Video killed, etc

One of the great revelations I have ever read about the continual watchability of the film “A Hard Day’s Night” is the cinematography’s kinetics. The shots are simply average, but there is something captured in the camera in the way the film itself moves, or that it never stops. The film has a fluidity that is jumpy, and by that basic statement, it could be called simplistic. But there is something in the film’s technique that, while it has become the Rosetta for music videos, is almost impossible to match or re-fabricate. It’s one of those happy accidents of film, but more so than most, the film owes as much to the direction as it does to the stars. “A Hard Day’s Night” is revered just as much as a great film as it is a testament to the Beatles themselves.

You could argue that “A Hard Day’s Night” was the first music video. Semantics about the origins aside, there is no doubt it was at one of the key jumps in the evolution of the medium (or submedium). It not just the performance, it was the motion of the whole movie that cemented the videos Eisenstein-ian look. It is also one of the most difficult things in film to recreate, and only a handful of people can make good videos and an even smaller minority can make great ones. Spielberg would make a video that would be drawn out in drama, huge in action sequences and somehow about divorce; Scorsese would have masterful lighting, somehow be about ordinary people going south, and be reminiscent of another era; and both would likely be terrible. But somehow, hacks like Michael Bay and Brett Ratner can make fantastic videos. There are three that have crossed over of quality that I can think of off hand, Michel Gondry, Spike Jonze, and David Fincher.
It’s the motion though, whether in edits, tracks, zooms, tilts, or pans, that not only has to be done, it has to be done in a precise matter. It is a grammar to a dialect so strict that more than a few missteps will render the piece incomprehensible. When I worked in development, this fact was beyond obvious to anyone who watched MTV growing up. Good or bad, the assimilation of the younger viewing culture to a systematic formula is ingrained absolute. I was paired next to a guy of my age vs. a group of older industry guys, and while they were split within themselves, the unity in my contemporary and me was 100%. We would agree without even looking at each other. Sometimes it was a lingering static shot in the middle of the song; other times it was an impure recreation of the jumping cuts that seemed arrhythmic but we picked up on it 10 times out of 10.

Examples, both of low, middle, and highbrow:

Van Halen: Hot For Teacher – fast, ridiculous, and the opposite of subtle in it’s approach. Still it’s endlessly watchable in both the subject matter and the way the teachers don’t just dance, they launch with the music.
Verdict: A shining example of the form. Even goofy material is compelling.

Alanis Morrisette: Thank You--Long sometimes static shots of her (naked, which hurts) too many blurring techniques of the camera that would drive even Janus Kaminski nuts. And the naked thing.
Verdict: too slow and plodding. Boring.

Radiohead: Knives Out – Constantly spinning, a frame jammed with ideas that match the song (perversion of beauty). It is moving constantly, but it is jittery to a point of near distraction, even if intentional.
Verdict: Accomplished, but boring. Too many ideas jammed into one video that makes a mash of an experience. Unwatchable for those who are not fans, and as I big fan, I still would rather watch other videos.

Overall verdict: Hot for Teacher is the best video, simply because it is interesting (you could call it fun or campy, but I’d pick this one while flipping any day). The reason is in the way the video moves and does so in a non-distracting matter. It could be called frenetic by the non music video buff, but Hot For Teacher’s video will survive well past the vinyl is was pressed on.

Aberrant from every other media form, videos can be great even if the source material is less than good or even terrible. While I could example Petey Pablo’s “How do you like it” (or the one where he lists off women’s names) as a video that is compelling even on mute, it’s only so because of that girl with the big tracts of land. Going back to Alanis, Ironic is not a good song, per se. Sure, it has a great hook, but anyone with a sixth grade education knows that the definition of ironic couldn’t be further from her description. But the video, with its four separate Alanis-es and their travel in the car, is fantastic. From the opening shot of Alanis as a lone hitchhiker to the giddiness of the quartet in the car trip, it’s a fun four or so minutes, and in all fairness, it made the song better. Something about the match of the cold atmosphere with the subject matter as well as the poppy elation and the bouncing singers compliments and raises both to higher levels in both acceptance and, even if a perceived, quality.
But all of these is leading to something I hope will be a running feature, a music video review. Basically, whenever I do one, look back to this article. I’ll of course pimp it later with each installment, but do it yourself anyway.

