Talking Heads-Making Flippy Floppy/Life During Wartime/Born Under Punches (The Heat Goes On); Tom Tom Club-Genius of Love

Jonathan Demme directed two of the greatest movies ever. One of them is Stop Making Sense, a concert film starring the Talking Heads. The other is The Silence of the Lambs, a psychological thriller starring Anthony Hopkins and Jodie Foster. Two very different movies, to be sure, but I think some of the classic scenes in Silence of the Lambs could easily be combined with Stop Making Sense to create a gripping psychological thriller musical.

As background, here is my surface understanding (I have neither the time nor the inclination to fact-check!) of the history of The Talking Heads. They went to the Rhode Island School of Art and Design, started an awesome band, and made some classic albums. Inevitably, divisions in the band came up, as David Byrne collaborated with Brian Eno and got into more "artsy" stuff, while Tina Weymouth and Chris Frantz collaborated on Tom Tom Club and at some point shacked up. I don't even know what drummer Jerry Harrison was doing at that point. Poor guy, he was probably working at a Big Boy's in his spare time.

If I were to recast Silence of The Lambs with the members of this band, David Byrne would be Hannibal Lecter, Tina Weymouth would be Clarice Starling, Brian Eno would obviously be Buffalo Bill, and Chris Frantz would be that dude from the Right Stuff who plays Starling's boss and seems to want to do a bit more than simply teach her how to pull moths out of corpses' mouths. On to a sneak preview!

This scene is based on the one when Starling realizes that Buffalo Bill is making himself a suit out of actual skin. In the Talking Heads' kooky world, it would go more like this:

Weymouth, becoming increasingly frustrated with Byrne's vague allusions to "working with that Eno guy," surreptitiously goes through the demos of Remain in Light. "Side project, my ass," she grumbles under her breath. Finally, she opens a drawer that reveals a repulsive stash of electronic gizmos and random power tools that Eno is using to bastardize her work. She then finds a tape entitled "Remain in the Dark, Intellectually Inferior Bandmates." She slams the drawer shut, slips the tape in the deck, and is horrified at what she hears. She frantically calls Frantz. "HE'S INSERTING MALFUNCTIONING KEYBOARD SOLOS, HIRING OUTSIDE BACKUP SINGERS, AND TOTALLY MOVING OUR INSTRUMENTS DOWN IN THE MIX." Frantz drops the phone and bolts off screen. Fade to black.

Despite the drama that almost inevitably comes with a band that has the talent (and usually, as an unfortunate byproduct, the requisite egos) to release several classic albums, the Talking Heads were, generally speaking, a band that spread joy, funk and general awesomeness. Below are two of my favorite clips from Stop Making Sense, the studio version of "Born Under Punches (The Heat Goes On)" from Remain in Light, and "Genius of Love," a great song from Weymouth and Frantz's group, the Tom Tom Club. The two live clips show how incredible their live shows were, "Born Under Punches" has that brilliant malfunctioning keyboard solo at 2:43, and "Genius of Love" is joy on wax.

Roxy Music-Do The Strand & Amazona/T. Rex-Bang A Gong(Get It On)/Lou Reed-Andy's Chest

I actually wanted to watch The Golden Globes last night, because there have been a bunch of good movies this year, and I was interested in seeing if my favorites (which are obviously also unquestionably the best films) would win. I had plans, however, and the thought of turning down socialization with real people so I could instead gawk at celebrities for three hours and inevitably be frustrated at the award winners made me reconsider. So I went out, had a good time, and wasn't frustrated about the winners until later that night. And supposedly Angelina Jolie was absolutely stunning in her Gucci ensemble.

So tonight I give you the Golden Globs, which appear to be real gold statues, but are instead constructed out of the crystallized mucas gathered from all the Kleenex tissues that have been blown into during flu season. Hey, the country is going through tough economic times! We gotta make every hacked lung count! GLOB NOTE: I haven't seen many of the best films, because I'm a really important person with many people making demands on my time. So if you're Colin Firth, James Franco, or Christian Bale, it' snot your year!

