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Writer and editor Home > Blogs > Brain Droppings > Archives > 2006 > April
April 2006
LeAnn Rimes gives good show in Kettering
First things first: If you’re going to write about a LeAnn Rimes show, you have to provide a quick and simple answer to the most important question: Did her rendition of “Blue� give you goosebumps?
Answer: Yes.
Not a problem at all. Rimes reminded a not-sold-out-but-still respectable audience at the Trent Arena in Kettering that her vocal chops are every bit as considerable as they were when we first heard ’em more than 10 years ago.
Nowadays, Rimes also wants to make sure nobody thinks she’s a little kid anymore. With her mile-long legs, sexy stage strut and songs of grown-up love conundrums, nobody would make that mistake, either.
Lots of the songs Rimes belted — and we do mean belted — Sunday night came off her newest CD, “This Woman,� which the enthusiastic crowd ate up. One may have wondered, from the talk of soft ticket sales leading up to the concert, but Rimes found out she definitely has some very big fans in Kettering.
The other star of the evening was Kettering itself, which saw the official grand opening of the Miami Valley’s newest music venue. The Firebirds’ basketball floor turned out to be a flexible, decent-enough concert hall. The acoustics were surprisingly fine, and responded well to Rimes’ powerful singing.
A good thing, too. From her killer delivery of the old standard “Summertime� to the new hit “Nothin’ ‘Bout Love Makes Sense,� Rimes gave a terrific show — and a worthy opener for the Trent.
Kudos, too, to Eleventh Hour, the group of Fairmont students who perform a cappella pop tunes, and did a very nice job warming up the appreciative crowd.
Um, what the heck was Keith Richards doing in a palm tree?
This may officially join the Top 5 strangest celebrity injuries of all time…
Can’t wait to find out what REALLY happened…
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Learn to sing the anthem yourself, first, dummies
Oh, lordy — wasn’t all THIS carping and kvetching about the Spanish-language version of “The Star-Spangled Banner” predictable as all get out?
Well, I’d remind all you proud Anglo-speakers of one thing: NONE OF YOU ARE ALLOWED TO GRIPE IF YOU CAN’T SING THE SONG YOURSELF.
You know what I’m talking about: The ugly little truth of the National Anthem is that most people in America don’t know the words to the sucker, let alone what it’s about (quick, kiddies… which war or battle was it written during and about? One point for each)?
CNN on Friday night was saying that more than 60 percent of Americans surveyed admit they don’t know all the words to the anthem. And in fact, the same percentage made the same admission in a similar poll back in the 1930s!
And trust me: I’ve been a judge of enough Dragons-game anthem tryouts at the Dayton Mall to confirm this from personal, not to say painful, experience.
So, let’s just tuck all this goofball, hysterical kneejerkiness back into the closet with flag burning, where it belongs, and all just try to get along, shall we?
Thank you very much.
A great new Springsteen CD.
Here’s a silly confession: One of my very favorite songs of all time is “Erie Canal.”
You know, the one about canal boats in the 1800s that goes, “I’ve got a mule, and her name is Sal, 15 miles on the Erie Canal….â€? I first heard it as a child, from my grandma, I think, and I used to sing it to my kids when they were tiny: A bedtime ritual in which we’d all three climb into the bottom bunk together and sing long-ago traditional tunes like “Camptown Races,” “Froggie Went A Courtin’,’ “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad,” and yes, “Erie Canal.”
Nowadays my kids are all grown, and so I don’t sing to them anymore unless I’m trying to get on their nerves (which works, by the way). Fortunately for all of us, though, Bruce Springsteen has come in to take over.
The Boss, now firmly into the Elder Rock Statesman part of his career, has two distinct musical personalities: The Jersey rocker so many of us know and love, and the rootsy folk-music fan who always comes back to the quieter acoustic songs of social justice and Americana that he learned long after rock ‘n’ roll seeped into his DNA.
Perhaps because he came by it academically rather than naturally, Springsteen’s folk work has generally been less satisfying than his rock. The notable exception, of course, is the hypnotic and haunting “Nebraska” from 1982. In contrast, 1995’s “The Ghost of Tom Joad” was tuneless, meandering and dull. Last year’s “Devils and Dust” fell a bit in between, successful more for its moving stories than for memorable music.
So now Bruce has done something really offbeat, even for him. This week he released “We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions,” a disc of 13 covers that reach back across American history. He assembled a talented crew of country and bluegrass players and knocked the album out essentially live, mostly in single takes, to get the dusty, back-porchy spontaneity that folk music with born with.
The songs are wonderfully selected: ” John Henry,” “Jesse James,” “Shenandoah,” “Old Dan Tucker,” “Mary Don’t You Weep,” “Pay Me My Money Down” — an array of ballads, square-dance reels, protest tunes, spirituals, hymns and laments that tell of the hopes, dreams, heroes, villains and dramas infused through our culture.
There’s no particular song by Pete Seeger in any of it (some extra lyrics on “Jacob’s Ladder” is about all), despite the name of the album. A few critics have rapped Springsteen for that, but he writes in the liner notes that Seeger’s spirit and approach to folk were what drove the project.
Springsteen seems to regard these songs as such treasures that it’s hard to doubt his sincerity. And besides, it’s all good stuff. “Erie Canal” is here, I should note. Springsteen rasps it out as an achey, melancholy song of endless workdays and dead-end drudgery, driven by sad Cajun horns and a gypsy fiddle. He turns it into a much different song than I had imagined it could be, for which I’m grateful.
Nice to know the old man can still teach me, and my kids, a thing or two.
NOTE: There’s a fun DVD here too on the making of, a film of the sessions. Enjoy.
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New Broooooooooce!
