I love the films of Francois Truffaut, the ones I've seen (and thanks to TCM, I've seen a couple more that I hadn't previously viewed, as well enjoyed a couple of old favorites). I like what his buddy Jean-Luc Godard did with cinema, don't get me wrong. But if I want to sit back and enjoy a good movie with subtitles that doesn't involve violent Hong Kong-set gunplay a 'la John Woo, it's Truffaut for me, hands down.
Like I said TCM has been showing Truffaut movies all this month on Friday nights...which, as next week is when August starts, means that if you didn't know about it already and wanted to see what I'm talking about, you might be out of luck (I'm sure all his stuff is on Netflix). I wasn't stoked about The Soft Skin when I saw it was on at eight to start one of the Friday nights, but it's not half bad (and the guy royally gets it in the end, a hallmark of all Truffaut movies where a "happy ending" usually proves elusive, but not as much as in Godard). I couldn't stay awake for Two English Girls, thanks in large part to Jules and Jim coming on before it. I doubt I'd care to go through all the trouble Jules and Jim do with Catherine (who's a little bat-shit crazy, truth be told), but I'll gladly watch them go through it for me. Shoot the Piano Player, one of my favorites, was on at four in the morning and, try that I might, I'm not getting up any earlier than seven-thirty on a Saturday.
Last night was, well, the last night, and it started off with what may be Truffaut's best film, Day for Night. It's a movie about a movie being made (in this case, a melodrama that wouldn't be much for any director's career, be he founding figure of an artistic movement like the French New Wave or just another Michael Bay wannabe), and most of the drama takes place away from the cameras filming the story in the movie, Meet Pamela. The lead actor is a spoiled brat, the main actress is a basket-case, the older male lead a closeted homosexual, and the secondary female lead an alcoholic who can't remember her lines. Guiding them is Truffaut himself, playing the director (Godard famously wrote Truffaut a letter about how the director was the only character who didn't sleep with anyone. Truffaut was well-known for sleeping with his leading ladies, he got pissed at Godard, and they never talked again). It's not snobby or pretentious like many Americans think foreign movies are (and truthfully, apart from some films that marry politics and cinema a little too fervently, a lot of foreign movies are just American except in language. Trust me, no one emulates the politics of Battleship Potemkin but they all crib from the Odessa Steppes scene. Does anyone steal anything from the movie Battleship? Doubt it). It's just a bunch of people stuck together, trying to make a movie (nothing artsy, just something that will return on its investment), and struggling with all the things that can go wrong. It's funny, too.
I think I respond to Truffaut more on an emotional level because he came from a situation I know personally (and which, when I find it out about a celebrity or artist, does make me more attune to what they're trying to do): he grew up without a father. Sure, the guy who gave him his name (his step-father) was around, when he and Truffaut's mother weren't mountain-climbing. Truffaut found out later that his real father was Jewish, information that could've been a death sentence in Nazi-occupied France. It was art that saved Truffaut, much as art saved another fatherless son, John Lennon. I understand that Godard might be more "important" or "influential" in film, and I do enjoy quite a few of his movies (Weekend deserves special mention for its cannibal hippies who dress like they stepped off the cover of Sgt. Pepper, but I wouldn't recommend it for family movie night). But I love Truffaut's movies, not all of them (The Bride Wore Black isn't much more than him trying to be Hitchcock, and it's not that good), but quite a few of them. They're sentimental at times, hokey at others, but for moments like Antoine Doinel riding the gravity-pull ride in The 400 Blows, Catherine Deneuve visiting her in-hiding husband in the bowels of their theater in The Last Metro, or the scene that immediately follows the cliched line "if I'm lying, may God strike my mother down" in Shoot the Piano Player, you can't beat Truffaut. It's a shame that he died so young, at fifty-two, of a brain tumor. He should be around now, making more movies. But the ones he did made are worth seeking out. Trust me on that one.
Saturday, July 27, 2013
Tuesday, July 23, 2013
The Ramones, "Surfing Bird"
As I've said before, I'm not a musician. I'd love to be able to play an instrument or sing (or both), but my best efforts at either endeavor have drawn more attention for their lack of what most people call "talent" than anything else. Granted, I can flatter myself that, in my head at least, it sounds exactly like what I'd like it to sound like. But chances are that the best I can manage is some sort of "American Idol" what-the-hell audition-quality performance. I'm no William Hung, but I might not be far off.
That said, I do have some small music-performance triumphs in my past. When I was in my teens, I located an old drum set that had belonged to one of my uncles and set it up on the hill in the backyard of my grandparents' home. I could keep a decent beat so long as I was playing the same beat (it sounded that way to me, anyway), and to this day I find myself drumming along to whatever song is playing in my head (it must sound like a cacophany to anyone around me). Also, a few nights back I could've sworn that I plucked out the last mournful part of the melody of the 400 Blows theme at the beginning of the film, on my cousin Sebastian's guitar. Seb is eight, by the way, and his guitar looks more like a ukelele. But still...I think it sounded close to what you hear as the opening credits fade and Truffaut's masterpiece starts up. Someday I might have a go at replicating the theme to The Third Man on guitar, that already sounds weird enough for me to manage.