Mr. Brightside—The Killers. Eric Roberts!!! A performance and a concept video (about performers) that works seamlessly and sublimely!!! An A+ performance from a blonde with a wig X-tina Aguilera would eschew and enough white makeup to disguise Eddie Murphy again, if he ever wants to go back to comedy and redo a great skit. A Blue faced chick who sticks out her tongue to lead in to a perfect dissolve to a Moulin Rouge skyline.
This video sold me on the Killers, at least to the level of not writing them off entirely due to the blur rip-off somebody told me. The director, Sophie Muller, is able to create an atmosphere of a backstage acting troupe complete with infidelities and a creepy overlord/manager, that seems not only viable to those who have ever been in theater, but familiar to those who have not. There are fantastic details included, a mass of characters lounging, sneaking behind the curtain to make out, a hot girl who is the center of the production and unanimous attention.
How the Killers got there though, is anyone’s guess. If you can give me a legitimate reason why a 21st century 80’s retro rock group is hanging out back stage, I’m all ears. But not only are they playing in the video, they are performing to the camera. The lead singer does a great job of selling the lyrics (like the 2nd refrain of “it was only a kiss”). The band as well, with the drummer’s game playing, (not only is he look like he is doing it, he acts disenchanted) and the guitarist actually putting effort into playing the axe. While this should be uniform for all bands in videos, it is notable because it seems realistic.
The video is compelling in it’s macro and micro levels. The fleeting loves feel romantic and it drives the narrative. It’s not just enough that Eric Roberts is in it, it’s that he is biting into apples, winning mercilessly at checkers (it’s hard to lose when YOU NEVER MOVE YOUR BACK ROW!!!!), and he’s wearing a smoking jacket! Yes, the Eric Roberts that is brother to Julia and star of Stiletto, one of the 1000 best porno’s posing as dramas.

Verdict: A great video that matches the song, works as a piece on its own (i.e. you can watch it on mute), and makes you listen to the song on the radio outside of the video.

Grade: A.

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C'est Combien?

Dystopia used to be hypothetical, and i used to be cute enough to get away with it! I guess some things never change. The NY Post was right - if you're gonna blow lines of your Miata keys in the bathroom at Concorde, kick down rails for the gals behind you who are waiting to pee... it's the right thing to do. Okay, here we go girls, Vent Session au marché.

• All women are gay, but most are still in the closet.
  
  
• How is it that the same escorts have been advertising in the local rags since the early ‘90s and yet the age listed in their ads never changes?
  
  
• The guy online asked to buy tina from you not because you are puerto rican, but because so many people online do crystal meth. Everything is not about race.
  
  
• To the older guy with the hot Latino girlfriend: Enjoy her now because soon enough “ugly” won’t be in style, and I’ll be able to get on that!
  
  
• To the black women who go to primarily white bars and roll your
  eyes at the sight of another black woman: What’s that about?
  
  
• When a man does something bad, it reflects on all men. When he does something good, it reflects only on himself. When a gal does something good, it reflects on all women. When she does something bad, we don’t talk about it at all.
  
  
• Why is it that hardly any bars are wheelchair accessible?

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Primal

Primal/ Primitive/ Primordial
Scream/ Shout/ Superauditory

Since it came out, there are times when I think that the Keiser Chief’s “I predict a riot” is the best rock and roll song to come out in a while. There are however, far more times when I think that the song is overproduced and incomplete. It is however the former impulse that is tending to win out in my current debate, simply for the final chorus and the bridge that precedes it. It is not that this is new, almost every thing about the song, save the fantastic delivery of the chorus, seems rehashed.


