The Hazards of Applause Inflation: Modern Day Concertgoing

So I'm at the Tower Theater on Saturday night, waiting for the Decemberists to start their set, surrounded by a palpable air of anticipation. Then the lights dim, and the crowd -- a mixture of oldheads and hipster doofi -- starts cheering wildly. Jenny Conlee's muted organ introduction to The Hazards of Love begins but nearly founders, overwhelmed by another wave of applause. A spolight illuminates Conlee at her keyboards; hysterics ensue. The cheers then come at regular intervals as the rest of the band assembles, and when Colin Meloy shows up -- well, you can imagine. The crowd had shouted itself hoarse almost before Meloy had sung a word.

I'm not, of course, singling out the Decemberists, who put on a great show Saturday night. But how did we reach this point? What drives the concert audience to shower praise onto performers before they've actually done anything?

It is safe to say that this is a new phenomenon. We're not, after all, that far removed from vaudeville, which featured audiences that demanded entertainment and were not shy about showing their displeasure to the acts that failed them. Today's Apollo Theater audience is probably the closest approximation to the old norm, and even there no one tolerates throwing things at the stage.

But one does not need to go that far back. If you want to get really startled, listen to some of the live albums from the '60s and '70s. I'm thinking of two in particular: House Full: Live at the LA Troubadour from Fairport Convention and the Who's Live at Leeds.

House Full features two virtuoso musicians, Dave Swarbrick on fiddle and Richard Thompson on electric guitar, battling each other to see who can play the best and the fastest, all the while anchored by as professional a rhythm section as rock has ever seen. And all that the crowd gives them back for their efforts is about ten seconds of golf claps. Granted, House Full is the product of the first American tour an electric British Folk act, so I can see why some may say that this is not the best example. But you won't hear much more applause in Live at Leeds, perhaps the most ferocious live album of the rock era.

So why do we cheer so vigourously? My guess is that it represents some latent insecurity, where our need to show our affection to a performer actually overwhelms the desire to listen to the performance? But that is a guess. All I wish to point out is that, if a concert audience actually wants to hear a great performance, they would be better served to sit on their hands at the start of the show and make the performer earn the applause.

The joys of a well crafted fight scene: Dollhouse, Episode 11

Minor spoilers ahead (but not the Big One) . . .
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There. I would have subtitiled this "Ballard vs. Langton" if it wasn't for the spoiler issue. And now that I think of it, non-Dollhouse fans may want to skip the next two paragraphs. Mostly, I want to write about a really good fight scene, but I feel compelled to note how well it works in the context of the season. So if, for some reason, you're not interested in the series, by all means, skip ahead.

Anyone who has been watching Dollhouse this year knows that this has been coming. Joss Whedon and his subordinates have been building up Paul Ballard (Tahmoh Penikett) and Boyd Langton (Harry Lennix) as the supreme hard asses of the show, sans peur et sans reproche. Neither of them has even come close to losing a fair fight yet. Hell, they both won most of their unfair fights. So, sooner or later, they would have to meet.

But the fight was not just a contest between the two toughest kids on the block. Both Ballard and Langton have settled on Eliza Dushku's Echo/Caroline as the chief justification for the sorry life choices that they have made. Ballard torched his FBI career to save Caroline; since Patton Oswalt's character dissected Ballard's motivations far better than I could in "Man on the Street", I'll leave that aside. But Langton isn't much better. He's never been shy about his mixed feelings about his gig working (and then running) security for the Los Angeles Dollhouse. His way of compensation? Develop a myopic concentration on saving Echo. A more productive neurosis than Ballard's, of course, but still a neurosis. And a neurosis that puts him at cross purposes with Ballard.

So that's the backstory, characterwise. Now for the fight itself, which largely takes place in the penultimate segment. Whedon fans, of course, should be quite used to fight scenes by now, which have largely been very well done. Many stand out, too many to mention, really; my three personal favorites are Connor's fight with the Beast and the Angelus/Faith wire fight (both from Season Four of Angel) and (God help me) the scene from the Season Two Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode "What's My Line, Part One" where Buffy malarchuks* a demon assassin. What makes the "BriarRose" fight stand out is how intricately it is choreographed.

Granted, any self-respecting drama will take care when staging a fight scenes, which almost always serve as the dramatic climax to a film or episode. Does anyone remember anything from the series Dynasty other than the Joan Collins-Linda Evans confrontations? It remains a mystery to me that neither the Oscars nor the Emmys (nor the Tonys, for that matter) do nothing to honor fight choreographers. Say what you will about the MTV Movie Awards, but they at least do something to recognize how important a fight is to a film's ultimate value.

One needs only look at the Ballard-Langton fight to see how much work goes into designing these fights. At one point, Langton has Ballard dead to rights, holding a gun on him while Langton lies crumpled on the Dollhouse steps, by now shattered by ealier stages of the combat. Ballard knows that he has a deadly opponent by this point; his only chance is to attack Langton in a way where reflex overwhelms control. So he throws a piece of the shattered bannister at Langton's gun arm. Langton involuntarily flinches, and in the second that action gives him, Ballard kicks Langton's gun out of his hand, then moves to press his advantage. The amount of storyboarding, rehersals and camera shots it took to develop this scene, or put more simply, the care put into this scene, simply beggars the imagination.

I could rattle off any number of films or television series with iconic fight scenes: Errol Flynn vs, Basil Rathbone in The Adventures of Robin Hood; Marlon Brando vs. Lee J. Cobb in On the Waterfront, James Caan vs. Gianni Russo in The Godfather (OK, better known as "Sonny wailing on his brother-in-law with a trash can lid"), the "He ain't pretty no more" fight in Raging Bull (along with Sugar Ray Robinson's final shot against Jake LaMotta), and the first Darth Vader-Luke Skywalker confrontation in The Empire Strikes Back. But what I think of most when I think of the Ballard-Langton confrontation is The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. There is a fight early on in the film (very ably described here) between the two main characters and a man who tried to cheat them out of a very small payday. This is not a fight between immortals; rather, it is a sloppy fight where the combatants pay for their many mistakes, winnning through endurance and guile rather than any clear supremacy. In other words, it is like the fights, real or rhetorical, that we ourselves endure throughout our lives.

