Bootleg Country: Paul Simon – Harare, Zimbabwe (02/14/87)

When I was an early teen, say 14, I got a little compact stereo for Christmas. It has a radio, a tape deck and a record player. As my parent’s record player had died many years prior I was very interested in this little device.

My mother, ever the child of the sixties, had an astounding record collection of great early rock and roll (I am sad to say it has since been lost in a flood.) The Beatles, Dylan, the Rolling Stones, Sonny and Cher, the Rascals, Beach Boys, Loving’ Spoonful, you name it if it was a hit in the 1960s she probably had it on vinyl.

This was also the point in my life when I began to take music seriously. Certainly, I had enjoyed music prior to this. I used to tape Casey Kasem’s Top 40 show every week as well as the local stations’ nightly top 10 requests. But I would often record over those tapes with whatever songs were new and popular. Music was something fluffy and fun, like candy that was to be enjoyed and discarded afterward.

Now with all of this great music at my fingertips, I began to really understand the depth and reach of what music could really be. For the first time, I began to really digest the poetry of Dylan, the guttural sex of the Stones, and the sheer brilliance of the Beatles. This was more than just throw-away pop music, it was important.

I spent many hours sitting inside my room, lying flat on my back in my bed devouring this new music. Most of these songs I had heard previously. Mother listened to Oldies radio and so much of what I was now listening to wasn’t new at all. I had heard all of Bob Dylan’s greatest hits separately many times over the years. Yet, as odd as it may sound, I had never put together that they were all his.

As much as I might now scoff at Greatest Hits albums, the 10 songs put together on Dylan’s version were life-changing to this little boy. I couldn’t believe one person had sung so much greatness.

It was Dylan and Simon and Garfunkel that made the biggest impression on me. Something about the sheer force of their songwriting knocked the breath out of me.

To this day I can remember listening to the “Boxer” late one night. As I had done many times before I turned off the lights and set the volume down low so as to allow the music to lull me asleep. Except I couldn’t sleep because my mind kept listening. I couldn’t stop, the song was too forceful to allow such a thing as sleep. The music, as it has done many a time since, kept me awake and begging for more.

02/14/87
Rutfaro Stadium
Harare, Zimbabwe

When I first started dating the girl who was to become my wife I gave her three CDs as a means to share my musical obsession. They weren’t necessarily my all-time favorite CDs, though they would certainly be high on the list, but albums I thought she would never have heard and that would shed some light into music that moved me.

Those albums were Willie Nelson’s Stardust, Nanci Griffith’s One Fair Summer Evening, and Paul Simon’s Graceland.

Graceland is an album of sheer joy to me. It is filled with great pop songcraft as well as a myriad of astounding vocals and rhythms from South Africa. It also helped bring about Americans listening to “World Music”.

This show is a song-by-song recreation of the album complete with a cacophony of South African musicians who provide their own myriad of sounds.

In fact, it is the African performances that make the bootleg worth listening to. Simon certainly performs with adequacy, but there is nothing here that really outshines the album. Part of the problem is that he only plays songs from Graceland. To be a really great performance, to me, you need to play songs spanning your entire career, not just one album.

Maybe Simon wanted to highlight only his newest album. Perhaps he wanted to showcase the African musicians and singers for the entire show. It seems to me this could have been done better by arranging a few older songs to include the singers. I can imagine an absolutely astounding African vocal arrangement of “April Come She Will” and a mesmerizing “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover.” But for whatever reason, we don’t get any of that, just Graceland and several what I can only guess are African originals.

It is there that the disks shine. The South African performers create sounds with their voices and instruments that are out of this world (or at least out of this part of the world). It is mystifying.

Unfortunately, the mix of Simon and the South Africans is a little underwhelming. I have heard marvelous things about this tour, and I suspect had I been in the audience I would be saying similar marvelous things, but to these ears, the tape doesn’t hold up to the hype.

It is hard to point at anything particularly wrong with this set, but when I think of Paul Simon performing Graceland live in South Africa with performers from the area I get all goose pimply and when I listen to the disks, I keep waiting for something more.

It is a good set, with good music. It’s just that when compared to say the Grateful Dead circa 1977 or Dylan in the 60’s or Bela Fleck in any year, this set just doesn’t have that same magic.

