So they just released the trailer for the forthcoming Bob Dylan bio-pic with that teenage heartthrob Chalamet kid as the Voice of a Generation.
I'll reserve judgement till I see it (and I have hopes for Edward Norton as Pete Seeger) but for my money this does not look promising. And for a very simple reason.
The teenage hearththrob comes across as way -- and I mean WAY -- too goyische to be a convincing Mr. Zimmerman.
(And yeah, I know the teenage heartthrob is actually half-Jewish in real life. Sorry, but he just doesn't read Red Sea Pedestrian.)
That said -- and flame away, if you're of a mind to -- but that leads us to the real business at hand. To wit:
...and your favorite (or least favorite) biographical film based on the life of a post-Elvis solo artist or group in the popular music field is...?
No arbitrary rules, but I did say post-Elvis, so don't nominate that abominable Baz Luhrmann flick, and I also said popular music field, so don't give me any of that Bradley CooperMaestro shit, because I don't want to hear it.
If you're wondering, my favorite remains this, which for some reason has pretty much faded from memory.
The short version: The Captain has been toiling on a series about his fave recent artists for a while now, and I thought -- hey, let the kid rock 'n' roll. I mean -- a boy needs a hobby, as well I know.
So, today, please enjoy part I of said series.
I should add that future installments will appear here on a semi-regular basis. Or (more honestly) whenever I'm hard up for a subject.
In any case, without further ado -- take it way, you old sea doggie!!!
"WELCOME TO THE 21st CENTURY, CAPTAIN AL!!!"
Unlike most of you guys and gals who read this blog, I can’t put together in my head a top 10 best of the year list each year. I just don’t listen to and absorb enough new music in a year to have any sort of comprehensive list. I feel I can’t even create a decade list. So to share and promote my favorite “newish” music I have created a Best of the 21st Century listing.
That being the case, here are the Captain’s favorite new musical artists of the current century. The century I was not born in nor am I quite sure if I belong in.
Also, to make this even more interesting to you and me, I have found myself seriously favoring female music creators. So my favorite new acts are all women! They are a damn fine, talented group!. And we don't even have to bring up that presidential candidate lady.
So -- here's my Best of the 21st Century Part I.
To begin with I am already breaking one of my criteria for this list, as the first musician I'm touting started releasing her music in 1999! And this won’t be the last time I twist things to fit the story I am trying to tell. (To quote Bugs Bunny -- “Ain’t I a stinker?”).
Number 1- FEIST!
The video of “1-2-3-4” was my first exposure to Feist. You can call me a sap but I think it’s a wonderful ear worm of a song and a terrific visual representation of it.
Hell I love the Sesame Street version.
Don’t like it? Fuck You!😎
Really. Perhaps you need to have a child and/or grandchild to help you develop a sense that not every musical creation has to be a major statement, that it can simply give you a lot of joy.
Anyway, the moment that I went all in on Feist was the Metals album. For whatever reason it's my favorite of this century. With so many of my last century musical favorites (the ones still alive) running down, creativitely, as we rolled into the new Millenium, Metals just stands out for its musical creativity without being a ‘mope fest,’ ‘post rock serious pretension’ or totally devoid of a rock-and-roll feeling. Metals is playful, mysterious, and adventurous, but without going off the deep end. Feist has not died for our sins nor sold out her soul to succeed.
Here is one of the many wonderful videos created around the album.
Finally, you should dig around for the many other great tracks on her albums The Reminder,Pleasure and Multitudes. Although those three are a little uneven, their best stuff is, once again, great 21st century music.
Thanks for letting me attempt this!
Well. And who can argue with that?
Seriously, I think Feist is pretty great, too.
Your thoughts?
And thanks a lot for the tirade, Capt. Al! See you next time with your ode to your next favorite modern babe!
I received the following message via the e-mail a few days ago. I'm sure you'll never guess what my reaction was.
Hi Steve:
Allow me to introduce you to my Mediocre Friends. We're a band of four NJ high school buddies who started making music together as teenagers...Then stopped...And 30 years later started again for this project. We each contributed a song for this EP and while I wish I could say it was all love and harmony, the reality was...We fought like we were back in high school again, over really stupid shit and right up to the very end! I guess all bands fight, the young and old alike, the great bands or the mediocre ones...That said, with the music finally released, we've all settled down and we've replaced all (most) of the bickering and negativity, with pride for our accomplishment...Us four old dudes actually got up off the couch and did something really cool! If by chance you've heard of my previous band Readymade Breakup [Yes, I have -- S.S.] I'd say TMF is in line with those powerpop types of sensibilities (Fountains of Wayne, Superdrag). Any help you could give in spreading the word would be greatly appreciated. Thank you for your time and consideration!