But when my niece was born, in an attempt to bond with her or put her to sleep one day (I can't remember which), the song "Surfing Bird" (or "Surfin' Bird," as it's also known) got stuck in my head so I started singing it to her. It kinda became our song, because every time after that when I wanted to get an easy laugh from her, I'd start doing the "papa-ooh-maw-maw" and watch her giggle and smile at her tone-deaf uncle trying to sing the Trashmen's classic ode to avian water-sports. Of course, the song became part of the single greatest first act of any Family Guy episode, when Peter tortured his family by playing the song at all hours until Stewie and Brian couldn't take it anymore. So I'm in pretty good company.
The Ramones were the best of America's pure punk bands (and the fact that three-fourths of them are dead is not comforting unless you consider that God might want one hell of a band in heaven), and on their album Rocket to Russia they cover "Surfing Bird." I had to buy this album when I saw it on the track listing. Had to. The Ramones have a pretty good track record with covers ("Needles and Pins" never sounded better, and Joey's cover of "What a Wonderful World" might be the best version), and "Surfing Bird" doesn't disappoint. It's just a fun, goofy, stupid-ass song that works wonderfully either as a punk band's "are they joking?" album ender or for a musicially-challenged uncle trying to entertain his beautiful niece.
Some of these song reviews are about serious songs, or "serious songs"; there's nothing serious about "Surfing Bird," no hidden meanings or messages (it's a song about a surfing bird, for Pete's sake). But for dumb no-thinking fun, it's hard to beat (though the B-52's "Rock Lobster" deserves a mention, as it was also central to a great Family Guy moment). Yeah, I can't play any instrument, and my singing would make deaf people cringe and run for cover. But my niece seems to like it just fine when I start asking if she's heard that the bird is the word, and sometimes that's more than enough.
That said, I do have some small music-performance triumphs in my past. When I was in my teens, I located an old drum set that had belonged to one of my uncles and set it up on the hill in the backyard of my grandparents' home. I could keep a decent beat so long as I was playing the same beat (it sounded that way to me, anyway), and to this day I find myself drumming along to whatever song is playing in my head (it must sound like a cacophany to anyone around me). Also, a few nights back I could've sworn that I plucked out the last mournful part of the melody of the 400 Blows theme at the beginning of the film, on my cousin Sebastian's guitar. Seb is eight, by the way, and his guitar looks more like a ukelele. But still...I think it sounded close to what you hear as the opening credits fade and Truffaut's masterpiece starts up. Someday I might have a go at replicating the theme to The Third Man on guitar, that already sounds weird enough for me to manage.
But when my niece was born, in an attempt to bond with her or put her to sleep one day (I can't remember which), the song "Surfing Bird" (or "Surfin' Bird," as it's also known) got stuck in my head so I started singing it to her. It kinda became our song, because every time after that when I wanted to get an easy laugh from her, I'd start doing the "papa-ooh-maw-maw" and watch her giggle and smile at her tone-deaf uncle trying to sing the Trashmen's classic ode to avian water-sports. Of course, the song became part of the single greatest first act of any Family Guy episode, when Peter tortured his family by playing the song at all hours until Stewie and Brian couldn't take it anymore. So I'm in pretty good company.
The Ramones were the best of America's pure punk bands (and the fact that three-fourths of them are dead is not comforting unless you consider that God might want one hell of a band in heaven), and on their album Rocket to Russia they cover "Surfing Bird." I had to buy this album when I saw it on the track listing. Had to. The Ramones have a pretty good track record with covers ("Needles and Pins" never sounded better, and Joey's cover of "What a Wonderful World" might be the best version), and "Surfing Bird" doesn't disappoint. It's just a fun, goofy, stupid-ass song that works wonderfully either as a punk band's "are they joking?" album ender or for a musicially-challenged uncle trying to entertain his beautiful niece.
Some of these song reviews are about serious songs, or "serious songs"; there's nothing serious about "Surfing Bird," no hidden meanings or messages (it's a song about a surfing bird, for Pete's sake). But for dumb no-thinking fun, it's hard to beat (though the B-52's "Rock Lobster" deserves a mention, as it was also central to a great Family Guy moment). Yeah, I can't play any instrument, and my singing would make deaf people cringe and run for cover. But my niece seems to like it just fine when I start asking if she's heard that the bird is the word, and sometimes that's more than enough.
Sunday, July 21, 2013
Simon and Garfunkel, "The Boxer"
I saw The Graduate as an impressionable teenager and, much like the hero of (500) Days of Summer, I misread it on first viewing. I didn't see in the ending (which is famous, by the way, though I won't spoil it for anyone who hasn't seen the film yet) all the uncertainty with adult life that the characters Ben and Elaine faced, as they fled from everything they'd known previously with at best a brief idea of who the other person was. The songs of Simon and Garfunkel dominated the soundtrack (the propulsive, mostly instrumental version of "Mrs. Robinson" that played as Ben drove up and down California looking for Elaine was hard to get out of my head when I was driving, primarily because my first car didn't have a working radio), and while I was familiar with their stuff, I wouldn't say that I was a fan necessarily. I liked "The Sound of Silence," and "I Am a Rock" was good, but a lot of their stuff sounded a little cheesy to me. It was probably their folk leanings (they had been caught up in that movement thanks to early Bob Dylan, but once he went electric so did they) which sounded wispy and a little wimpy to a kid who rocked out to the Who. But gradually, over the years, I developed a grudging admiration for the work of Paul Simon, with and without his white-boy-Afro-ed partner in crime.
