Abate! In the Name of Love (1999)

 Not too long after Laura Nyro died last year, Greil Marcus wrote a column (in Interview, probably, or maybe I'm remembering one small section in something he wrote elsewhere) lampooning not so much Nyro herself but the writers who were treating her death as a major story on the order of Marvin Gaye's or, more recently, Dusty Springfield's. Nyro's death did register with me at the time, solely because she wrote the 5th Dimension's "Wedding Bell Blues," on my shortlist of greatest singles ever. She wrote some other moderately famous hit singles for other people, none of which comes anywhere close to "Wedding Bell Blues." I don't own and have never heard any of her own albums.

Marcus's assessment of Nyro's importance seemed brutal coming so soon after her death (within a few weeks, I recall), but--thank you, Alanis Morissette--I can appreciate his exasperation. Rightly or wrongly, Morissette has come to embody for me the preciousness and unwieldy crimes-against-syllabication that I've always associated with all those Nyro albums I've never heard, or with Dory Previn, a contemporary of hers I've never heard either. From John Swenson's entry on Previn in the first Rolling Stone record guide: "a talented and somewhat overbearing and verbose songwriter with a horrible voice." I wish I had owned the copyright on those words when Jagged Little Pill came out.

Morissette's current single, "Unsent," is the first thing she's done that I don't immediately switch off when it comes over the car radio. It's exceptionally pretty--not the first good melody she's written (there was "Ironic," for one), but the first that she doesn't at least half-ruin with her yelping and caterwauling. If I tune out the lyrics and treat it as background, I'll happily stay with "Unsent" all the way through. But oh those words...

Things are generally OK through verse number-one, the Dear Matthew verse. Alanis wants Matt to come visit her in California once he's finished with his current girlfriend. She wants to spend some time with him--actually, she's "open to spending time" with him. That's the first warning-bell: I've written before about how I like equivocation in pop music, but one of the many good things about the Stooges was that they never wrote a song called "I'm Open to Being Your Dog."

Next up is the Dear Jonathan verse, and that one's pretty safe too. "Whenever I think of the early '90s" is a great line. Whenever I think of the early '90s myself, I think of Right Said Fred, the dancing midget from Twin Peaks, and Juan Guzman's unlimited potential. I never knew Jonathan, else maybe I'd think of him too.

After that, all manner of writerly hell starts to break loose. In the Dear Terrance verse alone, there's "muchly," "emotionally available," "nurturing," "consummately," and the very un-Bo-Diddleyish "you were the best platform from which to jump beyond myself." I don't know if "muchly"'s an actual word or not, but it shouldn't be. As Winston Churchill famously said, that is the kind of nonsense up with which we needn't put.

Dear Marcus and Dear Lou are good for "charismatic," "spirituality," "tumultuous," and "whereabouts." There's nothing wrong with any of those words, but by this point I'm wondering whether Alanis should even be allowed to use "seriously," "because," or "looked." The song ends there and it's time to say goodbye. Here's your platform from which to jump, what's your hurry?

I'm sure there'll be more of this kind of thing from Morissette in the future, not less. With that in mind, I've made up a list of 75 words (I set out to come up with 100 but got tired) that I think she ought to work into her next few albums. Morissette's fondness for writing songs that are structured like lists has been pointed out by many, so a list of words meant for future list-songs seems appropriate. I've tried to stay within the realm of possibility, words that I sense Alanis wouldn't think twice about putting to music--I've avoided things like "diadromous" and "pseudepigraphon" where I know her internal censor will do the right thing. These are instead words that you don't give a second thought to when you run up against them in print, even if very few you'd feel comfortable dropping into a conversation with your dad. Any one of them could stop a song dead. And that'll be the really fun thing about future Alanis singles, seeing how she navigates her way in and around and between words like the ones listed below. It'll be just like watching The Deer Hunter.

Dear Alanis: delineate, normative, perpetuity, sanguine, circuitous, environs, transgressive, henceforth, explicate, isometric, fiduciary, heuristic, imbue, lugubrious, jaundiced, calibrate, importune, vitiate, cavil, lacuna, interdisciplinary, daresay, untrammelled, titular, autodidactic, bibliophile, misbegotten, propensity, sententious, marginalize, firmament, gentrification, recidivist, excoriate, incremental, transmogrify, abate, umbrage, taciturn, fealty, oleaginous, nullify, interpolate, whichsoever, concomitant, syllogism, dissemble, expurgate, quiddity, augment, compendium, obfuscate, vertiginous, adduce, problematic, forfeiture, gainsay, hagiography, recalcitrant, notwithstanding, meritocracy, surfeit, neophyte, jocularity, ameliorate, polemicize, recuse (I'm not sure which scandal-trial it was that made me a big fan of "recuse"; Alanis could have one of those tumultuous relationships and recuse herself), myopic, colloquy, erudition, glean, paradigmatic, apostate, mollify, predilection.

I'm taking daily-double bets on "prediliction"/"propensity": somewhere along the way, Alanis will dismiss someone from her life because of his predilictions or propensities. "Reciprocity" would have been on the list, but Lauryn Hill got there first.

(Originally published in Popped.)

