Thursday, May 8, 2008
Toronto Again
posted by well-executed buffet at 11:29 PM
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Wednesday, May 7, 2008
Erykah et Melisande: Two Nights in Toronto
The ICRS featured long hours in a hotel ballroom. It was a very interesting affair that I will be considering for some time. But that will be the subject of another post. My job here is to talk about how I had two very fine and complementary musical experiences just blocks away from my hotel.
On the first night I went from a 50th floor bar social of my fellow members of the refurbishing community to Massey Hall to see Erykah Badu on the only Canadian date of her current tour. Massey Hall is an impressive rock of a structure with an impressive history. It is one of the coolest of classic auditoriums I have been in. The walls in the bar downstairs document the first 100 years of its 114 year history. I'm kind of thinking its accurate to say that the Massey saw most of the great stars of last century from Caruso to top pop artists of every decade.
And I'm also told you can order drinks before the first set to be ready for you at intermission. That's very cool.
Tonight was going to be lovely history too. Badu's latest album is the best new album I have heard in months and months. It is her right punch to adjust the career. I love this record. Surprisingly, she did only four numbers (maybe five) from Amerykah Pt 1. They were really strong, but Erykah is smart not to put too much of any one brand out for too long.
The band took a while to get organized. The back singers are all women who look like hip hop Raelettes. They have tight cream envelope slip dresses with orange scarves on them grabbing to outside or inside hip and beyond. They are paramilitary in their deliberation in V formation outside to into the central Erykah zone with her monopod keyboard on one side and table with her shakers, Mac notebook for loud sample cues mainly, and clear liquid that she drank from the cup lid of her red thermos that had some kind of Erykah logo on it.
As I said Amerykah povided the framework for her to go off and do her diva sequence as stylish as Josephine Baker or Lena Horne. She did this number with beach balls and streamers that I've been thinking about long after the performance. Her last note of the evening was this high perfect intense one feeling almost like the whole evening was designed to that moment. This show was a treasure.
I love Tristan and Isolde. And Fellini and Bergman films. This combination can all be found in Debussy's Peleas et Melisande. I love the half gurgle themes bubbling off and becoming something unexpected bumping off of some more big notes or spaces. I appreciate taking overwrought Romantic stuff with a capital R to far extremes here. I first heard this opera on a Met broadcast 24 years ago. Reading libretto to the opera revealed how truly goofy the symbolism was but how mysterious and special it was too.
I had the most remarkable $20 seat in the world purchased three hours before curtain. They claimed it had obscure view but that only meant that part of the first well scene was cut off. Big Deal.
The soprano, whose name escapes me, is credited as doing the vocals at the end of the second Lord of the Rings movies. She was impressive, but so too was the entire production which had some diverse things happening on stage. Gounod the cuckhold paranoid wandered around in an outfit that looked just like the pajamas Henri Matisse was wearing in the Cartier Bresson portraits except this dude was about twice as big. These folks portrayed the family and kingdom in this film as beyond decline mentally. They are losing their souls and emotions in front of you on a bleak landscape and a dwelling that is only portrayed as a kind of dock with most of the main action happening on the same level practically as the row of boxes I was sitting at.
The Canadian Opera Company is a class operation. The Four Seasons Hall a beautiful modern acoustically sensitive room. I got to watch the pit from my vantage point as well and was amazed how young the orchestra was. Everyone in there from my perspective seemed 35 or younger. They sounded great with the all of the Debussy expressions. Brass doesn't figure much a lot in this score except for a few key moments. Even dreams of weirdness need a little brightening sometimes.
posted by well-executed buffet at 9:02 PM
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Tuesday, May 6, 2008
Canadian Curiosities
Yonge St in Toronto is touted as the longest street in the world. It supposedly spans across the entire province, or maybe beyond that...I'll have to check Wikipedia, to be sure. Regardless I rather appreciated Yonge St. It is a long and lively avenue reminiscent of Market St. in SF, University Ave, in Seattle, and many great streets in Europe.
I don't know who Ava is, but her knock off cover of Marvin
Gaye's Trouble Man is inspired. I'd buy a copy from her if she had a card table set up somewhere.
They say it is the biggest bookstore in the world, but Mrs. Wyden with her Strand and Mr. Powell with his well, you know, have them beat, I am sure.
Canadian Tire? I know there is a backstory here somewhere. What I saw was through the windows was a combination households and home improvement store. It was strange to see such a large store in a downtown urban setting which ostensibly sells tires.
I had to stop and see what kind of passengers from this very long limo would come in to use the services of the Evergreen Yonge Street Mission. Instead of that, it turned out the driver was parked there to get a sandwich at the doner restaurant near by. I figured if it was good for parking such a large car on a busy street, it was worth checking out. dI had a good doner there with lovely and zesty spices,
Check out Zanzibar's amazing neon display.
A large scale bill board extravaganza overlooking Dunda Square. The guy on top even moves, presumably eating his square of chocolate.
posted by well-executed buffet at 7:58 AM
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Monday, May 5, 2008
Toronto Travels I
Salish Coastal artist Susan Point's work came to our attention when visited a gallery on our honeymoon in Victoria BC. We did not purchase one of her works, but rather the work of another contemporary Frances Dick. I believe the gallery owner told us about the pieces that were in the Vancouver BC International Airport lobbies. I kept my eyes peeled for them when I was on my way to Ontario.
What a strange image. It looks like a duplo village, partly due to the inflatable hockey player, It was taken from the window of the hotel shuttle bus on the way to downtown Toronto.
Morning walk in Toronto. The CN Tower seems to be present just about anywhere you go in this city.
Just a couple of adverts that caught my eyes.
Toronto's Dundas Square is kind of like a combination the commercialism environment of Times Square without huge crowds fused with the city living room qualities of Portland's Pioneer square or San Francisco's Union Square. Regardless, it is decidedly sleepy place at 7am.
posted by well-executed buffet at 7:54 AM
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Sunday, May 4, 2008
Persepolis and Joy Division at cruising altitude
Air Canada Rocks! They not only give you an o screen in front of your seat on the headrest of the seat in front of you, they give you access to dozens of movies, some of which have not been released to DVD yet.
Now, I know this is not perhaps the most optimal way to watch a movie, I think of David Lynch and his "You can't watch a movie on a f-ing phone."
But somehow, watching Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis for the first, of which I predict will be several screenings, worked for me partly because of the setting, on a domestic Canadian plane filled passengers of many nationalities, many heading to make connecting flights from Toronto to European countries or elsewhere, A major theme in Persepolis is being between cultures and experiences.
Could this graphic memoir be transferred more successfully to the screen, even one smaller than a loaf of bread? I could do some nitpicking, but I really don't see how it could be much better. Satrapi's voice and vision are there because the work belongs to her. She and the team of filmmakers have retained her visual style, but also found ways in the script to illustrate and explain the explosive series of changes that were Iranian politics and government in the seventies and eighties through voice over and sillouheted figures. I hope for lots of behind the scene extras when the DVD is issued.
