Nothing But Words

One of the problems with getting older is that I’m starved for new music. In college I was surrounded by people listening to all kinds of cool stuff, so I was hearing new music all the time. I also don’t go to shows anymore, partly because I have kids now, and partly because most of the bands I liked 10 years ago aren’t around anymore. Yesterday I came across two sites that already have me listening to some great music I’ve never heard before, and might even get me out of the house. One is Pandora – tell it a song or band you like and it’ll construct a playlist of similar music, and stream it to your computer. As you listen you can tell it whether you like the songs, and it will continuously refine the playlist based on your feedback. And it’s free – since it streams the songs, you can’t download them (not without some hacking anyway). I imagine they make their money on referral payments from the iTunes links they provide for each song. The other site is Podbop – tell it your city and it’ll tell you what bands will be playing there, and it gives you some sample mp3s of their music. Both sites are simple ideas, but as far as I know, no one’s done these things before, and most good ideas are simple ones.

Watching Revenge of the Sith was a frustrating way to spend two and half hours. Since the kitchen’s the only part of the house I could be in last night, it was a good opportunity to go out and catch a movie. I may give away a plot point or two, so you may not want to read this just yet if you haven’t seen the movie.

I should start by saying I like the original trilogy, and I was totally crazy about it when I was a kid (my mom brought me to Star Wars on its opening night in 1977). They’re hardly cinematic perfection, but they’re enjoyable films. Episodes I and II, however, were completely forgettable – my proof being that I completely forgot what they were about within a month after seeing them. But I saw all the very positive early reviews of Episode III, so I got my hopes up. With Revenge of the Sith, I think Lucas has benefited from the low expectations game, like George Bush did in 2000. Just as Bush “won” the 2000 Presidential debates simply by not making a fool of himself, Lucas is getting kudos simply for making a movie that’s not quite as awful as his last two.

The first act of the film is dreadful, but fortunately it gets better as it goes, achieving mediocrity by the end. The opening is a prolonged battle sequence. We’re thrown right into the action with Obi Wan and Anakin, which would be ok if Lucas had succeeded in giving us an emotional investment in these characters in the first two movies, but since he didn’t, I didn’t feel pulled into the action. The effects are top notch, but since there’s no way to tell the good guy ships from the bad guy ships, and the space battle consists of a series of seemingly random explosions, I was more confused and indifferent than engaged. Most of the light-saber sequences in this act are also tiresome, as we watch the Jedi duo slice up bad guy robots like so much firewood. Also, I’m generally not one to nitpick physical impossibilities in sci-fi films – I’m perfectly happy to hear explosions in space – but watching the long sequence of everyone falling sideways as the ship lists in space crossed the threshold into annoying-land: there is no “sideways” in space!

The second act mostly consists of a lot of exposition. This was more interesting to me, but I was continuously distracted by Lucas’ incredibly wooden and flat writing. I particularly felt sympathy for Samuel L. Jackson – here’s a really terrific actor, and you can see him straining to bring some kind of feeling to the completely antiseptic lines he must deliver. The one exception to all this is Palpatine – it really felt like his character was transplated from a different, better movie – his lines are good, and his presence is the one bright spot in movie. The biggest letdown in Episodes I-III is Anakin. Lucas had a fantastic opportunity to craft a complex and interesting anti-hero, but instead we’re presented with a spoiled, whiny kid whose descent into evil mostly consists of a series of petulant bad moods, interspersed with the occasional slaughter of innocents.

The third act is pretty much non-stop fighting. There’s Obi Wan battling the completely forgettable General Grievous. Sure, Grievous looked cool, but there was no character there at all – he’s no Jabba the Hut. There was the showdown between Palpatine and Yoda, which was my favorite part of the movie, because : 1. it was well done, and 2. I had some emotional investment in the characters (Yoda was well developed in the original trilogy, and Palpatine was the only interesting character in this film). The final battle between Obi Wan and Anakin was also well done, but its end was quite gruesome. I half-expected Anakin to threaten Obi Wan with a good nibbling, like the limbless black knight from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. “The black knight always triumphs!”

