streaming archive here for two weeks.

The date and time info is Saturday, November 12, 8pm.

It's seriously worth it just to hear Jack's voice. The man is a prince. A sonorous prince.

Wednesday, November 09, 2005

Welcome to the Suck is Right!

The best part was that on my way into the theater, this kid who couldn't have been older than 13 goes, "has anyone ever told you that your hair looks like... do you know who Art Garfunkel is?" Do I, indeed.

So, yeah, Jarhead. I don't know why I expected it might have had redeeming qualities. I hated both American Beauty and The Road to Perdition. Still, those two ps of s were as emeralds to this unbearably noxious non-character study. Sam Mendes is not a film director. He may be gifted in the theater, as evidenced by his obvious love of the arresting tableau. Too bad he's so busy setting those up (the burning oil field rainstorms, the gas mask jumpsuit football games, the sad soldier reading his sad letter outside while the happy soldiers read their happy letters inside--courtesy of the diopter lens, et al) that he fails to notice that the film has no drama, no conflict, no relationships, no characters, even; it's just a string of cranberries. Mendes lets pop songs and other movies do all his work for him, sometimes by association (Full Metal Jacket's drill sgt and sniper sequences, Platoon's nature encounter moment) and sometimes, as when a theater full of jarheads cheers on the Ride of the Valkyries sequence from Apocalypse Now, directly. Nirvana's "Something in the Way," is meant to describe the blank heaviness the lead character is experiencing. "Don't Worry, Be Happy" is meant to be ironic. Instead, both songs feel like commentary, or extraneous voice over--inflections. Nothing in the film resonates.

The set pieces could be impressive on a stage, which is where this movie obviously wants to live, where it's all about dealing creatively with an enclosed space. But cinema is unconstrained by space; the challenge lies in deciding where to put the brackets in a world of infinite possibility. Mendes always feints toward the proscenium. Jarhead is a play. A shitty play, but a play. It's all tableaux, man-to-man histrionics, group choreography. With no sense of realness and no admission of artifice, it just looks staged. It's not cinema. It's just outdoor theater with cameras.

News flash: Jake Gyllenhall, not a good actor. Not even an actor? Just a blank-faced eye-mover. Inexpressive to the point of absolute inexpression. Makes Peter Sarsgaard's blank John Malkovich impersonation seem almost thrilling by comparison. One of these men knows that the movie he's in is garbage.

The only real change that we can detect (other than the fact that JG's character says "All I wanted was out," after showing no sign of wanting anything ever)is that the movie opens with "Don't Worry Be Happy," and closes with the "Don't Worry Be Happy was a number one jam/ Damn, if I say it you can slap me right here" line from "Fight the Power." Get it?

Up yours, Sam Mendes.

Monday, November 07, 2005

Major Dickens

Also, even though I know I've been posting a lot today (you'd almost think my job wasn't fulfilling!), I feel that I must recommend that every person alive go see Noah Baumbach's The Squid and the Whale, which is the first movie in years that has made me wish I was a film critic. It was smart, funny, and gently profound while covering some very difficult and particular emotional terrain. Standard issue stuff like intellectual pomposity, the (ir)responsibility of selfish parents, the perils of being over-candid with kids, all gets packed into an avowedly un-heartstring tugging, though still poignant handheld family drama. And if it's true that only a few thousand people in the world will really relate to this movie (with its Jean Eustache and Ilie Nastase posters, its weathered bohemian liberal corduroy preppy sensibilities, its perfectly appointed bookshelves, its shitheel Peugeots, and its perfectly rendered pseudoaristocratic pretense; jeff daniels and jesse eisenberg couldn't possibly be any better), I feel I must know at least half of them, and would love to meet more.

Go see it as soon as possible.

Why should HEART get all caps?

This is hilarious/sad in a way that only HD news can be:



(BTW, it's a sticker affixed to copies of the Christmas in the NW compilation, released each year as a benefit for Children's Hospital, also featuring an original composition by no less a personnage than Grant Goodeve, who will join us on the Christmas in the NW TV show, filming 12/1 at KOMO studios)

Another word about Paul McCartney

Ok, so I posted this in a very timely manner.