Kevin Murphy once described fight scenes in the old Repubic Serial Commando Cody this way: "Cody and his pal Ted get beat up by Clayton Moore and his sidekick, taking twice as many direct, bare-fisted punches to the jaw as George Foreman has in his entire career, with no apparent damage or injury."** This fight scene is essentially the opposite of that sort of fight. Two equally matched opponents go at each other, earning every advantage through blood and cunning, where ultimately the fight is determined, not by the clear superiority of one over the other, but by the intervention of outside forces.

* Don't click on this link unless you have a very strong stomach. I'm still not sure how I feel about trying to create a verb out of Clint Malarchuk's near-tragedy (oh, BTW, he did live, and even got back to the NHL)

** To be precise: The Mystery Science Theater 3000 Amazing Colossal Episode Guide, page 12.

Worst Ensemble Cast Among MST3d Movies

OK, I'm a little desperate here to reinvigorate my posting discipline, so here's my recent post to the MST3Kinfo website's Weekend Discussion on the worst ensemble casts in the annals of MST3K:

I’d like to break this category down to distinguish between the five types of movies that wind up MSTed:
1)Movies with professional actors;
2)Movies with community theater actors;
3)Movies who draw their actors from their investors;
4)Movies where the director puts so little faith in his/her actors that he/she hires voice actors to dub the dialogue;
5)Movies where the director doesn’t trust the actors, but is too cheap to hire voice actors, so he/she (oh, who am I kidding, he)dubs the dialogue using his own voice and maybe his wife’s.
I think that we can all fill in the blanks here with the worst performances in each category. But here are my choices for each:
1)Hobgoblins. Stretching the definition of “Professional” here, but I can’t forget that Duane Whitaker was in “Pulp Fiction” (dishonorable mention: “Riding With Death”);
2)The Dead Talk Back. “Teenage Strangler” would be an acceptable alternate, but at least some of that cast was photogenic;
3)The Skydivers. Hard to leave “Red Zone Cuba” off here, but all of the “actors” in that were in this as well. And correct me if I’m wrong, but the “the Scotchman” did not show up in “Cuba”;
4)The Creeping Terror. Although I should give points for the very articulate and engaging narrator;
5)Manos, the Hands of Fate. Since I’m not one to pile on, I’ll be silent here.

Whedon and the Tabula Rasa: Thoughts on the "Needs" Episode of Dollhouse

Caution: Minor spoilers ahead

Many people have expressed variations on the same thought when it comes to Joss Whedon's new series Dollhouse. While his fans are happy to have Whedon back on the small screen, the show's premise creeps them out a bit, and on several levels.

And no wonder. Whedon presents his audience a world where a shadowy organization can erase the personality of a person and imprint a new one drawn to the specifications of a client for a specific task. Once the task is complete, the new personality, along with any memory of the "task," is itself erased, with no consequences to the client (apart from the fee) or the organization. We are assured, of course, that the "actives" (as the victims of the process are called) volunteer for the duty, and that one day they will have their original identities restored. Of course.

There's a lot of layers to this, many aspects that one could discuss, most of them very unsettling. So why did Whedon decide to explore this sort of territory? Perhaps the eigth episode, "Needs" offers a clue.

When not out on assignment, the actives are normally kept in a sub-childlike state where they spend their time eating healthy, exercising and resting. In "Needs," however, five actives wake up as themselves. While they have no memories of their previous lives, they apparently are who they were before joining the Dollhouse. The remainder of the episode spins off of this change, as the newly aware actives take steps to reconnect with their identities.

What is telling about "Needs" is that Whedon has used this trope before -- specifically, in "Tabula Rasa" from the sixth season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer ; and "Spin the Bottle" from the fourth season of Angel (not to mention a significant chunk of that series' fifth season). Both contrive situations where the main characters forget who they are so they can interact unencumbered by the residue of their experienences. But the audience willingly overlooks the contrivance because of the sheer joy of watching characters they love freed from their pasts. And let's face it: if you live in Whedon's universe, you're going to have a nasty past.

Whedon has always been at pains to make sure that the actions his characters take have consequences. In his shows, characters do not wind up where they were at the beginning of the episode. Perhaps, as the son and grandson of television writers, he has a better grasp of the double edged nature of serial character development. The television series format, just like radio before it, allows -- demands, really -- for a writer to create characters that evolve over time. The best shows sustain themselves by focusing on this potential.

For a good discussion of this, one should seek out Melvin Patrick Ely's landmark work on popular culture, The Adventures of Amos 'n' Andy:A Social History of an American Phenomenon (University of Virginia Press, 1991). Amos 'n' Andy spent forty years on the air in part* because it let some of its characters change into different people. Amos, especially, moved on from his original characterization as the good-natured but weak-willed second banana to the comically scheming Andy. By series end, he had asserted independence from Andy, established a successful business, married the love of his life and became a doting, loving father.

But as Calvin's dad once remarked, "We all know how funny good role models are." By the time Amos had turned into such a shining citizen, the Kingfish had supplanted his role as Andy's comic foil, shunting Amos into the background. That, of course, is another way long running series sustain themselves: by developing new characters without the emotional baggage of the original ones. But audiences will only accept so many new characters; in the end, a show can survive as long as the audience still reacts to the factors that drew them in the first place.

I often think of Ely's description of Amos 'n' Andy when I think of Buffy's seventh season. For one thing, Xander Harris' path closely parallelled the path that Amos had tred sixty years before. But even for the other surviving Scoobies, contending with life on the Hellmouth had taken its toll. Buffy and Giles both allowed the burdens of their responsibilities to suck all the joy out of their lives. Willow, meanwhile, spent the bulk of the seventh season recovering from her actions in the sixth; only in the final episode did she show any of her old spark. In short, the main characters were used up. Whedon could not remain true to his characters' integrity and continue to produce an entertaining show.