Going to a Go-Go: Wild Palms' Good Vibrations (1999; w/Scott Woods)

There's all sorts of talk these days about how weird television is getting as the century comes to a close, and the recent ballyhoo surrounding Millenium would suggest that the medium is undergoing if not a revolutionary shift in mass consciousness (paranoia is in), then certainly a transformation in style. As someone who has yet to watch a single episode of X-Files, I can't say for sure where--or even if--Wild Palms (the 1993 ABC miniseries, created by Bruce Wagner) fits into the recent spate of prime time eereality and crackpot conspiracy. If David Lynch's Twin Peaks can be likened to Elvis in that (to paraphrase Peter Guralnick) "the world was not prepared for it," then Wild Palms can, and indeed should, be considered the Beatles in that it was (to paraphrase Greil Marcus) "at its best, the best." In other words, Twin Peaks may have opened the door to TV surrealism (really, it's been there all along, Lynch just brought it to the surface), but Wild Palms struck an even truer chord, adding more passion and (literally in this case) musicality to the original explosion. (Interestingly, Lynch is fixated on '50s domesticity and 'normality,' while Wagner's vision explodes like a potent tablet of LSD.)

The analogy falls apart, of course, on a cultural level: Twin Peaks was a certifiable television classic--the first phenomenon of the new phenomena. The bizarre saga of Laura Palmer may have lost both its audience and its direction as the weeks passed on, but that in itself became part of the phenomenon--it created its own backlash. Wild Palms, on the other hand, was a mass failure: despite Oliver Stone's name on the credits as Executive Producer and a frenzied publicity campaign, almost no one I know watched it; a few people tried but didn't make it to the end of the first episode. As one friend put it, "all that stuff about rhinos--it looked pretty silly to me." I predict that within a few years Wild Palms will be hailed as the great work of art that it is, and become a hugely popular cult item. If you missed the series on television, you'd be wise to track down a copy on video--not for the latter reason, but for the former. (You might want to supplement your viewing with The Wild Palms Reader, which is probably difficult to find but well worth the search as a host of writers and artists--from Bruce Sterling to Spain Rodriguez to E. Howard Hunt to Lemmy of Motorhead--tie up some of the mini-series' loose ends, and typically add all sorts of new twists and mysteries.)

Set in Los Angeles in the year 2007, Wagner's creation is as notable for what it leaves out as for what it puts in. This is not a Los Angeles populated by people in shiny silver space suits or the war-torn rags of Blade Runner. Instead, the world bears an unsettling resemblance to the one we live in now; if anything, it takes us back a few decades, as most of the inhabitants listen to the Beach Boys and drive sleek '60s replicas (if one of the things you enjoy about watching older films are the trippy-looking automobiles of yesteryear, Palms is a feast for the eyes).

Broken down in the simplest terms, the story centres around two warring factions, the 'Fathers' and the 'Friends.' The Fathers are led by Senator Anton Kreutzer (Robert Loggia), who also owns Channel 3, a technologically dazzling propaganda factory. Kreutzer's ultimate goal is to invade the dreams of the entire population through virtual reality; in the words of his mistress, Paige Katz, "the Senator wants to kick-start himself into the cosmos." The Friends are an underground organization determined to keep their knowledge of the new technology out of the Senator's hands, and as things heat up they pledge to destroy the Senator and his network altogether. Harry Wyckoff (James Belushi), a lawyer hired by Senator Kreutzer, is the confused, well-meaning wildcard, the man in possession (though he doesn't know it) of the much sought-after Go-chip, the missing link in the Senator's bid to be immortal, "like Jesus."

I'd need at least another 1,000 words of your time to do Wild Palms' multilevelled story any justice at all, but like any great viewing experience, the series has much more to offer than a good--albeit confusing in spots--plot. (I refrain from using the word 'cinematic' instead of 'viewing,' though it wouldn't be a misuse. While the program does have the sweep and epic grandeur of a motion picture, part of its charm is in its made-for-TV-ness. In fact, when watching the video release of Wild Palms, I found it a bit disconcerting, as certain scenes weren't followed by a station break.) There are scores of memorable characters and performances (even the missteps in this respect are interesting), gorgeously streamlined photography, frightening special effects, plenty of violence (often psychological) which is hard to watch and even harder to ignore, dialogue that can only properly be described as poetry (forget all the stuffy associations you may have with that word--the script is a hoot), an overall hellish vision of the non-world we already sort-of inhabit (and certainly seem headed towards), and a wonderful rock and roll soundtrack.

It is with the latter that I thought it most appropriate to go in depth here, so I asked Phil Dellio to join me in reviewing a few of Wild Palms' more significant musical moments. (S.W.)

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The Supremes, "Love Child"

It's midway into the second night, and thus far pop music has only lurked around the edges of Wild Palms: snatches of the Zombies and Lou Christie, people trading offhanded quotes from the Beatles and Bob Dylan, two middle-aged housewives dancing to Don Gardner & Dee Dee Ford's "I Need Your Loving" while their husbands huddle in the foreground and plot corporate strategy. "Love Child"'s appearance is the first indication that something more adventurous might start to take shape. After Harry discovers the Wild Palms symbol on his hand--he screams out to Grace as the Wyckoff children, in sinister Village Of the Damned/Diane Arbus formation, watch silently--there's a cut to Senator Kreutzer lounging around poolside, absorbed in a holographic image of three Japanese women lip-synching the Supremes song. The women are stunning, done up vintage Supremes-style in sequined gowns and luxuriant bouffants, and they're shot like go-go dancers in an old Laugh-In party scene, all sectional body shots and subliminal jigsaw editing. The Supremes have never looked or sounded more erotic; they make great holograms, which (a good joke whether intentional or not) is kind of what the Supremes were anyway. That "Love Child" was actually an autobiographical tale of poverty and deprivation--a girl-group protest song--only makes the displacement all the more powerful. (P.D.)

The 5th Dimension, "Wedding Bell Blues"

 "I'm gonna put the tape on now," Kreutzer whispers to Paige Katz (Kim Cattrall) as he starts to seduce her--"Do you mind?" Publically and privately, Senator Kreutzer is impotent without images. So up comes the 5th Dimension on the soundtrack, accompanied by another dancing hologram to help the Senator along. The use of "Wedding Bell Blues" is not incidental, as it's a song that expresses something of the exasperation felt by Paige--ecstatic and bittersweet coming from Marilyn McCoo, closer to revulsion in Paige's case. But it's not enough, it's still not happening for Kreutzer, so he breaks out the Mimezine--he needs as much help as he can get. Paige storms out, leaving the Senator and his hologram to conduct their affairs in private. (P.D.)

