May 2004 Archives

Byliner helps you track your favorite writers from wherever they may contribute, easy interface, totally addictive, even has a chart for most accessed stories. Includes RSS feed for Bloglines, which is now a daily fix.

Also, this guy gave up his anonymity for NY Times, wouldn't you? I'll bet his phone rang all night long with job offers.

Been feeding my hungry iPod for ROAD TRIP, see you on the northeastern corridor!

Gary Giddins looks pretty sharp leaving the Voice with this piece, don't he? Alongside Sasha Frere-Jones and Alex Ross, music suddenly becomes the boldest section in the back of book. Could be a golden era until someone forgets. (Does anyone else find Nancy Franklin overrated?) Now if the profiles would just come back in force.

"His aesthetic is its own punishment," Keith Harris on Nick Hornby's NY Times Op-Ed piece today.

Sasha Frere-Jones calls him Nick "Mojo-Magazine-Invented-Me-In-A-Diabolical-Laboratory-And-Now-They-Can't-Kill-Me" Hornby.

Here's my NPR story on Loretta Lynn and Melissa Auf der Maur from last week, buried at the bottom of the page (direct RM link here). Guess which title is wearing much better than the other one?

Soda tragedy befalls key work station -- anxious fingers twitch daily -- email on other machines feels foreign, off-putting -- reading to fill my head with ideas, develop articles -- mental nail-biting lies down on already stressed workload, finance dilemma -- film at 11. PS: SCTV DVDs came in the mail.

So I'm doing tons of reading. And planning for future posts. And taking notes on everything I need to be doing once I get my unit ramped back up. We went to see SHREK 2 today. Man that franchise has some bad tunes -- almost redeemed by use of Tom Waits in the bar. AND double-check that list below, it has been tweaked of its errors. SCTV DVDs came in the mail.

What with the mess surrounding the Pioneer 563a's ability to play certain DVD-A titles (and KEY titles at that: GAUCHO, PET SOUNDS), I've been gravitating towards the SACD/CD format for both sound and convenience. The backwards compatibility factor weighs heavily, as many of the CD mixes surpass existing stereos for iPod listening, and the fuller stereo sound on SACD does the trick for presence, punch and detail. (What is the deal with iPods in the car, by the way: EQ settings sound different on every track, digital sources outperform analog mostly, but adjustments necessary on every tune, even on line-out direct. In general, R&B EQ with volume at halfway works best for most.) On the big speakers, digital masters win again, with some crucial exceptions. Here's a preliminary list, to be tweaked at future intervals. This could be the year these formats break wide, decisive factors will include compatibility with portables, chiefly iPods, the DVD boom, and the long-awaited Hendrix of 5:1. Where has PM Dawn disappeared to? Why didn't Prince hitch his wagon to this?
More on this when the 563s comes back from its upgrade.

HYBRIDS

Steely Dan GAUCHO (Universal)
Big Star #1 RECORD/RADIO CITY (Fantasy)
Mission of Burma ONOFFON (Matador)
The Who MY GENERATION DELUXE EDITION (Universal)
Marvin Gaye LET'S GET IT ON (Motown)

ALSO AT PLAY
John Lennon PLASTIC ONO BAND (MFSL)
Loretta Lynn VAN LEAR ROSE (Interscope)
Melissa Auf Der Maur AUF DER MAR (EMI)
The Who TOMMY DELUXE EDITION (Universal)
John Lennon PLASTIC ONO BAND (MFSL)
THE ROOTS OF TOMMY (Uncut)
ROOTS OF ROCK'N'ROLL 1946-1954 (Hip-O)
THE NOTORIOUS CHERRY BOMBS (Universal South)
The Pretty Things COME SEE ME (Shout!)
Bobbie Gentry CHICKSAW COUNTRY CHILD (Shout!)
Harry Nilsson SCHMILSSON (RCA/BMG Heritage)
Air TALKIE WALKIE (Astralwerks)
Bottle Rockets BRAND NEW YEAR (New West)