The other film I watched in the air was Control, the recent biography of Joy Division's Ian Scott. Surprisingly, the film was a reprise of the kind of kitchen soup films (Billy Liar, The Sporting Life, etc,) from the early sixties. Scott is revealed as primarily a well-intended bloke who works for Employment office, marries and fathers young. It doesn't glorify or romanticize his internal demons. His band gets very large in a hurry and his epilepsy and success leads to temptation and challenge. It probably should have been shortened, but I'm not sure if that response is not entirely unrelated to having it cut off with a reel to go as the plane was readied for descent.
posted by well-executed buffet at 9:42 PM
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Saturday, May 3, 2008
Walking Hard with Dewey Cox
Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story is a parallel universe of music biopics that was crafted by Jake Kasden and Judd Apatow. John C. Reily plays Dewey Cox, but by doing so he is also Buddy Holly, Roy Orbison, Bob Dylan, George Jones, Brian Wilson, and, of course, Johnny Cash. We see the rise and fall and rise again of Dewey Cox, who is plagued by childhood tragedy and never giving a daddy's love.
There are comedies and then there are "ignorant" comedies. Those that are off the meter and push the boundaries of taste. One's connection with this is personal. I have seen folks enjoy Monty Python and the Holy Grail until the blood and body parts start flying. There are moments in Walk Tall very early on where the user will know if the bandwidth of this entertainment.
PAm had a couple comments that I thought interesting after and while we were watching this DVD the other evening. First, she said that the script felt like something that Will Ferrell could star in. True, it features the kind of goofy world that Ferrell thrives in but Reiley gives it a different level and an almost tangible character. Is that because he looks like a regular guy (Thank you Paul Thomas Anderson for bringing Philip Seymour Thomas and Reiley to the public eye)
This leads me to Pam's second comment, the fact she noted a sense of heart and sweetness to an otherwise stoopid comedy, I give a lot of the credit to Reiley.
posted by well-executed buffet at 11:40 PM
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Friday, May 2, 2008
CT Is it Jazz?
Gil Scott Heron had a song out years ago called "Is It Jazz?" When he would do it in person he would talk about how he would always find his records in Miscellaneous.
It could be hard to classify the improvisational based music and work by many musicians who previously created straight jazz in the seventies and eighties. Miles Davis was electricity uncorked through the Jimi filter, Roy Ayers brought jazz to soul. Les McCann, Herbie Hancock, and even Bill Evans moved from Steinway to Fender Rhodes.
Then there were folks like Freddie Hubbard, George Benson into large productions by Creed Taylor who expanded from his work at Verve and A&M. I dispute that CTI was the birth of inoccuous "smooth jazz." Early seventies CTI albums that were not hard to listen to, but not necessarily "easy listening." he music was often produced big (but like Hubbard's Red Clay) this could be by creating a dynamic large quintet sound, no strings or large orchestrations, although CTI in that era could easily include both of those elements.
My favorite moments on these albums often include star musicians who play supporting roles on the projects of others. Chet Baker is at about his most lyrical on Jim Hall's Concierto. There's Joe Henderson and is very memorable in his solos on Red Clay, And Ron Carter seems to be the time keeper and a unstoppable force on just about all of the albums, it seemed.
Kyoto Jazz Massive is as hard to classify as the CTI early seventies halcyon days. There music is big, positive, but is as influenced as much by the soul and funk of the seventies as the musical form that is part of their name. And interestingly enough, they released an album of CTI and Kudo (related funk jazz level --think Grover Washington Jr.) My favorite track is Freddie Hubbard and Milt Jackson making a lovely turn through the Stylistics' People Make the World Go Round." If you need to ask "Is it jazz?" I would have to answer, "Does it matter?"
posted by well-executed buffet at 9:38 PM
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Thursday, May 1, 2008
The Daily Buffet at Half a Year
I had been mucking around with blogging a bit prior to November 2008. In late October my lovely wife had told me she was going to particpate in the exercise of blogging daily in the NaBloPoMo National Blogging Posting Month community. I told her that sounded like a fun thing to do and I thought I would try it for month as well.
Well-executed buffet's definition of daily is not necessarily 24 contiguous hours, but every day is indeed represented. In fact, I am writing this post with a bit of satellite delay.
If you are reading this, I appreciate it. But for the most part the creation is the end destination. I remember 21 years ago deciding to return to college because my jobhad become a burden and life seemed to tightening up. Similarly, why the blog. It is that space where I can..
- The joys of being in the audience at a really great performance.
- The pleasure of shouting out about something I dig and speculation into the reasons I find it pleasurable.
- Or for the same matter a place to explore the slippery areas of taste and aesthetics.
And if this daily sharing of signposts along the buffet lead to folks checkin' it out so much the better. But basically I like being here and doing this. When I returned to school, that was my motivation...it lead to a nice career. If there are rewards here that would be great to, but for now, it is what it is for which it is intended: a digital sandbox to play in.
posted by well-executed buffet at 8:10 PM
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Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Era Recognition in Wetlands Preserved
Wetlands Preserve was a night club in Tribeca that will likely go down in history as being as significant or as important location to music as CBGBs or the Filmores. Or perhaps it is much like the late 40s Bird-centric bebop scene on 42nd St as one of the many talking bobbing heads in a commemorative documentary called Wetlands Preserved.
Larry Bloch the originator of the club/activist center hub is a skinny intense Deadhead guy. The place was his for its first seven years. The film shows how he mushed together Grateful Dead ethos to create a kind (as in "oh oh and I want to know is are you kind?") vibe. I realized when they showed the artists who had played there regularly in the late 80s/early 90s: Blues Traveler, Phish, Widespread, Dave Matthews Spearhead, and Joan Osborne that during those years I was up here in PDXtown having my own private Wetlands.
Still, I kind of lapped up the trivia and anecdotes about the place. Such little cultural wavelets orginated and emanated from there more than hippie jam band. There was a wave of Ska started there. Roots came from Philly to host shows debuting the likes of Jill Scott. Hardcore punks and left wing writers would perform there.
Overall, I liked this film directed by Relix magazine Dean Budnick. The hagiographic and self important nostalgic tone got on my nerves on a couple occasions, but the film does what it seems to attempt to do. Get you to do a Woodstock mud people skinny dip in media related to the Wetlands. I'm not sure how many times the fact the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is mentioned as the home of the VW bus that the sold souvenirs and gave away activist pamphlets. Yup now it lives under and in the shadow of the Phish New Year's Eve hotdog in its Cleveland shrine.
I do give Bloch credit for is running his club like a Dead show every night. Long sets. Play til dawn. Lots of guests and combinations of artists. Benefits and socially conscious exhibits and food drives. Pieces of Wetlands showed up first at the HORDE tours, resides mightly at High Sierra, Bonaroo and other fests. They also provide the form and structure of String Cheese Incident, Phish and Widespread shows. It is not a mainstream legacy, but one I am glad I was able to have some great and glowing times with as well.
The club opened in Feb 1989, changed owners in 1996 and had its final concert on September 10, 2001. It was going to be its last week anyway, but 9.11 clinched the deal and shuttered the place for good. And soon it became a Swedish furniture store (no, not that one) and a bunch of apartments. But as I said before, all that really went away was a geographical center, a new wave of improvisational rock will always be on endless tour.
posted by well-executed buffet at 6:12 PM
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Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Berlin: Symphony of a Great City
I viewed Berlin: Symphony of a Great City a 1927 silent film by Walter Ruttmann encapsulating 24 hours in the day of a city. I can enjoy the rhythms and the images, but to study the film I would want to take another look at Vertov's Man with the Movie Camera or Strand's Manhatta.
