June 2004 Archives

I'm wary of Michael Moore, but I want to see FARENHEIT 9/11 for myself. Hitchens is a pretty persuasive hatchet job, but Rosenbaum is generally worhtwhile, so perhaps it's somehow redemptive for Moore in the way that Iowa's victory was redemptive for Kerry. I do think it's telling that we're circumspect about who carries this year's liberal flag, and Moore is wrong to proclaim the Bush administration over with, as he did on Jon Stewart.

We watched Wonderland for Kate Bosworth a couple weeks back, and although it's bad, it's stayed with me. Most of its problems are not really with the script by James Cox and Captain Mauzner, they're with Cox's dopey direction and hopped-up editing. You start to wonder how Cox romanticizes these dopeheads by his cutting and swerving, as if he were on dope while editing the movie. But Bosworth is quietly riveting as John Holmes's girlfriend Dawn Schiller. Near the end, when Holmes's wife (Lisa Kudrow) meets up with him at a hotel room where he's being kept before giving testimony, Bosworth lets the two go off to an unbugged room to talk, and picks up his sunglasses after she's left alone there. It's the kind of gesture that defines a character: Holmes is in deep doo-doo, but she's so naive she gets a thrill just by trying on his glasses. BLUE CRUSH surfed on Bosworth's smile and cool way with Hawaiian locals, but in WONDERLAND, she shows off acting chops to such an extent you're convinced that a sweetie pie could stick with such a loser for so long. The other key performance is Josh Lucas, whose Ron Lanius has such a hard-on for horse that his outbursts make way too much sense, even though you know his ripoff triumphs will backfire mercilessly. This is a bravura performance that could have been embarrassing and somehow transcends the dope-fiend clichés. Music is predictably bad throughout, and closes with the unspeakably hipless "If You Could Read My Mind" by Gordon Lightfoot.

Today in Harvard Square, I saw someone wearing a Leon Fleisher t-shirt.

An ambitious scholarly treatment of Dylan puts his lyrics beneath the microscope.

By Tim Riley
Posted on Slate, Monday, June 21, 2004

Cherish the cultural moment: Just as Bob Dylan sells his soul for a Victoria's Secret Venetian holiday, the academy ushers him into the Great Hall of Poets. With Dylan's Visions of Sin, Boston University's Christopher Ricks, the eminent Milton and Eliot scholar, delivers his long-awaited Dylan treatise, Visions of Sin. (It was published last year in Britain.) Organizing his thoughts around the traditional seven vices—and virtues—Ricks burrows deep into Dylan's lyrics for intriguing comparisons to Keats, Tennyson, and other canon members, with enough gusto and substance to win over any remaining Dylan holdouts. The writing is admiringly learned, the observations insightful and often piquant. Yet the Ricks style is overly pleased with itself, Old School straining to sound New School, and, at 500 pages, an arduous read even for Dylan fanatics...

Click here for more...

Thu Jun 17, 2004 10:00 AM ET
By Jill Serjeant

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Hip-swiveling Elvis, womanizer Mick Jagger and "Material Girl" Madonna may be some of rock 'n' roll's greatest musical icons but as positive role models, they've yet to win many fans.

Think again, argues rock critic Tim Riley. Far from being pilloried as a destructive influence on American youth, Riley says the best rock 'n' roll music celebrated sexual openness, honored tolerance, individualism and social responsibility in a way that helped baby boomers become better partners and better parents.

"Rock actually helped lead the culture toward a healthier, happier paradigm of male-female relations," Riley writes in his book "Fever: How Rock and Roll Transformed Gender in America."

"It depicted the world as a place waiting to be explored and enjoyed rather than as a system of tests to pass or fail," Riley writes....

[Click here for the rest of the article. Giant cash prize for whoever writes in with the giant misquote near the end.]

Current Ellen Willis clips. We're not worthy.

VERBAL HOOKS WITH SWING

Sam Phillips A BOOT AND A SHOE (Nonesuch)
Song title that lives up to its lyric: "I Dreamed That I Stopped Dreaming"
Lyric: "When noone's listening I have so much to say..." from "How to Quit"

KETCHUP

The Raveonettes CHAIN GANG OF LOVE (Columbia) sounds like My Bloody Valentine covering Buddy Holly, big thumbs up.