It should, then be obvious why Whedon would be attracted to the Dollhouse premise. Here is a show where the main characters will always remain true to who they are because they can't remember the consequences of their actions. The major problem with this approach is that it asks the audience to care about characters who have no apparent emotional core. And it is precisely this problem that "Needs" addresses.

*Yeah, I know. But this is not the place to talk about that.

Why Does Art Affect Me?

Why do we expect art to affect us rationally? Art exists outside the realm of rationality, so why do we expect to react to it rationally? Perhaps, as rational creatures, we cling to the notion of a rational world that reveals itself to those with the patience to examine it.

But the world is not rational. Rational thought helped us move out of the trees and, eventually, let humans conquer the world. But it does not explain what drives us, any more than an understanding of the seasons helps us understand what drives the birds around us. Because they are attuned to the mechanisms of the world (if not the motivations underpinning those mechanisms), birds are free to react to the impulses of the seasons. Humans, who live in defiance of those impulses, can not understand them at any level beyond the intellectual.

". . .the hardest thing in this world… is to live in it." The line is from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but the feeling comes from the depths of human experience. If humans lived in concert with nature, then we would have never left the trees. We live in defiance of the imperatives nature imposes on us. But at what cost? Does life in opposition to the divine plan deny us any hope for a contented existence? It may be that it does. Perhaps in the next world we may come upon something that satisfies our longing, but we have no assurance of this in this life, baring the grace of divine knowledge that some of us experience.

As it happens, I have experienced the grace of divine knowledge. But it would be hubris to expect others to take my word for it. Some of the greatest saints have experienced spiritual aridity, so to expect others to take my word for the experience of divine knowledge is obviously a fool's errand. For whatever reason, I have been blessed. All I can say is this: I believe that there is something beyond what we can experience. Take that as you will.

Things that Shouldn't Be: Rock Edition

I heard from a friend of mine who went to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Annex in New York over the weekend that the gift shop featured an obscenely expensive Led Zeppelin shot glass. Now consider for a moment the sordid end of John "Bonzo" Bonham, who consumed as many as forty shots of vodka the day he choked on his own vomit. Should Led Zeppelin shot glasses even exist? Obviously, no.

And yet they do. So indulge me for a moment as I try a free form writing experiment to see how long a list I can make (without research) of rock and roll memorabilia that the Hall of Fame might want to keep off its shelves:

• Sid Vicious Ginzu knives;
• Lynrd Skynrd air sickness bags;
• Janis Joplin hypodermic needles;
• Marc Bolan gear shift knobs;
• the phone number for the "Hells Angels Crowd Control Service;"
• Lou Reed's copy of the book" So You Want to Make Electronic Music;"
• The lyric sheet to the Spin Doctors' song "Cleopatra's Cat"
• Rick Wakeman ice skates;
• Jeff Buckley water wings;
• John Denver "Build It Yourself" plane kit (oh, wait, that might exist for real);
• A facsimile edition of Duane Allman's copy of "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance;"

Well, that's enough for now.

In Praise of Tracy Morgan

Tracy Morgan possesses a rare gift: the ability to say with a straight face anything, no matter how ludicrous. Judging by today's comment page at hulu.com, many still do not appreciate this. But really, in today's comedy world does anyone do a better deadpan than Morgan?

I had hoped to post a link to the final sketch of last night's Saturday Night Live, where Morgan playing the director of a family film called "Rocket Dog," displays a somewhat cavalier regard for the lives of the dogs (and actors) under his charge. Hulu does not have that sketch up yet, unfortunately, so instead I will ask you to remember how much Morgan brings to 30 Rock (the link goes to last week's show; I'm thinking mostly of the bit starting at about 2:10). Like a good left tackle or a solid bass player, Morgan is so good at what he does that you don't notice what he does, but everything else would not (could not) work without his contribution.

Plus, who else can just sit passively in a chair in a shirt made out of money?

Worst Moviegoing Experiences (from Onion AV Club): Ang Lee's "Hulk"

Although I have not seen Ang Lee's "Sense and Sensibility" since 1996, I can still recall the scene where Kate Winslet stands dumbfounded at both her love's infidelity and her rival's contempt, while Emma Thompson, knowing that each second her sister stands exposed will expose her to more scorn from London's scolds, desperately whispers into Winslet's ear trying to convince her to leave the room. Lee, therefore, had won a place in my heart even before "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon," so the prospect of him directing a new version of the Hulk seemed promising. So good, in fact, that I ignored a major warning sign: Lee had pointed a camera at Jewel during "Ride With the Devil" and expected her to act.

Normally, being a cheap bastard, I don't walk out of movies. I sat through many films that I detested -- "Cocoon," "National Lampoon's European Vacation," "The English Patient" and "Synecdoche, New York," to name a few. in fact, the only movie I ever walked out on was Lee's "Hulk."

Part of this was not Lee's fault. I watched the film in a very poor multiplex screening room, with odors and poor soundproofing. Moreover, someone in front of me had ignored the movie's PG-13 rating and brought in far too young a child. When the intense violence began, the kid naturally became disturbed, and the parent began aggressively disciplining the child. In a theater it is hard to tell what an adult does to a child, so I took no action. I may have erred in this, but I do not think so, and in any event this did not make for a pleasurable viewing experience.

But even aside from this, it is hard to see "Hulk" as anything but an absolute failure. All of the action in the film is predicated on someone, when confronted by a difficult choice, to use his or her imagination to find the worst possible course of action and then follow it to hell or high water. All of the major characters quickly learned that making Bruce Banner angry led nowhere good. Nevertheless, over and over again a character would decide to see what would happen if he or she provoked Banner. Surprise! Bruce turns into a green CGI blob, and watching that blob bounce through desert terrain like a Pong ball invoked as much Existential despair as anything Sartre ever wrote. Add to this Nick Nolte's horrific performance as Banner's father -- really, it looks like Lee just pointed a camera at Nolte and printed everything he said, including random bellows -- and "Hulk" becomes an indictment of one's way of life. Can one really justify one's existence if one rationally chooses to spend two hours of one's life watching such a monstrosity? So when Nolte, apropos of nothing, bellowed near the end of "Hulk," that was my cue to make for the door.