Random Shuffle (09/11/06): Barenaked Ladies, Bruce Broughton, Alison Krauss, Everything But the Girl, & Eric Von Schmidt

“Brian Wilson” – The Barenaked Ladies
from Rock Spectacle

I’m a total sucker for pop culture references. Perhaps this is because I am not only a pop culture junkie, but often make references myself in everyday conversation. I suppose when artists make similar references it makes me feel like they are one of us, or rather more pertinently, I am like them. Perhaps I could be a cool rock star, or writer pleasing fans by adding in subtle references to pop culture.

Whatever the reason for my love, when I heard the Barenaked Ladies break-out hit “One Week” I immediately adored it. The fast-paced, rat-a-tat-tat references filled me with glee. Add to that a reference to Kurasawa and I was sold.

I didn’t actually buy the album the song was on but rather an album filled with their “hits” played live. It was here I formed the opinion that they are decent songwriters with a tendency to get overly sentimental and have some of the worst rhymes in pop music. And tend to rely too heavily on jokes rather than true songwriting.

“Brian Wilson” is one of their better numbers with a sly reference to the Beach Boys’ nervous breakdown. I can even forgive the drooling joke because it references Pavlov in a way that borders on genius. Yet again when you hit the chorus the music moves into juvenile playing. It is nothing more than some adequate players speeding it up. It’s like they hit rock star mode and know nothing more than to play faster without actually having any chops.

The album is like that. There are a handful of great songs that make me laugh and feel BNL could be a great freaking band, but then they slip into full obnoxious teenage writing. Oh well, we’ll always have “If I Had a $1,000,000”

“Theme to Silverado” – Bruce Broughton
from the Original Soundtrack

I’m periodically a total sucker for rousing movie scores. Sometimes I like to pretend that I am a classical music buff, but in all honesty, though I do enjoy some of the bigger pieces, I mostly relegate that stuff to background music. Though not classical music in any sense other than the lack of singers, movie scores seem stuck in the same genre to me.

Perhaps they are more rousing, or maybe because they are attached to images and words that I adore, they seem to take up more space in my musical collection.

Silverado is a very decent movie that tried to reinvent the western genre and serves more as a winking tribute to old-style westerns. The score is mostly forgettable but the main theme has a nice bit of oomph to it that perks up my lips most of the time.

“Oh Atlanta” – Alison Krauss and Union Station
from 06/24/01

Alison Krauss has a great country/bluegrass voice. It is a perky, beautiful thing. The Union Station likewise are all superior musicians. Sadly, I tend to like very few of their songs. There are just a few that make anything memorable or enjoyable after they are heard.

“Oh Atlanta” is one of the few. Maybe it is because I love the south, or that my wife is from Georgia but I’ve never met a song about the state I didn’t love. It helps that Krauss sings it with verve and that the lyrics involve coming back to Georgia, and that is a longing I understand.

I grew up in Oklahoma but spent four years getting a college degree in Alabama and I consider myself an adopted son of the South. I don’t think I could ever explain the feeling to someone who has never loved the South, but there is just something intoxicating about the land. The people seem nicer there, the tea sweeter, and the air filled with more life.

I hope to move back there someday, and I think I’ll play this song on my way.

“Love is Strange” – Everything But the Girl
from Spin Sampler

When I was in high school I subscribed to Spin magazine which I considered to be far superior to Rolling Stone. In those days, before Guccione Jr sold the rag, it was. It had a focus on “alternative” music which of course, at the time in the early 90s was all the rage. Like that music it made me feel like I was onto something different, something only a few understood. Never mind that millions of people bought Nirvana and Pearl Jam albums, the whole scene felt like it was for the few, the cool, and I wanted to be like that.

For subscribing, I received a sampler disk filled with all the hip alterna-songs of the moment.

Though I sported the long hair and the grungy flannel and the black t-shirts with Soundgarden and Dinosaur Jr on them, I was still a closet fan of the soft, acoustic love songs.

Don’t tell anybody.

This is a cover of the Dolly Parton number. It’s played with less danceability, but there is a softness to it that I find lilting. They repeat the lyrics twice, the second verse having a little “oh-whoa” rave-up between each line.

I was always fond of the lyrics “You’re sweet loving is better than a kiss/when you leave those kisses I will miss.” This seems to say that love is more than a physical attraction, and yet physical attraction is very much a component of romance. As a geeky teenager who had never had as much as a kiss, those words spoke to me.

I still love that song. I put it on a comp for my wife and we played it during the reception of our wedding.

“Wasn’t That a Mighty Storm” – Eric Von Schmidt
Troubadours Of The Folk Era, Volume One

I first heard this song on Nanci Griffith’s album Other Voices, Too in which she plays a very upbeat version with a who’s who of country/folk musicians. It is a great version that almost makes you forget the lyrics are about an awful, destructive, deadly storm.