Bruce Springsteen’s new album is a keeper … it’s “We Shall Overcome,” a bunch of old American folk songs and traditionals that he recorded with a large acoustic band pretty much in a single take.
It’s good stuff, proving yet again that at heart Springsteen is an an Americana artist — that his national identity and sense of country and history are huge parts of who he is, informing his art and his work.
In this case, we get covers of great old songs, from “Jesse James” to “Erie Canal,” all done in ways you haven’t heard before.
We’ll talk more tomw. I gotta go listen!
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Good stuff: New mark knopfler/emmylou harris CD
The new duets disc from Mark Knopfler and Emmylou Harris is called “All the Roadrunning,” just out.
Some pairings feel so natural and so right that you wonder they took so long to get around to the matchup; as it turns out, Knopfler and Harris have known for a long time that they should be playing together, recording the 12 duets here over the last seven years, whenever schedules would allow — they just happened to get around to sharing the results with us.
Thank goodness the time for that has arrived. This is one of those wonderful albums that makes the most of its talents, brings out the best in both sides and displays hidden aspects of each half that only seem apparent in relation to the other — you know, the general definition of musical soulmates.
The match doesn’t just come in the blending of their dissimilar, but well-suited, voices as much as in hearing Harris’ perfect vocals snuggling inside the warm embrace of Knopfler’s guitar playing.
Musically, they’re closer to Harris’ terrain — quiet, pretty country-folk and soft roots-rock, though Knopfler feels at home there, too. She brings out a gentleness in his singing that shows his voice to have more music to it than he often displays in his own work; he provides a solid midtempo song framework that gives her a chance to sass and strut.
They’re both of an age and experience level where we might not have expected to get many surprises from either, but “Roadrunning” provides new delights and insights on nearly every track. “I dug up a diamond, rare and fine … I dug up a diamond in a deep dark mine,â€? they sing plaintively together here. “Maybe once in a lifetime, you hold one in your hand….â€? They may as well be singing of themselves, and of this gem of a work.
Grade: A
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Just shoot ‘em in the head!
I caught the remake of “Assault on Precinct 13” the other night on HBO, apparently in a bored-enough frame of mind that I didn’t mind sitting through a fairly standard C+ action flick that I’d seen and only partly enjoyed years ago in the original version…
Ethan Hawke and Lawrence Fishburne actually have a pretty good chemistry in this one, and Mario Bello is just plain hot, whether she’s handling a firearm or not. Some things are simply what they are.
Actually, Fishburne makes a more convincing bad guy than good guy, it occurs to me. When he plays bad, he knows how to really turn on the smooth oiliness, and he does it really well. He’s one of those smart bad guys who is even scarier for being clever. When he’s a good guy, there’s a bit of geekiness that comes out in the seriousness he usually affects.
But ANYWAY, what occurred to me is that I don’t think I’ve ever seen a movie in which so many people are shot in the head. I mean, we’ve all seen lots and lots of movies in which lots and lots of people got shot… but in this one, it seems that NEARLY EVERYBODY after the first two shootings gets it right in the noggin.
Which is pretty funny, because 1. There’s a lot of shooting, and it never seems to go anywhere except, well, in the head; and 2. most of the guys in this are wearing helmets and body armor (that’s all I’ll say), so the only place to hit ‘em that works is in the head … and wouldn’t ya know? That’s JUST what happens.
How conveeeeeeeeenient!
Anyway, Sundance… I think I should tell ya … I’ve never actually killed a man…
Oh, great: Hell of a time to tell me.
Dont’ you miss the old days when a bullet counted for something?
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Mishmashing Mozart…
I’ll come right out and say this, rather than beat around the bush: I spent about 20 unhappy minutes with the Dayton Philharmonic Orchestra the other night.
Now that I feel better for having vented, I should explain.
The DPO is taking the lead on the local celebration of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s 250th birthday this year with a bunch of concerts and other events that will run through the spring at venues around town (for the complete list, visit www. daytonphilharmonic.com).
The DPO’s inaugural concert in this series was Thursday night with famed pianist Emanuel Ax, who wowed the Schuster crowd with a fleet-fingered performance of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 25 in C major. It was splendid.
Before getting around to that, however, there was a bit of a diversion — an intellectual whetting of the artistic appetite, as it were.
It came in the form of a 1976 piece by the composer Michael Colgrass called Letter From Mozart, in which he fantasizes about having been asked by Mozart to write something reflecting how one of his works might be interpreted today. It takes a brief Mozart-like theme and then wrings it through a strange and surreal catacomb of dissonant and atonal effects that mangle it all out of recognition.
Here’s what a critic said about the piece a few years ago: “The effect is like watching a Federico Fellini movie set in a freak carnival, faces leering in and out of focus in the camera, the feral sound of a calliope and human screeches penetrating your ears. … A delightful contemporary work.â€?
I’d agree with everything until “delightful.� I found the piece to be grating, jarring and exceedingly unpleasant. From the awkward shifting in the seats and comments I heard in the audience, I wasn’t alone on this. I should add here I’ve got a high degree of trust in the programming decisions Neal Gittleman makes as the DPO’s music director.
One of the things I like about Philharmonic concerts is that they’re educational, as well as entertaining. He does a good job at challenging the audience and making them think about what they’re hearing. He likes to make sure you’re paying attention.
Maybe he did that this time, too, and my discomfort came from my knee-jerk negative reaction to most contemporary classical music. So, OK, assuming there was something to be learned from this nails-on-chalkboard experience, I’ll challenge myself: What might it have been? Well …
• Ugly music can be just as hard to play as pretty music: Colgrass’ piece is so complicated it took two conductors — Gittleman and assistant conductor Patrick Reynolds.