The Animals, "House of the Rising Sun"

 The rescue of Chickie Levitt, and also the rescue of "House of the Rising Sun": no matter how many thousands of times you've heard it--the song was all but dead for me before Wild Palms--all the urgency and foreboding that you first heard as a kid is here restored full force. As far as Chickie goes, I'd be lying if I said I fully understood why it's so important for the Friends to get him away from the Fathers and down to the beach so he can die; by this point, the story has more or less been lost to me and I'm just enjoying the all-around weirdness. The Fathers think Chickie has the Go-chip, it's really in Japan with Ushio, unless Ushio has secretly implanted it in Harry's hand, in which case why was Harry dreaming about rhinos all along?...Well, I'm sure it can all be logically mapped out on paper. In any event, the song combines with a whirlwind barrage of falling bodies (I love the shot of Stitch getting machine-gunned down as the rescue van starts to pull away) and Mimizine-induced cathedrals to make it seem as if the fate of the entire world hinges on getting Chickie to the beach. It's like an apocalyptic, guerrilla-style reprise of Midnight Cowboy's last few minutes. (P.D.)

The Beach Boys' "In My Room" and Bob Dylan's "All Along the Watchtower" as performed by Chap Starfall

Starfall, a cheesy, over-the-hill lounge act played with bug-eyed, crooning delight by Robert Morse--kind of Ian Dury goes to Vegas--is one of my favourite second-string Palms characters. It's entirely fitting that in his two finest performances, it is not actually him we're watching, but rather, his holographic image. The Beach Boys scene takes place in a nightclub in Kyoto, where Paige, Harry, Ushio (the Japanese guru of synthiotics, nemesis to the Senator) and his entourage have gathered, presumably to strike a deal on the Go-chip. As Ushio (an aging dignitary, played a little bit like Khigh Dhiegh's jovial Chinese Communist in The Manchurian Candidate) enters the scene, he peers over to Starfall crooning the most perfect of all Beach Boys' ballads, nods, cracks a big grin and says, "Ahhh--Brian Wilson. Terrific!" The song continues, but negotiations quickly break down and Ushio and crew leave the two Americans in the lurch--though not without rubbing some irony in the visitor's faces: "And now, in my room, that is where I must go. The Beach Boys sure had it right!" he giggles. True enough, Brian Wilson did have it right, for "in my room" is EXACTLY where the Senator (and Ushio too? here's where I get confused) would like the entire population to be, and via the technology in existence, he already has most of them there.

"All Along the Watchtower" follows what might be the series' most harrowing sequence, so the stately supper club rendition of "there must be some way out of here" feels like a tonic; that is, until you realize that Mr. Karaoke just had his own fist stuffed down his throat a few moments ago. Still, it's hard not to concur with Tabba Schwartzkopf (Bebe Neuwirth) when she says of Chap, "I hate to admit it, but I like him SO much better since he died. That posthumous quality really gives me the shivers." In a way that Bob Dylan's version doesn't and Jimi Hendrix's only begins to, she might have added. (S.W.)

The Rolling Stones, "Gimme Shelter"

This contains what might be the finest bit of photography in the series. It is the wedding of Kreutzer and his longtime mistress, Paige Katz, and as the guests watch and marvel over a holographic image of the newlyweds dancing (an "instant relive" of a step that took place only minutes ago), the camera glides over to Paige, attired in a long, red gown, alone, motionless, and utterly sickened at her betrayal (not just of Harry, but of herself), via her involvement with the Senator. Phil disagrees with me when I say there's some of Scorsese's touch in Wild Palms, but the only pop-in-the-movies moment I can think of that's as graceful and foreboding is when the camera descends upon Robert De Niro during "Sunshine Of Your Love" (in GoodFellas). (It should be noted that part of the beauty of this scene is that it comes out of another good--but entirely different--song, Irving Berlin's '30s depression number, "Let's Face the Music and Dance," performed by Starfall. The cut from one song to the other is as powerful aurally as it is visually.)

 Oddly enough, "Gimmie Shelter" shows up later on the soundtrack (perhaps as a clever in-joke--instant relive all over again?), this time as accompaniment to a long shot of the Wilderzone, more or less a black-market crack ghetto, where tragically addicted mime-heads like Tommy Laszlo (Ernie Hudson) get fixed up with small vials of reality-poisoning. The scene culminates in Tommy's vivid (recurring) hallucination of a cathedral tower with loud, ringing church bells that eventually smother the Stones' song. (S.W.)

The Rolling Stones, "No Expectations"

The exquisite slide playing that makes "No Expectations" one of the prettiest of Rolling Stones songs here serves as perfect accompaniment to Interrogation-by-Mimezine (following Death-by-Mimezine and Orgasm-by-Mimezine earlier in the film). The result is an inspired bit of druggy screen surrealism, as pleasurable in its way as the brainwashing scenes in The Manchurian Candidate or Mia Farrow's impregnation in Rosemary's Baby, encompassing both Wild Palms' funniest line ("Something's weird...", Harry's shrewd appraisal of the situation as his recently-dead wife cheerfully describes to him her annoying little flesh wound) and its single scariest image (Harry's long-dead father headbutting him in the pool). Harry emerges on the other side as a simpering basket case--they took him to the station, they put him on the train, he's got no inclination to pass through there again. (P.D.)

(Originally published in Popped.)

