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Writer and editor Home > Blogs > Brain Droppings > Archives > 2007 > June
June 2007
Who’s off to the Cityfolk Festival today?
And who are you looking forward to seeing?
Looks like the weather’s gonna be glorious….
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Yo! It’s a very funny Weird Al at the Fraze.
KETTERING — So, Friday night in and around Dayton, your myriad live-music choices included the Cityfolk Festival, where you could enjoy the Afro-Latin beats of Ricardo Lemvo and Makina Loca … or you might’ve been down in Kettering, getting your parody on with the loopy sounds and lyrics of (drum roll!) Weird Al Yankovic.
And while it may seem as though we’re making an aesthetic judgment with that statement, you’d be mistaken. We’re really just sayin’. Turns out Weird Al provided just as much food for thought as his excitable fans at the Fraze Pavilion expected he would. Not to mention laughter.
Yep, Yankovic’s dead-on pop parodies of tunes from “Beat It” and “Piano Man” and artists from Snoop Dogg to Avril Lavigne, and about 100 others, drew a rull range of chuckledom from the fans at the Fraze — a group that was fairly young, mostly white and presumably nerdy, and who just couldn’t wait to see their wacky hero riding that Segway during his latest hit, in which he skewers Chamillionaire’s “Ridin.’”
And that wasn’t all he skewered. Yankovic must keep a small army of copyright lawyers happily and gainfully employed, as he runs through one singer after another by hoisting them upon their own lyrical stupidities and turns their very personas against them — to wicked comic effect.
One minute, he was interviewing Eminem or Michael Stipe on his imaginary “Al TV” network, broadcast on big screens over the stage, and the next he was onto yet another costume change, slamming through so many songs you’d have to be a voracious consumer of pop culture to keep up with them all. Apparently, most of the crowd was keeping up, too.
The guy is definitely smart, and brave enough to make fun of his loyal audience, as well. If he’d given away a nickel for every joke he made about middle-aged geeks still living in Mom’s basement, it would’ve been a free show.
And who knows? Yankovic is so full of surprises, the next time he’s in town he might just try something that, um, weird. Anything for a laugh.
Time for the Cityfolk Festival!
Tonight is the night for the opening of the Cityfolk Festival, the coolest event that hits downtown Dayton every year.
You’ll find it along Riverscape under a variety of tents where folks will be listening and dancing to the sounds made by dozens of artists who represent a broad cross-section of the music that defines and connects cultures from around the world. This isn’t pop stuff … this is the music of the world that people had before pop as we think of it today took over everything else.
Like what? Well, how about the Balkan music known as tamburitza? You’ll hear it from Jerry Grcevich, who brings the music from Croatia.
How about Celtic and Irish music? The David Munnelly Band will have it.
American gospel/R&B/blues? Try the great Holmes Brothers, who sound like time itself.
Bluegrass, New Orleans jazz, Cajun, Latin dance music, soul and more… These aren’t household names in town this weekend … but that is the point.
The festival runs tonite from 6, and tomw and Sunday starting at 1 p.m. See you there!
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Books books books…
OK, let’s try this: What’s the book you’re reading this summer?
For me, there’ve been two goodies so far. I just finished Ian McEwan’s “On Chesil Beach,” which is the short but very bittersweet story of two young newlyweds in the early 1960s who have a bit of a hard time settling into their new lives together… It’s touching, sweet, sad and, as always with McEwan, startling and unexpected. He’s one of my favorite writers these days.
The other one I’ve dug into is Michael Chabon’s “The Yiddish Policeman’s Union,” which is a noir-style mystery with a whole lot of other stuff going on … namely, the weird, alt-historical setting. It’s in Sitka, Alaska, in the modern day but with this twist: He imagines that the city had been turned into the new Jewish homeland after WWII, rather than the Holy Land, and was settled by 5 million European expat Jews who are about to have to repatriate into American mainstream society.
Chabon’s great, too, and this is a terrific book.
Soooo, what are YOU reading?
Surely, you’ve read a good book…
Come on, folks… we’re looking for nominations for the next Big Read… Got a good book you like that you’d recommend to a friend? A book, fiction or non, that you would want to share and could find something to discuss about?
Tell us what it might be… The folks who are organizing the next communitywide Big Read this coming spring are looking for suggestions from people in town…
That means you!
Help decide the next Big Read book!