A few things were prominent for me on this viewing. It proves again that there is poetry in every day life. And that the mind likes the construction of thematic montage making those connections. Because one is locked into the structure of symphonic movements and a day in the city,so you go along for the ride. In the early acts, there is a stress on the mechanical and the industrial and later the rhythms of the machine become the rhythm of the people within the machine. One could say that the Berliners become the machine. But this is not without a kind of beauty and poetry.
And one can't be charmed by looking at these scenes with historical wonder three quarters of a century later. Berlin of the mid-twenties still had livestock next to the automobiles, streetcars and buses. Men wore hats and shop windows tried to wonder and delight. Ruttman shows a city in full throttle in a prime full of contrasts, not to stress either poverty and suffering or wealth and conspicuous consumption except in a kind of balance. It seems that rather than spend too much time considering if the film is superficial or not, let's be thankful for a document of the time, and celebrate its poetic tendencies and solid, if not revolutionary combination of imagery.
A couple of notes on the current DVD release: Timothy Brock's 1993 score serves the film well overall. It gets a bit bombastic but will bring the modern viewer further into the rhythms of this motion picture symphony. It also includes one of Ruttman's
abstract films Opus I full ofgrowing spheres and flowing paper like and other shapes of muted color which reminds me that I could seriously enjoy and explore the similar films of Oskar Fischinger someday.
posted by well-executed buffet at 10:45 PM
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Monday, April 28, 2008
The Rewards of The Lookout
Oh Lord. Another film about a mental case! My initial response in viewing of The Lookout, a 2007 directorial debut by screenwriter Scott Frank was not positive. The lead character played by Joseph Gordon-Leavitt (also excellent in a strange little high school noir entitled Brick, but best known as the nerd child alien in 3rd Rock from the Sun) is a head injury victim with memory and sequencing disabilities. I thought Memento was basically a trick film and had just viewed Guy Ritchie's bizarre and frustrating Revolverwhich featured not a protagonist trying to identify reality but the EGO of the protagonist's battle with identify reality as its core.
But The Lookout proved to be something very different. It has both an excellently crafted screenplay with strong characters and a sense of place. It takes place in Kansas City, but filmed in Manitoba's winter. The options for protagonist Chris Pratt, former high school star with a bent mental frame are limited as is his judgment when he encounters a nefarious group with designs for him which involve his job. They reel him into their web with Luvlee Lemons, a moll who comes off as a new take on the kind of role Claire Trevor used to play back in the forties.
The rewards of a well-crafted screenplay with right as rain plot and something more to say are so very rare these days. Michael Clayton was and When the Devil Knows Your Dead are recent exceptions. As to is The Lookout in which the writer who created excellent adaptations of Get Shorty and Out of Sight is able to realize his own story and vision and deliver it. And still on the level of craft to the aforementioned author of those adaptations, Elmore Leonard. There is plot to be sure, but much substance along the way in a story that begins with chasing fireflies and ends with substantial and well-earned reflection.
posted by well-executed buffet at 11:59 PM
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Sunday, April 27, 2008
Sam Yahel and the Delicate Balance: B3, Sax, & Drum
The set that opened the evening with Lee Konitz at the Ballard Jazz festival is certainly worth some discussion. Sam Yahel is a keyboard player associated with Joshua Redman's Elastic Band project and apparently is working with a wide range of top range musicians in New York. The Ballard Jazz Festival is purposes a promotional tool (but a very cool one) for Origin Records, a local independent record label owned and operated by a couple of Seattle drummers, John Bishop and Matt Jorgenson. Yahel's album Truth and Beauty is an Origin release and has been getting some buzz.
The album features Redman and Brian Blade. The set on Saturday featured Jorgenson and another Seattle resident, saxaphonist Mark Taylor. What I noticed immediately is that Yahel and his playing is not typical organ trio fare. By that I mean it isnt all about the McGriff/Jimmy Smith/Groove Holmes home cookin' or of Charles Earland, the "Mighty Burner." Instead, Yahel seems to check out a range of sounds and possibilities the B3 has to offer: the bubbling vibrato, soaring chords, even the loopy sounds that sound like they come out of the roller rink. But it was clear he wasn't afraid to give licks to the rotating Leslie speaker that could have come from a storefront church on Sunday or a juke joint on Saturday night, two important environs of the B3. I see on his web page that Yahel is going to open for Steely Dan several times this summer. I can see a connection. His music is not necessarily the neohip of a Bad Plus or a Medeski Martin and Wood, but the neighborhood isn't too far away either as the participants would ocasionally converge on a very plunkazoid groove
Saxaphone-drum-organ trios are a tough balance. And if the focus is not on burning and the blues, it gets even trickier. The trio can have division and tension, but its the unity of the three that gives them their essence and power. This music works better on the record (available on emusic, and worth the downloads) than it did during the set at the Nordic Heritage museum. This is partly due to the fact that Truth and Beauty as was the first Blade-Redmond-Yahel effort Yaya3, a truly collaborative, project. Jorgenson and Taylor were filling their shoes. And unfortunately, Jorgenson is the kind of drummer you know is on stage every minute. He loves his cymbals and tends to be prepetually busy. That isn't necessarily a bad thing especially in a bigger group, but the contrast to the range of colors Blade brings to the music on the recording is definitely noticeable.
Still there were moments when they came together like a group that had been playing for a long time together. This happened primarily during and towards the end of the sax solos by Taylor. A couple of times it almost seemed like Yahel's organ growled in approval to the sequence of events occuring on stage
posted by well-executed buffet at 6:04 PM
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Saturday, April 26, 2008
Lee Konitz at Ballard Jazz Festival 4.26.08
Some folks will understand. Sometimes it makes sense to drive 300 miles round trip to have y he opportunity, even for just an hour and a half in ideal conditions to be in the presence of a major artist, someone whose craft, art, and style stands shoulders above most others. My trip to the Ballard Jazz festival to witness Lee Konitz play with the Hal Galper Trio was certainly worth every minute and every mile.
Konitz will turn 81 in October. His voice on alto sax is direct and distinct. He may look like a great uncle or grandfather in his bush jacket. But a concert with Konitz is like watching a boxer in the gym still coming up with new moves. His sparing partners are his present and past relationships (some maybe going on 50 years strong) with standards like All the Things You Are and Body and Soul. He takes them down to their essentials and brought back together again with how he feels about them today with control with an individualistic and interpretive flair that is his alone.
And the setting for time with this master was about as good as it gets. He played to somewhere around 400 folks in what was formerly the school auditorium of the old Daniel Webster Elementary School in Ballard, Washington (now the Nordic Heritage Museum) No clinking glasses, loud drunks, and waitresses collecting tabs in this here museum opportunity. It is a room of Konitz's approximate vintage wrapped with curtains and mixed to sound very sweet. I was also impressed by his ability to create and project in this room. He spent about a third of the concert playing a distance away from the microphone often with a towel in the bell of his horn serving as a mute, especially when he would contribute to a bass or piano solo.
Those piano solos were played by Hal Galperwho is noted for his work with another great alto player, Phil Woods. Galper's solos tend to cascade, but not just for flourish, but in a full rhythmic context determined by the tune and the dynamic energy of what is happening among the four others on stage with him.