This is the original (?) version and here it is much more of a dirge. Von Schmidt plays the guitar with a kind of deep, dark feel like it is the sea wall approaching. His voice adds menace to the song.

I dig the folk tradition of making songs out of tragedies. Horrible things happen and we make songs to sing around the campfire to it.

The Death of Mr. Lazarescu (2005)

the death of mr lazarescu poster

Poor Mr. Lazarescu, his wife has left him, his daughter has moved across the ocean to Canada, and his sister and brother-in-law lecture him about the money he has borrowed. He’s been having massive headaches and throwing up since morning, and the ambulance never seems to come.

And everybody chastises him for the drink.

The Death of Mr. Lazarescu is billed as a comedy, but if it is such then it is so black that I couldn’t see it. Really it is just sad, very sad, possibly the saddest movie I have ever seen.

The movie starts with Lazarescu (Ion Fiscuteanu) calling for an ambulance. We then see him call his sister, who promptly, along with her husband, yells at Lazarescu for drinking too much and asking for the return of the money he has borrowed.

Then he waits and waits for the ambulance. Eventually, he finds his way into the hall, knocking on the door of the neighbors requesting medicine.

He is chastised for the drink.

The neighbors have mercy and nurse him to the couch where he pukes up blood. They call the ambulance again and note its more serious nature. When the nurse, Mioara Avram (Luminita Gheorghiu), arrives she finds Lazarescu in the tub, where he has fallen. She takes his vitals and tries to determine what is wrong with him.

And yells at him for the drink.

They take him to the hospital, where the doctor is extremely rude.

He chastises Lazarescu for the drink. He abuses the hospital staff, Mioara, and Lazarescu mercilessly. There is no bedside manner. Lazarescu is completely belittled for not taking care of himself properly, for the drink, for everything. The diagnosis is that it is liver failure due to the drink and tests are ordered from another hospital.

Lazarescu is abumulanced to hospital number two.

He is chastised for the drink.

The doctors there are much kinder and run a series of tests which result in serious complications for Lazarescu. Because of a bus accident, this hospital is completely full and unable to perform the immediate surgery needed to keep Lazarescu alive.

He is taken to a third hospital.

He is chastised for the drink.

The staff here is worse than the staff at hospital number one. Mioara tries to explain the urgency of the situation, but the doctors want to reexamine Lazarescu and spend most of their time arguing with Mioara. They then refuse to operate because a now near comatose Lazarescu doesn’t understand he needs to sign the release forms.

He is taken to a fourth hospital.

They do not chastise him for the drink and get him ready for surgery.

It is nothing short of heartbreaking.

It is shot in a documentary style. It uses natural light and lots of handheld cameras giving the film a very realistic feel.

Though it is a Romanian film, it asks plenty of questions about the state of healthcare systems around the world. It is a film that physically angers me. When doctors are more concerned about being sued and filing the proper paperwork than about caring for the ill what has gone wrong with the world?

Even the nice doctors and nurses look haggard. Long hours and extra work due to the bus accident leave them all exhausted. I’ve never thought about tired doctors, but it makes sense, they work long, hard hours and should be exhausted by the end of their shift. The healthcare workers also spend their downtime between tests and examinations chatting about personal things as if they weren’t involved in matters of life and death. It is an intimate look into the chaos, madness, and complications of caring for people.

It is a difficult film to watch. The pacing is languid and the subject matter is dark. Despite being a “comedy” there are few if any light-hearted moments. At a 153 minutes it is a large dose to swallow. Yet it is an important look at healthcare, loneliness, growing old, and how we take care of our fellow man. One that shouldn’t be missed.

Random Shuffle (09/05/06) – Billy Bragg, Merle Haggard, The Muppets, The Wallflowers & Warren Zevon

Originally posted on September 05, 2006

“New England” – Billy Bragg
From 10-14-96

Billy Bragg is an old-school folkie who wears his politics on his sleeve. He often allows his political ideas to take over his music and his songs come out like platforms rather than carrying a tune. But when he nails it he creates a wonderful collaboration between ideas and killer folkiness.

This is a great example of his cleverness. In its original form, it’s a bit of a break-up song by way of a single guy looking for fun and not love. Live, and many years after it was originally written, he has changed many of the lyrics to reflect his own life now. Having settled down with a girl and a son, lines about singlehood have morphed into lines about fatherhood. It’s all in good fun, and the audience gets a kick out of it and sings out the final chorus.