Perhaps the greatest compliment and equal criticism of the song is that it doesn’t sound like it is a new song. It is good enough that I have confused it with something of the era of Sanidinista but seeing as it also is a new creation, I am not sure whether I like it because of feelings of familiarity or appreciation.
I do know, however, that the build is the highlight of the song. It’s not that I haven’t heard it before, Jethro Tull, Tool, Kansas, and I suppose most of prog rock has created their career out of massive musical builds. It is likely though, that I have not heard this trick in a while. From 3:05 of the song to 3:20 where the screams and guitars are going, I feel like Rock and Roll will once again rule.
It is in the rise and the build that rock and roll defines it’s role. The new age of pop is one of screaming familiarity and misplaced emotion (clearly I am biased), opposed to former artists like Cat Stevens (come back Yusuf!). And hip-hop is one of similar basic music but as with the pop, the point is ultimately reformulated to cater to the performance and swagger persona of the genre. On a beauty level, pop is the most awful perpetrator of streamlining the experience. Hip hop, in it’s actual live performance mode is the same, as both pop and hip hop have moved away from the performance of the music and more into the dreaded performance- as a persona -of the musician. One need to look no further than the crossover ratio of hip hop stars to movies like DMX or Ja Rule or pop singers from soaps (Jesse McCartney, Lindsay Lohan), to know that 99% of these artists are about music above all.
Can you blame them though? In terms of live intensity, I can think of only two bands outside of rock and roll that have a presence, OutKast and The Roots. Why are these two groups great live.
Simple answer: They play instruments. For some, getting the vibe of 50 cent or Nelly come out with a bunch of guys from the entourage to boost the vocals of the live show (and by boost I mean scream lyrics in the song at random moments) is a great experience. In person, this may can be an experience. From the sheer loudness to the crowd, sometimes the whole atmosphere can be a great experience. But there is a reason why no hip hop artist has released a live album of any stature. Even giving exception to battle records, these performances suck musically. And I do not mince words. The musical skill with the rapper at the forefront, is terrible. Biggie could barely speak his great prose on stage because of his girth and his terrific delivery became forced to keep up with the beat and the magic of the lyrics became drowned.
Even people like Pac, Nelly, or Ja, each of varying talent but all in fantastic shape, still couldn’t recreate their velvety delivery on stage. While my memory isn’t the best, the only live performance I truly enjoyed was LL on unplugged.
But the atmosphere of rap/ hip hop is something in itself, something that is reminiscent of the a quality of the best live albums of all time. My favorite live album is a complete aberrance to this (Bob Dylan’s Bootleg series 4), where the crowd is clearly antagonistic to the performer, and while this puts the album over the top (read the history or listen to it to find out why, I will only ruin the experience), for most live albums the crowd is key. When the audience is fully immersed and enjoying the music, it almost always makes the musicians play and sound better.
It may the artist wanting to reciprocate the love, or the fact that they know they aren’t playing to a bunch of D-bags who are only there because of free tickets, they may want to try harder. I mean, don’t we all work better when we feel appreciated? The great thing about live shows and about the best of live albums is that “vibe.” It is a slang word that I cannot come up with a decent synonym for due to the fact that there is something that happens when a band of adequate to great talent and the audience all seem to be collaborating in one similar emotion about the music. These are the experiences that we cherish as music fans. Sometimes it is that “I was there” feeling that can make a lesser band’s concert more memorable. I went to a Oasis/ Black Crowes doubleheader and while Oasis had far better material, it was clear they really were not digging the Indiana music vibe. The Crowes, however, played the hell out of their set. While I cherish the memory of seeing Champagne Supernova live, Remedy was a much better experience.
When you can feel the drum’s back beat, when you can understand the lyrics better than you could before simply based on the delivery, when you can wrap arms with a stranger next to you and join in a mass belting of one of your favorite songs, that’s rock and roll. It’s immediate, it’s personal and to a mass, it’s a loving familiarity you and all those in attendance can share for the rest of your life. It’s something we all can understand. It’s primal.
My current favorite Beatles song is Twist and Shout. It is a cover, which means it is not really a true Beatles song, so to say. The story behind the song is that it was the first and only take they did. The great thing about the song is the rawness of it combined with the perfect execution. Ringo, while constantly lambasted as a weak link, delivers on this track. It’s not that he does a bravura drum solo, it’s that every time he hits the drums, it’s a prefect strike. From the builds to the chorus to the final three hits that close the song, nothing about the performance feels synthetic.
It’s a live song. Nevermind the lack of an audience. And it may be the best single take of a song ever recorded. In this terrain of vocal overlays and redubs where there are not one, but 15 different Mariah vocal tracks going at once. It is the antithesis of everything modern in the sense that it is real.
Which now brings us to: “I want you to want me” by Cheap Trick as a conclusive statement. It is one of the simplest songs ever to become a huge single success; the whole songwriting process is replacing pronouns. It is the definition of sum of the parts overcoming. Each of the parts seems simple enough in it’s own right but when combined the song doesn’t just play from a stereo as much as it blasts out.
The scream of the crowd in both mass yelling and repeated chants of the chorus refrains (crying, crying, crying) is near explosive in a prepubescent girls gone wild frame of outburst. And then there is the banshee (ghost not the backers of Soiux) outburst of the guitar, which wails in a cheeky, over-the-top but not quite sort of way, punching up the song.
And when the song has all of it’s elements up and running at full speed, the critical mass reaches overload, and the climactic build, launches the song to classic. That’s live music done right. It’s not just the experience and the mass output of communal energy, it’s the music being played so well it elevates the great songs from good to great. It’s rock and roll, and from Twist and Shout, to I want you to want me to modern songs that are riding purely on the power of a collective wait for release, that’s rock and roll, and why my faith in it keeps me coming back.
I no longer hope that rock and roll will return, I’m in the stadium waiting for the band to show up. I hope to see you there.