I am willing to give a pass to an artist whose work I have admired in the past over an utter failure. So I did not, thankfully, let "Hulk" keep me from seeing "Brokeback Mountain." But the experience of "Hulk" has added a certain wariness to the choices I make. The fact that this runs counter to what I ideally seek in film experiences makes "Hulk" the worst experience in movie going I have ever had.

On Listenig to Trout Mask Replica

It is amazing how art can really and truly affect you. One benefit of my job is that I can listen to music all day doing it, and for the last week or so I've listened almost exclusively to Trout Mask Replica, Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band's 1969 magnum opus. Trout Mask Replica invariably winds up on music critics' lists of the best rock albums of all time, and as a sucker for those lists it was only a matter of time before I bought a copy. At this point I don't remember if I had any expectations (although obviously the cover does lead one to certain conclusions), but learning of Frank Zappa's involvement did little to raise them. Listening to it for the first time quickly devloved into a chore. Blaring saxophones, shifting rhythms and odd time signatures -- not to mention Beefheart's, shall we say, nontraditional vocal approach -- made for quite a change from the traditional country and Southern rock I'd been listening to recently. So on the first listen I didn't get it.

But I kept at it. Obviously Beefheart designed Trout Mask Replica to be heard more than once, and its very opaqueness started to seem like a virtue. Plus I sometimes find myself revisiting works of art, culture or entertainment that do not work for me, but nevertheless have a large following. For the most part this has been unproductive (I've spent far too much of my life watching The Brady Bunch and Family Guy), but for whatever reason I could not stop listening to the record. And I still didn't get it.

Until I realized that the whole point of the album was to point out the fallacy of trying to "get" art. Trout Mask Replica indites the whole notion that artistic expression must adhere to the same logic that governs rational thought. What makes art work generally has roots outside the realm of logic, whether the artist consciously intends this or not. Beefheart deliberately draws from an extensive knowledge of different musical genres to create his dense melange, something that defies understanding but that nevertheless communicates with his audience.

And because of this work, I finally have an understanding of what modern artists of all stripes try to accomplish. To paraphrase von Clausewitz, art is continuation of communication by other means.

24 Idiocy

after watching this week’s episodes of 24 on hulu.com I must confess to a total loss of faith in the series. Let us leave aside the presence of Jon Voight -- an actor I cannot stand -- slurping Chinese food into his maw. And also ignore the mortal danger to two characters I like, Aaron Pierce and Bill Buchanan. At this point, the quickest way to get me to drop this series would be to put a bullet in Pierce’s brain (despite the fact that I do find his charge, the President’s daughter, hot enough to take the paint off the walls).

Do I really need to tell you why I find this latest plot twist so ridiculous? Suspending disbelief is one thing, but come on! We live in a world where Constitutional rights do not apply within a mile of a Vice-Presidential Candidate!!!!! I have long argued that we spend far too much money, and sacrifice far too many of our civil liberties, to protect the President’s life. No one holds a gun to the heads of Presidential aspirants, and the Constitution spells out the terms of Presidential succession well enough for the country to endure an assassination. But the shield around the President is there, and anyone who has even a casual acquaintance with the Presidency knows it is there. The producers of 24, then, do a great disservice to their audience by pretending that this attack would get anywhere near the President.

Santorum=Jackass

You know, I hesitate to post this link ("The Elephant in the Room: In Praise of Catholic Priests Who Dare to Preach and Enforce"), because it suggests that I'm insisting that people read an article written by Rick Santorum (albeit more likely one of his proxies), but fairness constrains me. Now I have not bothered to fact check the article, assuming that people usually treat any factual statement from the emphatically ex-senator from Pennsylvania as gingerly as a dog turd. But a few random observations comes to mind:

1) It takes a man of great character to question the quality of the person who so resoundingly thumped him in a recent election, knowing that lesser mortals might accuse him of sour grapes;

2) I've noted in the past that John Paul II knowingly gave the Eucharist to a pro-choice politician in Italy, so I won't go over how ridiculous this whole issue is. I will merely point out that a priest is in no position to know the heart of someone coming up to receive Communion, so really, he should just do his job and give out the sacrament. Not to mention that recent events have shown that the Church might want to review how it handles background checks;

3) Santorum brings up Justin Cardinal Rigali, at whom I am a bit miffed right now. Rigali is not as overtly confrontational as Bishop Joseph Martino, the main object of Santorum's praise. But he did allow himself to be photographed with Bush in 2004 and McCain in 2008, and yet somehow was not available for their respective opponents. After that, he had very carefully couched letters read at Mass the Sundays before the election, and then put out the FOCA post cards out the Sunday after Obama's inarguation despite the fact that the bill is not currently under consideration.

I met Cardinal Rigali last year, as part of a group introduced to him during a pilgrimage. When we learned that we would meet him I was torn as to what to do. This is hard to explain to non-Catholics, but even seeing a Cardinal, let alone meeting one, is something special, akin to seeing a rock star. But up to that point Rigali had come up short in every measure I have for high Church members. The question, then, was whether or not to make a scene. As the moment neared, however, I backed away from the idea of any confrontation, and soon I just hoped to avoid aping Mr. Bean when he met the Queen. Which I did manage, BTW, although verbally it was close.

Do I regret not speaking to power when I had the chance? Not really. It is true that some of the great saints of the Church have openly confronted high Church members whom they thought had deviated from the path. Catherine of Siena often signed letters to Cardinals "without reverence," and she's a Doctor of the Church now. Rigali should be told that he does his Archdiocese no favors by using sophists' tricks to manipulate it against politicians he does not like. But many people do tell him this, if he chooses to listen, so I am glad I showed respect to the people who allowed me to meet Rigali by not calling him to task. But if I meet him again . . .

Lenten Discipline: Post entries daily

OK, I've been lax, I know. But that is what Lent is for, to nudge us back towards what helps us. So my Lenten pledge is to make sure to post something every day. Hopefully this will work as an intellectual emetic. So we will see.

Facebook "These are a few of my favorite things" music post

As an eternally frustrated ex-college DJ, I'm always looking for opportunities to get music out there. Not a comprehensive list, although I did do 30. The order is utterly random.

1)Johnny Cash At San Quentin: An obvious choice, but a good one. Prefer this to Folsom because of "A Boy Named Sue;" a distant cousin of mine did an oral interpretation of this song at a family reunion in Ireland about ten years ago;

2)Sam Phillips Martinis and Bikinis: Anything Ms. Phillips does is worth a listen, even the Christian music she later disowned. This one's a slew of well-crafted Beatlesque pop songs dealing with how difficult straddling the line between the spiritual and temporal can be;

3)R.E.M. Life's Rich Pageant: Sentimental choice from the fall of '86. Hard to go wrong with any R.E.M. album, of course; "Accelerate" is also worth a listen, despite being the most recent one;

4)John Prine John Prine: Prine fell into the Marshall Crenshaw trap with this one by making a debut album so impossibly good that he could never top it. No one has ever drawn such richly developed characters in so few phrases;

5)The Pogues If I Should Fall From Grace With God: How do you pick one Pogues album? Simple. Pick the one featuring the duet with Kirsty MacColl, and then mourn the injustice that took her voice from the world;

6)Various Artists Troubadours of British Folk: Volume 1, Unearthing the Tradition: Speaking of Kirsty MacColl, this album features her father Ewan singing his song "Dirty Old Town." Rhino did a good job with this largely acoustic album, featuring most of the major early lights: Donegan, Carthy, Jansch, Briggs, Collins. Plus, if you ever wondered who yelled "Judas!" at Dylan during "The Royal Albert Hall Concert," there's a good chance that person listened to some of this music;

7)The Stooges Raw Power: "Menacing" is a word you don't see in too many music reviews outside of Rock. If you want to hear menace in its purest form, listen to this;

8)Martin Carthy Shearwater: A compelling album from one of the greatest British Folk artists, his return to acoustic guitar after a two album flirtation with electricity as part of Steeleye Span. Carthy believes in it and he knows how to do it.

9)The Hold Steady Boys and Girls in America: the album that restored my faith in rock;

10)The John Coltrane Quartet Africa/Brass: I'm not a jazz guy; the reason I latched onto this is because I read the Byrds were listening to it as they wrote "Eight Miles High." There's no linear link between the two that I can hear, and I never did hear the classical Indian influence on the album, but it is strangely compelling;

11)Various Artists Alan Lomax: Popular Songbook: Field recordings of many songs that would later become rock standards: "Midnight Special," Goin' Down the Road Feeling Bad," "Rock Island Line," "Sloop John B." and others;

12)The Beatles Revolver: Almost certainly the best album I've ever heard;

13)Fairport Convention Liege and Lief: And if it ain't "Revolver" it is this;

14)Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds Murder Ballads; Hard to top Nick Cave's voice, especially when he's intoning a certain twelve letter word;

15)U2 War; The album I memorized in high school. Growing up without consistent access to a good radio station or MTV, I would save up my money, scan album reviews in magazines and newspapers and buy anything I could find that a reviewer said came from the same influences as "War";

16)Iris DeMent Infamous Angel; She truly has her own voice, and she writes songs worthy of it;

17)The Who Live at Leeds: The most ferocious live album ever recorded, featuring some of rock's best musicians at the height of their powers;

18)Original Cast Album, Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Once More, With Feeling: Combines two of my favorite things, show tunes and TV. Plus it gives one a good intro to Joss Whedon: the character to whom the prettiest ballad is sung has just utterly betrayed the singer;

19)The Chemical Brothers Dig Your Own Hole; Accessible, compelling electronic DJ music. Plus, any recycling of "Tomorrow Never Knows" is always valued;

20)Anne Briggs A Collection: A compilation, but hey, she only has recorded thirty-odd songs to date. I still occasionally listen to her A Capella version of "She Moves Through the Fair" on continuous repeat. It sounds like she just restarts the song, over and over again. If that's what Heaven is like and I make the list, I won't complain;

21)Drive-By Truckers The Dirty South: Again, hard to pick just one DBT album. I go with this because Jason Isbell is still in the band at this point, and he does have the best singing voice DBT ever had. Great stories, good guitar, and that sense of Southern Gothic menace that no one does better;

22)Various Artists White Bicycles: Making Music in the 1960s: If you get a chance, read the book to which this is a companion, Joe Boyd's memoir of his early career. I'm only aware of one person, Al Kooper, who worked with a wider variety of musicians. But the album works even without the book.

23)Lucinda Williams, Lucinda Williams: PopMatters recently cheated in a review of Williams' last album, saying it was her best album since "You know the one." Readers would either instinctively think Car Wheels on a Gravel Road or this one. I go with the latter; having ears, I like Car Wheels, but Williams indulges her "write a song where a friend of mine dies" muse a bit too much on it. Really, who has a longer life expectancy: a friend of Lucinda's or a Spinal Tap drummer?;

24)Neil Young and Crazy Horse Weld: Neil touring in support of a strong album (Ragged Glory) with opening acts strong enough to push him (Social Distortion and Sonic Youth), and in the middle of the Persian Gulf War. Not much more you could ask for. Plus this is one of the few shows I actually saw;

25)Patty Griffin 1000 Kisses; with the '00s ending, I've been trying to think of the best albums of the decade, and so far nothing beats this one. A virtuoso singer who chooses restraint over self-aggrandizing vocal acrobatics except when the song demands it. Plus, a hell of a songwriter;

26)Talking Heads Remain in Light; I don't know enough about African music to judge how original this album. All I know is that, if I need music to help me focus and move quickly, on foot or behind the wheel, I'm popping in "The Great Curve";

27)Nick Drake Pink Moon: Musical heroin for depressives;