The Golden Glob Nominees for Film of the Year are: First of all, screw the comedy or musical demarcation-what does a musical have to do with a comedy? Aren't there sad musicals? Anyways, on to the nominees (Winners are in italics):

True Grit-The 14-year-old girl nails the delivery of her lines, and Jeff Bridges is typically awesome. There's also some beautiful shots by the Cohen Brothers.

Social Network-Really entertaining. Jealousy, greed, betrayal, dorky losers who take over the world. The guy who plays Zuckerberg nails it.

Black Swan-There are a lot of freaky, feel-like-a-wuss-for-turning-away-from-the-camera moments, but I think the best thing about this film is how it nails the insane pressure of being an upper-echelon dancer. The "split" seems to arise pretty organically from both her specific role in Swan Lake, and the person she has to morph into in order to succeed in such a "cut-throat," intense industry.

Winter's Bone-I already said way too much about this movie in the Slint post a few months back. It is such a powerful movie. AND IT ISN'T DEPRESSING. The addiction, violence and desperation surrounding the girl only serves to highlight her determination and unwavering devotion to her little brother and sister. It reminds me of The Road (the amazing book, not the crappy film version) in that way.

Hmmm... I just realized something. I don't want to do this anymore. Writing about movies makes my head hurt right now, and I'm just gonna glob more praise on Jennifer Lawrence if I keep going. And that might get annoying, and if there's anything I'm not all of the time, it's definitely not annoying. I tried to go for a record there. I think that was a quadruple negative.

So! Music! Great acting in films makes me think of great acting in music, and glam rock certainly contained some of the best examples of that. I've already blogged about how great an actress I think Kate Bush is, and her music isn't glam rock, so I will obviously leave her out. David Bowie and Brian Eno are simply gods, and I've blogged multiple times about them, so I'll leave them out as well. But the following songs are the Golden Glob nominees for Best Acting in a Glam Rock Song (Comedy or Music):

Oops, looks like I'm still gonna talk about Eno. He was a member of Roxy Music for the first two albums. They were still pretty great after he left, but he brought a certain je ne wear weird outfits and add cool tweaked out noises by twiddling knobs in the background sais pas to the band. Roxy Music has better songs than "Do the Strand," but there aren't many live performances that highlight their awesomeness more effectively than this one. Unfortunately, one of the best parts of this song, the chunky, rapid bassline, isn't quite as prominent in this performance as it is in the studio version. But the lyrics are funny, the song rocks, Bryan Ferry's overdone enunciation is perfect, and Brian Eno is really shiny.

I also posted the youtube to Amazona by Roxy Music. The song is somewhat pedestrian for the first 2:05, but then listen to that freaking guitar solo. I'm not big on wanky guitar solos, but sweet Mary Joseph this one kicks *ss. There is some effect that makes it sound like it's a piranha speeding through the Amazon River with a Lamborghini engine and its tail on fire. Then, at 3:28, the guitar slowly emerges from the muck, each note sounding like it's being electrocuted as it comes out of the amplifier. That might be the most ridiculous garbage I've ever written, but it's alright because that solo makes me freak out a lot-tle bit.

I'm not a huge T. Rex guy, but Electric Warrior is a really good album. And "Get It On (Bang a Gong)" is, of course, a classic track. I love the chugging rhythm, and the almost arrogant vibe. Shame that Bolan crashed and burned so fantastically. Bowie has a great song, "Lady Stardust," that he wrote about Bolan. Oops, I talked about Bowie, too.

Transformer (think Crying Game, not Optimus Prime) by Lou Reed is such a great album. "Walk on the Wild Side" is definitely a better song than "Andy's Chest," but it's not really glam rock-ish, so I'm posting this instead. I love how loose the song feels musically, with the background singers going "Ba ba ba ba ba!" in the background. "Are all the mountains bolder after you?" is one of my favorite slightly obtuse, perhaps containing a double meaning lines. Some people don't dig on Reed's voice, but it doesn't really matter. He's acting. It's about how he delivers the line in so many of his songs. He rules, and people who criticize him don't! End of story.

Black Keys-Tighten Up

I get a little giddy teaching certain novels. I like practically every book I teach, but there are a few I get kind of kooky for. The ones I get most excited about at this point are Brave New World, Macbeth, Of Mice and Men, The Great Gatsby, Romeo & Juliet, The Catcher in the Rye, and The Things They Carried. I haven't taught all of the classes at my school, but of the ones I have, those are the books that really fire me up.