You Remember Merle, Don't You? (1999)

I don't know which I'd choose between The Godfather and The Godfather Part II. I used to think of them as a piece, then I started to develop a preference for the original, and now, after seeing Part II this summer and being over-whelmed by it as if for the first time, I'm not so sure anymore. I do know that I like seeing them back-to-back more than I do the chronologically reshuffled version (which loses some evocative transitions between generations), and that the qualitative gap between the first two films and Part III is greater than the gap between Part III and Meet the Stupids. Some notes on Part II:

Best single piece of acting: It's hard to know where to begin--from top to bottom, The Godfather Part II must have more great performances than any film ever made (if it doesn't, then only because The Godfather has more). My vote goes to John Cazale's breakdown scene when Michael interrogates and then disowns him. When Cazale blurts out "It's not the way I wanted it," he does this thing with his arms that borders on an epileptic seizure. My favorite acting through the years has almost always come from people who underplay, a perfect example being Pacino here or Hackman in The Conversation. Cazale's cathartic unburdening of Fredo's resentment towards Michael crosses a line into some place where most actors look silly.

Best tantrum from Michael: He has four, and they're all riveting. 1) When he orders his underlings inside the Corleone compound to keep his would-be assassins alive ("Did you hear me, Rocco?--alive"); 2) When he visits Pentangeli soon after ("In my bedroom, where my wife sleeps..."); 3) When Tom breaks the news about Kay's miscarriage ("Can't you give me a straight answer anymore?--I said, was it a boy?"); 4) When Michael gets the truth from Kay ("You won't take my children...You won't take my children").

Best tantrum from someone other than Michael: Either Pentangeli in his first meeting with Michael ("and there's not gonna be any trouble from me") or Roth's reaction to Michael asking who gave the order on Pentangeli ("because this...is the business...we've chosen").

Michael's scariest moment: It's not one of his tantrums; they make you sit bolt upright, but he's at his absolute most sinister when, as he embraces Fredo at their mother's funeral, he looks up slowly and makes eye contact with Rocco.

Senator Geary's best moment: G.D. Spradlin is just brilliant in Godfather II (he's almost as good in North Dallas Forty as Nick Nolte's coolly heartless coach). There's his comic mispronunciation of "Corleone" at the communion, his contemptuously correct pronunciation of the same later that day, the catatonic shock on his face when he wakes up beside the butchered showgirl, his phony magnanimity at the Senate hearings, pretty much every last line of his. I love it in the Cuba sequence when he whispers to Fredo about getting him one of those "redheaded little Yolandas."

Tom Hagen's best moment: Along with Godfather III's 900 other problems, the hole left by Robert Duvall's absence is incalculable. I think his greatest moment in The Godfather is the way he looks away from Tessio when he says, "Can't do it, Sally." In II I'd go with his affectionate farewell handshake with Pentangeli: "So long, Frankie Five Angels."

Pentangeli's best moment: To watch Godfather II is to fall in love with Pentangeli--he out-Clemenzas Clemenza, and with Michael and Tom reduced to empty shells through most of the film, he's the truest link to the spirit of the original. Easy choice: "Your father did business with Hyman Roth, your father respected Hyman Roth, but your father never trusted Hyman Roth--or his Sicilian messenger-boy, Johnny Ola."

Most shattering moment: Bookends: Michael's "You broke my heart, Fredo" kiss of death, brought full circle by his forgiving embrace of Fredo at Mama Corleone's funeral (see above).

Most powerful segue: The slow fade from the nine-year-old Vito sitting in his quarantined cell singing ("Vito Corleone, Ellis Island, 1901") to Anthony Corleone walking up the aisle at his communion 57 years later.

Pauses that last a lifetime: 1) Michael to Connie: "If you don't listen to me, Connie, and marry this man...you'll disappoint me." 2) Michael to Al Neri: "I don't want anything to happen to him [Fredo]...while my mother's still alive."

Best piece of violence: The violence in Part II is much less flashy (though no less effective) than the original's. The most startling moment for me is when young Vito puts the gun inside the already-dead Fanucci's mouth and takes one final shot.

Best historical allusion: There are at least two that stand out: 1) When Michael's being chauffeured through the streets of pre-revolution Cuba, besieged on all sides by kids banging on his car windows, there's a strong echo of Nixon's disastrous trip to Caracas in 1958; 2) The staging of Roth's assassination as he's escorted through the airport is clearly modelled on Ruby's assassination of Oswald.

Funniest line: Again, where to begin? Two that always get me: Michael's "He's been dying of the same heart attack for 30 years" line on Roth, and Connie's schlub boyfriend Merle--stupid, silly Merle--asking "Can I get a drink?" in Michael's office.

Three people to watch for: The easiest to pick out is Roger Corman as one of the senators on the investigatory panel--Corman was fairly well known when the film was made, so that counts as a cameo. More eye-opening are Harry Dean Stanton as one of Pentangeli's FBI bodyguards--he sits behind Pentangeli at the Senate hearings--and Danny Aiello as the Rosato brother who makes the attempt on Pentangeli inside the bar ("Michael Corleone says hello"). I'd seen the film probably 15 times before I picked out Aiello this year, more because of his voice than the shadowed view you get of him.

Who does Michael most resemble at the end of the film?: In Peter Biskind's excellent The Godfather Companion--from which I stole the format for this piece--there's an anecdote about how II's final scene was referred to on the set as "the Hitler scene," and how Coppola specifically thought of Michael in terms of Hitler. The film came out in 1974; to me, it's impossible not to see Michael as a kind of Final Days Nixon as he retreats further and further into himself (a parallel drawn by many). "I don't feel as if I have to 'destroy' everyone, Tom. Just my enemies."