By the end I had lost track of how many limbs and heads had been severed. That’s not a criticism in and of itself, but when they take place in a film with comic relief that’s geared towards 7 year olds, it leaves me baffled as to who the intended audience is. We let Kai watch the original trilogy, but there’s no way he’s watching this. I’m surprised I haven’t seen this point mentioned in any of the reviews I’ve read. Spielberg got a lot of criticism from parents who brought their kids to Temple of Doom, which wasn’t nearly as kid friendly as the first Indiana Jones movie. Seated next to me watching Revenge of the Sith was a mother and her 6 year old son. I bet this movie is going to give him nightmares for a month.

I left feeling like Lucas had wasted a monumental amount of time and money making three lousy films. It’s a real shame, as it’s rare to have Hollywood backing for a decidedly non-Hollywood storyline: the descent of a good person into evil. Even if Lucas had done a better job with the secondary characters, the central failure of this trilogy is Anakin. In the final act of Return of the Jedi, you can really feel for Luke as his intellect and his emotions struggle with each other as the Emporer slowly works at him, tempting him to the dark side. Luke’s final refusal represents the climax of the development of his character. In Revenge of the Sith, Anakin’s turn to the dark side should be the defining moment of the trilogy. Instead, it feels rushed and has no emotional impact. After unthinkingly killing Windu and exclaiming “What have I done!” in horrified shock at his own actions, his very next words to Palpatine are “I’ll do anything you ask.” It didn’t make much sense, and it was hardly a memorable moment in cinema.

The film’s release date hasn’t been announced yet, but the trailer for Richard Linklater’s adaptation of Philip K Dick’s A Scanner Darkly is now online: here’s the Apple trailer. I knew the film was in the works, but I had no idea they were doing a rotoscoped animation style. Check out the trailer – it’s real eye candy.

Dick’s daugthers have said this “will be the very first faithful adaptation of a Philip K. Dick story.” Other film adaptation of his books (Blade Runner, Minority Report, and Total Recall) were good films, but took tremendous liberties with the storylines. Judging by the trailer, I’m impressed. I read the book over Christmas break, so it’s still fairly fresh in my mind – I recognized some of the lines, and the voiceover is taken directly from the portion of the book that explains the meaning of the title. So my expectations are now raised – can’t wait to see it.

This is my first post ever about a TV show, mainly because I don’t watch much TV (there are too many other things I’d rather do – or have to do…). But I’ve been making time for the new Battlestar Galactica series on the SciFi channel. Tonight they’re re-running all the episodes to date – watch ‘em! (I think there are 5). The show is impressive in every respect:

Good from the start: Unlike many other sci-fi series, the first season isn’t terrible. Star Trek: The Next Generation and Babylon 5 both had fairly lousy starts, but improved in subsequent seasons. Most other sci-fi series also had lousy starts, and then stayed lousy. With BG’s first episode, 33, the dramatic tension cuts like a knife, and I felt exhausted at the end – I was completely pulled in to the story.

Real actors: Edward James Olmos and Mary McDonell are the names I recognized right away in the credits. The other actors are proving to be top-notch as well. They made some interesting choices in choosing the actors: the lead characters among the young officers are all played by Beautiful People, while the elder leaders and the secondary characters are all played by more normal looking people. I guess they’re trying to strike a compromise between the gritty drama of the show and the innate preference we all have to watch people who look better than the rest of us.

Cool effects and music: the visual effects are almost Hollywood movie quality. The sound effects and music are generally used in a minimalist way, which is very effective at both adding to the tension in show, and also providing a heightened wallop on the occasions when they’re used more forcefully.

And, most importantly, the writing is excellent: the old 70s British sci-fi show Blake’s 7 is still one of my favorite series. The special effects were laughably bad, the acting was uneven at best, but the characters were good, and one in particular (Avon) was fascinating. That was enough to make me a fan. What’s impressed me with Battlestar Galactica is that, with just an opening movie and a handful of episodes, they’ve succeeded in creating distinctive and interesting characters out of almost everyone in the show’s large cast.

