I’m spending the holidays with the cat. But seeing as how the cat’s passed out on the swing at the moment, looks like I’m flying solo.
Today I broke out the five disc box of Christmas extravagance that Sufjan Stevens released last year. And it’s supposed to snow today, so I’m off to pour some chilled nog, wake the cat and relax for a while. I’ll be back in a week or so with my year-end lists, so stay tuned.
It’s Sunday again. That means a bit of electronica for the blog. It’s icy cold outside. Snow still carpets the ground. Last night my car did some highly amusing things on black ice. Maybe that’s why today this track (“Skyline Road,” selected almost at random from the library) sounds crystalline and chilly to me. It’s a straight out trance onslaught by Luke Chable. I think I first caught this one a few years back on one of Dave Seaman’s Therapy discs. In fact, come to think of it, it might have been the Luke Chable Mix on one of the Therapy Sessions comps. That would make a certain sense, wouldn’t it?
Anyway, Chable’s an Aussie, which I didn’t know, and he’s quite good at what he does, which I did. Occasionally he produces under the Quest moniker. This track is one of those. It’s an older track (ancient, in clubbing terms) but a DJ Remy mix of the tune has been making the rounds of late. I actually think I prefer the original, with its rapid-fire synth melody and soft, percussive kick beat. And in the exerpt below, I’m particularly fond of of the way the harsh tones drop away and let the cool, smooth lower stuff take over. Nice.
Luke Chable: myspace, youtube (the entire track with goofy visuals)
It warms the heart to see the exposure and acclaim that’s coming to Randy Randall. Randy and his No Age bandmate, Dean Spunt, have grown into first rate indie rockers. Their album, Weirdo Rippers, which is a collection of tracks from a handful of hard-to-find EPs, has garnered them some serious praise. Their success is a marvelous thing to see.
Randy and I worked together years ago at Rocket Video in Hollywood and then again at Amoeba Music. You couldn’t meet a more humble and sweet-natured guy. And dedicated. The reason he’s gotten where he is today is because of his dedication to and love for the music. Indeed, he left Amoeba because his touring schedule kept getting in the way of having to shuck dvds. The hard work seems to be paying off. Weirdo Rippers is making appearances in the upper end of year-end Best Of lists and the cover of the album, which features their L.A. venue of choice and they stage on which they cut their teeth, The Smell, is fast becoming ubiquitous across the indie music blogosphere.
The music is a logical next step in evolution from the stuff Randy and Dean pounded out in their last outift, The Wives. Whereas that was a blistering punk effort, this one leans more towards an atmospherric blend of knife edges and soft breezes. It’s the sort of approach perfected by Deerhunter and the reason why I like the album so much. I love musical contrast, so when I get expansive breathers like “Every Artist Needs a Tragedy” pushed smack up against pounding factory-setting scorchers like “Boy Void” I get excited.
They’re doing well. It warms the cockles of my heart, and as Woody Allen says, “There’s nothing like hot cockles.”
The video below is something I stumbled across over at the Forkcast. It’s part of a series of taped presentations that will be coming from New York music purveyors, Other Music. Enjoy.
No Age: purchase, Pitchfork Review (8.0), label page, Fader article
A week ago I joined several other WGA members, aspiring writers and even a few SAG members in Albuquerque to do a little picketing. I was surprised to find out that there was a WGA contingent out here big enough to pull something like this together. I met a couple of the organizers at a cafe off Central and where we assembled and tracked down the set of Game, with which was shooting nearby with Gerard Butler and Alison Lohman. It went down peacefully and various news media dropped by to check out the Southwest’s microcosm of LA strife.
I’d link to the actual Albuquerque Journal article, but their site is like the proverbial Gordian Knot. So here it is, reproduced in its entirety from the December 14, 2007 edition:
Writers Take Battle to Duke City
By Dan Mayfield
Journal Staff Writer
Since 1992, Tracey Ann Kelley has written an episode a week for the soap opera “The Bold and the Beautiful,” from Albuquerque.But not for the past month.