What else came out in 1974?: Among films that I love, there was The Conversation, Chinatown, The Sugarland Express, and California Split; Badlands, Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, Thieves Like Us, Lenny, Harry and Tonto, and The Parallax View were also 1974, and Mean Streets, The Long Goodbye, and Serpico were late-73 releases that were either still in theatres or didn't really even get an opening until '74. Checking movie listings in those days must have been a lot like turning on the radio in 1965.

Woo-Hah! Best of 1997 (1998)

SONGS

1. "Peaches," Presidents of the United States of America: Perhaps my dumbest song-of-the-year ever. There's fake country-blues at the beginning, sublime power-pop at the end, and a part in the middle that I eventually learned to like almost as much as the other two. A thousand times better than the bad Stranglers song of the same name. Greg Brady once said that summer meant three things: peaches, girls, and there was something else I can't remember.

2. "Let's Get Down," Tony! Toni! Toné!: My biggest surprise of the year. I liked "Feels Good" from a few years ago, and after that there were a couple of blah hits that made me think I'd never take much notice of Tony Toni Toné again. The last thing I would have expected from such a group is a serene, almost cerebral (this is also my trance record of the year) getting-drunk song. It's about drinking in a way that I can understand, how I used to drink: close your eyes, everything's wonderful, look at those people over there, a disembodied hello, let it all wash over you. I'd contrast this with Leaving Las Vegas, which to me was overwrought nonsense I did not understand. I think there's a sample at the beginning from "Do You Wanna Get Funky," my trance record two years ago.

3. "Jack-Ass," Beck: I found it quite jarring to go back and listen to Them's original after hearing "Jack-Ass." I've had the Them compilation on Parrot with Lester Bangs's notes for years, and I doubt if I've played it twice through--it was definitely news to me that that's who I was hearing. "I Can Only Give You Everything" is the one song from that album I sometimes tape for people, so I did recognize the sample on "Devil's Haircut" right away. The executors of long-gone record companies must give bulk discounts on sample rights--I haven't heard Odelay, but Tom Jones must be on there somewhere.

4. "Walking Contradiction," Green Day: "My wallet's fat and so is my head"--you know, I think I used to work for that guy. I changed jobs, he was still there.

5. "Woo-Hah!!! Got You All in Check," Busta Rhymes

6. "Tres Deliquentes," Delinquent Habits: This is the fifth time I've liked this song: first it was called "Jump Around," then it went under names like "Insane in the Brain," "Phonkie Melodia," and "Saturday Nite Fever." Whoever wrote it is a modern-day Richard Berry.

7. "Pretty Noose," Soundgarden: The most bracing heavy metal I've heard since at least "Sweet Child o' Mine" (with which it shares a piercing bit of echo off the top, "alright-alright-alright-alright" taking the place of "cry-iii-iii-iii") and, for all I know, all the way back to "Black Dog" or "Whole Lotta Love." The sound of it hits me as a dozen different contradictory things at once: dense, clean, chaotic, beautiful, concise, brutal, just one big wash of drone and clang and swirl. Most of all, it has what "Sick as a Dog" and Husker Du's best songs had, the thing that Metallica's kind of heavy metal never has, and what I didn't think "Black Hole Sun" had, either--some chime to it, some Byrds. I play it in the car all the time, and it effects me the same way that this kind of music, at its best, has effected me ever since I was a teenager: I look out the window at everything that's going on--a man walking his dog, someone buying a paper, kids hanging around a store--and it all looks absurd and slightly surreal. The song becomes soundtrack music, slowing the world down and turning everything on its head.

8. "How Bizarre," OMC: Radio On has a contributor from New Zealand, Andrew Palmer, who sent in a review of this a couple of months before it started getting play here. Thanks to Andrew's review, I was laughing at OMC before I'd ever heard them: "For a couple of months everyone was saying 'How bizarre' at the slightest prompting. Someone would drop a pen on the floor and you'd say 'How bizarre.' They'd bend over to pick it up and you'd say 'How bizarre.'"

9. "Lady," D'Angelo

10. "Up to No Good," Porn Kings: This isn't really one of my 10 favourite songs of the year, I'm just trying to pretend I'm right up to date and livin' phat on the flippety-floppety. Otherwise I'd end up picking somebody dull and obvious like the Butthole Surfers or Keith Sweat or the Counting Crows. I've got enough of those people already. All year I'm on an Anita Bryant-like crusade with Chuck Eddy, harassing him about fibs and exaggerations; when I want to cheat on my own list, I cheat. I've heard "Up to No Good" twice--it had munchkin vocals and sounded vaguely criminal. On Electric Circus the one time, there was a close-up of a guy who'd apparently memorized all the words, but I'm sure it was an optical illusion.

 

VIDEOS

1. "Buona Sera," Louis Prima, in Big Night: Outside of "That Old Black Magic" and some childhood memories of The Jungle Book, I don't know Louis Prima at all. He was one of the heroes of Big Night, the one who wasn't there; best of all was the guy who stood in for him, lip-synching "Buona Sera" as he led everyone around the room in a primitive Macarena. Hey, Buona Sera.

2. "Homerpalooza" Simpsons episode: "Who's playing with the London Symphony Orchestra? C'mon people, somebody ordered the London Symphony Orchestra...possibly while high...Cypress Hill, I'm looking in your direction."

3. Scorpio Rising: I saw this for the first time last winter. It's an extreme example of how I think pop music should be used in movies--when a song is on, let it play and shape the film to the music. According to a biography of Kenneth Anger I read a few months later, the guy who played Scorpio never recovered from his phantom brush with fame. He spent the rest of his life trying to convince everyone he came into contact with that they should care that he'd been in this film.