I usually fall head over heels for teaching a book if it's either incredibly well written, or it's "packed with meaning." BNW and GG fall into the first category. This passage from Gatsby, for instance, just destroys me:

Then I heard footsteps on a stairs, and in a moment the thickish figure of a woman blocked out the light from the office door. She was in the middle thirties, and faintly stout, but she carried her surplus flesh sensuously as some women can. Her face, above a spotted dress of dark blue crepe-de-chine, contained no facet or gleam of beauty, but there was an immediately perceptible vitality about her as if the nerves of her body were continually smouldering. She smiled slowly and, walking through her husband as if he were a ghost, shook hands with Tom, looking him flush in the eye. Then she wet her lips, and without turning around spoke to her husband in a soft, coarse voice:
“Get some chairs, why don’t you, so somebody can sit down.”

Fitzgerald imbues this supposedly unattractive woman with so much life, and so much power: she basically crushes her husband in an instant. One of my favorite sculptures my father had was The Glorification of Beauty by Alexander Archipenko, and whenever i read that passage I think of it.









The Things They Carried is amazingly written and really affecting. There's too many great passages to choose from, but here's one I love:

A true war story is never moral. It does not instruct, nor encourage, nor suggest models of proper human behavior, nor restrain men from doing the things men have always done. If a story seems moral, do not believe it. If at the end of a war story you feel uplifted, or if you feel that some small bit of rectitude has been salvaged from the larger waste, then you have been made the victim of a very old and terrible lie. There is no rectitude whatsoever. There is no virtue. As a first rule of thumb, therefore, you can tell a true war story by its absolute and uncompromising allegiance to obscenity and evil. Listen to Rat Kiley. Cooze, he says. He does not say bitch. He certainly does not say woman, or girl. He says cooze. Then he spits and stares. He's nineteen years old-it's too much for him-so he looks at you with those big sad gentle killer eyes and says cooze, because his friend is dead, and because it's so incredibly sad and true: she never wrote back. You can tell a true war story if it embarrasses you. If you don't care for obscenity, you don't care for the truth; if you don't care for the truth, watch how you vote. Send guys to war, they come home talking dirty. Listen to Rat: "Jesus Christ, man, I write this beautiful f*$@+n' letter, I slave over it, and what happens? The dumb cooze never writes back."

So sad, and such an incredible book.

I have no transition into the Black Keys. Truth be told, I'm not even that big a Black Keys fan. Half of their stuff that I've heard I like, and half is sort of redundant and plodding for my taste. I saw them live, though, and they kicked a fair amount of *ss. "Tighten Up" is definitely a great song. There's more tempo shifts than most of the other Black Keys songs I've heard, and that's what really sets it apart. The drums are also Bonham-esque, which pleases both me and Jason Segel in Freaks and Geeks.

Larry Tee - Hipster Girl (Evol Intent Mix)

I was at a Bjork concert a few years ago, and her producer Mark Bell was creating the sounds live by strategically shifting objects on this big circular device. I, too, wanted to shift objects around a big circle and create bad*ass noises for an Icelandic goddess to sing over. I'm not sure if it was a visual gimmick or not, but boy did it look cool!

When I first heard "Hipster Girl," it reminded me a bit of that live performance. The wobble is that noise in dubstep that sounds like the bass is being filtered through spinning plates. It sounds like the remixer of this track is scratching the wobble. The effect sounds really great on headphones or a car stereo.

I mentioned a few posts back that sometimes listening to too much frenetic drum n' bass, breaks, and dubstep can make my brain feel a bit like scrambled eggs inside a giant pinball machine. Fortunately, a few weeks back my friend introduced me to a Dustin Hulton mix that's for the most part pretty chilled out. It's a bit more vocal-heavy than the stuff I usually listen to, but it's really good. This track comes in about twenty-five minutes into the mix.