• Complicated doesn’t mean better: Sometimes it just means complicated.
• Learning isn’t always fun: After a tough day, I was more in a mood to simply be entertained. Sorry.
• Check in with your audience: Riskiness is one thing; alienation is another. My guess is that Neal and crew knew pretty well that most folks would dislike the Colgrass and plunged in anyway. My question would be: In times of tight ticket sales, why annoy large numbers of your fans? It’s not like performing Mozart is pandering, or anything.
And the main lesson:
• Pretty music sounds prettier by contrast: Real Mozart sounded even better after the Colgrass version. I wouldn’t have imagined that was possible, but it was.
“Elizabeth I”: So far, so strange…
Very much looking forward to tonight’s part two of “Elizabeth I,” the two-hour miniseries on HBO about the great queen… Sat nite’s first part was interesting and very watchable; Helen Mirren does a fab job as the monarch, and Jeremy Irons was terrific as her pal and key adviser, the Earl of Leichester…
Still, I found myself as a history fan prickled by a few things with the show.
Firstly, I found myself liking Elizabeth a lot less from this presentation, and especially respecting her much much less. My sense of her has always been that she was a cool-headed, sage professional who went about the business of governing in a smart and businesslike way, which was why things went so well for her.
This show actually goes against that view. She is show as very emotional and ruling mostly from the hip and from her gut, largely based on whim and mood. If she’s angry or sad, the people around her suffer. She’s benign only in a relative way. She is mercurial and governs accordingly. Not at all what I had expected.
They also portray her as a virgin well into her 50s; I think like most modern folks, I figured her virginity was mostly a myth that she perpetuated to stay potentially marriable and thus in power, but the producers here suggest that she indeed was virginal late, late into life.
All in all, it’s an intriguing portrait but not what I had expected… Which really makes it better and more watchable, I suppose. And this portrayal may be the correct one; i need to get back to my reading, I guess.
Seeya later.
What’s your favorite music?
Today’s home page features a great story by Carol Simmons, the DDN’s main music writer, listing the CDs you’d want to have to start your very own classical music collection. It’s a good list, too — in addition to the 25 that she gives as as the main must-haves, we will be running lists on different genres all through the week, drawn from the expertise of various DDN music writers and critics. Jazz, hip-hop, rock, blues, country — even local music from Dayton bands.
Next Sunday, we’ll cull the list down to the best of the best — the CDs you should just own, period, in order to be All You Can Be, in terms of well-rounded personhood. That list will be composed by myself and Alexis Larsen, the editor of GO! magazine in the DDN.
It’ll be a fun week! Stop by and let us know what you think.
Meanwhile, if you have any favorite songs, bands, albums or compositions you want to share this week, let us know. Post a comment and you might end up getting a vote in all this!
Cheers, Ron
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The view is cool from the cheap seats
Attended the Dayton Phil at the Schu Thursday night, and I did something I don’t normally do: Spent the second half in the cheap seats.
Our tix are normally in the back of the orchestra (the main floor area), and they’re good seats — or are they? For the Broadway on Main shows, we are in the first balcony near the center, and those seats are SCHWEEEET! But during the first half of the DPO show, I realized that from where I was sitting, I could mostly see the side of Emanuel Ax’s piano, Neal Gittleman’s tuxedoed backside and the first couple of folks in the strings. I could hear the percussionists and the brass, but I sure couldn’t see them.
Besides, I was wondering how the ticket sales were going lately, and so wondered who was upstairs. I headed during intermission for the very upper floor and perched in the center of the very last row of seats.
And it was very very cool.
First of all, for the Philharmonic you can get the entire lay of the land — you can see all the parts of the orchestra working together and see the actual artistic mechanics of how they work as an ensemble. When Gittleman throws a direction to a far corner of the group, you can see what he means and notice the result. You can see how the pieces and parts all fit together; you get a better sense of the whole.
Plus, the sound is good up there. It’s just as loud as you need it to be, thx to the marvelous Schuster acoustics (which are as good as they ever advertised during construction that they would be, which is nice). And it may sound a bit richer, actually … more like soup that has had the proper cooking time, better blended together. Or at least that’s how it sounded to me.
And there is a delightful sense of floating in space. Up there, you are waaaaaaay high up. You can feel a bit claustrophobic with the ceiling right overhead, but I really enjoyed myself. I may well head up that way for the next show.
Folks often ask me where I sit for concert reviews: Do we get good seats for shows? Front row? Nope. We buy tickets along with everybody else, so that we can see the same show everybody else sees. Remember: If they aren’t playing to you in the back row, they really aren’t playing to anybody.
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Hawthorne Heights busts the model.
We’re all good with having a not new band from Dayton out in the music world carrying our city’s torch. It’s nice to always have a local group someplace on the national scene, if only to give hope to all the other hard-working musicians that the time they spend writing, rehearsing and playing out in small clubs might eventually pay off.
But if you haven’t caught HH’s story, yet, what is most interesting about them is how they made their break: They went around the stifling, hobbling music industry crap and took their tunes directly to the people.
And they used the Internet for it, of course. The band marketed their first disc solely on Myspace.com where kids could find it, and sold TONS of CDs. That first flush of big surprise success got them a record deal on a major label, and their second album sold big, too. The band has sold more than half a million records without messing around with all the foolishness of worrying about marketing, radio play, getting discovered, etc. — the stuff that usually kills good bands before anybody can hear them.
WIRED magazine even profiled how HH pulled this off about a year ago, making the point that the Internet is changing everything faster and faster — knocking down old, longstanding business models and creating new opportunities by the minute. Cool that a bunch of kids from Dayton were smart enough to take advantage of the fact.
