Category: Music

Oil, fat and hyacinth

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

At lunch today I finished watching another Werner Herzog documentary: Lessons Of Darkness (imdb | rotten tomatoes). Essentially 50 minutes of aerial film from Kuwait, taken just after the first gulf war, set to a Wagner score or to Herzog himself reading passages from Revelations, it’s enough to boggle the mind and drop the jaw. Fountains of fire spewing from sand, rivers and lakes of oil stretching for miles, racks of crude torture paraphenalia, burned & rusted skeletons of old vehicles, blackened men trying desperately to regain control over the exploding landscape…it’s just incredible stuff.

Herzog’s a freaking genius.

.:.

It’s natural that a conservative government would cut social programs. That’s what they do; it’s the basis for conservative politics: you lessen the role (and spending) of government, thereby reducing the short-term tax burden on the public. So it comes as no surprise that the Tory government is cutting $1 billion from human rights lawyers, students, museum-goers, etc.

What does surprise me is that they cut the programs on the same day they announced a $13 billion surplus.

While I agree with their decision to use the surplus to pay down the debt, couldn’t they have paid down $12 billion and left the social programs intact? It would’ve been a good PR move, certainly, and it would have been a non-dickish thing to do.

Weighing in with their (predictably opposing) viewpoints: the Toronto Star and National Post.

.:.

While piddling about on my computer tonight I put ye olde Windows Media Player on random. These were the first ten songs served up. Apparently my PC likes the instrumental post-rock; I didn’t hear a single word for about 22 minutes starting at song #6…

  • radiohead . “backdrifts”
  • blink 182 . “i miss you”
  • hank williams iii . “atlantic city”
  • flogging molly . “light of a fading star”
  • bjork . “army of me”
  • mono . “the flames beyond the cold mountain”
  • mogwai . “you don’t know jesus”
  • explosions in the sky . “first breath after coma”
  • constantines . “hyacinth”
  • ani difranco . “willing to fight”

I should have kept writing them down. It just played The Cooper Temple Clause, Sleater-Kinney and Iggy Pop all in a row.

[tags]werner herzog, lessons of darkness, conservative spending cuts, budget surplus, random music[/tags]

You snooze, you lose; well I have snost and lost.

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

You know, it’s all fun and games ’til someone…umm…ooh. Yikes.

.:.

Sports Illustrated thinks the Canadiens might be a dark horse this year. I hope so, but their 0-4 preseason record isn’t a great sign.

Ooh…but they’re leading the Senators 4-2 in the 3rd.

.:.

We watched episode one of the fourth season of The Wire, and I’m hooked already. Sooooooo hooked. I love that show.

.:.

By the way, that line up there in the subject is from “I Hear The Bells” by Mike Doughty, known to my wife as the song playing at the alternaprom in the last season of Veronica Mars. I just love the lyric.
[tags]sports illustrated, canadiens, senators, the wire[/tags]

66.15%

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

I have my ride-home playlist all set up and ready to go. There’s just no better feeling than climbing into that cab and falling into an exhausted stupor for the ride home, while the perfect music blares in my ears. Here’s the lineup this time around:

  • cat power . “sweedeedee”
  • mike doughty . “i hear the bells”
  • jose gonzalez . “heartbeats”
  • regina spektor . “better”
  • cold war kids . “don’t let your love grow away from me”
  • band of horses . “monsters”

That oughta do it. If I run out of time I’ll skip the Mike Doughty song.

OK. Must go finish off a deck, read the material for tomorrow and review some class notes.

[tags]cat power, mike doughty, jose gonzalez, regina spektor, cold war kids, band of horses[/tags]

16.29%

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

The film festival buzz about All The King’s Men appears to be true, given the ratings on Rotten Tomatoes. Hard to believe, given the incredible cast.

.:.

The new Bonnie Prince Billy disc, though, is getting good reviews.

.:.

I was going to write something about the whole Muslim-anger-over-papal-statements controversy, but my brother wrote pretty much the same thing I was planning to write. I’m not one to defend the pope, but I don’t think he’s the one in the wrong here.