"The Boxer" is one of those songs that I discovered thanks to a friend, though I'd been aware of it before. It's funny how, when you care about someone, sometimes you raid their cultural preferences for things that you might like yourself, either to ingratiate yourselves with them or because you genuinely feel drawn to that particular artifact. I'd bought a Genesis best-of under the sway of this new acquaintance (who had simply mentioned once that she like Phil Collins), but I was hesitant about going in for S&G in all their close-harmony glory. I made the call to pay for the "best of" CD if I ever came across it used, and so when I did see it in a record store I had to put up or shut up.
I have mellowed in my musical tastes as I've gotten older, and the guy who listened to punk rock exclusively was never really "just" listening to the Sex Pistols or the Clash (I seem to remember that guy also having a hidden affinity for ABBA, too, though he would probably deny it out of some misguided sense of machismo). Simon and Garfunkel didn't really do it for me as a teenager, aside from the context of Dustin Hoffman wondering if Anne Bannecroft was trying to seduce him, but now they seem just right.
And while I have other songs that are my favorites ("Kodachrome" and "Me and Julio Down By the Schoolyard" stand out solo-Simon-wise, for example), I do like "The Boxer." Whether it's just because a certain someone likes it or because I came to identify with the narrator of the song as events have transpired in my life, I can't say. But if a song moves you, it moves you. It is what it is.
"The Boxer" is one of those songs that I discovered thanks to a friend, though I'd been aware of it before. It's funny how, when you care about someone, sometimes you raid their cultural preferences for things that you might like yourself, either to ingratiate yourselves with them or because you genuinely feel drawn to that particular artifact. I'd bought a Genesis best-of under the sway of this new acquaintance (who had simply mentioned once that she like Phil Collins), but I was hesitant about going in for S&G in all their close-harmony glory. I made the call to pay for the "best of" CD if I ever came across it used, and so when I did see it in a record store I had to put up or shut up.
I have mellowed in my musical tastes as I've gotten older, and the guy who listened to punk rock exclusively was never really "just" listening to the Sex Pistols or the Clash (I seem to remember that guy also having a hidden affinity for ABBA, too, though he would probably deny it out of some misguided sense of machismo). Simon and Garfunkel didn't really do it for me as a teenager, aside from the context of Dustin Hoffman wondering if Anne Bannecroft was trying to seduce him, but now they seem just right.
And while I have other songs that are my favorites ("Kodachrome" and "Me and Julio Down By the Schoolyard" stand out solo-Simon-wise, for example), I do like "The Boxer." Whether it's just because a certain someone likes it or because I came to identify with the narrator of the song as events have transpired in my life, I can't say. But if a song moves you, it moves you. It is what it is.
Wednesday, July 10, 2013
The Who, "Behind Blue Eyes"
If I haven't said it before, I'll say it again: for my money, the Who are the greatest rock band of all time. Sure, there's the Rolling Stones (I was late to the party on that one, their post-1978 work for the most part has been more miss than hit but I acknowledge the greatness of that period between "Paint It, Black" and "Start Me Up"), and a little band out of Liverpool that happen to be my favorite recording group of all time. But in terms of melting your face with music, I can't think of anything better than the windmill theatcrics of Pete Townshend, the unbridled glory and fury of Keith Moon behind the drum kit, the deceptively restrained bass lines of John Entwistle, and the ear-piercing soul of Roger Daltrey. A better band there never was when they were at their peak (roughly 1966 to 1978, when Moon took one trip too many and ended up gone before his time).
I was a convert to the Who when I was in high school, I got into their Mod period from the early Sixties pretty heavily. I liked the smart fashions they wore (their 1965 look is less ridiculous than the way a lot of bands dress now), and I desperately wanted a Union Jack jacket like Townshend wore in many of the publicity photos of the band from that era. I was hesitant to embrace the later "stadium rock" incarnation of the band, the era that provided countless opening-credits songs to various offshoots of CSI, but you can only resist the awesomeness that is Who's Next for so long. But it was on that album that I encountered the one Who song I will never embrace to my bosom, no matter how much time passes. And I have no idea why that is.
I think I've talked here before about songs I love from bands I hate or dislike; "Behind Blue Eyes" is the song I hate from a band that I love. I'm not sure why it is, necessarily. It could be the "Stairway to Heaven" factor, where a song is celebrated for the explosiveness at its end but also contains a lengthy build-up section that goes on and on (kinda like foreplay...ooh, Freudian territory there) and just leaves me unsatisfied. Perhaps it's the identification with a villain as the narrator of the song (the tune came from the abandoned Lifehouse rock opera, a follow-up to Tommy that was ten times as ambitious and therefore unlikely to be realized), but I have read books and listened to songs and watched movies where the main guy, the guy we are supposed to root for, is a bad egg. Alex in Clockwork Orange comes to mind, and I love the moral ambiguity of the movie (resolved too easily in the book, in my opinion, by the onset of maturity) in which the hero's evil acts are somehow less so compared to the machinations of the state. So really, it can't be that. Why do I hate it so?