My Phish piece aired today. A lot of what I say could be applied to the Paradise show I saw 1989 when I covered them for the Phoenix.

Tom Carson is predictably, astutely hilarious in his Voice obit:

...Reaganism had beauty. Even if you knew better, it was seductive. The best description, or possibly just evidence, I know is the oddly forgotten Talking Heads song "Road to Nowhere," from 1985's Americana-flavored Little Creatures. A hymn that evolves into a march tune and then a full-on cattle drive, complete with "Hah!"s and get-along-little-doggie percussion, it's one of David Byrne's most insinuatingly phrased preacher rips, with imagery swiped straight from the Gipper himself: "There's a city in my mind/Come along and take that ride/And it's all right." Even as the odyssey the listener is being asked to sign up for turns flagrantly nuts—"Maybe you wonder where you are/I don't care"—the song's eerily dissociated exuberance inveigles you; you still want to join. If it's an anti-Reagan song at all—and with Byrne, who ever knows?—it's anti-Reagan in the same sense that "Heroin" is anti-shooting up...

And although there are many links to The Gore Speech, the one from Springsteen's own page seems the most compelling, given that this is a rock star who took a lot of heat when jocks started showing up at his 1984 shows to hear "Born in the U.S.A." and never really came out explicitly against Reagan. Turn Gore's text over in your mind for a couple days and it gets larger, more impressive. This is the guy who got cheated out of office, dropped out of the current race, and still makes the most cogent arguments against W.'s tyranny. Bruce brought Al Franken up on stage with him at Shea Stadium last fall, but somehow this cuts deeper:

President Bush offered a brief and half-hearted apology to the Arab world - but he should apologize to the American people for abandoning the Geneva Conventions. He also owes an apology to the U.S. Army for cavalierly sending them into harm's way while ignoring the best advice of their commanders. Perhaps most importantly of all, he should apologize to all those men and women throughout our world who have held the ideal of the United States of America as a shining goal, to inspire their hopeful efforts to bring about justice under a rule of law in their own lands. Of course, the problem with all these legitimate requests is that a sincere apology requires an admission of error, a willingness to accept responsibility and to hold people accountable. And President Bush is not only unwilling to acknowledge error. He has thus far been unwilling to hold anyone in his administration accountable for the worst strategic and military miscalculations and mistakes in the history of the United States of America.

He is willing only to apologize for the alleged erratic behavior of a few low-ranking enlisted people, who he is scapegoating for his policy fiasco.

Finally, here's Jimmy Guterman on Ray Charles.

Thank you to Tom Wilk and Doug Jones, who wrote in jogging my sieve of a memory: added John Fogerty's BLUE RIDGE RANGERS below. Does it strike anyone else what a good year 1973 was for covers?

And as if to bless all this cosmic meandering, the Los Lobos record, THE RIDE, just came, and it's like a cross between a brilliant cover record and a turbo-charge on their original material, totally entrancing. Cranks it up a few notches... AND just for kicks, here's how 2004 is shaping up to my ears:

RILEY'S 2004 LIST as of 6/9/04

Rocket From the Tombs ROCKET REDUX (Smog Veil)
Chris Richards TUMBLERS & GRIT (Lake Effect)
Sam Phillips A BOOT AND A SHOE (Nonesuch)
Bottle Rockets BRAND NEW YEAR (New West)
Los Lobos THE RIDE (Hollywood)
Air WALKIE TALKIE (Astralwerks)
Ben Kweller ON MY WAY (ATO/RCA)
The Notorious Cherry Bombs (Universal)
Aveo BATTERY (Barsuk)

"Missing the Point"

No. 3 on Austin's Book People New and Noteworthy page.

Keep track.

ART OF COVERS

Ever since David Byrne's BELEZA TROPICALE (1989) compilation, I've followed Bahia's Caetano Veloso, even wrote up his Knopf autobiography for Boston Review, a piece that never ran. One of the first things I admired was his taste in covers: Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean," sung with a delicate irony, on his eponymous Nonesuch release in 1986 (still my favorite Veloso CD). His new release is all covers, A FOREIGN SOUND (Nonesuch), a mixed bag, but a keeper for song choices alone (Richard Rodgers's "I Must Have Done Something Good," Kurt Cobain's "Come As You Are"). It got me thinking about the cover genre in more detail. Here's a couple lists I threw together for kicks, and more on Veloso soon.