Hey, all you readers out there… and yes, we know you’re out there somewhere, flipping the pages on your summer beach read…
Here’s some fun news: The good folks in town who organize the annual communitywide Big Read in Dayton — librarians, writers, teachers and other interested volunteers — are looking for your suggestions about the next book to feature.
The last one, you recall, was The Glass Castle, which drew hundreds of people last spring to see and hear author Jeannette Walls talk about her story of childhood survival. The book was a clear hit with Dayton-area readers.
The books before that were To Kill a Mockingbird and Nickel and Dimed, both of which drew their own kinds of discussion group interest and chatter.
So, what ideas to you have for the fourth Big Read? Is there a novel or non-fiction book that you’ve read that you think imparts an interesting story, good writing and an insightful take on the world. A book that you would share and want to talk about with friends?
Let’s hear it. We’ll make sure the organizers hear your suggestions.
New Springsteen CD’s got the goods. Good!
Here’s the CD du jour:
Bruce Springsteen with the Sessions Band Live in Dublin
If he is remembered by rock historians for nothing else (which is actually unimaginable, but just say), Bruce Springsteen will go down as modern popular music’s best reinterpreter and re-imaginer of his own material. For years, as his innumerable fans will attest, he’s managed to rework songs from his own past in a way that reveals new nuances and intricacies to them that even the most avid listeners couldn’t have seen coming.
This is most often apparent in his live performances and albums, of which Live in Dublin is the sixth — and one of the best. Certainly the most unexpectedly interesting.
Springsteen performs with the folksy, cobbled-together “Sessions Band” that he used to produce his last studio album, a front-porch reading of great American folk music, from Erie Canal to Lay Your Money Down, on which he put his own studious, music-scholar stamp.
On the live album, he folds his own songs, from Highway Patrolman to Atlantic City, into the rootsy mix that includes the standards and traditionals from the last album. They all blend together in a rich stew that mixes his own songs with the classics — voicing the intention, both subtle and not, that he considers his own work to stand alongside We Shall Overcome and When the Saints Go Marching In as Important American Music, whether we were ready to pronounce it so or not.
He’s taken care of that for us — convincingly so. In the meantime, Springsteen’s made one of the biggest artistic leaps in his long career, and shown us the direction he intends to stay on in the future. Not a bad one, probably. Grade: A
iPod picks: Jesse James, Further On (Up the Road), Long Time Comin’
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“Citizen Kane” vs. “Die Hard”
Ahhhh… another decade, another AFI top-movies list. You may have caught it the other night on TV, running down the list of Greatest Films of All Time, as determined by the critics, scholars and filmmakers who comprise the American Film Institute.
No. 1? Need you ask? It was, of course, “Citizen Kane.”
I asked on my DaytonDailyNews.com blog what folks thought of that (obvious) choice, and got some good comments. A colleague, Eric Robinette, noted: “I always say that when you make lists like these, you start with ‘Kane’ and build from there. It really was the seismic shift.”
Reader Zack notes: “Maybe I wouldn’t put ‘Kane’ at the top of my list, but it’d certainly be in the top 10, and it’s a perfectly good choice for the top spot of a list that doesn’t really mean much anyway.”
Well, that’s a good point — it doesn’t mean much, in the grand scheme of things. Except it does say something about how we think about, feel about and approach movies — or at least, that’s what we tell ourselves as we’re watching the TV show that unspools the list. Or as I was watching my movie-lover son’s irritated reactions to a lot of what he was seeing; my favorite of his observations came as Liza Minelli was belting out the theme song to “Cabaret”: “OK, I can tell that’s one I don’t like.”
What’s one he would like? Well, funny you should ask. This week also saw a slightly different sort of movie list. The enternally list-crazy Entertainment Weekly, one of my favorite things, popped out “The 25 Greatest Action Movies Ever Made,” and it doesn’t take a film scholar to guess that there isn’t much overlap between it and the AFI list.
Just two movies made both — “Raiders of the Lost Ark” and “The Wild Bunch.” And not to make the AFI list out to be dull — it’s not — several of its picks would have felt at home at the magazine’s list: the first “Lord of the Rings,” “Platoon,” “Jaws,” “Bonnie and Clyde,” “The French Connection” and others.
But there were a couple of really great movies in the mag that would never have ended up on AFI’s — all of them movies that I love to watch over and over. “Speed” is one. “The Adventures of Robin Hood” is another. “Aliens,” “The Matrix” (the AFI list didn’t go past 1996, but you know “The Matrix” still wouldn’t have made it). “Predator,” “Gladiator,” “Terminator 2: Judgment Day,” even “Spider-Man 2.” EW’s No. 1: “Die Hard.” Yippee-Ki-yay…
I really enjoy “Citizen Kane,” too, and I’ve even written in the past about how great I know it is. But you know what? I would always rather watch “Die Hard” again. Wouldn’t you?