Kudos to ‘em on a big show this weekend. We heard the guys at X-Fest last fall, but as you may know that’s hardly the place to really get much sense of how a group sounds. Too many distractions, crummy sound and too much feedback.
But we’ll get around to bashing X-Fest soon enough. Have fun with the Heights!
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Lousy actors … and lots of ‘em
My fellow blogger on this site, Eric Robinette, has raised a fun question on his “Sir Critic on Cinema” blog, which you’ll find in our DDN.com directory (go thru the directory and have a looksee at the other blogs we’ve got; there are lots of good ones on there).
ANYWAY, he asks which actors and actresses these days really manage to stink up a picture just by showing up … he lists Vin Diesel, Jessica Alba and a few others that I really can’t quibble with (tho I think it’s almost unfair to pick on Alba since she knows as well as we do that she’s hired for looks alone, and fills that bill just fine, thankyewverrymuch).
Anyway, I filed the following on his blog, and would welcome any further contributions:
• JIM CARREY. except for his great turn in “Eternal Sunshine…” he’s truly the most annoying person in the cosmos. in fact, his performance in that movie was enjoyable mostly because … why? … he didn’t act like Jim Carrey. ExACTly.
• Also… ROBIN WILLIAMS. When he is playing a bad guy or straight man, OK. “Insomnia” was cool cuz he was a good creepazoid villain. Otherwise, he makes me ill.
• And here’s one to debate: AL PACINO. Face it, he’s horrible exactly half the time. There are two Als: Screamer Al and Quiet Al, and they alternate movies. Sometimes Screamer Al is OK, as in “The Devil’s Advocate,” and sometimes Quiet(er) Al is awful, as in “Scent of A Woman,” which is one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen, and largely due to him. Either way, the guy is a total crapshoot — which he knows, and has turned into his main stock in trade. Very interesting, considering the level of talent he has, or used to have.
• ROBERT DENIRO. Yep, I’d throw late-period DeNiro on there. Has he made a good movie since “Ronin” or “Jackie Brown”? Those were quite a while ago. His comedy shtick of late is embarrassing and awful, and he’s obviously just paying bills with a smirk and a wrinkle of the brow. Do not tell me how funny he was in “Meet the Fockers,” either. He wasn’t, and it’s a pretty poor movie anyway. He’s the biggest case out there of Major Star Who’s Lost His Way that I can think of.
Thots, anyone?
Do you like prints?
Ahoy, all you art lovers (and I KNOW you’re out there…) you might do yourself a favore and stop by the Wright State University Art Galleries before April 30 to have a look at “Layered Inventions,” a group printmaking exhibition.
The show was the one that was up during the recent WSU ArtGala — which, I’m told, earned $100,000 for art student scholarships; very cool — so some of you may have seen it already at that well attended event.
Printmaking is difficult and specialized — a form of making art that most people don’t understand very well. But it’s also one that you can learn a lot about in a show like this, where you have a variety of techniques on display side by side for comparison and repeated viewing. Look for ways the artist layers on colors, and the ways that black plays a part, or not, in the image and composition.
The range of images by the collection of artists is original and eye-catching. You’ll find yourself wandering back and forth, taking this large show in in several stages, most likely.
I esp liked Laurie Sloan’s large, minimalist prints, and the way she takes advantage of an open white background, as well as Akiko Taniguchi’s busy, atmospheric landscapes, full of furious and minute black lines.
Check it out. The galleries are in the Creative Art Center on campus… visit www.wright.edu/artgalleries for hours and directions. It’s a free visit.
Have fun!
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On DVD: “Jarhead’ isn’t that bad
Caught up the other night with “Jarhead,” recently out on DVD. It’s the memoir of James Swofford, a Marine who fought in the Gulf War — except that he and his fellow leathernecks never ever got to fight.
This is a movie that dramatically illustrates the idea, which you’ve heard before, that war is 90 percent boredom and 10 percent sheer terror — and if you recall that conflict, you will remember that we had more than half a million troops massed in Kuwait for more than 122 days before they got to attack Iraq. And then the ground war wrapped up in just four days before Bush Sr. declared it all done.
Swoff and his Marine buddies wait and wait and wait in this picture, and then the war races past them so fast that by the end, they haven’t fired their rifles. The movie is about that paranoia, anger, frustration and suppressed hostility — about the weirdness of being trained for something that never ever comes. The men all go a bit crazy waiting to fight and never being able to, wanting to kill and never getting the chance.
A lot of critics pounced on this movie when it came out last year, and I think rather unfairly. First of all, the complaint that “nothing happens,” which I saw in a lot of reviews, is a fact of history, not a flaw in the screenplay. If anything, William Broyles Jr’s script does a good job at keeping things interesting and getting into the characters’ heads, when the fact of their boredom is the key plot point. It’s a nifty trick, well pulled off, I thot.
If anything, the movie shows the surreality of war a little better by it being threatened, promised even, and then never happening. The Marines’ reactions to not getting to act out their desire for violence is even scarier than it might have been otherwise.
Altogether, a worthy film. Ignore the critics on this one (they didn’t seem to get it) and check it out.
Tom and Katie have a girl!
Surely you’ve heard the news by now, but let us here at Brain Droppings be the first … well, OK, among the first … well, maybe among the first 1,000 or so… well, among the first in Ohio, wait, no, she’s from Toledo… well — all right, let us simply make sure that within the first few minutes of having heard the news — but, no, I read it about an hour ago, and I had some stuff to do before I had a chance to fire up the computer…
Let’s try this again: First or not, let us congratulate the happy couple (wait a sec… ARE they happy? he is kinda weird, after all, and do they think of happy the way most of us do? but she seems normal, and she IS from Toledo, like we said…) as they (are they even really a couple? you know all that stuff the tabs have written about she’s really just being used as a Scientologist breeding recepticle… egad!) as they (but what about all that stuff? What do they think in TOLEDO???) welcome (do they have welcomes in Scientology? aren’t they all quiet and stuff?) the new baby (yes, they’re apparently quiet unless they’re on talk shows… THAT whole thing was odd … but you know, he really has been much more normal lately. he was even on the cover of PARADE magazine, and you CANNOT, trust me CANNOT, be more boring than that) into their family (does that include his adopted kids? doesn’t Nicole have custody of them? have they ever been to Toledo?).
