Yeah, I'm really late with this one. It didn't dawn on me until way too late that the beginning of the month was going to coincide with my trip to Chicago. But hey...better late than never. Starting in mid-July, the amount of my monthly entertainment took a hit with the purchase of our lovely MacBook Pro, but thanks to eMusic and Netflix, I'll never be totally, uh, unentertained.
Books
none
Movies
Reno 911!: Miami
Idiocracy
Extras, Season 1
Music
Living with the Living, Ted Leo & The Pharmacists
The Loon, Tapes ‘n Tapes
Plume Delivery, The 1900s
Anhedonia, The Graduate
Icky Thump, The White Stripes
These Days (The Virginia Sessions), Pat McGee Band
iTunes Originals, Flaming Lips
Progress Reform, iLIKETRAINS
Live at Schubas 3-12-2004, The Hold Steady
Live at Bonnaroo (6-16-2006), My Morning Jacket
Frochot Music Sampler: CONGO
Funkadelic, Funkadelic
Thank you, emusic. You made Lollapalooza much more enjoyable for me, both in finding me bands I needed to see and at least one I didn't need to see. I spent a majority of my monthly downloads on Lolla bands in July, and though I didn't find as many Lolla artists on the site as I thought I would, the ones I found were worth it.
1. Ted Leo & The Pharmacists. Like my major June discovery, the Ike Reilly Assassination, this is a band that has developed many albums and a dedicated following completely and totally outside my radar screen. I'm sure there are hundreds of bands out there, that fit that description, and if they all sound like this, I'm going to be a lifetime eMusic subscriber. Either way, they were a perfect way to kick off Lolla weekend for us.
2. Tapes 'n Tapes. This Minnesota band also left me plenty to rave about on Saturday at Lolla, and if I hadn't downloaded The Loon in the weeks before the Chicago trip, I'd have probably settled for going to Pete Yorn with Hear No Evil and his girlfriend. I can pretty much guarantee that I wouldn't have enjoyed that nearly as much.
3. The 1900s. My original plan was to check out The Graduate (11:15) and The 1900s (12:00) first thing on Sunday. The 1900s have a quirky, interesting sound, one that's a bit similar to previous eMusic discovery Elk City. I had every intention of checking them out, and I was looking forward to it...however, getting out of bed and out of HNE's apartment before noon proved impossible.
4. The Graduate. I regretted missing out on The 1900s, but thanks to eMusic, I didn't waste time regretting missing this band. There's nothing wrong with them per say...they just suffer a bit much from Generic Modern Rock Band Syndrome for my tastes. In fact, I'm pretty sure they're going to hit it big for that very reason, but that doesn't mean I'm going to spend much time on this band.
Beyond the Lolla bands, July also provided me with three major Best of 2007 candidates: Ted Leo's aforementioned Living with the Living, the White Stripes' Icky Thump, and Pat McGee Band's These Days. That's a good month, no? I have high hopes for August as well, with Common's Finding Forever (more on that later...this is about July), as well as Ben Harper's Lifeline and Talib Kweli's far-too-long-awaited Eardrum. But that's not even all that July gave me!
Other purchases: I was totally taken advantage of by iTunes with the ultimate impulse purchase, the Flaming Lips' iTunes Originals set. I was on iTunes to buy the White Stripes, and naturally I was unable to pass up something new (sort of) from The Lips, which basically consists of the Lips' greatest hits (plus a couple new/unreleased originals) with Wayne Coyne discussing and/or explaining the tunes. It's fun.
Also, I finished up my monthly eMusic downloads with some iLIKETRAINS (eh), Funkadelic (this month's download: their debut album, Funkadelic), and a live release from The Hold Steady, a 2004 show at Chicago's famous Schuba's (HNE lives roughly two blocks from Schuba's, by the way...I hate him for that).
Finally, one service I'll probably be taking more advantage of in the future due to the fact that a) it's free, and b) I have more live bands to keep track of now, is the always phenomenal www.archive.org, which houses free live recordings from hundreds and hundreds of bands. I'd used the service for some Pat McGee shows, but now I'll be delving into the My Morning Jacket and Ted Leo catalogs as well...no telling who else is on this thing...it takes 30 minutes just to sift through the list of bands...
As for movies...we hopped back on the Netflix train this month. While still renting some movies for The Butterfly's parents, we were far too busy cranking through all five seasons of Smallville (her anniversary present) in May and June to watch movies. But we're back. And we picked some interesting movies in July.
First up was a movie I was strangely giddy about seeing: Reno 911!: Miami. Wow, did it live up to expectations. This movie earned an R-rating in every single possible way. Language, insinuation, nudity...this movie was delightfully grotesque and obscene in every way. I loved it for all the wrong reasons. And the beached whale scene (you saw it in the commercials...the scene where Junior falls into the whale) was even better than I thought it would be. I recommend listening to the commentary on that scene as well.
Another Netflix rental: Idiocracy. I was talking to my high school best friend a while back, and as he has two kids of his own, it was time for his monthly "So...when are you having kids?" inquiry. I gave the monthly excuses ("still living in in-laws' basement", "wife isn't in a position to miss that much work yet", "still enjoying ourselves", etc.)--all very legitimate, I'd say--and he laughed and mentioned a movie he had just seen. Basically the premise is, smart people barely reproduce (having 1-2 kids max) while stupid people have as many kids as they can possibly pop out, so in the future the country just gets dumber and dumber. Honestly, that's a fantastic premise for a movie. However, when the main stars are Luke Wilson, Maya Rudolph, and Dax Shepard, you know that premise probably isn't going to live up to its potential. It's still at least somewhat enjoyable, though...I mean, when are you going to have another opportunity to see Luke Wilson playing the smartest man in the world?
Finally, we delved into the world of Netflix TV show rentals, checking out the first season of the painful, funny Ricky Gervais comedy, Extras. If you like The Office or Frasier, you'll love this show. It's nothing but that type of uncomfortable, oh-god-please-stop-talking-you're-only-making-things-worse type of comedy, where you're wincing and laughing at the same time. You love and hate the show simultaneously. Honestly, Extras is worth it for the cameos alone...Kate Winslet giving phone sex advice, Samuel L. Jackson being, well, Samuel L. Jackson, Ben Stiller quoting the opening weekend figures for all his movies...I love that they were willing to do this, Kate Winslet in particular. Other shows now in the Netflix queue: Firefly (The Butterfly loves Joss Whedon, so it's probably time she gives this a try) and Freaks & Geeks, which I somehow never watched.
Sunday, August 12, 2007
My Month of Entertainment – July 2007
Wednesday, July 04, 2007
My Month of Entertainment - June 2007
Books
Tip Off: How the 1984 NBA Draft Changed Basketball Forever, Filip Bondy
Baseball Economist: The Real Game Exposed, J.C. Bradbury
Tragic Legacy: How a Good vs. Evil Mentality Destroyed the Bush Presidency, Glenn Greenwald
Movies
The Cooler
Music
Blue Scholars, The Long March EP
Bob Dylan, Slow Train Coming
Bokoor Band, Bokoor Beats
Elk City, New Believers
Flaming Lips, Hear It Is
Flaming Lips, Hit to Death in the Future Head
Funkadelic, America Eats Its Young
Gorillaz, Demon Days
Ike Reilly Assassination, We Belong to the Staggering Evening
Jaylib (J Dilla & Madlib), Champion Sound
John Lennon, Plastic Ono Band
K'naan, The Dusty Foot Philosopher
Mission of Burma, ONoffON
My Morning Jacket, It Still Moves
Paul McCartney, Memory Almost Full
Queens of the Stone Age, Era Vulgaris
The Smiths, Singles
TV On the Radio, Live Session (iTunes Exclusive)
Wiley, Treddin' On Thin Ice
Various Artists, Frochot Music Sampler: MALI
Various Artists, The Now Sound Redesigned
Everywhere I looked, June was My Month of Redemption! Old faces, new names, hip hop, and Oklahoma City redeemed themselves to me, I redeemed myself to the God of Music Nerds, and The Butterfly and I redeemed ourselves in the eyes of Netflix. Let’s take a closer look!
I righted some old wrongs in my own music collection in June, and not a moment too soon. It’s hard to admit that I didn’t already own Plastic Ono Band, Slow Train Coming, Demon Days, It Still Moves, or anything by The Smiths, but here I am, admitting it to you now, throwing myself at the mercy of the court.