The answer might simply be that I do, the same way that "A Quick One (While He's Away)," the live version that the Who did at the Stones' "Rock and Roll Circus" and which later turned up on The Kids Are Alright is my all-time favorite Who song. Sometimes you can over-intellectualize why you respond to something or someone the way that you do. Sometimes it's just a matter of catching it at the right time; perhaps if I'd been more receptive of the themes in The Godfather (or hadn't seen the last movie in the trilogy first, thanks to that one year we had HBO legit), I'd be able to call it my favorite movie of all time (it isn't; the answer seems to change year to year but overall the original Star Wars trilogy could probably claim that title in my heart of hearts). But The Godfather to me is a great film, just not one of my favorites.
"Behind Blue Eyes" is the story of the villain of Lifehouse, how he's been pushed to his dastardly deeds because people perceive him as evil, and he has to live up to it. In that sense, he's more in line with Pinky Brown from Brighton Rock, a killer who's reluctant to do so because the wages of sin weigh him down. In the movies where the bad guys know they're bad guys, you always come away rooting for their downfall. But in the movies where the bad guy is a Hans Gruber from the original Die Hard (his greed more than anything defines him as evil, but other than being a killer he's quite charming and you almost want to root for him to get away at least), it's harder to seperate yourself from the moral abyss. In Star Wars, of course, Anakin Skywalker was simply trying to protect the woman he loved from his nightmarish vision of her death in childbirth; you could argue that the evil he does was rooted in a noble cause. Bad guys like that fascinate us not because they're evil, but because they don't know they're doing evil, not until the last minute. Sometimes an actor likes to ham it up as the bad guy (God love him, Anthony Hopkins literally sunk his teeth into the Hannibal Lector role), but the bad guys that remain in the mind long after, the ones that are truly troubling, are the ones you feel a little sympathy for after it's all said and done. Maybe that's why "Blue Eyes" draws my ire: I can see why the bad guy is the bad guy, even if I deplore his actions.
Real life, of course, is more complicated; you have bad guys for sure (Hitler springs to mind, hard to find anyone who ever mistook him for a wounded soul. He was just evil, greedy and morally evil), but sometimes the good guys aren't so squeaky-clean. If you follow sports at all, you know this for a fact. Lance Armstrong is simply the most recent in a long list of sports stars who sold a counterfeit image of "wholesomeness" that was so far removed from who they really are. Maybe that's why I hate "Blue Eyes," because it doesn't make it easy to hate the villain, because when you hear it in his own words, you begin to understand. That's what the bad guy wants, of course; that's how he can ultimately win. The old line from Donald Sutherland about the Devil in Paradise Lost applies here and in other narratives of violence and death: the most interesting character is the bad guy.
Chuck Klosterman has written a whole book on the subject of bad guys, I'm gonna buy it eventually (probably the weekend, after I get paid), and I'm guessing he goes into way more detail about the nature of villainy in his book than I can get to in one blog entry. But I thought I could lend my voice to the discussion, via the song I hate the most from the band I love above all others save the Beatles. Because sympathy for the Devil is easy to avoid when you're younger and more naive about how the world really works.
I was a convert to the Who when I was in high school, I got into their Mod period from the early Sixties pretty heavily. I liked the smart fashions they wore (their 1965 look is less ridiculous than the way a lot of bands dress now), and I desperately wanted a Union Jack jacket like Townshend wore in many of the publicity photos of the band from that era. I was hesitant to embrace the later "stadium rock" incarnation of the band, the era that provided countless opening-credits songs to various offshoots of CSI, but you can only resist the awesomeness that is Who's Next for so long. But it was on that album that I encountered the one Who song I will never embrace to my bosom, no matter how much time passes. And I have no idea why that is.
I think I've talked here before about songs I love from bands I hate or dislike; "Behind Blue Eyes" is the song I hate from a band that I love. I'm not sure why it is, necessarily. It could be the "Stairway to Heaven" factor, where a song is celebrated for the explosiveness at its end but also contains a lengthy build-up section that goes on and on (kinda like foreplay...ooh, Freudian territory there) and just leaves me unsatisfied. Perhaps it's the identification with a villain as the narrator of the song (the tune came from the abandoned Lifehouse rock opera, a follow-up to Tommy that was ten times as ambitious and therefore unlikely to be realized), but I have read books and listened to songs and watched movies where the main guy, the guy we are supposed to root for, is a bad egg. Alex in Clockwork Orange comes to mind, and I love the moral ambiguity of the movie (resolved too easily in the book, in my opinion, by the onset of maturity) in which the hero's evil acts are somehow less so compared to the machinations of the state. So really, it can't be that. Why do I hate it so?
The answer might simply be that I do, the same way that "A Quick One (While He's Away)," the live version that the Who did at the Stones' "Rock and Roll Circus" and which later turned up on The Kids Are Alright is my all-time favorite Who song. Sometimes you can over-intellectualize why you respond to something or someone the way that you do. Sometimes it's just a matter of catching it at the right time; perhaps if I'd been more receptive of the themes in The Godfather (or hadn't seen the last movie in the trilogy first, thanks to that one year we had HBO legit), I'd be able to call it my favorite movie of all time (it isn't; the answer seems to change year to year but overall the original Star Wars trilogy could probably claim that title in my heart of hearts). But The Godfather to me is a great film, just not one of my favorites.
