The original:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyqeWtxGbls&feature=related
and the cover version:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zGYASktc7k&feature=related
FAIL.
Know your limits John. For the love of God. I know you're from New Jersey, but please. Bruce can get away with this, but you're not Bruce. I wonder how many people in the audience know who Tom Waits is.
Here's something to get that out of your system:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkUFzkYybKo&feature=related
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Thursday, June 11, 2009
I saw a great show last night. Jonathan Richman in a small club in De Moines. Amaaaaazing stuff. I've been aware of him for years, but hadn't "gotten around" to getting any of his records. That's just how it is sometimes, I suppose.
If you don't know who he is, he's probably most famous (outside of the music geek world) as the guy playing the musical interludes during the movie "There's Something About Mary," but he's a much bigger deal than being "the guy playing the guitar in the tree when Ben Stiller's doing that funny crying scene." He was an important forerunner to punk rock. His early band, The Modern Lovers, played really simple sounding pop songs that were totally bizzare at the time, but now sound a lot like the music that hundreds of indie rock bands play. Well, it sounds kinda like that. He had this really weird and awkward personna, and the band's music sounds almost like it was written for little kids.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6KSt1u_UE0
They are mostly remembered for this song, which is something of an underground classic (mostly cause everybody copied the Sex Pistol's cover):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPCHU-cBWwk
In the late seventies he switched his style up and started playing weirdo lo fi pop that was influenced by European pop music and by Latin Music. That's the style he's been working in since then, and that's what I saw last night. He is one of those mesmerizing performers who seem like they just ARE. Plus he's a brilliant guitarist. He managed to make the audience laugh at his goofy antics while being glued to him:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjFU98mEem4&feature=related&pos=3
It's really a strange balancing act he pulls off, and completely compelling.
For his first encore he played a song called "When We refuse to Suffer," which was particularly articulate version of the old "carpe diem" theme, if only because his goofy vulnerability really made the sentiment seem substantial. Then for his last encore was a song called "As My Mother Lay Dying," which had the audience in tears. I've never heard a bar get so quiet. It wasn't sentimental or melodramatic; it was just a really direct expression of an important memory. It wasn't cheap. I've not had quite that experience before at a concert. This was really different.
It was almost embarrasing. The lights go up and there's a room full of people deliberately not looking at each other.
The amazing was how those last two songs cast a new light on the rest of the show. A lot of his music is delivered in that "childlike" mode, but with that ending, he really changed what the whole thing meant. The "statement" he makes with his goofy stage personna became much more serious all of the sudden. This guy fucking means it. It was an amazing show really.
I'd post a link to a clip of those two songsI described, but nobody's put a vid of them on the youtubes. Here's another song from his latest record. This is what the first hour and a half of the show was like:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yORR9d8hYZE&feature=related&pos=5
It was a pretty astonishing show, and I'd recommend that anyone reading this go see Jonathan whenever he comes near you. He's pretty special.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqQznJtTz3o&feature=related&pos=6
If you don't know who he is, he's probably most famous (outside of the music geek world) as the guy playing the musical interludes during the movie "There's Something About Mary," but he's a much bigger deal than being "the guy playing the guitar in the tree when Ben Stiller's doing that funny crying scene." He was an important forerunner to punk rock. His early band, The Modern Lovers, played really simple sounding pop songs that were totally bizzare at the time, but now sound a lot like the music that hundreds of indie rock bands play. Well, it sounds kinda like that. He had this really weird and awkward personna, and the band's music sounds almost like it was written for little kids.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6KSt1u_UE0
They are mostly remembered for this song, which is something of an underground classic (mostly cause everybody copied the Sex Pistol's cover):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPCHU-cBWwk
In the late seventies he switched his style up and started playing weirdo lo fi pop that was influenced by European pop music and by Latin Music. That's the style he's been working in since then, and that's what I saw last night. He is one of those mesmerizing performers who seem like they just ARE. Plus he's a brilliant guitarist. He managed to make the audience laugh at his goofy antics while being glued to him:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjFU98mEem4&feature=related&pos=3
It's really a strange balancing act he pulls off, and completely compelling.
For his first encore he played a song called "When We refuse to Suffer," which was particularly articulate version of the old "carpe diem" theme, if only because his goofy vulnerability really made the sentiment seem substantial. Then for his last encore was a song called "As My Mother Lay Dying," which had the audience in tears. I've never heard a bar get so quiet. It wasn't sentimental or melodramatic; it was just a really direct expression of an important memory. It wasn't cheap. I've not had quite that experience before at a concert. This was really different.