HOWEVER, i failed to mention that this was my third attempt to see the man play in the Puget Sound area, and all the sweeter for my two previous failures. The first time was in 1989, when I was in town from Virgina for a couple of days to visit my dying grandmother. I was walking around Pioneer Square, where my dad's gallery was at the time, and saw that PMc was playing the Kingdome. I tried to figure out a way to justify going, but was ultimately thwarted by my dad's hyperactive guilt transferring mechanism. (EXAMPLE: "I'm sure your grandmother would understand that you preferred to go to a concert over visiting her on her deathbed. I mean, I might not understand, but then, I'm not the one who's dying.")

It's worth mentioning that I had spent several hours in her company at this point, and she was unconscious the entire time, gasping for breath, and frail almost beyond recognition. In fact, if she had been conscious, she would not only have understood; she would have demanded that I go, both because she would've been embarrassed to be seen in her condition (vanity dies hard), and because I was the apple of her eye. I was a tender and callow lad in those days, but I could still recognize a crucible of familial angst that I would no doubt still be scraping myself out of today. It was the fucking "Flowers in the Dirt" tour, though. Fook's sake.

The second time was a much clearer-cut example of taking one for the team: There was a performance of "21 Shots" that night and no way I could make it to Tacoma in time to see the show. I remember that basically the entire cast and crew scoffed at my classification of missing the Paul show as some kind of sacrifice. "PAUL MCCARTNEY????" they scoffed. "YOU ACTUALLY WANT TO SEE PAUL MCCARTNEY???"

(Implication: wouldn't you really rather sit around drinking warm Schmitt's from a can while some 18th generation Bright Eyes cassette plays on an answering machine and conversation centers on how everybody (except me) got their printer's devil nicknames?)***

Goddamn right, I said then, and say again now. I'm pretty sure it was the best show I've ever seen. In a certain sense, I could make the argument that my entire life had been leading up to the moment the lights went up and the (brilliant) band launched into "Magical Mystery Tour" and I was instantly transformed/regressed into a young child, dancing around my parents house wearing nothing but underwear (and maybe a cape, actually).

To paraphrase Mr. Costello: "Umm, compared to whom is Paul McCartney not brilliant?"

Yes, the banter was embarrassing, as were the long curtain calls after every song, and the obvious plastic surgery, but none of it mattered; this was not a master taking a victory lap. This was a master showing the world how it's done. And by the world, I mean the world.

I really feel like I've accomplished something meaningful now, and I'm utterly not joking at all.

Which is probably sad on some level, but who cares? I saw Paul McCartney, at long last. He even played a song from Ram, my favorite!

***i hope it goes without saying that i say this with love.

Thursday, November 03, 2005

For the Love of Benji

I mean lists. For the love of lists.

I've been thinking about how awkward it is when your friends make art you don't like but you want to be supportive because they're your friends, but you just for the love of all things holy never want to get asked to go to another goddamn harvey d--I mean another show by your unnamed friends.

But then, I've also been thinking about how exciting it is to be connected to a large group of creative friends whose talents extend into all forms of thing-making. The more I travel, the more I remember how proud I am to know so many gifted, generous people who have devoted themselves, with varying degrees of commercial and critical success, to making music, books, film, theater, photography, and other forms of art (if, indeed, there are any).

This all occurred to me a propos of the new "Awesome" record that accompanies their just-closed show "Delaware." The show itself was excellent, but because I'm partial to records, I'm more impressed by the record, which captures their musical and personal personalities so well. It's an excellent debut, and you should all go buy it (if, in fact, anyone who isn't already in "Awesome" ever reads this bullshit...).

Then, because I felt like it, I compiled a brief list of other records and songs I am proud to know the creators/writers/singers of. And while I know this may basically come off as a massive exercise in name-dropping, I liken it more to thinking out loud, and a public proppage to my small circle of brilliant friends.


10 LPs (which reminds me of the time I was hosting KEXP and some kid called to say he was confused because I kept saying that whatever song I had just played had been issued on such-and-such an LP. "Is that supposed to stand for something?" he asked. Indeed.)

•Awesome-Delaware

•This Busy Monster-Like Icicles (though, frankly, I wish they had used my suggested title, "Breaking Up is Hard to Do.")

•Death Cab for Cutie-Something About Airplanes (still the best one.)

•Nada Surf-Let Go (beautiful both as an album proper, and as a statement of purpose.)