Starbuck: making the cigar-chomping character of the original series into a woman in the new series was a brilliant move. She’s my favorite character, and it’s unusual in sci-fi for a fan to say that about a female character. That’s because female characters in sci-fi tend towards the extremes of being either sophisticated and virtually non-sexual, or being sex objects with underdeveloped characters. Much of sci-fi writing seems stuck at a 12-year boy level when it comes to female characters, but that’s not the case here. While sci-fi these days does tip its hat to modern attitudes that allow for strong female characters that kick butt, my suspension of disbelief comes crashing down when such characters are played by toothpicks with hOOters in skin tight costumes (that’s just not who I’d want watching my back in fist fight). In contrast, the actress who plays Starbuck is buff and perhaps a bit hefty (but she does, of course, still meet the prime-time requirement of being cute). And in just a small number of episodes, the writers have already made her a complex and interesting character.

The show has gotten some negative feedback for gratuitous sex. At first I was thrown by the sexual content in the series – but it wasn’t gratuitous – it was simply there. I eventually realized that I just wasn’t used to a TV show treating sex as a normal part of life. The writers neither pretend it doesn’t exist, nor do these fetishize it. Executive Producer Ron Moore put it best in his response to the criticism:

We’re presenting adult human beings as adults, and their sexuality is a key part of their lives. Baltar’s sexual weaknesses, Sharon & Tyrol’s forbidden love affair, and Starbuck’s promiscuity are part of who and what they are. I think the only reason this gets the kind of attention it does is that we’re not used to seeing sex treated maturely in science fiction — nine times out of ten, any sex is either something to snigger at or to make fun of. Somehow it’s okay to fetishize sex by putting women in S&M leather “space” outfits or have Carrie Fisher run around in harem clothes (not that there’s anything wrong with that), but to portray two mature adults simply having sex is somehow controversial in sci-fi circles.

This week I bring you a song by Ed’s Redeeming Qualities, one of my very favorite bands. Here are a couple descriptions of what they’re like:

Ed’s Redeeming Qualities describe themselves as “a charming folk trio,” but that description fails to mention their quirky humor, odd instruments, surreal lyrics, or disrespect for genre conventions. They can go from silly to sad to poignant to really weird, all in the same song!
- Dave Mattingly

When I was twelve, I remember finding a big box of old photographs and cards in the street waiting to be taken to the dump. I took the box home and went through the whole thing slowly, getting to know a couple generations of this family’s history. It was a more intimate look than I was ready for and I quickly brought the box back outside. Listening to Ed’s Redeeming Qualities records is something like getting a close look at someone else’s life, in that the details seem too precise not to be true…

The songs are a mix of those of [Carrie] Bradley, Dan Leone and former member Dom Leone, who died of cancer in 1989. His spirit is very much alive here, having penned five of the fourteen songs on the album which are sung, mostly, by newest member [and children's book author] Jonah Winter whose resonant baritone calls to mind Dom’s own voice. Besides singing, Winter brings a variety of instruments to the mix, including accordion, tin whistle, clarinet and mandolin. Combining all those with guitar, violin, various ukuleles and a home-made one string bass makes for quite a disparate overall sound.
- HiFi’s Review of At the Fish and Game Club

The band was together from ’88 – ’96 (not counting the occasional reunion shows since then). They only ever had two brushes with fame: The Breeders covered their song Driving on 9, and four of their songs are on the soundtrack to the coincidentally titled Ed’s Next Move.

I saw them perform live three times, and it was always a very personal experience. Even though the shows were in nightclubs, they made me feel as if I was in their living room, and that we had all been friends for years. You will find no artifice or pretention in their music; just simple, honest feelings. And plenty to make you laugh.

Dave Mattingly’s Unofficial Ed’s Redeeming Qualities home page is the best (and, I think, only) web site for them. Dave and I got in touch when I was working at Georgetown in ’96. At the time the only CD burner on campus was located next to my desk. Back then they were big, hard to use, very expensive machines. Blank discs were about $6 each, and our CD burner had a failure rate of about 20%. I had an original copy of the band’s cassette-only release Static and Weak Tea, and Dave had their early 45s and copies of their original demo tapes. He lent them to me so I could make digital copies and burn them onto CD. In those days I had time in my life for that sort of thing, so I probably have the world’s most complete Ed’s Redeeming Qualities collection – for whatever that’s worth

If you’d like to get an Ed’s album, the one you’re most likely to find is their final album, At the Fish and Game Club – I do not recommend it. It is dull and lifeless compared to their earlier releases. You probably won’t find their first two studio albums (as I don’t think they’re being made anymore), but you probably can find the live album Big Grapefruit Cleanup Job. It has some excellent tracks and is a good introduction to the band.