I finally got around to reading Faking It: The Quest for Authenticity in Popular Music this month (after purchasing it in February). Really interesting (and nerdy) read. There were interesting chapters on everything from Leadbelly and Jimmie Rodgers to The Monkees to Moby, but the chapter with the most impact on me was the one on John Lennon. Needless to say, any discussion of John Lennon and authenticity is probably going to focus on Plastic Ono Band. It’s funny—sometimes when I know there’s an album I should have bought 10 years ago, it makes it harder to suck it up and go ahead and buy it. I didn’t buy OK Computer until last year. I knew I’d love it (and boy, did I), but I guess buying it would acknowledge that I didn’t own it yet, and you can only pull the “I lost my copy” or “My roommate owned it, so I didn’t need to” excuse so many times (I think I lost my rights to those excuses after using them on Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) and the Led Zeppelin catalog a couple years ago).
Anyway, it was time to suck it up and acknowledge that I really needed Plastic Ono Band in my catalog. I expected it to be a decent listen, but not an amazing one—I think I’m scarred by the entire post-Beatles McCartney catalog—but I would put this one right up against All Things Must Pass as the best solo album from a Beatle. I think I like All Things better (I think that makes me pretty weird, actually), but it’s to find too much fault in Plastic Ono. A great album. It’s painfully, emotionally raw in parts—duh—but that’s obviously one of the things that make it great. Another thing that makes it great to me is that...well, it’s not just pain and acoustic guitar. Songs like “Well Well Well” and “I Found Out” are a nice balance to the agony of “Mother” and well-known now-standards like “Power to the People” and “Working Class Hero”.
Alright, next up on the “You call yourself a nerd, and you didn’t own this album???” list is...Slow Train Coming. The first of Dylan's three "Christian conversion" albums. When I felt like filling in my Dylan collection over the last couple years, I always looked past this one. Now, in my defense, I already had copies of “Gotta Serve Somebody” and “I Believe in You” on my iPod, so that’s one of the reason I hadn’t ever gotten around to buying this album—the general uncomfortability of being preached at being the other one. But it really is a strong album. Aside from the two classics listed above, “When He Returns” is unbelievable, and even some of the more preachy songs—“When You Gonna Wake Up” and “Precious Angel”, for example, are quite well-done.
Next up? The Smiths. I guess I’ve just read too many Modest Mouse articles and Johnny Marr interviews in the last few months—it was time to take the plunge. It was just a bit disorienting to me to know that The Smiths were one of the most influential bands of the early- and mid-‘80s (it seems if you were in your late-teens or early-20s in 1985 and didn’t worship U2, you lived and died by The Smiths. And while I knew of the major Smiths tunes—“Hand In Glove” and “This Charming Man”, to name a couple—I couldn’t hum a single line of any of them. So now that I’ve listened to all of their major singles, I must say...I’m not all that impressed.
But their music could just be handicapped by their era. I mean, nothing sounds more aged than music from the early- and mid-‘80s. There’s no bass, no groove, too many artifical sounds...it just sounds awful. Music from the early- and mid-‘70s sounds much newer and fresher. I wish all the major albums from the Smiths era could be remixed and remastered with today’s techniques. Could we snap to that please?
Speaking of today’s techniques, I also righted a couple of more recent wrongs by picking up MMJ’s It Still Moves and The Gorillaz’ Demon Days. MMJ is probably quite a rewarding band to have followed over the years—I wouldn’t know...I didn’t get into them until last year. They made a short leap between 1999’s The Tennessee Fire and 2001’s At Dawn, a giant leap between At Dawn and 2003’s It Still Moves, and a quantum leap between Moves and 2005’s amazing Z. I really can’t wait to see what they come up with next, and in the meantime I’m just glad I’ve finally completed the MMJ puzzle.
As for Demon Days, at long last I convinced myself to get it when The Butterfly decided she must immediately own “Feel Good Inc.” It’s embarassing to me that I haven’t gotten into the Gorillaz more; I bitch and moan that not enough bands are attempting to fuse together hip hop, rock, and other genres, and then I don’t pay enough heed to those that do. This album’s good. It’s not amazing, but it still made me feel stupid for letting it sit out there for 2-3 years before giving it a shot. And when these songs fail, they fail in creative—not formulaic—ways. I respect the songs I don’t really enjoy.
So anyway, I feel much better about myself now that I’ve righted these wrongs. Let’s see who else was able to right themselves in my eyes...
I’ll say it: I haven’t enjoyed much of the post-Beatles Paul McCartney era. Solo albums...wings...it just hasn’t done it for me. I was working part-time at Barnes & Noble when his last album came out, and though some songs were really pretty decent, it was an in-store play, and I got seriously sick of hearing them pretty quickly. But now I don’t work at B&N anymore, and I’m able to turn Macca off when I don’t want to listen to him. That’s key. In moderation, Memory Almost Full is actually pretty good. It’s uneven—the weak songs like “Nod Your Head” and “Feet in the Clouds” are bad in the ways that all bad McCartney songs are bad—but Memory Almost Full goes in a lot of creative directions. “Only Mama Knows” and “House of Wax” are great, and “Dance Tonight” has the added benefit of annoying the crap out of The Butterfly every time that iTunes commercial comes on...which makes me enjoy it in a very immature way. This won’t crack my Top 5 Albums of 2007 list, but it’s going to end up ranking a lot higher than I figured it would.
I’ve complained all year about the lack of recent quality hip hop, and June finally saw that ship slowly righted. First came The Dusty Foot Philosopher, last year’s debut album rapper K’naan. K’naan was raised in Somalia until he was 13, when he (according to his Amazon bio) left “on what turned out to be the last commercial flight ever to do so, amidst a crumbling society and the end to this day of any form of central government.” You think of what he probably saw in Somalia, and you realize that half (okay, probably 90%) of the rapper who try to act ‘hard’ because of what they’ve seen and done...well, they really aren’t hard at all. Though he does drop a few good lines regarding that upbringing (“If I have to talk about home and get descriptive/I would make 50 Cent look like Limp Bizkit”), he doesn’t go far into detail. His attitude basically seems to be “Trust me, it was bad, but let’s move on.” K’Naan has an acquired-taste kind of voice, and his rhymes are hit and miss, but I was looking for creativity and experimentation in hip hop, and this mix of hip hop style and African beats fits the bill nicely.
Next up is London’s Wiley, whose Treddin’ on Thin Ice has been one of the toughest albums I’ve ever attempted to actually review/evaluate. The underground London ‘grime’ sound is unique and creative—and Wiley is probably one of the two best at it, along with Dizzee Rascal—but it’s not always immediate and listenable. It takes a few listens, but I think I’m going to get into this one. I’m not sure by any means, but I’m optimistic.
Of course, neither of these albums are 2007 releases, so for the most part my Top Albums of ’07 list is devoid of hip hop. But I think I might have found the group to invade the list: Blue Scholars. I posted a video clip of theirs last weekend. I started in June with their Long March EP that was released in February. Now that I’ve digested that, I’m moving on to their June release, Bayani. It’s been a while since I heard this sort of clarity and story-telling ability, and when that’s mixed with strong (if not all that creative) beats, good things happen. If I’m optimistic about Wiley, I’m giddy about Blue Scholars.
A year ago, when my parents moved back to Oklahoma City, I discovered an old music store on 36th and Western called Rainbow Records (which I mentioned here)...and it was closed by the next time I visitied OKC. Well I drove by 36th and Western when I was in town a couple weeks ago, and a new store had opened up, called Guestroom Records. I walked out with cheap copies of Slow Train Coming, Singles, OnoffON, It Still Moves, and The Now Sound Redesigned, a neat, $2 electronica/hip hop cd from 2005. Good store. I have a reason to go back to OKC now...other than, you know, visiting berlin niebuhr’s dog, of course.
Okay, sports books didn’t need redeeming in my book, but I guess it bears mentioning that I bought two of them this month. This week’s Tuesday Pirates Rant™ suggests that I really don’t care much about baseball at the moment, but The Baseball Economist is exactly the kind of book I’ll want to read when Dave Littlefield is fired and I’m interested in baseball once again. Meanwhile, I was very much into the NBA draft (as my posts on a non-NBA blog would suggest) this year, and the 1984 draft is the most talked-about of all-time. I’m starting Tip Off tonight, and I’m looking forward to it.
This hasn’t happened yet, but I was just going to mention that, now that we have officially cranked through every episode of the first five seasons of Smallville (The Butterfly’s anniversary present), we’re open to actually watching movies again. The only Netflix rental we watched this month was The Cooler, and...I really really liked it. William H. Macy absolutely makes this movie all by himself, but Maria Bello, Alec Baldwin, and Ron Livingston are fantastic as well. Good stuff.
I will also mention the following things:
Until next month...