Good stuff.

“Theme From Dukes of Hazzard” – Merle Haggard
From Ladies Love Outlaws

As a kid, my mother would never let me watch the Dukes of Hazzard on TV. She was concerned that it depicted cops as being bumbling crooks and ex-convicts as the good guys. This, it seems, would have corrupted my own morals. Fair enough, Mom, but I often slipped over to the neighbors and watched it.

The theme song remains a classic. It always reminds me of a guy named Adam who would play this song over and over in college, right along with anything Lynard Skynard.

“Moving Right Along” – The Muppets
From the Muppet Movie

I went to see Muppets from Space with a carload of friends in a little, tiny, dinky theatre in Prattville, Alabama. It had originally been a one-screen theatre and they cut it in half to create two screens. The door into the theatre was one of those swinging bar things and the hinges made obnoxious screeching noises when they swung.

Worst movie experience ever.

Except that I sat by Julie Austin, whom I had the biggest crush on. Nothing came of it, she married Mr. Knapp and I moved to Texas.

That has nothing to do with the wonderful first Muppet Movie or this song from it, but that’s what I always think of when I think of Muppets.

This is a great little song that’s full of humor and grace, much like the Muppets themselves.

“I’m Looking Through You” – the Wallflowers
From the I Am Sam soundtrack

The idea of filling a soundtrack with covers of Beatles songs sounds like a good one to me. On the I Am Sam disk it works about half the time. Some of the covers are just too close to the original to make any impression, others try to reinvent the psychedelic madness of their later albums but just don’t get it. The Wallflowers manage to do very little new with the song, but it still comes out all right.

They’ve pepped it up a little, and Jakob Dylan’s vocals have enough of a rock edge to make it interesting. It is really a testament to the power of the Beatles song than anything. I wouldn’t exchange this for the original, but it’s fun and something slightly different, and sometimes that’s alright too.

“Werewolves of London” – Warren Zevon
From Excitable Boy

I have to admit that I don’t actually own this album, but I did download the single. I also have to admit this is the only Zevon song I know. They say he was a good guy who wrote great songs, and I’m sorry I don’t know him better.

This is a great freaking song. I always wonder if it has anything to do with the movie and I’m always too lazy to look it up. I love the light-hearted feel, and the great sing-along quality to lyrics about a murderous rampage. It makes me think of Teen Wolf too (Not Teen Wolf Too) with Michael J Fox as a cool werewolf.

29 Palms (2002)

29 palms

About 3/4ths of the way through 29 Palms an inept security guard (Jon Polito) says, “Nobody thought I’d do that, did they?” In a way, this line could sum up the entire plot structure of the film, for it seems the filmmakers want nothing more than to surprise the viewer at every turn. They seem to be wearing a smirking smile knowing they are coming up with something different, something no one would expect. Yet, in spite of all the twists, turns, and quirkiness, it all feels like something I’ve seen before.

It is as if, while attending film school all of the filmmakers heard over and over again to avoid clichés and then skipped class the day originality was discussed. As if the avoidance of redundancy is all that it takes to be interesting.

To say something nice, it is filled with lots of great character actors like Michael Lerner, Michael Rapaport, and Jeremy Davies and they do manage to rise above the lackluster material.

Barely.

Davies plays an unnamed drifter who starts the film as a clerk for a corrupt judge (Michael Lerner) and may or may not be an FBI agent. The judge is about to make an important decision on whether or not an Indian Casino can expand. The judge hips the Native Americans onto the drifter and they promptly kill his girlfriend. A hired killer (Chris O’Donnell) is turned loose to do the same to the drifter.

The killer contract includes a bag of money and a severed hand (which is apparently from an enemy of the Native Americans and is to be used to frame someone, but it’s all fairly vague and unclear.)

The inept security guard steals the bag which is in turn stolen by a corrupt cop (Michael Rapaport) and then again stolen by the drifter (who somehow knows about the bag, though this too is also vague and unclear).

The remainder of the film centers on all of these characters (and more!) trying to get their hands on the bag. There are quite a few plot turns and the characters are all quirky and indie-friendly, but honestly, by the midpoint I stopped caring enough to write it all down.

If the filmmakers had stopped trying to make everything so original and quirky for a second and worked on their stories, and maybe developed a couple of their oddball characters, it might have worked. But instead, we get a film that may be “different” but it never makes me interested enough to care.