•Gherkin-10 Esperanto Love Songs (a huge source of inspiration to me at a time when I really needed to believe that people i knew were capable of making something real; also a real "there but for the grace of god" kind of story...)

•Centro-Matic-Love You Just the Same (every time I hear this incredible gem I am transported to the couch in Belgium where I first listened to it, aching with jet-lag, and blown away by the degree to which these magnificent Texans had finally lived up to their own musical prowess. i confess, however, that the absence of the title song on the record itself still nags at me, and I at them.)

•John Vanderslice-Time Travel Is Lonely (my favorite one because it's both concise and sprawling, and the letters inside break my heart even now. this was the first record that convinced me barsuk could be world class with or without dcfc.)

•Sarah Dougher-The Walls Ablaze (I can't claim to know her well, but the intimacy of this record is astonishing. it also always reminds me of the night her old band, the lookers, played with HD at some crappy pioneer square bar before everything went crazy, and she stayed at my old apartment, and i later got mugged. good times.)

•Pete Krebs-Sweet Ona Rose (speaking of couch surfers of the past... this is the only full-length aside from the first hazel record that really ties together everything PK is great at: tenderness, twang, toughness, and just a touch of old school rhetorical righteousness.)

•Rat Cat Hogan-Don't Call Me Twaddy/Eet Ees Too Koldt To Go Swimmink (the definitive collection by one of my favorite bands of all time. more great lines than a book of berman poems. the american way of life has got to be protected.)


10 songs

•Carissa's Wierd-"So You Wanna Be a Superhero" (i assumed i wouldn't like this band on principle because of the spelling thing and because of some other associations. i was an idiot. every night the long winters toured with them, i watched in amazement that such a big group could make such delicate, achingly sad, utterly beautiful music. this song is them at their best, and jenn ghetto at her bleakest.)

•Nevada Bachelors-"Marla" (robb writes a lot of songs, maybe more than anyone i know. i would have stopped with this one, if only because once you've beaten mccartney at his own game, you might as well hang it up.)

•The Capillaries-"Sleeping You Off" (again, an epic by a good friend, and one of those moments where you hear someone make their ultimate statement, summing up an entire body of work. he's gone on to write better, but this one feels to me like the summation of the first chapter of this band's existence, from when it was just a twinkle in a jaundiced eye.)

•Smoosh-"Rad" (umm, obviously. the only song i know that both affirms positivity and openly encourages the joining of a soccer team.)

•Jenny Lewis-"Rabbit Fur Coat" (whatever for Rilo Kiley. when this song, which i saw her perform in a little clothing store in west hollywood in front of like 8 people, comes out, minds are going to be all-the-way blown.)

•Rachel Haden-"Let's Get Lost" (I've heard a few different versions of this, and I'm not even sure if it's finished, owing to that peculiar strain in some people that never lets them believe that anything they do is of any worth, but i can say without any hesitation that it made me tear up the first time I heard it, and subsequently, every time I've even thought of it.)

•Hazel-"The Title Track" (the best use of the bop-ba-ba construction since The Turtles, the best Hazel song since "truly," and the best feeling I ever felt at a rock show the first time i heard them do it.)

•Gavin Guss-"Mercury Mine" (actually, this might be a tie with "Union Station" for the most impressive construction by tacoma's bravest son. again, in mccartney territory, and again, not just because it sounds vaguely similar. it's the real shit. i thought for years that gg and i hated each other. then i head this and new we were obviously lifelong friends. then we met and i was right.)

•South San Gabriel-"Smelling Medicinal" (the pun "tired and feathered" is only one small reason this song somehow stands as my favorite will johnson composition, a collection that consists of more pure tonnage than one man should reasonably be expected to generate in a lifetime. and he's basically just getting warmed up.)

•The Long Winters-"Scent of Lime" (obviously.)

Tuesday, November 01, 2005

Pizzniggety

Oh, man. I have a feeling we're gonna get hammered by Pitchfork tomorrow.

In happier news, there's an All Things To All People Anti-New Year's Party at Chop Suey on December 30 with some very special guests, so in the words of old Tom Moore from the Bummer's Shore (in the good old golden days): "They calls me a bummer and a gin-sop, too, but what cares I for praise?"