Galper's trio was matched well with Konitz. They started off with one of those breakdowns that I think of as jabbop, a jagged current distant relation of flavorful exploration he converged with back in the late forties and early fifties with revolutionary pianist Lennie Tristano. Next was All the Things...complete with the descending triplet figure made famous in so many bop era jazz recordings smoothly sailing into a very complete workout of Body and Soul. There was another standard I could not identify then Invitiation, always in her terrible beauty with its four note theme coming out like repeated jabs in a tempo that was almost a shuffle to end the formal trio section of the concert.
Galper and Konitz came out for a duet. The full set began with musicians taking their places as local jazz deejay told the story Galper had told him about a lenghty run he and Konitz had in New York back in the seventies where every set and every night was a completely different and inventive experience. So there was a built-in anticpation. That mood shifted Konitz comment when they were situating themselves that they were having a "Jew off" I'm reminded that in Andy Hamilton's exceptional biographical book of interviews with Konitz where he says "If someone asks, I tell them my heritage but I don't practice my "Jewishness"--except with the jokes!"
But what came next was a Stella By Starlight suited for closing the evening and enough for me to drive back over half of my home state. Stella is a tune that has moved me for years with its rising tide and resolution and this was a version, like the In A Sentimental Mood I saw Sonny Rollins play back in September or Joe Lovano's interpretation of Chelsea Bridge a few weeks back that I will reflect on when I hear it in the future, no matter how formidable or mundane the interpretation. It contributed to making every mile to and fro worthwhile.
posted by well-executed buffet at 11:59 PM
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Friday, April 25, 2008
Advice Fully Circled: Tribute to Bill Drevdahl
Here are some remarks I have prepared for a memorial service to a family friend and, in a way, a colleague.
The Drevdahls were family friends. My brother Steve used to hang out with a group that included Dale. They took us on their boat. I would mow their yard when they were on vacation. Mom and Joan knew each other as elementary school teachers in the same district, but never taught in the same buildings.
I was over at the Drevdahl’s house one summer evening in 1975. I think Joan extended a dinner invitation. –that’s what kind of home it was. If you happened to be there near dinner time you ended up getting fed. In fact, that happened just a few months ago…
I digress. Anyway, Bill and I were talking about my plans to go to college in the fall. It was clear he didn’t think I was totally right in my plans. Those of you who knew Bill knew he wasn’t afraid to speak his mind if he didn’t agree with you. He thought it was fine I was going to go study communications but he thought I should probably consider going to Clark College and getting a certificate in some kind of trade skill that I could fall back on. He was hoping his kids were going to do that. I wasn’t offended, and I certainly knew better than to argue with Mr. Drevdahl, but I told him respectively, that that didn’t seem like the path for me.
Flash forward years later. I went to work in the service sector for several yars after the work I had done was curtailed by arts funding no longer being a priority of the Reagan administration. I came to Clark College to take classes at the time the personal computer became a formidable tool and ended up pursuing both an AAS degree in Scientific and Technical writing and a certificate in desktop publishing. During this time, I would bump into Bill Drevdahl having his morning coffee and fresh pastry at the Clark College bakery. One day I was talking to him and told him I had returned to Clark to get that second skill that he had advised me was a good idea a dozen years earlier. Bill got that twinkle in his eye and said something to the effect of "Well, you know its never too late." He wasn’t going to say I told you so…but you could sure see he approved. It was always pretty obvious when Bill Drevdahl agreed with the situation.
I see now that Bill was ahead of the curve. I think he clearly saw the "job for life" era was over and that people would have to have other foundational skills to fall back on. Certainly the eighties and nineties showed this to be the case at Clark College with waves of professional refugees coming back for retraining, first from Tektronix, then the timber industry, then Hewlett Packard, and again pulp and manufacturing.
Now its years later. I work at Clark as the division Chair for the vocational computer related-programs. I advise dozens of students each year in their career interests and intended paths. Tuition was practically free when Bill Drevdahl started at Clark College back in the 1960s, certainly when compared to the nearly $1000 per quarter that it costs now. I have given many students close to the same advice that Bill tried to give me back in 1975, with a bit of a variation – I suggest that they earn both their AA degree and pick up a certificate in a field (maybe web design, prepress,computer networking) and get their transfer degree as well. I even find myself quoting Bill Drevdahl from that summer post dinner conversation in 1975.
One more note: Bill’s retirement from Clark College came just about the time that I started getting hired for temporary staff and faculty assignments before my full time opportunity. He was having problems with his Macintosh computer and was trying to track me down across campus. I had three separate faculty members come find me and let me know that Elmer Drevdahl was looking for me. (As it turned out, I did nave the answer this time to the technological malady he was facing) Somehow I ended up in a conversation with one of these faculty members ---It was clear that Bill was very respected among his peers at Clark College and that he was doing his part in trying to find me to help him out. That was kind a nice moment with the sort of undefinable emotion that help make life matter.
I’ve wondered since if somehow my return to Clark to take some classes to try to find something else to do with my life was somehow linked to the advice this family friend was trying to get into my head years before.
posted by well-executed buffet at 10:42 PM
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Thursday, April 24, 2008
Shot High and Missed: Lions for Lambs
For some unknown reason, given myself the task of making sure I touch bases with all the war on terror films that have been coming out of the studios lately. And there have been some nice surprises. DePalma's Redacted attemped an interesting perspective stylistically. In the Valley of the Elah was a moving experience.
Lions for Lambs has a very strange trichotomy going on. Meryl Streep is trying to be sold a new approach to Afghanistan by a Republican stick in his ass Senator played by Tom Cruise. Robert Redford is getting in a student's face about not being socially active and two others of Redford's students (an Hispanic and an African American) who made a choice about quitting studies in social policy joined Special Forces instead are caught on a murky and unrealistic soundstage getting their butts blown off by rebels trying to secure the "high ground" (double meaning slammed over our heads) while green screen survielence of the screen takes place in HQ miles away.
The bad movie set mountain top action of the two college buddies running out of blood, ammo and time is actually a relief from the heavy speechy dialog going on in Cruise's or Redford's office. Here is a full example of one of Redford's speeches to his slacker student.
"World War I, German soldiers wrote poems about the bravery of British grunts, admired them, almost as much as they laughed at the British high command who wasted thos same grunts by the hundreds of thousands. German general wrote, "Nowhere else I have seen such lions led by such lambs." Gosh, that statement is so dead on right now. These startched collars that started this war, that are running it now, nowhere near the best and the brightest, not even in the same galaxy. They're the ones when our men are blown to bits in the middle of a gun battle, say shit like, "The enemy may have bloodied our nose, but we're learning from our mistakes."
But he is just winding up for his big finish two or three intercuts later...
"Rome is burning's son. And the problem is not with the people that started this. They're past irredemable. The problem is with us. All of us. Who do nothing. Who just fiddle. Who try to maneuver around the edges of the flames. And I'll tell you something, there are people out there, day to day, all over the world who are fighting to make things better."
Earnestness is a great value. But unfortunately, when it goes unchecked in an agenda ridden 90 minute film the result can not be satisfactory. Ironically, screen writer Matthew Michael Carnahan wrote one of the best war on terror films to come out recently, The Kingdom which had the premise of a police procedural in Saudi Arabia, with lots of wonderful opportunity to investigate cultural differences and conflicts. In one of the film promotional extras, Carnahan said the motivation for this film came when he saw a crawler headline about Humvee accident in Iraq while channel surfing while watching a football game. It later became his motivation for the story -- our pursuit for entertainment while folks are fighting, a lack of involvement at the citizenry level. One can't deny that this is a noble starting point.