28)The Decemberists Picaresque: Colin Meloy gets mucho props for his literary songwriting skills, which are very evident here. But he is a very evocative vocalist as well, and really, he has to be to pull off his songs. Plus, Jenny Conlee is probably the Garth Hudson of her generation;

29)Sarah McLachlan Fumbling Towards Ecstasy: It took me several years to figure out that "Possession" was essentially written from the perspective of someone who stalked McLachlan, which I think says all I need to say about the power of this album;

30)Richard and Linda Thompson I Want to See the Bright Lights: I've read that Richard Thompson denies that his songs reveal a bleak worldview, saying that he always leaves room for redemption at the end. Maybe so, and certainly "Night Comes In" is as ecstatic a song as one is likely to find. But that was after he converted to Sufism. On this album, one gets the closing tandem of "The End of the Rainbow," which makes Roger Waters' later work sound like the 1910 Fruit Gum Company, and "The Great Valerio," which stomps on the possibility of romantic love as a salve. On a lighter note, the reissue features the most blistering live version of "The Calvary Cross" available right now.

OK, that's it. As always, thanks for your attention.

Fifteen Years Too Late for the Borovnian Fair

Did you ever get something you dreamed about long after you imagined it? I mean really long, like a decade and change. Growing up in an area without an established revival film circuit, I can remember wishing that I could go back in time and see movies that TV stations, for whatever reason, did not show. That era, of course, is as dead as the antebellum South; nowadays people expect access to nearly every film still in existence with almost no delay. And in large part, they get that access. The idea of waiting, say, for a TV show to rerun an episode has become nearly as anachronistic as a hat blocker.

Bear with me through the the remainder of the segue. A few weeks back I missed an episode of The Simpsons. This was a disappointment to me, since I had been told that it took inspiration from the Chronicles of Narnia. But tonight I remembered Hulu.com, and when I pulled up the episode in question my interest increased ten fold. Here's how Hulu describes it: "Lisa meets an equally academic and creative new friend named Juliet." It took me about five seconds to realize the full implications of this statement.

At this point, I should note my mid-1990s obsession with the film Heavenly Creatures, which documents (well, sort of) a real life occasion where the meeting of two "academic and creative" girls set off a chain of events that ended in a horrific murder. You can guess the name of one of the girls involved: Juliet. Granted, this is pretty icky territory, and perhaps not something that a sitcom should ideally do. But really, The Simpsons gets a pass in my book.

Or at least it used to. Now, I don't know, especially in the wake of this episode. Heavenly Creatures came out in 1994, and despite the subsequent success of its stars, screenwriters and director, remains obscure. While movie references and parodies form a significant segment of The Simpsons' humor, fifteen years is a stretch. But what is more disturbing is that the writers pulled back from the most disturbing aspects of the case. Granted, part of this may be do to maintaining the integrity of Lisa's character; she's not one who normally strays too far away from reality. But this itself brings up a disturbing thought: why did the writers jackhammer the plot of an obscure movie onto a character who does not really fit the profile? Unfortunately, Occam's Razor suggests that The Simpsons writers room is so bankrupt of ideas that it will piece together an episode out of anything.

So I've drifted into Comic Book Guy territory. But I think that this is evidence that the party has finally come to an end in Springfield.

Mexico 0, USA 2: "America, F--K Yeah!!!!!!"

That's the most I've enjoyed a U. S. soccer game in quite a while. They actually looked like a top-flight side in Columbus tonight: one touch passes, working the trap, forcing errors and making the other side pay for its mistakes. Sure, finishing could be better (really, what else is new?), but the USMNT showed that they believe in themselves. And really, that is when historically they have produced.

Some may hesitate to look for positives in the 2006 World Cup, but at least one can be found: it lowered expectations for the USMNT. Personally, I think that 2006 could have gone worse -- remember, no one else got a point off of the eventual World Cup champion that year (not even my beloved Les Bleus), and they did draw a tough group. Still, the team played tight, clearly uncomfortable under the weight of expectations. Well, 2002 is a distant memory, and the high FIFA ranking (whether deserved or not) has fallen by the wayside. No one expects anything out of this team now. That may not explain everything about tonight's performance, but it did not hurt.

And I suppose one could argue that so many years under Bruce Arena had let the team go stale. Personally, while I was glad to see Arena go at the end, I prefer that situation to the coaching merry-go-round that Mexico endures. Maybe I've read too much Gregg Easterbrook, but at this point I have to wonder if the stability the USMNT enjoys at the head coaching position has helped them surpass Mexico in CONCACAF. Sven-Goran Eriksson's lackluster resume may not inspire too much confidence, but at least his former employers gave him a chance. Since 1991, the USMNT has had 4 coaches, while Eriksson is number 14 for Mexico, and may be out after tonight.

Why Mexico has not done better on the world soccer stage remains one of the most debatable sports questions out there, but really, there's no excuse.They've hosted two World Cups, rank 11th in world population and have no sport nearly as popular (unless I've underrated the appeal of competitive walking). Plus, Mexican players regularly play for the top teams in the world, while (aside from goalkeepers) Americans have trouble hanging onto roster spots in the top four leagues. But despite all of Mexico's advantages, they've never gotten farther than the World Cup quarterfinals. Yeah, I know its unfair to point this out, but the USMNT reached the semifinals in 1930. After tonight, it is hard to imagine Mexico matching that accomplishment in 2010.

But rather than be negative, I'll enjoy the now. Good times for the USMNT.

Use your Allusion

OK, I'm over-thinking this, which usually leads me to do absolutely nothing, so I'll take a different approach. Here's something where I do not have a fully formed thought before I compose the post. Hey, this is ultimately a writing exercise anyway, so all roads must be explored.

Anyway, I've been reading my posts and noticing how often I make allusions. There are worse literary devices, but nothing endures overuse very well, so why do I keep going back to them? If one takes a dismal view, allusions often are the hallmark of intellectual laziness. An author hijacks the emotions evoked by an event or a work of art for her own purposes. Or it could be exclusionary, something designed to cut out the squares from the audience; if you don't get the reference, you have no business being here.