Wait a sec, that didn’t turn out the way I meant. Let’s try again: Welcome to the baby! Let the tabloid wars begin.
And blessings upon the child, for she is certain to have a very unusual life.
Good new CD by Dayton singer Van Hunt.
Hey, kids, here’s your preview of the CDs we’re reviewing in this Friday’s GO! magazine (in the print edition … try it! You’ll like it).
R&B
Van Hunt
“On the Jungle Floor”
The second disc from Dayton-born Atlanta expat Van Hunt bubbles and boils with a raw, exciting mixture of funky soul and stripped-back R&B that stands out from the current pack with a rough-edged sound that one might sooner expect to find on a rock album.
Except that a rock album is also one of the many things that this kaliedoscopic package turns out to be. Hunt nimbly shifts gears from genre to genre, equally at ease in any form — skipping from pretty piano crooning on “Daredevil, Baby” to surging-guitar sneering on the terrific “Ride, Ride, Ride.”
“Get on up and dance!â€? he hollers, and he’ll do almost anything to get you doing it — such as sliding next into the slow, velvety seduction of “Being A Girl” on the very next cut. You never know what’s coming next.
Hunt credits his musical polymorphism to growing up here in the Dayton area (visit his bio at www.vanhunt.com), cutting his musical teeth on the exuberant richness of the city’s 1970s explosion of funk bands that was led by the Ohio Players. Settling in the south after college, he plunged into making music. His 2004 debut disc ended up with a Grammy nomination and the same solid reviews that he’s earning for On the Jungle Floor.
And what’s not to like about a guy who not only enthusiastically acknowledges and appreciates his many influences, but also handles and updates them with such finesse? He’s working early Prince here, channeling late-career Smokey Robinson there, out-Kravitzing Lenny K someplace else. Heck, “At the End of a Slow Dance” even sounds like a U2 song, if you squint a little bit.
Hunt plays every instrument as he goes and calls the shots smartly enough that he’ll even toss in an old Stooges cover, “No Sense of Crime,” that he turns from punk into a pretty, rain-patter soul groove. It would be weird, if he didn’t manage it so well.
We like this one. Grade: A-
iPod picks: “Hot Stage Lights”; “Ride, Ride, Ride”; “If I Take You Home (Upon…)”.
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Everything I know, I learned from TV!
In Sunday’s paper in our new section, Life & Arts pop-culture writer Dave Larsen had a little bit of fun at television’s expense, looking at shows that appeal strongly, if not totally, to one sex or the other, with little meeting of the twain. Personally, though, I recommend not being so hasty. I think there’s a great deal that men can learn from watching chick TV, and vice-versa.
Such as what, you wonder?
Well, how about these valuable life lessons that I’ve gleaned from some of the very shows Dave mentioned:
• Gilmore Girls: It is extremely irritating for a teenage girl when she isn’t nearly as hot as her mom. Imagine!
• 24: Blowin’ stuff up can be just as much fun on the small screen as on the big one.
• Desperate Housewives: One can never take too much enjoyment in the unhappiness, misery and misfortune of others — especially if they’re people you know well.
• South Park: People laugh when you make cartoon characters say bad words. If Disney had figured that out about 20 years ago, its animation department might not be in the fix it’s in now.
• Grey’s Anatomy: Women can’t help but fall for men who are really bad for them. In fact, the smarter they are, the more they can’t help it. Men know this and act like there’s nothing they can do about it, which usually works for quite a while.
• Battlestar Galactica: A friend in high school had a white 1974 Wildcat convertible with bad rear bumper that we called Battlestar Galactica. I just thought I’d mention that.
• The Ghost Whisperer: Who knew that little Haley Joel Osment would grow up to look just like Jennifer Love Hewitt, complete with curves? That’s what messing with spirits will do to you.
• Anything on HGTV: Designers take sadistic pleasure in listening to what people would love to see done to their houses while they’re away, and then doing exactly the opposite. Hate brown? You get brown. And then they love it when the people try not to betray their dislike on camera.
• The Shield: Shaving your head can be a great career move.Does anybody remember Michael Chiklis before he met a razor? Didn’t think so.
• Oprah: If God had a TV show, it would probably be like this.
• Football: Why Oprah invented couches, chips and beer.
• Prison Break: It’s a good thing that they’re in there, and we’re out here.
• America’s Next Top Model: Does anybody actually know the name anymore of America’s Current Top Model?
• The Three Stooges: Actually, this is a biggie — because Everything You Need to Know in Life, You Can Learn From the Three Stooges. To wit:
Poking somebody in the eye is not nice.
If you see somebody is about to poke you in the eye, put your hand up in front of your nose really fast to block them.
If you’re trying to do the poking and you encounter the action listed in No. 2, just punch the person in the stomach instead.
‘Sopranos’ predictions!
OK, don’t read this if you havent’ seen Sunday’s episode yet, but here’s what I think might be coming:
• Vito, far from dead yet, will hide out in New Hampshire, working at the antiques store, until a surprise visit from a vacationing family member gives him the idea that he needs to start working with the Feds — in fact, he’s the only guy other than Paulie with hooks into both the NJ and NY families, from his connection with Phil Leotardo. Could his testimony to save himself be what finally brings Tony down?