Bootleg Country: Gillian Welch – Grand Rapids, MI (09/17/03)

I have a long history of not going to a concert and then regretting it for years to come. The reasons for not going usually involve not having anyone to go with/not wanting to go alone, and not being familiar enough with the artist to convince me that the show is a must-see.

That and I’m a cheap bastard.

A few months down the road I usually become more familiar with the artist and begin cursing myself for not seeing them. This happens often in the city where I currently live. It is a college town and large enough to nab artists just before they hit the big time, but too small, and too close to Indianapolis to carry them after that. So usually it is once missed, never see again.

Gillian Welch came to town a few years back and I thought about seeing her. I liked the few songs I had heard of hers, but the voice in the back of my head got to nagging me – you don’t know her songs, you won’t be able to sing along, you should be saving your hard-earned dough – and I didn’t go.

Oh, how I have cursed my ever-loving name for that. How I’ve yearned for her to come back to no avail.

09/17/03
Calvin College
Grand Rapids, MI

Quite simply, Gillian Welch’s voice is nothing short of heavenly.

If there really are angels, and they really do sing, then they must sound like Gillian Welch.

She has some of the most haunting, achingly beautiful songs ever sung. I am reminded of Alison Krauss in that the two have similarly beautiful voices, yet where Alison’s choice of songs often makes no impression on me, Gillian’s own songs and her choice of covers are perfect for her style and often get stuck in my head for days on end. I have been singing “Look at Miss Ohio” for a week now.

This show starts with a triple play of my favorite Gillian Welch songs. “Look at Miss Ohio” starts off the show and it often gets a repeat play around these parts. It is followed by “Elvis Presley Blues” which is the first Gillian Welch song I ever knew, and remains one of my favorites. It speaks of nostalgia, the deep mysterious ache of loss, and the magic of music. It is a perfect song and Gillian Welch sings it like it’s the only song in the world.

My holy trinity is concluded with “Rock of Ages” which is one of Gillian Welch’s rocking-out songs, and by that I mean it has a tempo other than a slow dirge.

Before I go any further, I really must mention David Rawlings, Gillian’s musical partner for many years. David often gets overlooked in writings about Gillian but is very much an important player in her musicality. On stage, he sings harmony and plays guitar, and gives the music a layered and more dense quality.

She follows her trio of excellence with an entire show of great music. It is a show that reaches spiritual proportions. The music is so soft and warm and kind it wraps around me like a blanket near a fire while the cold wind and rain whip about outside.

This is an audience recording and as such we hear the crowd scream and shout between songs at a louder volume than preferable. However, they do keep quiet during the song performances allowing the music to filter in untouched and unmarred.

My only complaint is that the show runs just a tad long. While the music is always beautiful, Gillian’s penchant for playing slow, sad songs starts to be too much by the middle of the second disk. I find myself fully ready for it to be over a few songs before it actually is. I suspect as an audience member I would have begged for more, but as it is, on CD I’m ready for the closure.

It is a great disk by a overlooked performer, whose music really matters. In a world full of dizzying pop songs, flashy lights, and fast-edited videos, Gillian Welch seems more of the past, like some ancient hieroglyph pulled from the very dust of America. It is old, real music that should last another millennium.

Night Watch (2004)

night watch poster

“One side is in Russian, the other side is in English,” the girl behind the counter noted about the DVD I was renting. “So if you play it and it is in Russian, just turn it over,” she continued. I wanted to glare at her and snidely question her about her movie appreciation skills. Shouldn’t girls, who work in the movie industry, freaking appreciate films as God intended them? But I’ve had that argument one too many times. If Blockbuster wanted their employees to have a clue, I guess they’d pay them more.

Night Watch lives in the same world that we do, but in a different kind of dimension if you get my meaning. It is a dimension filled with vampires, shapeshifters, and seers. They live alongside humans, but secretly without being understood by the likes of you or me.

These creatures, or Others as they are called, were once engaged in a brutal war, but being evenly matched signed a truce many years ago. Much like in our own Cold War, the Others have set up watchmen for both the light and dark sides to ensure each side keeps up with their side of the truce. Part of this bargain is that when new others are formed; neither side will interfere with them until they have chosen a side. For the Others are actually born of human seed, and do not know they are different until something extreme occurs and their powers come out.

Our movie lies in a time in which a cursed virgin proclaims the nearing Armageddon, and a chosen child will throw the balance of good and evil to one side.

The film sets up its universe and mythology extremely well. In a prologue, Lord of the Rings style, we learn about the others and the war and the truce, it is just enough to allow us to gain understanding without bogging down in the mythos. As the story unfolds we gain a better understanding of the rules and still feel that there is a deeper story. That it is based on a series of books only adds to that mythos.