4. "Do You Believe in Magic," Lovin' Spoonful, in I Shot Andy Warhol

Perfect counterpoint, but just as obviously the way it really was.

5. Godfather sightings: I'm almost positive that Corrado Gaipa (Don Tommasino in Part 1, Michael's wheelchair-bound mentor back in Italy) plays the old uncle in Big Night; there's no mistaking Alex Rocco in That Thing You Do!, especially since he's still doing Moe Greene 25 years later. I thought for sure Rocco was going to accuse one of the Wonders of banging secretaries two at a time.

6. Dian Fossey commercial for HBO: Speaking of which, this collection of gorillas lip-synching famous movie lines finishes dramatically: "I didn't know until this day that it was Barzini all along."

7. "Devil's Haircut," Beck: Two years ago, I mentioned that I thought "Pay No Mind" borrowed from Midnight Cowboy's theme music. Here's some more of the same: guy in a cowboy hat walking centre-frame through crowded city streets, boombox in hand (Jon Voight had to make do with a radio), lots of electronic advertising boards, right down to Beck almost getting hit by a car--"Beck's walkin' here, Beck's walkin' here!" The rest, all the surveillance stuff, comes from the "Sabotage" video, as does...

8. "Walking Contradiction," Green Day

9. "1979," Smashing Pumpkins

10. SCTV parody of Crash: Doesn't exist, of course, except in my mind (and probably won't make any sense to New Zealanders)--it's the one thing that could have redeemed such a solemnly preposterous film. Johnny LaRue heads the roving band of crash fetishists, with the badly mangled Woody Tobias Jr. its readymade love object (Tobias, Koteas, they even sound alike). There's a wild sex scene between Edith Prickley and Ed Grimley in the back of an overturned shuttle bus. Big Jim McBob and Billy Sol Hurok stand by the side of the road and cheer on every bit of mayhem and carnage. The film's in 3-D, but Count Floyd seems baffled as to what's so scary about it. Fifteen years later, Bobby Bittman releases ill-advised Crash Again remake.

(Originally published in Real Groove)

Rambling, Gambling Milli (1998)

 "I'm just as good a singer as Caruso... Have you heard me sing? Have you ever heard me sing?" --Bob Dylan, Don't Look Back (1966)

Seven years ago, when Milli Vanilli were still around and functioning as a not-group, Vanilli's Rob Pilatus made headlines when he told a Time reporter that his band was better than Bob Dylan--"any Bob Dylan," actually, which only confuses the issue, so let's forget about the "any" for a moment. A whole lot of people sure took righteous offence upon hearing of Rob's boast, but naturally nobody bothered to check if he was right. Well, I have, and he was--Milli Vanilli were probably better than Bob Dylan. Surprisingly, it's not even all that close.

I know, I know, apples and oranges. Milli Vanilli had just the one album to their credit, while Dylan's numbered well over 300 (with no one around to stop him from releasing any more), including 63 live sets, three famous folk-rock records, a lavishly packaged box set, and 42 LPs alone since he embraced and then discarded Christianity in the early '80s, at which time many of the people who were most outraged by Rob's honesty more or less forgot all about Bob Dylan. So bringing quantity and/or longevity into the equation is out of the question, and anyway I'm pretty sure that wasn't what Rob had in mind. The only fair way to compare them is to establish a point system, square off Girl You Know It's True against each and every Dylan album individually, and see who comes out on top. It's a system that's not flawless, granted, but it does yield results. It's a good system.

First, the raw data:

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1) Bob Dylan Albums That Are Better Than Girl You Know It's True:

The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan (1963), Bringing It All Back Home (1965), Highway 61 Revisited (1965), Blonde on Blonde (1966), John Wesley Harding (1968), Blood on the Tracks (1975), The Basement Tapes (1975)

2) Bob Dylan Albums That Are No Better But No Worse Than Girl You Know It's True:

Bob Dylan (1962), Another Side of Bob Dylan (1964), Nashville Skyline (1969), New Morning (1970), Desire (1976), Infidels (1983), World Gone Wrong (1993)

3) Bob Dylan Albums That Are Not As Good As Girl You Know It's True:

The Times They Are A-Changin' (1964), Self Portrait (1970), Pat Garret & Billy the Kid (1973), Dylan (1973), Planet Waves (1974), Hard Rain (1976), Street-Legal (1978), Bob Dylan at Budokan (1979), Slow Train Coming (1979), Saved (1980), Shot of Love (1981), Real Live (1984), Empire Burlesque (1985), Knocked Out Loaded (1986), Down in the Groove (1987), Dylan & the Dead (1988), Oh Mercy (1989), Under the Red Sky (1990), Good As I Been to You (1992)

4) Bob Dylan Albums That Can't Logically Be Compared To Girl You Know It's True:

Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits (1967), Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits Vol. II (1971), Before the Flood (1974), Biograph (1985), The Bootleg Series Vol. 1 (1991), Greatest Hits Vol. III (1994), MTV Unplugged (1995)

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Obviously there's some subjectivity at work there on my behalf, but if anything I'm being lenient—most of the ties I'd personally give to Milli Vanilli, but I've deferred to conventional wisdom that says records like New Morning and World Gone Wrong are prominent fixtures within Dylan's output. I want to take great care not to throw the system out of whack with any spurious data.