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The best quote in years.

If you are a reader of this site, you likely have great taste. If you happen to be in high school, here is the greatest yearbook quote possible.

"To live like I ain't never lived before. If y'all see me in the news, and I make the news for something that I ain't got no business making it for, don't bash me. Say it was a young guy living."
-- Redskins RB Clinton Portis, on his plans for the off-season

I mean, this is it. A young guy living. Hemingway or Fitz couldn't do this good.

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Matadores & Toreros

Remember the first time you saw Wild Things, and as you watched Neve Campbell and Denise Richards smooch you were pretty sure it was the hottest thing you would ever see in your entire life? The Cruel Intentions kiss that came a few months later may have been sexier, but Neve and Denise will hold a place in all of our hearts for making big screen lesbianism okay. From Kevin Bacon's wang, to Bill Murray's cameo, at the time the movie seemed like the best film ever made....

Not unlike Maurice Sendak's Where The Wild Things Are... I remember reading it for the first time (actually, having it read to my class during Library) and thinking it was the most beautiful, amazing story every written. Seeing it animated for Reading Rainbow was even more spectacular (though I was in a Caravaggio stage, and the not even ...Wild Things could compare to the imagery of John Steptoe's Mufaro's Beautiful Daughters). Those things that we once cherished never changed, but we did. Maybe this is the only tangible explanation of time and flux we have, but it is neither tangible, nor an explanation.

When I saw a trendy, Speaker City t-shirt wearing douche-face trying to wax/revive Where The Wild Things Are a year ago, I knew that things had changed. Kids these days - they have Jenna Haze assfisting Sky Lopez at 384kbps, Wild Things is about as nouveau as The Golden Girls to these little bastards. Forget Where The Wild Things Are, kids can barely read the mission dialogue in GTA: San Andreas...

Wild Things was released shortly after I began taking pictures. I had never picked up a camera in my life, much less been in a photo, but I was hanging out with the pretty girls, and they asked me to take pictures at parties and dances a few times, and I knew that I was onto something. I'm no Cartier-Bresson, but the girls really enjoyed the pictures, and I had a role. When not taking pictures of my friends, i was taking pictures of sunsets and landscapes and flowers.... Vapid, superficial images are creamsicles & lollipops to vapid, superficial people, so everyone loved the scenic photographs! I was proud of the images because of the compliments they yielded, but I always knew that any chimp could point a lens into a New Mexico sunset and make something colourful and pretty. But flowers and landscapes were popular so I kept producing images of them.

