Jazz Thursdays: The Jazz Messengers - A Night in Tunisia

Serious jamming from all-stars from the 1960s: drummer Art Blakey, Lee Morgan, and I think that's a young Wayne Shorter.

Back of the Bin: Rattlesnakes

From the great and greatly under appreciated Lloyd Cole: "She looks like Eve Marie Saint in On the Waterfront."

TGIF: Let's Stay Together

The great Rev. Al Greene opens his heart.

Back of the Bin: Homosapien

I'm the shy boy/You're the coy boy/And you know we're/Homosapien, too.

Back of the Bin: Oblivious

"They call us lonely, when we're really just alone."

Back of the Bin: Prefab Sprout's "Looking for Atlantis"

"If you're looking for Atlantis, you should cast your eye on me." Produced by the estimable Thomas Dolby in 1990, this helped me get through my last semester of college.

Jazz Thursday: Do I Love You?

From the great, great Cole Porter, as sung by Aztec Camera.

Back of the Bin: Red Guitar

Here's former Japan frontman, David Sylvian, with his New Wave jazz gem Red Guitar. In this beautifully angular song we can hear Sylvian moving away from the pop glam stylings of Japan and catch hints of his high-art ambitions. Songs such as Red Guitar may sound self-conscious to some. You say self-conscious, I say deliberate.

Speaking of which, the video, by filmaker Anton Corbijn, references the images and techniques of highly influential surrealist photographer Angus McBean, who also has an appearance in the film. Historical footnote: McBean, like so many men of his generation, was imprisioned for several years in England for admirable crime of homosexuality.

Time Capsule Tuesdays: Schoolhouse Rocks

Schoolhouse Rocks is pretty much played out nowadays, thanks to all you lame hipsters out there. But when I was young, these cartoons really resonated. I remember sitting at my grandmother's house and at school watching and singing these songs. That's how ubiquitous they were. And while singing never helped my multiplication tables, the segment explaining how a bill becomes a law actually taught me something useful. Take that, Sunday School!

I'm posting Three Is a Magic Number for no other reason than the line "A man and a woman had a little baby. They had three in the family." My parents were divorced by this time, I had two brothers, and even then was super gay. So this song became one of my first clues that 1) the media lies, and 2) the expressed culture doesn't always reflect the actual culture. Fuckers.

Superstar

Since we seem to be in a 70's kind of mood today, here's Sonic Youth's cover of Superstar, the Carpenters weepie from '71. This particular meeting of the minds creates some exquisite dislocation, and bumps the Carpenters' ever-present creepiness to the forefront. SY thankfully drains the original's sappiness, only to reprocess it into yummy pop syrup!

Beardy Goodness

Just finished watching one of VH1's catalog shows. This one listed the best/worst softrock songs of all time. Now, I could write for hours about the dumb irony of "so bad it's good" hipsterism, or the emptiness of creating any kind of dichotomy between "high" and "low" art. But what completely captivated me was all the hairy, bearded, groovy guys this show highlighted. Whether it was the guys from Orleans (Still the One, indeed) or Rupert Holmes (remember the Pina Colado Song?), it pulled me right back into the 70s, at the exact moment when my brain was ready to be imprinted with the concept of Hot Guy. All I need now is a Camero, a fu manchu stache, and tight flares. Grrrrrr.

BTW, one of the commenters for this particular VH1 show was JD Ryznar, one of the writers/actors on Acceptable TV. He and several of his peers on Acceptable TV are equally beardy and slobby, in that almost-trying-too-hard hipster way. The show is just passable. The men are hairy nerds. Again, grrrr.

Jazz Thursday: Django Reinhardt, King of Gypsy Jazz

Engineering Animated Model of 9/11 Attack

This generates a weird mix of sadness and scientific curiosity. They don't sit together very comfortably.