If we closed the books right now, Milli Vanilli would emerge a rather easy 19-7 victor, with seven ties and seven no-decisions rendered null and void. Sounds reasonable enough to me, but the numbers still need a little work, namely some historical and geographical context. Here's my thinking: since it's 1997, which means that Highway 61 Revisited is closer to the Andrews Sisters than we are now to Highway 61 (a benign way of saying that it's what you might call yesterday's news), it only seems fair to weight each individual match-up along a sliding scale that awards extra points to more recent recordings, thus placing a premium on contemporaneity. Let's say we give two points to the winner when comparing Girl You Know It's True to a Dylan album recorded since 1980; one-and-a-half points for a win in the '70s; and a single point only to those contests waged in the '60s, all but one of which shows a Bob Dylan that people insist on confusing with the author of "Changing of the Guards" to be on equal footing with and usually better than Milli Vanilli. Retabulated, Milli Vanilli's line now reads (10 x 2) + (8 x 1.5) + (1 x 1); Dylan's, (0 x 2) + (2 x 1.5) + (5 x 1). New score: Milli Vanilli - 33, Bob Dylan - 8.

That's more like it. There's still one more important thing to factor in, though, what baseball analyst Bill James (the inspiration for this study) calls a "park adjustment." This is the way to neutralize the conditions under which like tasks are performed in unlike environs, which in James's field means accounting for the fact that it's much easier for Dante Bichette to do his hitting in Coors Field than it is for Mike Piazza to do his in Dodger Stadium. For our own purposes, we know that Bob Dylan was born in Hibbing, Minnesota, a state that besides housing such formidable hitters as Tony Oliva, Harmon Killebrew, Rod Carew, Kent Hrbek, Kirby Puckett, and Chuck Knoblauch, is also home to Prince, Husker Du, the Replacements, Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis, the Jets, the Suicide Commandos, Ta Mara & the Seen, all the way down to Soul Asylum and many other lesser lights too numerous to mention. Milli Vanilli, of course, were from West Germany; although West Germany has given us some excellent film directors, and probably even a few pretty good baseball players, the only bands I can think of from across that way are Can, Silver Convention, and Einsturzende Neubauten--thanks guys! Clearly Minnesota's a lot more conducive to music-making than West Germany, and for this Milli Vanilli must be upgraded and Bob Dylan penalized. I propose park adjustments of 1.10 for Minnesota and 0.90 for West Germany, comparable to James's 1982 figures for the difference between Wrigley Field and the Astrodome, and really rather conservative when you consider you're dealing with a ratio of probably 100 Minnesotan bands for every West German counterpart. Thus adjusted, Milli Vanilli's score increases to 36.7 (33/0.90), while Dylan's drops to 7.3 (8/1.10). 36.7 to 7.3 in Milli Vanilli's favor--that's more than five times as good, and I still haven't mentioned the Band of the Hand soundtrack one way or the other. Which reminds me: even if you're adamant that Dylan deserves credit for side projects like the Traveling Wilburys and "Sun City"--even if you're Adam Ant himself--you'd better balance them off with Renaldo & Clara, "We Are the World," and other equally stellar achievements. They all even out in the end, believe me.

Now that we've finished the research part of our study, maybe someone can explain something to me. Shortly before Rob's Time interview was published, Public Enemy's Professor Griff emerged from some research of his own to declare that Jews were responsible for the majority of wickedness that goes on in the world, an ingenious idea that you and I and the entire cast of Toy Story know isn't true. Most pop critics came down hard on Griff, but not all of them; some strained and serpentined and jumped through hoops to rationalize Griff's bombshell, saying at the time that he must have been misquoted, or he's only citing secondhand sources, or he's just trying to "start a dialogue" (I've always loved that phrase), or he's engaging in a little harmless hype (you know, as in "Don't Believe the--"), or it doesn't really matter what Griff says because he's not a key member of Public Enemy, or the favourite riposte of all, "What about 'One in a Million'! What about 'One in a Million'! What about 'One in a Million'!" This was chewed around ad nauseum in the media for the next few months, with everyone taking turns flogging a dead horse in much the same way I am now, until finally PE's public relations firm in the early '90s, Spin magazine, put the matter to rest by walking Griff through an interview in their 5th Anniversary Issue in which the contrite Professor announced he was wrong, Jews weren't to blame for nuclear warfare and The Pat Sajak Show--and if you wanted to find out more you needed to check out his new solo album, available in better record stores everywhere.

Fair enough--I always held Tom Scott and Dan Miller responsible for what was wrong with The Pat Sajak Show, and I'm pretty sure both of them were as Gentile as could be. Anyway, practically minutes before the Griff matter was resolved, Rob fires off his polemic--which, I hasten to remind you, I've just proven to be true--and everybody save me starts SCREAMING BLOODY MURDER. Have pop critics got their priorities straight, or what? The backlash was so swift and furious that Rob's basically intimidated into the old "I've been misquoted" panacea, but of course no one believes him, and who cares anyway since he has nothing to apologize for. Maybe Rob should have said that Milli Vanilli were less wicked than Bob Dylan, footnoting the as-yet-unrepentant Griff for support, and he would have been the recipient of at least scattered sympathy. Happily the story died quickly, else we might have been treated to such moving acts of penance as Milli Vanilli Sings the Bob Dylan Songbook, or maybe a mea culpa from Rob in Spin's 10^th Anniversary Issue: "I was wrong; after listening to Bob Dylan at Budokan numerous times, I want to go on record here and now as saying it's really quite special."

C'mon people, no one said Milli Vanilli were better than the Jefferson Airplane, or Dionne Warwick, or Frankie Lymon & the Teenagers, claims that any one of which would have been ridiculous (I ran each through the system just to make sure). Rob simply made a realistic appraisal of his band as being better than someone who I'm sure welcomed the free publicity at the time.

This is the first in a series of 12 Rock 'n' Roll Abstracts.  Next month: the Notorious B.I.G. vs. Petula Clark.