Since Nov. 5, when the Writers Guild of America went on strike, Kelley hasn’t written a word. She was Downtown carrying a picket sign with about 30 other writers on Thursday for the WGA’s national strike. Some were members of other unions, like the Screen Actors Guild and the International Alliance of Theatrical and Stage Employees, showing solidarity with WGA. They were picketing outside the set of the movie “Game,” which was shooting at the Doubletree Hotel.
The writers union, which represents film and television writers, hopes to negotiate a better deal with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which pays them.The big sticking point is residual fees when shows or films are re-broadcast, especially those shown over the Internet.
“The Internet is the future of soap operas like mine,” Kelley said. “You can watch my show anywhere in the world on the Internet.”
But, Kelley said, writers don’t see their fair share of the profits companies are making for distributing what they’ve written.
Kelley was joined by several other writers, such as Melinda Snodgrass. “I thought we were all alone,” Snodgrass said. “I never knew there were so many of us.”
Many of those on strike were also picketing Wednesday in Santa Fe on the set of the film “Brothers.”Thursday was a national “Day of Action,” WGA said. Screenwriters from around the country picketed in San Diego, New Orleans, Burbank, Calif., and several more cities.
“We don’t have an official statement on this. It is absolutely within their rights. I respect and honor that,” said Lisa Strout, director of the state film office.
I went to the dentist yesterday. I was in an out of there in an hour. The doctor drilled into a sixteen year old crown and re-gouged out my canals with a marvelous collection of files and drills. I think he even used a falchion at one point. Since the original root canal had been a medieval process I was a bit nervous about this one. He assured me I’d feel no pain. He injected me with something and for the next hour he and his assistant field stripped my tooth. He was right. I felt no pain.
That came later.
That afternoon, trying to get some work done, the pain came at me like the Norman army. Dosed up on pain killers, I poked about looking for something I could use as a sort of aural anodyne. I decided to give Alexandre Desplat’s score for The Painted Veil a try. It had been recommended to me by someone but I’d never gotten around to checking it out. As it turned out, it was the perfect analgesic.
It reminds me of Richard Robbins’ score for Remains Of The Day. It has that lively, Glass-y style that somehow manages to be both upbeat and somber. The opening track, sampled below, is an arpeggio pulse, populated by flutes, accented by the brassy trumpet and pinned to the earth by great surging strings. Check it out.
Alexandre Desplat: itunes, amazon, official site,
I’m off to get my tooth drilled. Since I don’t want to let the morning slip away without a WGA strike-related post, enjoy this piece of clever WGA strike you-tubery. I think that’s David Cross as the scab.
Here’s another of the Speechless shorts. This one was directed by Paul Haggis and stars (in order of appearance) Demi Moore, Martin Sheen, Dulcy Rogers, Marguerite Moreau, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Deitrich Bader, Olivia Wilde, Marcia Cross, Chris Redman, Josh Brolin, Jenna Elfman, Elizabeth Pena, Polly Shannon, Kamala Lopez and James Franco. Brolin’s final reaction is priceless.
It’s Sunday. Church is open for business. Sunday’s a day of rest. It’s a day for paying homage to our myths and our legends. It’s the day on which we profess our fealty to the Flying Spaghetti Monster (but then every day is FSM day–join the club.) Sunday also happens to be the day I intend to post something electronic. Call it Techno Worship Sunday, call it Weekend Progressive, call it Butterscotch Pudding Down The Pants Day. Call it whatever you want. The idea is to spread the word about some of the incredible electronic dance-y goodness that the progressive dance industry churns out week after week.
Last time I posted about Ohmna. This time it’s Adam Kershen and Soha Radjpous, better known (in progressive circles, anyway) as Adam K & Soha. I stumbled upon this, their collaboration, quite by accident. It’s got everything I love in a good, meaty progressive track. Excerpted here is the breakdown. And here (in keeping with the Sunday theme) you’ve got a holy trinity of sounds that build and combine into a genuine skin-chiller moment. There’s the main thread, a repetitive synth pulse that describes a simple descending melody; there’s that stratospheric surge that soars well above it like a cirrus cloud and then, deep below, keeping it all rooted, is a fine bass thunder. It’s a fine progressive marvel and, rightly so, spent a while on the top of Beatport’s charts–no mean feat considering the turnover.