Wednesday, June 06, 2007
My Month of Entertainment – May 2007
After the explosion that was April, this was a pretty slow month. And a single-faceted one.
Books
None. I gots plenty to read already.
DVDs
Muppet Show, Season 1 – Why? Why not! I’ve just not had enough Beaker and Dr. Bunsen Honeydew in my life lately.
This month’s Netflix rentals: none. That’s right, a combination of our being pretty busy and our being bored with our Netflix queue made us super lazy in the DVD department. We’re Netflix’s favorite customers now...paying our monthly fee and demanding nothing of them. Actually, I’m open to suggestion here...we’re going to retool our queue and try to actually find some movies we’re interested in...ideas? What’s a great movie you’ve rented/seen lately? We split this subscription with The Butterfly’s parents, and they prefer new releases...keep that in mind...
Music
Friendly Fire Recordings Sampler
Independent Music Awards Winners Sampler
One good thing about eMusic is they put out lots of free samplers for download. One bad thing is, they always sucker me into downloading the free samplers, and 99% of them suck. For the most part, the Independent Music Awards Winners sampler was pretty sorry for two reasons: a) horrible sound quality of the downloads, and b) horrible song quality of the performers. There were a couple exceptions, but not just a ton to write home about. And who knows, maybe I'd have like some of the songs if they'd been better sound quality.
As for Friendly Fire Recordings...this was decent. I was unimpressed for the most part, but it did allow me to discover an artist I’d have otherwise overlooked: Elk City. For one thing, one of my high school’s main rival schools was the Elk City Elks (one of the few schools in the country with school colors of brown and white). I saw the name and got excited. Turns out this group is from New York, which was a bit of a buzzkill...but they’re good anyway. They’ve got a quirky, very indy sound, and their lead singer, Renee LoBue, is really really interesting. Downloading this sampler caused me to download Elk City’s latest album, New Believers, but that took place in June, so you’ll have to wait a month for that review, now won’t you? They’re impressive, though, and since the point of these samplers is to introduce you to music you wouldn’t have otherwise found, I call Friendly Fire a success and Indy Music Awards a failure.
Dinosaur Jr., Beyond
I’ve never been a big fan of J Mascis’ vocals--I don't need a powerhouse voice, but his voice is thin enough to get lost in the mix occasionally--and the vocals are the same on Beyond as they ever were, but this album is a success. “We're Not Alone” has the best guitar solo I’ve heard in a 2007. It's an unbelievable song, and while that’s not all the album has to offer ("Almost Ready", "Crumble", "Back to Your Heart", "I Got Lost" and others are solid), it’s definitely the biggest highlight. I love that bands like Dinosaur Jr. and Mission of Burma are finding their footing again.
Tinariwen, Aman Iman: Water is Life
My ongoing dabbling into African music—which had gone dormant for a couple years after my initial discovery of Orchestra Baobab, Baaba Ma’al, and Ali Farka Toure—continues to pick up steam in recent months. This was recommended to me by a friend, and it was worth it. Not as good as Hugh Masekela or the Afro-Rock collection, but solid.
Incredible Bongo Band, Bongo Rock
Not sure what possessed me to pick up this 30+ year old mostly-percussion album, but wow...what a revelation. First of all, just about every damn song on the album has been sampled in hip hop at some point, most notably “Apache”, which is the highlight of the album along with the remix of "Last Bongo in Belgium". I’ve mentioned many times on here that I’m basically a groove whore...I love good beats, and I will go to great lengths to find them...and wow, did I find a good selection of them on Bongo Rock.
Funkadelic, Live: Rochester, MI, 9-12-71
Funkadelic, Cosmic Slop
My embarassingly late discovery of Maggot Brain last month led to a couple more purchases this month. Not sure why the Rochester ’71 show was released as a live album since the band was breaking in a new rhythm section at the time, but it’s still a good show. I was worried about the sound quality, but it holds up. And songs like “Maggot Brain” and "All Your Goodies Are Gone (The Loser's Seat)" make it worth a few downloads.
As for Cosmic Slop...“You Can’t Miss What You Can’t Measure” is my favorite song of the month. Better than anything on Wilco’s album or anything else. It’s the perfect encapsulation of every single Funkadelic song into about 4 minutes. You can’t listen to that song without a smile on your face. The album as a whole is a bit weaker than Maggot Brain, but “You Can’t Miss...” is unbelievable.
Bright Eyes, Cassadega
I really appreciated what Conor Oberst was trying to accomplish in simultaneously releasing two very different albums—I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning and Digital Ash in a Digital Urn—in 2004. I was curious how his next release would incorporate the two disparate sounds—the acoustic folk/country of Wide Awake and the electronic noise of Digital Ash. Well...Cassadega’s decent. Good, even. Oberst really is as good a song-writer as there is today, but the subject matter here is a little less urgent than in the past. Oberst secured his reputation as a political songwriter by performing “When the President Talks to God” on Leno, but a majority of his songs are anything but political. Oberst’s main songwriting strength isn’t talking about struggle directly, but talking about life...of which struggle is a part.
The main problem with Cassadega is the lack of a true, unbelievable, standout track. "Soul Singer in a Session Band" is great, but it doesn't pack much emotional punch. "Lime Tree" is good and emotional, but...upon first listen at least (it'll grow on me, I'm sure), no song on Cassadega does for me what "Hit the Switch" or "Arc of Time (Time Code)" or "Train Under Water" or "Road to Joy" did on 2004's albums.
Ryan Adams, Heartbreaker
Wilco, Sky Blue Sky
The Heartbreaker download was a simple course correction...I realized I should have gotten this album years ago and never had, so I picked it up. It's long been known as probably Adams' most solid work, and I needed it. Plus, the country-rock feel got me in the mood for Wilco's new album. My favorite track: "To Be Young (Is To Be Sad, Is To Be High)".
As for Sky Blue Sky, I wrote a bit about it here, and I guess I'll expand a bit. I agree with part of Rolling Stone's review:With guitar whiz [Nels] Cline on board, they seemed to be heading in a more rocking direction -- for many of us, the 2005 live album Kicking Television was their finest hour. Cline's presence is more low-key here, but so is everything else about the album. Sky Blue Sky (great title -- Allman Brothers via Laurie Anderson) is understated, erratic, often beautiful, disarmingly simple music; it really sounds like six guys playing in a room, and no doubt that's how they wanted it.
This is People's Exhibit Q for the fact that Wilco never ever ever ever does what's expected of them. That doesn't mean I didn't like Sky Blue Sky--not even close--but it once again caught me off-guard.
Finally, a question before I go: Do you see any new hip hop on this list? WHERE IN THE HELL IS THE NEW HIP HOP?? By my count there's officially been one good hip hop release in 2007...Brother Ali. Five months into the year, and that's it. That's awful. Along with Netlfix rental suggestions, somebody please point me toward some good new hip hop. This is depressing. The end.
UPDATE, 8:27pm: Upon further review, the guitar in Wilco's "Side With the Seeds" competes very well with that of Dinosaur Jr's "We're Not Alone", and "I Must Belong Somewhere" on Cassadega is as good as anything on one of Bright Eyes' other albums. So there you go.
Wednesday, May 02, 2007
My Month of Entertainment – April 2007
Find previous My Month’s here.
Oh, what a month it was. I got so much (mostly cheap) music this month, I didn’t know what to do with myself. For one thing, eMusic mysteriously gave me 50 extra downloads. And it wasn’t even my birthday! For another, Teenage Kicks co-proprietor Michael Atchison pointed me toward some of his site’s favorite music from 2006 with a “Teenage Kicks Care Package”. And for another, I bought a lot of music.
Books
Who needs books when you’re getting this much music?
DVDs
Smallville, Seasons 1-5 – The Butterfly’s wedding anniversary present. Some women want jewelry, some want DVDs. I married the right girl.
(And yes, I’ve gotten sucked into the show too. It’s pretty solid. The unique casting, the dynamics between Clark and Lex, and the inspired casting of Lois Lane—introduced in Season 4—as much trampier than in the movies...all of these lead to a solid show with plenty of plotlines to carry over a 6-8 season period.)
(Oh, and I got a new watch for our anniversary. Just in case you wondered.)
Empire Records – A cheap buy at Best Buy. The Butterfly revealed that she had never seen this, so I had to pick it up. Solid, harmless movie featuring a young Renee Zellweger, a really young Liv Tyler, and an almost-but-not-quite-to-the-age-where-the-only-option-is-a-CBS-crime-drama Anthony LaPaglia. The fact that this movie is 12 years old makes me feel a bit old.