Visually the story lives in a Fight Club world where digital animation moves alongside live action. There are lots of extreme close-ups of machinery and metro tubes that transition smoothly into the real.

I’m not sure if the subtitles were created by the filmmakers or were a later addition, but they become a part of the film. Sometimes they are swatted away by a character, zoom out like the cars on a highway, or are underlined for emphasis becoming more like characters than simple translations.

The characters are well developed and often give hints at deeper backgrounds, which again, may come from their literary counterparts. Sometimes the main character is treated like more of an officer in the others than he actually seems to be, all to move the story along.

It is a slick, MTV generation movie. A glossy popcorn piece of cinema with a cool mythology, and some killer visuals. It is not great cinema, but a darn fine piece of science-fiction/horror.

While watching it I kept thinking there was great material for a sequel or sequels. Turns out it is the first part of a trilogy, the second of which is already playing in Russia. I’ll be keeping an eye out, for sure.

Random Shuffle – Emmylou Harris, Lucinda Williams, Pat Carrell, & Sam More with Conway Twitty

Originally written on August 31, 2006.

“Car Wheels on a Gravel Road” – Lucinda Williams
From Car Wheels on a Gravel Road

Lucinda has a voice that is country, earthy, sad, and beautiful all at the same time. She writes lonely songs about country roads, failed love, and all the pain and hurt that make up a life. Car Wheels on a Gravel Road, the album, is about as perfect as an album can be. There simply isn’t a bad song on it.

The song is just exactly the kind of song I love. It has jangly guitars, a nice little rhythm section to it, it is country without being too country, it rocks without really being rock, and it has a great sing-along little chorus.

If it was socially acceptable, if my wife wouldn’t kill me, and my God wouldn’t damn me, I’d ask Lucinda Williams to be my mistress and ask her to sing this song to me.

“Real Live Bleeding Fingers and Broken Guitar Strings” – Lucinda Williams
From 05/16/03

Originally this is off of Lucinda’s World Without Tears album, an album I have never found myself getting into all that much. There are some good songs there for sure, but overall it never really catches me, not like Car Wheels anyway.

Upon listening to this live version I may have to reconsider the whole album again. The bootleg itself is exceptionally good, which is tremendous considering the other Lucinda boots I own sound like crap. A terrible thing, in my opinion, to get a bootleg of an awesome live artist only to be let down by the sound quality.

This is the show closer of that boot, and I get a couple of minutes worth of crowd noise before, presumably, she comes out for the encore. An interesting thing that comes from listening to a bootleg that is still on the computer in a random order. You get every note and every pause.

“May This Be Love” – Emmylou Harris
From Wrecking Ball.

Emmylou Harris has a gorgeous, moving voice, but to be honest many of her songs leave me with little impression. This is doubly strange when I consider that she does convey a great deal of emotion in her songs. They just don’t tend to stick with me.

This is from her second album, I believe, with producer Daniel Lanois. There are lots of his trademark ethereal sounds throughout, but to be honest, once again, most of the album doesn’t leave a mark.

Take this song for instance, it is four minutes of guitar fuzz and Emmylou singing what must surely be a great, tragic song, but while listening I keep wondering when it will end. It is moving in its own little way, and perhaps if I had the headphones plugged in and a starry sky to look upon, I would be moved. But as is, it seems nice, but it is nothing I’ll remember.

“Single Girl” – Pat Carrell
From Songcatcher

Songcatcher, the movie always seemed like a way to cash in on the whole O Brother, Where Art Thou? buzz. The soundtrack carries several lovely songs and a number of irritatingly country songs.

“Single Girl” is a funny, very country little ditty that reminds me of both my grandma and a lady who tells stories on the local radio station on Saturday mornings. At just over a minute it isn’t much more than a snippet, but one that sticks with me.

“Rainy Night in Georgia” – Sam Moore and Conway Twitty
From Rhythm, Country and Blues

This is a great old, sad, soul song made famous by Book Benton. Here it is covered by Sam Moore of Sam and Dave fame and country legend Conway Twitty. It is from an album that coupled country singers with their soul-singing counterparts. Mostly, it stinks but this and a version of “Ain’t It Funny How Time Slips Away” by Lyle Lovett and Al Green make the album worth any money you might spend.

Sam and Conway are obviously having a lot of fun singing this old song, and they even throw a little banter midway through that sounds natural and fun.

