Here’s what I find funniest: “Now any idiot can be a critic. Writers used to review writers. My second novel was reviewed by Ann Tyler. So who is Roberta Silman?”
Hmmm … five-second Web search … Roberta Silman is a writer.
Not sure how to proceed from here. Do I lament the capacity of social networking to spread ignorance whenever someone’s a little angry, or do I check to make sure my phone number is unlisted?
I’ve been meaning to blog this one for a long time. From my brief jazz fusion/New Age phase (thanks to VH1’s “New Visions” show), this was one of the highlights. Mesmerizing stuff.
This one’s mostly for the music-major friends who have recently befriended me on Facebook. And the Popdose gang. And anyone else who likes seeing weird old PJ Harvey videos.
These three songs all have odd time signatures. And yet they rock. They’re not some sort of prog-rock “Hey, look at us, we’re so sophisticated because we can count to 13″ mathematical exercises. Here goes:
The verses — in 11/4 — are the easy part. The choruses are more erratic, not easily described in one time. Alternating measures of 9/4? Rapidly switching from 3/4 to 2/4? Hard to say.
Then near the end, it slams into 4/4. Brilliant stuff.
I put the downbeat number in the middle. This is Tori Amos’ sprightly little ode to her own miscarriage.
It’s moving and quite intense, with verses that seem timeless. (Most of the time, it’s 13/8, but she throws in a couple of twists at the intro.) The gentle choruses are in simpler triplets. Then, like PJ Harvey, she resolves to something simple for the climax of the song.
The live version from Jools Holland’s wonderful show Later omits a transition into that thrashing section at the end, which you can hear on the studio version that I apparently can’t embed. Even after hearing this song 100 times or so, I sometimes get chills around the 2:50 mark. The video projects a completely different dramatic storyline on the song which, like Tori herself, is strange but compelling.
In both versions here, Tori has a secret weapon — the always excellent Matt Chamberlain on drums.
And we’ll close with one in which Chrissie Hynde just decides to skip a beat in each line of verse, giving us a skip between 7/4 and two bars of 4/4. Don’t crank this up at work — lyrics are a little suggestive. So suggestive I still don’t even know what she’s talking about. I probably shouldn’t.
I’m going to try to update the old blog more often, but I can’t promise anything.
You’ll occasionally catch some James Gang songs on the radio, but this live version of Walk Away shows just how ferocious Joe Walsh and company were before Joe joined the Eagles.
Yes, everyone in Western civilization can hear the word “Caddyshack and immediately think of a few lines. But has anyone ever thought about what a strange film it is?
For one thing, it’s clear from reading the Wiki entry here — which is well-sourced with a few things available elsewhere — that the movie they envisioned on the first day of filming was nothing like the film they ended up with. Bits of that original concept exist. But Rodney Dangerfield, Chevy Chase and Bill Murray essentially took over, starting doing improv, and there you have it.
The result is almost a train wreck, a strange collection of sketches in which characters seem to be in two movies at once — one about caddies, one about a nasty conflict of snobs and slobs. They share a couple of characters but are otherwise disjointed, like the scenes in Pulp Fiction that intertwine but do little more.
The parts, thankfully, are far greater than the sum. A film about the caddies — Maggie of the wavering accent, the dude who says “Noonan,” Brian Doyle-Murray’s character — surely wouldn’t have been as well-remembered as the final product.
But the funny thing is that you have to root for the obnoxious people for any of this to succeed. In the film, you root for Dangerfield, though you wouldn’t want him behind you on an actual golf course. Behind the scenes, you’re also rooting for Dangerfield and the other comic geniuses who took over Harold Ramis’ film.
AMC often pairs this film with Blazing Saddles for some reason. Sure, they’re both packed with semi-relevant gags like a Family Guy episode (as I type, Sheriff Bart is greeting Count Basie for reasons that probably made sense to Richard Pryor when he was working on the screenplay). But Blazing Saddles is a well-crafted satire in which most of the events are related somehow.
To me, Caddyshack is a good collection of gags. Blazing Saddles is a work of art. Seriously.
I haven’t been down lately — a little overworked, yes — but I’m still enjoying this downer of a tune from Bloc Party called Talons.
When people think of rock “opera,” they usually mean 20-minute songs. But this is operatic in style without demanding that the listener clear out a day to listen.
The most obvious interpretation of the song is a fable about AIDS, though that’s not necessarily the only interpretation. More broadly, it’s about guilt and death. The protagonist and his circle of friends have led entertaining but reckless lives, and they’re suffering the consequences.
What separates it artistically from the typical emo music is the change of moods. The verses are full of subdued regret. The chorus cries out against the same circumstances, dialing up the anguished self-loathing. “I have been wicked / I have been arrogant.”
The best part is the bridge, a final bit of defiance. “I didn’t think it would catch up as fast as I could have run,” they sing over a major key progression that sounds almost Wagnerian. Then they modulate back to the minor for the crushing line — “a new disease came in the post for me today.”
If you don’t buy all the aesthetic talk here, just know that it rocks. Enjoy.
Good interview and performance clips. The new tunes are pretty good, with propulsive bass and less of a morbid tone than you might expect from The Cure.
One qualm with the interviews: The Cure’s personnel have been relatively steady over the past 15 years or so. No one in the band now has less than a decade of experience playing with Robert Smith. It’s hardly a solo project.
Robert Smith is a terrific interview, open and honest. I don’t buy his annual “this is the last Cure album” moan, but aside from that, it’s great to hear from him. I hope it’s not the last Cure album.
The tools for blogging are just getting better, even as the time I have to blog is greatly diminished. I’m also spending more and more time on Facebook, where I can just make a quick comment and move on.
So the tactic I’m trying now for Mostly Modern Media is to make a quick comment and move on. Not as quick as a Twitter tweet or Facebook update, but something short and easy.
I reserve the right to go on the occasional 2,000-word rant. Maybe even a well-crafted 2,000-word hypertext essay. But in the interest of posting here more frequently, I’m going to try this sort of thing more often, using ScribeFire to help out.
As a test case, I’ve included a good PopUp Video above. Enjoy.
