The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit

Quite by chance, I caught Dr. Oliver Sacks’ appearance on The Daily Show a few days ago, where he was promoting an episode of PBS’s venerable science magazine Nova called “Musical Minds”.  Dr. Sacks is a British neurologist whose book Awakenings was the basis for the excellent movie with Robin Williams and Robert DeNiro.  “Musical Minds”, based on his 2007 work Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain, boasted no such celebrities but was pretty interesting nonetheless.

The bulk of the special was dedicated to profiling four people who have very deep but very different connections to music.  Two of them (Derek Paravicini from England and Matt Giordano from upstate New York) have a high degree of innate musical ability that allows them each to seemingly overcome a significant neurological disorder.  Paravicini is an astonishingly gifted pianist despite being blind and autistic, while Giordano has a severe case of Tourette’s syndrome and finds relief only through his drumming (which he engages in even if there are no drums around).

Read on Daddy-O »

Don’t let the title fool you – Single & Single is in fact not the new name for Jon & Kate Plus 8.  It’s actually a 1999 novel by John le Carré, who made a name for himself in 1963 with The Spy Who Came in From the Cold.  I picked it up a few years ago solely because le Carré is the author, which should tell you how much I liked The Spy Who Came in From the Cold. I don’t know if I was aware that Single & Single isn’t a spy novel when I bought it, but it doesn’t really matter because it might as well be.

All the familiar elements are here, but in the post-Cold War world we have to make do with cutthroat Russian mobsters rather than crafty KGB agents, and put-upon British bureaucrats who lack the zip of the agents of yesteryear.  Fighting crime just isn’t as interesting as fighting Commies, let’s face it.  Still, le Carré gives it the old college try and manages to wring some excitement out of the situation.

Read on Daddy-O »

Jazz piano giants Hank Jones and Tommy Flanagan, who both sprang out of a very fertile post-war Detroit jazz scene, entered Fantasy Studios (the in-house studio of Fantasy Records) in Berkeley, California to record an album of piano duets in January 1978.  The result of that session was the Galaxy Records release Our Delights (GXY-5113).  The album art indeed reflects the very sweet music contained within:

It took a few glances at the photo before I figured out that those aren’t chocolate hearts, but chocolate pianos.  A nice little juxtaposition for sure.  Unfortunately I don’t know who’s responsible for this rather clever photograph, but if anyone has that info please let me know.

The same recording session also yielded a second duet album, More Delights, which featured a similar piano/candy theme.

No matter what objectionable things I think he did, no matter what objectionable things I know he did, at this moment I can only look back on Michael Jackson’s half century on this planet and think of the great things he did.  I’ve gone through various stages of love and hate regarding Michael over the years.  But one thing I didn’t consider until today was that I’ve never really known of a musical universe without Michael in it in some fashion.

I had just turned seven when Thriller came out, and I played that album a million times.  Not long after that, maybe around 1984 or 1985, I suddenly decided that anything besides hard rock or heavy metal was garbage.  I trashed my copy of Thriller and never even gave any of his subsequent albums a shot (I had an image to uphold, you know).  But it didn’t stop there, as I became one of the growing numbers of Michael bashers, fueled in large part by the excesses and eccentricities widely reported by the tabloids (some of which were planted by Michael himself, to be fair).  Let’s face it, the man made it awfully easy for people to ridicule him over the last 20 years.

Occasionally a new song snuck past my guard and I briefly reconnected with Michael as an artist – “Leave Me Alone” and “Remember the Time” are two I still look back on with fondness.  But by and large, I continued to put him and his music out of my mind.  But over the last few years I made a conscious effort to judge Michael’s career for the music itself, rather than for the traveling sideshow his life became.  And the thing is, the man made some damn good music, plain and simple.  Whether it was the early years with the Jackson 5 or the one-two punch of Off the Wall and Thriller, Michael could’ve retired many years ago and been assured of his status as a legend.

One of the saddest aspects about Michael’s death to me is that in recent years I think some part of me was hoping for a Comeback (that’s with a capital C) – a great album or concert tour to show that all that talent hadn’t simply wasted away like he obviously had physically.  A part of me wanted him to recapture at least some of his former glory, perhaps more for my sake and the sake of a jaded and cynical public than for his.  It’s some consolation that even in the absence of that Comeback, we’re still left with so much.