I haven’t figured out how to link to an artist on Beatport yet, so when you go buy the track, just visit Beatport and look for Adam K. Easy enough, right? It’s just two and a half bucks for the track.
Adam K & Soha: myspace (Adam K), myspace (Soha), Hotbox Digital (Adam K’s label)
Writers come up with the best slogans. Get one on your shirt and support the cause by visiting the WGA Strike Swag site. I just ordered myself a shirt. Order one for yourself as well. My favorite slogan?
“We write. They wrong.”
When I was a kid I was a fan of Buck Rogers. I’m talking about the TV show in which Gil Gerard jumped around in his white suit and knocked out bad guys. There was some great stuff in that show, especially for a nine-year-old Star Wars fan. Twiki was… alright, he was a little creepy, but he was short and kinda funny, which I could understand. Wilma Deering was an angel. She was probably my first real crush. She didn’t seem to do to much, but who cared? I don’t think there’s ever been a sexier person named Wilma in the history of the universe.
And then there was, of course, the galaxy’s most popular rock band, Andromeda.
Andromeda only appears in one episode. The episode is called “Space Rockers” and guest-starrs Jerry Orbach as the band’s unscrupulous manager. The story is simple. Jerry wans to cause galaxy-wide riots by embedding a freak-out code into the band’s music that causes people to beat each other up and then wander off to find something better to do. It’s up to Buck (with his savvy familiarity with 20th Century indie pop music) to stop him.
Andromeda was one of the coolest bands I’d ever heard. They had a nifty proto-trance groove that was hard for a kid to ignore. And since I’ve got a keen musical memory, I never forgot the tune that opened the episode. And thanks to the miracle of YouTube, I can show it to you:
I love the outfits, I love the crazy “futuristic” instruments, I love the calisthenics. So cool. As far as I know, they never released an album and are, as yet, without a label. I’m guessing they’re retired. I’d love to get my hands on a bootleg. If anyone has any connections, let me know.
By the way, I watched that episode at hulu.com. It’s that new service offered by NBC and News Corp that plans to stream and share full-length television episodes. This is new media. There were advertiesments. There’s going to be money. That’s why there’s a strike.
Just a quick post today. I scraped myself out of a dream this morning at 6:30, lurched like Igor into the kitchen and made coffee and have set about tackling my daily 1500 words so I can head down to Albuquerque. I discovered a local knot of WGA-ers and they’re actually going to picket a production (Game, with Gerard Butler and Alison Lohman, is shooting in town.)
Anyway, yesterday’s post about Erik Enocksson inspired me to hunt down the trailer for the film in question. It’s sprinkled liberally with Enocksson’s music and actually looks really good. And I was right, Judd Apatow has nothing to do with it.
You ever been clobbered by beauty? It happens. You’re minding your own business, you’re sitting in a chair, maybe, engaged in some Cavandoli Macrame, perhaps, or calculating your Christmas card list to ten decimal places and a tune floats out of nowhere and lays you out. An emotional ram. A melodic haymaker.
Erik Enoksson’s “The Lingering Procession” did that to me. It’s a piece taken from his spare, chilly, gorgeous soundtrack to the Swedish film Farväl Falkenberg, the final cut on the cd, in fact. The film isn’t out here. I doubt we’ll ever see it, because as far as I can tell, it has nothing to do with Judd Apatow. The music, however, just might be enough.
The track in question is a simple little progression, picked out on a guitar (it might not be a guitar; it might be something else with strings.) Then a delicate chorus of voices joins in, introducing a similar melody. Another repetition of the melody adds another voice, this time in slightly higher register. Then a third repetition brings in even more voices, followed by a new melody. This is when the pummeling begins.
I believe that there are certain melodies, certain sequences of notes, that tap into something primal in the listener. It’s like hitting the resonant frequency in the shower when you’re belting out “I Made It Through The Rain” by Barry Manilow. It’s like that, but better. That melody, or combination of melodies has the power to stop you in your tracks.
This one does that for me. It’s one of the most beautiful pieces of music I’ve heard in a long time. I’d be curious to know what others think of it.