Most Sincerely,
Gay Elvis
Seriously, considering that I've been playing rock-and-roll with a bunch of high school friends from New Jersey off and on since I was a teenager too, I was predisposed to like these guys. Plus, when I hear the words Fountains of Wayne...well, you know.
Also -- Gay Elvis. I mean, I was a goner.
Anyway, as it turned out I actually genuinely dug these guys' music, which is great melodic/rockin' stuff that definitely lives up to their influences. And I think you'll dig them too.
Here's my favorite track...
...and you can read their complete and very amusing bio, listen to the rest of the EP, and download all of it over HERE.
Pretty inspirational, no?
Sniffle. Have I mentioned that some days I really love my phony-baloney job?
The brilliant and innovative lead guitarist of Moby Grape has passed. Damn.
I should add that the version of Miller's long-time showpiece above thoroughly pales by comparison with the unadorned (no horns or keyboards) live version I heard the Grape do in 1967, some several months before the album came out. (Grape afficianados, of which I number myself, have never forgiven producer David Rubinson for over-arranging just about everything on that record -- Wow -- in what one can only assume was a misguided attempt to follow in the footsteps of Sgt. Pepper.)
In any event, you can at least get an idea of Miller's astounding fret-work from the track. No wonder Led Zeppelin ripped them off -- from the same album -- so blatantly. (Hey, it's a legal thing -- I'm too depressed to tell the story, but just google Zep's "Since I've Been Loving You" and the Grape's "Never").
POSTSCRIPT: I should add that the pre-Grape Miller not only toiled in Bobby Fuller's touring band, but he played on the original pre-hit/demo version of "I Fought the Law."
And cooler than that it does not get, rock history-wise.
Kurt Cobain covers a beloved ballad by The Beatles?
I must admit, I hadn't ever heard that version until last weekend (on the sound system at my local Forest Hills watering hole).
But wow. That's clearly the work of a guy who's not in the best possible mood.
I mean, I don't want to say Cobain had a gift in that regard, per se. But it's pretty remarkable that he could make his own personal depression seem so utterly contagious. 😎
[I originally posted versions of this back in 2010(!) and 2019, but I'm re-upping it now because of its obvious relevance to recent events in Pennsylvania and Milwaukee.
I have also done a shitload of rewriting, and swapped in five new songs, just to demonstrate my Taylor Swift-ish work ethic. Enjoy! -- S.S.]
Well, well. It's the weekend, and you know what that means.
Yes, my Oriental manual catharsis manager girl Friday Fah Lo Suee and I will be travelling to...well, at this point, as long-time readers are doubtless aware, I was going to insert the traditional sort of lame topical political gag here, but it occurs to me I've already done it. And to be honest, the naked racism and misogyny being spewed by the substitute teacherJ.D. Vance wing of the Republican party in the last few days has been so utterly loathsome that my heart's just not in the job. Sorry.
In any case, posting by moi will be sporadic for a few days.
So on a hopefully much lighter note, in my absence, here's a fun project for you all to contemplate:
...BEST OR WORST POST-ELVIS POP/ROCK/SOUL/COUNTRY/HIP-HOP SONGS OR RECORDS THAT REFERENCE FIREARMS IN EITHER THE TITLE OR THE LYRIC!!!
Self-explanatory, so no arbitrary rules, but by firearms I mean the obvious, i.e. handguns, rifles, etc. In other words, if you try to sneak in something like Bruce Cockburn's otherwise quite splendid "If I Had a Rocket Launcher" I'll come to your house and make merciless fun of you.
And my totally top of my head Top Eight is/are:
8. KISS -- Love Gun
An embarassingly crappy song by an embarrassingly crappy band from an embarrassingly crappy album. And let's not even get into the fact that these mooks thought they were making a witty parody of the Sex Pistols.
Okay, it's a generation gap thing, I'll grant you. And, in fact, my Gen X colleague/friend Doug Brod has written a brilliant recent book actually making a plausible case for KISS being an actually important band. Let's just say that while I recommend you read it, I disagree with it on several profound levels.
7. Mission of Burmaa-- That's When I Reach for My Revolver
Yeah, it's a great song. Still, and I forgot who said it, but there comes a time in everybody's life when they look at their CD collection and realize that those three Mission of Burma discs are basically just taking up space.
6. Hackamore Brick -- Zip Gun Woman
From their 1971 cult album. These guys are supposed to be some kind of proto-something -- punk, powerpop, I don't know what -- and people whose opinions I respect actually like the record. All I know is, I pull it out once every year or two to see if it makes sense to me yet, and it never does.