.:.

OK, off to day 2 of international business.

[tags]all the king’s men, bonnie prince billy, muslim anger at pope[/tags]

Kokomo? Seriously?

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The coffee shop on the ground floor of my building, which I have to walk by to get outside, often pipes in music from some godawful radio station or another, and whatever song they’re playing inevitably gets stuck in my head. Today it was particularly insidious: “Kokomo” by the Beach Boys. I practically ran back to my desk, jammed my headphones in my ears and hit play. My Nomad faithfully served up a couple of good tunes to blast that 80s shit out of my head: “Many Lives -> 49mp” by Final Fantasy and “Alright Alright” by Sahara Hotnights.

Whew.

[tags]beach boys, final fantasy, sahara hotnights[/tags]

Kurt Cobain: About A Son (9/10)

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Tonight we watched the world premiere of Kurt Cobain: About A Son (tiff | imdb | myspace), and it wasn’t at all what I expected. I guess I didn’t read the description that closely, because I expected a straightforward documentary. It was anything but.

The film, directed by A.J. Schnack, consisted of three threads: extensive audio interviews between Kurt Cobain and writer Michael Azerrad, footage filmed in the towns where Kurt spent his life, and music (some original score, some licensed songs…though no Nirvana songs) by Steve Fisk (who produced some of Nirvana’s music) and Ben Gibbard (of Death Cab For Cutie). There’s little question as to whether an audience would find audio interviews with Kurt Cobain compelling, and it’s safe to assume that two gentlemen with the pedigree of Fisk and Gibbard would produce a memorable soundtrack (and they did; the songs they picked and the score they used to tie it together — and especially to end the film — were perfect), but the real key was the cinematography. Creating visuals that could pull the reader along on the thread of Kurt’s words, or that could create beauty of their own, was the only way to make this format work, and Wyatt Toll did it perfectly. The time lapse footage, the waterways and lumberyards of Aberdeen and Olympia, the faces of students at his old high school, the still photos of Kurt by Charles Peterson…there was no break, no let down, no lapse in attention for the whole 96 minutes.

Schnack was very emotional as he introduced the film, but he needn’t have been. It was nearly perfect. In the Q&A after the film Azerrad said it felt like closure to share the interviews with us, after losing Kurt more than a decade ago. It felt that way for a lot of us tonight.

[tags]tiff, toronto international film festival, kurt cobain about a son[/tags]

non-TIFFness

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Hey…there’s shit going on in the world not related to the film festival. Huh. I wasn’t aware.

For example, the pope has been trashing Canada, scolding us for having the audacity to “exclude God from the public sphere.” I would counter by saying that the pope should really exclude his head from his own ass.

Then there’s the sad news that The Rheostatics are breaking up. I can hear M2 weeping from here. Even more than the Tragically Hip, the Rheos are the quintessentially Canadian band. I’ll miss their annual and epic fall/winter nationals at the Horseshoe.

.:.

I finished watching a (non-TIFF) documentary this morning called Twist Of Faith (imdb | rotten tomatoes). A 30-something firefighter from Toledo, OH finally opens up about the abuse he suffered at the hands of his priest twenty years earlier, and the betrayal he feels by the church he still tries to love, and Kirby Dirk takes us along. You see Tony Comes try to deal with what happened, explain things to his 9-year-old daughter, fight to save his own marriage, wrestle with whether or not to attend his daughter’s first communion, and deal with the shock of moving into a new house only to discover that the abusive priest lives five doors away. He also discovers resentment from his friends about his decision to sue the diocese, his mother’s divided loyalty between her son and her church, and deceit from the various church officials who lie about the number of accusations over the years. Tony Comes was a time bomb, and the documentary captures a sample of the inevitable eruption.

.:.