Deerhunter-Revival/Memory Boy

During my recent trip to Florida, I went to an Orlando Magic-New York Knicks game at the Magic's brand new arena. My friend had a hook up for suite seats, so we had an amazing view. I had gone to many games in the old arena with my father (including the first one ever), so it had added meaning beyond being a really great match-up of my two favorite NBA teams. Two favorite, you say. Sounds like a conflict of interest! Well, sports allegiances can be a tricky thing. Thankfully, my friends and I have figured out an extremely intricate tier system to clear up any ambiguities that might arise. The system goes as follows:

Tier 1 Teams: Teams you have absolute allegiance to. They include teams that a) you have rooted for your entire "sport fan" life, b) you are an alumni of the school, c) you have a very close personal connection to, or d) represent the city you have lived in for the majority of your life. My tier one teams include:

NY Mets: I rooted for the team since I lived in New York in the 80s, which happened to be both the beginning and end of their rather abbreviated dynasty-that-never-was-because-the-majority-of-the-best-players-were-hopped-up-on-drugs. My dad, who, being completely immersed in the arts since a young age, knew NOTHING about sports, made an admirable effort to learn about the Mets. His favorite player was the rather dorky and completely unglamorous singles hitter Dave Magadan, whom he took to calling "the thinking man's hitter." Magadan is now the offensive juggernaut Boston Red Sox's hitting coach. Guess Dad knew what he was talking about with that moniker.

Florida Gators: I went there (chomp chomp).

Orlando Magic: I lived forty-five minutes from Orlando when they were awarded a franchise, and went to many of their games with my father.

Miami Dolphins: I didn't really get into football until I moved down to Florida. Dan Marino was the Dolphin's quarterback, so of course I rooted for them and not the perennially horrific and "I'm a loser orange"-clad Tampa Bay Bucs.

Tier 2 Teams: Teams you have followed closely for an extended period of time, but don't have absolute allegiance to for one reason or another. You can root for them unless there is a conflict of interest with a tier 1 team, such as competition for a playoff spot or, of course, a direct matchup. My tier two team is:

New York Knicks: They were my tier 1 basketball team when I lived in New York, and when I lived in Florida before the Magic franchise came into being. It is fairly unprecedented for a tier 1 team to be usurped, but going to many Magic games in the first year, following the franchise very closely since inception, and living forty-five minutes from Orlando brought me over. I still got love for the Knicks though! (unless they're playing the Magic)

Tier 3 Teams: Teams you root for, but while you want them to win, it doesn't really pain you on any visceral level if they lose. Fandom is oftentimes brought about by geographical relocation. My tier three teams include:

Golden State Warriors: They're a fun team to watch, I get tons of exposure to them living in the Bay Area, and there's barely any conflict of interest with tier one or two teams due to Western Conference placement.

San Francisco Giants: Same as the Warriors, except NL West Division instead of Western Conference, which brings about slightly more frequent conflicts of interest.

Tier 4 Teams: Similar to Tier 3, but with slightly less appealing teams. My tier four teams include:

San Francisco Forty-Niners: When they're on and not playing the Dolphins I want them to win, but let's face it, this ain't the 80s. They're a fairly consistent snoozefest the past few years.

Tier 5 Teamss: Similar to Tier 4, but with even less appealing teams. It's almost a pity tier. My tier five teams include:

Oakland Raiders: When Al Davis kicks the bucket, maybe I'll bump 'em to four. The working man's Bay Area team, and it would be nice to see a classic bad*ss franchise return to at least a(n) (Art) shell of their former self.

Oakland A's. They used to be four, but watching baseball games in the Coliseum lately is like that scene in 28 Days Later where the guy walks around post-apocalyptic London. DEPRESSING.

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By the time I got to the Magic game, I had driven about six or seven hours around Florida. That might sound bad, but it's actually pretty mild for me. One of the records from my year-end downloading frenzy that I enjoyed the most was Halcyon Digest by Deerhunter. I've listened to Deerhunter in the past, and while I liked them, the album I heard (Cryptograms) just didn't have a ton of staying power. This one will hopefully have more replay value.

I'm still digesting the album, so I'm not sure which songs will ultimately stand out to me. Right now I'm really digging "Revival" and "Memory Boy." "Revival" has a fun, bouncy feel to it, with fuzzy guitars and cool harmonies. "Memory Boy" sounds like they're channeling Olivia Tremor Control channeling summery 60s pop. I'm digging it. There's a few interesting down-tempo songs on the album, too, but I need a little more time with them. Yay for good new music!