We Live Again
One-offs, for the Spring of 2008:
- When it’s all looked down upon as if by a seagull caught in an updraft, it does appear that Dick Cheney is the only politician in memory who seems to know he is evil.
- Tracks records count for only so much – I recently saw We Live Again (1934), a Golden Era melodrama that combined the talents/work of Rouben Mamoulian and Preston Sturges and Leo Tolstoy and Maxwell Anderson and Fredric March and Gregg Toland and Thornton Wilder (uncredited) and Alfred Newman, and despite its credits it kinda smelled up the joint. Anna Sten, whose second Hollywood film this was, remained dreadful, but she alone couldn’t’ve pulled the film down. It had to be fate.
- I find as I plow through my 40s that I can no longer tolerate The Eagles.
- It’s hilarious how reviewers of Martin Amis’s new book of 9/11 essays are taking to slam him for his fundamental position of seeing serious religion and civilized reason as standing opposed to each other, which they (the reviewers) are doing presumably because the corporations they work for insist on it, for fear of losing market share. They are wrong. Amis, admittedly too often a self-infatuated boob, is right. Look at the definitions. If religion wasn’t illogical, whimsical, fantastical and unreasonable, it wouldn’t be religion, it’d be fact. I could start a faith centered on, say, balloon-headed alien gods from Alpha Centauri, but the minute I produce an iota of evidence to support my religion’s ideas, a photo or strand of DNA, my Balloon-Headed Alpha Centaurion belief system is no longer "belief" or "faith" or religion, it’s science. Period.
- Speed Racer, attended for the sake of children in a movie wasteland of few choices, is little more than sensory abuse. As if someone had taken a wad of radioactive Good ‘n Fruity and ground them into my eyes with their boot heel. As if we all, myself and my children, are regarded as little more than toddlers, instinctly and dumbly drawn to brightly colored objects.
"I find as I plow through my 40s that I can no longer tolerate The Eagles." -- you can't tolerate bad oliver stone but you got through three decades of "lyin' eyes" without the urge to stand athwart music history, yelling "STOP!!"?? g-d almighty, if only you'd turned 40 sooner!
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"Tolerate" is the key word here; I can in fact tolerate bad Oliver Stone, and did for a long time find it possible to tolerate various varieties of three-minute pop song that now I find I cannot any longer. Not for a single second. Pop music is easily the most mysterious of modern cultural forms; why anyone once liked, and therefore condemns the idle radio-listening driver to confront, so many years later, songs by .38 Special or Chicago or The Fixx or REO Speedwagon is simply not knowable.
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And Phil Collins! Why PHIL COLLINS!? And... Foreigner! Why, in the name of all that's holy, why is Foreigner still on playlists?
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"Michael Atkinson wrote:
And Phil Collins! Why PHIL COLLINS!? And... Foreigner!" -- all difficult, searching questions, which might be answered with the same answer i had around the issue (or non-issue, in your estimation) of our disappearing film critic ecosystems, namely: americans love crap, preferably recognizable crap. to conflate: "bela tarr? wasn't he the sabbath vocalist after coverdale left to 'form' whitesnake?"
that said...it's not an easy thing to admit, but i must own up to my own conflictedness over mr. collins, or aspects of his career, specifically: phil, the great prog drummer vs. phil, the 80's kitsch pop vocalist unrequiring of jackets, shame, &c. leaving aside pre-abacab genesis -- itself alot to leave aside -- that's phil behind the kit being chased by prog-dub delay on eno's "no one receiving," plus on fripp's "north star" (also featuring darryl hall's greatest vocal performance, ever, fully recognizing that this may be the splitting of infinitesimal hairs to you, probably others (though i expect you haven't heard these tracks on commerical radio lately/ever...)), &c. his tag teams with the supernally gifted fretless bassist, percy jones, in the underrated fusion band brand x, and on various tracks off eno's another green world ("over fire island"!) are, as we used to say in finishing school, fucking phat as hell. after 1980, i plead no contest, while still taking the long view, like a good auteurist.
foreigner. yeah. awful. i could try to highlight king crimson's ian mcdonald's presence on the first album, but why bother, you ask? good question. the greatest defense against the soul-sucking atrocity that is foreigner is to use their lyrics, matter-of-factly, in a quotidian converstaional manner. e.g.: mike, i'm hot-blooded; check it, and see. i have a fever burning inside of me. hot-blooded, mike; i'm a little bit high...
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When I say "Phil Collins," I don't mean Phill Collins the drummer or even Phil Collins the Genesis staple (though I could, largely), but the Phil Collins who generated and still generates music under that name, and still, somehow, some way, persists on American broadcast channels.
But I can't get into an audioslave debate; I'm largely unqualified. I don't understand the points most rock critics make (though they're often fun to read), I believe lyrics count (and so I completely disregard 80% of all music recorded since 1970 and loads before that, and almost all hip-hop), and I haven't found much worth listening to in general since Kurt Cobain ate lead.
But that doesn't mean I have to hear Foreigner. I should be able, in a reasonable world, to turn on the car radio without the danger of having to hear Foreigner. It's that simple. I'm not asking for a miracle.
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and not to flog this hoplessly -- though i'd be fascinated to see a reply thread in this blog system you have that is whittled down to the width of a single letter -- but i'm also amazed you listen to any radio stations that play those bands. commerical radio is abysmal and has been for a consoldiating genertaion, and nowhere worse than our nyc-area market. the non-commercial options here are good but hardly enough to stem the tide of awful across the dial. satellite radio is certainly better, but so impersonal (obvious exceptions like robert zimmerman notwithstanding). i'd rather hear amatuer college radio with passion behind the playlist than anything forwarded to Programming from Corporate. that's especially true for hip-hop, which you shouldn't oughta give up on. start with dr. octogon and rob swift routines -- worked for me...
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I'll consider it. But mostly I listen when I drive, and run through the stations I can tolerate, and usually land on FUV, which is a godsend. My gut complaint was that I'm living in a world where Phil Collins is still being broadcast, but you're right, it's the three corporations' fault, and once you look at the business end of it, it's no mystery at all. Honestly, though, much of what I hear on FUV doesn't interest me either -- but at least it's not whine rock, punk regurgitation or computerized pop, and at least I haven't heard it before.
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Dude, if you think The Eagles and Foreigner are bad, check out what today's youth are listening to:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=6rQmXAs5lN0
The only question is, when I'm your age, will I be able to turn on the radio without hearing these guys?
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