Is it natural to grow less snooty about these things over time, or more so? I find that the older I get, the less I feel that I want to categorize the art I consume as highbrow or low, important or not, best or worst, supposedly fine or pop. I simply want to ask myself: Did I like it? For each of us, it simply comes down to that and nothing else.
“Citizen Kane” … again?
All right, really. I like “Citizen Kane.” In fact, I love “Citizen Kane.”
But after watching it end up last nite on the American Film Institute list of Best 100 movies, and after knowing without even having to wait on the results that it would top yet another tops list AGAIN, I wonder:
Shouldn’t we have a list that’s called, say, “Top 100 Movies That Aren’t Citizen Kane” ?
Just askin’…
BTW… “Singing In the Rain” is No. 5? Really? Better than “The Wizard of Oz”?
Yikes…
spare me from kids on tv…
ok, i just saw this promo on CBS for a new reality show called “kid nation,” in which they let 40 kids take over a ghost town and turn it into something on their own… will they make it? will they fail? ah, the teasers abound…
ummm…. didn’t we already answer this question in “lord of the flies”?
New Marilyn Manson CD: Gothy and weird
Here’s the disc of the day, believe it or not…
Marilyn Manson’s new one: EAT ME, DRINK ME
Maybe a good place to start is with Marilyn Manson himself, who had this to say about his sixth album: “If I had to do a record review, I’d say it’s got a cannibal, consumption, obsessive, violent-sex, romance angle, but with an upbeat swing to it… The album’s title (Eat Me, Drink Me) was also inspired by that story several years back of the German man who put out an ad that he wanted to be eaten, and the man who ate him. Although I can’t relate to the relationship those two had, I found the story very compelling in a romantic way.”
The funniest thing about that quote is that Manson confesses to being unable to relate to that relationship…. Certainly, one of the most weirdly compelling things about him throughout his leather-and-chains, beat-me-now career has been his willingness to portray himself as the darkest apparition from the worst of any listener’s depressive nightmares, creating a goth-rock image about himself that on its worst days feels like a tacky Cure ripoff, and on its best is a post-millenial resurrection of the glam-rock ethic that drove some of the best music of the 1970s and seems to have died off everywhere but in his studio.
In fact, it’s that blood-retro, rock-with-handcuffs ethos, along with his boffo way with hair dye and makeup, that recently got SPIN magazine to name Manson “The Last Rock Star,” and apparently mean it. What’s that mean for this album, though?
Well, it’s decidedly different from past work; one hesistates to say it’s more gentle or introspective, realizing how silly either sounds when applied to Manson. But it is more wrapped up in his personal life (he recently divorced, messily) and less into the drug-addled depravities that he’s wanted us to believe fuel his MM persona. This time, on songs like If I Was Your Vampire and They Said Hell’s Not Hot , he sings about sad, heart-broken stuff all us normal folks can almost identify with, and less about what he might do with chopped-off body parts. Imagine that.
Lyrics and tone aside, this is some of Manson’s best music — a duel-production effort with himself and guitarist-bassist-drummer Tim Skold, who seems to always bring out the best — which can also be the worst — in his good buddy Marilyn. At the end of the day, we’ll grant that Manson may have given his own best review, and leave it at that.
We will say this: The disc rocks.
Grade: B+
iPod picks: They Said That Hell’s Not Hot; The Red Carpet Grave; You, Me and the Devil Makes 3
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The smartest comment about fixing downtown
OK, ya’ll… the smartest response I got to my entry the other day about what people would do to get people to come back downtown more often came from … ta-da! … local uberblogger Dave Esrati, who offers the following. I’ll say that I think what he says makes a lot of sense.
Thoughts, anyone?
This isn’t that hard to solve- if you had leadership with vision. Change zoning codes to enable easy redevelopment and re-purposing of existing buildings. Close off 5th street in the O-dist every Friday and Sat and turn into a big block party like Louisvilles 4th st. live. Allow unlimited liquor permits in the district. Build a proper bandshell in Dave Hall plaza for the festivals- don’t build ball park village- build more ballparks on the parkside homes space- and a dog park,skateboard park, etc. Public space dev. is critical. Unified parking identity- all kinds of options. Just need vision- which is sorely lacking in Dayton.