COVER ALBUMS
A single act covering a variety of songwriters. Must reveal new things about the originals, with points awarded for obscure revelations, arrangements, genre insights, and fresh angles on original recording/performer(s) AND interpreter. That is, a cover becomes poetry when it casts light in all directions. Omitted from this category are GENRE EXERCISES, like Rondstadt's Nelson Riddle affair, WHAT'S NEW, where an artist attempts a complete stylistic crossover. Exceptions prove the rule:

The Band MOONDOG MATINEE (1973)
The Beatles BEATLES AT THE BEEB (1962-66) (the great apprenticeship)
Yo La Tengo FAKEBOOK (1989)
Dwight Yoakam UNDER THE COVERS (1997)
Todd Rundgren FAITHFUL (1976) (half covers, so good they count double)
HINDU LOVE GODS (Warren Zevon w/REM) (1990)
John Lennon ROCK'N'ROLL (1973)
Paul McCartney RUN DEVIL RUN (1999) (nearly all covers, with originals blending right in)
John Fogerty BLUE RIDGE RANGERS (1973)
Willie Nelson TO LEFTY FROM WILLIE (1977)

Bubbling Under:

Joan Jett THE HIT LIST (1990)
Willie Nelson STARDUST (1978) [produced by Booker T. Washington]
Harry Nilsson A TOUCH OF SCHMILSSON IN THE NIGHT (1973) (included here precisely because it's more than a GENRE EXERCIZE: he sings these standards, and reveals original lyrics to "Makin' Whoopee," as rock'n'roll.) Everything But the Girl ACOUSTIC (1992, fleshed out with originals)
David Bowie PINUPS (1973)
Guns 'N' Roses THE SPAGHETTI INCIDENT? (1994)
Joan Osborne RIGHTEOUS LOVE (2000)
Michael McDonald MOTOWN (2003)
Leon Russell HANK WILSON'S BACK (1973)
Beach Boys PARTY! (1965)

ACTS WITH COVER ALBUMS STILL IN THEM:

Neil Young
Bruce Springsteen
Bonnie Raitt (please oh please)
Bob Dylan
Chrissie Hynde
NRBQ

TRIBUTE ALBUMS
Single act dedicated to single composer/act, far fewer success stories. Must convey a sense of how the material shape(s)(d) the interpreter(s).

The Byrds BYRDS PLAY DYLAN (NA)
Coulson Dean McGuinness and Flint LO AND BEHOLD! (Sire) (all Dylan)
Bottle Rockets SONG OF SAHM (all Doug Sahm)
Pine Valley Cosmonauts THE MAJESTY OF BOB WILLS (Bloodshot)

SONGWRITERS DESERVING OF MORE COVERS:

Rosanne Cash
Elvis Costello
Leonard Cohen
Joni Mitchell
Lucinda Williams

Like everybody else, I'm fascinated by Tony Hendra's conversion buzz, but suspicious of Andrew Sullivan. While gay, and a semi-reformed neo-con (the gay marriage thing had him recanting Bush fever), Sullivan remains, after all, a Catholic. (One wonders what it might take for him to recant THAT fever.) Carolyn See was disdainful in the WashPost, but a bit overboard. With no time to read something like this, I'd love to hear some respectable opinions on it. Gary Wills? Michael O'Donaghue? Harry Shearer? After all, Hendra is the guy who roared "Genius is PAIN!!!!!!!!"

Down in front, it's time for my notorious impression of Sting.

Regarding the review posted below: folks who don't read the book shouldn't review it, period. A substantive disagreement is fine, but with no quotes to rebut directly, I'm forced to consider the notion that Grace Slick parades covertly as a PW stringer. Who else would care what she thinks?

From: Jonathan Dorfman
Sent: Thursday, June 03, 2004 12:02 PM
To: 'triley@artsjournal.com'
Subject: A few words

Tim:  Hope you/kids/Sara are well.  Love to get together soon.  Congratulations on the book: I’m sure that future comments will differ from those Grace Slick!  Screw Publisher’s Weekly!   I look forward to reading it, armed as I am with the recordings.