PIANIST OF THE MONTH: Olga Kern (Rachmaninoff, on Harmonia Mundi)

GETS BETTER WITH AGE: Danger Mouse GREY ALBUM

SCARED TO PLAY: Julianna Hatfield IN EXILE DEO (zoe)

BOXES ON DECK:
The Hollies
The Zombies

Our man Devin McKinney gets high praise for MAGIC CIRCLES from novelist Andrew O'Hagan in the NYRB:

The Beatles are the super-boomers' house band. Even people who don't care about popular music—especially those, one might argue—are conscious of how these English songwriters may have harnessed the properties of their own time, or were harnessed by them, down to every teenage sob and every kink of modern marketing. McKinney crunches the facts and pulps the possibilities before tossing everything into a great metaphysical soup, and his book carries sentences not unlike those Norman Mailer used to write forty years ago in the Village Voice:

Despite feeling paralysed at the center of the mania, the Beatles would draw their audience in by pushing it to new places. They would speak contentious, unprecedented words; offer upsetting, incomprehensible images of themselves; make disorienting musical noises. Just as their music would be the best and most challenging they had yet made, their collective persona would be more provocative, richer in dimensions than ambition or circumstance had previously allowed—or required. They would answer and interpret their suddenly hostile world in the language of symbol, the logic of dreaming; and they would, by accident and intent, seduction and aggression, tumult and meditation, sound early shots in the ferocious battle over consciousness which consumed the latter half of their decade.

Bill Murray's induced a couple double-takes since his Oscar nod and one of the funniest Golden Globe acceptance speeches in its history ("Often we forget about our brothers on the other side of the aisle -- the DRAMATIC actors..."). He referred to the director who baked his souffle (LOST IN TRANSLATION), the 33-year-old Sofia Copolla, as a "girl." Sexist comments both. I mean this guy was a figurehead of the COUNTERCULTURE, the era of feminism, sheesh. Then, in this New Yorker profile of Harold Ramis by Tad Friend, he reveals an imperious ingratitude by calling Friend back with a "no comment" on writer and director Ramis's contribution to his own stardom. And I watched this guy's elephant flick (LARGER THAN LIFE).

LINKS FOR INDUSTRY!

DEFAMER
http://www.defamer.com/

Movie poop Shoot
http://moviepoopshoot.com/

Low Culture
http://www.lowculture.com/

IMIX FOR FEVER (more to come)
http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPublishedPlaylist?id=26629

STATE OF PLAY (BBC America). You may watch this for Kelly McDonald (from Gosford Park), your brother may watch it for Polly Walker (of Enchanted April), either way it's instructive how the Brits use beauty not merely to sell a story but advance a plot. It is unimaginable the MP Stephen Collins would cheat on his wife, especially given the picture of the vic. But it makes perfect sense why she would then take up with his friend, the journalist Cal McCaffrey (John Simm), and why he (and those of us identifying with him) doesn't really have any defenses. And if you thought Bill Nighy made a suitably dilapidated rock star in Love Actually, wait until you see him fend off bulldog bobbies in his office.

We thought Helen Mirren was back in good mettle as Det. Supt. Jane Tennison in Prime Suspect 6: The Last Witness, but Peter Barry's anti-genocide script had a couple cracks. First off, Tennison's dad gets introduced way too late in the story, he comes off like a cheap plot device instead of the wrenching witness that Frank Finlay portrays during his Holocaust remembrance. And why did they have to make DC Lorna Greaves (Tanya Moodie), the only black person on the squad, the big snitch? Extra heaps of praise for Ben Miles, last seen as the parading buffoon Montague Dartie in the Forsyte Saga.

Tomorrow I file a big chunks of huzzahs on new CDs from Melissa Auf Der Maur and Loretta Lynn for WBUR, link to follow.