What’s wrong with Beatles fans?
So, the other day in a column in the Sunday DDN I said I thot “Rubber Soul” and “Revolver” were better than “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” and now a bunch of Beatles fans are alllll mad at me…
What gives? What’s WRONG with you people?
Discuss….
Those downtown sculptures are kinda creepy…
All right, is it me, or are those new life-like bronze sculptures they’ve placed all over downtown just a liiiiiiiittle bit weird and creepy?
I can’t quite put my finger on why they bother me, but I know they do. I appreciate that the downtown folk are trying to do something to generate some interest and excitement downtown and all, but this doesn’t work, for me.
The Marilyn Monroe statue comes close to working, since it at least seems to pay homage to her as an iconic figure, and seems to make a statement about her and her image. On the other hand, I’m not really even sure about that….
The others? They give me the shimmy-shakes…
Doobie Bros @ Fraze: Good show!
KETTERING — The reason we liked the Doobie Brothers back then was simple: They picked up where Creedence Clearwater Revival left off, fulfilling the need for basic, bluesy hits that went down easy without frills or pretense and still rocked out.
Plus, there was that great in-joke: Despite their dope-pipe name, they made music that was so mainstream and radio-friendly (“Jesus is Just Alright,” anybody?) that even your parents could enjoy it.
So, now that we all are our parents, it’s no surprise that the latest, long-touring version of the band had no trouble filling the Fraze Pavilion Saturday night. The version of the band that more than entertained the graying, not-young-anymore-but-denying-it crowd (with a few classic-rock-loving youngsters scattered here and there) harkens back to the earliest days of the group — before Michael McDonald and Jeff Baxter turned it into a weird, jazz-pop Steely Dan offshoot.
Original members Patrick Simmons and Tom Johnston are the main guys now, and they speedloaded through the double-guitar, soaring-harmonies hits that rocked up the charts in the early ‘70s: “China Grove,” “Long Train Runnin’,” “Black Water,” “Listen to the Music” and a half-dozen others that still sounded fun and were delivered with brio and skill.
They threw in a couple of newer songs, including the opening cut Dangerous, that fit in pretty well with the old groove. They did let their new bassist, Skylark, do a version of “Takin’ It To the Streets,” paying passing reference to McDonald’s work. That gave me a good chance for a restroom break, which had nothing to do with Skylark’s singing.
But this was mostly the Simmons/Johnston show. The latter was as constantly stirred up as the former was perpetually laid-back, a rockin’ dynamic that worked as well Saturday as it did way back when.
Opening band Lady Antebellum reprised a June 5 Fraze show with delightfully laid-back, rootsy country that went down well and made us want to hear more. Good band, dumb name — but watch out for them anyway.
Doobie, anyone?
Gettin’ ready to see the Doobie Brothers tonite at the Fraze brings back a lot of memories for me, since they were the first rock concert I attended as a kid.
Well, actually, it was Heart, who was opening for the Doobies at Blossom Music Center near Cleveland. It was 1976, I was 16 and my buddy Med and I took his ug-brown Buick to the show.
It was great, too, or so we assumed. We’d never been to a show before, and we had the time of our young lives. Heart was brand new and merely OK, looking back. But the Doobies really did put on a long and terrific show. This was before Michael McDonald ruined the band, of course… and man alive, could Jeff Baxter play wicked guitar.
Anyway, on the way out of the lot Med’s car melted down and wouldn’t budge. We had to wait three hours for a tow truck, and it was nearly an hour home. We got home as the sun was coming up… amazing our parents ever let us out again…
See you tonite at the show!
Too bad about Kelly Clarkson
Hmmmm … just when I was looking for more news about Paris Hilton, I ran across something I didn’t expect to see…
Looks like there’s more strangeness afoot in the music biz, as it was announced yesterday that Kelly Clarkson, of all people, was canceling her summer tour based on low ticket sales … if you want, you can check the AP story elsewhere on our at site at http://www.daytondailynews.com/e/content/shared-gen/ap/Recordings/MusicKellyClarkson.html.
This comes at a time when CD sales are plummeting, touring is getting soft and people seem to be reevaluating their myriad entertainment and leisure choices nearly as quickly as new ways to amuse ourselves come available.