I shot the picture above for my first Photography course in college, about three years ago. It is a black and white photograph of a sunset from El Matador Beach in Malibu that I have hand coloured, and it is the last sunset/landscape photo that I've shot. Soon after, I began to create more experimental, conceptual images. I recall showing a series of photos, Seven Ways To Commit Suicide In Your Bathroom, to one of my friends from high school. She responded with, "I like your old pictures more. You should keep taking pictures of flowers and sunsets." I prefer boobs and blow. Beautiful paintings and photographs of idyllic landscapes and vibrant still lifes decorate the walls of hotels and accompany the allegory, Footprints. They are mindless, they are tedious, they are practice, and they are not art.

Digital cameras destroyed the role of documentarian - with cameraphones and 6 megapixel point & shoots, everyone is a photographer these days - Matthew Brady, and Robert Frank, and Patrick McMullen wouldn't stand a chance in the digital errata. This is not the tired diatribe about visual overlaod and subsequent atrophy, but is rather about the quality of the image that we are receiving. Printed media is supersaturated with earthy vector corrosion - tricks and techniques that were beautiful and revolutionary a decade ago when they were brought to us by David Carson and Martin Venezky, but have become the signature of the one-click-pony who is sitting down in front of Illustrator for the first time. I cannot look at a magazine without seeing every single pixel of bad photoshop retouching (in four-toned offset dots, of course), or copycat technique stolen from german teenagers' on deviant art. I cannot watch a movie without cringing at every poorly rendered CGI element, wondering where the suspension of disbelieve has gone. When advertising and dynamic media (television / music videos / feature film / et al) are not stealing concepts from last generation's contemporary art, they are evoking faux sentimentality via kitschy retrospecticum - vintage t-shirts, mesh hats, horrible remakes of television shows that no one liked the first time (Scooby Doo, Starsky, Dukes of Hazard, Charlie's Angels), or worse - eroding the soul and charm of everything that our young generation cherished only a few years ago - Atari, Charlie & The Chocolate Factory, Care Bears, Revenge of The Nerds, and yes, Where The Wild Things Are. We have become a society of referential commodity - when VH1 produces an I Love The 2000s series, it's going to be a sentimental look back at a sentimental look back. Top Ten lists enumerate the best Top Ten lists, Roosevelt will be president, Ike will be in the white house (Turner, not Eisenhower), and Olivia Newton John will be running this country into the ground!

I make no pretense about my role in this structure. Afterall, those who can, do. Those who can't, jump... Are white men. Who can't. Jump.

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Five Fucking Years

Five years ago, I pretty much changed the course of my life in a way that can not be described. The short and simple answer of it, is that I broke my leg. In doing so, I suffered what is probably the most painful experience in my life, even more so than my parents di-vorce, and one that still cripples me to this day. In the period after, when I was a much more consistent but lesser writer, I composed the following. It is a review of Van Morrison's Astral Weeks. So now, 5 years after the fact, I will post one of my favorite texts to come out of this period. In retrospect it's semi drivel, but it is interesting as a point in time.

P.S. Happy B Day dad



Earlier this year, on April 9th to be exact, I dislocated my ankle and was rendered completely invalid for over a month and a half. I was on crutches and then I used a cane, and still to this day I can’t walk right, my leg will click and hurt, and I won’t be able to run for a while.

But about during the period I stopped using the cane, I started to feel a reawakening of consciousness, and I started to really appreciate what I had. And then, on the weekend that the fourth of July, my life reached a high point that seemed to last until the end of the month. Never in my life have I felt so good, never have I felt more alive and aware of everything around me. I had some of the best experiences of my life with my friends, and I saw family I may not see again for years or ever. And then even though I was having the time of my life, I knew it had to end, and by the end of this period, I sunk back into a depression, but it wasn’t a low as much as it was a continuation with the rest of my life, and a knowledge that this period may have been the final chapter of my childhood. And as if there was a fate to it all, I picked up only two days before this period what would become the soundtrack to it all, Astral Weeks, by Van Morrison.

The first four tracks of the album seem to feel like one great day, the lyrics of some of the songs, including the title track that is the first song.