"Behind Blue Eyes" is the story of the villain of Lifehouse, how he's been pushed to his dastardly deeds because people perceive him as evil, and he has to live up to it. In that sense, he's more in line with Pinky Brown from Brighton Rock, a killer who's reluctant to do so because the wages of sin weigh him down. In the movies where the bad guys know they're bad guys, you always come away rooting for their downfall. But in the movies where the bad guy is a Hans Gruber from the original Die Hard (his greed more than anything defines him as evil, but other than being a killer he's quite charming and you almost want to root for him to get away at least), it's harder to seperate yourself from the moral abyss. In Star Wars, of course, Anakin Skywalker was simply trying to protect the woman he loved from his nightmarish vision of her death in childbirth; you could argue that the evil he does was rooted in a noble cause. Bad guys like that fascinate us not because they're evil, but because they don't know they're doing evil, not until the last minute. Sometimes an actor likes to ham it up as the bad guy (God love him, Anthony Hopkins literally sunk his teeth into the Hannibal Lector role), but the bad guys that remain in the mind long after, the ones that are truly troubling, are the ones you feel a little sympathy for after it's all said and done. Maybe that's why "Blue Eyes" draws my ire: I can see why the bad guy is the bad guy, even if I deplore his actions.
Real life, of course, is more complicated; you have bad guys for sure (Hitler springs to mind, hard to find anyone who ever mistook him for a wounded soul. He was just evil, greedy and morally evil), but sometimes the good guys aren't so squeaky-clean. If you follow sports at all, you know this for a fact. Lance Armstrong is simply the most recent in a long list of sports stars who sold a counterfeit image of "wholesomeness" that was so far removed from who they really are. Maybe that's why I hate "Blue Eyes," because it doesn't make it easy to hate the villain, because when you hear it in his own words, you begin to understand. That's what the bad guy wants, of course; that's how he can ultimately win. The old line from Donald Sutherland about the Devil in Paradise Lost applies here and in other narratives of violence and death: the most interesting character is the bad guy.
Chuck Klosterman has written a whole book on the subject of bad guys, I'm gonna buy it eventually (probably the weekend, after I get paid), and I'm guessing he goes into way more detail about the nature of villainy in his book than I can get to in one blog entry. But I thought I could lend my voice to the discussion, via the song I hate the most from the band I love above all others save the Beatles. Because sympathy for the Devil is easy to avoid when you're younger and more naive about how the world really works.
Saturday, July 6, 2013
The Sounds of Summer
A quick look at what's on the radio lately:
Pink featuring Nate Reuss, "Just Give Me a Reason" - this is about the most overplayed song right now, it's decent but doesn't really bear up well to repeated listens. I can't shake the feeling that Nate is the voice of the Fairy Dad on "Fairly Oddparents" (I have cousins who watch Nick and Disney religiously, so I know more about kids's show than any thirty-three-year-old without kids should). Someone I know has this as a ringtone, so every time I hear it I look to see if someone's phone is ringing.
Robin Thicke featuring Pharrell and T.I.. "Blurred Lines" - I have to say, this is my favorite radio song so far this summer, it's very reminiscent of "Got To Give It Up" by Marvin Gaye. I understand there's a version of the video where the hot models are topless. Alas, I am much too puritanical to look for it...
Bruno Mars, "Treasure" - First time I heard this, I thought "are you fucking with us, Bruno?" I couldn't take it seriously. But I concede that I'm warming up to it. Imagine if the future of music had been Billy Ocean's "Caribbean Queen."
Mumford and Sons, "I Will Wait" - Remember when this band was new, and you couldn't wait to hear their new stuff? Yeah, that's over now.
Macklemore and Ryan Lewis...no, not even gonna pretend I can talk about them. They're the Vanilla Ice of this generation. Trust me, one or both of them will be in a reality show with Verne Troyer before it's all said and done.
The Lumineers, "Ho Hey" - They're the Mumford and Sons of 2013. I hated this song for a little while last month, but it's slowly won its way back into my heart. The follow-up single ain't too shabby either.
Emeli Sandie, "Next to Me" - Another song that would be decent if not overplayed to death. It's on pace to be this year's "Somebody That I Used to Know"
Taylor Swift, "22" - We get it, you're twenty-two. Shut the fuck up about it.
Florida Georgia Line featuring Nelly, "Cruise" - Can we all agree that this is the worst goddam song ever? Not even "worst song of the year" or "worst song of the century." Just awful, awful.
Vampire Weekend, "Diane Young" - To end on a positive note, this is not even the best song on the album (I think "Hannah Hunt" might be even better), but it's a start. Ezra Koenig and company are welcome in my CD player anytime.
Pink featuring Nate Reuss, "Just Give Me a Reason" - this is about the most overplayed song right now, it's decent but doesn't really bear up well to repeated listens. I can't shake the feeling that Nate is the voice of the Fairy Dad on "Fairly Oddparents" (I have cousins who watch Nick and Disney religiously, so I know more about kids's show than any thirty-three-year-old without kids should). Someone I know has this as a ringtone, so every time I hear it I look to see if someone's phone is ringing.
Robin Thicke featuring Pharrell and T.I.. "Blurred Lines" - I have to say, this is my favorite radio song so far this summer, it's very reminiscent of "Got To Give It Up" by Marvin Gaye. I understand there's a version of the video where the hot models are topless. Alas, I am much too puritanical to look for it...
Bruno Mars, "Treasure" - First time I heard this, I thought "are you fucking with us, Bruno?" I couldn't take it seriously. But I concede that I'm warming up to it. Imagine if the future of music had been Billy Ocean's "Caribbean Queen."