So despite all the weirdness, despite all the laughter and jokes at his expense, and despite the sad sight of watching a human being fall apart physically and psychologically over the course of many years, for one day at least I choose to remember Michael Jackson for the legacy of great music and entertainment he leaves behind.

Since it’s been so long since the last entry, I’ll give you a two-fer.  This marks (I believe) the first entry in the ACotW series featuring a compilation, as well as the first entry from the Fab Four.  These two albums were released in April 1973, less than three full years after the Beatles officially disbanded in 1970.  In contrast to the iconic covers of albums like Rubber Soul or Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, the images for this career-spanning set are simpler yet more powerful in my opinion.

Up first is 1962-1966, also known as the Red Album.  This shot of the Beatles looking down from a stairwell at the EMI building in London was taken by Angus McBeam, and is actually from the same photo session that gave us the cover of the group’s debut, Please Please Me.

.

Nothing too flashy I admit.  But the really cool part comes in with the next set in the compilation, 1967-70 (aka the Blue Album).   For it the band and McBean returned in July 1969 to the EMI building and recreated the earlier photo almost exactly.

Again, while the image itself is pretty good, what really sells it is the contrast to the first photo.  When it was taken almost a decade had passed since the dawn of Beatlemania, and the band was pretty much done by the time this photo was taken (although the official breakup was still more than a year away).  Not only had the band and their music changed a great deal, but so had the world in general.

When it comes to gift-giving – and that is the point of holidays, right? – Father’s Day has to rank somewhere between Groundhog’s Day and Flag Day in terms of pure lameness.  I would go so far as to say it’s the lamest holiday, at least when you weigh the importance of the day’s reason with the level of creativity employed by its celebrants.  I’m not pushing for dads to get bouquets of roses or anything, but why do Father’s Day gifts almost end up being so…utilitarian?

Read on Daddy-O »

Television.  Love it or hate it, it sure beats reading or taking out the garbage.  I don’t post all that frequently about TV on this site, but man do I spend a truckload of time watching it.  So here’s a breakdown of the shows I watched over this past television season, and what I thought of them.  Overall it was a pretty good year, and the spectre of the writers’ strike is already a distant memory.

American Dad! – I can only guess that more of Seth MacFarlane’s attention has been directed towards this show than Family Guy, which is the reason it has consistently been the funnier of the two.  Or maybe he isn’t overseeing it, and that’s why it’s funnier.  Either way, this season saw a drop in quality from the previous few but was still pretty good.  Any bit with a Roger/Steve pairing was usually pretty good, but there were good laughs to be had elsewhere as well (Steve and friends facing off against the cool kids at school and the inspired Roger/Hayley costume switching gag to name a few).

One of the best elements of American Dad! is its willingness to explore Roger’s various neuroses and personalities for something other than comedy.  “The One That Got Away” is a prime example – Roger tracks down an unknown crook who maxed out his credit card, and it turns out to be himself living a completely separate life.  This kind of relatively nuanced writing has been done before on AD and I hope to see more of it. Final grade: B-

Read on Daddy-O »

It wasn’t all that long ago that the Star Trek brand was about as interesting and relevant as…well, let’s just say I can’t have been the only one who left Gene Roddenberry’s creation for dead after their last outings on the big screen and the boob tube.  Turns out it just needed a bit of a breather (not to mention some fresh creative blood).

Putting aside painful cliches like “set phasers for stunning!” or “Star Trek will now live long and prosper”, I’ll just say that J.J. Abrams’s Star Trek takes its place among the greatest realizations of Roddenberry’s franchise in any medium.  The film succeeded on nearly every level possible, not the least of which was making it resonate with longtime fans – who, let’s face it, are probably the most fanatical and detail-obsessed of any fictional franchise – as well as curious newcomers.

Read on Daddy-O »

There are some names in literature that for some reason intimidate me before I even read a word of their work.  Since I’m not a voracious reader I think I have a tendency to put some authors on a pedastal.  When I do get around to reading something by one of the “greats”, I feel silly for having avoided them for so long.

So it was with science fiction legend Philip K. Dick, whose canon I have finally entered by reading his 1959 novel Time Out of Joint.  Why this one, and not one of his more famous works such as Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? or A Scanner Darkly you might ask?  My wife owns a copy so that’s the one I decided to start with, that’s why.