(Originally published in Throat Culture)

Le Conseil des Une (2000)

I was looking over some archived e-mail and came across three old film...well, they're too short to be called reviews; let's call them blurbs, instead. I Shot Andy Warhol and Vertigo were published in Real Groove, a mid-late '90s New Zealand publication (yes, my North American freelance career was a spectacular success) edited by Andrew Palmer, an old Radio On contributor; Almost Famous was written for but ultimately never used in Blender, not too long after they started up. It wasn't exactly rejected--the details are a little hazy now, other than the whole episode was quite exasperating. It's long ago enough now to say that after two rewrites, I still wasn't clear what they wanted, and I'm pretty sure the editor was even less clear. (Possibly something on the order of "This is the most important film since Citizen Kane"--like I say, I'm not sure.) Things worked out in the end: the magazine folded a decade later, all due to bad karma over its mistreatment of me.

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The best moment in Mary Harron's I Shot Andy Warhol is a quiet one: as the Lovin' Spoonful's "Do You Believe in Magic" plays, Valerie Solanas (Lili Taylor) and Andy Warhol (Jared Harris) stare warily at each other across a roomful of frugging and monkeying Factory-types. It's Warhol's party and Warhol's world; he's peering out as Solanas peers in, and neither one can make sense of the other. The gulf between them reminded me of Dustin Hoffman's mismatched presence at Midnight Cowboy's Factory-styled party, appropriate because Taylor sometimes seems to closely model her portrayal of Solanas on Hoffman's Ratso Rizzo. When she finally commits the movie's title act, it's not really convincing as presented; up to that point, she seems like someone who's more disdainfully amused by men than actually enraged by them. Not carrying around a lot of female rage myself, this basic hollowness wasn't a big problem for me. There's a good feeling throughout for period atmosphere, lots of great music used intelligently (other highlights are "Walk On By," "Grazing in the Grass," Blue Cheer and the MC5, and a pretty version of "I'll Keep It With Mine" by Bettie Serveert), and two performances I'll remember longer than the more acclaimed work by Taylor and Stephen Dorff (as Candy Darling). Michael Imperioli, my favourite actor right now, is perfectly nasty as Ondine, and Harris's Warhol is sublime. Looking over Solanas's S.C.U.M. Manifesto, he gushes, "Oh, gee, did you type this yourself? You should come type for us." You just know that it wouldn't have mattered if it had been the Bible or the phone book, his reaction would have been identical.

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Many critics regard Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo (originally released in 1958) as one of the greatest films ever made--enough of them that it has placed in the Top Ten of the last two Sight and Sound polls to determine that very thing (7th in 1982's poll, 4th in 1992's). Vertigo's standing is so immense at this point, it's hard to explain adequately in 300 words why I don't care for it much. I've seen the film  numerous times, including this new restored print, and I've never had much of a response beyond detached appreciation for its uniqueness and technical audacity. I prefer Rear Window by a wide margin, and I'm also a bigger fan of Psycho and Shadow of a Doubt. Above all else, Vertigo is an extremely cold film, even by Hitchcock's austere standards; if it's a great romance, it's a great romance in the way that Silence of the Lambs is, which is to say don't expect Roman Holiday. An accepted truism about the film is that Scottie's (James Stewart) obsessive makeover of Judy (Kim Novak) into "Madeleine" closely parallels Hitchcock's own lifelong search for his perfect blonde leading lady (Madeleine Carroll, Grace Kelly, Novak, Eva Marie Saint, Tippie Hedren). Seems like a reasonable interpretation, but unless you can relate on a personal level (I can't), you have to care deeply about Hitchock's neuroses to find much reward in that direction. I've never liked Jimmy Stewart less, and it doesn't matter to me that he's not supposed to be likeable. The vertiginous reverse-tracking is spectacular, and I love the dream sequence and Bernard Herrmann's score. See Vertigo, of course, and if you find yourself overwhelmed, you won't have to look far for more appreciative readings than this one.

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If you watch Cameron Crowe's Almost Famous as a music fan first and a filmgoer second, you'll get caught up in the swirl and come away happy. Crowe's autobiographical look back at his apprenticeship as Rolling Stone's resident kid rock critic is a lively period piece with an eyewitness's insights into the essential absurdity of his former vocation. It's less successful as a Casablanca-style love triangle and a cautionary tale about celebrity-driven journalism, but all of that is window dressing, there if you need it. I didn't.

Billy Crudup's Russell Hammond, "guitarist with mystique" for fictitious '70s band Stillwater, is central to Almost Famous's period authenticity. Crudup currently owns the copyright on sleepy-eyed easy riders--a dead ringer for James Taylor circa 1971, he's like Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Free Bird" made flesh. Kate Hudson (groupie Penny Lane) and Patrick Fugit (Crowe's alter-ego William, assigned to cover Stillwater on tour) also inhabit the era comfortably, and Crowe's lovingly programmed soundtrack unerringly avoids the obvious: "Misty Mountain Hop" instead of "Stairway to Heaven," "Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere" rather than "Heart of Gold," "Tiny Dancer" in lieu of "Your Song."

"They are not your friends," Philip Seymour Hoffman as Lester Bangs counsels William about Stillwater; "Be truthful and merciless." But Crowe is too genial a director to heed the same advice, so he goes mild on the expose and saves his deepest feelings for scenes like William flipping though a pile of his older sister's albums. Anyone who grew up spending every last dollar on vinyl records (usually, as with William's sister, furtively snuck into the house under mom's gaze) will feel a pang of recognition as a wide-eyed William slowly passes his hand across Hendrix's Axis: Bold as Love and Cream's Wheels of Fire. Basically, Crowe has cashed his blank cheque from Jerry Maguire, taken a step back, and tried to tell his own story with Almost Famous. For that--and notwithstanding the film's occasional overreach--I think he deserves all the credit in the world.

(I Shot Andy Warhol and Vertigo reviews originally published in Real Groove)