This month’s Netflix rentals:
Superman Returns – The Butterfly’s recent obsession with Smallville caused this to get bumped to the top of the Netflix queue. Like most action movies nowadays, it’s about 30 minutes too long, but the never-ending quality isn’t quite as noticeable here as in Casino Royale. We both ended up liking Smallville’s casting more than SR’s, but everybody does a capable job...and Kevin Spacey is quite good as Lex Luthor. You can tell he enjoyed himself.
Volver – This movie came highly-recommended by berlin niebuhr and Mrs. N (of course, they also highly recommend movies such as Emma and You’ve Got Mail, so that recommendation alone didn’t make me think I’d love this movie), and this was one of our better Netflix rentals in a while. The entire package in this movie—cast, writing, plotline, direction—works brilliantly. And Penelope Cruz is much hotter with an extra 10-15 pounds on her.
The Departed – I expected to enjoy this movie—I enjoy most (but not all) Best Picture winners—but I must say...I liked this more than I thought I would. Near the beginning of the movie, my mind started locating the people I thought would live and the people I thought would die...and I pretty much got them all wrong. I love that.
Accepted – I figured we needed to balance out The Departed with, shall we say, a slightly less involved movie. Accepted fit the bill. It's a nice, stupid college comedy that doesn’t try to be more than it is. Justin Long (a.k.a. the “I’m a Mac” guy) carries this movie with confidence and ease, which is impressive considering he’d been basically a bit character (weird kid in Ed, kid who gets hit with a wrench in Dodgeball) in most of his roles, and really all a movie like this needs is for the main character to pull everything together. I would honestly call this a worthy rental despite its residence in the “Stupid College Movie” category.
Music
I got so much music this month that I think I’ll make a Top Ten Gets of April list.
1. Amy Winehouse, Back to Black. I really didn’t want to like this album—like I’ve said before, I’m unimpressed with the ‘out-of-control-drunk’ persona that some of Winehouse’s performances have earned her. But if the music’s good enough, it just doesn’t matter. And the music here is beyond good enough. My recent Best of 2007 (so far) list had both “Rehab” and “You Know I’m No Good” in the Top 5, and just about every other song on the album earns Honorable Mention status. If Barry Gordy, Diana Ross, etc. were transported from the mid-‘60s to the mid-‘00s, this would be the sound they produced. You hear old school Motown all throughout Back to Black, but the sound maintains originality due to Winhouse’s lyrics and vocals, and the genre-bending involved. Just a fantastic album.
2. Brother Ali, The Undisputed Truth. I was so excited to get my hands on this (well, my metaphorical hands, since I bought it on iTunes), and that excitement usually leads to a letdown. I will say that the initial single (“Truth Is”) is the best song on the album, which is usually a bad sign, but everything’s good. His natural skill, emotion, and charisma make the album worthwhile. You want truth and reality and real-life topics—instead of women and jewelry—in your hip hop? Then this is the best hip hop album in about 2 years. If hip hop is in its hair metal stage, then consider Brother Ali the hip hop Fugazi, creating real music in a genre getting more and more fake.
3. Funkadelic, Maggot Brain. I was perusing eMusic to see how I would spend my unforeseen 50 bonus downloads, and I came across this album. Somehow, despite my love for Roots-era Curtis Mayfield and Songs in the Key of Life-era Stevie, and despite having worn out my copy of The Best of Parliament, I’d really never dabbled in Funkadelic territory. After listening to Maggot Brain, I feel pretty silly about that. I love genre-bending—it’s one of my favorite things about Bob Dylan and Sly & the Family Stone and Ozomatli and M. Ward and Ben Harper and 50 other bands—and few bands bend more genres into one sound than Funkadelic does on this album. Here’s some R&B...here’s some funk...here’s some hard rock...here’s some psychedelic rock...great stuff.
4. Ozomatli, Live at the Filmore. Ozo has been one of my favorite bands for quite a while, and their live shows are some of the best I’ve ever seen. So how it took me 2 years to pick up their live album, I have absolutely no idea. Pretty unfathomable, really. I went ahead and downloaded it with their new release, Don’t Mess With the Dragon, and it was every bit as good as I figured it would be. Just as I’m almost ashamed that I hadn’t dabbled in Funkadelic before now, I’m ashamed of this too. I hate myself! Okay, not really.
5. Bruce Springsteen, We Shall Overcome - The Seeger Sessions. For whatever reason, I hadn’t pulled the trigger on getting this one yet, but hearing “How Can a Poor Man Stand Such Times” on the Teenage Kicks Care Package gave me a Bruce booster shot, and I went for it. Now, like with #3 and #4, I feel silly for not having bought this months ago. I love gospel-style backing vocals, I love the looseness, I love the let-your-hair-down-and-belt-it-out quality of Bruce’s vocals...I’ve never been a huge fan of Pete Seeger’s lyrics (almost too ‘cheesy folk’ for me), but Bruce a) made some great selections from the Seeger catalog and b) performed the crap out of the selections. Songs like “Jacob’s Ladder” (and the accompanying video) and “John Henry” are the definition of ‘joyous’. Great album.
6. Modest Mouse, We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank. If you need definitive proof of what a great month April was for me, realize that this album fell all the way to 6th, and I loved this album. I liked Johnny Marr’s contribution here. With the press that his joining MM received, you’d think that MM had turned into the Isaac and Johnny Band, but Marr’s not a guitarist who demands the spotlight. He doesn’t turn MM into a new band, he just makes good songs better.
7. Hugh Masekela Presents the CHISA Years: 1965-1975 (Rare & Unreleased). Michael of Teenage Kicks recommended this album upon seeing how much I liked Afro-Rock Vol. 1 last month. I didn’t disappoint. Like most collections, there are hits and misses, but there are just so many good grooves and basslines here that it’s worth sifting through the misses.
8. Lupe Fiasco, Lupe Fiasco's Food & Liquor. Listening to Brother Ali’s new album got me in a hip hop mood (as #8-10 will show), and I went out searching for good hip hop. It’s getting harder and harder to find it, but it’s out there. I finally sucked it up and tried this album out...and the risk paid off. Lupe passes all of my tests—interesting beats, interesting subject matter, originality—and while there’s no one song that hits me as hard as Ali’s “Truth Is”, this is a pleasant listen throughout...despite the less-than-impressive album title.
9. J Dilla, Donuts. J Dilla, a very popular producer for the likes of Common et al (in other words, producer for rappers I love), died of lupus last year, and this album, a large selection of 1- or 2-minute cuts, has been regarded as his masterpiece. I was afraid of it. Why? Because I’ve never been a huge fan of DJ-only hip hop, and I was afraid I wouldn’t enjoy this as much as a true hip hop fan should. Now that I own it? I’m still not sure what to think. It's good, but I'm still not sure how good. I’ll get back to you on that one.
10. Immortal Technique, Revolutionary Vol. 1. Immortal Technique has long been considered one of the best underground rappers around. His songs are great but hard to listen to. Think The Wire set to music. His songs are political, gritty, and heartbreaking, and they leave you a bit shaken, particularly the 9-minute epic, “Dance with the Devil.” I also downloaded his Mos Def collaboration, “Bin Laden”. Let’s just say that Immortal Technique isn’t too adept at beating around the bush.“Look at their mansions, then look at the conditions you live in/All they talk about is terrorism on television/They tell you to listen, but they don't really tell you their mission/They funded Al-Qaeda, and now they blame the Muslim religion/Even though bin Laden, was a CIA tactician/They gave him billions of dollars, and they funded his purpose/Fahrenheit 9/11, that's just scratchin' the surface.”
You should read all the lyrics or watch the video here. Seriously...I’m worried that I got put on a Homeland Security watch list just for downloading the song. It’s ruthless.
Other April Gets:
Ozomatli, Don't Mess with the Dragon. I love Ozo to death, but the Spin Magazine review put it best. This album sounds like they took a Black Eyed Peas turn—tired of making good music that radio wouldn’t play, they decided to dumb things down a bit to actually make some money and stick around in the business a while. I really can’t blame them—they’ve been doing this for a while, they’ve gotten minimal radio play, and they have more damn members in their band than P-Funk, so they probably need to make a little money at some point if they want to continue doing this. That said, it’s not my favorite album of theirs by any means. If you’re new to Ozo, start with Live at the Filmore and Street Signs.
Josh Rouse, 1972. I’d been debating buying this album for about three years now, and when I heard a couple Rouse songs on the Teen Kicks Care Package, I went ahead and pulled the trigger. (Are you noticing that April 2007 turned out to be “The Boy Finally Sucks It Up and Buys It” month? Me too.) What do I think of it? Eh. Not bad, not wonderful. "Comeback (Light Therapy)" is very good..."Love Vibration" is fun...everything's decent, but there's not one blow-me-away tune.