This week I bring you Party Balloon, from the 1992 album Prison – a posthumuous release of spoken word tracks by poet Steven Jesse Bernstein, set to music by producer Steve Fisk.

I was introduced to this album by my friend Pete right after it came out. I thought it was one of the strangest, saddest, funniest, most compelling narratives I’d ever heard. And it still is. What follows is an excerpt from the Unappreciated Album of the Month review of Prison. It’s a great review, and while it gives you a good sense of the sadness and emotional harshness of the album, it doesn’t mention the humanity and humor you’ll also find while listening to it. I picked Party Balloon as the track to highlight from the album, as it emphasizes those aspects of Bernstein’s work.

Bernstein’s published and unpublished body of work has started to surface in bound volumes over the last 10 years, but his own spoken-word recordings, rare as they are, remain somehow more vital than what stands on the printed page. His stream-of-consciousness-inspired texts are volatile, emotional works with images that writhe and twitch and pull switchblades on the reader. Bernstein’s recordings of his own work, though, are even more vicious and affecting beasts. Aside from sparse appearances on comps like the infamous Sub Pop 200, the posthumously released Prison is the only real document of this, a nuanced gem of a spoken-word record that pairs the writer’s readings with the sound collages and arrangements of Seattle musician/producer Steve Fisk.

From first breath, Prison is a strange and upsetting little document. Instead of using guitar drones or other sounds with their own inherent or apparent narratives to back Bernstein, Fisk casts the writer’s words against manipulated music that calls to mind a much different time and place. The album-opening “No No Man (Part One),” the only track on the disc completed before Bernstein’s suicide, and “This Clouded Heart” use looping pieces that could have sold kitchen appliances on black-and-white TV in the 1950s. Warped with turntable lurching and cuts, the soundtrack only makes Bernstein’s words — first-person narratives that wander around images of lust, urban decay, and self-examination — all the darker and more disorienting.

Ths will be my last blog entry until Januaray. Kai and Maria left yesterday for Denver, and I’m following them tomorrow. We’ll be staying with her folks for the holidays. I’m looking forward to skiing again for the first time in at least 10 years! I think we’ll end up having to rent a freight truck to bring back all the presents they’ll give Kai

My reading material for the flight is Philip K. Dick’s A Scanner Darkly, which is currently being adapted into a film. This will be the 8th story of his that has been made into a movie (I believe the list should include a 9th – it’s my guess that The Truman Show was “inspired by” Time Out of Joint). The movie adaptations generally steal the concepts of his stories and use them as hooks, and then just layer standard action/thriller storylines on top. But I’m not a purist – most of them have been enjoyable films, even if they’re not faithful to the source material – and it’s good to see my favorite author getting some recognition. A Scanner Darkly is being hyped as faithful to the book, so I’m particularly intrigued to see how it turns out (after I finish the book, of course!).

I want to write about what is relevant to me, what I can see in our landscape. The music brings this to mind anyway. We live in a rural area of England where the presence of the past is strong. Here, like in many parts of Italy, the past and the present exist side by side. I like my lyrics to drift backwards and forwards through time.
- Simon Jones, And Also The Trees singer and songwriter

Sometime during my first year of college (1988), I found the first And Also The Trees album, Virus Meadow, in a used record bin. I looked over the lyrics sheet and was dazzled by the strange, dreamlike imagery, so I paid a couple bucks for it and gave it a spin. I’ve been a fan ever since.