This isn’t a formal letter to your website—just some advice from a friend and a great admirer of you and your work.  I think you’ve opened yourself up to a storm of criticism this morning about Andrew Sullivan and his article on Tony Hendra.  For one, Sullivan is adamantly opposed to current Church practice on many areas—the Church abuse scandal, homosexual marriage, etc. etc., and he is by no means a Vatican drone.  For another, he’s been whacking the Bush administration regularly—on fiscal policy, incompetence on the war, Rumsfeld, Tenet, etc.

But the big thing on which you’ll be ripped is what many will take as anti-Catholic, anti-religious bigotry. Don’t get me wrong: there is an argument to be made against religion, including the Catholic Church, just not the argument you made.   You want Sullivan to recant his Catholicism.  Are religious beliefs a fever from which you should recant?  Replace “Catholic” with “Jewish” or “Moslem” or “Baptist (African-American)”, and you can see how many people could find that statement offensive.  And if one remains a Catholic, as in your criticism of Sullivan, is this on a par with remaining a racist or a thief or any other degraded state from which you are supposed to evolve?  So you also then will need to face the problem of explaining why so many saintly people are Catholic—for instance, Dorothy Day and her Catholic Worker Movement.  And one last thing: just because Andrew Sullivan is gay is no reason why his opinions should be any less suspicious than if he were not.  The whole point of fairness is to look at the person, not his sexuality, or his race, or his religion.

Anyway, I don’t mean to hector you, just to caution you about the need to rebut the sort of arguments I’ve just made, and which you’ll might get.   As your friend, I’d hate to see you portrayed in ways that could create problems for you.

All best: Jon

Dear JD,

Fair enough, Dorfman. Sara chides me about my anti-Catholic bias all the time, and I was just trying to be funny, in haste: raised Episcopalian, I simply try to fling superiority towards Catholics as they tend to fling it towards everybody else. A not very flattering case of enjoying their hurricane season. Clearly, this can be taken wrong. I admire Sullivan's brash brand of gay Catholic politics even if I think he was late in discovering Bush to be a moral fraud. And I distrust his Hendra review to the extent that its over-the-top endorsement revealed more Catholic bias than it intended: would he have raved as much about this memoir nearly as much if Hendra was mentored by a Muslim or a Buddhist? I sincerely doubt it, and that's all I meant. But you're right: swap out the terms and I sound pretty bigoted.

Have you read Hendra's book? Yours is the opinion I'd really value on it...

more soon, and thanks for the advice, Tim

Fever: How Rock & Roll Transformed Gender in America
Riley, Tim
ISBN: 0-31-228611-2
St. Martin's Press
Hardcover $24.95
2004/06

When Elvis walked onstage and sang "Love Me Tender" or "Hound Dog," he changed and challenged more than just popular music. According to Riley, his gyrating hips and his invitations to nights of lusty love and rock and roll altered his audience's thinking about sexuality and gender relations, challenging their parents' more circumspect ideas and opening up new ways of freely experiencing their sexual selves. In this rather simplistic study of the impact of rock and roll on sexuality and gender, Riley opens with a comparison of John Wayne's and Elvis's sexual personas. Of course, Elvis shakes the foundations of male sexuality with his openness, his eagerness for experience and his dynamic and forthright declarations of the pleasures of love. While Elvis is shaking up the males, the girl groups—the Chantels, the Ronettes, the Crystals, the Shirelles—are providing a similar experience for the women. Perhaps sex could be saved for marriage, the songs said, but the singers insisted in their lyrics that women could experience plenty of sexual pleasures outside of marriage and that they should. Riley weaves this thesis through the history of rock and roll, tracing its development through Tina Turner, Bonnie Raitt, Joni Mitchell, Bruce Springsteen, Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love, among others. Whether or not rock and roll played the largely positive role in changing ideas about gender remains questionable, for many listeners—and many women in rock, such as Grace Slick—would contend that men's view of women has not changed much since John Wayne. Moreover, Riley's view is very selective, for much of rock music reinforces gender stereotypes, encouraging its audiences to do the same. While Riley's book contains some interesting moments, it fails to go far enough in looking at rock's more checkered history of gender relations. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

I'm going to practice restraint of tongue and pen until tomorrow. --TR