5. Mike Daly and the Planets -- Kill a Clown (No, Not Really)
He's only kidding, folks. Heh.
4. Aerosmith -- Janie's Got a Gun
It may surprise you to learn that I think that this record's a fucking masterpiece on every level. I should also add that yes, I'm aware that people who came of age during those guys original 70s heyday prefer that incarnation of the band, but I think it's pretty obvious that the earlier Aerosomith couldn't possibly have written and performed anything as good as the above.
3. Eminem -- Darkness
I always thought he was kind of a putz, but jeebus -- apart from the over the top melodramatic gun shit, self-pitying much?
2. The Sevens -- Seven
Apocalyptic garage rock from the Rolling Stones of Switzerland. Actual gun shots -- a starter pistol, more specifically -- fired in real time in the studio, courtesy of producer Giorgio Moroder (in his pre-disco days, obviously).
And the Numero Uno ode to the joys of blowing stuff up real good simply has to be...
1. The Floor Models -- A Shot in the Dark
Okay, I'm aware there's no actual reference to guns in the lyric, but what a great freaking song anyway. And c'mon -- you just knew that was gonna be the one, right?
So okay, today -- once again -- we're going to celebrate brand new music by one of the greatest roots rock/punk/powerpop bands you might never have heard of. (Well, as I keep saying, if you were a sentient college kid down South in the 80s, you heard of them. And also if you're a longtime reader.)
In any event, I refer to the aforementioned up top (aux francais) White Animals, seen here today in an absolutely fab new group photo.
I mean seriously -- those bastids have aged better than anybody in their line of work has any right to. Wow.
But okay, let's bring things further up to date.
The short version: I've been a fan of these guys since I first saw them in 1978 -- as an acoustic duo doing Sixties classics at some low dive in Nashville -- while I was interviewing the great Marshall Chapman for the Magazine Formerly Known as Stereo Review. Later, as a four-piece, they went on to pretty much rule the 80s college rock party circuit down South, and as I've mentioned on numerous occasions, they were a ferocious live act (any band that shared a stage with them did so at their peril -- me and The Floor Models gave it a go on our home NYC ground, so I know what I'm talking about!) and true musical visionaries, whose ahead of its time mix of garage-punk energy, British Invasion song structures, and dub reggae soundscapes by way of Lee Perry(!) still sounds utterly fresh and contemporary. I should add that they were the first indie band to get their videos on MTV, which was a hugely amazing accomplishment at the time. Here's one of the clips in question (which should give you an idea of both their coolness quotient and their songwriting and performing chops). I should also add that they had the single most enormous live sound of any band I've ever witnessed anywhere at any time period.
Okay, cut to the present: These guys, who have reunited on several occasions since their New Wave heyday, went into the studio recently, and they exited with an absolutely world class new album -- the appropriately titled Star Time -- that not only does justice to their legacy but actually breaks some new artistic ground.
Here are my two favorite tracks, with commentary by the band's frontman, Dr.(!) Kevin Gray. First, the hilarious "In a Post-Apocalyptic World (Would You Be My Girl?)"...
Sometimes I write songs when I’m not trying to write a song. When pandemic era real estate prices were at their zenith, my wife and I sold our Nashville home and bought our dream house in Thomasville, GA, with a big yard and a pool. I was working in the back, pulling vines out of the tall Japanese Cheesewood hedge. I had that “this is too good to be true feeling”, and in my head I’m singing, ‘Have you heard the news today? Troubles are here, and more is on the way’. I yanked at more vines. ‘In a post-apocalyptic world, would you be my girl?’. I tugged at a really tough vine, and my shoulder was starting to hurt. ‘Love will matter more than ever’. I went inside and put the song down.
...and then the drop dead amazing "Man of Constant Dread," which takes a venerable American folk song and gives it the dub treatment I referred to above. Wow.
I suspect, of course, it was [the band's brilliant bassist Steve Boyd] who pushed for us to do this traditional song live. Originally titled “Farewell Song” it is over 100 years old, and lent itself perfectly to our Dread Beat swirl of psychedelic swamp guts, pounding drums [courtesy of Ray Crabtree], angel harmonies, and guitars, guitars, guitars. In my mind, it is the Rich Parks [the bands' guitarist] dream showcase, as he laid down multiple tracks that display his incredible virtuosity and taste, including a tribute track to the late Andy Gill [axe man for Gang of Four], the greatest guitarist who people too often forget about. Steve and I spent hours layering his guitars and other elements of this track and it is simply the best musical creation I’ve ever been a direct part of… so far!
Okay, that's as much of a teaser as I'm gonna give you. You can find out a little more about the Animals history and the circumstances behind the genesis of the new album over HERE.
