September 2004 Archives

"They came to me and said, 'We don't want to lose Conan O'Brien.' I said, 'Oh, OK, what does that mean?' " The big shocker here: Leno's been host for 11 YEARS already. All CBS has to do is hire Jon Stewart, it's a SLAM DUNK.

Punk's Revenge on WBUR's arts page.

NPR's On Point with Tom Ashbrook (from WBUR Boston)
Rock 'n Gender Roles
Aired: Friday, September 17, 2004 8-9PM ET
RA | WMA | QT

My appearance on today's Here and Now, with Robin Young, promoting Fever. Click here for the direct RA link.

Owen Gleiberman weighs in on a lot of things at rockcritics.com, including this comment on pop in the movies:

I've always lived for those moments in movies that are musical-dramatic epiphanies. The form, if that's what it is, was really born in Kenneth Anger's Scorpio Rising--both Scorsese and David Lynch were hugely influenced by its fusion of darkness and Top 40 beauty--and the great filmmakers are still out there doing it. Wes Anderson, as much as I deplore his synthetic irony, is a wizard at using songs to conjure a mood. I'm haunted by the way that he used the Elliot Smith song "Needle in the Hay" in The Royal Tenenbaums. There are just too many examples to count. At this year's Sundance Film Festival, there was an experimental biography called Tarnation that does for Glen Campbell's "Wichita Lineman" what Blue Velvet did for "In Dreams." I love movies that tap the kind of hidden rapture you can feel for pop--like, say, the musical collage that Trent Reznor helped orchestrate for Natural Born Killers, which turns that entire movie into a pure acidhead opera. It should have started a whole Leonard Cohen revival. Incidentally, there's a song on the Natural Born Killers soundtrack, "Allah, Mohammed, Char, Yaar," that in the context of the climactic prison riot is like a bizarre omen of America's war with Islam. It's an embodiment of the chaos we were about to face.

Tarantino, of course, is the ultimate modern maestro at meshing music and image. I thought he did an inspired job of that in Kill Bill--Vol. 1, where he reconfigured all those great ‘60s and ‘70s soundtracks so that the whole thing played like a B-movie dream. Nancy Sinatra singing "Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)" cast this incredible mood over the whole movie. One of the disappointments, to me, of Kill Bill--Vol. 2, much as I liked the film, is that the use of music wasn't nearly as revelatory. This year, what may be my two favorite moments in movies are both centered on music: that great last scene in Before Sunset, in which Julie Delpy seems to bring Nina Simone back to life before your eyes, and the moment in Garden State where Zach Braff and Natalie Portman kiss for the first time to the sound of Simon & Garfunkel's "The Only Living Boy in New York." What can I say? I'm a deep-dish sap, and that moment was just so gorgeous and perfect that the movie soared.

I would have followed up the section on the Kaelettes with a question on how her death affected the whole scene...

Jeff Jacobi ("Where is the Muslim outrage?"), meet the New York Times ("Massacre Draws Self-Criticism in the Muslim Press").

Back from another Goshen Fair, rich with carbs. Late into the night after rescreening some BAND OF BROS, which holds up nicely, I listened to the Fiery Furnaces's BLUEBERRY BOAT, which blew my mind instead of lulling me off to sleep. I mean this in a good way. The lyrics veer between offhanded randomness and surefire inevitability; the production values are pristine but not IN YOUR FACE; the singing is casual-virtuosic; and the elaborate instrumentation recalls the more inspired Brian Wilson. Eric Weisbard sings their praises in Slate:

Blueberry Boat is a tribute to that moment when early '60s rock became late '60s rock: conceptual, difficult, and as inclined to draw on Stockhausen as it previously had Chuck Berry. For traditional punks, art rock was a blasphemy. For collegiate punks like Sonic Youth, it was fine so long as it was difficult and truly avant-garde—minimalism with guitars. But the Friedbergers have a different take. As they see it, what redeems concept albums, rock operas, and the whole sodden lot is that when they fail, they don't fail quietly. And what's not punk about that?

Bandwagons are a drag but this CD is a MUST. I have no clue WHAT IT ALL MEANS. The next night I listened to András Schiff's Schumann (ECM). Again.

David Thomson on Robert Redford.

introducing FANTASY COVERS:

Max Cleland doing Johnny Paycheck's "It Ain't Over Til the Triple Paraplegic Vet Sings"

GLOSSED IN TRANSLATION:

"I listened to Richard Nixon... and I decided to be a Republican..." Arnold Schwarzenegger.

READ: "That one guy looked richer than the other guy..." [What would Nixon make of Arnold?]

"Thank God we have George W. Bush for President..." Rudolph Guiliani.

READ: "Thank God there's a Republican controlling the federal spigot..."

John McCain explained: he's accepted a major cabinet post, probably State, when Powell steps down. Either that, or Cheney is planning a heart attack the third week of October.

STILL TO COME: more lists, Too Many Guitars, Andras Schiff Beethoven on ECM, and Boz Scaggs Live.