• Tony will declare a live-and-let-him-hide policy on Vito, and the guys in his family will declare him soft. Not good. Mutiny will begin, in subtle ways, starting with Paulie Walnuts.
• Speaking of Phil, he’s likely to make a play to run the New York family while Johnny Sack is in the pokey. Once he gets what he wants, his personal hatred of Tony will win out in the form of open violence.
• Speaking of Paulie, he’s soon dead. Tony will whack him either becuz he goes too far in his revolt over Vito getting a pass from Tony, or because T. realizes Paulie was rattin’ him out to Johnny Sack from Youngstown a few years back. Either way, he’s history, and soon.
• Carmela will get the building inspector pass on her spec house, thanks to Tony’s influence, but it will lead to some sort of investigation from the govt that spins out of control and catches them unawares.
• It’s time for the women to emerge within the family business. Meadow will get dragged into the business, the way Michael Corleone did (remember, Ron’s Sopranos Theory No. 1: The show follows the same story arc as ‘The Godfather.’), and have to become part of it all. Somehow, her boyfriend Finn will figure into this, accidently pushing her toward it. Meanwhile, Carmela has ambitions that will lead her to get involved in it all. The boys are about to start really messing things up. Just wait and see what happens.
What do YOU think?
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“Constantine” on DVD: Better than you’ve heard
We caught the DVD of “Constantine” the other nite, a combat-with-the-devil comic-book flick with Keanu Reeves and Rachel Weisz, and it was rather entertaining. Completely silly, but very entertaining.
Most of the reviews of it that I read when it was in theaters were quite negative, but I’m thinking they were off the mark this time. Or, it may be that given all that bad stuff I read, I may have had such low expectations that the movie seemed that much better by comparison.
I think the writers, as usual, were taking the thing way too seriously. I remember complaints that it was was too derivative of other movies like “The Exorcist” and “The Matrix,” and indeed it was. But frankly, blending those two into one movie strikes me as a darn good idea, and I was pleased that somebody tried it.
What was the last movie that critics ruined for you?
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What are today’s classics?
The Wall Street Journal isn’t just all boring business news, you know (or maybe you don’t). In recent years, the paper has vastly expanded other areas of its coverage, including into the arts, entertainment and leisure activities — and in fact, one of my favorite weekend reads every Saturday morning is the WSJ’s “Pursuits” section, which hits all those topics in a thoughtful, analytical way.
One of the best features is called “Masterpiece,” a column that rotates amongst various writers and critics that focuses on the best work in a genre or by a particular artist and really digs into why the piece in question deserves the title. They hit all kinds of bases. Today’s looked at Dashiell Hammett’s “The Glass Key,” the book that was his favorite, even above “The Maltese Falcon,” which was the one I like best and that most folks know, cuz of the Bogart movie version. Writer Tom Nolan made his case, and I’ll have to hunt that one down. A bit more Hammett on the shelf is a good thing, anyway.
In recent weeks the column has talked about Frank Lloyd Wright’s famous “Fallingwater” house in Pennsylvania, Jasper Johns’ “Flag” painting from the mid-1950s, and Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B. Goode,” which just enjoyed a 50th anniversary, I believe.
This column has gotten me thinking anew about something that comes to mind frequently in my writing and critiquing and conversation about arts and entertainment stuff: Namely, what are the masterpieces and classics of today?
There’s a lot of entertainment fodder being produced and cranked out — mountains of books, movies, TV shows, pop songs, classical compositions, poems and more, in a never-ending deluge of creativity. Sorting through them is a challenge — an exceedingly enjoyable and usually rewarding challenge, but a challenge nonetheless.
I often ask myself, “Sure, this is good. But will I still be listening to it a year from now?” or “I like this book a lot, but will I remember 20 years from now that I read it?”
So, this week on the blog we’ll be putting the question to you, dear reader/posters: What are our contemporary classics? What music, movies, TV shows and books from the last 10 years or so will stand the test of time and still be talked about, say, 50 to 100 years from now? Who’s written our “The Sun Also Rises?” Who has composed our “Swan Lake?” Who has acted our “Hamlet?” Who has produced our “Gone With the Wind?”
Just to get the conversation started, I’ll toss in “The Sopranos” as a body of work … not surprising to anybody who reads me regularly. Bookwise, I’ll suggest “Atonement” by Ian McEwan, from a couple of years ago. Moviewise, I’ll suggest “A History of Violence,” which just came out last year, and which I think will be looked at written about in film classes a long time from now.
Others? We’re taking suggestions here, kiddies…. And this can be a big, flexible list.
The floor is open.
Pretty with Pink
Hey, let’s talk new tunes!
Pink’s new CD is “I’m Not Dead.” Her career and the way she approaches it raises the question: Can you have it both ways? Have your cake and eat it, too? Work both sides of the room at the same time? Have two conversations at once?
Pink wants to pull off all of those — and even though she doesn’t always manage it as well as she, and we, might hope for, we like her for the attempt. If nothing else, she’s rock/pop’s best contemporary multi-tasker.
Over the course of two good albums, she’s carved out a semi-gritty reputation as a punky popster — though her bleach-blonde, ink-bodied, pierced and screechy image is lot gruffer than her music, which tends to be tamer, well-crafted pop-rock with just enough edge to suggest more chops and talent than the other LindsayAshleeChristinaBritney pop chix with whom she gets lumped together in the marketplace.