Tuesday Time Capsule: Russ Meyers

The first image I ever saw from Russ Meyers was a life-sized cardboard cutout of Up star Raven De La Croix--the so-called "Margot the Magnificent Superchick." Even at that early age, I knew I was as queer as a backwards duck. But something about that very, very larger than life woman fascinated me.

Years later, after I discovered the Sontagian definition of camp, I watched Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill! Certainly, Meyers's pneumatic "superwomen" and drag performers seemed to share the same DNA. But even that explanation failed to completely satisfy my curiosity.

Later still, I began to watch the Meyers's films with an older and more experienced eye. I discovered that what fascinated me wasn't the just obvious over-the-top details of his women, but their contradictions; Strong, feminine, crazy, loyal, sexual, violent, victimized, victimizer. Ambivalent. Contradictory. Hyper real. And completely fake. They were, as a friend once said about something completely different, "a parody and celebration at the same time." Indeed.

What's not to be fascinated by?

Pop Goes My Heart

I watched Music & Lyrics tonight, against my better judgment. Romantic comedies tend to rub me the wrong way for any number of reasons. Surprisingly, this flick not only didn't suck, it actually made me laugh. And nothing was as funny as this video from fake 80's band PoP! Uncannily accurate in its cheesiness, it also features a fantastic song from Fountains of Wayne virtuoso Adam Schlesinger someone I've never heard of. I can't get this out of my head. And I don't think I want to.

Massachusetts Is (Still) for Lovers

Marriage is still on the books in Massachusetts. Andrew Sullivan says it best:

Looking back on two decades of struggle, past the ashes of so many, to the clearing on which we now stand, it's hard not to weep. Two decades ago, marriage for gays was a pipe-dream. Some of us were ridiculed for even thinking of the idea. And yet here we are. Past the vicious attack from the president, past the cynical manipulation by Rove, past the cowardice of so many Democrats, past the rank hypocrisy of the Clintons, past the inertia of the Human Rights Campaign, past the false dawn in San Francisco, and the countless, countless debates and speeches and books and articles and op-eds.

Tuesday Time Capsule: Omni Magazine

When I was growing up, I read Omni magazine religiously. I can now admit to only understanding about one quarter of what I found between it insanely evocative covers. But those stories described a world outside my suburban mind that I couldn't wait to explore.

Too bad the timing sucked. Omni missed the nerd-worshipping internet-loving world by a decade. And though it limped into an online version in 1996, it ceased publishing in 1998, and disappeared from the web in 2003.

While I can't imagine living without the web's horizonless ocean of content, there's something to be said for keeping all the world's geeky coolness in one place, between two slick covers. Gives a teenage outsider something to look forward to.

10 Movie to Watch For

Salon's fantastically readable indie movie critic, Andrew O'Hehir, sends this list from Cannes. Of them all, I'm getting sweaty palms thinking about Control directed by Anton Corbijn:

Corbijn's film is a glum, black-and-white period piece about Ian Curtis, the late singer in the legendary English post-punk band Joy Division, and there are only two possible reactions to that information. It's either "Who cares? or "What do I have to do to see it?" Samantha Morton stars as Curtis' wife, Deborah (the film is based on her book), with unknown Sam Riley as the espresso-depresso gloomster champion of his time.

Corbijn's music videos for Depeche Mode, Nirvana, and others were beautiful and perfectly tuned into their times. I wonder how well he does with late 70's England? And speaking of which, Ian and the boys appeared in 24 Hour Party People a few years back. It wasn't really their story, but I still hightly recommend it to anyone who loves post-punk music and gloomy dudes singing death disco.

Jazz Thursdays: Dave Brubeck Quartet (1961)

Gabba Gabba Hey! It's the Punk Zine Archive

Take a peek at your fav punk zines from 1977 to 1998: Suburban Voice, MaximumRockandRoll, HeartAttaCK, and Flipside are all here. I've never loved reading zines, finding them a little too difficult to actually deal with, but I loved that fact that they existed. Kind of like vampire bats. From Operation Phoenix Records.