It was almost embarrasing. The lights go up and there's a room full of people deliberately not looking at each other.
The amazing was how those last two songs cast a new light on the rest of the show. A lot of his music is delivered in that "childlike" mode, but with that ending, he really changed what the whole thing meant. The "statement" he makes with his goofy stage personna became much more serious all of the sudden. This guy fucking means it. It was an amazing show really.
I'd post a link to a clip of those two songsI described, but nobody's put a vid of them on the youtubes. Here's another song from his latest record. This is what the first hour and a half of the show was like:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yORR9d8hYZE&feature=related&pos=5
It was a pretty astonishing show, and I'd recommend that anyone reading this go see Jonathan whenever he comes near you. He's pretty special.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqQznJtTz3o&feature=related&pos=6
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
I'm finally posting on this damn thing.
This is probably the third blog I started and abandoned, but I'll try to actually use this son of a gun. I rediscovered it through Ashli's profile. I forgot it existed until right now.
So anyway, I figure I'd start with a list of my favorite movies, followed by a list of my favorite musical artists. I figure I'll start with the cliche and then go from there. I'm obviously bored.
Today I'll do the Movies and soon I'll do the music:
1. "Mullholand Drive." Because it's surreal and sad, because it's all about the eroticism and intangibility of popular culture and because it's got a scene where Naomi Watts and Laura Harring make out. It's pretty much an extended fantasy about the way that we project our identities and sexual desires through pop culture archtypes. Nancy Drew falls in love with Rita Hayworth, but then it all falls apart. I love David Lynch. (The song in this clip is a Roy Orbison song. This scene is reason enough to watch the movie. It's hardly the only reason.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oddg6dCB7FE
2. "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre." (The original. Don't be stupid.) Because it's balls to the wall crazy, and it has no sense of propriety or common sense at all. It's completely disiguisting and humiating, but it's funny as hell. It's a brilliant satire (as most great horror films are), and it's much smarter than it seems like it is, not only in the way it's carefully constructed, but also in the way that there are interesting little thematic elements that are carried through the movie. And it's got a scene where a nearly catotonic old man sucks blood from a girl's finger.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=285ImXTYdsg
3. "Come Drink With Me." A classic kung fu flick from the sixties. Actually, its a movie that helped to invent the genre (along with One Armed Swordsman, which is also great). It's one of very few films that King Hu made with the Shaw Brothers, and its a damn shame they didn't give him more room to work. It's pretty much a film about filmmaking, with lots of leisurely compositions and carefully coregraphed movement. It doesn't add up to much more than an entertianment, but it's such a deliberate, artful film that you can't stop looking at it. It's kind of like the Wizard of Oz or something. But not really.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kJ9lxnvOxk
4. "Invincible Pole Fighter." One of the definitive kung fu movies of all time. It's got Gordon Lu being completely amazing. It's usually thought of as a kind of also-ran behind 36 Chambers of Shaolin, which is generally regarded as the definitive Shaolin Temple flick, but this one's got more interesting thematic tensions, plus the uneven, slightly disjointed story actually builds a bizaare momentum. The movie was originally going to be a vehicle for Fu Sheng (one of the Venoms) one ofwho died in a car accident during the production. They restructured the film to be a Gordon Lu Shaolin picture. The end result is a movie that strangly works, and it generates some surprisingly intense moments. This isn't Lau Gar Leung's usual playfulness (although there are some amazingly audacious and goofy moments in a couple of fight scenes). It's probably his "heaviest" picture. Plus its Gordon Lu being directed by Lau Gar Leung. I mean, what do you want? These guys are serious Martial Artists, serious Buddists, and serioius filmmakers. This is a thoughful, emotional film disguised as pulp cinema.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dd0YQJjCkg
5. "The Big Lebowski." 'm an achiever. Probably not the best movie ever made, but certainly the most perfect movie ever made. It's amazing. You could spend days just analyzing all the little linguistic allusions in there. I've seen it literally dozens of times, and I always see something new. The Cohen brothers are clearly insane control freaks. It works for them though.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ED4VL7W6VdQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydTIHmvUAyk&feature=PlayList&p=42996DF37C44692C&index=25&playnext=3&playnext_from=PL
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48TVqttHIuo&feature=PlayList&p=42996DF37C44692C&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=23
6. "Irreversible." A surpreme examples of a certain kind of extreme experience that I really love in movies. I really think that sometimes we need extreme nihilism in art. Not candy pants genre bullshit, but outright clausterphobic despair. The kind of thoughtful, cathartic state you can reach if you watch that kind of film in the right mindset is an experience that's rare in art. "Irreversable" is mostly notorious for a long rape scene that some viewers report being unable to watch. (It's a ten minute scene done in one shot. It's probably the most disturbing piece of film ever made. I almost can't watch it. Anyone who knows me will tell you that that opinion means something. If I can't watch it, nobody can watch it!) The scenes in the movie play in reverse order (a la "Memento), so you watch a horrific revenge scene, a bizarre chase scene, a more horrific rape scene, then some nice young people at a party, then the nice young people going to the party, then . . . The result is that you watch their happy life knowing what's going to happen. The last scenes is of a happy couple being comfortably firty with each other after waking up from a post ciotal nap. In any other context it'd be a warmly erotic scene. In this movie it makes you want to die.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9QgckVsgCQ&feature=related
Be careful with that one. I'm not kidding. (The clip up there is fine. It's an artsy music mashup thing.)