The funny thing about Clarkson is that she seemed to be on the way up up up… Her last tour sold out, her last two albums and her string of singles have done very well, and she seems to be on lots of folks’ lists as a win-win performer who delivers the goods. Personally, she’s my favorite of any of the post-Idol winners, and the only one I think has translated well into the general pop-rock marketplace. We saw her Hara Arena show, and it was a lot of fun — admittedly, I went with so-so expectations, and yet gave it a good review.
So, what gives? If Kelly Clarkson’s having troubles with her audience, who’s next?
What would get you downtown?
Today’s “Chatterbox” feature in the print edition of the DDN (maybe you’ve heard of it? to get it delivered at home, just call 222-5700!) asked four locals what would bring them to downtown Dayton, and the answers were interesting.
One young lady from Kettering said “less traffic,” which seems odd since there’s hardly any traffic there now, and another guy said bike lanes and bike paths, which made a kind of sense both practically and recreationally, I thot.
One lady called for a first-run movie theater, something Dayton lacks not just downtown but in the whole city, those things having moved to the ‘burbs long ago … we still do have the wonderful Neon Movies downtown that plays a great lineup of art and foreign films, but I don’t think that was what she meant.
The other guy said he won’t come unless he has to, since he’s already there five days a week for class. Ok… he’s out; but he does give insight into the notion I’ve long had that most of those Sinclair students don’t regard downtown as a play spot in their off hours, no matter what city-planner and fine-arts organizers may think and hope.
Soooooo … what would bring YOU downtown?
Missing great ’70s R&B and soul…
Thinking this morning about tonite’s Earth, Wind & Fire concert, I realized that I often muse on the sudden demise of bands of its sort… It’s interesting, looking back on semi-recent pop music history, how rap and hip-hop came along and killed off bands like EW&F…
And kinda sad, too. The 1970s were filled with large, multi-instrumental, sweet-harmonies and good-beats bands like EW&F that made hits with fast, funky and romantic soul-pop that dominated the charts. Groups like Kool and the Gang, the Commodores and others were terrific … and, mysteriously were put into the grave at the top of their commercial might by the overnight sensation of hip-hop.
This does happen from time to time… The Beatles and the British Invasion killed off the crooning soft pop of the early 60s as practiced by Fabian and others, and 80s hair metal was shoveled under late one night by Nirvana and grunge… And really, both of those things were A-OK with me and lots of others…
But I miss the music that was felled by rap … and I know lots of other folks do, too.
Sorry I never got to see EW&F when they were a musical force.
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Earth, Wind & Fire: who’s going?
Alas, I wasn’t able to clear the sked so that I can make it to see EWF at the Fraze tonite… it would’ve been the first time to see them, and I’m bummed…
They were one of the great ’70s bands I always wanted to see and never did hook up with, always to my dismay. In my HS back in the day, they were the band everybody loved and played at parties… Esp that 20-minute live version of “Reasons.”
Hope it’s a good show! Anybody want to drop a line on how it turned out, do so and we’ll post it.
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Guess what? Tony died, ya’ll.
OK, I know everybody thinks the end of “The Sopranos” was this wishy-washy, just-another-day-in-the-life, life-goes-on sort of closer that defied all the guesswork … and frankly, if that’s what it really was, I’m OK with that; I thot it was really a pretty good way to end the show.
But a friend of mine at work says her husband has an interesting theory … namely, that Tony really did die at the end… that he didn’t see it coming, as he and Bobby once discussed (funny they showed that scene again in there someplace), and that was the whole meaning of the fade-to-black ending. Basically, Tony was paying attention to the front door and got shot … and since the show’s POV is his, he goes black and so does the screen, no music no nuttin’….
So, um … that might be possible, mightn’t it?
The Sopranos: What will happen?
It’s coming… the end…
Sunday night is the final episode of the greatest TV show ever. It looks like a bloody shootout is brewing between Tony and the few forces he has left, and the ever-stronger New York gang that’s gunning for him.
When last we saw Tony, he was snuggling with his M-16 in a Jersey safehouse, surrounded by a crew that seemed more worried about getting a pizza than about the fact that they might be shot at any time…
Meanwhile, Tony’s two closest associates are now either dead or dying, mowed down on the last show.
What about Paulie? He seems to be helping Tony out, but a friend at work who’s a big fan and a careful watcher of the show reminds us that in “The Godfather,” the don’s best advice to Michael was that the turncoat will be the one who tries to broker a deal with you and your enemies… Keep an eye on old Paulie. He’s never been all that trustworthy.
All right, what do you think? Give us your theories.
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