Mumford and Sons, "I Will Wait" - Remember when this band was new, and you couldn't wait to hear their new stuff? Yeah, that's over now.
Macklemore and Ryan Lewis...no, not even gonna pretend I can talk about them. They're the Vanilla Ice of this generation. Trust me, one or both of them will be in a reality show with Verne Troyer before it's all said and done.
The Lumineers, "Ho Hey" - They're the Mumford and Sons of 2013. I hated this song for a little while last month, but it's slowly won its way back into my heart. The follow-up single ain't too shabby either.
Emeli Sandie, "Next to Me" - Another song that would be decent if not overplayed to death. It's on pace to be this year's "Somebody That I Used to Know"
Taylor Swift, "22" - We get it, you're twenty-two. Shut the fuck up about it.
Florida Georgia Line featuring Nelly, "Cruise" - Can we all agree that this is the worst goddam song ever? Not even "worst song of the year" or "worst song of the century." Just awful, awful.
Vampire Weekend, "Diane Young" - To end on a positive note, this is not even the best song on the album (I think "Hannah Hunt" might be even better), but it's a start. Ezra Koenig and company are welcome in my CD player anytime.
Saturday, June 29, 2013
Ed Sheeran, "Lego House"
When I think of Ed Sheeran, I think of Van Morrison. It's hard not to, the physical resemblences are hard to miss: both are red-headed Irish guys (Morrison was born in Ireland, Sheeran is English-born but of Irish descent), Ed looks like a young Van facially, and both are singer-songwriters. Superficial, yes, but pop music is nothing if not superficial at least on the surface (I feel like that last thought could have been culled from Yogi Berra).
The dude shot to fame with that song about the crack whore (yes, if you pay attention to the lyrics, it's a lovely tune about crack addiction), but I like his follow-up single "Lego House" better, especially the music video that combines the actual music video his record company made (starring Ron Weasley) and a fan-made video out of, well, Lego animation. It's kind of a trip.
It's one of those songs that gives you hope, in a landscape dominated by Train and Nicki Minaj and Taylor Swift (all artists who, while not necessarily terrible, are a little overplayed on the radio, as I'm sure Mr. Sheeran will be before I finish typing this sentence). It's a song that you can actually relate to, that isn't about partying all the time but about the fragile nature of interpersonal relationships. Because you know what? Those can break down at any time.
Facebook is both a blessing and a curse, in that you can share everything about yourself with total strangers but you can share everything about yourself with perfect strangers. I've seen it numerous times and been guilty of it myself, enough to feel like privacy is almost more of a choice than a right in the digital age. We live in a time where you are almost expected to divulge everything you're thinking or going through on social media, and while that can be healing it can also lead to places you don't want to go. You can vent about someone or something that "did" you "wrong," and you'll feel good for about five minutes until you realize that the other person or entity might see that, and you have to deal with the repercussions. That's why I've backed off talking so much about personal things on Facebook or other social media, unless I have the assurance of anonymity that is all too rare in the information age.
Suffice it to say, a friendship is broken, and in the past my efforts to fix it would've led to simply more hurt feelings and the all-too-common occurance of an absence in my life where once there was a presence that I might not have realized could be gone. Just because you're hurt doesn't give you the license to take it out on who hurt you, even if (like I said) it makes you feel better for about five minutes. The world can be a crazy, scary place, and if you're lucky you can have people in your life that will see you at your worst and still be ready to call you a friend. This has really gotten away from the song I was talking about, but that's how these things go sometimes; you start off in one direction then you go down a side street. I think that's what makes music so important to me and others like me, it helps bring you to places you might not otherwise go. As I've heard "Lego House" on the radio or seen the video on TV this past month, I've been more than happy to let it wash over me, clean out the areas of my brain polluted by my own self-doubts and recriminations over actions that hurt someone I care about and for which I am truly sorry.
So I'd like to think that, when I hear this song again (and it's beginning to get regular rotation, so it's a certainty), I'll feel that same sense of regret tinged with happiness for what once was and could have been. I don't know what the future holds, but I look towards it anyway. And Ed Sheeran, whatever else he does with his career (he might have the longetivity of a Van Morrison, or the brief flicker of so many other bright young songwriters before him), has left me with a song that I can listen for and to when life seems overwhelming, and that's a good thing.
The dude shot to fame with that song about the crack whore (yes, if you pay attention to the lyrics, it's a lovely tune about crack addiction), but I like his follow-up single "Lego House" better, especially the music video that combines the actual music video his record company made (starring Ron Weasley) and a fan-made video out of, well, Lego animation. It's kind of a trip.
It's one of those songs that gives you hope, in a landscape dominated by Train and Nicki Minaj and Taylor Swift (all artists who, while not necessarily terrible, are a little overplayed on the radio, as I'm sure Mr. Sheeran will be before I finish typing this sentence). It's a song that you can actually relate to, that isn't about partying all the time but about the fragile nature of interpersonal relationships. Because you know what? Those can break down at any time.
Facebook is both a blessing and a curse, in that you can share everything about yourself with total strangers but you can share everything about yourself with perfect strangers. I've seen it numerous times and been guilty of it myself, enough to feel like privacy is almost more of a choice than a right in the digital age. We live in a time where you are almost expected to divulge everything you're thinking or going through on social media, and while that can be healing it can also lead to places you don't want to go. You can vent about someone or something that "did" you "wrong," and you'll feel good for about five minutes until you realize that the other person or entity might see that, and you have to deal with the repercussions. That's why I've backed off talking so much about personal things on Facebook or other social media, unless I have the assurance of anonymity that is all too rare in the information age.