7. "A Touch of Evil." Orson Well's best movie. It's totally awesome. It's sometimes thought of a second tier Orson Wells movie because it's a genre movie. Forget that nonesense. Wells was an audacious stylist. That's his schtick. This nasty little film nior is a great way to get your hands on some Wells. Plus it's got Janet Leigh. And some weird creepy villans. And Charlton Heston playing a Mexican. It's a kick. And it's got more interesting racial politics than it seems. Although the leering gangsters might be seem as a bit problematic. But the Americans don't come out too good either.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rl8kj8mAA84&feature=PlayList&p=AB5087275CA96E37&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=3
8. "Plan 9 From Outer Space." Frequently called out as "the worst movie ever made," but that's balony. Oh it's terrible alright, but Ed Wood had a cockeyed niave enthsiasm and just enough ability to make his movies really compelling. One suspects that if with a little coaching, he could have made a living directing unremarkable B movies. We should be grateful that nobody ever corrupted him.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xes0F36eTJA
9. "Taxi Driver." I feel just like that guy sometimes. Fortunately I've got deeper emotional resources than he does.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XzPBUGUM7KQ
And this is why Hollywood sucks:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lb3FepZtVxA
10. "The Seven Samurai." Probably the best action movie ever made. It's a big unweildy, especially compared with some of Kurosawa's later, better movies (Sanjuro is great), but it's awfully good. That unweildiness is a part of what's so great about it. It's one of those movies with a bit of everything. Plus Toshiro Mifune overacting with all the passion of a punk rocker. Japanese film is great.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uu40a3ANFw
The following directors have produced "bodies of work" that mean a lot to me, but no individual films that stand out enough for the list. At least not today. Tomorrow the list might look different. These things are arbitrary and just for fun anyway, right?
Takashi Miike. I almost put "Audition" (which I sincerely believe to be one of the sweetest films ever made once you get past all the torture) on the list. I also love "Ichi The Killer," "Dead or Alive," and "Visitor Q." I own about 30 Takashi Miike films. (No Exagerration. Because he has worked in the Japanese OAV market, he's directed about 80 films last time I checked.) He's only about middle aged now. He's a maniac and a genius. He's a little too undisciplined to make many GREAT movies, but his work is fascinating.
From "Audition":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9GlqG_831Q&feature=PlayList&p=07141A1A28D1A2AD&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=1
From "Dead of Alive":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvQWvDLTlUM
From "Deady Outlaw Rieka":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Fb8DW11Xak
John Waters. The king of bad taste. Actually, he's a brilliant satirist and a kind of derranged moralist. He's all about celebrating divesity. And about serial killers. Go figure.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gl4f7wK67Uw&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=og_85XJTOac&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5PwYOPrZh4
Warner Herzog. Cause he has a moral sensibility very much like my own, and because he a genius. Also because of the fascination of his weirdo relationship to Klaus Kinsky.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hepXYNI3Cy0
This is the second greatest interview ever:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ugQrfDrcq4
This is the greatest:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4uE5F0WXic&feature=related
And last, but not least, Eril Morris. Perhaps the greatest documentary filmaker ever. His films are basically interviews with artful editing and reinactments. But holy crap does he know how to get people to talk.