But let us take the more charitable view. I throw allusions out as means to strike a commonality with readers. Even with people one knows well, communication is problematic at best; we try to organize the chaos in our minds into something that language can convey, say our peace and hope for the best. In that context, all bets are off, and anything that can simplify the process should be in bounds. Really, shared experiences make up the foundation of any relationship merely by making it easier to talk to each other. All an allusion does is make it possible for people who might not know each other well to find common ground.

Star Trek: The Next Generation ran a very good episode near the end of its run where Picard was stranded on a planet with an alien starship captain played by Paul Winfield. At first Picard found communication with Winfield impossible until realizing that Winfield's culture spoke in nothing but allusions to their culture's foundational Creation story. Now obviously, this premise does not bear close examination, unless one can imagine a nuclear physics textbook written wholly in allusions. Only actors as skilled as Patrick Stewart and Paul Winfield could pull this off. But the scene where Picard bridges the gap by telling the story of Gilgamesh shows the power of allusions to bring people together.

Rock and Roll Does Mean Well

Many things still amaze me as I drift into decrepitude, but rock music certainly ranks near the top of the list. What keeps it so fresh, long past any reasonable expiration date? Anyone who has given the matter any thought should be able to write out the rise and fall of rock in her head. If you can't, then just crack open an art history book. Someone synthesizes a few tired old means of expression to create a new form, someone else comes along and expands the new form's possibilities, the momentum dies and everyone moves onto something else.

Except that rock, which by all rights should have started to die after the Beatles broke up, still endures. Scratch that: it still prospers. What brought on this little typing exercise is a sudden realization of just how great a band the Drive-By-Truckers are. With a seemingly inexhaustible supply of songwriters. DBT have already created a body of work that stands with the best rock bands. Just imagine if Flannery O'Connor had grabbed a six string rather than a pen, and you'll get an idea of the kind of songs they produce.

But two years ago I could have written a similar piece on the Hold Steady (and might just yet). My point is this: Buddy Holly's been in the ground fifty years, and the genre still produces artists this vital. One is tempted, of course, to ask why, and I have my theories. A country as culturally diverse as America would naturally favor an art form that easily adapted to different milleaus; moreover, it would stand to reason that this form could itself be transmitted to other societies, where the process would repeat itself. Or whatever. All I know is that rock and roll still possesses the power to move me, and (I think, with some Descartian hedging) others long past the point where it should have lost steam. Hail, Hail, Rock and Roll, indeed!

An Elegant Solution for Catholic Church: Women Cardinals

I've been thinking since my last post praising (sort of) Frances Kissling for speaking out on the Society of St. Pius X readmission and the rehabilitation of Bishop Williamson. Actions like this, while understandable, still do less than nothing to assuage the feelings of liberal Catholics. Still, nothing makes me more uncomforatble than the lack of a role for women in Church leadership.

Last year, at the International Eucharistic Congress in Quebec, I sat in an old hockey areana temporarily converted into a church and watched the opening procession of a Mass. Dozens of bishops, archbishops, Eastern patriarchs and cardinals made their way down the aisle. And while there were a few female faces -- alter servers, lectors, mostly -- it was impossible not to be aware of the gender disparity. "We have to get more women up there," was the only thought that passed through my head.

But I have hope, for there is an elegent solution out there: women cardinals. Even if Church leadership persists in arguing that the apostolic succession bans women from the priesthood, the College of Cardinals is a later creation that exists outside of the priesthood. One does not have to be a priest to be a cardinal. I retain the hope that, someday, the Church will open up this body, which directly selects the Pope, to women.

A fool's hope? Perhaps. But the same Mass at Quebec featured, to celebrate India's contributions to the Church, a sitar solo. A hundred years ago, when the U.S. took the Phillipines from the Spanish, the Church replaced the Spanish bishops who served there up to then with American ones. Change does come.

Kissling, Lefebvre et al

Browsing over to Salon.com and seeing Frances Kissling's byline is never a pleasant experience for me, but after Benedict XVI recinded the excommunication of the four Society of St. Pius X bishops, I knew that she would show up sooner or later. And here she is: http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2009/01/29/antisemitism/

I've published responses to Kissling's earlier pieces in the Salon letters section before, so I won't go over my objections to her here. She earns her living playing the Zell Miller role in the Catholic Church, plain and simple. I don't think anyone who gives the matter any thought would really quibble with that characterization, except perhaps in degrees of magnitude.

But as someone once said, every ten years or so David Brenner tells a funny joke. This rapprochment Benedict XVI engineered with the late Bishop Lefebrve's ultraconservative group has grated on me ever since the effort began. Then on Sunday, I heard about what the one bishop said and that he still was getting back into the Church. I was scheduled to do the readings during the 9:30 Mass, so soon I found myself silently seething over the decision in full view of several hundred people.

It is tempting, of course, to blame the messenger. One suspects that Benedict tried to make peace with the right rather than the left because, ultimately, there is nothing anyone in the Church can do that will ever satisfy Kissling and those like her. And truth be told, Kissling does overstate her case a bit here. Personally, if I was donating money to the Southern Poverty Law Center, I'd like an explanation as to how an investigation of a relatively obscure Catholic splinter group forwards the center's goals. But for a liberal Catholic who remembers that the Church teaches that one does not have to be Catholic or even Christian to gain salvation, this whole business leaves a bitter taste.

If one believes in God, then it must follow that the Universe is ultimately not a democracy. And if one believes that the Church is truly the Church Millitant, then it deserves a fair hearing. But I do think back on some prominent Church leaders who have come back into favor after some time -- Lefebvre himself, obviously, but also people like Savonarola, who I asked for help before reading on Sunday. My belief is that eventually good sense will prevail.

More Pandora Musings, plus apparently Sad Songs Say So Much

Boy, do I like Pandora radio (http://www.pandora.com/), and they're not even paying me -- not that I'd refuse, of course. You just type in a song, and they make a station based entirely around it. I've already got stations for "She Moves Through the Fair," "The Great Valerio," "Decoration Day", "Matty Groves", "Bachelorette" and "Crazy Man Michael." Of course, the downside of this is a case of depression so nasty that against it my Prozac works as well as an oregano joint.