Unfaithfully Yours (1948)

unfaithfully yours

While trying to explain the type of film we were about to watch to my in-laws, my wife said it was a Rex Harrison film. I immediately began thinking that I would explain that it was a Preston Sturges film, starring Rex Harrison. Not really much difference there, when you think about it, especially since the in-laws have probably never heard of Preston Sturges or Rex Harrison, not being much for film watching.

It’s not that they are opposed to film, but rather they don’t ever go to watch movies, being too expensive, or read up on them, or study weekend grosses or any such thing. They don’t really go to rent them either. They are just not that type of folk.

I mean they still watch regular TV, no cable or satellite, and still use the internet via dial-up. They only have a DVD player because I bought them one, and only then because I was tired of watching the same old VHS tapes when we came down. And that’s just it, when we come down we watch movies, and they enjoy them. So, they aren’t opposed to movie watching, they just don’t go about seeking them out.

Anyways, I would have said it was a Preston Sturges film because when I think about movies I think more about directors than stars. Directors, it seems to me, have more of an effect on the final outcome of a film than an actor. If I had to choose, I’d go for a film with a bad actor and a great director, then a great actor and a bad director. Odds are a director can elevate a bad actor’s performance, more than an actor will elevate bad direction.

This isn’t always true, especially in older films, say starring Humphrey Bogart. I might be able to tell you who directed Casablanca if I thought about it (it’s Michael Curtiz right?) and I know that Howard Hawks directed The Big Sleep and John Huston did the Maltese Falcon. But still all of those pictures, and pretty much everything starring Humphrey Bogart is a Bogart picture to me.

This is all a convoluted way to say that I picked up a copy of Unfaithfully Yours at the library (man you’ve got to love a public library with a massive collection of excellent films) on the basis that it was a Preston Sturges film. Really, I only know Sturges because of the Coen Brothers. Their hilarious film, O’Brother, Where Art Thou? Gets its title from Sturges’s film, Sullivan’s Travels. Loving the brothers Coen and wanting to see their inspiration I rented Sullivan’s Travels and found it to be beautiful.

Preston Sturges is now on my list of directors to watch.

Unfaithfully Yours is an odd little picture. It starts out like a fast-paced comedy in the style of Bringing up Baby or His Girl Friday and then heads into surrealistic art territory before slipping over to a slapstick farce.

The plotting involves Rex Harrison starring as a celebrated English conductor, Sir Alfred De Carter, living in New York with his beautiful bride. Things are going pretty well for the old man, too. He has fame, fortune, success at something he loves, and a beautiful woman to fawn over. Sure he must put up with his petulant brother-in-law, but he’s got his wits and they are enough to take care of him.

Things turn upside down after he gets back from a trip abroad and finds out that when he told his brother-in-law to “look after” his wife, he was taken quite literally. The brother-in-law hired a private detective to look after the wife and the detective found out a few things. Mainly, that said wife spent some time in her negligee late one evening in Sir Alfred’s secretary’s bedroom.

This information naturally outrages Sir Alfred and moves our film into the surreal. During an evening concert, Sir Alfred begins to fantasize about what he will do. The camera moves into his eyeball, and into his mind.

Three fantasies of revenge, remorse, and self-loathing play out during the course of three songs that the actual Sir Alfred is conducting. During the interlude between each song, the real audience goes mad as if the music performed is the best Sir Alfred has ever conducted. Giving us some commentary on the passions and art.

When the concert is over, Sir Alfred rushes home to implement his first, and most devious fantasy – that of killing his wife and framing his secretary. But all does not go as well as the fantasy and we move into the final act, which is pure slapstick.

Nothing goes right for poor Sir Alfred, he cannot find anything, breaks everything, and is too inept to work a recording machine. It is all perfectly paced and consists of the funniest parts of the movie.

In the end, misunderstandings are worked out and everything becomes a happy ending.

Unfaithfully Yours is an odd little film and not for everyone, as can be seen from a fairly dismal box office at the time of its release. The ever-changing tone of the film may turn some people off, but for those willing to stick it through and enjoy a film that is experimental but well made, the payoff is worth it.

Random Shuffle: Louis Armstrong, Bruce Hornsby, The Libertines, The Rolling Stones, The Blues Brothers

Originally posted on August 26, 2006.

“Kiss to Build a Dream On” – Louis Armstrong
From Sleepless in Seattle

I periodically think of myself as a great jazz lover. In fits and spurts, I try to be. Back about ten years or so I was with a friend at his friend’s house and the subject went naturally to music. Well, it went naturally there because I was checking out his CD collection. The discussion turned to jazz and I mentioned I liked Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, and Sarah Vaughan. Condescending with a whisper he said, “Oh so you like vocal jazz?”