Afrobeat... No Go Die!. Since I enjoyed Afro-Rock Vol. 1, I figured a) I would enjoy a follow-up enough to justify spending precious downloads on it, and b) it wouldn’t quite be as good as the first. I was right on both accounts. Everything I liked about Afro-Rock Vol. 1, I liked about Afrobeat, only in smaller quantities.
J Dilla, Ruff Draft. A drastic departure from the J Dilla product listed above. This one features darker, grimier beats and J Dilla actually rapping on it. His lyrics and flow aren’t bad, but the subject matter and variety of beats (or lack thereof) are relatively underwhelming. Donuts is much better.
SXSW 2007: Breakout Bands That Tore Up Texas. I’m not even sure who put this out...I just snatched it up on eMusic. Really, the collection is relatively underwhelming. I liked the following songs, though:
- “How Do I Let a Good Man Down”, Sharon Jones & the Dap-King
- “How Come You Don’t Hold Me No More”, The Hot Puppies
- “Open Us Up”, Thunderbirds Are Now
- “Murder”, The Big Sleep
Cat Power, Live at Austin City Limits Festival 2006
Gomez, Live at Austin City Limits Festival 2006
Son Volt, Live at Austin City Limits Festival 2006
Rocky Votolato, Live at Austin City Limits Festival 2006
The Hold Steady, Live at Lollapalooza 2006
Lyrics Born, Live at Lollapalooza 2006
Office, Live at Lollapalooza 2006
Sleater-Kinney, Live at Lollapalooza 2006
In April, eMusic also featured partial show downloads from a lot of artists’ sets at these two 2006 festivals. Only Gomez and The Hold Steady had more than 1-3 songs available for download, but it was pretty nice to get to sample all of these bands.
Teenage Kicks Care Package. Of this I figured I should mention my favorite songs:
- “White Collar Boy”, Belle & Sebastian
- “How Can a Poor Man Stand Such Times”, Bruce Springsteen
- “Flathead”, The Fratellis
- “People Gonna Talk”, James Hunter
- “Girl in the War”, Josh Ritter
The Springsteen performance would be my favorite on the list, but it got a point deduction for having been the song I was listening to when I hit the turkey a couple weeks ago. It’s like when I threw up Double Chex as a kid—I didn’t throw up because of the Double Chex, but Double Chex were always associated with the event, and I never ate them again.
And on that note, so ends probably the best music month I’ve had since I started My Month of Entertainment.
Wednesday, April 04, 2007
My Month of Entertainment – March 2007
Busy month, actually...impressive considering the RIAA boycott and everything. It was a nice combination of a) baseball season beginning and therefore requiring me to stock up on new data nerd books, b) all but one weekend spent at home and therefore requiring plenty of Netflix, and c) a series of fantastic finds on eMusic.
Books
The Team That Changed Baseball: Roberto Clemente and the 1971 Pittsburgh Pirates, Bruce Markusen. The return of baseball means two things: first, I need to buy something related to the Pirates’ good ol’ days. Last year it was Clemente and the 1979 World Series DVD set. This year, it’s this lovely—and relatively short—book about the ’71 Pirates. Why did they “change baseball”? Because they were the first team to freely incorporate minorities without some sort of unspoken quote. Hispanic players like Roberto Clemente and Manny Sanguillen mingled happily with black players like Willie Stargell and Dock Ellis and white players like Bill Mazeroski (on his last legs) and Steve Blass (let's be honest--they don't come any whiter than Steve Blass). The book tells a very chronological story—what happened in 1970, what happened in the offseason, and what happened month-by-month in 1971—but for this type of book, that’s precisely what’s needed. I’ve made it through July 1971, and so far I’m very happy with the purchase. Now I just need the 1971 World Series Collector’s Edition DVD to come out.
Baseball Hacks, Joseph Adler. Every year I get more and more in touch with the data nerd side of me, and every year I get more and more into baseball statistics. This book is the first of 2007. Here’s the description: “Baseball Hacks shows how easy it is to get data, process it, and use it to truly understand baseball. The book lists a number of sources for current and historical baseball data, and explains how to load it into a database for analysis. It then introduces several powerful statistical tools for understanding data and forecasting results.” Sounds like perfect summertime reading to me!
Behind-The-Scenes Baseball: Real-Life Applications of Statistical Analysis Actually Used by Major League Teams...and Other Stories, Doug Decatur. This came as one of those Amazon package deals with Baseball Hacks, but I must say it’s a pretty neat read. Well, it’s not so much of a read as a browse, but that’s besides the point. I referenced the GM Quiz last week during my Pirates Rant™, and it’s pretty disturbing to me just how many questions Pirates Management would answer incorrectly, but hey...2-0, baby!
Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know—and Doesn’t, Stephen Prothero. This was actually a purchase for The Butterfly, but I’m pretty sure I’ll end up reading this one as well. Prothero was on Daily Show a couple of weeks ago, and at the end of the interview, we looked at each other and both said that this was exactly the kind of book we hoped somebody would write. Lots of people are good at making huge judgements about you because you’re not as religious as they are, but how many of them are actually religiously literate (i.e. can name one of the Gospels, or even half of the Ten Commandments) and how many just use religion as a way to feel superior to others? This book seems to go into that, and I’m excited to read it.
DVDs
This month's Netflix rentals:
Run Lola Run. When we first joined Netflix, we got into a pretty steady rhythm of solid indie flicks and mediocre new releases. Well...this month, the new releases were very strong and the indie films were...eh. Lola is a really interesting visual movie, but The Butterfly and I were both unimpressed with the actual plot. This movie was highly regarded in the late-‘90s, but strangely it’s already aged quite a bit. Plus, Lola doesn’t run nearly as much as I thought she would.
Stranger Than Fiction. Great movie. I was pretty optimistic about this one because the plot just seemed so quirky and the cast was so strong, and both lived up to expectations. Will Ferrell uses his ‘blank slate’ look for drama instead of comedy, and it works. Maggie Gyllenhaal, Dustin Hoffman, and Emma Thompson were all fantastic too, and Queen Latifah was decent enough. The ending almost buckled, but it stayed upright. One of the better new movies I’ve seen in a while.
Winter Passing. This is another indie film with a pretty neat cast—led by Zooey Deschanel and Ed Harris—but The Butterfly’s parents watched it first, and there was apparently a kitten-drowning scene. So The Butterfly wouldn’t watch it. I didn’t really want to either. So we didn’t.
Broken Flowers. The one indie-ish movie we watched this month that I liked. The ending was a lot more depressing than I thought it was going to be, but honestly I think I liked this more than Lost in Translation, the other, more renowned recent comedy-ish, noir-ish, Bill Murray drama. Murray is strong as a rich, former player who thinks he has a long, lost son, and Jeffrey Wright is phenomenal as his vicarious buddy Winston. Murray visits numerous former flings, and they’re all solid, though Sharon Stone is probably the best. A good rental.
For Your Consideration. We like Best in Show and Waiting for Guffman enough that we had to see this one, another Christopher Guest pseudo-documentary. This one’s about the making of an indie drama, and as always, every character takes him- or herself far too seriously. Catherine O’Hara, Parker Posey, etc., are quite good, though Fred Willard is extremely creepy as an Entertainment Tonight-style TV host. Lots of great characters here, as one would expect, but overall, FYC honestly didn’t sustain my attention as well as other Guest movies have. It was okay, but a bit disappointing.
Casino Royale. I actually really liked this movie...right up until the point where it decided not to end. This would have made a great 1 hour, 45 minute-long movie, but stretched into a 2.5-hour package, it loses some luster. This movie basically serves as a Bond prequel...that takes place in the present tense, about 40 years after the first Bond movie. That takes a bit of getting used to, but I think it works simply because it forcefully makes you to suspend all notions of time. If 007 really is the same person in Goldfinger as he is in Tomorrow Never Dies, then Casino Royale attempting to serve as technically the ‘first’ in the Bond series actually works. Plus, I enjoyed the nuance of Bond starting off a bit brash and cocky—and capable of love—before reeling it in to survive over the long haul.
Daniel Craig plays Bond with lots of ego and muscle, and it works (for me, at least). It will work a lot better if he slowly morphs into the more typical Bond character over the next couple of movies, though. There needs to be an evolution there. And his hair should be black. Eva Green, even only at age 26 (12 years younger than Craig), does a strong job as the first (and only?) woman Bond truly let himself love, and Judi Dench...sorry...DAME Judi Dench was fantastic in the role of M. Again, this was a well-executed movie...it just lasted about 30 minutes too long.