Suffice it to say, a friendship is broken, and in the past my efforts to fix it would've led to simply more hurt feelings and the all-too-common occurance of an absence in my life where once there was a presence that I might not have realized could be gone. Just because you're hurt doesn't give you the license to take it out on who hurt you, even if (like I said) it makes you feel better for about five minutes. The world can be a crazy, scary place, and if you're lucky you can have people in your life that will see you at your worst and still be ready to call you a friend. This has really gotten away from the song I was talking about, but that's how these things go sometimes; you start off in one direction then you go down a side street. I think that's what makes music so important to me and others like me, it helps bring you to places you might not otherwise go. As I've heard "Lego House" on the radio or seen the video on TV this past month, I've been more than happy to let it wash over me, clean out the areas of my brain polluted by my own self-doubts and recriminations over actions that hurt someone I care about and for which I am truly sorry.
So I'd like to think that, when I hear this song again (and it's beginning to get regular rotation, so it's a certainty), I'll feel that same sense of regret tinged with happiness for what once was and could have been. I don't know what the future holds, but I look towards it anyway. And Ed Sheeran, whatever else he does with his career (he might have the longetivity of a Van Morrison, or the brief flicker of so many other bright young songwriters before him), has left me with a song that I can listen for and to when life seems overwhelming, and that's a good thing.
Tuesday, June 18, 2013
The Decemberists, "Grace Cathedral Hill (Live)"
Some people have church; I have bookstores.
I realize some people will find that blasphemy, but it's true; my place of worship is amongst a row of dusty old paperbacks or brand-new hardbacks that someone read once, or bought for a friend who didn't want it, or just wanted to give back after enjoying said book and hope that someone else would find it amongst the stacks of other volumes and give it a try. There are few such places where I feel like I can spend hours (literally; ask anyone in my family who's ever made the mistake of accompanying me to Books-A-Million or a thrift store in the past, they'll testify to that) just roaming around, looking for something in particular or nothing in general. It's pretty damn relaxing too, if you're in good with the owner of a small bookshop and they let you use the restroom if you have to.
Every Saturday, it seems, I go out early to enjoy a day hitting up various locales in the greater Clemson/Anderson area. After a long week at work or in my personal life, it's my own mini-vacation. Sometimes I have a book in mind that I'm looking for, but more often than not I'm just winging it, seeing what's out there and hoping to stumble across something that will divert me for a few hours, entertain me or educate me (or both). I've been a reader for as long as I can remember, it's one of the things I got from my mom. And it's something that I wonder about sometimes.
To be a reader, a real dedicated reader of books (not just fiction, but non-fiction, essay collections, science books, sports books, and so on), you have to be comfortable with being alone for large chunks of time. Readers are not necessarily social creatures. We tend to hide away from fun, natural light, and conversations. We're happiest, it seems, thrust into a fictional world that only exists on the printed (or electronic) page but which comes alive in our vivid imaginations. Bookstores, however, almost force us out of our shells, because we have to be polite when we ask someone who's standing between us and that Graham Greene novel we want to move out of our way. Or we could just wait till they move on to the James Patterson section, whatevs. To each their own.
The Decemberists seem like a "literary band," which is a nice way of saying "educated douchebags with guitars," because most bands are just douchebags with guitars (tell me you don't die a little inside when you read about how Keith Moon was an abusive prick away from the drum set or that Jim Morrison really believed his poetry was good. Tell me that doesn't make you re-think celebrity hero-worship). But I like what I've heard of them, and "Grace Cathedral Hill," the live version off their live album, made me think of this topic when I was driving to work today. There's a difference between being lonely and loneliness, and to me bookstores (be them big chain places like BAM, where I'm more likely to cruise around the pop-culture or sports sections, or the little neck-of-the-woods places like McClure's or McDowell's) are ways of being alone together, with fellow converts to the religion of the printed word.
McClure's is in Clemson, off the main drag and full of goodies in all the subjects I love. Back when I needed money, I'd take in books there for sale or donations, and sometimes I still see books that I had to part with (or was all too happy to be rid of, in some cases) still on the shelf, waiting for a second (or third, or fourth) home. It's usually a good way to kill time if I have a particularly brief lunch and still have time before going back to work. McDowell's is more for the weekends, because it's in Anderson and way past the mall (which has BAM now). It's this little house just off the highway, a co-worker told me about it and when I found it I was in reader-heaven. It's literally stuffed with books, you can't turn around without finding more than you thought could be in a particular section. If the term "book-gasm" doesn't exist, it should to describe both McClure's and McDowell's. And no, I wasn't paid for those endorsements.