Ultimately, Lions for Lambs and its intentions gets derailed by all the talk intersected by an unconvincing action sequence. It came out in November and disappeared before Thanksgivng was over. I am all for serious films that aim high, but Lions shows that this can be a very difficult task to do successfully.
posted by well-executed buffet at 9:08 PM
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Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Two Lane Blacktop plus 37 years
They are less characters than cultural manifestations: The driver and the mechanic; James Taylor undeniably beautiful and one of the Beach Boys. A 55 Chevy and a 70 GTO. A weird BS artist and likely alcoholic played by a great character actor of the era. And a (probably) jailbait quasi-hippie chick with a duffle bag nearly as big as she is. (The duffle ends up on the side of the road and the girl on the back of a motocycle.)
Two Lane Blacktop is a curious product of the times. Director Richard Linklater gives his tribute to it and summarizes nicely when he says: "...it's both the last film of the '60s -- even though it came out in '71 -- but it's also the first film of the '70s. You know, that great era of "How the hell did they ever get that film made at a studio/Hollywood would never do that today" type of film." It is definitely a US road film with European sensibilities. The Wikipedia article on Two Lane Blacktop lumps it in with Easy Rider, which it resembles in many ways, and Vanishing Point as an existential road picture.
Taylor and Dennis Wilson kind of flounder around throughout Monte Hellman's film. Thank goodness for Warren Oates in the yellow GTO.Performance his great screen presence as he delivers a different backstory to all of the hitchikers he encounters and delivers such line as. "Peformance and image, that's what its all about." about the GTO. Or as raps on to the sleeping girl, "If I don't get grounded pretty soon, I'm going to go into orbit." Or in challenge to hustler/drag racer in reality rock star owners of the 55 Chevy: "If I wanted to bother, I could suck you through my tail pipe." But best is the scene where he sings to a cover of Chuck Berry's Maybeline with goofy abandon.
Two Lane Blacktop has held a kind of cult classic status for movie buffs for a very long time. I was curious and finally dropped the recent Criterion disk into my player. Ultimately it is an audacious cultural artifact. The first forty minutes seems like it is going to be a set up for a race across country with the vehicles themselves up for grabs, but near Arkansas, big meandering sets in. Warren gets drunk. Dennis Wilson sleeps, James Taylor does the drive shift seduction to Lori Bird. But hey it's the cusp of 60s cruising into 70s and the journey still seems more important than the destination.
posted by well-executed buffet at 8:30 PM
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Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Snoop in Retroland
My basement video wallpaper generally consists of VH1 Soul. There are few commercials, and none are too exceptionally annoying. And other than that nothing but soul videos by artists new and old. Hip-hop is just a flavor in this mix, mostly it consists neosoul crooning and trips down video lane for artists of the late eighties and early nineties. And then there is some special programming such as concerts like a recent one with Snoop Dogg, that was surprisingly diverse. I very much enjoyed the guest spot by Charlie Wilson of the GAP band (that man has one of the best sets of pipes in all of soul-funk-urban music) and his closer, the hit single from last December, Sensual Seduction.
Sensual Seduction is Snoop's take on Prince, Roger Troutman and Zapp and other iconographic imagery from the excess of the late seventies and early eighties disco to electrofunk era. I love the PFunk spaceship, the turban and the round bed. He sings: "If you don't know by now, Doggy Dogg is a Freak" The buffet embeds this clip to you all as a public service brought to you by WEFUNK. Life is too short not to have the funk.
posted by well-executed buffet at 2:06 AM
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Monday, April 21, 2008
A Walk in the Valley of Elah
Paul Haggis' In the Valley of Elah is well-crafted, thought provoking, topical, and engaging. It isn't perfect, but any film which endeavors and mostly succeeds to show both a human drama against the large disturbing canvas of the American scene in the Iraq war era deserves at least as much attention as any of the five Best Picture nominees this year,.
Tommy Lee Jones is given something to do besides waxing poetic and serving as the tweener for others who were seeking after Javier Bardem's evil with an air compressor as he did in No Country for Old Men. Here he is seeking answers to his son who has gone AWOL since returning from Iraq. Here he is Hank Deerfield , a former military policeman at the very base his son is stationed at,; his faith, his patriotism and his stability all get tested. He spars and later links up with a detective and single mom played by Charlize Theron, leads over his wife as one would expect a career army man to do, and tries to make sense of technically corrupted phone videos taken by his son in Iraq.
One of the things I like about this film is that the filmmaker seems very concerned about the details and the richness of the experience. Tommy Lee's character experiences aspects of the base and town, small details and episodes. Such as when he meets up with a former colleague at the base for breakfast played by character actor Barry Corbin. It doesn't move the plot in a linear fashion, but it does add some backstory details and makes him just a little bit more isolated. Additionally, is a very elaborate sequence where he goes to a strip club. It must have cost thousands. The points that are made in the scene are minor ones as far as plot is concerned, But when Jones shows the bartender hi son's picture in a room full of rowdy military and naked strippers and tells him he is looking for his boy, one gets a sense of the kind of needle in a haystack search for truth he has in front of him.
I am very careful in discussing matters of plot in a film that takes its time to reveal and is filled with layers of details. Elah is among the at least half dozen releases with an Iraq or post 9/11 related topic that have come out within the last couple years and have not found an audience. What makes this more ironic in this case is that a major theme is how our society is isolated from the war and can not relate with the men who return from it. This is underscored in the extras on the DVD which feature a strong content-related series of short documentaries that are there for extensible reference on the film experienced, not just to hype he project, as is too often the case. The deleted sequence is also worth one's time.
DVDs can give films of merit like this one a second chance at an audience. It is one of the aspects of that medium, that acts as a service to filmmakers who are serious and don't always have stars lined up for commercial success for some reasons or other. Maybe the somewhat religious allusion for a title made a difference or perhaps the masses are not quite ready for hard and sober filmmaking about this thing that is so full of paradox and feels like it will never end.
posted by well-executed buffet at 8:07 PM
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Sunday, April 20, 2008
The Last Year at Marienbad Ride
I wonder how many folks who came to see a new 35mm print of director Alain Resnais' and writer Alain Robbe-Grillet'sLast Year in Marienbad, were there because, like myself, they had never seen it and felt that if they probably should because it is one of those "classics" that gets mentioned a fair amount by film scholars. Someone had to do a Marienbad, which I see as an exercise in trying to create suspension in the art of film. Time, reality, space, and narrative are all shifted and suspended. There are even some exceptionally overexposed sequences that give the illusion of shifting black and white. Hypnosis is also a kind of suspension. From the very beginning, the narrative of X (the major speaker and protagonist, if one stretches the definition to call him that) and the tracking shots of walls and ceilings are intended to put the audience into a unique space, where after a fashion they accept jump cuts across time and place as three characters circle around each other in a way not unlike the overall presentation.
Once again - I walk on, once again, down these corridors, through these halls, these galleries, in this structure -- of another century, this enormous, luxurious, baroque, lugubrious hotel -- where corridors succeed endless corridors -- silent deserted corridors....."