Borat. OH DE BABY. I’m not a fan of the type of humor that takes advantage and humiliates unsuspecting innocents...but I’ll make an exception here. Sacha Baron Cohen does a fantastic job of finding all the hidden, ugly flaws of Americans and making them seem almost acceptable. I’m not really sure if that’s the best way to word it, but that’s the best I can do. And beyond that...well, let’s just say that the obscenity level this movie reaches is almost admirable, and you’ll laugh. A lot.
Music
Apollo New York ’79 (Live), Bob Marley & The Wailers. I should have sampled this album on emusic, but instead I just saw “Bob Marley” and “Live” and dove right in. Marley’s ’79 Apollo concerts were notable in his attempt to reach out to black audiences. It didn’t really work, as white college music nerds snatched up most of the tickets. I’ve read that Marley was visibly disappointed when he walked on stage—in Harlem—and saw nothing but white faces, but you couldn’t tell it from the music. Unfortunately, the sound quality on this recording is terrible. I’ve collected tons of concerts over the years, and a lot of them are audience (i.e. non-soundboard) recordings. I don’t have the highest standards for sound quality, but I do have standards. In this recording, the bass is loud and fuzzy and distorted and the vocals aren’t very clear. Which is disappointing considering (from what I could tell through the distorted bass) the quality of performance that was captured.
Freak ‘N’ Roll...Into the Fog (Live), Black Crowes. Top three most surprisingly great musical moments I’ve ever seen: 1) the first time I saw Jurassic 5 live, 2) the first time I saw Ozomatli live, and 3) the first time I saw the Black Crowes live. Now, J5 and Ozo were surprises because I’d barely heard of them when they rocked my world. However, I’d been listening to the Crowes for a really long time when I first saw them live at the Beale Street Music Festival in 2001. They were playing at the same time as Bob Dylan on the opposite end of the park, and we were going to watch one Crowes song before heading to see Dylan...but the Crowes had such an unbelievably full, hypnotizing sound that we ended up staying for half their set before finally pulling ourselves away to see Dylan...who probably is #4 on this list (seeing Dylan, even at the age of 60, set me off on about a year-long “Dylan phase” where I bought everything I could hear or read about him, but that’s a completely different story). There was no one particular aspect of the Black Crowes’ sound that made them so great—it was just that everything was there. The guitars, bass, keys, Chris Robinson’s voice...it was all just so perfect.
Well...Freak ‘N’ Roll doesn’t leave as perfect an impression as the Beale Street show was—Robinson’s voice isn’t quite as strong, and the recording itself doesn’t leave you with quite as full a sound...unless you turn it up really, really loud anyway. But it’s totally and completely worth adding to your collection. The professionalism is top-notch. And “Soul Singing” is transcendent.
Afro-Rock Volume 1. The emusic description: “Almost immediately after Fela Kuti died in 1997, his music was enthusiastically rediscovered in the English-speaking world — and the music of his African peers. US/UK reissue labels have barely scratched the surface of great African pop and rock, but they're digging, and this volume was one of the earliest fruits.” I’ll just say that, while there are plenty of misses on this collection, there are so many damn songs that will make you nod your head and bounce a little bit. Just some fantastic basslines in this album. If I were a hip-hop producer, I’d be sampling every single one of these grooves in some fashion. A great download.
Neon Bible, Arcade Fire. Two things about this album: 1) A lot of times when indie acts find success, their second album finds them with a recording budget and with access to lots and lots of instruments, so they use those instruments and big-budget items simply because they can and they lose track of what actually made their music good. With Arcade Fire, strings and other items of musical bombast actually enhanced their sound and made it better. Neon Bible is over-earnest and over-indulgent, but it’s also Arcade Fire at their finest. 2) It’s not nearly as good on the second listen. Maybe it was the mood I was in, but I listened to it again yesterday, and I was not nearly as impressed. Some albums grow on you, and some...well...shrink. We’ll see how this one ages.
Separation Sunday, The Hold Steady. All you ever need to read about The Hold Steady and Separation Sunday has already been written on this blog. Good album...I don’t find it great yet, but while Neon Bible might not be holding up, this one’s growing on me.
Wednesday, March 07, 2007
My Month of Entertainment – February 2007
Where did the first week of March go?? Usually I remember on the first or second of the month that I need to do a My Month of Entertainment write-up...and this time, the first six days of the month snuck right by. Maybe that’s because I’ve been preparing for my virgin VEGAS, BABY, VEGAS trip (we fly out tomorrow).
(And since I’m going to Vegas, don’t expect much of a Month of Entertainment for March...am thinking most discretionary funds will be cut off for the next month or two.) Anyhoo. February was a relatively unique month…had a bit of a book splurge this month, due mostly to a Going Out of Business sale for a downtown Columbia bookstore...a few of the Netflix rentals were disappointing...and the music purchases were almost nonexistent.
Books
Praying for Gil Hodges – Some nice spring training reading while I’m putting off the year’s first Tuesday Pirates Rant™ as long as possible.
1973 Nervous Breakdown: Watergate, Warhol, and the Birth of Post-Sixties America – I loved Mark Kurlansky’s 1968, so I thought I’d give this a shot. I’m willing to give a lot of things a chance when they’re 40% off.
Da Capo Best Music Writing of 2005 – You know...so I can see how my, ahem, competition is writing about music. Or something like that.
Faking It: The Quest for Authenticity in Popular Music – It just sounded like something I would read.
I think there are a couple others I bought that I’m completely blanking on at the moment. Oh well...your loss.
DVDs
This month’s Netflix rentals:
This Film is Not Yet Rated – Well-made documentary about the politics and inconsistencies behind the Motion Picture Association of America’s movie ratings system. The best part was where it was revealed that, if you appeal the rating your movie received (it received an NC-17 when you thought it deserved an R, for example), you’re not allowed to site precedent in your appeal. Think about that. If there was a scene in another movie where something 5x worse happened, and that movie received an R, you can’t site that in defending your movie. Precedent shouldn’t be the only way to put movies in specific ratings categories, but it has to at least be part of the process. Great movie all around.
Transamerica – The month definitely started off well with these two. Felicity Huffman’s performance was every bit as good as critics said it was, and like Little Miss Sunshine, it finds something to warm your heart within all the disfunction on the screen.
The Constant Gardener – Good movie. You make yourself dizzy trying to guess what’s going to happen next, but it was very well done. Just as Felicity Huffman’s scene peeing with a prosthetic penis fell into the “Daring Things Pretty Actresses Don’t Usually Do” category, so did Rachel Weisz’ walking around naked and pregnant. And they both got Oscar nominations (Weisz even won). Hmm.
Running With Scissors – Unlike Transamerica, there’s nothing to warm your heart amid the disfunction, nothing to pull you through. This DVD is being advertised on TV right now as something of a dark comedy. Well, it’s 95% dark, 5% comedy. There are a few chuckles, but there’s not enough of anything to pull you out from the darkness of the characters and the plot. That’s not necessarily bad, but it’s just not what was advertised.
L.A. Confidential – The Butterfly hadn’t seen this, and I hadn’t seen it in probably 7-8 years, so we picked it up. It’s just as good as I remembered.
History of the World, Part I – This movie hasn’t aged all that well. The highlight was something that didn’t actually happen—I was driving myself crazy trying to figure out who played the Vestal Virgin, and when I finally figured it out, I narrowly avoided blurting out “A ha! It’s the woman who played Dawson’s mom on Dawson’s Creek!” The look The Butterfly would have given me upon blurting that out would have been a low point in my marriage, and possibly my life. There are some things you just don’t reveal—your in-depth knowledge of Dawson’s Creek (as a married male approaching 30) is one of those things.
Run Lola Run – Visually, it’s an interesting movie. However, overall this wasn’t as good as I thought it would be. It received lots of kudos from lots of critics, and while it’s pretty creative (and I’m always willing to give points for creativity and uniqueness), it just wasn’t all that good. Quality is still relatively important.
Music
Curtis Mayfield, Honesty and Love is the Place – These albums are proof that Curtis Mayfield could make fantastic music in his sleep. The thing I’ve always loved about an album like Roots from the early ‘70s was both how great the music was and how interesting the subject matter was. With these two albums from the ‘80s, there’s absolutely no creative subject matter whatsoever, but the music is still more than listenable. In my Great Musicians Pantheon, he’s on the top level. Just amazingly underrated.