Which raises another question: why do I seek out sad music? Sometimes a third of the songs on my MP3 player are from diagnosed depressives or artists who killed themselves one way or another, including at least one from an overdose of anti-depressants. This would be excusable in someone young, whose Romantic notions of what depression can do to a person, but not for someone who knows something of its nature. Depression makes the entire world taste like ashes, and banal ashes at that.

And perhaps that is where the attraction lies. Feeling something, even sadness, is infinitly superior to feeling nothing. People may talk about listening to sad music out of a sense of community via empathy, but really I think a closer analogy is to what Rod Steiger's character does at the end of The Pawnbroker: he pushes his hand through a spike.

Who said obituaries cannot be funny?

Certainly not me, someone who's been reading the "Irish Funny Pages" as long as he can remember. Although I will agree that film producer Charles Schneer's obituary in the New York Times was probably not the best place for the following tidbit:

"Mr. Schneer also produced a biopic about the Nazi rocket scientist Wernher von Braun, released in the United States in 1960 as I Aim at the Stars. (The comedian Mort Sahl made short work of the title, amending it to read: “I Aim at the Stars — but Sometimes Hit London.")

This also brought back memories of the last (OK, only) Drive-By-Truckers show I saw, where Patterson Hood talked about going to rock concerts at the Von Braun Arena in Huntsville, saying that it was years before he realized how "messed" up that was. Oh BTW, I'm trying to keep this blog relatively clean in language terms, so I bowdlerized Hood's language a bit.

Quick link to anti-Billy Joel goodness

A friend of mine pointed me in the direction of this article: http://www.slate.com/id/2209526/
Let us just say that I will never pass up a chance to testify to the sheer awfulness of Billy Joel.

Someone did recently point out to me that Joel does have some decent personal qualities; apparently he has stuck with his original band mates long past the point where most pop stars dump them for studio session players. But I certainly emphasize with Mr. Rosenbaum on his shame of growing up in the same place as Joel. In October, I grew sick of Joe Buck during the World Series, so I started listening to the radio broadcast instead. That decision spared me from hearing Patti LaBelle butcher the Star Spangled Banner. Maybe I should send Buck a note thanking him for being such an unctuous jerk.

Feeling my way through the process

I'm still not sure how all of this works yet, so I hope that I did not write myself into a corner yesterday with a political post. For now I intend to let my ADD follow its bliss, so to speak, and go wherever it takes me. So, to name a random example, if I feel the need to vent some bile about a movie I just saw -- to say, for instance, that the experience of seeing Synecdoche New York most closely parallels watching someone take an enormous dump, complete with sound effects -- then that's what I'll do.

Not that I want to be wholly negative here, either. If I like something (like, for instance, the Pandora website: http://www.pandora.com/backstage) it will wind up on my site. For now, I'm just feeling out the ground rules my mind is setting for itself.

FOCA Fun

So I'm at Mass today and I see that someone put out pre-printed postcards, ready for mailing to the local Senators and Congresspeople, opposing something called The Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA). The explanatory literature is, needless to say, very inflammatory; FOCA will supposedly outstrip Roe v. Wade in institutionalizing abortion in the United States.

Now at this point I should note that I voted for Obama. And Kerry. And Gore, Clinton (please ignore 1996, when I voted for Nader; there's a few hundred years in Purgatory waiting for me for encouraging him) and Dukakis. Leaving apart the abortion issue, in terms of social conscience consistent with my faith the Republicans have never come close to offering any sort of alternative. Moreover, the Pro-Life movement, generally speaking, has long since lost any scruples about how they present their case. Both they and the Republicans (and yes, I make a distinction) express their views with the subtlety of a jackhammer. And God help someone who unquestioningly uses their literature to inform their views; facts always take a secondary role to polemics. So I take a pretty jaundiced view towards the Pro-Life literature I see around my local church.

Nevertheless, I will wind up sending in the postcards. Since I started regularly attending Mass again I have never skipped the Eucharist because of my voting record. I know of at least one occasion where John Paul II knowingly gave the Eucharist to a Pro-Choice politician. But abortion bothers me. On social issues I normally take the view that legislating morals does not work, and in any event if society itself is flawed and finite, then why bother worrying about what policies it endorses? I am an American, and to me part of that means believing that we should not be penalized by the circumstances of our births. But that, of course, entails getting born, and I have never heard Reproductive Rights advocates (who themselves are somewhat scruples challenged) make a convincing argument that life definitively begins any later than conception.

Ultimately, my wish is for my party to realize that Pro-Choice advocate have become a boat anchor for the party's election hopes. Without them, Kerry would have won in 2004. Honestly, I know nothing about FOCA, and I suspect that it is not politically viable even in the current environment. As likely as not, the Pro-Life advocates are just trying to keep their followers stirred up. One gratifying trend in recent years has been the increasing success of Pro-Life Democrats, so it would surprise me if FOCA gets anywhere near a vote. But if it does, I certainly do not wish to see any expansion of abortion rights pass Congress.

Late to the Game as Always

Well, here we go. I've always wanted to be one of those people who jump onto trends before anyone else, but as my personal history has been a long series of staying too long at various fairs, here I am again, starting a blog in 2009!!!!!

On the other hand, I do tend to hang onto the bitter end once I have taken something up, which does bode well for the continuance of this little commentary. And I do think that I have something to say that others may, from time to time, find of interest. Mission statements are not part of my style, so essentially I will limit myself to saying that I will offer some observations on whatever catches my attention.

Joseph Stilwell famously used his diaries as an outlet for his bile (and Lord Knows he needed one dealing with Chiang Kai-Shek). That may happen here on occasion. I'm not sure if I should frame this fact as a warning or an enticement, but there it is.

Oh, the title. I based it on something Lenin said. Honestly, I mostly chose it because I was surprised that the title was still available, considering the relationship the United States has with China these days.