If I ventured in the slipstream
Between the viaducts of your dreams
Where the mobile steel rims crack
And the ditch and the back roads stop
Could you find me,
Would you kiss-a my eyes,
And lay me down
In silence easy
To be born again

The song climaxes with Van singing the line, we are goin to heaven, looping the lyric over and over again and then adding in another time, in another place. And the lyrics would leave you to believe this as well. But what pushes the album into the ranks of great and why it continues to be considered one of the greatest albums of all time is the supporting music and how it perfectly matches the way the lyrics feel. On the last track Slim Slo Slider, it is just Van and his acoustic guitar, but on Astral Weeks, and Sweet Thing, it is a collection of musicians that defies labeling, it just seems like heaven. The album seems at time, like the sound of Lennon’s Imagine, this world where we don’t have problems, at the same time, it has the sharp pain of not be able to go there, or if we were, the feeling of leaving that place, and knowing you can’t go back.

He was born again, and he was also, at the same time, finding the ultimate moment in his life, as the lyrics and folklore of the album would tell. The back story of the album would tell you that the protagonist, Van or whoever, has been in the slump of his life, and this one day is where all of his problems have ceased, and his is reunited with his lost love, and he just seems to be able to float along in this joyous world he has finally found.

Adding more interesting ideals to the history of the recording, done in two small sessions in New York, were the circumstances that surrounded the period. The history of Ireland at the time was at the peak of the problems that would shape the country and it’s relations with the other countries of the Isles during the late 60’s and 70’s. Morrison himself was only 23 at the time of the recording, but he was trying to recreate himself from the days of Them and Bang, where he did Gloria and Brown Eyed Girl. He hated the songs in a sense and he tried to get himself away from the whole mess of it. So, with the help of his producer he put himself into the album. The lyrics of the album have references to Morison’s life before he was an artist, such as Cypress Ave. and many other references, that can be seen and understood at the Van Morrison Website

http://www.harbour.sfu.ca/~hayward/van/van.html

So, he moved himself out of the area where he grew up, and began with a new life. This idea helps to explain the two album sections, In The Beginning, which covers the first 4 songs, and Afterwards which covers the second side and other 4 songs of the albums. The difference between the two, below the surface is night and day. One the first side, it has the beauty of the album aforementioned, a sort of musical drug that takes you to another place, which would explain why this has been a stoners choice for years. The second half, however, holds the recognition that Van has to leave, and this is done with absolute perfection in what is considered the centerpiece of the album, Madame George. The song is about a reunion of old friends, maybe those who lived in the first half of the album, which brought Van to another world. It is joyous, but there seems to be a feeling of awkwardness, as Van has seemingly outgrown his friends. He feels a pain because he doesn’t seem to fit in anymore, but he remembers all of the times where he was, but he realizes that he has to leave.

The following two songs of the album take this idea and continue with it, with the final song having Van recount this sort of depression and rubbish of it all, the sense of leaving greatness and beginning his life again.

The songs are as good as any that have ever been made, and the album itself is an experience that is unforgettable, definitive, and beautiful and immensely depressing at the same time.

As for me, it kind of captured this period with perfection. For Morrison the whole album was both autobiographical and otherworldly removed at the same time. I hope you may understand with what I have written how Astral Weeks fits in both ways, but for me to do this would only spoil the album itself, it needs to be heard first, and if so later desired, understood. I don’t think I could even do it justice.

As for the album, it is one of the best of all time, but for more reasons is it great than just the music.

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Millions of bad jokes

Looks like my old friend Archibald is at it again. And his text choice couldn't be more topical. In other notes, you have go to love death watches as Tv news. Only three hours more of deathbed footage.

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We'll Use The Republicans!

Things I don't like:

• Media Hype
  
• The Pope
  
• Terry Schiavo's ugly face
  
• Republicans
  
• American Jingoism
  
• Faux Sympathy from people who have absolutely no relationship to a situation
  

That said, Terry Schiavo died and the Pope should be dead before my I have to fill up my gas tank again. What is the point? Why am I mentioning this? Simple. Click here to find out. I quite honestly do not like the Pope as a person or as a spiritual leader, but I think it's hilarious [like when a clown dies] how we in America have put a waterhead vegetable on a pedestal while one of the world's most important leaders is dying. Yes, America is that egocentric. Personally, I want Scotty to take over! He deserves it after what Fiona and Matt Damon did to him.

Rest In Peace Walter Hopps.

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