Gomez, How We Operate – Like Yo La Tengo’s I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass, this is an album that snuck up on me—it never overwhelmed me with how good it was, but then I looked up and realized that I’d given almost every song 4 stars. You know you’re dealing with a good band when they can take a song with an awful title like “Girlshapedlovedrug” and make it listenable. Power to them for that.
Ojos de Brujo, Bari – This is an E-music download I got for The Butterfly but haven’t listened to all the way through yet. We’re both huge fans of Ozomatli, and she likes Shakira too, so when I heard good things about this (obviously) Latin group, we gave it a try. She seems to like it.
Sunday, February 04, 2007
My Month of Entertainment - January 2007
Books
Another bookless month. But that’s good...I’m actually starting to get through the ones I bought over the last 6 months.
Movies
This month’s Netflix rentals:
The Break-Up. Memo to any husband or boyfriend whose significant other is thinking about watching this movie. DO NOT LET THEM. It gets into female heads and messes with them severely. They cannot help but severely over-analyze it. Avoid it. You do not want them to see this movie. That is all.
Slap Shot (25th Anniversary Edition). I hadn’t seen this in a long while, and The Butterfly hadn’t seen it at all, so I stuck this one in the queue. This has long been regarded as one of the funniest sports movies of all-time, and all the Hanson Brothers scenes were as great as I remembered, but I’ve gotta say...it’s a lot slower than I remembered it. Lots more attempted plot than there needed to be, and in the end it just doesn’t flow as well as other great sports movies like Major League or Bull Durham.
Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby. This is was actually a mutual selection—I’ve always loved The Butterfly’s sense of humor—and unlike a lot of comedies like this, the humor didn’t really slow down once the plot had to take over. A lot of recent comedies are like Wedding Crashers—hilarious premise and great comedic acting, but when the plot takes over, everything comes grinding to a halt. Ricky Bobby used a lot of the same actors as Wedding Crashers and Anchorman, but this one was more consistently funny. Actually, I should watch Anchorman again before I commit to that...anyway, we both enjoyed it quite a bit.
The Devil Wears Prada. It was The Butterfly’s turn to pick out a movie, so we went with this one. Obviously I haven’t read the book (and neither has she), but I had heard that this was pretty decent for a book adaptation. This was surprisingly watchable. Granted I was playing Spider Solitaire the whole time and wasn’t giving 100% of my attention to it, but it wasn’t painful to watch like some of the the chick flicks The Butterfly actually hates. We had a bit of a disagreement over whether she should end up with Rich Dude or Dude from Entourage (obviously I was in Dude from Entourage’s corner), and I guess I won. Though I have no idea why they would throw in the “he gets a job in Boston” kink if they really didn’t have plans to address that in the resolution, but whatever. I didn’t care all that much.
Happy Endings. Another indy movie I heard decent things about and stuck on the Queue. We were not impressed with this one, however. As I like to say about some movies, there was a good movie in this somewhere, but it never came to the surface. Interesting cast (Maggie Gyllenhall, Tom Arnold, Lisa Kudrow, etc.) and interesting plot points, but the end of the movie comes and you realize you don’t actually care about any of the characters (sans maybe Tom Arnold). That’s not usually a good thing.
Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life. I’ve always loved Holy Grail and Life of Brian (and Spamalot, for that matter), but I’d never seen this one. Lots of laughs, as you would expect, but there’s definitely a reason this one’s not as highly-regarded as Grail and Brian. It’s just not quite as focused, though there’s definitely plenty to enjoy.
Cars. This was for The Butterfly’s parents...we never got around to seeing it. I’m sure it’s enjoyable.
Little Miss Sunshine. One of the 2-3 best Netflix movies we’ve seen to this point. I was dying to see this when I first heard about it, but as more and more people started piling on about how great it was, I got wary. I love it when movies like this are nominated for Best Picture awards because it acknowledges that you can have lots of comedy and still create one of the best movies of the year. You care about the characters at the end, and you can almost relate to them no matter how crazy their situation ends up...and the performances were fantastic. I’m not totally sure why the little girl got nominated for an Oscar (it led to a great moment in last night’s SNL “Dakota Fanning Show” skit, where Dakota Fanning talks about all the serious roles she’s played without getting nominated for an Oscar, and the little girl says “I ran around a lot.”). Honestly, I thought the best performances came from the Oath of Silence little brother (Paul Dano) and Steve Carell. Kinnear and Colette were both great, but you just expect those performances out of them.
All in all, a decent Netflix months, but there were some duds in there. Oh well. And DO NOT LET YOUR SIGNIFICANT OTHER WATCH THE BREAK-UP. I cannot emphasize this enough.
Music
Barenaked Ladies Are Me, Barenaked Ladies. In the last few months, two different artists who belong to my “When They Release a New Album, I Will Buy It Immediately” club released new albums...and I didn’t buy them immediately. I have a decent excuse for each one. First of all, soon-to-be Good Nonsense poster Shep (note to self: next time you introduce a new poster, make sure they’re not out of town all week for work...kinda makes the introduction anti-climactic) and I agreed to trade some music—he was going to get me BNL’s new one, and I was going to get him Guster’s new one. Great...except we kept forgetting to actually do that. So I finally sucked it up and used some eMusic downloads on it. I talked about it in depth here...not as good as Gordon or (especially) Maroon, but quite enjoyable.
True Magic, Mos Def. Mos Def is also on my Buy Immediately list, and I’d been trying as hard as I could to keep up with when this one was coming out. First it was the summer, then 2007, then December, then 2007 again...and then I checked and found it had been released to zero fanfare three weeks previous. Grr. I have an upcoming post about Mos Def and Talib Kweli, so I won’t speak much about this one now...other than to say that I like it because it’s Mos Def, but like his last album (The New Danger)...even moreso, actually, it does kinda feel like he half-assed this one.
Light Grenades, Incubus, and Sam’s Town, The Killers. I used some of my Christmas present iTunes downloads for these two albums...as much for The Butterfly as for me. I like good hard rock, and I’ve appreciated the works of these two groups in the past, so I thought I’d give these a shot. I think Incubus have been lumped in with the “RAWK!!” category with bands like Limp Bizkit and Korn, and that’s a bit unfair. They have more to offer than those groups, and while they wouldn’t get very high on any “Favorite Bands” list of mine or anything, they’ve made a lot of songs I really like...“Warning” and “Megalomaniac” being at the top of the list. There’s nothing that good on Light Grenades, but there is still some good creativity on display.
As for The Killers...you can definitely hear some U2 influences—both early- and late-U2. They aim for greatness and grandure, and while they don’t really achieve either, I appreciate the attempt. I’d always prefer that over “Hey, we sold a ton of records last time out, so let’s make the exact same songs this time.” The Killers are seen as pretty arrogant and self-important, and they probably are, but oh well. They’re a decent band.
All in all, January was a pretty slow Month of Entertainment, wasn’t it? Then again, nobody usually has much post-Christmas money to spend, do they?
Sunday, January 07, 2007
My Month of Entertainment – December 2006
An explosion of indie music, and...well, that’s about it this month. That’s what happens when you upgrade your subscription to eMusic.com and get iTunes gift cards for Christmas.
Books
Racing in the Street: The Bruce Springsteen Reader – Again, very little in the way of new books this month. I spent most of the month finishing off the Bob Dylan: Performing Artist series (Volume 3 is quite long and a bit tedious) and plowing through Nick Hornby’s A Long Way Down (which is way better than I thought it would be).
DVDs
Pat McGee Band: Vintage Stages Live – A pretty solid CD/DVD from a band I’ve discussed here before. They put out a live CD, General Admission, about seven years ago, but this is the first time you can watch them perform. Honestly, it’s a pretty accurate look at the band. It goes a long way in showing how they’ve managed to develop a strong foundation of fans despite a lack of radio play.
This month’s Netflix rentals:
An Inconvenient Truth
We’ve made plenty of comments about this one in the past.
A Prairie Home Companion
Going into this one, I had no idea whether I would love or hate this movie, and...well, it was pretty much directly in between those two. Companion the movie is, I figure, a lot like Companion the live performance—hokey, amusing, comforting, and unchallenging in every way. It was probably worth seeing because of the performances of Kevin Kline and Maya Rudolph (and for the disorienting effect of watching Meryl Streep, Lily Tomlin and Lindsey Lohan performing together), but it’s probably not something I’ll ever need to watch again.
Pirates of the Caribbean 2: Dead Man’s Chest
I have a rule: when your main motivation for watching a movie is a) action scenes and explosions, and b) attractive people, then that movie should never ever ever last more than 1 hour, 45 minutes. There’s just nothing that vital to the plot to take it over this length. Well, Pirates 2 is a relatively entertaining 1:45 movie...stretched to 2:30. Seriously, just an inexcuseable length on this movie.