Of course, there are other book-buying areas out there; I sometimes stop at a spot just before you get into Anderson, it's more geared towards mystery-book readers and so, but their tiny non-fiction section has yielded some wonderful finds (and I was a little miffed when I saw a copy of Inherent Vice, which I'd bought new elsewhere, there on the used fiction shelf last weekend). If I have to go to Easley for any reason, I usually stop in a place that's next to the railroad tracks. Odd thing is, every book I've bought there usually ends up unread and donated elsewhere (the trend began when the owner was kind enough to let me use the facilities and, common courtesy being what it is, I bought a copy of The Guns of August even though I'd read it, just to be nice. Ever since, when I get home with a book that I bought there, I automatically lose interest. I don't know why). There are chain bookstores, of course: BAM, which used to be in a shady strip mall in Anderson before it moved into the Mall and got nicer (but I miss the old, seedy location); and Booksmith, in Seneca, which has been more of a lurking destination than a buying one (though I occasionally do feel like committing to a purchase).
You might think I'm wasting gas and money, and you could be right. None of the books I've bought and read have led me to a higher-paying job, a relationship with a beautiful woman who finds my Monty Python-quoting hilarious, or much else that I might want. But until any or all of those things do occur, I can always get away from my troubles for a few hours every Saturday, whether I buy anything or not. Religious experience? Perhaps.
I realize some people will find that blasphemy, but it's true; my place of worship is amongst a row of dusty old paperbacks or brand-new hardbacks that someone read once, or bought for a friend who didn't want it, or just wanted to give back after enjoying said book and hope that someone else would find it amongst the stacks of other volumes and give it a try. There are few such places where I feel like I can spend hours (literally; ask anyone in my family who's ever made the mistake of accompanying me to Books-A-Million or a thrift store in the past, they'll testify to that) just roaming around, looking for something in particular or nothing in general. It's pretty damn relaxing too, if you're in good with the owner of a small bookshop and they let you use the restroom if you have to.
Every Saturday, it seems, I go out early to enjoy a day hitting up various locales in the greater Clemson/Anderson area. After a long week at work or in my personal life, it's my own mini-vacation. Sometimes I have a book in mind that I'm looking for, but more often than not I'm just winging it, seeing what's out there and hoping to stumble across something that will divert me for a few hours, entertain me or educate me (or both). I've been a reader for as long as I can remember, it's one of the things I got from my mom. And it's something that I wonder about sometimes.
To be a reader, a real dedicated reader of books (not just fiction, but non-fiction, essay collections, science books, sports books, and so on), you have to be comfortable with being alone for large chunks of time. Readers are not necessarily social creatures. We tend to hide away from fun, natural light, and conversations. We're happiest, it seems, thrust into a fictional world that only exists on the printed (or electronic) page but which comes alive in our vivid imaginations. Bookstores, however, almost force us out of our shells, because we have to be polite when we ask someone who's standing between us and that Graham Greene novel we want to move out of our way. Or we could just wait till they move on to the James Patterson section, whatevs. To each their own.
The Decemberists seem like a "literary band," which is a nice way of saying "educated douchebags with guitars," because most bands are just douchebags with guitars (tell me you don't die a little inside when you read about how Keith Moon was an abusive prick away from the drum set or that Jim Morrison really believed his poetry was good. Tell me that doesn't make you re-think celebrity hero-worship). But I like what I've heard of them, and "Grace Cathedral Hill," the live version off their live album, made me think of this topic when I was driving to work today. There's a difference between being lonely and loneliness, and to me bookstores (be them big chain places like BAM, where I'm more likely to cruise around the pop-culture or sports sections, or the little neck-of-the-woods places like McClure's or McDowell's) are ways of being alone together, with fellow converts to the religion of the printed word.
McClure's is in Clemson, off the main drag and full of goodies in all the subjects I love. Back when I needed money, I'd take in books there for sale or donations, and sometimes I still see books that I had to part with (or was all too happy to be rid of, in some cases) still on the shelf, waiting for a second (or third, or fourth) home. It's usually a good way to kill time if I have a particularly brief lunch and still have time before going back to work. McDowell's is more for the weekends, because it's in Anderson and way past the mall (which has BAM now). It's this little house just off the highway, a co-worker told me about it and when I found it I was in reader-heaven. It's literally stuffed with books, you can't turn around without finding more than you thought could be in a particular section. If the term "book-gasm" doesn't exist, it should to describe both McClure's and McDowell's. And no, I wasn't paid for those endorsements.
Of course, there are other book-buying areas out there; I sometimes stop at a spot just before you get into Anderson, it's more geared towards mystery-book readers and so, but their tiny non-fiction section has yielded some wonderful finds (and I was a little miffed when I saw a copy of Inherent Vice, which I'd bought new elsewhere, there on the used fiction shelf last weekend). If I have to go to Easley for any reason, I usually stop in a place that's next to the railroad tracks. Odd thing is, every book I've bought there usually ends up unread and donated elsewhere (the trend began when the owner was kind enough to let me use the facilities and, common courtesy being what it is, I bought a copy of The Guns of August even though I'd read it, just to be nice. Ever since, when I get home with a book that I bought there, I automatically lose interest. I don't know why). There are chain bookstores, of course: BAM, which used to be in a shady strip mall in Anderson before it moved into the Mall and got nicer (but I miss the old, seedy location); and Booksmith, in Seneca, which has been more of a lurking destination than a buying one (though I occasionally do feel like committing to a purchase).
You might think I'm wasting gas and money, and you could be right. None of the books I've bought and read have led me to a higher-paying job, a relationship with a beautiful woman who finds my Monty Python-quoting hilarious, or much else that I might want. But until any or all of those things do occur, I can always get away from my troubles for a few hours every Saturday, whether I buy anything or not. Religious experience? Perhaps.
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