Director George Hickenlooper and writer Alan Sereboff have teamed up to create a series of mini-shorts designed to throw light onto the issue of writers. Using top – tier SAG artists and clever presentation of ideas, they’ve put together a whole series of these amazing pieces. They began “airing” on Thanksgiving an United Hollywood.com. Of course, the word “airing” connotes television. These were made for the internet, and guess what? That’s the point. The dispute is about many things, but mostly it’s about the Internet. It’s not about what we’re going to watch on our computers in the next decade. It’s not about computers at all. Why? Because computers and television are blobbing together into one great quivering mass. This is the first time USDA Prime Choice actors have actually created something strictly for this new medium. That’s why it’ so intriguing. That’s why it kinda works.And since it’s autumn and autumn always makes me think of Mr. Königsberg, Woody Allen’s been on my brain lately (and not just mine; check out Billy Mernit’s excellent Woodman post here.) So here’s the Woody segment. I’ll post more in the next week or two. I love these things.
Melanie Varela is Tender Forever. She’s French (from the fine city of Bordeaux) and has managed to establish some fruitful penpal-ships with some cool artists in the U.S., most notably in Portland. This is her new album. It’s full of smooth vocals, angular melodies and sparkly electronic bits, tossed in together with decidedly lo-fi handclaps and the cute snapping of fingers. It has a careful, deliberate feel (it’s very well produced) and while it never quite feels sparse, there’s plenty of open space to hang out in. Check out the airy “Heartbroken Forever.”
Tender Forever: myspace, itunes, amazon, label page
Man, I picked a bad month to try to re-start this blog. Nothing gets in the way of blogging quite like deciding to write 50,000 words in thirty days. Well, almost nothing. Decapitation can get in the way of blogging. In fact, most dismemberment leads to blogging slowdown. My point is that I was do busy writing that I didn’t want to stop and then… well, write some more. But hey, I got 50,000 words done. The last four days were on the hellish side because I foolishly chose to visit relatives over Thanksgiving.
“I can write 1,667 words a day while I’m in Kansas City,” I said to whomever would listen. “I’ll just do it in the morning.”
Well, I fell a little short of that goal. I wrote four sentences. And one fragment.
So when I got back I had to set a schedule of 4,000 words each day in order to make today’s deadline. That’s twice as many as Stephen King types in a day and, as my dad put it once, “he’s possessed by a demon that types.” The event doesn’t actually end until tomorrow, but at five tomorrow morning I’m jumping into my bat mobile and cruising out to LA for some partying, picketing and panhandling. No time for the words.
And hey, here’s a fun cap of my Facebook page. Lookie how you can track my progress through the day:
The novel itself isn’t done. It’ll weigh about 80 thousand when it’s done. But it’s a hell of a start. And it isn’t terrible. Of course, it helped, especially during the dreary moments, that I’m merely expanding an already-written screenplay into novel form, so there was little to none of the floundering that so many participants took to. The flounder factor was high at NaNoWriMo HQ, especially in the early days. It was a veritable jubilee.
For me the floundering happened when I tried to remember how to write in prose form. Too many years spent writing screenplays had tenses switching without warning, dialog indenting beyond all reason and character names capitalizing of their own volition. But I figured it out and now the patient is breathing on its own.
Special thanks go to Clare & The Reasons, Erik Enocksson, The Wedding Present, Earlimart (as usual–you can listen to their marvelous new album at the site), Dawn Landes, White Rainbow, Frank Zappa (thanks to my uncle, Andrew, who re-informed me of Zappa’s coolness), Dave Seaman, Sonny Boy Williamson, Nicole Atkins, and of course, Michelle Branch (yes, that Michelle!) for providing the soundtrack for the effort. There are also too many prog house producers to mention, but there were a lot of them as well.
As for me? I’m taking a break. Amoeba’s Holiday party beckons (one last time) and the producers have brought forth a “groundbreaking proposal” and the writers have commenced blasting it. Gotta go see if they want me to carry a sign.
And when I get back, I’ve got to tackle the NaNo pudge that crept around my middle whilst sitting at Santa Fe Baking Company for hours on end. Maybe a Cabbage Soup Diet lies in my future…
blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, MUSIC, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, MOVIES, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, SCREENWRITING, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, STUFF, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, ME.
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