In an online analysis Walter Kirschgives his impression of Robbe-Grillet's sense of time,
"In `Marienbad,' Robbe-Grillet treats time as a flat, planar element, not a linear one. Past, present and future are of equal scale occupying the same space -- a novel concept for a French writer whose native language has eight past, four future and four present tenses. With the concept of time, Robbe-Grillet is a deconstructivist smashing the temporal elements into fragments for Resnais to reconstruct into the cinematic present tense of ninety-three minutes."
This is the kind of statement that is only going to make sense at all to someone who viewed the the film. Even more so, what a German professor told Roger Ebert when he was a nineteen year old trying to make sense of it:
"`It is a working out of the anthropological archetypes of Claude Levi-Strauss. You have the lover, the loved one and the authority figure. The movie proposes that the lovers had an affair, that they didn't, that they met before, that they didn't, that the authority figure knew it, that he didn't, that he killed her, that he didn't. Any questions?''"
This is both a film and a puzzle. Ebert's professor friend and Kirsch are providing some potential keys to the work. Everyone who leaves the theatre will need to find their own frame of reference from the moving camera, jump cuts, and well dressed aristocrats who sometimes appear to be like the statues at the mansion and at other times quite full of human traits and emotion. An elder woman leading the theater told her companion. "My that's a strange one." Maybe that is where the response will end or perhaps it will lead to some extensive consideration. I sure couldn't fathom turning this loose on a bunch of college freshmen.
I'm glad I went, but I believe it stands up as a landmark film and not necessarily a classic film. If I wished to take a close look at the nature of dreams or or time or reality in film Marienbad would make an excellent choice of study. I don't think it has come off as timeless either in the way that many films like Antonioni do to me who also worked with the time/space/dream/reality/perception.
Although, admittedly, Blow Up! and Zabriskie Point are truly documents of their time.
Marienbad's return to the Cinema 21, felt less like going to a movie and more like an art movie ride of the late fifties or early sixties, enhanced also by the fact that it was presented in one of the most long standing of art movie theaters in the country.
posted by well-executed buffet at 4:40 PM
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Saturday, April 19, 2008
Trader Joe's in NW: Reflecting the Hood
One of the few things I have actually memorized are the alphabetical street names in west Portland. Some folks can pull out large excerpts of Shakespeare, scripture, or the Preamble to the US Constitution. I can tell you about Pettygrove, Savier, and Thurman. So I kind of appreciated that the 22nd and Glisan, (the street between Hoyt and Homer Simpson's neighbor) Trader Joe's decided to do a local motif for their checker lines. If they ever have to expand into he neighboring space next door, will they get all the way to Vaughn?
posted by well-executed buffet at 4:29 PM
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Friday, April 18, 2008
Lee Konitz Preview
I was purusing YouTube clips of Lee Konitz for next week's concert at the Ballard Jazz Festival. It is difficult to feel that this drawer of clips is because the career of this 80 year old saxaphonist is so broad and multifaceted Here is one I very much like, a fairly recent reading of Lazy Afternoon.
And here is My Heart Belongs to Daddy with Konitz and Joe Lovano taking on Cole Porter in a big way. Ignore the obnoxious voice over at the front and end of the clip and instead check out where Joe and Lee make some sweet chaos with each other after their solos. I kind of love YouTube, except for the Bob Saget reject videos, even when you need to try to ignore foreign voice overs babbling on about Broadway musica.
posted by well-executed buffet at 8:06 PM
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Thursday, April 17, 2008
Erykah Badu New Amerykah Part One (4th World War)
This is a truly great soul album. In recent years it would rank with efforts by Jill Scott, D'Angelo, Me'Shell Ndegeocello, and Lauryn Hill's first Album. But in actuality, it deserves a place on the best of Marvin Gaye in the seventies and There's A Riot Going On by Sly and the Family Stone. There is greatness here.
This Erykah Badu's third album, ten-eleven years after making the scene, a long and even self-publicized writer's block and an EP. And now we get this album, a first taste of what she has for us now. There are two more albums ready with part 2 coming in July.
Honey is the single and it is worth seeing the video. I can't embed it but here is a link on her official Amerykah website. Honey, the video is a full on production using self-reference and very cool digital effects making a shelf of great and historic funk and soul album covers from the age of vinyl come to life as well as a tribute to Indy record stores.
It is going to take many more listens to New Amerykah Part One (4th World War) to visualize let alone get a grip of the handlebars for this ride, just as it did with Marvin Gaye's I Want You, Sly's aforementioned There's a Riot... or one of the really good PFunk albums.
In fact, a hardass PFunk groove and a StarChild Long Haired Sucker narrator are featured on the opening groove Amerykahn Promise.
"Ladies and Gentlemen, before exiting the train, please leave your valuables--your diamonds, rubies and pearls in the cabinet adjacent to your left. Ummm. The pussycats and the jackals you can leave them with me." (sinister laugh)
We wouldn't steer you wrong."
The next workout The Healer/Hip Hop has a decidedly more ethereal quality and sing song chant. In the dreamy sonic soundscape Erykah on the danger zone of using a voice too much like a little girl affectation sings how Hip Hop is bigger than religion and the government.
"Told you we aint dead yet
we been livin' through your internet
you don't have to believe everything you think
we've been programmed wake up, we miss you."
So by now you get the idea that the grooves are indeed deep on this album. A horn chart with a jazz base as the backdrop for one tune, a smokey after hours cabaret evoked on another. So much range and loveliness. I look forward to savoring this album for the months until the next installation.
New Amerykah Part One (4th World War) is the work of an artist caught in a great stride. You get a sense that all of her 37 years including a decade's lifetime in the public eye are somehow reprsented. I say it is worth your time to take notice.
And furthermore, I am pumped: It looks as though I will be able to see Ms. Badu in concert next month. I'm sure there'll be Erykah night at the buffet after that one...in other words you'll be hearing more from me about this amazing woman's most recent art.
posted by well-executed buffet at 10:51 PM
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Wednesday, April 16, 2008
David Hajdu at Powell's
My instincts tell me that besides his optometrist, (who fetched him glasses like a roadie in a impromptu and funny moment) I believe I was one of the very few who came to Powell's on Hawthorne to see David Hadju and not so much because the content of his new book but because he is a pop historian driven by his interests. A darned nice gig to have along with music criticism for the New Republic and teaching Journalism at Columbia.
His first two books are rich well-chosen topics. Lushlife is a biography of Billy Strayhorn, and Positively Fourth Street about the folk music movement in the late fifties and sixties overall and the nexus of Bob Dylan, Richard Farina and sisters Baez. His most recent book is a history of the rise and fall of the Comics industry through its crazy industry, public and governmental backlash of the late forties and early fities, The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America.
The excerpts read and the level of detail given in his remarks clearly indicate that Hajdu knows and has done exhaustive research on his topic. The basic story line: freedom from all restrictions and huge popularity of the medium lead to hysteric societal crack-down and backlash. It was a plague for the art form and for the artists who worked in it. To help illustrate the latter, he has included an appendix of the names of more htan 800 "artists, writers and other who never worked again in comics after the purge of the 1950s." Many of the comics of the late forties, especially those from E.C. and their imitators were lurid in the extreme. Hajdu is clear that this was a war story. And in stories of war, it is not driven by simply by black and white issues.
It was fortunate to have cool encounter with Hajdu at the book signature component of the evening. He asked me if I was a fan of comics.