Clerks 2
As with Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, if you enjoy the characters Kevin Smith has created in the last 12-14 years, then you’ll enjoy the movie. Unlike with Jay and Silent Bob, though, this movie isn’t just an “Aren’t these characters funny? You know they are!” victory lap. There is a decent streak of creativity and plot (all of which is quite perverted and crude, though not all of which is believable...I mean, come on, Rosario Dawson hooking up with Dante?? Sorry if you haven’t seen it and didn’t want a spoiler, but you need as much mental preparation for that one as possible), in this one. However, just like with Jay and Bob, if you didn’t enjoy the other Kevin Smith movies, you should just let this one pass you by as well.
Music
(Can’t really call this section “CD’s” anymore since I don’t actually buy cd’s anymore)
Vintage Stages Live, Pat McGee Band
While it is nice to have a live DVD, I’m glad there’s an audio-only version of this concert in this set as well so I can listen on the iPod. Again, it’s a good representation of where PMB were musically (before the death of Chris Williams, anyway), though the inclusion of “Who Stole Her from Heaven” and the exclusion of “Hero” was a bit disappointing to me. But then, only PMB obsessives (or former PMB obsessives) would find that strange or disappointing.
The Greatest, Cat Power
Moon Pix, Cat Power
It’s relatively conventional wisdom at this point (among music nerds, anyway) that if you’re a long-time fan of Cat Power, her latest album, The Greatest, will be your least favorite as it recycles old material and incorporates a Nashville band, very much unlike her previous material; however, if you’re a Cat Power newbie, you’ll find The Greatest much more accessible and enjoyable than her more sparse-sounding earlier work. Well, I’m a Cat Power newbie, and I think The Greatest is fantastic. I found 1997’s Moon Pix a lot harder to enjoy overall. For me, the best albums are the ones that vary tempos and instrumentation, and Moon Pix is all sparse and slow. With The Greatest, the aforementioned band is involved, and even though the songs are still mostly mid-tempo or slow, there is a fantastic R&B feel to the album, and I’m liking it a lot.
Best songs (from The Greatest): “Lived in Bars,” “Living Proof,” “Love and Communication.” Best songs (from Moon Pix): “American Flag,” “You May Know Him.”
Under the Red Sky, Bob Dylan
I am slowly but surely filling in the gaps of my Dylan collection, and while reading Vol. 3 of Bob Dylan, Performing Artist, I went ahead and picked this one up. This is known as Dylan’s “songs for children” album, or something like that, but while the lyrics are definitely not his sharpest (nor were they necessarily supposed to be), I liked this album more than I thought I would, mostly because his band for this album was on fire.
There isn’t a lot of creativity in the song structures or instrumentation—most of the grooves are basically generic blues or R&B—but good grooves are good grooves, and just about every song has one. Not saying this would make my Top Ten Dylan Albums list...just that it was worth getting. I pretty much agree with the sentiment of the album’s 1990 Rolling Stone review (“Old masters sometimes pare their statements down stylistically to attain the mythic or universal – their work gets simpler, easier. Under the Red Sky, certainly, is Dylan taking it easy. Sad to say, he's taking it far too easy. It's disheartening to find the writer of "Visions of Johanna," and a hundred other cryptic, haunting songs that have inspired countless poets, coming up with titles like "Wiggle Wiggle" and "Handy Dandy."), but the music is still worth hearing. It probably helps to know that Dylan didn't stick with this lighter style, too...if I were hearing this as Dylan's latest album, I too would probably be a lot more critical. Best songs: “Wiggle Wiggle,” “Cat’s in the Well,” “Unbelivable.”
Hip Hop Is Dead, Nas
Hell Hath No Fury, Clipse
I’ve said this before, but hip hop has most certainly entered its “hair metal” stage, where primping and pimping are more important than actually saying something of value. There has always been this aspect in hip hop, just as there always has been in rock music, but it’s successfully come to the forefront now. And that doesn’t make Nas very happy. I’ve always been a relatively casual Nas fan, meaning I own most of his albums, but I honestly can’t remember too many of his songs. He’s a strong lyricist, especially when he’s taking on tough subject matter, and that makes his music worth listening to, even if he’s never really had beats that were all that great. I still have to listen to this album a few more times to get a grasp on the vocals, but I can say this for sure: these are the best beats a Nas album has ever had (“Where Are They Now,” in particular), and “Still Dreaming” with Kanye West (who I really hate liking as much as I do) and “Black Republican” with Jay-Z (“I feel like a Black Republican/Money I got comin’ in”...it’s creative, at least) are fantastic collaborations. Nothing but good songs and good beats on this one.
And I should mention that the title track samples “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida”...you know, just so you’re not as taken aback as I was by that.
As for Clipse, I am so desperate to discover new good hip hop groups that I’ll pretty much take a chance on anybody who gets a lot of good press. It took four years for Clipse to put out their second album, and it’s a good one...though that is almost totally because of the productions of The Neptunes. Clipse get the first crack at these innovators’ beats, and you can tell. The beats on this album are about as good as I’ve ever heard. The lyrics are decent (the rhymes are pretty good), but not creative in the least. In other words, lots of bitches and hos and guns and the like on this one. However, the lyrics are good enough in songs like “Wamp Wamp (What It Do)” and “Chinese New Year” (“I was in and out of homes like the Orkin man”) to make those songs as good as anything else that came out in hip hop in 2006.
Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers & Bastards, Tom Waits
I’d never really thought about checking out a Tom Waits album before, but this was generating lots of good press, and his appearance on Daily Show was quite entertaining. I had reservations, “His voice is just so damn weird” being the most prevalent, but I decided to go ahead and check it out one disc at a time on eMusic. I will say that some of the covers he chose (pop standards like “Sea of Love” and “Young at Heart”) don’t do anything for me, but every time he pins his ears back and rocks out, it works tremendously. He absolutely nails songs like “Buzz Fledderjohn” and “The Return of Jack and Judy,” and a lot has already been said about “Road to Peace”...
Young Abdel Mahdi (Shahmay) was only 18 years old...that there’s really not much I can add. This one definitely belongs in the Liked It More Than I Thought I Would category.
He was the youngest of nine children, never spent a night away from home
And his mother held his photograph, opening the New York Times
To see the killing has intensified along the road to peace
There was a tall, thin boy with a whispy moustache disguised as an orthodox Jew
On a crowded bus in Jerusalem, some had survived World War Two
And the thunderous explosion blew out windows 200 yards away
With more retribution and seventeen dead along the road to peace
A Blessing and a Curse, Drive-By Truckers
I’ve heard good things about the Truckers for a while...that they were an extremely competent mix of southern rock and jam band...things like that. I compare them to one of my more recent discoveries, My Morning Jacket. They are indeed both one part Black Crowes/Allmans, but they both like to explore new ideas. Neither of them worry about technical perfection and polish in their studio recordings, which can either lead to sloppiness or raw perfection (to me, the chance for raw perfection is worth the risk of sloppiness), and they both utilize a shaky falsetto from their singer part of the time. Overall, I think I’ll stick with MMJ, but this was worth getting for songs like “Easy On Yourself” and “Daylight.”
Live: Austin City Limits Festival, Flaming Lips
I stumbled across this 4-song set of the Lips’ performance at ACLF this year on iTunes, and it was a lovely surprise. A video download would have been better, since so much of the Lips’ performance is visual, but for the money (<$5), this was more than worth it.
I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass, Yo La Tengo
All the Music Nerd magazines were raving about this a few months ago, and since I had a few more downloads to use, I decided to give in and give it a shot. Every song from this poppy, sometimes-falsetto, upbeat, nerdy group (who most certainly couldn’t beat your ass) is good, and I gave them pretty much all **** on the iPod, but when the album was over, I couldn’t think of one single, memorable song beyond the adventurous 10-minute jam (“Pass the Hatchet, I Think I’m Goodkind”) that kicks off the album. For the most part, this is pretty much the definition of “light and enjoyable,” but there’s enough risk-taking here to set Yo La Tengo apart from most.
As with most everything else I got this month, this was worth getting (and it falls into the ever-referenced Liked It More Than I Thought I Would category), but it still falls behind The Greatest, Hip Hop Is Dead, Vintage Stages Live, and possibly Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers & Bastards on this month’s pecking order. If this came in fourth, though, it was a pretty damn good month for music. Best songs: “Beanbag Chair,” “The Room Got Heavy,” “Pass the Hatchet, I Think I’m Goodkind.”