Here's a part of the story of a pilot who went up to the cockpit to help crash land a plane in distress. It's probably the best peice of storytelling ever filmed. The little bits of personality that come through here really flesh this out. It's a great piece:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KyiV3uGIYnE
Here's a bit of the story of the guards at Abu Girab (almost everybody in the photos appears in the film):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTqgIW8J86U
And then there's THIS asshole:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=niBw8JakaFg&feature=PlayList&p=E38AB84BEA509806&index=11
Thus concludes this segment.
This is probably the third blog I started and abandoned, but I'll try to actually use this son of a gun. I rediscovered it through Ashli's profile. I forgot it existed until right now.
So anyway, I figure I'd start with a list of my favorite movies, followed by a list of my favorite musical artists. I figure I'll start with the cliche and then go from there. I'm obviously bored.
Today I'll do the Movies and soon I'll do the music:
1. "Mullholand Drive." Because it's surreal and sad, because it's all about the eroticism and intangibility of popular culture and because it's got a scene where Naomi Watts and Laura Harring make out. It's pretty much an extended fantasy about the way that we project our identities and sexual desires through pop culture archtypes. Nancy Drew falls in love with Rita Hayworth, but then it all falls apart. I love David Lynch. (The song in this clip is a Roy Orbison song. This scene is reason enough to watch the movie. It's hardly the only reason.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oddg6dCB7FE
2. "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre." (The original. Don't be stupid.) Because it's balls to the wall crazy, and it has no sense of propriety or common sense at all. It's completely disiguisting and humiating, but it's funny as hell. It's a brilliant satire (as most great horror films are), and it's much smarter than it seems like it is, not only in the way it's carefully constructed, but also in the way that there are interesting little thematic elements that are carried through the movie. And it's got a scene where a nearly catotonic old man sucks blood from a girl's finger.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=285ImXTYdsg
3. "Come Drink With Me." A classic kung fu flick from the sixties. Actually, its a movie that helped to invent the genre (along with One Armed Swordsman, which is also great). It's one of very few films that King Hu made with the Shaw Brothers, and its a damn shame they didn't give him more room to work. It's pretty much a film about filmmaking, with lots of leisurely compositions and carefully coregraphed movement. It doesn't add up to much more than an entertianment, but it's such a deliberate, artful film that you can't stop looking at it. It's kind of like the Wizard of Oz or something. But not really.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kJ9lxnvOxk
4. "Invincible Pole Fighter." One of the definitive kung fu movies of all time. It's got Gordon Lu being completely amazing. It's usually thought of as a kind of also-ran behind 36 Chambers of Shaolin, which is generally regarded as the definitive Shaolin Temple flick, but this one's got more interesting thematic tensions, plus the uneven, slightly disjointed story actually builds a bizaare momentum. The movie was originally going to be a vehicle for Fu Sheng (one of the Venoms) one ofwho died in a car accident during the production. They restructured the film to be a Gordon Lu Shaolin picture. The end result is a movie that strangly works, and it generates some surprisingly intense moments. This isn't Lau Gar Leung's usual playfulness (although there are some amazingly audacious and goofy moments in a couple of fight scenes). It's probably his "heaviest" picture. Plus its Gordon Lu being directed by Lau Gar Leung. I mean, what do you want? These guys are serious Martial Artists, serious Buddists, and serioius filmmakers. This is a thoughful, emotional film disguised as pulp cinema.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dd0YQJjCkg
5. "The Big Lebowski." 'm an achiever. Probably not the best movie ever made, but certainly the most perfect movie ever made. It's amazing. You could spend days just analyzing all the little linguistic allusions in there. I've seen it literally dozens of times, and I always see something new. The Cohen brothers are clearly insane control freaks. It works for them though.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ED4VL7W6VdQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydTIHmvUAyk&feature=PlayList&p=42996DF37C44692C&index=25&playnext=3&playnext_from=PL
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48TVqttHIuo&feature=PlayList&p=42996DF37C44692C&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=23
6. "Irreversible." A surpreme examples of a certain kind of extreme experience that I really love in movies. I really think that sometimes we need extreme nihilism in art. Not candy pants genre bullshit, but outright clausterphobic despair. The kind of thoughtful, cathartic state you can reach if you watch that kind of film in the right mindset is an experience that's rare in art. "Irreversable" is mostly notorious for a long rape scene that some viewers report being unable to watch. (It's a ten minute scene done in one shot. It's probably the most disturbing piece of film ever made. I almost can't watch it. Anyone who knows me will tell you that that opinion means something. If I can't watch it, nobody can watch it!) The scenes in the movie play in reverse order (a la "Memento), so you watch a horrific revenge scene, a bizarre chase scene, a more horrific rape scene, then some nice young people at a party, then the nice young people going to the party, then . . . The result is that you watch their happy life knowing what's going to happen. The last scenes is of a happy couple being comfortably firty with each other after waking up from a post ciotal nap. In any other context it'd be a warmly erotic scene. In this movie it makes you want to die.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9QgckVsgCQ&feature=related
Be careful with that one. I'm not kidding. (The clip up there is fine. It's an artsy music mashup thing.)