So along comes album No. 3, with a declaration in the title that seems to refer to disappointing sales from her very fine last disc, 2003’s “Try This.” You should have no doubt as to her still being around based on the kickoff track, “Stupid Girls,” whose lyrics and video slam the roles into which society jams young women. Everything from bulimia to breast augmentation to brainless clubbing to fakey fashionista preening comes under her gun, along with funny riffs on Jessica Simpon and Paris Hilton. Pink’s smart enough to deliver it all in a shuffling dance confection that has radio play written all over it; after all, why protest if nobody will hear you? To drive the point home, she scoots her hiphuggers as low as they’ll go on the CD cover, with a look that says she knows how stupid it seems.
While the music sticks to solid pop/rock, Pink plays the lyrics as serious as she can, writing about what she’d like to tell President Bush, the plight of runaway kids, lying boyfriends and more pointed stuff about gender roles. Most interesting of all, she closes with a duet with her father, on a ballad he wrote about being in Vietnam. It’s a good song that declares Pink always plans to be up to something different. And in her business, different is good.
Grade: B+. Why not?
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Gettin’ tired of Dave Chappelle…
OK,OK, OK! We get it! Dave C. felt like he just didn’t want to play the crazy TV biz games anymore and felt like he had lost creative control over his show, and he has too much aesthetic integrity to trade for $50 million! We GET IT NOW. He’s not crazy!!! He doesn’t do drugs!!!!! WE UNDERSTAND WE REALLY REALLY DO WE SWEAR PLEASE GOD DONT MAKE US LISTEN ANYMORE.
Seriously, time to find a new story to chew on, folks. Chappelle admittedly surprised us because he made an extraordinary-seeming decision: he chose not to take the brass ring when it was offered, realizing that it went through his nose. So he passed on a pile of money, which few people in his position might have done — but he is a happier guy for having done so. That’s obvious, and worth learning from.
We are surprised and even shocked when entertainers turn out to have decency, life wisdom and common sense, mostly because we usually expect people in New York and Hollywood to just act like craven idiots, and they rarely disappoint us.
So it’s cool to find that our guy Dave ended up acting like a decent fellow (foul-mouthed and very naughty, but decent nontheless) — just as we would hope any well-raised, level-headed Midwesterner would turn out to act. Kudos to him, and we’re glad for it.
But really, we’ve heard the story enough — and he MUST be tired of telling it. So let’s move on, shall we? So far, I haven’t seen a story that says what he’ll be doing next, and I’m looking forward to hearing that. Then we can all just turn the page, and like Dave, start laughing as we walk in the opposite direction from the bank.
BTW, anybody catch his impromtu standup at Wiley’s last weekend? Let us know….
Too bad about Lorrie…
Here’s an interesting thing: As you note from today’s DDN.com, this week’s concert by country star Lorrie Morgan was cancelled at just about the last minute. She was supposed to play at the Schuster Center on Thursday, but the press release sent out said she was suffering from “seasonal allergies” and couldn’t perform.
Uh-huh, sure. Don’t buy it. As anybody knows who went online this week to Ticketcenterstage.com to buy tix for the show, sales were going pretty badly. In fact, they were going terribly. The show was obviously cancelled for lack of sales.
But what’s interesting is that the announcement of the cancellation is one of the most popular, best-read stories on our Web site this morning…. So, what gives? Big interest in the cancellation, but not in going to the show?
That gets to the heart of what’s happening to ticketed events in Dayton and elsewhere of late. Ticket sales for shows of all sorts are flat, down, just plain lousy. All the fine-arts groups based downtown, from the Ballet to the Philharmonic, report that they’re having a hard time selling tickets to shows and that they’re feeling the pinch from the slump.
Popular Broadway shows like “Hairspray” and “Movin’ Out” haven’t sold as much as expected, either — in fact, sagging sales for the Victoria/Schuster Broadway on Main series is the reason that they announced next season’s offerings will be collapsed from two-week runs to single-week runs. That forced a lot of seat-shuffling in recent weeks for longtime season-ticket holders, but Victoria Prez Dione Kennedy says it was necessary to undergird the bottom line and keep shows from losing money. The Vic will end up saving up to $100,000 per show, in fact, for each one they don’t run. Big money to lose if you aren’t drawing the crowds you want.
Times are tough out there. Leisure money is tight, and entertainment options are plentiful. If anybody in the area doesn’t think Dayton is still mired in a recession, I’d like to hear from them. I’ll refer all your comments to the marketing honchos and executive directors of the local arts groups who’d really like to get your business back — and who are starting to realize that just putting on good shows may not be enough to do the trick, to their dismay.
So it isn’t just Lorrie Morgan’s fault. She most likely would have done a good show. I was even thinking of going, just on a lark (no, I don’t just listen to rap, thank you). And if I’m wrong about why she cancelled her show, I’ll just say I hope the “seasonal allergies” she’s suffering from stop bothering everybody else in the arts community sometime soon. Because they’re all passing out the Benadryl up and town Main Street right now, lemme tell ya, and these sniffles seem to be contagious.
Just plain weird
i’m spinning the new Flaming Lips CD, “At War With the Mystics.”
they seem to be keeping up the extraterrestrial combat theme of “Yoshimi,” tho with a few more sound effects, stop-start arrangements and aural (not oral, you perv) tricks…
i think i like it, but with the Lips it’s kinda hard to tell, you know what i mean? they’re so dang weird that after a while it just seems like weirdness for its own sake, and that grows a little tiresome. i find that after my initial listen, i rarely want to go back…
thots? any flaming lips fans out there?
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the COOLEST new CD out there…
yes, kids, that would be “Show Your Bones” by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs…
I’m on about my 15th spin of the new Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and I’m truly, honestly stuck. I can’t tell whether it’s a new rock masterpiece or a semi-disappointing near-miss that merely frustrates by hinting at promise that never quite gels.