I had never thought about it like that. Isn’t jazz jazz? I had just begun to listen to the likes of Miles Davis and John Coltrane, and by that, I mean I had heard talk about their frenetic awesomeness amongst deadheads. I got the knock of vocal jazz not being real jazz and split. I have since dug what this guy would dub real jazz, but it is a moderated digging. I whip out all that cosmic jazz once in a while, but I can’t take in more than smaller doses.

Louis Armstrong started in the real jazz category, being a trailblazing blower, but in the latter days became the unique voice singing such family hits as “Wonderful World” and “Hello Dolly.” This song falls straight in that camp, being off of the soundtrack to Sleepless in Seattle of all things. It’s a darn fine song though, and one I stuck on my wedding CD.

Most days I’ll take this version of jazz over the real stuff, hands down.

“Rainbow’s Cadillac” – Bruce Hornsby
From 11/06/98

There is a video on YouTube, but the embed has been disabled, you can watch it by clicking here.

I didn’t really get into bootleg trading until just after I graduated college. I had moved to Abilene, TX to start graduate school – start over really, as I didn’t know a soul. Actually I never really got to know many people and left after a semester. But while I was there my refuge was bootlegging.

During this time Bruce Hornsby played a long run at Yoshi’s in Oakland California to promote his album, Spirit Trail. The tour was highlighted by guitar work from Steve Kimock, and a couple of guest spots from Phil Lesh and Bob Weir. This was one of the few performances Lesh had given since Jerry Garcia’s death a few years back and really marked his return to music.

This run came out on tape quickly and with a fantastic sound quality. In those days we were still using analog tapes and the sound quality often degenerated quickly through each generation of recording (unlike CDs where you can get an exact copy of the music, with analog the quality of a recording digressed every time you recorded it). This was an amazing thing to me to have so much high-quality music so quickly after it had been performed.

Now that I’ve moved to the CD world and almost everything is high quality, such recordings are no longer rare. In fact, I’ve only got a couple of these shows on CD and the tapes have long since been given away. But it still brings fond memories. Some of the only ones from that small chunk of time I spent in Texas.

It’s a great performance too. “Rainbow’s Cadillac” is one of Bruce’s finest songs, and an excellent jamming song done live. He pretty much nails the sucker. The sound is great and there is an energy at these shows that this was a new Bruce. Great stuff folks.

“Can’t Stand Me Now” – Libertines
From the Libertines

Peter Doherty, lead singer of the Libertines, and now Babyshambles, is a pretty danged good musician/songwriter but has so thoroughly screwed up his life that it’s all kinds of sad. We don’t hear much about him on this side of the ocean, but in England, he’s all sorts of tabloid fodder, what with the heroin addiction, the multiple arrests, and his off-and-on relationship with Kate Moss.

The Libertines were an excellent British, indie rock outfit, that broke up in, well, tabloid fodder. This is a really great upbeat, heavy drum, pop song. Maybe that’s not very indie rock of them, but a good pop song is a good pop song. And 9 times out of 10 I’ll take a good pop song over a great classical, jazz, or obscure rock song.

“Dead Flowers” – The Rolling Stones
From Sticky Fingers

The first time I ever heard this song was through a live performance by Townes Van Zandt over the closing credits of The Big Lebowski. I hunted the song down and eventually got the Rolling Stones album. Yeah, I know I’m a little behind on the Stones, but I’m slowly catching up with them.

Great freaking song. What more can be said? One of my all-time favorites. It’s a favorite daydream to learn to play this song (when I learn to play an instrument) and please the crowd (for of course I’ll make it big as a musician) when I whip it out.

“Turn On Your Lovelight” – Blues Brothers
From Blues Brothers 2000

This is an old blues number, but I know it mainly through the Grateful Dead. Pig Pen used to do these half-hour rave-ups to it. He’d rap along about women and drinking and whatever while the Dead freaking took off behind him. If I could go back in time I’d go back to 1968-69 San Francisco and groove to Pig taking off on this song. The tapes simply can’t do him justice.

The Blues Brothers don’t do the song justice. Man I dig the Brothers, and the original movie is a classic. The sequel had some good moments but sorely missed John Belushi. I miss Pig Pen on this song. It’s got all kinds of cool bluesmen playing along, but it ain’t got no soul.

RIP Ron “Pig Pen” McKernan