I said I was, but I told him I was there this evening because I liked his writing. I asked him about his past books and of course was quite intrigued to find out that his next was going to be a biography of Billy Eckstine. I told him that I thought this was going to be a great topic for one of his cultural studies because Eckstine had such an impact on style and fashion and really helped pave the way for folks like Nat King Cole. (I don't know how to make this next part sound like boasting but..) He said": "Hey, you know your stuff." And said I should be sure to come out for the reading when he comes out with that book. We started to talk about Strayhorn and ballads, but then I noticed that there was quite a line behind me. I should have found out what brewpub he and his optometrist were going to after the signing. But Pam and I had a lovely time picking out flavors at Ben and Jerry's instead. Here is a nice piece by Hajdu where he has the privilege of an encounter with Joni Mitchell.
posted by well-executed buffet at 12:05 PM
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Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Walker: Cinema Under the Trainwreck
I have a feeling I will be poking at Alex Cox's Walker with a kind of stick for the rest of my life, just like I did for the past two months. The film came out in 1987. I only know two people who saw it, both probably on really late cable before it disappeared until the recent Criterion Edition.
This film is kind of indescribable. You have to compare it to lots of other things that come out. But it wiggles like jelly. You can't really figure out what it is. Is it broad farce with lots of anachronisms? Sometimes. Does it have a David Lean, Francis Coppola epic sweep? Once in a while. Does it have the guilty pleasure of being kind of an art grindhouse film marinated in politics? Undoubtedly in some reals, especially the expatriate self-indulged fillibuster free who became President of Nicaragua in 1856. An accompanying documentary noted that Walker is now unknown in the US, but "in Nicaragua he is Osama Bin Laden."
Rudy Wurlitzer wrote the screenplay. In a way this is just a left turn in the eighties down Pat Garrett and Billy The Kid lane, established 1975 with Coburn after Kristoferson and Bob Dylan as Alias by Herr Wurlitzer. Yet his film goes further than Peckinpah and Penn. It is Alex Cox at the intersection of Jarmusch, Scorcese, Coehn and Lynch. This well before Tarrantino. Not just the poetry of violence, but the political poetry of violence. Remember this is a film that was made in the heyday of the FSLN.
"Unless a man has the idea there is something great for him to do, he can do nothing great." --- William Walker.
Ed Harris is simply awesome as Walker. The role is strange as hell, but he pulls it off looking great in that broad brimmed hat. Marlee Matlin plays Walker's girlfriend, who was indeed deaf. But most bizarre is Peter Boyle as Cornelius Vanderbilt.
Joe Strummer wrote the screenplay, serves as an extra, and appears on extras documentary with a full beard that makes him look like he could be found selling glass pipes and jewlery at a Dead Show. Int the short, Strummer is on a a docked raft doing immitations of many of the actors in the film such as Rene Auberjonois. Strummer also wrote a very interesting score that fuses Morricone, mariachi, and salsa together. I had a very sketchy cassette that I bought at Walgren's on the first night of my first MacWorld trip to San Francisco. Hearing the score again made me reminisce about that trip once again.
So I conclude my final verdict on this film as inconclusive. I can see deeper study and attention to this one, although I very much had to motivate myself to view the film on my end. I actually can think of many films I would like to see prior to Walker, but if this irrational soldier of filibuster and I should meet again, it will be interesting time to be spent, to be sure.
posted by well-executed buffet at 6:13 PM
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Monday, April 14, 2008
Serious Chill: An Evening with Quincy Jones
The life, music and career of Quincy Jones has been packaged several times during the years. There have been numerous greatest hits collections. Listen Up! was a definitive 1990 documentary connected to the Back onthe Block album that featured interviews with just about everyone in Q's life and career and lots of jiggly Hi8 (probably) camera work. Ten years later a full American Masters documentary for PBS was created about the same time his Autobiography was released. And this last year, many PBS stations broadcast An Evening with Quincy Jones. Q's life, story, and musical canvas is a far stretching one and, at least for me, there is always something of interest to take notice of each time it is reviewed or celebrated.
An Evening with Quincy Jones was a televised interview and concert event where well-heeled folks spent thousands to be a part of the audience. In 2001, we attended an interview with Quincy Jones facilitated by Elvis Mitchell at the Experience Music Project in conjunction with his book tour in an auditorium that was filled with Goretex clad fans and old musician types with Mitch Miller go-tees. Cutaways in this show revealed a much different audience. My favorite was the guy who was probably a record exec with two very "escort service" looking young blonds in the front row.
And in this show, Gwen Iflil from the PBS News Hour tries an act that comes off somewhere between Oprah and Ralph Edwards and This is Your Life that became pretty annoying after a while, especially when she feigns hot flashes when James Ingram sings. Yuck.
Still, it is hard to screw up an evening with the Q. His recollections and his stories are so rich. "Music was more than an escape. It was a mother." At 13, he was playing at juke joints in Seattle and at 14 Ray Charles became a role model. "Not one drop of my self worth depends on your acceptance of me." were words that Ray and Quincy lived by in those formidable years. The tales he tells of boppers, breaking into the film industry, and collaborating with the greatest entertainers and artists in the world never fail to entertain and enlighten.
He makes for a great audience. I remember years ago on a Bravo tribute to Count Basie where Q stood in the wings and was practically doing the pogo for joy when Stevie Wonder played Do, I do with the Basie band. In this telecast, Bebe Winans did an astounding version of Everything Must Change that made the big music man weep.
Almost every interview I have seen with Quincy Jones has him stating that everything he has done came from his development of gaining a core skill in composition and arranging. He always finds a way to give Nadia Boulanger credit and emphasizing how his studying with her in Paris changed everything for him. "Everyone has a different talent." Quincy can't drive a car and is miserable in business. But it his relationship with music has made a great impact in our world. It is great fortune that he played everything from juke joints to bar mitzvahs in Seattle in those formidable years. Having no boundaries, an exceptionally wide bandwidth and being true to ones soul will always be the major lesson I will take away when his work is retrospected and re-examined. And being fearless about it. "You can not get an A, if you are afraid to get an F" says the Q. Have Mercy.
posted by well-executed buffet at 2:49 AM
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Sunday, April 13, 2008
Chad Mitchell Trio & Tom Paxton in Salem: 4.12.08
The keys of the magic of the Chad Mitchell trio is tight harmony, melodic clarity, and cleverness in lyric and execution. They were a folk group with roots in a college glee club, hence the emphasis on harmony and clarity. Their initial group had a four year run and then a second manifestation of six that brought John Denver to the attention of the world when he replaced Chad Mitchell. (There is a parallels here to the role John Stewart played when he replaced Dave Guard of the Kingston Trio.)They are men in their near seventies now doing a select number of dates, like this one in Salem, seemingly more for joy than profit. Chad Mitchell introduces themselves by the lives they have had since the times of the trio, when they were a mainstay of variety shows, beginning with Belafonte's concerts at Carnegie Hall through years of television with Sullivan, Dinah Shore and many others. Mitchell worked as a singer, a cabaret artist, a realtor, worked as entertainment director for a cruise line. Mike Kubluck became the arts administrator for Spokane Washington. And Joe Frazier went to Yale Divinty school and became an ordained Episcopalian minister.