And now, even as I type all that, I’m thinking it may be neither one — nothing more than the best rock disc so far this year. Come to think of it, maybe it’s just the best Yeah Yeah Yeahs album of all time.
OK, mebbe you get the joke there — “Show Your Bones” is just the second full-length album by this wild and fascinating New York trio, who made a fabulous critical splash with a 2001 EP and 2003’s “Fever To Tell,” a jaggedly melodic dreamscape of feedback, sonic freefalling and mysterious love songs that only made sense in the dark. Bones is actually better, finding the band morphed into something weird and thrilling: one part experimental, one part pure punk, one part post-Beat balladeering, one part God-knows-what.
The result? Well, most bands spend whole careers never managing the barely controlled energy and hardcore stomp the Yeahs peel off without an apparent care on the very first song, Gold Lion: Simple drum beat melts into lazy acoustic strum — until singer Karen O goes into valkyrie-on-fire mode, and the band starts blasting away like crazed gunslingers fighting for their lives.
The first half of this not-too-long album blazes away until about the middle, when it settles into a quieter groove that brings out the many idioscyncracies of O’s fearsome voice, which sounds like Betty Boop fleeing a biker gang led by Janis Joplin. Right behind her are her brilliant bandmates, guitarists Brian Chase and Nick Zinner, who seem more at home on the stompers but still know how to dial it back effectively.
Except that depending on my mood, the slow stuff here seems a big loose and silly after the opening volcanics. Can you have a semi-disappointing masterpiece? And if you can, is it all right to keep wanting to hear it over and over again?
I’ll get back to you on that after the 16th or 17th spin.
Grade o this one? Let’s say a B+
iPod picks: Gold Lion, Phenomena, Cheated Hearts
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the TV show everybody’s talking about
… And no, it’s not “American Idol.”
It’s “Big Love” on HBO (Sundays at 10 pm, right after “The Sopranos”). The story of the polygamist Morman family — one hubbie, three wives — just gets better and better each week. It’s turning out to be the best way imaginable to explore the complexities and complications of married life, as each of the wives and the numerous kids all seek new ways to jockey for position and power in the family structure.
Overlaid onto all this are issues of faith, fidelity, friendship, business, the workplace, child-rearing, social life, ambition and more. It’s like “The Sopranos” without the shooting!
Great show so far. Anybody tuning in?
Lookin’ forward to “Elizabeth I”
HBO is doing some heavy promotion to its next big miniseries, dealing with the life of England’s most famous queen… airs in a couple of weeks, with the always terrific Helen Mirren in the lead role.
Hmmmmm… they ‘ve done pretty well with history, from “Deadwood” to the amazing “Rome,” which we still miss a lot at our house. Given this cast and that it’s one of the most interesting times in Western history, anybody think they can go wrong?
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Who needs another “Ten Commandments”???
As you’ve probably heard by now, ABC is launching a two-part miniseries tonite of “The Ten Commandments,” and the main question I have is, Um, Why?
I have to admit here that the cheesy, awful old 1950s version by Cecil B. DeMille is one of my greatest cinematic Guilty Pleasures… It’s the picture that personifies the very idea of “So bad it’s good.” And it is sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo bad, that you almost can’t rip your eyes off it.
It’s the height of all that was dreadful and wonderful in Hollywood back then, all at the same time: lavish sets, horrible acting, worse writing, flagrant melodrama, arch over-seriousness, monotone narrative… that all this stuff came to rest on one of the most important Old Testament stories, if not the most important one, has always struck me as even more car-crash horrifying, and fascinatiing.
My next fave on this list would be “Ben-Hur,” mostly for the Chuck-Heston-clenched-teeth factor and the chariot race, which is one of the greatest things ever filmed, period.
But “Ben-Hur” beats “10 Commandments” in one respect… it’s actually a pretty good movie!
Anyway, back to tonite… Why oh why do they keep doing this?
Remember what you’ve heard about there being No New Ideas anymore? Need any more proof?
Stupid pop for teen girls
Anybody out there remember David Cassidy and Bobby Sherman?
They’ve long since gone grey, but the sort of stuff they used to churn out for teenage girls is still being made in a form that — surprisingly enough, given all the other changes in popular music over the years — isn’t all that much different-sounding from what they produced 30 years ago.
The latest incarnation would be a young man named Teddy Geiger, who’s currently burning up charts and hearts with a CD called “Underage Thinking.”
It’s proof again, if you needed it, that being cute makes up for lots of other things. Geiger has a cleancut look, doey eyes and a pleasantly swoony voice a voice that crosses John Mayer and Maroon 5’s Adam Levine, at a time when neither of them have been heard from very much lately.
But before you decide that’s a good thing (any part of it, I mean), I think it’s best merely for me to check out of further review of an album that is clearly NOT intended for me, and simply let young Mr. Geiger speak for himself. Here, then, are the lyrics to one we chose at random, “For You I Will (Confidence).” Enjoy.
“Alright yeah/I’m wandering the streets in a world underneath it all/Nothing seems to be/Nothing taste as sweet as what I can’t have/Like you and the way that you’re twisting your hair around your finger/Tonight I’m not afraid to tell you/What I feel about you…â€?
I think you can guess the rest. I’d have to give this sucker a C-. Not that my opinion counts for much in this case.
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“Movin’ Out” — mostly OK.
We caught “Movin’ Out” at the Schu Friday nite, near the tail end of its run here, and I’m glad the Vic-Schu powers-that-be brought it around, since I was curious to see what the buzz I’ve heard about it over the years is all about.
And yes, the dancing is fabulous and lots of fun. The hard-hoofing young crew does a great job with Twyla Tharp’s inventive and fast-paced choreography, and I thot that the best way to enjoy the s