OK, I can’t let a post go by without something about the festival. As much as I love the TIFF, there are unsavoury parts. As far as I can tell there are four main species of people who attend the festival:

  1. The folks who buy tickets for a few movies…maybe 2, maybe 5, maybe even 8-10 (if they get, say, the Visa Screening Room package). They know the quality of the films, or even the festival itself, and they want to watch a few good flicks and take part in the atmosphere that’s created in downtown Toronto for 10 days. This is basically how we started out: slowly eased into it and fell in love with it.
  2. The fans who go hard. They book anywhere from 10 to 50 movies and take time off work, sometimes even travelling to Toronto just to attend. They may be fans of a particular genre, or they may be generalists. These are the poor tired bastards you see in line, looking around frantically for a Starbucks to get one last espresso shot before heading into the Midnight Madness rush line. They’re the heart of the festival.
  3. The press and industry people. Sometimes they’re enthusiastic critics, sometimes they’re wanks on their cell phones looking for a deal or wondering why other people don’t seem to realize how famous they are. Those two groups don’t really mix — the film-loving critics have more in common with group #2 than with the industry wanks — but they all have special badges and special lineups, so it’s easier to classify them this way.
  4. The lowest form of life at the festival: the starfuckers and autograph seekers. The thirty year old little girls who go into hysterics at the sight of Brad Pitt. The losers who stake out the back entrance of the theatre because getting someone’s autograph is more important than watching their movie. The poseurs who yell into their cell phones, requesting entry to tonight’s after-party while applying more product to their hair or adjusting their Gucci sunglasses. The celebrity gossip reporters on the constant, urgent hunt for more boldface.

The first three groups are what make the festival endearing and worthwhile. The last group is just a necessary evil.

[tags]pope vs. canada, rheostatics, twist of faith, tony comes, tiff species[/tags]

Only skin

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

The new Joanna Newsom album Ys is like her last one: maddeningly compelling. I don’t want to like music which sounds like it was written by J.R.R. Tolkien and sung by the genetic offspring of Bjork and Yeardley Smith, but I do. The line in “Monkey & Bear” that goes “But Ursula we got to eat something” is just…bone-chilling somehow. I don’t know…it’s like there’s someone telling a story over in the corner that I’m not really paying attention to, but part of me knows that the story’s fascinating.

.:.

This is the first night in a long time that I haven’t to do some kind of work. No school work to do tonight, no film festival stuff to plan, no pressing errands…I had time to go for a run, read through all my feeds, blog a hundred things and now I think I’ll watch an episode of Deadwood, or read some more of the Philip Roth book I started this morning (The Plot Against America). Aaaaaaah.

I guess all that hard work from a few weeks ago paid off, though. I got 88% on the term paper, which I’m pretty happy with. I’m one of those guys who’s happy with pass + 1%, so (in the immortal words of my brother Andrew) everything more than that’s just gravy.

[tags]joanna newsom, bjork, yeardley smith, philip roth, leisure time[/tags]

My newest hero: Banksy

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Banksy (a London graffiti artist) has performed a bit of guerilla deliciousness with some fake Paris Hilton (is that redundant?) CDs in London music shops.

From the Globe and Mail: Record chain HMV said Sunday it had pulled from shelves several copies of Hilton’s Paris album that appeared to have been doctored by British graffiti artist and prankster Banksy.

The doctored version includes a topless image of the celebrity heiress, as well as a picture in which she sports the head of a dog. A sticker advertises the album’s “hits” — Why Am I Famous? What Have I Done? and What Am I For?

The AOL indie (is that an oxymoron?) music blog has more, including some NSFW pictures.

[tags]banksy, paris hilton[/tags]

Mediocre modern times

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I’m not a big fan of the new Bob Dylan disc Modern Times. I certainly seem to be in the minority, and my own brother may disown me, but I only liked 4 of the songs (one of which was a cover). I just can’t get into mellower, jazzier, adult-contemporary-sounding stuff. The bluesy numbers, I’m all over; “Thunder On The Mountain”, “The Levee’s Gonna Break” and “Someday Baby” are great songs, and “Rollin’ And Tumblin'” is an adequate cover, but the rest just doesn’t do anything for me. It’s not bad music; it’s just not something I’d choose to listen to.

[tags]bob dylan, modern times[/tags]