So what's it like with all original members circa 70 years old? Their delivery is still hearfelt and lovely, but sometimes it was more than that. Like when they delivered a rousing version of Woody Guthrie's ballad of the Ruben James that was responded by the crowd in one of the liveliest ovations of the evening. Likewise was the power in their complex arrangement of When Johnny Comes Marching Home with its direct and strong imagery and delivery which felt very topical, but perhaps not as direct and topical as their update of the George Birch Society Blues updated with venom to the George Bush Society Blues. Part of the secret of the Chad Mitchell Trio was that the messages were delivered by clean cut college men from a school out West. There is something still disarming about that except now they are three elder, one a near Anglican priest delivering these words.
I don't think there could ever be a Chad Mitchell concert without the influence of Tom Paxton. Paxton's What Did You Learn in School Today? and The Marvelous Toy were among the trio's best known tunes. So it makes it an even more significant evening when Paxton was there to open and help close out the evening. His opening How Beautiful upon the Mountain began the evening and set the tone for the evening. Almost immediately the crowd sang along with him on the chorus, essentially to a song they had never heard before. I felt like a Unitarian singing along to a folksong in public, but I have to admit, it was kind of like revisiting an old campfire. Paxton's set had some tunes about our current wartime situation ("This is just a surge for Victory" went one lyric) along with a moving tune about the firemen of 9/11. And it was kind of fun to hear him pull out Bottle of Wine (as in "fruit of the wine, when will I ever get sober")
But it was his tender songs about his daughters Jennifer and Kate and his wife of 45 years that came across best, especially with interplay with string wizard Paul Prestopino. And his Last Thing on My Mind certainly holds its own as one of the finest ramblin' on songs of the Folk era.
Are you going away with no word of farewell?
Will there be not a trace left behind?
Well, I could have loved you better,
Didn't mean to be unkind.
You know that was the last thing on my mind.
And it only seemed right for The Chad Mitchell Trio to become the Chad Mitchell Quartet with the addition of Paxton delivering his well known Ramblin' Boy and the moving plea for a peaceful world Ed McCurdy's Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream. It was a special and lovely evening and was made even better by the company of my mother and aunt. Certainly, sixty miles seemed like a short distance to travel for such rewards.
posted by well-executed buffet at 8:04 PM
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Saturday, April 12, 2008
Maria's Realization: The Rabbit is Me
The Rabbit is Me is a vibrant, French New Wav-styled film made in East Germany in 1965. It tells the story of a young woman who ends up falling in love with the judge who sentenced her brother to three years in prison for "inciting subversive activity," and these three words are fully all we ever really know about his supposed crime. There are echoes of Kafka's The Trial.
Maria's involvement with Judge Diester comes about through some coincidental circumstances, but that is barely noticed, because the heroine and the way her story is told are so engaging. Part of Maria's tale is told in voice over, filling in both the details of her young life and her spirited attitude towards the world. And then there is the direction by Kurt Maetzig. Like the best of the French New Wave, he tells his story with the language of the possibilities of cinema. The camera moves, there are sometimes jump cuts and even a dramatic use of freeze frame, but it never feels gimmicky or overly self conscious.
The film was banned shortly after it came out. It was created at a time when there was a brief support for artists to explore and when there was a brief consideration towards a bit of democratic reform in the time of Kruschev, but that quickly retreated by the time the film was ready to come out. Maetzig reviews the unfortunate circumstances in an interview on the DVD extras where he still seems a bit regretful of the situation his film found itself in. But ultimately there is a happy ending. We can see it today in crisp black and white with fabulous directing and a performance that rivals the heroines of Truffaut or Demys.
posted by well-executed buffet at 3:04 PM
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Friday, April 11, 2008
Joe Rogan's Comedy: Not For The Faint
I noticed in one of the local weeklies when I was in Philadelphia that Joe Rogan was going to be appearing at Helium, a club within walking distance of my hotel. I found out that although it was sold out, there would be a wait list. Fortunately, all stars lined up and I was able to attend his show.
Rogan has been one of the edgiest and most provocative comics working for a long time, but he is mostly defined in the eyes of the public as the host of Fear Factor or the handyman on the series Talk Radio. He even makes light of this role and identity on his latest album Shiny Happy Jihad. talking about how folks come up to him as though it is his responsibility for the stunts on Fear Factor.
What makes him interesting and relevant is that beyond the comedic bits and the slam dunks in the art of offensive humor is that Rogan observes and probes fundamental elements of the human condition. "We're on a f--ing rock flying through space." He asks do we look up into the sky and consider what's going on? Why instead do we get obsessed with attractions like the Grand Canyon (a f---in ditch?) Or there is his observation that "No girl wants a secretly gay boyfriend. Every dude wants a secretly gay girlfriend." Also, he comes back to the refrain that we are all pretty much the same, despite our genetics and experience. He doesn't suffer fools well at all and if his targets (people who save beached whales, Al Queda, terrorists, and guys who would want to to go the March of the Penguins movie) come in range with some of yours, laughter will indeed result.
The showroom in Helium is pretty basic. It could fit a a small bowling alley and fits approximately 300 people. The show I saw was the last in his three night stand. He obviously enjoys playing in Philadelphia. "It's better than Boston. Boston is like a colder, dumber Philly." His set went on for nearly 90 minutes, partly because the drunkest bachelor party ever had to be tossed out, but only after Rogan gave them several chances to stay until it was obvious that the situation was hopeless.
Part of Rogan's arsenal is that he uses the mike and sound effects like a true pro, especially when he his reenacting tigers, bears and others in the animal kingdom. He uses dynamics well. He rants, but builds up to a crescendo like with his his bug-eyed and frantic pronouncement that pyramids were built by people a were a whole lot smarter than ourselves, "but the dumb ones just out-f---ed the smart ones. That's what I think. I think we are all the bastard children of the idiot stoneworkers of Egypt." You laugh, but it is more than a joke, it is a skewed logic that makes sense in some bizarre and recognizable way.
posted by well-executed buffet at 7:50 PM
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Thursday, April 10, 2008
More Impressions of Philly
There are four blocks worth of plaques at the Philly Musician Walk of Fame on Broad Street (the Avenue of the Arts). Everyone from Eugene Ormandy to Todd Rundgren to Solomon Burke was included. I had thought about taking pictures of each one but time did not allow. Someone on the web must have this recorded, I bet.
Man, I can tell you I was ready to do some shopping here. I had visions of TSOP hats and exclusive instrumental dance mixes of OJays songs. Problem was, they were closed. I tried calling the phone number on the door to find out what gave, but only got a generic greeting that they phoned me up with a day later when I was listening to Anwar Sadat's widow talk about peace. Oh well. I guess Pam does have a point about bringing more junk into the house.
The true sound of Philadelphia? The sound of a steak grill, perhaps. Despite predictions of people who know me, I didn't really go overboard with ordering up Philly Cheese Steak Sandwiches. Frankly, some of them scared me. Cheese Whiz? No thanks, I'll have mine with Provolone, thank you very much.
I hope that lady in the window is coughing and not choking. Maybe it is from the the charming misogyny they have on their sign here
The South Philly blocks that make up the Italian Market are vibrant and colorful. I only wish I had access to a refrigerator and a kitchen to take full advantage of the wonders that can be acquired there
The Terminal Market was pretty darned impressive too. The treat above is a chocolate covered banana on an almond cookie similarly shaped with raspberry and whipped cream filling. Yes, it was wonderful.
posted by well-executed buffet at 11:07 PM
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Wednesday, April 9, 2008
The Oldest and the Newest Photo