The song I picked for this week is from the 1998 album Silver Soul (the band has recently released another album, but I haven’t heard it yet). The lyrics of And Also The Trees songs are sometimes sung, and sometimes – like in this week’s song – delivered in a spoken word style. What makes this song for me is the last half, where the tempo quickens, a rhythm guitar is suddenly introduced, and the fragmentary, dreamlike narrative of the lyrics grab your attention:

I take a draught of beer from a clouded glass and look around the room:
Pawschien talking with brothers…
The men have self-made tatooed grids on their forearms
in which there are sanskrit letters.
They tell me all that they know is the obvious,
and that if I stay with them, maybe I will learn it, too.

Suede-head girls with grey eyes and clear skin,
One has a crescent scar on her cheekbone,
She looks at me with an air of smiling anticipation,
as though she’s expecting me to recognise her at any second.
Something turns inside me like a tickling thirst…
Others are watching me, too, same expression,
Then look away, laughing, shaking heads…
It’s okay, you’ll remember.

Back in the dark streets
the scent of the human night seems to hold me,
Steps muted by onion skins.
Old women sleep curled in the roots of houses,
coiled around bales and bundles of fresh herbs and babies.
Walking the wooden tunnels out of town,
All I can think is – remember your way back here -
As in the darkness, all has vanished.
Remember your way back here.

Not many bands can hold my attention year after year. But these guys have because their sound has matured and changed with each album. A fan wrote up a good summary of the phases they’ve gone through:

I think their musical career can be divided in some phases; a first one, soaked with quite typical (but very original at the time) sonorities of the cold-wave post-punk period. Sharp but never aggressive guitars, lots of chorus, delays and reverbs, powerful rhythms…The second phase of their career is a very long trip backwards into the centuries; the look (riding-boots, ruffle-shirts, vests, cut pants, scarves and long coats) and the sound both change. Keats, Byron and Shelley are awakened from their long sleep…The guitars turn into harpsichords…In 1992 Green Is The Sea is released; it is a new phase, a new musical change for the band…Within the album is placed a big piano; its chords are the basis for every song…[The 1996 album] Angelfish, a brand new musical path. Simon tells us: “Justin found this 50′s [American] guitar sound and somehow we then continued in this direction.”…Angelfish takes the listener through a long deserted street across endless open spaces; a big convertible car across the United States, town after town, leaving behind rocky mountains, dry deserts, green flatlands, muddy rivers, chaotic metropolis’ and quiet provincial towns, bars flooded with cheap beer.

Here’s the band’s official site.

I’m sure that those of you who know me well are astounded and amazed that I didn’t debut the “Song of the Week” on my blog with a Big Country song. And that I even resisted the urge for a second week. But I can resist it no longer.

This week I have for you a song that has been one of my favorites since high school: The Sailor. It is the last song on the third Big Country album, The Seer. It meant enough to me that I even sang the first half of it at my wedding reception (the first and probably last time I’ll ever sing in public).

When I started my toppa.com site, back in 1996, one of the first things I did was put up some Big Country pages (fan sites were a novelty then). I also managed the Big Country email discussion list for a few years. I no longer update my Big Country pages, but I recommend looking at the first page if you want to get a sense of why I like this band so much. At that time there were a few other fan sites as well, and we actually ended up in an email fight with Ian Grant, the band’s manager. He was threatening to go after us for copyright infringement for using the band’s logo, etc. He thought the only Big Country web site should be the official one, which of course didn’t exist yet (and wasn’t finally created until, I think, 2000). We ultimately just ignored him and he left us alone. He simply didn’t get the web at all – instead of realizing the potential for free marketing from enthusiastic fans, he just wanted us to take our sites down. The sad thing is, we probably would have done anything he wanted, except that.

Three years too late, I bring you At the Drive-In. I only started listening to these guys recently, but they apparently broke up in 2001 (a couple years ago, my friend Pat W suggested I check them out – I just got around to it…). I actually know very little about them, other than a review I just found of their last album, Relationship of Command. This week’s song, Pattern Against User, is the second song on that album.

I’d say their sound is like Fugazi’s, but more dense, with no pretense of minimalism. Lyrically, the closest thing I can think of is Skinny Puppy. That’s right…compare the lyrical style of, say, Hexonxonx (Skinny Puppy’s ode to the Exxon Valdez) to One Armed Scissor, and you’ll see what I mean.

Sorry for the short review. I’ve been sick the past few days and my brain ain’t workin’ so well right now…