More important, you can listen to the rest of the record and purchase the thing itself -- and WTF are you poltroons waiting for? -- over at the official website HERE!!!
From 2022, and the soundtrack to (season I episode 3 of) The Afterparty, please enjoy Ben Schwartz as annoying Millenial musical careerist Yasper and the melodically infectious and lyrically hilarious "Yeah Sure Whatever." ."
In case you haven't seen the show (and a certain Shady Dame of my acquaintance turned me on to it just last week) TAP is a sort of black comedy murder mystery set at a high school reunion (class of 2015) in Marin County. Each episode has a different character arc and a different visual and dramatic style (to my knowledge, the episode from whence the above song derives is the only one with a big musical number).
In any event, it's quite brilliantly written and often fall off your couch funny (it's worth seeing for the first episode Hall and Oates gag alone), although I should add that if -- like me -- you're not particularly nostalgic for your high school years, you may also find it a bit creepy and uncomfortably close to the bone.
In any event, "Yeah Sure Whatever" has had me singing it in the shower for several days now; if it isn't a fab gear example of contemporary power pop I don't know what is.
Oh, and the series is on Apple TV, for those who have.
"They'll make a sequel to A Star Is Born starring me!"
So the other day, to my utter astonishment, I happened to chance across (via the invaluable Internet Archive, which is the 21st century equivalent of the Library at Alexandria) a whole bunch of back issues of Video Review magazine.
The short version: VR was the second greatest consumer magazine ever (the first was, as longtime readers are doubtless aware, Stereo Review) that I was lucky enough to work for in the fullness of my youth. It was published from sometime in the late '70s till the early '90s; I was the managing editor for two years in the late '80s, a job I was manifestly unqualified for. But that's a story for another day.
Anyway, I hadn't seen any of the stuff I wrote for VR since forever, and I thought it might be fun to share a brief piece that's relevant on some level to the theme of this here blog.
So -- from the April 1990 issue, please enjoy my thoughts on...
By any reasonable standard, this is an exemplary career documentary on what is now the longest-lived successful band in rock history -- well-balanced, musically rich and visually fabulous. Of course, there’s no question the band deserves this kind of hagiographic treatment; nobody in rock ’n’ roll has a more impressive body of work. So, with one major (very major) caveat, 25 X 5 has to rate as the best archival rock program anybody’s come up with since The Compleat Beatles back in 1981.
Granted, the format here -— talking heads and performance clips -— is not exactly innovative. Individual band members and assorted associates are glimpsed reminiscing as footage of the band from 1964 to the present flashes by (most of the songs, alas, are truncated). Much of the footage, put together with apparently unlimited access to the band’s archives, will be unfamiliar even to hardcore fans, but it's usually so good and so unerringly chosen that you hardly notice. It’s all -— and I mean all — here, from long-unseen excerpts from the band’s performance on TV’s old Hollywood Palace (yes, the show on which Dean Martin famously made fun of them) to the Rock ’n’ Roll Circus special (Mick claims they never aired it because his performance was substandard and the clip bears him out), and even a legendary and actionable tour film (a/ka Cocksucker Blues).
As a bonus, the new interview segments are often a hoot. Charlie Watts, predictably, comes off as the sanest of the bunch, and the problematic points in the band’s history -- their relationship with manager Andrew Oldham and the drug problems of cofounder Brian Jones -- are dealt with unflinchingly, while the soundtrack audio, even when the source material is TV mono, is pretty great. From a technical and conceptual standpoint, then, 25 x 5 could hardly be bettered.
So what is the aforementioned caveat? Frankly, it’s that the band’s story gets less interesting at the same time as their music does. In other words, however admirable their 1978 Some Girls comeback songs or their recent live performances may be, still only an acolyte or revisionist historian could argue honestly that the Stones’ most vital days are not behind them, that the recent ‘‘A Rock and a Hard Place" (which closes the tape) is as epochal as a ’60s classic such as "The Last Time.” That is, admittedly, an unfair complaint, although it’s not as unfair as what most critics wish had happened -— that the Stones had gone down in a plane crash around 1972 and become unassailable legends, like Charlie Parker or Buddy Holly.
Still, this is a very long tape and while your interest may flag in its later segments, there’s guaranteed to be at least one moment here that will have you emitting a Mick Jaggeresque ‘‘Whoo!”. So it seems ultimately churlish to carp -- face it: you or I should be so cool after 25 years.
Not a bad piece, I think, and yes, a lot of stuff has changed since it was written.
And Hole E. Shit -- here's the documentary film in question, completely complete and in a VERY high quality transfer. I had no freaking idea.
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