7. "A Touch of Evil." Orson Well's best movie. It's totally awesome. It's sometimes thought of a second tier Orson Wells movie because it's a genre movie. Forget that nonesense. Wells was an audacious stylist. That's his schtick. This nasty little film nior is a great way to get your hands on some Wells. Plus it's got Janet Leigh. And some weird creepy villans. And Charlton Heston playing a Mexican. It's a kick. And it's got more interesting racial politics than it seems. Although the leering gangsters might be seem as a bit problematic. But the Americans don't come out too good either.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rl8kj8mAA84&feature=PlayList&p=AB5087275CA96E37&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=3
8. "Plan 9 From Outer Space." Frequently called out as "the worst movie ever made," but that's balony. Oh it's terrible alright, but Ed Wood had a cockeyed niave enthsiasm and just enough ability to make his movies really compelling. One suspects that if with a little coaching, he could have made a living directing unremarkable B movies. We should be grateful that nobody ever corrupted him.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xes0F36eTJA
9. "Taxi Driver." I feel just like that guy sometimes. Fortunately I've got deeper emotional resources than he does.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XzPBUGUM7KQ
And this is why Hollywood sucks:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lb3FepZtVxA
10. "The Seven Samurai." Probably the best action movie ever made. It's a big unweildy, especially compared with some of Kurosawa's later, better movies (Sanjuro is great), but it's awfully good. That unweildiness is a part of what's so great about it. It's one of those movies with a bit of everything. Plus Toshiro Mifune overacting with all the passion of a punk rocker. Japanese film is great.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uu40a3ANFw
The following directors have produced "bodies of work" that mean a lot to me, but no individual films that stand out enough for the list. At least not today. Tomorrow the list might look different. These things are arbitrary and just for fun anyway, right?
Takashi Miike. I almost put "Audition" (which I sincerely believe to be one of the sweetest films ever made once you get past all the torture) on the list. I also love "Ichi The Killer," "Dead or Alive," and "Visitor Q." I own about 30 Takashi Miike films. (No Exagerration. Because he has worked in the Japanese OAV market, he's directed about 80 films last time I checked.) He's only about middle aged now. He's a maniac and a genius. He's a little too undisciplined to make many GREAT movies, but his work is fascinating.
From "Audition":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9GlqG_831Q&feature=PlayList&p=07141A1A28D1A2AD&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=1
From "Dead of Alive":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvQWvDLTlUM
From "Deady Outlaw Rieka":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Fb8DW11Xak
John Waters. The king of bad taste. Actually, he's a brilliant satirist and a kind of derranged moralist. He's all about celebrating divesity. And about serial killers. Go figure.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gl4f7wK67Uw&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=og_85XJTOac&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5PwYOPrZh4
Warner Herzog. Cause he has a moral sensibility very much like my own, and because he a genius. Also because of the fascination of his weirdo relationship to Klaus Kinsky.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hepXYNI3Cy0
This is the second greatest interview ever:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ugQrfDrcq4
This is the greatest:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4uE5F0WXic&feature=related
And last, but not least, Eril Morris. Perhaps the greatest documentary filmaker ever. His films are basically interviews with artful editing and reinactments. But holy crap does he know how to get people to talk.
Here's a part of the story of a pilot who went up to the cockpit to help crash land a plane in distress. It's probably the best peice of storytelling ever filmed. The little bits of personality that come through here really flesh this out. It's a great piece:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KyiV3uGIYnE
Here's a bit of the story of the guards at Abu Girab (almost everybody in the photos appears in the film):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTqgIW8J86U
And then there's THIS asshole:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=niBw8JakaFg&feature=PlayList&p=E38AB84BEA509806&index=11
Thus concludes this segment.
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