As I made my way though the story of Ragle Gumm and his struggle to break through what he at first only vaguely feels to be the false suburban reality he is trapped in, I thought to myself, “self, this would make a neat movie.”  Then I remembered, “self, you’ve seen The Truman Show haven’t you?”   It’s the same basic premise really, except that instead of putting the protagonist into a fake world for the amusement of a TV audience, Gumm is placed into an idealized 1950s neighborhood to keep him focused on a very important task – entering and winning a newspaper contest called “Where will the little green man be next?”  It’s sort of a precursor to Where’s Waldo?, but it involves statistics and probability so it’s five times as hard and half as fun.

It’s a fun read, but nothing special really.  Dick keeps the action moving along at a good clip, and drops enough hints along the way to keep things interesting.  After some tentative steps and a few red herrings the central theme of “the world is not what it appears” takes center stage.  Gumm’s efforts to figure out just what is going on around him, and then to escape it, are the most interesting aspects of the novel.

I think what ultimately dulls the impact of this book for me is the big revelation of just why Gumm’s work on the newspaper puzzles is so important that he is forced to live in a fantasy world.  I don’t want to give it away totally, but basically it involves nuclear missiles and lunar colonists.

In the late ’50s these plot devices would’ve been of no small impact, seeing as how instant nuclear annihilation was a very real and commonly perceived danger and the moon was still the subject of much mystery.  But now it all seems rather quaint.  That’s not a knock on Dick mind you – he was merely writing of what he knew, but Time Out of Joint reads more like a time capsule of American phobias now than anything else.

I think it’s fair to say that I was spoiled musically by growing up in the ’80s, the tail end of a long period where bands usually released albums no more than 1-2 years apart.  So when great newer acts like Manchester’s Doves come along and take longer than that I get impatient.  It’s been more a little more than four years since the group’s excellent third record, Some Cities, and after reading about so many delays with their newest I was starting to lose hope.  But now Kingdom of Rust is here, and all is well.

My overall impression of Rust is that it represents a nice synthesis of the sounds and styles the band explored on their first three albums, but is by no means an artistic retread.  The bulk of the record leans more toward the dense and atmospheric tendencies displayed on Lost Souls and The Last Broadcast, but the direct approach favored on Some Cities rears its head on occasion.

The beauty of Doves’ music has always been their uncanny ability to make even the simplest tunes sound and feel epic – witness the bouncy opening cut, “Jetstream”, which is really a dance-rock song disguised as neo-prog.  Similarly there’s “Spellbound”, which makes up for its lack of immediate gratification with an aura of darkness and considered songcraft.

The band deviates from their typical approach a few times, however, to marvelous effect.  The first is the title track, a danceable but melancholy alt-country shuffle (I love the chorus of “My God, it takes an ocean of trust/In the kingdom of rust”).  Then there’s one of my early favorites, “Compulsion”, wherein Doves reveals their funky side and call to mind the recent work of bands like TV On the Radio.  It probably goes on a tad too long but is a real treat.

Elsewhere on the album, I was reminded of Syd Barrett-era Pink Floyd (with the harsher and weirder edges smoothed down) on “Outsiders”, which explodes out of the gate with an urgent rhythm and a liberal dose of analog-sounding synthesizers.  Add in the deliciously fat, distorted bass line and you’ve got another winner on your hands.  Likewise I felt another callback to early Floyd on the vaguely psychedelic stomp-rock of “House of Mirrors”, which revels in heavy reverb and hard-panned effects and guitars. It’s one of the many examples of why listening to this album with a good pair of headphones is a must.

Of the 11 songs on Kingdom of Rust, only the peppy but not particularly memorable “Winter Hill” feels superfluous.  But that’s remedied with the next song, “10:03″, which begins with a pleading, spiritual vibe.  Just as it starts to feel like nothing more than an interlude it gathers steam at the halfway point and builds to a satisfying, beefy crescendo.

The whole affair closes with “Lifelines”, one of the more hopeful-sounding songs on the record.  It serves as a sort of thematic soft landing and was a great choice to finish the album.  So yeah, Kingdom of Rust was well worth the four-year wait , but you won’t hear me complain if they can get the next album out by 2011 or so.

Track listing:
1. “Jetstream”
2. “Kingdom of Rust”
3. “The Outsiders”
4. “Winter Hill”
5. “10:03”
6. “The Greatest Denier”
7. “Birds Flew Backwards”
8. “Spellbound”
9. “Compulsion”
10. “House of Mirrors”
11. “Lifelines”

Watch the video for “Kingdom of Rust”: