Blogsmos

Friday's Playlist: 2-17-12

2012-02-17T14:50:00.000-08:00

Jungle Brothers – “Jimbrowski”
Lush – “Tralala”
The Beach Boys – “Let the Wind Blow”
Dead or Alive – “You Spin Me Round (Like a Record)”
The Big Pink – “Velvet”
Modest Mouse – “Perpetual Motion Machine”
Aimee Mann – “This is How it Goes”
Death Cab for Cutie – “Movie Script Ending”
Glasvegas – “Stronger than Dirt”
The Swell Season – “Falling Slowly”
Orbital – “Adnan’s”
Blondie – “Rapture”
David Lynch – “Crazy Clown Time”
Gene – “Be My Light, Be My Guide”
Alcest – “Printemps Emeraude”
The Psychedelic Furs – “Shadow in My Heart”
The Boxer Rebellion – “Never Knowing How or Why”
The Who – “The Real Me”
The Pixies – “Narc (Theme from)”
Pat Benatar – “Fire and Ice”
Whale – “H.H.S.B”
Baths – “Departure”
Class Actress – “Prove Me Wrong”
The Pixies – “Hey”
Gorillaz – “Rhinestone Eyes”
Fennesz & Sakamoto – “0324”
Sara Watkins – “All This Time”
Hum – “Stars”
British Sea Power – “Let the Tears Roll”
Moby – “Honey”
Luscious Jackson – “Summer Daze”
The Twilight Sad – “Scissors”
Iceage – “Collapse”
School of Seven Bells – “Babelonia”
Cary Ann Hearst – “Hell’s Bells”
The Bird and the Bee – “Spark”
Orbital – “Out There Somewhere 2”
The Explorers Club – “Any Little Way”
The Roots – “Don’t Feel Right”
Bear in Heaven – “Lovesick Teenagers”
Sigur Rós – “Von”
Stars – “How Much More”
The Who – “I’m One”
Sea Lions – “I Should Be Sleeping”
Mercury Rev – “Nite and Fog”
Clem Snide – “The Meat of Life”
Torche – “Arrowhead”
Galaxie 500 – “Isn’t it a Pity”
Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross – “Another Way of Caring”
Allen Ginsberg – “A Supermarket in California”
Medicine – “She Knows Everything”
Curtis Mayfield – “We the People Who are Darker than Blue”
St. Vincent – “Strange Mercy”
Yacht – “Psychic City (Voodoo City)”
Supertramp – “Breakfast in America (Live)”
Nada Surf – “The Moon is Calling”
Lansing-Dreiden – “A Sanctioned Beam”
The Big Pink – “The Palace”
Glossary – “Headstones and Dead Leaves”
Prince – “Delirious”
DJ Shadow – “Midnight in a Perfect World”
Badly Drawn Boy – “You Were Right”
James Blake – “Limit to Your Love”
The Black Angels – “Sunday Afternoon”
X – “You”
The Explorers Club – “Open the Door”
Those Darlins – “Boy”
Smashing Pumpkins – “Landslide”
Bear in Heaven – “Casual Goodbye”
Jonsí – “Go Do (Live)”
Ministry – “The Missing”
Gorillaz – “El Mañana (Metronomy Remix)”
Destroyer – “Ravers”
Elbow – “The River”
Ladytron – “Light & Magic”
The Corin Tucker Band – “Miles Away”
Little Dragon – “Ritual Union”
Black Rebel Motorcycle Club – “Feel It Now”
The Weeknd – “The Knowing”
Blondie – “Dreaming (Live)”
Vampire Weekend – “California English”
Hooray for Earth – “No Love”
The Beach Boys - "Good Vibrations (Various Sessions)"

Wednesday's Playlist: 2-15-12

2012-02-15T14:48:00.000-08:00

Sigur Rós – “Svefn-g-englar”
Denim – “It fell off the Back of a Lorry”
The Shins – “Plenty is Never Enough”
Zola Jesus – “Vessel”
Sea Lions – “A Song for Your Smile”
Echo & the Bunnymen – “Don’t Let it Get You Down”
Sharon Van Etten – “I’m Wrong”
Heartless Bastards – “Low Low Low”
Black Mountain – “Let Spirits Ride”
Charlie Haden & Hank Jones – “Wade in the Water”
Luscious Jackson – “Naked Eye”
Apparat Organ Quartet – “1 2 3 Forever”
The Psychedelic Furs – “Love My Way”
Smith Westerns – “Girl in Love”
The Black Keys – “Little Black Submarines”
Real Estate – “Kinder Blumen”
Weezer – “Falling for You”
Tombs – “Cold Dark Eyes”
Low – “Nothing But Heart”
The Beach Boys – “Can’t Wait Too Long”
Aimee Mann – “This is How it Goes”
Camper Van Beethoven – “When I Win the Lottery”
Black Flag – “TV Party”
Fennesz & Sakamoto – “0409”
Smashing Pumpkins – “Rhinoceros”
Duran Duran – “Night Boat”
Nada Surf – “Question”
Radiohead – “Codex”
Small Sins – “Where There’s Gold”
Skee-Lo – “I Wish”
Superchunck – “Driveway to Driveway”
Bryan John Appleby – “Boys”
Broken Social Scene – “World Sick”
The Pogues – “Haunted”
The Antlers – “I Don’t Want Love”
Sunny Day Real Estate – “Bucket of Chicken”
Billy Joel – “The Stranger”
The White Stripes – “Apple Blossom”
Soul II Soul – “Keep on Movin’”
Blue Scholars – “George Jackson”
Belle and Sebastian – “I Want the World to Stop”
The Lemonheads – “It’s a Shame About Ray”
Beastie Boys – “Don’t Play No Game That I Can’t Win”
Duran Duran – “Secret Oktober”
R.E.M. – “Cuyahoga (Demo)”
Franz Ferdinand – “Do You Want to”
…And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead – “Another Morning Stoner”
The Pixies – “Make Believe”
Chameleons – “Don’t Fall”
Loggins & Messina – “Thinking of You”
Styx – “The Best of Times”
Cloud Nothings – “You’re Not that Good at Anything”
The New Pornographers – “The Bleeding Heart Show”
Porter Wagoner – “The Rubber Room”
Depeche Mode – “Just Can’t Get Enough”
Urban Dance Squad – “Deeper Shade of Soul”
Happy Mondays – “Hallelujah”
Gorillaz – “O Green World”
Grand Archives – “Willoughby”
Ryan Adams – “Bartering Lines”
Sun Kil Moon – “Tiny Cities Made of Ashes”
Stars – “Opinions Versus the Sun (Stars vs. the Album Leaf)”
Florence + The Machine – “Heavy in Your Arms”
Bachelorette – “The Light Seekers”
Loggins & Messina – “Be Free”
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah – “Same Mistake”
Mike Ness – “Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright”
The Jesus & Mary Chain – “Taste of Cindy”
The Knack – “Oh Tara”
Michael Jackson – “Off the Wall”
REO Speedwagon – “In Your Letter”
Foreign Born – “Winter Games”
Glasser – “Clamour”
Mike Ness – “Cheating at Solitaire”
Blitzen Trapper – “Dragon’s Song”
Allen Ginsberg – “Sad Dust Glories”
B-Movie – “Nowhere Girl”
The Beach Boys – “In My Room (German)”
Jawbox – “Jackpot Plus!”
Dusty Springfield – “He’s Got Something”
The Hot Rats – “The Crystal Ship”
Eagles – “The Greeks Don’t Want No Freaks”
Glossary - "As Far as Fear Will Take You"

Weekend Playlist: 2-11-12 & 2-12-12

2012-02-12T13:47:00.000-08:00

Local Natives – “Camera Talk”
Sufjan Stevens – “For the Widows in Paradise, for the Fatherless in Ypsilanti”
Trashcan Sinatras – “January’s Little Joke”
Kylesa – “Identity Defined”
The Rolling Stones – “Under My Thumb”
Scritti Politti – “Hegemony”
Public Enemy – “Louder than a Bomb”
Hall & Oates – “Wait for Me”
Kansas – “Carry On Wayward Son (Live)”
Animal Collective – “Winter’s Love”
Apparat Organ Quartet – “1 2 3 Forever”
Squeeze – “Take Me I’m Yours”
Travis – “Luv”
Matt Nathanson – “I Hope that Something Better Comes Along”
Mark Lanegan – “St. Louis Elegy”
Public Enemy – “Security of the First World”
The Cure – “Charlotte Sometimes”
Earth, Wind & Fire – “That’s the Way of the World”
Florence + The Machine – “Leave My Body”
Camper Van Beethoven – “The Day that Lassie Went to the Moon”
Kate Bush – “Wild Man”
The Bird and the Bee – “Birds and the Bees”
Echo & the Bunnymen – “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue”
Badly Drawn Boy – “It Came from the Ground”
Tears for Fears – “Change”
X – “See How We Are (Demo)”
KISS – “Rock and Roll All Nite”
Rufus Wainwright – “Smile”
Destroyer – “Kaputt”
Grand Archives – “Topsy’s Revenge”
Pelican – “March to the Sea”
Darker My Love – “Split Minute”
No Age – “Dusted”
WU LYF – “Concrete Gold”
Sleigh Bells – “Rachel”
George Michael – “Praying for Time”
Tori Amos – “Angie”
Patrick Park – “You Were Always the One”
Bear in Heaven – “Casual Goodbye”
Lush – “I’ve Been Here Before”
Iron & Wine – “Waitin’ for a Superman”
Earth, Wind & Fire – “Gratitude”
Grizzly Bear – “Knife”
Canon Blue – “Honeysuckle (Milwaukee)”
Camper Van Beethoven – “Opening Theme”
Les Savy Fav – “Excess Energies”
Grant-Lee Phillips – “Under the Milky Way”
U2 – “Everybody Loves a Winner”
Ramin Djawadi – “You’ll Be Queen One Day”
that dog – “Family Functions”
Echo & the Bunnymen – “The Back of Love”
Cymbals Eat Guitars – “Rifle Eyesight (Proper Name)”
The Beach Boys – “Gettin’ Hungry”
The Who – “I’ve Had Enough (Demo)”
Chris Cooper – “Let’s Talk About Me”
Deltron 3030 – “Meet Cleofis Randolph the Patriarch”
Spoon – “Small Stakes”
George Michael – “Jesus to a Child”
Frankie Goes to Hollywood – “Two Tribes”
Radiohead – “Life in a Glass House”
Stuart Murdoch – “Another Saturday”
John Cale – “My Maria”
Sharon Van Etten – “One Day”
Baths – “Lovely Bloodflow”
Plastico – “Communicate (Headquake Hazy Cloud Mix)”
AC/DC – “Rock and Roll Ain’t Noise Pollution”
Erykah Badu – “Agitation”
OK Go – “All is Not Lost”
Kaiser Chiefs – “Out of Focus”
Gorillaz – “Don’t Get Lost in Heaven”
The Beach Boys – “Good Vibrations”

Thursday's Playlist: 2-9-12

2012-02-09T15:21:00.000-08:00

Glasvegas – “Dream Dream Dreaming”
M83 – “Outro”
Suede – “Every Monday Morning Comes”
Jens Lekman – “New Directions”
Music Go Music – “Just Me”
Cibo Matto – “Black Hole Sun”
Klaxons – “Golden Skans”
Sharon Van Etten – “Serpents”
Superchunk – “Rosemarie”
The Rapture – “How Deep Is Your Love?”
The Old 97’s – “Broadway”
New Radicals – “You Get What You Give”
Gorillaz – “Plastic Beach”
The Chameleons – “Singing Rule Britannia (While the Walls Close In) (Demo)”
Prince – “Delirious”
Local H – “Smothered in Hugs”
The Pipettes – “A Winter’s Sky”
Rabbit in the Moon – “Waiting for the Night”
Gorillaz – “Bobby in Phoenix”
Sufjan Stevens – “Now That I’m Older”
R.E.M. – “Cuyahoga (Demo)”
Blondie – “Call Me (Live)”
Kanye West & Jay-Z – “Why I Love You”
Pulp – “Sunrise”
Fennesz & Sakamoto – “0404”
Tears for Fears – “Change”
Pearl Jam – “Of the Girl (Instrumental)”
Peaches – “Search and Destroy”
The Beach Boys – “Never Learn Not to Love”
The Sea and Cake – “Lyric”
Childish Gambino – “My Shine”
Liars – “Proud Evolution”
Class Actress – “All the Saints”
Papercuts – “Do You Really Wanna Know”
X – “Soul Kitchen”
Spoon – “Written in Reverse”
BLK JKS – “It’s in Every Thing You’ll See”
The Chameleons – “In Shreds”
Interpol – “Slow Hands”
Q-Tip – “We Fight / Love”
Mastodon – “Blood and Thunder”
Pharcyde – “Runnin’”
The Beach Boys – “You’re Welcome”
Earth, Wind & Fire – “Reasons (Live)”
Loggins & Messina – “Vahevala”
Travis – “Sing”
Sugababes – “I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor”
Moby – “At Least We Tried”
Information Society – “What’s on Your Mind (Pure Energy)”
The Beach Boys – “Cuckoo Clock”
The Boxer Rebellion – “No Harm”
The Distractions – “Time Goes by So Slow”
Dan Wilson – “Come Home Angel”
Van Morrison – “Sweet Thing”
Nina Simone – “Black is the Color of My True Love’s Hair (Jaffa Remix)”
Wilco – “A Shot in the Arm (alternate)”
Japandroids – “No Allegiance to the Queen”
Fountains of Wayne – “Little Red Light”
Les Savy Fav – “High and Unhinged”
Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross – “One Particular Moment”
Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds – “Soldier Boys and Jesus Freaks”
Queens of the Stone Age – “Ode to Clarissa (Live)”
Primal Scream – “Swastika Eyes”
The Jayhawks – “Red’s Song”
How to Dress Well – “Date of Birth”
Smashing Pumpkins – “Never Let Me Down Again”
Shearwater – “Run the Banner Down”
Little Dragon – “Forever”
Tombs – “Constellations”
The National – “Fashion Coat”
British Sea Power – “Once More Now”
Childish Gambino – “Be Alone”
Galaxie 500 – “Pictures”
Fleet Foxes – “Tiger Mountain Peasant Song”
ceo – “All Around”
Ray Davies, Alex Chilton, & The 88 – “’Til the End of the Day”
The New Pornographers – “A Bite Out of My Bed”
Bruce Springsteen – “Talk to Me”
The Wombats – “Walking Disasters”
Ramshackle – “Eyes, Lips, Body (Mekon Vocal Mix)”
Siouxsie & the Banshees – “Spellbound”
Royal Family and the Poor – “Art on 45”
UNKLE & Thom Yorke – “Rabbit in Your Headlights”
The National – “Cherry Tree”
Fountains of Wayne – “Hackensack”
The Primitives – “Crash”
British Sea Power – “Thin Black Sail”
Mew - "Saliva"

Wednesday's Podcasts: 2-8-12

2012-02-08T15:20:00.000-08:00

Walking the Room Ep. 89
Who Charted? Ep. 62 (Jake Fogelnest)
The Pod F. Tompkast Ep. 15
The Thrilling Adventure Hour Ep. 57: Sparks Nevada - “Do the Fight Thing”
The Nerdist Ep. 165 (Jenna Elfman)
You Made it Weird (Jake Hurwitz & Amir Blumenfield)
Jordan, Jesse GO! Ep. 210: “Going Ape”

Tuesday's Podcasts: 2-7-12

2012-02-07T13:54:00.000-08:00

Pop My Culture 67 (Drew Carey; Live at SF Sketchfest)
Professor Blastoff 41: “Magic” (Derek Hughes)
Stop Podcasting Yourself 203 (Katie Crown)
How Did This Get Made: Prequel to Episode 30
Adventures in Design 3: “I Fear No Monday”
Making It w/ Riki Lindhome (Joss Whedon)
WTF 251 (Matt Graham)

Monday's Podcasts: 2-6-12

2012-02-06T15:14:00.000-08:00

Comedy Bang Bang 143 (Weird Al Yankovic, Todd Glass, Amy Phillips)
Doug Loves Movies: Rental Car VIII
Improv4Humans 12 (Eugene Cordero, Brett Gelman, Will McLaughlin)
KCRW’s The Treatment (Patton Oswalt)
The Smartest Man in the World : “Menageries”
The Nerdist 164 (Fred Stoller)
The Indoor Kids (Jensen Karp)
You Made it Weird (Joe Mande)

Sunday's Playlist: 2-5-12

2012-02-05T15:22:00.001-08:00

Interpol – “Always Malaise (The Man I Am)”
PJ Harvey – “In the Dark Places”
The Saints – “Know Your Product”
Robyn – “Stars 4-Ever”
U2 – “Mysterious Ways (The Perfecto Mix)”
Kylesa – “Tired Climb”
Dawes – “Million Dollar Bill”
The Album Leaf – “Landing in Snow”
The National – “Murder Me Rachael (Live)”
Suede – “This Hollywood Life”
Soul II Soul – “Happiness (Dub)”
Depeche Mode – “Never Let Me Down Again (Remix)”
The Beach Boys – “Spirit of America”
U2 – “Salome (Zooromancer Remix)”
José González – “Heartbeats”
Jellyfish – “Baby’s Coming Back”
Blondie – “Bermuda Triangle Blues (Flight 45)”
Porcelain Raft – “Tip of Your Tongue”
Neil Finn – “Last One Standing”
Smashing Pumpkins – “Today (Broadway Rehearsal Demo)”
Wilco – “When You Wake Up Feeling Old”
Delay Trees – “In February”
Sarah McLachlan – “Good Enough”
Journey – “Don’t Stop Believing”
Ty Segall – “Where Your Mind Goes”
The Weeknd – “The Morning”
Frankie Goes to Hollywood – “War”
David Bowie – “Baby Loves That Way”
Broken Bells – “Meyrin Fields”
Spoon – “Nobody Gets Me But You”
Danzig – “Thirteen”
David Bowie – “Queen B. (Live)”
Battles – “Toddler”
The Pogues – “Haunted (Demo)”
Joe Jackson – “Is She Really Going Out With Him?”
Low – “Especially Me”
Battles – “Wall Street”
Tom Waits – “Way Down in the Hole”
Atlas Sound – “Parallax”
Trans Am – “Getting Very Nervous”
Michael Jackson – “Working Day and Night”
The Weeknd – “The Birds Part 1”
Cliff Martinez – “On the Beach”
Nada Surf – “The Future”
Twin Shadow – “Forget”
Travis – “Happy Hang Around”
Camper Van Beethoven – “Devil Song”
Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds – “Soldier Boys and Jesus Freaks”
Dirty Projectors – “Spray Paint (The Walls)”
The Beach Boys – “I Do”
New Edition – “Count Me Out”
Metric – “Stadium Love”
Damien Jurado – “Sorry is for You”
The Corin Tucker Band – “Handed Love”
The Go! Team – “Ladyflash”
Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross – “People Lie All the Time”

Saturday's Playlist: 2-4-12

2012-02-04T16:16:00.000-08:00

Billy Idol – “Congo Man”
The Thermals – “Only for You”
Peter, Bjorn & John – “Young Folks”
Spoon – “Don’t Let it Get You Down”
Blondie – “Union City Blue”
Arvo Pärt – “Fratres (2)”
Florence + The Machine – “You’ve Got the Love”
The War on Drugs – “It’s Your Destiny”
The Go-Go’s – “Lust to Love”
Ringo Starr – “It Don’t Come Easy”
The Venus in Furs – “Baby’s on Fire”
The Smiths – “This Charming Man”
The Beach Boys – “Fun, Fun, Fun”
Grouplove – “Naked Kids”
David Bowie – “Ziggy Stardust”
Yello – “Oh Yeah”
Paul Westerberg – “Born for Me”
Mike Ness – “Six More Miles”
A Tribe Called Quest – “Midnight Marauders”
Camp Lo – “Sparkle”
Weezer – “The Good Life”
The Sea and Cake – “Aerial”
Jesu – “Opiate Sun”
R.E.M. – “I Believe (Demo)”
Janáček – “Sinfonietta – Allegretto”
The Pipettes – “A Winter’s Sky”
Eels – “Trouble with Dreams”
Austra – “The Noise”
The National – “Gospel”
Luscious Jackson – “Stardust”
Journey – “Only the Young”
The Decemberists – “The Rake’s Song”
Mastodon – “Octopus Has No Friends”
Espers – “The Road of Golden Dust”
Dirty Projectors – “Stillness is the Move (Album Version)”
TV on the Radio – “Will Do (Switch Remix)”
Nada Surf – “Enjoy the Silence”
PJ Harvey & Thom Yorke – “This Mess We’re In”
Ben Folds Five – “One Angry Dwarf and 200 Solemn Faces”
Mogwai – “Young Face Gone Wrong”
Hothouse Flowers – “If You Go”
Frightened Rabbit – “Old Old Fashioned”
ELO – “Sweet Talkin’ Woman”
Scritti Politti – “A Little Knowledge”
Pelican – “Nightendday”
Sufjan Stevens – “Decatur, or, Round of Applause for Your Stepmother!”
PJ Harvey – “Let England Shake”
The Chameleons – “Here Today”
Iron & Wine – “Godless Brother in Love”
Trans Am – “4,738 Regrets”
Gorillaz – “Stylo”
Queens of the Stone Age – “In the Fade”
Patrick Park – “You’re Enough”
Brian Eno – “St. Elmo’s Fire”
Phosphorescent – “Heaven, Sittin’ Down”
George Michael – “Shoot the Dog”
First Aid Kit – “New Year’s Eve”
U2 – “I Will Follow”
The Old 97’s – “The Beauty Marks”
Bell Biv Devoe – “Show Me the Way”
Kaiser Chiefs – “Oh My God”
Dan Wilson – “Against History (Live)”
Bryan John Appleby – “The Road”
Valient Thorr – “Har Megiddo”
Camper Van Beethoven – “O Death”
Still Corners – “The White Season”
Allen Ginsberg – “Howl”
Rossini – “The Thieving Magpie”
The Cardigans – “Lovefool”
Digital Underground – “The Humpty Dance”
Viva Voce – “Diamond Mine”
Earth, Wind & Fire – “Boogie Wonderland”
Ramin Djawadi – “King of the North”
Delay Trees – “Whales & Colors”
Hothouse Flowers – “Hallelujah Jordan”
Hooray for Earth – “Same”
Japandroids – “Lucifer’s Symphony”
Prince – “I Would Die 4 U”
Janelle Monae – “Dance or Die”
Yuck – “Operation”

Friday's Podcasts: 2-3-12

2012-02-03T15:06:00.001-08:00

Doug Loves Movies (Scott Aukerman, Andy Wood, Graham Elwood)
WTF Ep. 120: Live in Boston
You Made it Weird (Chris D’Elia)
The Dana Gould Hour Ep.1
Superego Ep.3.11
The Long Shot Podcast #418 (Paul F. Tompkins)
Sklarbro Country #80 (Keegan-Michael Key)
Making It w/ Riki Lindhome (Thomas Lennon)

Thursday's Playlist: 2-2-12

2012-02-02T15:14:00.001-08:00

The Lonely Island – “We’re Back”
Sunny Day Real Estate – “In Circles”
Viva Voce – “We Don’t Care”
The Kinks – “I’m Not Like Everybody Else”
Talk Talk – “Talk Talk”
Smith Westerns – “Fallen in Love”
Blondie – “Europa”
Ruby – “Carondelet”
Suede – “Europe is Our Playground”
White Buffalo – “How the West Was Won”
Orbital – “Halcyon & On & On”
Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross – “I Can’t Take it Anymore”
The Beach Boys – “I Get Around”
Troop – “Spread My Wings”
Raphael Saadiq – “Good Man”
R.E.M. – “New Test Leper”
Echo & the Bunnymen – “Pictures on My Wall”
The Weeknd – “Thursday”
Tin Machine – “I Can’t Read”
Suede – “Another No One”
The Like – “He’s Not a Boy”
Still Corners – “Into the Trees”
Leo Sayer – “Long Tall Glasses”
Starsailor – “Silence is Easy”
Tennis – “Bimini Bay”
The Who – “Bell Boy”
Deadmau5 – “I Said (Michael Woods Remix)”
The Chameleons – “View from a Hill”
Zola Jesus – “Tower”
The Antlers – “Prologue”
The Innocence Mission – “Bright as Yellow”
A Tribe Called Quest – “Bonita Applebum”
Danger Mouse – “December 4th”
Erykah Badu – “Love”
Moby – “The Rafters”
Kansas – “Dust in the Wind”
Smith Westerns – “Diamond Boys”
Broken Social Scene – “Anthems for a Seventeen Year-Old Girl”
David Bowie – “TVC15”
My Brightest Diamond – “Reaching Through to the Other Side”
The Drums – “Forever and Ever Amen”
Prince – “Lavaux”
Iron Maiden – “Flash of the Blade”
Paul Simon – “Me & Julio Down by the Schoolyard”
Male Bonding – “Worse to Come”
Lykke Li – “Get Some”
Janet Jackson – “Alright”
Big Boi – “Shutterbug”
Styx – “Renegade”
Midnight Oil – “Dreamworld”
Adam Ant – “Vive le Rock”
Stricken City – “P.S.”
Prince – “Uptown”
Smashing Pumpkins – “Marquis in Spades”
The Big Pink – “At War with the Sun”
Fountains of Wayne – “Laser Show”
Delays – “Long Time Coming”
New Order – “Temptation”
Gorillaz – “Clint Eastwood (Phi Life Cypher Version)”
The Smiths – “Girl Afraid”
Remy Zero – “Life in Rain”
New Order – “Kiss of Death”
Hole – “Gold Dust Woman”
Smashing Pumpkins – “Ache (Demo)”
Ministry – “Golden Dawn”
Shudder to Think – “I Want Someone Badly”
Def Leppard – “Bringin’ on the Heartbreak”
Bad Brains – “Leaving Babylon”
Bangles – “In a Different Light”
a-ha – “The Sun Always Shines on TV”
The Elected – “When I’m Gone”
Torche – “Ufo”
Fonda – “Better Days”
The Jesus & Mary Chain – “You Trip Me Up”
Blur – “Girls & Boys”
Superchunk – “Digging for Something”
Björk – “Pagan Poetry”
Earth, Wind & Fire – “Evolution Orange”
Grouplove – “Colours”
Tallest Man on Earth – “Where Do My Bluebirds Fly?”
Basic Black – “She’s Mine”
First Aid Kit – “You’re Not Coming Home Tonight”
Austra – “The Future”
Mariachi El Bronx – “Cell Mates”
Nirvana – “Breed”
The Dream Academy – “Life in a Northern Town”
Deee-Lite – “Groove is in the Heart”
Faunts – “Lights are Always On”
Galaxie 500 – “Blue Thunder”
The Mission – “Tower of Strength”
Best Coast – “The End”

Wednesday's Playlist: 2-1-12

2012-02-01T15:20:00.001-08:00

Superchunk – “Saving My Ticket”
The Beach Boys – “Medley: I Get Around / Little Deuce Coupe”
tUnE-yArDs – “Killa’
Arcadia – “Election Day”
Frightened Rabbit – “Head Rolls Off (Live)”
Office of Future Plans – “The Beautiful Barricades”
OMD – “If You Want It”
The Who – “Cut My Hair”
Peter Gabriel – “Mercy Street”
Frightened Rabbit – “Floating in the Forth (Live)”
Dum Dum Girls – “Oh Mein M”
Charlie Haden & Hank Jones – “Danny Boy”
Echo & the Bunnymen – “Heads Will Roll (Summer)”
Leftfield – “Original”
The Gorillaz – “The Sounder (Edit)”
The Avalanches – “Since I Left You”
Metric – “Handshakes”
Big Star – “Stroke it Noel”
Silverchair – “Israel’s Son”
R.E.M. – “Leaving New York”
Girl Talk – “That’s Right”
Ty Segall – “California Commercial”
Twin Shadow – “When We’re Dancing”
The Beach Boys – “Don’t Worry Baby”
R.E.M. – “We All Go Back to Where We Belong”
Broken Social Scene – “Sweetest Kill”
Radiohead – “Lucky”
Goldfrapp – “Shiny and Warm”
Blondie – “Fade Away and Radiate”
A Tribe Called Quest – “Can I Kick It?”
Sunny Day Real Estate – “In Circles”
Missing Persons – “It Ain’t None of Your Business”
A Place to Bury Strangers – “Ego Death”
Loggins & Messina – “Your Mama Don’t Dance”
The Swell Season – “Once”
Happy Mondays – “Sunshine and Love (Lionrock Remix)”
Beachwood Sparks – “By Your Side”
Sharon Van Etten – “Damn Right”
Radiohead – “15 Step”
Nirvana – “Lithium”
The Specials – “Ghost Town”
a-ha – “Hunting High and Low”
Metric – “Monster Hospital”
Aimee Mann – “Nobody Does it Better”
The Feelies – “Should Be Gone”
Fountains of Wayne – “Barbara H.”
Stars – “Ageless Beauty”
The Pixies – “Gigantic”
R.E.M. – “Living Well is the Best Revenge”
Blonde Redhead – “Not Getting There”
Modest Mouse – “Satin in a Coffin”
Future of the Left – “Kept by Bees”
Camper Van Beethoven – “ZZ Top Goes to Egypt”
Childish Gambino – “You Know Me”
Ministry – “Hizbollah”
Ray Davies & Black Francis – “This is Where I Belong”
Alcest – “Écailes de Lune (Part 1)”
Prince – “Darling Nikki”
Jakob Dylan & Gary Louris – “Gonna Be a Darkness”
Dan Wilson – “I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight (Live)”
LCD Soundsystem – “Yr City’s a Sucker”
The Go-Go’s – “This Town”
Los Campesinos! – “Plan A”
Antony & the Johnsons – “Aeon”
Northside – “Take 5”
U2 – “Mysterious Ways (Apollo 440 Magic Hour Remix)”
The Pixies – “Wave of Mutilation (UK Surf)”
Aaliyah – “Are You That Somebody”
Elbow – “With Love”
The Rolling Stones – “Let’s Spend the Night Together”
Gene – “For the Dead”
Wild Flag – “Glass Tambourine”
Girls – “Headache”
Hugo – “99 Problems”
Earth, Wind & Fire – “Let’s Groove”
Kylesa – “Train of Thought”
The Long Winters – “Ultimatum”
Christopher O’Riley – “Knives Out”
Earth, Wind & Fire – “See the Light”
Camper Van Beethoven – “No Krugerrands for David”
Oneohtrix Point Never – “Power of Persuasion”
Jungle Brothers – “Jungle Brother (True Blue) (Urban Takeover Remix)”
Better Than Ezra – “Rosealia”
Ani DiFranco – “Gravel (KCRW)”
XTC – “Generals and Majors”
The Psychedelic Furs – “The Ghost in You”
John Cale – “(I Keep A) Close Watch”
Evan Dando – “The Ballad of El Goodo”
Marvin Gaye – “Wholy Holy (Live)”
Camper Van Beethoven – “Folly”
Modest Mouse – “The View”
Stars – “He Dreams He’s Awake”
Alice in Chains – “Dam that River”
LCD Soundsystem – “Daft Punk is Playing at My House”
Earth, Wind & Fire – “That’s the Way of the World”
The Dears – “Warm and Sunny Days”
Wolf Parade – “Little Golden Age”

She Alone: Revisiting Buffy, the Reluctant Feminist Hero

2012-01-29T19:30:00.000-08:00

At least once a year, I manage to revisit Buffy the Vampire Slayer in its entirety. There are a few shows I hold in high esteem as the most intriguing, well-written, and compelling: The Wire, Six Feet Under, The West Wing, just to name a few. But I have watched none of those as much as I have watched Buffy. The premise was simple enough, and yet it defied all existing tropes up to that point. Buffy Summers is the chosen one, the next in a long line of Vampire Slayers, called when the preceding Slayer dies. It is her duty to protect the world from bloodsucking creatures of the night, and all other manner of beasties. Creator Joss Whedon’s intention was to take the helpless girl in the alley in every cliché horror movie and give her agency and power. That, in itself, was likely enough to make me watch, despite the somewhat silly title, but the transformation of “High School as Hell,” from the figurative metaphorical to the literal made it even more appealing.

Fans know the origin of the show already. Originally, Buffy was a movie starring Kristy Swanson, Donald Sutherland, and Luke Perry, with Rutger Hauer and Paul Reubens as the baddies. It wouldn’t be a stretch to say that Whedon was unsatisfied with the result, despite Reubens performing one of the best death scenes in film history. It certainly wouldn’t be Joss’ first disappointment with Hollywood. But, he was given a second chance with this great character, the reprise to appear on the small screen. Cleverly, Whedon managed to reboot the property while maintaining the mythology created in the movie. Later, a comic book adaptation of Whedon’s original script was released, which he explains is to be taken as canonical. But the basics are the same. A new Slayer is called in L.A., she is trained in her fight against the vampires, she loses her original Watcher, and then she has to move.

The series starts with Buffy as a new student in Sunnydale, having just moved from Los Angeles. She meets her new Watcher, Giles, though she is at first resistant to resume her destined role, and quickly subverts a major tradition amongst Slayers by having friends. This becomes a key issue in the series. Though Whedon certainly follows his thesis of celebrating female power, he also follows the maxim that no one is truly alone, prophecy or no. The first set of episodes, a mid-season replacement, had twelve installments. They acted as a blueprint, establishing character, setting, situations, and mythology. Though the twists and emotional complexity would be more fully explored in later seasons, there were definitely some shining moments in the original dozen shows.

From the first show, Whedon wanted to establish the notion that nobody was safe. Eric Balfour, later to star in several shows including the aforementioned Six Feet Under, was to have appeared in the opening credits (though the network balked at the idea), only to be made a quick casualty in the war against darkness. While it wasn’t necessarily Game of Thrones, it was daring nonetheless. All of the chess pieces are put in place in the first two episodes. We have our heroine, Buffy, her substitute father figure in Giles, the Watcher, and her friends, Xander and Willow. In addition, we meet two different foils, the cliquish Cordelia and her mysterious romantic interest, Angel. We also have what Whedon establishes every season, what he likes to call “The Big Bad.” In the case of the first season, this is the elder vampire known as The Master.

The Master sets the architecture for major season-long enemies to come. While every episode may have some new challenge to face, there is always the threat of the major villain, ever plotting in the background for some major battle that will inevitably come. He and his minions, Luke (played by an actor who would later come back as baddie, The Judge) and Darla (a recurring fan favorite), scheme to rise from their underground “mystical” prison, and subsequently doing what nearly every Buffy baddie wants to do, open the Hellmouth and release untold evils upon the earth. The point is made again and again, as it probably needs to with such fantastical stories, that this is a lot of responsibility for one teenager to bear, even with special powers.

The Master’s arc over the season is peppered with what has become the norm for supernatural shows, which is appropriately called “Monster of the Week.” Buffy deals with witches, praying mantis monsters, animal possession, ancient demons, a cursed spirit inhabiting a ventriloquist’s dummy, waking nightmares, and a vengeful, invisible girl. And yet, they go far beyond those pedantic descriptions. All take on the subtext of the metaphorical becoming literal. The overbearing mother who lives vicariously through her daughter actually switches their bodies through witchcraft. Hyenas possess the cruel, preying clique. The ignored and scorned girl actually becomes invisible. And, though the bulk of the episode, “I, Robot…You, Jane,” is somewhat clunky, it is memorable not only for the introduction of Jenny Calendar, but also for its books vs. technology messages that are still relevant, fifteen years later.

“Smell is the most powerful trigger to the memory there is. A certain flower, or a-a whiff of smoke can bring up experiences long forgotten. Books smell musty and-and-and rich. The knowledge gained from a computer is a - it, uh, it has no- no texture, no-no context. It's-it's there and then it's gone. If it's to last, then-then the getting of knowledge should be, uh, tangible, it should be, um, smelly.”

The season finale, meant to wrap up the entire series in case it wasn’t renewed for a second season, has Buffy finally meeting and facing the Master. Though this seems formulaic, the episode is anything but. For one thing, when Buffy learns of the prophecy that predicts her death, she has a real, emotional, visceral reaction. There is no “rah-rah” moment or a stiff upper lip in the face of danger. Buffy is a reluctant hero. She’d much rather lead a normal life, and when faced with impending death, shows her true humanity. It is authentic and memorable. Secondly, the fact that the Slayer, the chosen one, has friends ends up to save her life. Though the prophecy actually comes to pass, Xander revives her, a circumstance that would never have happened had Buffy been a more “conventional” Slayer. And, though Buffy lived, she did die temporarily, which would have lasting effects in later episodes. This bit of business ended up becoming a touchstone of the series that proved to obsessive nerds, like myself, that no detail was insignificant.

Of course, a lot of fans will point to the Buffy and Angel romance as the hallmark of the series. It wasn’t the first instance of the vampire as romantic figure by a long shot, but it, and possibly Anne Rice, helped redefine the vampire as an elegant, all consuming, passionate character. Though it wasn’t the first, it definitely helped spawn an entire generation of supernatural romance, from True Blood to Twilight. With Buffy, however, there are no religious overtones and no sparkles. Angel is cursed, forced to walk the earth as an immortal, but with a human soul, aware at all times of the damage he has done and the pain inflicted. He is another piece of this Slayer’s unconventional life. Because of his unlikely curse and his desire to help this Slayer, who he falls for, Buffy has an advantage over past incarnations.

Buffy represents the power of feminism. This is not the kind of feminism that says women have to “be like men,” but instead showcases the strength of all women, distinct from men, yet equal, and uniquely powerful. It is a feminism that has the strength enough to share her power with others. This becomes a consistent theme throughout the series, making profound statements about humanity’s shared struggles, and how the battles we fight against our own demons are best assailed with the help of others.

In the days to come, I hope to share with you my thoughts about later seasons of this, one of my most beloved television series. I almost can’t wait to get to the second season, which is strange considering I’ve seen it so many times already. Buffy faces life after having faced death, a few more recurring vampire foes, including the enigmatic Spike, and a “Surprise” big bad that shocked everyone. Season two definitely raises the stakes on a show that had a strong beginning and near unlimited potential. Stay tuned.

Sunday's Playlist: 1-29-12

2012-01-29T18:01:00.001-08:00

The Boxer Rebellion – “The Absentee”
Sufjan Stevens – “That Was the Worst Christmas Ever!”
The Bangles – “Eternal Flame”
David Bowie – “Five Years (Live)”
Smashing Pumpkins – “Never Let Me Down Again”
Childish Gambino - “Put it in My Video”
The Weeknd – “The Morning”
George Michael – “Understand”
Zola Jesus – “Collapse”
Radiohead – “The Tourist”
Gonzales, Feist & Dani – “Boomerang 2005 (Comme um Bommerang)”
The Time – “Jungle Love”
Beastie Boys – “Lee Majors Come Again”
Hall & Oates – “Camellia”
Hall & Oates – “So Close”
Morrissey – “Disappointed”
R.E.M. – “Jazz (Rotary Ten)”
MC DJ – “UFO”
The Beach Boys – “Sloop John B (Instrumental)”
Big Star – “Holocaust”
Guided by Voices – “Game of Pricks”
The Jayhawks – “Wichita”
Ruby – “Paraffin”
Patrick Park – “The Lucky Ones”
Spoon – “Tweakers (Remix)”
Information Society – “Running”
Ryan Adams – “In My Time of Need”
Office of Future Plans – “The Beautiful Barricades”
Sufjan Stevens – “The Seer’s Tower”
Jawbox – “Cornflake Girl”
Sunny Day Real Estate – “9”
Carissa’s Wierd – “Blue Champagne Glass”
George Michael – “Spinning the Wheel”
The Beach Boys – “Little Honda”
Camper Van Beethoven – “We Saw Jerry’s Daughter”
The Cult – “Peace Dog”
Daft Punk – “Rectifier”
Animal Collective – “Did You See the Words”
Frankie Goes to Hollywood – “Get it On”
Danny Elfman – “Gratitude”
The Kinks – “Mindless Child of the Motherhood”
ESG – “Tiny Sticks”
Baroness – “Bullhead’s Lament”
Radiohead – “Reckoner”
The Beach Boys – “The Elements: Fire”
Orange Juice – “The Day I Went Down to Texas”
A Tribe Called Quest – “Can I Kick It?”
Mumford & Sons – “Awake My Soul”
U2 – “Mysterious Ways (Solar Plexus Club Mix)”
The Chameleons – “Swamp Thing”
Neil & Tim Finn – “The Weather With You (Live)”
Kylesa – “Spiral Shadow”
The Books – “Chain of Missing Links”
Stories – “Brother Louie”
Destroyer – “Kaputt”
The Swell Season – “The Swell Season”
U2 – “Discotheque (New Mix)”
Little Joy – “Play the Part”
The 88 – “As Far as I Can See”
The Elected – “See the Light”
The Bird & the Bee – “Spark”
The Go-Go’s – “Johnny, Are You Queer”
Jungle Brothers – “Good Newz Comin’”
R.E.M. – “Me, Marlon Brando, Marlon Brando and I”
Suede – “He’s Dead (Demo)”
Fennesz & Sakamoto – “0425”
Can – “Sing Swan Song”
Deltron 3030 – “3030”
Woods – “Hand it Out”
Nada Surf – “Jules and Jim”
The Tallest Man on Earth – “Walk the Line”
Broken Social Scene – “Cause = Time”
Lansing-Dreiden – “Disenchanted”
Blitzen Trapper – “My Home Town”
Childish Gambino – “Backpackers”
Smashing Pumpkins – “Hippy Trippy (“Crush” Music Box Demo)”
Chicago – “25 or 6 to 4”
M83 – “Teen Angst”
Wild Flag – “Racehorse”
Radiohead – “Jigsaw Falling Into Place”
Placebo – “Bigmouth Strikes Again”
The Walkmen – “The Rat”
Eric B & Rakim – “Eric B is President”

Saturday's Playlist: 1-28-12

2012-01-28T18:00:00.000-08:00

Mariachi El Bronx – “Map of the World”
Kaiser Chiefs – “I Dare You”
Peter, Bjorn and John – “Dig a Little Deeper”
Kaiser Chiefs – “Back in December”
Childish Gambino – “Lights Turned On”
Girl Talk – “Make Me Wanna”
Alice in Chains – “Rooster”
Blitzen Trapper – “Street Fighting Sun”
Stereolab – “Laserblast”
Leo Sayer – “Thunder in My Heart”
X- “Los Angeles”
Band of Horses – “Blue Beard”
Moby – “Flying Foxes”
X – “Wild Thing”
Band of Horses – “Northwest Apartment”
Lush – “Hypocrite”
Duran Duran – “Tel Aviv (The AIR Studios Version)”
Soft Cell – “Secret Life”
Crash Test Dummies – “In the Days of the Caveman”
Explosions in the Sky – “Inside It All Feels the Same”
Iron & Wine – “Upward Over the Mountain”
OMD – “If You Leave”
Valient Thorr – “Suddendeathisnothing”
‘Til Tuesday – “Sleep”
The Pixies – “River Euphrates”
Ryan Adams – “Luminol”
Dum Dum Girls – “Teardrops on My Pillow”
The Flaming Lips – “Race for the Prize”
Paul Simon – “American Tune”
Cass McCombs – “Pleasant Shadow Song”
Veronica Falls – “All Eyes on You”
Camper Van Beethoven – “No More B.S.”
Luscious Jackson – “Gypsy”
Janelle Monae – “Neon Valley Street”
Bomba Estéreo – “Tambora”
R.E.M. – “Bad Day”
Canon Blue – “Lulls (Memphis)”
Arcadia – “Election Day”
New Order – “Ceremony (Original Version)”
Cults – “Rave On”
David Lynch – “Noah’s Ark”
Sigur Rós – “Ný Batterí (Live)”
X – “Breathless”
The Locust – “Master and Servant”
James Brown – “Make it Funky, Pt. 1”
a-ha – “Take on Me”
Stricken City – “Five Metres Apart”
Ariel Pink – “Alisa”
Camper Van Beethoven – “Militia Song”
Wolfmother – “Vagabond”
Neil Finn & Eddie Vedder – “Parting Ways”
Thom Yorke – “Black Swan”
Beck – “Leopard Skin Pill-Box Hat”
Damien Rice – “Volcano”
Kansas – “Carry On, Wayward Son”
Faunts – “Lights Are Always On”
Free Energy – “Wild Winds”
Adam Arcuragi – “Delicate”
Echo & the Bunnymen – “Run, Run, Run (Live)”
Ray Davies & the 88 – “David Watts”
that dog – “Never Say Never”
Fountains of Wayne – “A Fine Day for a Parade”
Camper Van Beethoven – “Waka”
Blondie – “Die Young Stay Pretty”
The Rolling Stones – “Start Me Up”
Florence + The Machine – “Swimming (Live)”
Atlas Sound – “Parallax”
Deerhunter – “Nothing Ever Happened”
The Pogues – “Haunted”
Hothouse Flowers – “It’ll Be Easier in the Morning”
Raphael Saadiq – “Heart Attack”
Madonna – “Crazy for You”
Styx – “Mr. Roboto”
Bruce Springsteen – “Gotta Get that Feeling”
The Beach Boys – “I Should Have Known Better”
Okkervil River – “Rider”
Danny Elfman – “Lightning”
Midlake – “In the Ground”
Toto – “Africa”
The Weeknd – “The Fall”
Blondie – “Sunday Girl”
Sons & Daughters – “Axed Actor”
Nirvana – “Jesus Doesn’t Want Me for a Sunbeam (Live)”

Friday's Playlist: 1-27-12

2012-01-27T15:26:00.000-08:00

The Alarm – “Knife Edge”
The Swell Season – “When Your Mind’s Made Up”
New Order – “Vanishing Point (Instrumental)”
The Tough Alliance – “1981 -”
Bryan Ferry – “Shameless”
Scott Walker – “Always Coming Back to You”
Suede – “Picnic by the Motorway”
The Constantines – “Young Lions”
Fennesz & Sakamoto – “0328”
The English Beat – “End of the Party”
The Who – “Baba O’Riley”
Janet Jackson – “Livin’ in a World (They Didn’t Make)”
DJ Shadow – “Give Me Back the Nights”
Eagles – “James Dean”
Luscious Jackson – “Deep Shag”
Jungle Brothers – “Sexy Body”
INXS & Jimmy Barnes – “Laying Down the Law”
Jenny Owen Youngs – “F Was I”
Metric – “Ending Start”
A Sunny Day in Glasgow – “Ashes Grammar – Ashes Maths”
We Were Promised Jetpacks – “This is My House, This is My Home”
Moby – “Machete”
The Horrors – “I Can See Through You”
Wilco – “I Can’t Stand It”
Smashing Pumpkins – “Apathy’s Last Kiss”
Stars – “The Last Song Ever Written”
John Maus – “Matter of Fact”
Elton John – “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road”
The Cult – “No. 13”
Les Savy Fav – “Rodeo”
Q-Tip – “Blue Girl”
Wilco – “I Am Trying to Break Your Heart”
The Black Angels – “Haunting at 1300 Mckinley”
The Bird & the Bee – “Spark”
The Yardbirds – “For Your Love”
Paul Simon – “The Boxer (Live)”
First Aid Kit – “Emmylou”
Nada Surf – “Jules and Jim”
The Delgados – “Coming in from the Cold”
ESG – “Hold Me Tight”
Pat Benatar – “Promises in the Dark”
The Cure – “10:15 Saturday Night”
Pearl Jam – “Let Me Sleep (It’s Christmas Time) (Live Acoustic)”
Jungle Brothers – “Good Newz Comin’”
Destiny’s Child – “Bills Bills Bills”
The Dismemberment Plan – “Come Home”
Missing Persons – “U.S. Drag”
KRS-One – “Mad Crew”
Glossary – “The Reckless”
Drive Like Jehu – “Good Luck in Jail”
ceo – “All Around”
James Blake – “The Wilhelm Scream”
Sufjan Stevens – “Romulus”
Tim Capello – “I Still Believe”
Glasvegas – “You”
Clint Mansell – “Opposites Attract”
The Sundays – “Can’t Be Sure”
Billy Joel – “You May Be Right”
Adam Arcuragi – “Go With Them”
Roxy Music – “Pyjamarama”
Weezer – “Jamie”
U2 – “With or Without You”
The Beach Boys – “Gettin’ Hungry”
The Beach Boys – “Cabin Essence”
Flying Lotus – “Camera Day”
Tim Minchin – “Storm (Live)”
Fly Pan Am – “Brulez Suivante Suivant”
Billy Bragg – “A New England”
The Swell Season – “Sleeping”
Ani DiFranco – “Albacore”
Jungle Brothers – “Black Woman”
Information Society – “Something in the Air”
Kings Go Forth – “Paradise Lost”
The Cure – “Jumping Someone Else’s Train”
Funkadelic – “Super Stupid”
Neil & Tim Finn – “Edible Flowers”
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah – “Maniac”
Akron / Family – “Another Sky”
The Beach Boys – “Ten Little Indians”
Big Star – “Kangaroo”
The Bangles – “Walk Like an Egyptian”
The Beach Boys – “Good Vibrations (Session Highlights)”
Charles Bradley – “The Telephone Song”
Smashing Pumpkins – “Set the Ray to Jerry”
Grand Archives – “Left for All the Strays”
Garfunkel & Oates – “Me, You and Steve”
Childish Gambino – “Be Alone”
Little Joy – “Evaporar”
The Mountain Goats – “For Charles Bronson”
Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross – “The Heretics”
OMD – “RFWK”

Tuesday's Playlist: 1-24-12

2012-01-24T14:56:00.000-08:00

Future Sound of London – “Hot Knives”
X – “Los Angeles”
Adam Arcuragi – “Math”
Childish Gambino – “Freaks and Geeks”
Blondie – “Rapture”
Jawbox – “Cruel Swing”
The Antlers – “Prologue”
Blondie – “Once I Had a Love (The Disco Song)”
Charles Bradley – “Heartaches and Pain”
Charlie Haden & Hank Jones – “We Shall Overcome”
The Jesus & Mary Chain – “Cherry Came Too”
Supertramp – “Goodbye Stranger (Live)”
The Old 97’s – “The Dance Class”
AC/DC – “Thunderstruck”
Howard Jones – “Pearl in the Shell (Extended Mix)”
Stories – “Brother Louie”
Creedence Clearwater Revival – “Lookin’ Out My Back Door”
Gang Gang Dance – “∞ ∞ ∞”
Janet Jackson – “Alright”
Robyn – “Criminal Intent”
Jellyfish – “That is Why”
Serge Gainsbourg – “Ah! Melody”
Lush – “Blackout”
Turin Brakes – “Feeling Oblivion”
Robyn – “Get Myself Together”
Vampire Weekend –“Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa”
Quiet Riot – “Cum on Feel the Noize”
David Lynch – “Football Game”
Future Sound of London – “Dead Cities”
Jaydiohead – “Change Order”
Prince – “Walk in Sand”
Jonsí – “Icicle Sleeves (Live)”
Natalie Merchant – “Motherland”
Madvillain – “America’s Most Blunted”
Mekons – “Flitcraft”
Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros – “Janglin”
Mekons – “Country”
Ryan Adams – “Burning Photographs”
Sigur Rós – “Ágætis Byrjun”
Mirah – “Nobody Has to Stay”
Eddie Money – “Baby Hold On”
ESG – “Moody”
Orange Juice – “A Sad Lament”
Beastie Boys – “C.A.S.”
The Cure – “A Night Like This”
Gorillaz – “Feel Good Inc. (Stanton Warrior Remix)”
Little Dragon – “Recommendation”
They Might Be Giants – “Ana Ng”
Cults – “Most Wanted”
Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti – “Round and Round”
Fleet Foxes – “Quiet Houses”
The Roots – “Stomp”
Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros – “Carries On”
Stevie Wonder – “Where Were You When I Needed You”
The White Stripes – “The Hardest Button to Button”
Camper Van Beethoven – “Come on Darkness”
Peaches – “Search and Destroy”
The Stone Roses – “Fool’s Gold 9.35”
Sigur Rós – “Hafsól”
X – “Delta 88”
Valient Thorr – “Habituary”
Sufjan Stevens – “I Want to Be Well”
Jawbreaker – “Wound”
Fonda – “My Heart is Dancing”
The Bird and the Bee – “Birds and the Bees”
The Futureheads – “I Can Do That”
Medicine – “She Knows Everything”
Eisley – “The Valley”
Wolves in the Throne Room – “Astral Blood”
George Michael – “Round Here”
Aimee Mann – “I Was Thinking I Could Clean Up for Christmas”
Orbital – “Phoebus Apollo”

Weekend Playlist: 1-21-12 & 1-22-12

2012-01-22T11:40:00.000-08:00

Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross – “She Reminds Me of You”
Krallice – “Litany of Regrets”
Florence + The Machine – “Dog Days are Over”
British Sea Power – “Luna”
That Dog – “Never Say Never”
New Order – “Cries and Whispers”
Paul Simon – “Look at That”
St. Vincent – “Cruel”
The Strokes – “Someday”
Q-Tip – “Vivrant Thing”
John Cougar Mellencamp – “Small Town”
Blonde Redhead – “Luv Machine”
Gang Gang Dance – “Adult Goth”
The Cult – “Little Face”
Interpol – “Success”
Rakim – “Know the Ledge”
Faunts – “Input”
Future Sound of London – “Eggshell”
King Creosote & Jon Hopkins – “John Taylor’s Month Away”
The Byrds – “Goin’ Back”
The Fixx – “One Thing Leads to Another”
Galaxie 500 – “Cold Night”
The Who – “5:15”
Kanye West – “Jesus Walks”
George Thorogood – “Miss Luann”
Delays – “The Sun Always Shines on TV”
The Beach Boys – “The Surfer Moon”
Mastodon – “Thickening”
Office of Future Plans – “The Loyal Opposition”
The Old 97’s – “The Grand Theatre”
Lamb – “Heaven”
Radiohead – “Morning Mr. Magpie”
Torche – “Arrowhead”
British Sea Power – “Living is So Easy”
Aimee Mann – “Red Vines”
Interpol – “Memory Serves”
Little Scream – “Red Hunting Jacket”
Espers – “III”
The Jayhawks – “Blue from Now On (Take 2)”
Art Ensemble of Chicago – “Theme de Yoyo”
I Monster – “Daydream in Blue”
Canon Blue – “Honeysuckle”
Hall & Oates – “Say It Isn’t So”
Mew – “156”
Oneohtrix Point Never – “Sleep Dealer”
Neutral Milk Hotel – “Holland, 1945”
Rod Stewart – “Every Picture Tells a Story”
Paul Young – “Every Time You Go Away”
Kaiser Chiefs – “Long Way from Celebrating”
Smashing Pumpkins – “Suffer”
Foo Fighters – “Everlong”
Sleigh Bells – “A/B Machines”
Joe Purdy – “Wash Away (Reprise)”
Iceage – “Total Drench”
The War on Drugs – “Black Water Falls”
Little River Band – “You’re Driving Me Out of My Mind”
David Bowie – “Young Americans”
Sufjan Stevens – “Chicago”
Elvis Costello & the Attractions – “Beyond Belief”
Devendra Banhart – “It’s a Sight to Behold”
Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross – “Pinned and Mounted”
The Roots – “Finality”
Paul Simon – “Mother and Child Reunion”
Icicle Works – “Birds Fly (Whisper to a Scream)”
Moby – “Rushing”
Gorillaz – “19-2000”
The Go! Team – “Yosemite Theme”
Feist – “Intuition”
Modest Mouse – “History Sticks to Your Feet”
Echo & the Bunnymen – “Broke My Neck (Long)”
Suede – “This Hollywood Life”
Washed Out – “Far Away”
Oneohtrix Point Never – “Computer Vision”
Prince – “Laydown”
Tame Impala – “Desire Be Desire Go”
R.E.M. – “Two Steps Onward”
Jaydiohead – “99 Anthems”
Os Mutantes – “Baby”
Kate Bush – “Never Be Mine”
Mastodon – “Stargasm”
Woods – “White Out”
Ani DiFranco – “Life Boat”
A Flock of Seagulls – “Tanglimara”
Yaz – “Situation”
Heart – “Crazy on You”
Jimi Hendrix – “Foxy Lady”
Blondie – “Man Overboard”
DeVotchKa – “The Last Beat of My Heart”
Prince – “Sticky Like Glue”
Frank Turner – “Nights Become Days”
Cream – “Tales of Brave Ulysses”
Björk – “Hyperballad”
Motörhead – “Ace of Spades”
Florence + The Machine – “Shake it Out”
OMD – “History of Modern (Part 1)”
Crowded House – “Into Temptation”
The Smiths – “Pretty Girls Make Graves”
Suede – “High Rising”
Lucy Pearl – “Hollywood”
Cloud Nothings – “No Sentiment”
Florence + The Machine – “Strangeness & Charm”
The Kinks – “Big Black Smoke”
Gorillaz – “Rock the House”
KISS – “Makin’ Love”
The Motels – “Take the L”
Bad Lieutenant – “Split the Atom”

Thursday's Playlist: 1-19-12

2012-01-19T14:55:00.001-08:00

Glasser – “Glad”
Tom Waits – “Do the Hokey Cokey (Live)”
Cymbals Eat Guitars – “Keep Me Waiting”
Low – “Try to Sleep”
The Feelies – “Change Your Mind”
Travis – “Dear Diary”
Smashing Pumpkins – “Today”
Hothouse Flowers – “Movies”
Echo & the Bunnymen – “Zimbo (Live 1982)”
Be Your Own Pet – “Bicycle, Bicycle, You Are My Bicycle”
The Like – “Square One”
X – “I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts”
De La Soul – “Say No Go”
Orange Juice – “Poor Old Soul”
Cloud Nothings – “Youre Not That Good at Anything”
Ray Davies & Gary Lightbody – “Tired of Waiting”
Fleetwood Mac – “Sara”
Swans – “You People Make Me Sick”
David Arnold & LTJ Bukem – “The James Bond Theme”
The Beach Boys – “Little Miss America”
Tom Waits – “Jitterbug Boy / Better Off Without a Wife”
Frank Turner – “Glory Hallelujah”
Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros – “Up From Below”
Fountains of Wayne – “All Kinds of Time”
Moby – “Why Does My Heart Feel So Bad?”
Timex Social Club – “Rumors”
Hurricane #1 – “Step Into My World”
Dusty Springfield – “I Think It’s Gonna Rain Today”
Suede – “Sound of the Streets”
Danzig – “Mother”
Peter Gabriel – “Shock the Monkey”
Eddie & the Tide – “Power Play”
Mates of State – “Basement Money”
A Tribe Called Quest – “Clap Your Hands”
Blondie – “Rifle Range”
Ray Davies & Spoon – “See My Friends”
Titus Andronicus – “A Pot in Which to Piss”
George Michael – “Patience”
Gorillaz – “Ghosttrain”
The Cave Singers – “Outer Realms”
King Curtis – “Memphis Soul Stew (Live)”
Dirty Projectors – “Knotty Pine”
The Jesus & Mary Chain – “The Hardest Walk”
Beastie Boys – “The Bill Harper Collection”
The Tough Alliance – “Take No Heroes”
Maxence Cyrin – “Crazy in Love”
The Rural Alberta Advantage – “Live to Tell (We’re Scared Version)”
Samuel Barber / Baltimore Symphony Orchestra – “Adagio for Strings, Op. 11”
Jimi Hendrix – “Red House”
Kanye West – “Flashing Lights”
Patrick Park – “You’re Enough”
The Dears – “Degeneration Street”
Eric B & Rakim – “Microphone Fiend”
Röyksopp – “Forsaken Cowboy”
Kermit & the Muppets – “Rainbow Connection”
Band of Skulls – “Cold Fame”
Austra – “The Villain”
The Duke Spirit – “Procession”
DJ Shadow – “Redeemed”
The National – “Gospel”
Suede – “La Puissance (The Power) (Live)”
The Weeknd – “The Knowing”
Deadmau5 – “Right this Second (Original Mix)”
Midlake – “Rulers, Ruling All Things”
The Dream Academy – “Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want”
UGK feat. Outkast – “Intl Players Anthem”
Elbow – “The Birds”
Tammany Hall NYC – “Always on Sunday”
Little River Band – “It’s a Long Way There”
Health – “Triceratops (Acid Girls Remix A)”
Pete Yorn – “For Nancy (Cos It Already Is)”
Trans Am – “Polizei (Zu Spät)”
The Killers – “Somebody Told Me (Demo)”
The National - "Terrible Love"

Weekend Playlist: 1-14-12 & 1-15-12

2012-01-15T17:49:00.001-08:00

Antony Hegarty – “If It Be Your Will”
Crooked Fingers – “Wild One”
Frankie Goes to Hollywood – “Watching the Wildlife”
Blue Öyster Cult – “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper”
Devendra Banhart – “Chinese Children”
Smashing Pumpkins – “Never Let Me Down Again”
Leo Sayer – “You Make Me Feel Like Dancing”
Blondie – “Look Good in Blue”
The Muppet Barbershop Quartet – “Smells Like Teen Spirit”
The Kinks – “I’m Not Like Everybody Else”
Nirvana – “School (Live)”
Blur – “Coffee & TV”
David Bowie – “Suffragette City (Live)”
Radiohead – “Airbag”
Broken Social Scene – “Late Nineties Bedroom Rock for the Missionaries”
The Who – “Dirty Jobs (Demo)”
McLusky – “To Hell with Good Intentions”
Massive Attack – “Rush Minute”
The Tallest Man on Earth – “You’re Going Back”
Braids – “Plath Hearth”
Rocket from the Crypt – “Ditchdigger”
Prince – “Purple Rain”
Fruit Bats – “You’re Too Weird”
Tangerine Dream – “Love on a Real Train”
U2 – “’Baby’ Until the End of the World”
Atlas Sound – “Lightsworks”
Valient Thorr – “Night Terrors”
Architecture in Helsinki – “Escapee”
Faunts – “Explain”
Suede – “Heroine”
UNKLE – “Rabbit in Your Headlights”
The Old 97’s – “Champaign, Illinois”
Arctic Monkeys – “That’s Where You’re Wrong”
Neil Finn – “Driving Me Mad”
Eels – “Last Stop: This Town”
Interpol – “A Time to be So Small”
Lustre – “Nice Overalls”
The Pains of Being Pure at Heart – “Contender”
Male Bonding – “The Saddle”
Otis Redding – “Down in the Valley”
Billy Joel – “She’s Always a Woman”
Boston – “Peace of Mind”
Midlake – “Small Mountain”
Aimee Mann – “Save Me (on Conan)”
The Black Keys – “Next Girl”
The Black Keys – “Yearnin’”
Beach House – “Walk in the Park”
Sharon van Etten – “For You”
Gorillaz – “Orchestral Intro”
Eliza Lumley – “Black Star”
Smashing Pumpkins – “Because You Are”
A Place to Bury Strangers – “Ego Death”
Tricky – “Christiansands”
Yuck – “Suicide Policeman”
The 88 – “They Ought to See You Now”
Jellyfish – “The Man I Used to Be”
Gillian Welch – “Silver Dagger”
Faunts – “Das Malefitz”
Blondie – “Rapture”
Faunts – “Alarmed / Lights”
Led Zeppelin – “Immigrant Song”
Dexys Midnight Runners – “Come On Eileen”
Fountains of Wayne – “Hung Up on You”
Prince – “I Would Die 4 U”
U2 – “Where Did It All Go Wrong?”
The Beach Boys – “California Girls (Instrumental)”
Crowded House – “Into Temptation
Childish Gambino – “I’m On It”
Adele – “Someone Like You”
The New Pornographers – “If You Can’t See My Mirrors”
Apollonia 6 – “Sex Shooter”
Warpaint – “Undertow”
Stereolab – “Delugeoisie”
Nas – “It Ain’t Hard to Tell”
Paul Simon – “Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard”
Jungle Brothers – “Sounds of the Safari”
Woods – “Any Other Day”
R.E.M. – “Nightswimming”
ABC – “The Look of Love, Pt.1”
General Public – “Tenderness”
Gene Pitney – “24, Sycamore”
Jimmy Eat World – “Game of Pricks”
Grandmaster Melle Mel – “White Lines”
Elbow – “Mirrorball”
Okkervil River – “Mermaid”
Hothouse Flowers – “Water”
John Cougar Mellencamp – “Pink Houses”
Oingo Boingo – “When the Lights Go Out”
Prince – “Sexy M.F.”
Smashing Pumpkins – “Hummer”
Sunny Day Real Estate – “5/4”
Eagles – “Take it to the Limit”
Future Sound of London – “Smokin’ Japanese Babe”
Ray Davies & the 88 – “David Watts”
Bright Eyes – “First Day of My Life”
Mission of Burma – “Academy Fight Song”
Smashing Pumpkins – “Waiting”
David Bowie – “Young Americans”
X- “The New World”
Glossary – “The Natural State”
Kurt Vile – “In My Time”
The Black Keys – “Hard Row”
Billy Squier – “The Stroke”
The Acorn – “White Heat (Silken Laumann Remix)”
Van Morrison – “Moondance”
Sufjan Stevens – “Size Too Small”
Elton John – “Someone Saved My Life Tonight”
Zola Jesus – “Sea Talk”
ELO – “All Over the World”
Saint Etienne – “You’re in a Bad Way”
Ryan Adams – “Ashes & Fire”
David Lynch – “Speed Roadster”
Scott Walker – “Such a Small Love”
Peter Salett – “Heart of Mine”
Caribou – “Eli”
Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers – “What are You Doin’ in My Life?”
Moby – “Signs of Love”
Interpol – “The Undoing”
The Byrds – “Wasn’t Born to Follow”
Marvin Gaye – “Sad Tomorrow”
Cut Copy – “Corner of the Sky’
M. Ward – “Poison Cup”
Nine Inch Nails – “The Great Below”
Vampire Weekend – “Giving Up the Gun”
Suede – “Animal Nitrate”
Kylesa – “Between Silence and Sound”
Mogwai – “You Don’t Know Jesus”
The National – “Murder Me Rachel”

Ernest Cline's "Ready Player One": Nothing Can "Console" Me. Get it?

2012-01-13T17:56:00.000-08:00

The following is my personal review of Ernest Cline’s "Ready Player One." Before you begin reading, know that my review is not positive. If you cherish this book, I highly suggest stopping here in your reading. This is not an invitation to an argument, but instead merely my opinion of a book that is very popular, that many people love, but that I simply did not. If you have not read the book, know that there are some key plot elements that, while maybe not spoilers in the traditional sense, are included here as part of the critique.

Ready Player One is the debut novel from Ernest Cline, perhaps best known within indie geek circles as the screenwriter of the film, Fanboys. I was pointed to this book numerous times over the last few months, from fellow readers as well as podcasts and the inevitable stream of pop culture “word-of-mouth.” At first blush, the novel seemed perfectly suited to me, or at least my demographic. As I read through the book, I realized that it was more of the latter than the former, overtly and consciously constructed to hit all the buttons of a particular generation. The problem is there is very little to no substance under the surface.

In the year 2044, the world is in the third decade of a massive recession and most of the population is living in abject poverty. We are quickly introduced to our protagonist in this world, Wade Watts, who goes through most of the book under his avatar’s pseudonym, Parzival. He is what is known in the novel as a “gunter,” short for “egg hunter,” one of a group of people obsessed with the quest for Halliday’s egg. This egg is a valuable prize left by a genius game designer for these virtual adventurers to find within the gaming world he invented. Gunters spend their time in the OASIS, a huge online gaming world chock full of geekery. The requirement for finding the elusive egg, named after the concept of the “Easter Egg,” a practice of hiding elements within video games and other media, is an encyclopedic knowledge of 80s pop culture. More specifically, the gunters obsessively consume all of the pop culture artifacts revered by the character of James Halliday, mythic creator of the OASIS. There will be more on him and other characters later.

References and the Unending Abyss of Nostalgia:

From the first few paragraphs of Ready Player One, the pop culture references are not just dropped; there is a virtual deluge of allusions. While there are a few clever and appropriate nods, such as the name Parzival, the medieval German name for Sir Percival, the knight who found the Holy Grail, the vast majority of the other mentions fail in this endeavor (i.e. naming his virtual spaceship Vonnegut, mainly as very few of his books even involve space travel, and he was especially critical of pop culture and materialism). Perhaps it is the idea that the name Parzival is one of the few references not rooted in the 80s, but there is no denying that the immersion into the “Me Decade” is incredibly flawed at best. Parzival and his fellow questers, all young adults, our “hero” in high school, seemingly spend every last waking moment watching 80s television, playing 80s video games, role playing in 80s D&D campaigns, reading 80s science fiction and fantasy, and memorizing 80s films. While this may seem cheeky, fun, and hugely appealing to someone such as me, who grew up during that period, obtaining my first real introductions to great examples of these distractions, the actual result is far from enjoyable.

Those who know me are well aware that I can be a pop culture snob and obsessive, especially as relates to books and music. Because of this, some fans of Ready Player One may be crying foul, or even simply pointing out the flaws in others that I harbor as well. Bear with me. A friend of mine once looked at my music and book collection and remarked that I wasn’t discriminating enough, that I liked far too many things. As such, one could not determine the things that I truly loved, that should be seen as great as opposed to good. This is the difference between an obsessive collector, someone who simply must “conquer” every relic that comes across their path, which is just a small step away from “hoarder,” and the opposite side of critic or evaluator. (It is similar to the difference between the two camps in education reform that battle over breadth vs. depth. For your information, I fall into the latter category.)

Like Cline and his characters, there are many things I love, but I have learned about sacrifice, moderation, and putting aside childish things, which it seems Parzival and his buddies cannot, even in a poverty-stricken world. The characters in this novel, especially the third person limited narrative of Parzival, simply cannot find a situation in which they can’t reference their favorite things. At one point, Parzival points out that he has a “weakness for kaiju,” which is an incredibly meaningless statement because he makes so many references that it appears he has a weakness for EVERYTHING. It is a hallmark of this culture in which everything is either “my favorite” or “that’s the worst.” The only time I can remember that Parzival actually disparages something is when he uses Wham’s “Wake Me Up Before You Go Go” as an alarm to annoy himself out of bed.

Most references come so fast and frequently that the novel at times seems nothing more than a personal list of Ernest Cline’s “likes,” probably better done as a Facebook widget or Tumblr post instead of a basis for a science fiction adventure. In this way, the novel becomes the ultimate example of the maxim of “write what you know,” but takes the form of an exorcising information dump instead of the crafting of experiences into a compelling narrative. In effect, the referential avalanche becomes nothing more than onanistic self-congratulations for the author’s tastes. It is a fetish novel, pure and simple.

While the pace and frequency of the references may be fevered, the consistency amongst them is problematic. While Parzival and company have an incredibly deep and obscure knowledge of video games, as presumably does the author, their knowledge of music and films is fairly pedestrian. It is obvious that Cline’s expertise lay in video games, so why he chose to make the characters supposed masters of “all pop culture” is beyond me. Ready Player One could have been decidedly more effective had it confined itself to just video games (with perhaps a few instances of role playing) as opposed to having such a broad, unwieldy reach. It becomes a Mad Libs of pop culture references, the book equivalent of a Family Guy episode, shoehorning in all manner of geek obsessions at every opportunity, often seeming random and clunky in the process.

This choice to be so entirely exclusive is not just troublesome in the arena of depth, though that is certainly one that left me rankled. It also opens up the door for errors that obsessive fans are sure to gripe about (i.e. using the term “seppuku” to mean general suicide instead of a particular form of suicide by ritual disemboweling) and for cross-pollination of disparate elements that that should never be put together (i.e. a remix of New Order’s “Blue Monday 88,” itself a remix /reissue, overlaid with beeps and boops from Star Wars droids). Blasphemy, for sure, but none so much as having Halliday and Parzival’s favorite band be Rush, possibly the most clichéd reference in the bunch. While Cline’s incredibly obscure knowledge of Japanese robots and all manner of video games is, at best, alienating, his inclusion of music references is embarrassingly banal, hitting AC/DC, Duran Duran, and Def Leppard at various turns, who are the furthest form obscure you could get.

The novel is floor-to-ceiling full of what I am consistently weary of, the unending abyss of nostalgia. At one time, writers, artists, and filmmakers such as Jean-Luc Godard introduced the idea of the pop culture reference as a reflection of modern society and consumerism. While this was certainly meta-commentary, much of today’s culture lacks a dimension of reflection. We now live in a world in which movie studios and record labels prey on a consumer’s unnaturally exploded sense of nostalgia, with artifice playing a far greater role than substance, in examples such as the films of Transformers, G.I. Joe, Speed Racer, and others based on board games and theme park rides, as well as an eternal parade of nostalgic band reunion tours. (For more on this, Simon Reynolds has a book that deftly explores this subject, called Retromania). We continually seek to please ourselves with mere dog whistle reactions to the things we grew up with, instead of seeking out original, challenging, and contemplative material.

I was reminded throughout the reading of Ready Player One of other like-minded pop culture-laden, referential books and films, such as Scott Pilgrim, High Fidelity, and even Cline’s other creative endeavors, particularly Fanboys. But where those are selective, confined, subtle, and the references serve the plot, Ready Player One is definitely a case in which the tail wags the dog. In other words, it seems as if Ready Player One is merely an outlet for Cline to share the shows, movies, and games he loves, of which there are a LOT of them, many of them being much better alternatives to spend one’s time than actually reading this book. As a list of recommendations, it works fairly well. As a compelling and effective novel, it fails completely.

Plot, Setting, and the Mind-Numbing Vortex of Having to Watch Someone Play Video Games:

The plot of Ready Player One, as stated earlier, is nominally the quest of a young obsessive to find a virtual Holy Grail, that being the Halliday egg. In actuality, it becomes a mere justification for Cline’s own obsessive nature. Instead of wasted time or entertainment, the mass consumption of pop culture becomes a matter of life and death. As the character of Parzival narrates, “Having the right ‘80s song lyric memorized might save my avatar’s life someday” (Cline 2011). It is almost insulting. If I felt there were a subtlety of message, in which Cline were perhaps making a comment on the nature of nostalgia and obsession, this might be a different review, but every element of the novel is so superficial that one can easily dismiss this angle as being a possibility.

All good stories have conflict, and Cline does create it through the evil forces of “The Sixers,” the competition of his friends, and a love interest. The Sixers are representatives of an evil Internet company (the IOI) intent on taking over the virtual worlds of the OASIS so that they can charge users for access and implement advertising. The timing is convenient, given the current fight over SOPA (the Stop Online Piracy Act), with this particular storyline bringing to the fore the difficulty of regulation and monetization keeping up with the speed of information sharing. The IOI certainly represents several current tech companies and burgeoning social networks gobbling up start-ups and bandwidths with increasing rapidity. Certainly, Parzival’s rapacious appetite for pop culture, given his economic status, has to rely on what must be illegal downloading or at least the equivalent in 2044. That is, unless we are to believe that all of these shows, games, and songs have entered the public domain in 33 years.

Though this may seem especially relevant to readers of today, and the themes certainly are, Cline does very little to bring them to fruition in a satisfying manner. Like the references, they are mostly surface. For instance, the real world is rarely described, though Cline makes a point of addressing the fact that the world is one of abject poverty. While it does set up the justification for many choosing to live inside a virtual reality as opposed to authentic human existence, we have no real sense of how the real world works. What happened? I have heard this novel described as a Hunger Games for fortysomething slackers. But, Hunger Games deftly and economically presents a particular world, which then informs character actions. We have no sense of why teenagers still attend virtual school. We have no sense of what these teens want to do with their lives, other than maintain their obsessions with hollow pursuits. The hunt for Halliday’s Egg will, like Willy Wonka’s “Golden Ticket” conceit, award the winner with controlling ownership in Halliday’s company as well as his vast fortune. And yes, Cline does point out the Wonka reference in an almost "See what I did there?" fashion.

The plot relies just as much on nostalgia as the references. It is part Wonka, part WarGames, part early Atari or text-based video game, and part John Hughes teen romance, with all of the clumsiness that one would think a combination of these elements would make. While reading, one can visibly see the blueprints of already established plot lines, which could either make this endeavor entirely meta and postmodern, or just derivative. I suppose that determination will lay in the purview of the reader. One of the real problems with the plot is the idea of the virtual gaming world. This is not to say that I am not intrigued by it. I have read great books in the past that hinged on virtual worlds, immersive games, and vicarious adventuring through avatars, such as Jeff Noon’s Vurt and Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash, two books I highly recommend. Aside from the barely described dichotomy between the real and virtual world, there is the larger problem of the concept of watching someone play a video game.

One of the main criticisms of modern sci-fi action films, such as the aforementioned Transformers series, Battle: Los Angeles, or any number of movies actually based on video game properties, is that it is like watching a video game as opposed to playing one, a decidedly frustrating and tedious pastime. Reading about someone else playing a video game distances oneself even further from it, though one could make the case for it just being another adventure story. However, the adventure story defense loses its teeth when we get a long description of a game of Pac-Man, among other game walkthroughs. Additionally, the pacing of the novel is inconsistent at best. Parzival meets the initial goals of his quest within a few short hours, but six months within the novel go by (taking several chapters), before the next goals are met. At times, it seems that Parzival completely forgets his task entirely. He does comment on his inactivity, but too late both in the construct of the novel and in the telling of it. In these moments, the tension and momentum is sapped from the narrative. As Parzival seems to lose interest in the quest (what other explanation could there be?), the reader is in danger of losing interest as well. As a kicker, part of the “dramatic” finale involves everyone with a feed into the OASIS watching a video game being played.

Rather than clever and consequential storytelling, Ready Player One is overpopulated with Dei Ex Machina. Things just tend to “happen.” Rarely do choices that are consciously made affect the narrative. Sometimes, these events directly contradict the rules and conventions set by the author. For instance, it is established that Parzival has spent nearly his entire adolescent life consuming Halliday’s favorite pop culture touchstones, as well as mastering nearly every video game in existence, especially those that were supposedly important to his gaming hero. So, when Parzival comes across a game that he has only played once and then dismissed, despite the Sisyphean importance placed on the encyclopedic knowledge of these games, it makes no sense other than to force tension where there is a void. Everything that is not a surprise in this way is simply too predictable. Parzival slacks off and gets distracted from the game only to be one-upped by a competitor? Yeah, we see it coming. The unbalanced nature of the tension with the lack of it is frustrating and even appears in the finale, which seems torturous at times and then is suddenly over.

Characters and the Bottomless Pit of Two-Dimensional Stereotypes:

One sign at the heart of the problems with Ready Player One is the disconnect between young adult characters and adolescent obsessions in a nominally adult novel with references that will only be picked up by someone who experienced the same pop culture era. In fact, the narrative point of view, though housed in the mind of a teenager, is unquestionably that of a 40-year-old attempting to get into the mind of a teenager. It is not marketed as a young adult book, due to the nostalgic factor for Gen-Xers, but probably should have been. This is where the aforementioned Scott Pilgrim and High Fidelity succeed. Scott is a teenager with current teen obsessions, most of them invented for the text, and Rob Fleming / Gordon is an adult with music obsessions rooted in his youth. They make sense in this way. Further, Scott and Rob are multi-dimensional characters. They lie to their friends and lovers. They can be, and many times are, complete jerks. But, we ultimately sympathize with them because they go through something that changes them for the better. Additionally, the plots revolve around their relationships in the real world outside of their obsessions, and do not stem from their hobbies.

Parzival doesn’t seem to change. Some of his decisions may be questioned, but he always has some kind of moral compass and even the smallest discretions are forgiven. He is a good guy; you can imagine that he’s going to win, and that he is going to get the girl. In addition, though Cline attempts to make consequences for his actions, they are near meaningless because of the disconnection Parzival has to those punished. In other words, there is nothing compelling about his character. He reflects once, more than halfway through the novel, wondering if he has gone overboard with his geekery and wonders about his distance from reality. Yet, he does not take any agency in changing anything.

On the alternate side of Parzival, there is his crush, Art3mis. In the world of OASIS, Art3mis is from the planet Benatar. Yes, really. Can you guess what her concern is once Parzival falls in love with her? She’s worried about her appearance in real life. Again, this would be fine in a young adult novel, but for adult readers, it is far too simplistic and predictable. Two other gunters, Daito and Shoto, are perhaps the most stereotypical representations of Japanese adolescents on the page. They love samurai movies and Ultraman. They do everything with honor. We see little else of any dimension of their characters other that what I just wrote. Only one character ends up to have a surprising bit of dimension, and even then it is only addressed in passing before we move on and completely forget about the whole thing.

The mythical James Halliday remains shrouded in mystery, himself a combination of Bill Gates, Lord British, Professor Falken, and the guy who created the Atari Adventure game. We know this because Cline spells it out, even putting all of these names together just in case we didn’t get it. As mentioned earlier, he’s also a little Willy Wonka, but the keys to his kingdom are left for others to find without his observation. He is an absent character, in more ways than one. His former partner, a Paul Allen to his Gates, is alive and present, but also ineffectual, having little to do with the plot and proceedings, that is until he is magically needed as a Deus Ex Machina. It’s as if Cline followed the blueprint of Campbell’s Hero with a Thousand Faces template, but failed to go farther than the outline stage. Can you imagine Gandalf only appearing at the end of The Return of the King to give Frodo a magical t-bar lift up Mt. Doom?

What disturbs me the most is that I seem to be in the minority in my appraisal of this book. There are over 8,200 four and five star reviews on Goodreads.com, comprising 85% of the reviews in total. There are over 453 four and five star reviews on Amazon, comprising 87% of the total reviews. People love, love, love this book. One review I read said it was the best science fiction novels the reviewer had read in a decade! (BoingBoing). I wouldn’t try to dissuade them, despite the above evidence to the contrary. This is merely my opinion, but I respect and appreciate that others may disagree. There are plenty of things that I enjoy that others don’t. The Catcher in the Rye is just one example that seems to polarize people, and The Tree of Life as a more recent case, both of which I love and wouldn’t change my opinion based on anyone else’s. Neither am I trying to take down Ernest Cline or be a “hater.” I greatly enjoyed Fanboys and find it to be a great example of pop culture reverence mixed with heart and character. It’s just that these elements were certainly missing from Ready Player One. The complete confusion over who this book is really supposed to be for leads me to only one conclusion: this novel was really only for the author. Sorry, gang. I just really didn’t like Ready Player One. The best way I can efficiently express my reaction to it is with this sound:

GAME OVER.

Works Cited
Cline, E. (2011). Ready Player One. New York, NY: Crown. Kindle Edition.

Friday's Playlist: 1-13-12

2012-01-13T15:16:00.000-08:00

Madonna – “Into the Groove”
Weezer – “Butterfly”
Sufjan Stevens – “All for Myself”
Tears for Fears – “The Marauders”
Monks – “Monk Time”
The Horrors – “Moving Further Away”
Kim Carnes – “Bette Davis Eyes”
The Like – “He’s Not a Boy”
Oneohtrix Point Never – “Child Soldier”
Thompson Twins – “Storm on the Sea”
Crash Test Dummies – “Untitled”
Massive Attack – “Atlas Air”
Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross – “We Could Wait Forever”
R.E.M. – “Get on Their Way (What If We Give It Away)”
Serge Gainsbourg – “Cargo Culte”
MC DJ – “Chitown”
Okkervil River – “Mermaid”
Blondie – “Under the Gun (Live)”
Hothouse Flowers – “I Can See Clearly Now”
Les Savy Fav – “Fading Vibes”
Stricken City – “Gifted”
New Order – “Blue Monday”
Suede – “The Drowners (Demo)”
Here We Go Magic – “Backwards Time”
David Bowie – “Five Years (Live)”
Joy Division – “Digital”
Red House Painters – “Rollercoaster”
The Sea and Cake – “Weekend”
J.D. McPherson – “Your Love (All I’m Missing)”
Janelle Monae – “Suite II Overture”
Black Kids – “Hit the Heartbreaks”
Sons & Daughters – “Bee Song”
Girls – “My Ma”
Sigur Rós – “Hjartað Hamast”
KISS – “Cold Gin”
Maxence Cyrin – “Crazy in Love”
Snow Patrol – “Same”
The Thermals – “You Changed My Life”
Chevy Chase – “The Way It Is”
TV on the Radio – “Caffeinated Consciousness”
Wilco – “Dawned on Me”
Red Fang – “Malverde”
Yo La Tengo – “Last Days of Disco”
Health – “Die Slow”
The Kinks – “Dead End Street”
George Michael – “Fantasy”
Loch Lomond – “All Your Friends are Smiling”
Ramin Djawadi – “Game of Thrones Main Title”
Belle & Sebastian – “I’m a Cuckoo (by the Avalanches)”
U2 – “Trash, Trampoline, and the Party Girl”
Flight of the Conchords – “Sugalumps”
Minus the Bear – “Fooled by the Light”
Childish Gambino – “Nowhere to Go”
The Smiths – “This Charming Man”
King Curtis – “A Whiter Shade of Pale”
U2 – “Night and Day (Steel String Remix)”
John Maus – “Head for the Country”
Kruder & Dorfmeister – “Original Bedroom Rockers”
Billy Idol – “Love Calling”
Junior Boys – “Banana Ripple”
Wild Beasts – “Two Dancers (II)”
Esben & the Witch – “Eumenides”
Dum Dum Girls – “I Will Be”
Sigur Rós – “A Ferð Til Breiðafjarðar Vorið 1922”
The Beach Boys – “Surf Jam”
Kaiser Chiefs – “When All Is Quiet”
The Long Winters – “The Commander Thinks Aloud”
ABC – “The Look of Love, Pt.1”
Prince – “Take Me With U”
The Pains of Being Pure at Heart – “The Body”
Scott Walker – “Such a Small Love”
Little River Band – “Reminiscing”
Joanna Newsom – “Baby Birch”
Grouplove – “Slow”
Smokey Robinson – “Ooo Baby Baby”
Roxy Music – “Pyjamarama”
The Black Keys – “Hold Me in Your Arms”
Orbital – “The Box 1”
Battles – “Atlas”
The Swell Season – “The Hill”
The Sea and Cake – “Interiors”
Stars – “Opinions versus the Sun (Stars vs. the Album Leaf)”
The Rosebuds – “Cover Ears”
Suede – “Sleeping Pills (Demo)”
My Brightest Diamond & DM Stith – “Everything Is in Line’
Explosions in the Sky – “It’s So Natural to be Afraid (The Paper Chase Mix)”
The Rapture – “It Takes Time to be a Man”
Braids – “Lammicken”
Prince – “Peach”
The Clash – “The Magnificent Seven (12” Version)”
U2 – “Love is Blindness”
Darren Hayes – “Not Even Close”

Sunday's Playlist: 1-8-12

2012-01-08T17:11:00.001-08:00

LCD Soundsystem – “Us v Them”
The Weeknd – “Life of the Party”
Echo & the Bunnymen – “Zimbo (Live)”
Hall & Oates – “Rich Girl”
Kasabian – “Goodbye Kiss”
Duran Duran – “Fame”
Yeah Yeah Yeahs – “Maps”
A Tribe Called Quest – “The Chase, Part 2”
Little River Band – “The Other Guy”
R.E.M. – “The Lion Sleeps Tonight (Demo)”
Megafaun – “Heretofore”
George Michael & Paul McCartney – “Heal the Pain”
Superchunk – “Slow Drip”
Jimi Hendrix – “Stone Free”
Blondie – “Sunday Girl (Live)”
Radiohead – “Codex”
Howard Jones – “Conditioning”
Smashing Pumpkins – “Starla (2011 Mix)”
New Order – “Denial”
The Elected – “Look at Me Now”
Everything But the Girl – “English Rose”
Roxy Music – “More than This”
School of Seven Bells – “Ilu”
Minus the Bear – “Hold Me Down”
The Seekers – “A World of Our Own”
Nine Inch Nails – “Closer”
White Denim – “New Coat”
Mogwai – “Tracy”
Divine Comedy – “There is a Light that Never Goes Out”
The Boxer Rebellion – “We Have this Place Surrounded”
Jellyfish – “That is Why”
The Head and the Heart – “Lost in My Mind”
Luscious Jackson – “Country’s a Callin’”
Mogwai – “Does this Always Happen?”
The Hooters – “All You Zombies”
LCD Soundsystem – “Sound of Silver”
My Brightest Diamond – “Ding Dang”
A Tribe Called Quest – “Luck of Lucien”
Nirvana – “Something in the Way”
The Weeknd – “Heaven or Las Vegas”
Life Without Buildings – “Philip”
English Beat – “March of the Swivelheads”
The Roots – “Make My”
David Bowie – “Stay”
Unwound – “Scarlette”
Dum Dum Girls – “Wrong Feels Right”
Iron & Wine – “Waitin’ for a Superman”
Talking Heads – “Once in a Lifetime”
Echo & the Bunnymen – “Crocodiles (Live)”
Marvin Gaye – “Flyin’ High (In the Friendly Sky)”
Ty Segall – “Where Your Mind Goes”
Arcade Fire – “Rebellion (Lies)”
Pelican – “Aurora Borealis”
Adele – “If It Hadn’t Been for Love”
Natalie Merchant – “Owensboro”
Nirvana – “Drain You (BBC Live)”
The Smithereens – “This Boy”
Mike Ness – “Rest of Our Lives”
Maxence Cyrin – “Where is My Mind?”
Led Zeppelin – “The Rain Song”
Radiohead – “House of Cards”
The McCoys – “Hang on Sloopy”
Bee Gees – “How Can You Mend a Broken Heart?”
Eric B & Rakim – “A Microphone Fiend”
Travis – “Indefinitely”
Frankie Goes to Hollywood – “War (Hidden)”
Souls of Mischief – “93 ‘til Infinity”
Smashing Pumpkins – “Smiley (Demo)”
Chameleons – “Up the Down Escalator”
Everclear – “Santa Monica”
Stone Temple Pilots – “Interstate Love Song”

Saturday's Playlist: 1-7-12

2012-01-07T17:09:00.001-08:00

Mogwai – “Cody (Live)”
Eels - “Climbing to the Moon (Jon Brion Remix)”
Eagles – “You Never Cry Like a Lover”
The Decemberists – “Calamity Song”
Kyuss – “Gardenia / Asteroid / Supa Scoopa and Mighty Scoop”
Portugal. The Man – “Once Was One”
The 88 – “Love You Anytime”
Camper Van Beethoven – “Yanqui Go Home”
Marjorie Fair – “Empty Room”
Dolorean – “My Grey Life (Second Chances)”
Health – “Heaven (Narctrax Remix)”
Ringo Deathstarr – “Sweet Girl”
BLK JKS – “Lakeside”
The Chills – “Pink Frost”
Feist – “Mushaboom”
Prince – “Delirious”
Nine Inch Nails – “Complication”
Gorillaz – “Stylo”
R.E.M. – “What’s the Frequency, Kenneth?”
Mumm-Ra – “She’s Got You High”
Aloe Blacc – “I Need a Dollar”
Ryan Adams & the Cardinals – “Dear Candy”
Duffy – “Stay With Me Baby”
The Album Leaf – “Landing in Snow”
Jungle Brothers – “Doin’ Our Own Dang”
Crash Test Dummies – “The Psychic”
!!! – “Made of Money”
ELO – “10538 Overture”
Röyksopp – “Happy Up Here”
The Go-Go’s – “We Got the Beat”
Valient Thorr – “Fall of Pangea”
The Cult – “Big Neon Glitter (Live)”
The Antlers – “Atrophy”
Suede – “The Chemistry Between Us”
George Michael – “Freeek!”
George Michael – “My Mother Had a Brother”
Sara Watkins – “Pony”
Snow Patrol – “Tiny Little Fractures”
Iron Maiden – “Powerslave”
The Smithereens – “I Saw Her Standing There”
The Horrors – “Oceans Burning”
The Byrds – “Artificial Energy”
Opus III – “It’s a Fine Day”
Suede – “Trash”
Nite Jewel – “We Want Our Things”
Missing Persons – “Words”
Robyn – “Dancing on My Own”
Information Society – “Repetition”
Band of Horses – “Compliments”
Gorillaz – “Plastic Beach”
A Tribe Called Quest – “Everything is Fair”
A Tribe Called Quest – “Keep it Rollin’”
White Denim – “Shy Billy”
U2 – “Satellite of Love”
Craig Robinson – “Jessie’s Girl”
Frida – “I Know There’s Something Going On”
Delta Spirit – “Bushwick Blues”
The Specials – “Ghost Town”
The Stepkids – “Shadows on Behalf”
James Murphy – “People”
Ludwig Gorranson – “If I Die Before You”
Depeche Mode – “But Not Tonight (Extended Mix)”
Blondie – “Atomic”
The Birthday Party – “Release the Bats”
R.E.M. – “Jazz (Rotary Ten)”
The Wombats – “Jump Into the Fog (Acoustic)”
Mötley Crüe – “Enslaved”
David Lynch – “She Rise Up”
Eisley – “Smarter”
Janet Jackson – “Black Cat”
Portishead – “Glory Box”
No Age – “Get Hurt”
Snow Patrol – “Same”
Prince – “Gett Off”
The Beach Boys – “Little Honda”
Echo & the Bunnymen – “Villiers Terrace”
Paul Simon – “Quality”
Stars – “The Passenger”
M83 – “Claudia Lewis”
Julie London – “Yummy Yummy Yummy”
The Knack – “My Sharona (Demo)”
Wild Beasts – “All the King’s Men”
The Sea and Cake – “Do Now Fairly Well”
Mastodon – “Thickening”
Free Energy – “Bad Stuff”
Japandroids – “I Quit Girls”
Naked Eyes – “Always Something There to Remind Me”
Janelle Monae – “Mushrooms and Roses”
The Smiths – “Cemetry Gates”
Peter Gabriel – “Mercy Street”
Nine Inch Nails – “La Mer”
Raphael Saadiq – “Stone Rollin’”
The Rolling Stones – “Shattered”
Veronica Falls – “Beachy Head”
The Elected – “Go for the Throat”
Lou Reed – “Street Hassle”

Wednesday's Playlist: 1-4-12

2012-01-04T14:57:00.000-08:00

Skee-Lo – “I Wish (Bonus “Street” Mix)”
Pat Benatar – “Love is a Battlefield”
Kaiser Chiefs – “Modern Way”
The New Pornographers – “Silver Jenny Dollar”
Flying Lotus – “Clock Catcher”
ELO & Olivia Newton-John – “Xanadu”
The Go! Team – “T.O.R.N.A.D.O”
M – “Pop Muzik”
King Khan & BBQ Show – “Third Ave”
Moby – “Spiders”
Mekons – “Lost Highway”
Suede – “Pantomime Horse”
Eagles – “On the Border”
Matthew Sweet – “Day for Night”
Twin Sister – “Bad Street”
Mastodon – “Bedazzled Fingernails”
Supertramp – “From Now On (Live)”
Minus the Bear – “Dayglow Vista Rd.”
Future Sound of London – “We Have Explosive”
N.W.A. – “Straight Outta Compton”
Fences – “The Same Tattoos”
A Tribe Called Quest – “Word Play”
Queens of the Stone Age – “Better Living through Chemistry (Live)”
Camp Lo – “Black Nostaljack aka Come On”
Washed Out – “Soft”
Tom Waits – “Way Down in the Hole”
My Brightest Diamond – “High Low Middle”
Dexys Midnight Runners – “The Teams that Meet in Caffs”
John Cougar Mellencamp – “Jack & Diane”
Camper Van Beethoven – “One of These Days”
Prince – “Hot Thing (Extended Remix)”
Woods – “Say Goodbye”
Band of Horses – “No One’s Gonna Love You”
My Brightest Diamond – “In the Beginning”
Moby – “When It’s Cold I’d Like to Die”
Frank & Moon Unit Zappa – “Valley Girl”
The Hollies – “I’m Alive”
The Beach Boys – “Shut Down”
Frightened Rabbit – “Good Arms vs. Bad Arms (Live)”
West Indian Girl – “What Are You Afraid Of?”
The Mission – “Heat”
Nirvana – “About a Girl (Live)”
Florence + the Machine – “Hurricane Drunk (Acoustic)”
Fleetwood Mac – “Heart of Stone”
The Beach Boys – “Surfers Rule”
Missing Persons – “Walking in L.A.”
The Who – “Punk (Demo)”
The Beach Boys – “Darlin’ (Instrumental)”
Cream – “Sunshine of Your Love”
The Cure – “Jumping Someone Else’s Train”
A Place to Bury Strangers – “Ego Death”
Roxy Music – “2HB”
Tears for Fears – “Broken Revisited”
Embrace – “Ashes”
Laura Veirs – “Down in the Medder”
Hall & Oates – “Kiss on My List”
Okkervil River – “For Real”
Mariachi El Bronx – “Fallen”
How to Dress Well – “Walking this Dumb”
The Who – “I’m One”
The Decemberists – “Here I Dreamt I Was an Architect”
Dusty Springfield – “Will You Love Me Tomorrow?”
Sufjan Stevens – “Size Too Small”
Weezer – “Jamie”
Paul Simon – “Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes”
A Tribe Called Quest – “Rap Promoter”
Blondie – “Dragonfly”
Allman Brothers Band – “Melissa”
Ariel Pink – “Netherlands”
Rocket from the Crypt – “Ditchdigger”
Hooray for Earth – “Pulling Back”
A Tribe Called Quest – “Can I Kick It?”
Dum Dum Girls – “Coming Down”
Mogwai – “2 Rights Make 1 Wrong (Live)”
Paul Simon – “Something So Right”
The Go-Go’s – “Skidmarks on My Heart”
Spoon – “All the Pretty Girls Go to the City”
Can – “Vitamin C”
Boston – “Amanda”
Sleigh Bells – “Tell ‘em”
Flight of the Conchords – “Too Many D**** (on the Dance Floor)”
Sufjan Stevens – “In the Devil’s Territory”
The Magnetic Fields – “Nothing Matters When We’re Dancing”
The Jayhawks – “Take Me with You (When You Go)”
The Pains of Being Pure at Heart – “Heaven’s Gonna Happen Now”
John Cale – “All I Want is You”
Neil Finn – “Faster than Light”
Natalie Merchant – “Living”
Smashing Pumpkins – “Today”
ELO – “Roll Over Beethoven”
Gang of Four – “You Don’t Have to Be Mad”
Josh Rouse – “1972”
The Cave Singers – “No Prosecution if We Bail”
Camp Lo – “Good Green”
BLK JKS – “ZOL!”
The Pipettes – “Pull Shapes”
Simple Minds – “Don’t You (Forget About Me)”
Happy End – “Kaze Wo Atsumete”
Phoenix – “Rome”
Dan Wilson – “Easy Silence”
The Smithereens – “Well Alright (Live)”
Tom Waits – “The Black Rider”

Sunday's Playlist: 1-1-12

2012-01-01T17:27:00.000-08:00

The Smithereens – “Drown in My Own Tears “
Gillian Welch – “Dark Turn of Mind’
The Boxer Rebellion – “The New Heavy”
Psychic TV – “Just Drifting”
Danger Mouse & Daniele Luppi – “Roman Blue”
Caribou – “Sundialing”
The Who – “Doctor Jimmy (Demo)”
Okkervil River – “Show Yourself”
Gang Gang Dance – “Mindkilla”
Little River Band – “Happy Anniversary”
Bruce Springsteen – “Secret Garden”
The Like – “Square One”
The Jesus & Mary Chain – “Sowing Seeds”
The Beach Boys – “Little Deuce Coupe”
The Beach Boys – “He Gives Speeches”
Mumford & Sons – “Sigh No More (Live)”
Pelican – “An Inch Above Sand”
Echo & the Bunnymen – “The Pictures on My Wall”
Silverchair – “Undecided”
Morrissey – “Shame is the Name”
Fujiya & Miyagi – “Tinsel and Glitter”
The Go-Go’s – “Can’t Stop (Live)”
Perfume Garden – “When”
The White Stripes – “Truth Doesn’t Make a Noise”
Gorillaz – “On Melancholy Hill”
Childish Gambino – “That Power”
Aphex Twin – “Windowlicker”
Frankie Goes to Hollywood – “Relax (Scott Storch Mix)”
Bobbie Bare – “Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright”
X – “In the Time it Takes”
Metric – “Twilight Galaxy”
Camper Van Beethoven – “The History of Utah”
Little Scream – “Black Cloud”
Iceage – “You’re Blessed”
The Durutti Column – “Sketch for Summer”
Small Black – “Search Party”
The Dandy Warhols – “Smoke It”
Here We Go Magic – “Babyohbabyijustcantstanditanymore”
Still Corners – “Cuckoo”
Modest Mouse – “Bukowski”
OK Go – “Shooting the Moon”
David Bowie – “Let’s Dance”
UNKLE & Thom Yorke – “Rabbit in Your Headlights”
The Trash Can Sinatras – “Funny”
Mychael Danna & Rob Simonsen – “A Story of Boy Meets Girl”
Delay Trees – “Quarantine”
The The – “Kingdom of Rain”
Finn Brothers – “Only Talking Sense (KCRW)”
Camp Lo – “Negro League”
Journey – “I’ll Be Alright Without You”
The Go-Go’s – “Surfing and Spying”
Happy End – “Kaze Wo Atsumete”
Ramin Djawadi – “Goodbye Brother”
Irma Thomas – “It’s Raining”
Unwound – “Scarlette”
New Order – “Confusion”
Beastie Boys & Miho Hatori – “Start!”
Curtis Mayfield – “Other Side of Town”
She & Him – “I’ll Be Home for Christmas”
KISS – “Hard Luck Woman”
Aimee Mann – “The Fall of the World’s Own Optimist”
The Bird & the Bee – “How Deep is Your Love?”
The Beach Boys – “All Dressed Up for School”
Colin Stetson – “Lord I just Can’t Keep from Crying Sometimes”
Deerhunter – “Nothing Ever Happened”
John Cale – “You Know More Than I Know”
Travis – “…Baby One More Time”
Baroness – “O’er Hell and Hide”
Japandroids – “Darkness on the Edge of Gastown”
Sigur Rós – “Intro”
The Hot Rats – “The Lovecats”
The Cult – “Assault on Sanctuary”
Tom Waits – “Way Down in the Hole”
Her Space Holiday – “Black Cat Balloons (City Light Reconstruction)”
The Go! Team – “Lazy Poltergeist”
Sufjan Stevens – “To Be Alone With You”
Harvey Danger – “Flagpole Sitta”

Saturday's Playlist: 12-31-11

2012-01-01T07:59:00.000-08:00

Faunts – “Lights are Always On”
The Knack – “Good Girls Don’t”
Glasvegas – “Go Square Go”
Bachelorette – “Waveforms”
The Flaming Lips – “Race for the Prize”
Todd Rundgren – “It Wouldn’t Have Made Any Difference”
Jawbox – “Spoiler”
The Pains of Being Pure at Heart – “Stay Alive”
The Old 97’s – “Timebomb”
Genesis – “Abacab”
Voice of the Beehive – “I Say Nothing”
British Sea Power – “No Lucifer”
R.E.M. – “New Test Leper”
Paul Simon – “Spirit Voices”
Billy Squier – “Emotions in Motion”
MC DJ – “Egypt”
Falco – “Vienna Calling”
Archie Shepp – “Blues for Brother George Jackson (Mondo Grosso Next Wave Mix)”
Sara Watkins – “Where Will You Be”
Stephin Merritt – “When You’re Young and in Love”
Prince – “Adore”
Eric B & Rakim – “Casualties of War”
Deltron 3030 – “Turbulence (Remix)”
Blondie – “Union City Blue (Live)”
The Sea and Cake – “A Fuller Moon”
The Beach Boys – “Finders Keepers”
Smashing Pumpkins – “Daydream”
Outkast – “Ms. Jackson”
Bomba Estéreo – “Las Siete Potencias”
Billy Idol – “The Dead Next Door”
The Sea and Cake – “On a Letter”
Better Than Ezra – “The Killer Inside”
New Edition – “Can You Stand the Rain”
Hothouse Flowers – “Sweet Marie”
Eagles – “King of Hollywood”
Yes – “The Clap”
Cat Power – “Amazing Grace”
The Jesus & Mary Chain – “April Skies”
BLK JKS – “Cursor”
The Muppets – “Mah Na Mah Na”
Florence + the Machine – “Never Let Me Go”
Kaiser Chiefs – “Dead Or In Serious Trouble”
Frank Turner – “English Curse”
Smashing Pumpkins – “Tristessa”
Tombs – “Bloodletters”
KISS – “Rock and Roll All Nite”
The Knife – “Silent Shout”
Mötley Crüe – “Smokin’ in the Boys’ Room”
Castanets – “My Heart”
Kate Bush – “Constellations of the Heart”
Esben & the Witch – “Warpath”
The Decemberists – “The Hazards of Love 1 (The Prettiest Whistles Won’t Wrestle the Thistles Undone)”
Kaiser Chiefs – “I Predict a Riot”
Arctic Monkeys – “Piledriver Waltz”
The Field – “Sweet Slow Baby”
REO Speedwagon – “Tough Guys”
Aesop Rock – “Daylight”
Bee Gees – “Nights on Broadway”
The The – “The Beat(en) Generation”
Luscious Jackson – “LP Retreat”
Gorillaz – “5/4”
The Duke Spirit – “Everybody’s Under Your Spell”
Kool Moe Dee – “Look at Me Now”
Yeah Yeah Yeahs – “Y Control”
R.E.M. – “Swan Swan H”
Interpol – “Safe Without”
ABC – “Vanity Kills (Abigail’s Party Mix)”
James – “Laid”
Mumm-Ra – “She’s Got You High”
Grand Archives – “Oslo Novelist”
A Place to Bury Strangers – “Deadbeat”
The Killers – “Jenny Was a Friend of Mine”
Prince – “Little Red Corvette”
Passion Pit – “Cuddle Fuddle”
Future of the Left – “Team:seed”
Shabazz Palaces – “Yeah You”
R.E.M. – “Imitation of Life”
Q-Tip – “Johnny is Dead”
Nirvana – “Smells Like Teen Spirit”
The Shins – “Kissing the Lipless”

Friday's Playlist: 12-30-11

2011-12-30T12:03:00.001-08:00

Bryan John Appleby – “The Road”
R.E.M. – “Burning Hell (Demo)”
Camp Lo – “I Love it Then”
Billy Squier – “In the Dark”
The Cult – “Little Face”
Soul II Soul – “Dance”
David Bowie – “The Jean Genie”
Foo Fighters – “Rope”
Glasvegas – “Lost Sometimes”
Baroness – “Ogeechee Hymnal”
The Tallest Man on Earth – “Love is All”
Delays – “Nearer than Heaven”
Neil Young – “Grey Riders (Live)”
Ra Ra Riot – “Foolish”
LCD Soundsystem – “All I Want”
The Lonely Island – “The Creep”
BLK JKS – “Molalatladi”
Low – “Something’s Turning Over”
ODB – “Baby I Got Your Money”
Foo Fighters – “Everlong”
Bon Iver – “Minnesota, WI”
Dexys Midnight Runners – “Tell Me When My Light Turns Green”
Future Sound of London – “Among Myselves”
Gorillaz – “Glitter Freeze”
Bowerbirds – “Ghost Life”
Thomas Dolby – “Hyperactive!”
A Flock of Seagulls – “D.N.A.”
Tony Toni Toné – “Feels Good”
Nirvana – “In Bloom”
M83 – “Klaus I Love You”
Smashing Pumpkins – “Bury Me”
The Smithereens – “Only a Memory”
Deerhunter – “Nothing Ever Happened”
Mogwai – “Drunk and Crazy”
John Maus – “Cop Killer”
Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti – “Reminiscenes”
The New Pornographers – “The Bleeding Heart Show”
Future Sound of London – “Interstat”
Les Savy Fav – “Rodeo”
Gang of Four – “To Hell with Poverty!”
OMD – “Souvenir”
Orbital – “The Girl with the Sun in Her Head”
The Swell Season – “Say it to Me Now”
Suede – “Feel”’
Billy Idol – “Motorbikin’”
The War on Drugs – “The Animator”
Tom Waits – “Satisfied”
Nick Drake – “Fly”
Florence + the Machine – “Dogs Days are Over (Yeasayer Remix)”
The National – “I Don’t Mind”
Iron Maiden – “Invaders”
The Cramps – “I Was a Teenage Werewolf”
The Beach Boys – “Girls on the Beach”

Wednesday's Playlist: 12-21-11

2011-12-21T16:15:00.000-08:00

Eksi Ekso – “Bellows to Brass Lens”
Blondie – “Out in the Streets (Demo)”
Sigur Rós – “Untitled #8 aka Popplagið”
Moby – “Fireworks”
Pretenders – “Don’t Get Me Wrong”
Kansas – “Miracles Out of Nowhere”
Robyn – “Jag Vet en Dejilg Rosa”
A Tribe Called Quest – “Footprints”
Eminem – “Lose Yourself”
Moby – “Great Escape”
Jonathan Rice – “My Mother’s Son”
Smashing Pumpkins – “Rock On”
The Books – “Group Autogenics I”
Concrete Blonde – “Everybody Knows”
Free Energy – “Hope Child”
Perfume Genius – “Look Out, Look Out”
Dexys Midnight Runners – “Come on Eileen”
Eagles – “Good Day in Hell”
Adam Ant – “Apollo 9”
Prince – “Pope”
Crystal Castles – “Suffocation”
Marvin Gaye – “What’s Happening Brother (Detroit Mix)”
Gorillaz – “White Flag”
Childish Gambino – “F it All”
OK Go – “Oh Lately It’s So Quiet”
a-ha – “Living a Boy’s Adventure Tale”
The Crazy World of Arthur Brown – “Fire”
Menomena – “Tithe”
The Thermals – “You Changed My Life”
Girls – “Just a Song”
Black Tusk – “Redline”
Plexi – “Star Star”
Tennis – “Pigeon”
Fountains of Wayne – “Stacy’s Mom”
Patrick Park – “Blackbird through the Dark”
Panda Bear – “Drone”
Ramin Djawadi – “A Raven from King’s Landing”
Explosions in the Sky – “The Birth and Death of the Day (Jesu Mix)”
The Cure – “The Caterpillar”
Candy Flip – “Strawberry Fields Forever”
Eels – “Dirty Girl (Live)”
Florence + the Machine – “Rabbit Heart (Raise it Up)”
Florence + the Machine – “Seven Devils”
Moby – “Sleep Alone”
U2 – “Stay (Faraway, So Close)”
Gorillaz – “Tomorrow Comes Today”
Big Pink – “Love in Vain”
Fleet Foxes – “Your Protector”
James Brown – “Living in America”
Bangles – “Hero Takes a Fall”
Portugal. The Man – “Once Was One”
Shudder to Think – “9 Fingers on You”
New Order – “True Faith”
The Kinks – “Set Me Free”
Ted Leo & the Pharmacists – “One Polaroid a Day”
Flesh for Lulu – “I Go Crazy”
Rammstein – “Stripped”
Health – “Triceratops (cf cf Remix)”
OMD – “RFWK”
Modest Mouse – “The Good Times are Killing Me”
John Cale – “Helen of Troy”
Hum – “Stars”
Fugazi – “Bulldog Front”
Cults – “You Know What I Mean”
Mobb Deep – “Shook Ones Pt.II”
M83 – “OK Pal”

Sunday's Playlist: 12-18-11

2011-12-18T19:39:00.001-08:00

Ra Ra Riot – “Suspended in Gaffa”
Broken Social Scene – “Pacific Scene”
Golden Earring – “Twilight Zone”
Craig Armstrong & Paul Buchanan – “Let’s Go Out Tonight”
How to Destroy Angels – “Fur-Lined”
The Thermals – “I Don’t Believe You”
Little Dragon – “Nightlight”
Wilco – “Jesus, Etc. (Live)”
Eric B & Rakim – “I Ain’t No Joke”
Squeeze – “There’s No Tomorrow”
Frightened Rabbit – “Things”
Broken Bells – “Citizen”
Talking Heads – “And She Was”
Sufjan Stevens – “That Was the Worst Christmas Ever”
Ryan Adams – “Bartering Lines”
Peter Gabriel & Kate Bush – “Don’t Give Up”
Big Daddy Kane – “Word to the Mother(land)”
Kylesa – “Forsaken”
Beulah – “Comrade’s Twenty-Sixth”
De La Soul – “Held Down”
The Cure – “A Letter to Elise”
Luscious Jackson – “Energy Sucker”
Galaxie 500 – “Strange”
Plexi – “56”
The Rolling Stones – “Sympathy for the Devil”
Ryan Adams – “Wish You Were Here”
Kate Bush – “Misty”
Russian Circles – “Atackla”
…And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead – “Another Morning Stoner”
The White Stripes – “Hello Operator”
A Tribe Called Quest – “Push it Along”
John Cale – “China Sea”
Johnny Gill – “Rub You the Right Way”
The Cult – “Love”
Morrissey – “The Bed Took Fire”
Moby – “The Sun Never Stops Setting”
Dolorean – “My Grey Life (Second Chances)”
ELO – “Ma-Ma-Ma Belle”
Ivy – “Edge of the Ocean”
Smashing Pumpkins – “I Am One”
Missing Persons – “Mental Hopscotch”
Little Dragon – “A New”
The Beach Boys – “Do You Like Worms (Roll Plymouth Rock)”
Foreign Born – “It Grew on You”
U2 – “’Baby’ Ultraviolet (Light My Way)”
Cake – “She’ll Come Back to Me”
The Roots – “Radio Daze”
Echo & the Bunnymen – “Hurricane”
Massive Attack & Tunde Adebimpe – “Pray for Rain”
Fatboy Slim – “Praise You”
Dirty Projectors – “Fluorescent Half Dome”
Gorillaz – “Kids with Guns (Jamie T Remix)”
Roxy Music – “More than This”
James Blake – “Limit to Your Love”
The Twilight Singers – “She Was Stolen”
REO Speedwagon – “Shakin’ it Loose”
The Smiths – “How Soon is Now”
A Flock of Seagulls – “You Can Run”
The Psychedelic Furs – “India”
OK Go – “What to Do”
The Smiths – “I Started Something I Couldn’t Finish”
Minus the Bear – “Summer Angel”
John Cooper Clarke – “Beasley Street”
Christopher O’Riley – “True Love Waits”
Owen Pallett – “Lewis Takes Off His Shirt”
Broken Social Scene – “Almost Crimes”
Kylesa – “Tired Climb”
Still Corners – “I Wrote in Blood”
Here We Go Magic – “I Just Wanna See You Underwater”
Gang Gang Dance – “Mindkilla”
Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds – “Red Right Hand”
Fleetwood Mac – “Trinity”
Jimi Hendrix – “Can You See Me”
The Boxer Rebellion – “Organ Song”
Blitzen Trapper – “Taking it Easy Too Long”
WU LYF – “Cave Song”
Big Boi – “Hustle Blood”
Ramin Djawadi – “When the Sun Rises in the West”
The Mountain Goats – “High Hawk Season”
Blondie – “Poets Problem”
Jay-Zeezer – “Only in a Moment of Clarity”
Beach House – “Zebra”
Peter Gabriel – “Red Rain”
Shearwater – “Century Eyes”
The Killers – “All These Things That I’ve Done”
Richard Hawley – “Don’t Get Hung Up in Your Soul”
The Cult – “Electric Ocean”
The Walkmen – “Torch Song”
Liturgy – “Returner”
Camper Van Beethoven – “Sons of the New Golden West”
Godspeed You! Black Emperor – “Storm: Lift Yr Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven / Gathering Storm / Il Pleut a Morir / Welcome to Arco AM/PM / Cancer Towers on Holy Road Hi-Way”
Those Darlins – “Fatty Needs a Fix”
The Old 97’s – “Timebomb”
Gomez – “That Wolf”
Eric B & Rakim – “Run for Cover”
Band of Skulls – “Death by Diamonds and Pearls”
Bee Gees – “Nights on Broadway”
Beyoncé – “Irreplaceable”
John Cale – “Mary Lou”
Jimmy Barnes – “Message to My Girl”
Dan Wilson – “One True Love (Live)”
The Jayhawks – “Ten Little Kids”
Camilla & the Chickens – “Forget You”
Rod Stewart – “Mama You Been On My Mind”
Genesis – “The Brazilian”
The Waterboys – “Fisherman’s Blues”
The Smiths - "Stretch Out and Wait"

Films of the 60s, Part 27: All the Lonely People

2011-12-18T19:15:00.000-08:00

“All the lonely people,
Where do they call come from?
All the lonely people,
Where do they all belong?”
- The Beatles, “Eleanor Rigby”

In Haruki Murakami’s critically acclaimed, latest novel, 1Q84, his character Aomame makes a distinction between being lonely and being alone. That passage, among many others, resonated with me on a deeply personal level. There have been times in my life in which I have felt incredibly alone and incredibly lonely, yet the two do not necessarily go hand in hand. One can feel lonely while being surrounded by friends and acquaintances, and in the reverse, one can be alone yet not feel the sting and pain of loneliness. When I was a teenager, prone to bouts of loneliness and depression, a wise man told me that I had to make a friend of loneliness. While at the time it seemed esoteric and nonsensical advice, that phrase stuck with me. As I grew older, that piece of advice became a mantra for me. The three films in this post all, in some way or another, made me recall the feelings of loneliness, as each director amazingly and heartbreakingly captures it in words, sounds, and images.

Vivre Sa Vie (My Life to Live) (1962, Jean-Luc Godard)

Vivre Sa Vie, Jean-Luc Godard’s fourth film, starts with an epigraph from Montaigne that was eerily similar to the advice I mention above. “Lend yourself to others, but give yourself to yourself.” What follows is a tragic tale of a woman struggling in the modern era, a victim of a changing world that values money and fame but objectifies people, especially women, in the process. Anna Karina is Nana, a young girl with aspirations of becoming an actress. Told in twelve separate vignettes, we follow episodes of Nana’s life, seeing her with different jobs, different men, and in some hopeless situations. Godard specifically shoots from behind Karina’s head, sometimes not allowing us to see whom she is talking to. It doesn’t matter in the slightest. We are Nana. We connect with her in her attempt to navigate a pop culture world that could easily, and does, chew her up and spit her out.

Like many of Godard’s films, Vivre Sa Vie is incredibly meta and has only become more so in recent years thanks to Quentin Tarantino’s homage. While Godard was paying homage with Karina's bob haircut to Louise Brooks, Tarantino was paying homage to Godard with Uma Thurman's character in Pulp Fiction. In his own inimitable style, however, Godard tends to blur the lines between reality, play acting, real acting, and everything in between. Failing to make her dream come true as an actress, a direct contrast with the real Anna Karina, we see Nana’s dreams dashed in increments amidst a world of consumerism. It is a brave new world that idolizes Americana, pop music, films, and gangsters. Particularly relevant to the story are references to Truffaut’s Jules and Jim and Poe’s short story, "The Oval Portrait," which somehow seems to reveal the nature of Godard and Karina’s on and off screen relationship. Nana works at a record store, essentially selling art as product. Eventually, Nana resorts to prostitution, feeling it is the only path to take in order to make ends meet. It is a searing indictment of the treatment of women in a capitalist world. If that weren’t convincing in and of itself, Nana is sold from one pimp to another, as a piece of property, as an object, as product.

Through it all, Nana stoically traverses her life, but her loneliness, desperation, and crippling sadness is there, just under the surface. At one point, Nana has a dance number, hoofing it to up-tempo jazz music in a pool hall. The men simply ignore her joyous dance, and she ends by embracing a pillar in the room. One can’t help but sense that “look at me” desperation and subsequently feel your heart slowly cracking. Godard’s choice of filming from behind Karina’s head, so that she eclipses whomever she may be conversing with, forces us to see her and only her. We don’t see her face, because that would allow us to personalize her loneliness and not actually experience it for ourselves. It is as if, even though she has people with whom she interacts, they don’t exist. She is utterly alone. There are two moments that are crushingly heartbreaking, bringing me to tears. One is the inevitable end of the film, awful, stark, and yet incredibly true to the character Godard and Karina have created together. The other moment comes when Nana goes to see Carl Dreyer’s Joan of Arc in the movie theater. As she sits watching this tale of a martyr, essentially alone against the English, Nana weeps openly, tears streaming down her face. What is amazing about this scene, at least in my mind, is that Godard truly captures the connections we make with art, how we see ourselves: our fears, grief, joy, and pain in artistic representation. This is what great art should do, and I certainly saw many aspects of myself in Nana.

The Fire Within (1963, Louis Malle)

Maurice Ronet is Alain Leroy. Alain has a crippling depression due to his alcoholism. He has been staying at a rehab clinic, often calling himself “cured,” but his cure seems to only have power while his is sheltered in the clinic. He hasn’t talked to his wife of two years. She fled to America and this event only further fueled his sense of shame and regret. In a great scene, we see Alain getting ready to visit the city for the first time in a long while. He picks out his shirt, a tie, cufflinks, and rehearses a telegram to his wife. He does not know how to interact with the outside world anymore. This is merely a precursor for a Homeric journey that will lead to a somewhat inevitable end. We soon realize that this is not an attempt to insert himself once again into the real world, to dip his toes in the water of reality, but is a “farewell tour” before leaving the world entirely.

Once back in the city, he decides to visit his old stomping grounds, including his old hotel apartment. He has been “replaced” by a young soldier back from the Algerian war. He has stepped in to his old apartment, and representatively, his old life. He goes to see old friends, one of which, played by the luminous Jeanne Moreau, could have been more than a friend in the past. She is the only one who seems generally comforting to him, the rest having either moved on without him and preoccupied with their own lives to give him any notice. Eventually, after feeling the emptiness of his life, he resorts once again to drinking. Ironically, at one point, he is even saved from being hit by a car. One could read into these events that he is being given reasons to live over and over again, but he cannot see them. This is what depression is. Despite the good that may be present, you simply can’t see past the darkness enveloping you.

Even though his friends know that he is an alcoholic, they allow him to drink, even commenting at one point that his first drink after detox will make him sick. Some friends. The men in his life are selfish enablers with no compassion. The women in his life have compassion, but are ultimately ineffectual. He finally breaks down and admits that he is scared of the women around him and he cannot feel desire. He says, “I can’t reach out with my hands. I can’t touch things,” and “I wanted so much to be loved.” Toward the end, he is seen reading F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, which is resoundingly relevant for a number of reasons. For one, it is set during the prohibition and Alain is in detox. Gatsby is an enigmatic man who people can’t seem to figure out. Alain’s friends can’t seem to figure him out, nor do they seem to want to, and he can’t figure himself out. While Gatsby longs for Daisy Buchanan, Alain longs for his departed wife, who has gone off to America. The parallels could continue. And while the novel ends tragically for Gatsby, it likewise does for Alain. Upon returning to his room at the clinic, he shoots himself, unable to live with the loneliness that surrounded him.

Juliet of the Spirits (1965, Federico Fellini)

By 1965, Federico Fellini already had a number of films under his belt, including the now celebrated 8 ½ and La Dolce Vita, both masterpieces. Juliet of the Spirits is yet another visual stunner, and yet another film that continues Fellini’s streak of surrealism and strangeness. His wife, Giulietta Masina, plays the title role, and due to the fact that the actor and character have the same name, we can possibly read into the subtext of reality within the film. Fans of Fellini and Masina will also start to make connections between the sadness of this title character and that of the title character in the exquisite, Nights of Cabiria. We start the film at the anniversary party of Giulietta and Giorgio, which is “crashed” by neighbors and friends at the invitation of Giorgio, who we soon discover is a philanderer. We can see from Giulietta’s preparations that she desperately wants to be alone with Giorgio. We often see her face obscured by darkness, indicating the loneliness she feels in her marriage. Of course, his later actions show that he wants the opposite, desperate to be around people and take up the mantle of the object of desire. The party soon becomes the requisite dreamlike landscape that Fellini is known for, but this time in vivid color.

Giulietta is soon captivated by their glamorous neighbor, Gabriela. Gabriela is the epitome of independence, and thus the antithesis of Giulietta. Gabriela is somewhat flighty, new-agey, and at times, just plain ridiculously inane. Giulietta is taken to a Buddhist seminar that, like the party, takes a turn for the surreal. Fellini once again shows himself a master of the frame as he puts Masina against a bright red wall with a fan blowing in the corner, the two objects miniscule against the overwhelming presence of the wall. It is one of many ways that Fellini uses the camera to display her feelings of loneliness and being subservient to emotion. Eventually, she begins to see images and prophecies of what will or could come to pass, namely, being visited or haunted by spirits who will guide her in her near future.

One of these possible spirits is José, who gives her bullfighting lessons, telling her that the monster (read: husband) will be defeated. But, despite the repeated visits, the religious, philosophical, and mere friendly advice that she gets throughout the film, she still cannot resort to playing her husband’s game and cheat on him in return. Rather, still feeling hurt, she hires detectives to look into his cheating. At the close of the film, Giorgio tells her that he has not had sex with another woman, but instead has a deep and meaningful friendship with another woman. I honestly don’t know which is worse. I have been in this position, and it is not a comfort. The truly odd thing about this film is that Fellini intended it to be a “gift” to his wife, Masina. This gift seems to find excuses for his own possible philandering and encouraging Giulietta to become more independent. One also has to question the urgings from the last spirit that she must take her own life. This is just one interpretation, and anyone who has seen Fellini’s films will know that meanings are hard to come by. What is clear throughout is Giulietta’s pain and loneliness, which Fellini has captured exquisitely.

Saturday's Playlist: 12-17-11

2011-12-17T16:18:00.000-08:00

Suede – “Young Men”
Neil Young – “Mansion on the Hill”
Suede – “Dead Leg (Beautiful Ones Demo)”
Franz Ferdinand & Jane Birkin – “A Song for Sorry Angel”
Crash Test Dummies – “When I Go Out with Artists”
Glasvegas – “Go Square Go”
The Hold Steady – “A Slight Discomfort”
Glossary – “When Easy Street Gets Hard to Find”
De La Soul – “The Magic Number”
Black Mountain – “Old Fangs”
Valient Thorr – “Goveruptcy”
Little Joy – “Unattainable”
The Men – “Bataille”
The Walkmen – “Woe is Me”
Starsailor – “Four to the Floor”
The Hooters – “All You Zombies”
Castanets – “Dance, Dance”
Godspeed You! Black Emperor – “Tiny Silver Hammers (Part 1)”
The Sea and Cake – “Mr. F”
Danger Mouse & Daniele Luppi – “The World”
Yes – “Starship Trooper”
The Antlers – “Atrophy”
A Flock of Seagulls – “Modern Love is Automatic”
Florence + the Machine – “Leave My Body”
Wilco – “I Might”
Crash Test Dummies – “In the Days of the Caveman”
Garfunkel & Oates – “Silver Lining”
José González – “Cycling Trivialities”
Blitzen Trapper – “Might Find it Cheap”
Phoenix – “Fences (25 Hrs a Day Remix)”
R.E.M. – “Wait”
Esben and the Witch – “Light Streams”
Baroness – “War, Wisdom, and Rhyme”
The Black Keys – “Never Give You Up”
The Cool Kids – “Freak City”
Engineers – “Las Vega”
Black Rebel Motorcycle Club – “Done All Wrong”
Fennesz & Sakamoto – “0402”
Clint Mansell – “The New Season”
Blondie – “Detroit 442 (Live)”
The Wombats – “Walking Disasters”
WU LYF – “Dirt”
Okkervil River – “Wake and Be Fine”
Erika Eigen – “I Want to Marry a Lighthouse Keeper”
Kate Bush – “And So Is Love”
General Public – “Tenderness”
Laura Veirs – “Summer is the Champion”
Camp Lo – “Luchini aka This is It”
The Smiths – “Meat is Murder”
Scritti Politti – “Flesh & Blood”
Stereolab – “Supah Jaianto”
New Order – “The Perfect Kiss”
Wye Oak – “The Altar”
Kylesa – “Back and Forth”
The War on Drugs – “Black Water Falls”
Mew – “Cartoons and Macramé Wounds”
The Thermals – “A Pillar of Salt”
George Thorogood – “Can’t Stop Lovin’”
Phoenix – “Rome”
Northside – “Take 5”
Gruff Rhys – “Sensations in the Dark”
Suede – “Sadie”
Chameleons – “In Shreds”
Camper Van Beethoven – “New Roman Times”
Ben Folds – “Still”
The Police – “Every Breath You Take”
Gang Gang Dance – “Sacer”
A Sunny Day in Glasgow – “Shy”
Hothouse Flowers – “I’m Sorry”
Fonda – “A Love that Won’t Let You Go”
Les Savy Fav – “Bringing Us Down”
Those Darlins – “Waste Away”
Surf City – “In Times of Approach…”
Ray Davies & Bruce Springsteen – “Better Things”
Oneohtrix Point Never – “Up”
Frankie Goes to Hollywood – “Rage Hard (Freddie Bastone Remix)”
Russian Circles – “When the Mountain Comes to Muhammad”
Dinosaur L – “Go Bang”
Suede – “Metal Mickey (Island Demo)”
Tombs – “Vermillion”
Thomas Dolby – “One of Our Submarines”
R.E.M. – “Country Feedback”
Frightened Rabbit – “Who’d You Kill Now? (Live)”
Yeasayer – “I Remember”
Lush – “Undertow”
Fleet Foxes – “The Cascades”
Nancy Sinatra – “You Only Live Twice”
Mew – “Special”
Pearl Jam – “The Fixer”
Ice Cube – “Wicked”
De La Soul – “So Good”
Kate Bush – “Why Should I Love You”

Wednesday's Playlist: 12-14-11

2011-12-14T15:55:00.001-08:00

Okkervil River – “For Real”
Shearwater – “The Snow Leopard”
Eksi Ekso – “Brown Shark, Red Lion”
Eels – “Railroad Man”
The Tough Alliance – “Miami”
Mogwai – “Get to France”
Gillian Welch – “Tennessee”
Daft Punk – “The Son of Flynn”
Soul II Soul – “Keep on Movin’”
Postal Service – “Such Great Heights”
Ladytron – “Light & Magic”
Brian Eno – “St. Elmo’s Fire”
The Magic Numbers – “Forever Lost”
Feist – “Get it Wrong, Get it Right”
The Wannadies – “You and Me Song”
José González – “Teardrop”
Serge Gainsbourg – “L’Hotel Particulier”
Echo & the Bunnymen – “The Subject”
R.E.M. – “New Test Leper”
Laura Veirs – “Prairie Lullaby”
The Decemberists – “Down by the Water”
Moby – “Why Does My Heart Feel So Bad?”
…And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead – “The Best”
Nirvana – “Jesus Don’t Want Me for a Sunbeam (Live)”
Toots & the Maytals – “Funky Kingston”
Erykah Badu – “Window Seat”
Neil Young – “Are You Ready for the Country? (Live)”
Mumford & Sons – “Roll Away Your Stone”
Fugazi – “Promises”
A Tribe Called Quest – “The Hop”
Phoenix – “Fences (Boombass Mix)”
Supertramp – “Breakfast in America (Live)”
Gang Gang Dance – “Glass Jar”
Childish Gambino – “You See Me”
Tombs – “Constellations”
Band of Skulls – “Light of the Morning”
Art Brut – “Formed a Band”
LCD Soundsystem – “Yr City’s a Sucker”
J.D. McPherson – “Country Boy”
Geto Boys – “Mind Playin’ Tricks on Me”
Smashing Pumpkins – “Ache (Rehearsal Demo)”
The Weeknd – “Rolling Stone”
Les Savy Fav – “Meet Me in the Dollar Bin”
The War on Drugs – “Your Love is Calling My Name”
Sigur Rós – “Untitled #1 (aka Vaka)”
Altered Images – “Intro: Happy Birthday”
Prince – “Sister”
José González – “Down the Line”
OK Go – “Last Leaf”
Jay-Z – “99 Problems”
The Innocence Mission - “The Melendys Go Abroad”
The White Stripes – “Fell in Love with a Girl”
The Cardigans – “Lovefool”
Darker My Love – “Backseat”
U2 – “Numb”
The Pixies – “I’ve Been Waiting for You”
Sigur Rós – “Starálfur”
The Motels – “Take the L”
Marcy Playground – “Poppies”
Florence + the Machine – “What the Water Gave Me (Demo)”
Scritti Politti – “Confidence”
Nancy Wilson – “Lucky Trumble”
The War on Drugs – “Brothers”
Torche – “Arrowhead”
Bomba Estéreo – “Juana”
Spoon – “Someone Something”
Yuck – “Rubber”
Moby – “In My Heart”
Heaven 17 – “Let Me Go (Extended Mix)”
Ladytron – “Tomorrow”
Suede – “Banana Youth (The Power) (Demo)”
Chris Bell – “I am the Cosmos”
Paul Kelly & Angus Stone – “Four Seasons in One Day”
Rogue Wave – “Endless Shovel”
MC DJ – “UFO”
Matt Pond PA – “Summer is Coming”
Superchunk – “Driveway to Driveway”
Blue Scholars – “Rani Mukerji”
The Smithereens – “Only a Memory”

Sunday's Playlist: 12-11-11

2011-12-11T12:42:00.000-08:00

Little Scream – “Cannons”
The Mission – “Heaven on Earth”
Sun Kil Moon – “The Leaning Tree”
Spoon – “Out Go the Lights”
Echo & the Bunnymen – “Start Again (Live)”
X- “The Stage”
The Pixies - "Caribou"
Nada Surf – “Bye Bye Beaute”
Bonnie “Prince” Billy – “Wolf Among Wolves”
Real Estate – “Kinder Blumen”
Lavender Diamond – “New Ways of Living”
Toad the Wet Sprocket – “Pray Your Gods”
Echo & the Bunnymen – “The Game”
The Innocence Mission – “Bright as Yellow”
The Elected – “Did Me Good”
Cymbals Eat Guitars – “Gary Condit”
Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti – “Beverly Kills”
Smog – “Dress Sexy at My Funeral”
That Dog – “Minneapolis”
Red Sparowes – “A Mutiny”
Fleetwood Mac – “Only Over You”
A Tribe Called Quest – “Push it Along”
The Corin Tucker Band – “Dragon”
Midlake – “Acts of Man”
Akron/Family – “Cast a Net”
Blondie – “Heart of Glass (Live)”
Blondie – “The Tide is High (Live)”
U2 – “Mysterious Ways”
The Black Keys - "Hell of a Season"
Plexi – “Mountains”
Suede – “So Young”
Simian Mobile Disco – “I Believe”
Engineers – “Press Rewind”
Luscious Jackson – “Stardust”
Fonda – “A Love That Won’t Let You Go”
Tricky – “Christiansands”
Queens of the Stone Age – “Born to Hula”
Janelle Monae – “Sincerely, Jane.”
The Cave Singers – “Falls”
Dexys Midnight Runners – “Dubious”
Wesafari – “Winter Song”
U2 – “Mysterious Ways (Ultimatum Mix)”
The Heavy – “And When I Die”
Bon Iver – “Babys”
Blondie – “Orchid Club”
Fugazi – “Burning”
Elbow – “Mirrorball”
Loch Lomond – “Northern, Knees, Trees, and Lights”
Frankie Goes to Hollywood – “Relax”
Bruce Springsteen – “Atlantic City”
Mew – “Beach”
Gorillaz – “Sweepstakes”
Evan Dando – “The Ballad of El Goodo”
Laura Marling – “Sophia”
OK Go – “Needing / Getting”
Fleetwood Mac – “Oh Diane”
Eels – “Flyswatter”
The Who – “I am the Sea”
Jay-Zeezer – “Bonnie, Clyde, & El Scorcho”
Howard Jones – “Look Mama”
Those Darlins – “Bumd”
Deerhoof – “Panda Panda Panda (Live)”
The Tallest Man on Earth – “Kids on the Run”

Films of the 60s, Part 26: Only the Good Die Young

2011-12-11T09:50:00.000-08:00

“Come out, Virginia. Don’t let me wait
You Catholic girls start much too late.
Sooner or later it comes down to fate,
I might as well be the one,
You know that only the good die young.”
---Billy Joel, “Only the Good Die Young”

One glance at the title of this particular survey of 60s films should give you one big spoiler alert. Sorry about that, but I think in this case it is warranted. Though Billy Joel's lyrics are more of a plea of seduction, in this case, I am using them as words of sacrifice. As you will see, these are movies all about sacrifice. In regard to the "spoilers," these are not movies with surprise endings. Plot is not an isolated element here. Rather, these three films encapsulate everything films should aspire to be. They do tell a story, but they take advantage of visual imagery, symbolism, narrative tricks, and reflections on humanity. It’s true, very young characters die in each of these films, and each of them could be defined as “good,” but the films and characters represent the 60s in France and Russia as a time of post-war bleakness, a time, though not isolated, of man’s inhumanity to man, and the dichotomy of this darkness and a religious background.

Ivan’s Childhood (1962, Andrei Tarkovsky)

Ivan is a twelve-year-old Russian boy caught in the conflagration of World War II, specifically his countrymen’s fight with the German Wehrmacht along the Eastern front. As the film moves along, we are exposed to more of his story, both in the present day, and in a series of four “dreams” that serve as psychological flashbacks. We find out that Ivan is tragically orphaned by the war. We also learn that, in an effort to avenge his family’s deaths, he wants to fight on the front lines. The Russian army uses him as a reconnaissance spy, due to his innocuous nature as a child. Through these back-and-forth splits in the linear narrative, we see the comparisons of a life of innocence with those of the harsh realities of war.

Ivan isn’t the only character we follow through the film. We also follow a few of the Russian soldiers, some of whom very much want to protect Ivan. In effect, they make a compromise by allowing him to spy, but not to fight on the front lines. Another solider, Kholin, spends most of his time trying to aggressively woo a young nurse, Masha. Through all these characters, we are exposed to nearly every primitive instinct of man, from revenge to caring, and from violence to lust. War, by its very nature, tends to reduce man to his basest instincts, but yet even this message is not the central one in Ivan’s Childhood. Being a great film with many narrative and visual layers, there are perhaps many messages that can be taken from it. As we can say of all great art, there are many interpretations, depending on the viewer.

It is amazing to think that this is Andrei Tarkovsky’s first feature film. The imagery within seems to come from the eye of a seasoned director. Nearly every shot means something within the narrative. Take, for instance, an early shot of Ivan in a burned out house. As he enters it, several of the fallen, hanging beams frame Ivan, pointing to him as some kind of aura of a religious figure. Another lasting and powerful image involves the Russian soldier, Kholin. In a forest of starkly white bark trees in the winter, he straddles a foxhole trench and hugs Masha, her feet dangling over emptiness. It perfectly captures how we have to hold each other up through difficult times, and that often our lives are completely in the hands of others. These are just two of the stunning images among many in the film. They all serve to underscore the sacrifice eventually made by Ivan, a heartbreaking reminder of the fragility of life and the utter ridiculousness of war as the eventual result of the petty differences between men and nations.

Au Hasard Balthazar (1966, Robert Bresson)

Au Hasard Balthazar has been called one of the most powerful allegories of the life of Jesus Christ ever put on film. Even though it can certainly be interpreted in this way, there are various other interpretations that are just as certain. Balthazar is a donkey. We are introduced to him and his human counterpart, Marie, and then subsequently follow them through their horrifically tragic lives. Marie is among a group of children who are the first “owners” of Balthazar, there at the presence of his birth. As if that wasn’t symbolic enough, the kids then playfully “baptize” the newborn donkey. As the two grow older, they are eventually separated, though their lives mirror each other’s.

Balthazar goes through seven owners, again a hugely symbolic element, reflecting the seven sacraments, the seven words from the cross, or the seven deadly sins. His life, moving owner-to-owner, and suffering abuses and indignities, are representative of the Stations of the Cross, eventually ending in Balthazar’s death on a hillside, much like Golgotha. Balthazar is given a wreath of flowers to wear upon his head, like the crown of thorns. It is absolutely intended symbolism, one can easily see. But, the question becomes whether this is supposed to simply be an allegory, or could there perhaps be other interpretations?

Jean-Luc Godard, who eventually married the young girl who played Marie, Anne Wiazemsky, famously said that Au Hasard Balthazar was “the world in an hour and a half.” While those with faith may take this to mean that life is suffering, but through saintliness, like that which can be attributed to either Marie or Balthazar, there is redemption, I think Bresson could have presented an alternative alongside this. Bresson’s films are typically bleak. They show the world for what it is, a harsh, violent, depressing, and inhumane landscape filled with selfish people. Marie and Balthazar are not selfish. Rather, they are subservient and meek. While Christian religion tells us that the meek shall inherit the earth, Bresson presents a tableau that shows the meek are simply tragic figures, swallowed up by the harsh world, eventually sacrificed, though we may not know the value of that sacrifice. After all, Marie’s father lies dying at the end of the film, her mother desperately praying for God’s compassion, her prayers unanswered. Remember, this is a specific choice Bresson makes as a storyteller. My point is that this is ok. Two viewpoints can coexist, even in discussing the same piece of art, and I think Bresson would adamantly agree. Is there another life for those who have faith, or is this is all that we get, a cold, harsh reality where we make choices for the benefit of our fellow man? It’s impossible to know, but both of us can disagree and coexist.

Mouchette (1967, Robert Bresson)

Mouchette, like Ivan, Balthazar, and Marie, is a young, tragic figure. In French, the name means “little fly,” and this is perhaps the most fitting description of this female adolescent. Her mother is bedridden, her father is an abusive alcoholic, and she is a social outcast at school. In other words, Mouchette doesn’t have much going for her. Her life is as bleak as it can possibly be. Painfully, Bresson gives Mouchette a few moments when her life may begin to improve, small glimpses of hope that are then just as quickly dashed. For instance, she meets a young boy at a fair and after the two playfully flirt with each other on the bumper cars, her father viciously slaps her in front of her crush, interrupting and in effect, destroying their courtship.

But, this is just the beginning of Mouchette’s tragic tale. During a rainstorm, she becomes lost and disoriented in the woods, usually the only place she feels comfortable. The woods are generally Mouchette’s only refuge. Lost, she eventually comes upon a poacher who has just killed the village’s game warden. Because she is a witness, the poacher deviously connives her to become his alibi. In her state of shock, fatigue, fear, and sadness, she agrees, and further becomes his rape victim. Humiliated, she leaves for home the next morning and must not only relate the poacher’s concocted story, but also claim that the two are lovers due to her being out all night. Upon her arrival home, she finds her mother eventually succumbing to her illness and dying. At this point, Mouchette has been deprived of the last tenuous sanctuaries she has in life. An elderly villager offers her a dress and shroud, intended for her mother. In an eerie calm, she takes the garments, walks to a nearby lake, wraps herself in the shroud and rolls herself into the lake, committing suicide.

While there is an easy allegory to see in Balthazar, and an underlying hope, all hope seems absent from Mouchette, or at least one has to really want to see any positive message within its narrative. It is less about saintliness or transcendence and more about the utter ugliness and tragedy of human existence. It is, at most times, difficult to watch because of this, but Bresson’s images are still riveting and captivating in their simplicity. The film is, if nothing else, a stark reminder that all existences are not equal and that, while there is indeed beauty in life, there is also injustice, inequality, and evil. While some are given little boosts here and there due to social stature, wealth, privilege, and even luck, others are not so fortunate. It is also a reminder of the fragile nature of youth and the crippling nature of depression and hopelessness. Though we can argue over other possible outcomes for Mouchette, the narrative effectively seals her fate and serves as a stark depiction of inhumanity. I am also reminded of the saying, which is not in the Bible, that God doesn’t give us more problems than we can handle. Mouchette is a symbol of the flaws inherent in this belief.

Saturday's Playlist: 12-10-11

2011-12-10T22:08:00.000-08:00

Justin Timberlake – “Cry Me a River”
U2 – “Can’t Help Falling in Love (Triple Peaks Remix)”
Radiohead – “Lucky”
Sons & Daughters – “Don’t Look Now”
Bright Eyes – “Shell Games”
ABC – “15 Storey Halo”
LCD Soundsystem – “Movement”
Cut Copy – “Hanging Onto Every Heartbeat”
Modest Mouse – “Trailer Trash”
David Bowie – “TVC 15”
LCD Soundsystem – “Drunk Girls (London Session)”
Sufjan Stevens - “Detroit, Lift up Your Weary Head! (Rebuild! Restore! Reconsider!)”
Mew – “Sometimes Life Isn’t Easy”
Gorillaz – “19-2000”
Arcade Fire – “Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)”
Camper Van Beethoven – “We Love You”
The Black Keys – “Unknown Brother”
The Bird & the Bee – “I Can’t Go For That (No Can Do)”
New Order – “Vanishing Point”
R.E.M. – “Be Mine”
Viva Voce – “Black Mood Ring”
Suede – “Daddy’s Speeding”
Dum Dum Girls – “Bedroom Eyes”
Galaxie 500 – “Isn’t it a Pity”
Aloe Blacc – “Life so Hard”
John Cale – “Pablo Picasso”
Stephin Merritt & Susan Anway – “Plant White Roses (Buffalo Rome)”
U2 & Johnny Cash – “The Wanderer”
Red Sparowes – “In Illusions of Order”
Glen Hansard – “Say it to Me Now”
Sufjan Stevens – “Too Much”
Eels – “Looking Up”
Luscious Jackson – “Rollin’”
The Old 97’s – “You Drink Too Much”
Okkervil River – “The Valley”
Q-Tip & Raphael Saadiq – “We Fight / Love”
Better than Ezra – “(Untitled)”
Tom Waits – “Earth Died Screaming”
Childish Gambino – “That Power”
Postal Service – “The District Sleeps Alone Tonight”
The Pixies – “Manta Ray”
The Smithereens – “Something New”
Iggy Pop & James Williamson – “Master Charge”
The Smithereens – “Time Won’t Let Me”
U2 – “Dirty Day”
Mew – “Comforting Sounds”
Bon Iver – “Michicant”
The Motels – “Take the L”
TV on the Radio – “All Falls Down”
U2- “’Baby’ Love is Blindness”
SWV – “Anything (Old School Version)”
School of Seven Bells – “The Wait”
Here We Go Magic – “Babyohbaby-Ijustcantstanditanymore!”
Woodhands – “Papa Don’t Preach”
Echo & the Bunnymen – “The Cutter”
The Smiths – “Barbarism Begins at Home”
The Thermals – “I Don’t Believe You”
Mumford & Sons – “Dust Bowl Dance”
The 88 – “Coming Home”
The Stepkids – “Outro”
Dolorean – “My Grey Life (Second Chances)”
Luscious Jackson – “Ladyfingers”

Thursday's Playlist: 12-8-11

2011-12-08T15:49:00.000-08:00

Placebo – “Nancy Boy”
Death Cab for Cutie – “Monday Morning”
Kaiser Chiefs – “Heard it Break”
Thomas Dolby – “Radio Silence”
Andrew Bird – “The Whistling Caruso”
Zola Jesus – “Shivers”
Tom Waits – “I Wish I Was in New Orleans (Live)”
Baroness – “War, Wisdom and Rhyme”
Broadcast – “The Little Bell”
Best Coast – “Each and Everyday”
Sufjan Stevens – “In the Devil’s Territory”
The Cure – “Just Like Heaven”
Supertramp – “Breakfast in America”
Echo & the Bunnymen – “Fuel”
The Beach Boys – “Heroes and Villains (Stereo Mix)”
Smashing Pumpkins – “I Am One”
Nirvana – “Lounge Act (Boombox Rehearsal)”
Information Society – “Tomorrow”
The Cure – “Charlotte Sometimes”
Tom Waits – “Good Old World (Waltz)”
Danger Mouse – “My 1st Song”
The Killers – “All These Things That I’ve Done”
Ryan Adams & the Cardinals – “Kisses Start Wars”
The Zombies – “This Will Be Our Year”
Wye Oak – “Plains”
King Curtis – “Mr. Bojangles”
The Jayhawks – “Red Light”
Male Bonding – “What’s That Scene?”
M83 – “Soon, My Friend”
Echo & the Bunnymen – “Heaven Up Here”
Band of Skulls – “Patterns”
Janet Jackson – “The Knowledge”
Gruff Rhys – “At the Heart of Love”
Kansas – “The Spider”
Orbital – “Satan (Live)”
Red Fang – “Hank is Dead”
Clem Snide – “Stoney”
Peter, Bjorn & John – “Black Book”
Sebastian Tellier – “Fantino”
Toro y Moi – “Divina”
RES – “Golden Boys”
Liam Gallagher & Steve Craddock – “Carnation”
The Smithereens – “Top of the Pops”
Swervedriver – “Last Train to Satansville”
The Dears – “Thrones”
Jesu – “Small Wonder”
M83 – “Echoes of Mine”
The Go-Go’s – “We Got the Beat”
The New Pornographers – “Sweet Talk, Sweet Talk”
Ministry – “Cannibal Song”
Echo & the Bunnymen – “No Hands (Peel Session)”
The Jayhawks – “Turn Your Pretty Name Around”
Suede – “Heroine”
Lucy Pearl – “Lucy Pearl Tells”
Bright Eyes – “First Day of My Life”
Missy Elliott – “Work It”
Stina Nordenstam – “Like a Swallow”
Fleetwood Mac – “Never Forget”
Prince – “Pop Life”
Big Daddy Kane – “I Get the Job Done”
Cymbals Eat Guitars – “Plainclothes”
World Party – “All the Young Dudes”
Serge Gainsbourg – “Ah! Melody”
Ty Segall – “Where Your Mind Goes”
John Cale – “Helen of Troy”
The War on Drugs – “Original Slave”
Gorillaz – “Every Planet We Reach is Dead”
The Rapture – “Blue Bird”
Oneohtrix Point Never – “Physical Memory”
Old 97’s – “Four Leaf Clover”
Nirvana – “In Bloom”
Drive Like Jehu – “Caress”
Stevie Wonder – “Overjoyed”
tUnE-yArDs – “Gangsta (Ad-Rock Remix)”
Jay-Zeezer – “99 Problems with Buddy Holly”
Phosphorescent – “Pride”
Kansas – “Sparks of the Tempest (Live)”
Skee-Lo – “I Wish (Street Mix)”
Washed Out – “Soft”
Jungle Brothers – “Strictly Dedicated”
The Jayhawks – “Sweet Hobo Self”
The Men – “With the Shah”
Tennis – “Bimini Bay”
The Beach Boys – “Surf’s Up (Piano Demo)”
Camper Van Beethoven – “(Don’t You Go To) Goleta”
Van Morrison – “Sweet Thing”
Love is All – “Make Out Fall Out Make Up”
Alice in Chains – “Them Bones”
A Tribe Called Quest – “Lyrics to Go”
U2 – “Heaven and Hell”
Can – “One More Night”
The Buggles – “Video Killed the Radio Star”
Fountains of Wayne – “She’s Got a Problem”
Hüsker Dü – “Pink Turns to Blue”
Mew – “Wheels Over Me”
X – “Johnny Hit and Run Paulene”
Danger Mouse & Danielle Luppi – “Black”
Pearl Jam – “Crown of Thorns (Live)”

Wednesday's Playlist: 12-7-11

2011-12-07T15:54:00.000-08:00

Dexys Midnight Runners – “Reminisce Pt. 1”
Rialto – “Monday Morning 5.19”
Aimee Mann – “Save Me (Live on Conan)”
Goldfrapp – “Believer”
Laura Marling – “My Friends”
Darker My Love – “18th Street Shuffle”
Sigur Rós – “Svefn-g-englar (Live)”
Gruff Rhys – “Shark Ridden Waters”
The Polyphonic Spree – “Light & Day / Reach for the Sun”
The Who – “Won’t Get Fooled Again”
Asia – “One Step Closer”
Iron Maiden – “Back in the Village”
The Future Sound of London – “Papua New Guinea”
Neil Finn – “King Tide”
Interpol – “NYC”
Warpaint – “Bees”
Snow Patrol – “Somewhere a Clock is Ticking”
The Pains of Being Pure at Heart – “Even in Dreams”
Aimee Mann – “Calling it Quits”
Simian Mobile Disco – “Skin Cracker”
John Cougar Mellencamp – “Small Town”
Danger Mouse – “Change Clothes”
Destroyer – “Song for America”
Red Fang – “Human Herd”
Paul Westerberg – “Born for Me”
A Tribe Called Quest – “Check the Rhime”
OK Go – “Muppet Show Theme Song”
A Place to Bury Strangers – “It is Nothing”
OK Go – “What to Do”
Q-Tip – “N.T.”
R.E.M. – “Life and How to Live It”
Stereo MC’s – “Deep Down & Dirty”
R.E.M. – “Hyena”
The Corin Tucker Band – “Doubt”
Paul McCartney & Wings – “Live and Let Die”
Portugal. The Man – “All Your Light (Times Like These)”
Yeasayer – “Rome”
Blondie – “Shayla (Live)”
David Bowie – “Fashion”
Christopher O’Riley – “Fake Plastic Trees”
Health – “Perfect Skin (Curses! Remix)”
Cat Power – “I Found a Reason”
David Bowie – “Shadow Man”
Jónsi – “Go Do”
The National – “Pay for Me”
Sigur Rós – “Með Blóðnasir (Live)”
Braids – “Lammicken”
Carissa’s Wierd – “The Color that your Eyes Changed with the Color of your Hair”
Megafaun – “Comprovisation for Connor Pass”
The English Beat – “Spar Wid me”
Cold Cave – “Confetti”
World Party – “Take it Up”
R.E.M. – “Be Mine”
Blitzen Trapper – “American Goldwing”
Neil Young – “Cinnamon Girl”
Can – “Soup”
Basement Jaxx – “Red Alert”
Mike Ness – “Big Iron”
Fennesz & Sakamoto – “0405”
The Boxer Rebellion – “Both Sides are Evil”
Blondie – “X-Offender”

Sunday's Playlist: 12-4-11

2011-12-04T13:52:00.001-08:00

Blondie – “The Dream’s Lost on Me (Acoustic)”
Black Kids – “Hurricane Jane”
Heart – “Dreamboat Annie (Reprise)”
Camper Van Beethoven – “Five Sticks”
Wolf Parade – “Pobody’s Nerfect”
Franz Ferdinand – “The Dark of the Matinee (Headman Remix)”
OMD – “Bondage of Fate”
Wilco – “A Shot in the Arm (Alternate Take)”
The Jayhawks – “Sister Cry”
Flying Lotus & Thom Yorke – “…And the World Laughs With You”
Stevie Wonder – “Where Were You When I Needed You”
Björk – “Thunderbolt”
Stars – “He Lied about Death”
Mastodon – “Crack the Skye”
The Pixies – “Build High”
Blitzen Trapper – “Fletcher”
Sun Kil Moon – “Tiny Cities Made of Ashes”
R.E.M. – “I Believe (Demo)”
The Duke Spirit – “Homecoming”
Tombs – “Constellations”
Little Scream – “The Lamb”
Thomas Dolby – “Flying North”
Christopher O’Riley – “Let Down”
Gorillaz – “19-2000 (The Wiseguys House of Wisdom Remix)”
Wolf Parade – “I’ll Believe in Anything”
Phoenix – “Love Like a Sunset Part II”
Cake – “The Distance”
Black Rebel Motorcycle Club – “Love Burns”
Blondie – “Detroit 442”
Florence + the Machine – “You’ve Got the Dirtee Love”
Remy Zero – “Save Me”
Kansas – “Carry on My Wayward Son”
Eels – “For You”
Hans Zimmer – “Dream is Collapsing”
Ryan Adams – “Rocks”
Jónsi – “Sinking Friendships”
Wilco – “Handshake Drugs”
The Smiths – “London”
Run-D.M.C. – “Together Forever”
Childish Gambino – “Not Going Back”
Blondie – “Call Me”
Fountains of Wayne – “Valley Winter Song”
Juana Molina – “Isabel”
Yeah Yeah Yeahs – “Sheena is a Punk Rocker”
Camper Van Beethoven – “Sometimes”
She & Him – “Please, Please, Please, Let Me Get What I Want”
Panda Bear – “Scheherazade”
Spoon – “Small Stakes”
The Psychedelic Furs – “President Gas”
A Tribe Called Quest – “Baby Phife’s Return”

Films of the 60s, Part 25: What If I Were Romeo in Black Jeans?

2011-12-04T11:59:00.000-08:00

“What if I were Romeo in black jeans,
What if I was Heathcliff, it’s no myth,
Maybe she's just looking for someone to dance with.”
--Michael Penn, “No Myth”

Shakespeare. No one is more ubiquitous in world of English letters than the Bard of Avon. I’ll admit, though the current trend in education is to scale back on Shakespeare and supplement the curriculum with more current material, I am quite pro Shakespeare. It’s not that I don’t agree with keeping it fresh, it’s just that Shakespeare has been relatable to the human condition for over four hundred years. I have read every play and every poem. I have seen many of the plays performed at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Bill is my boy. Modern filmmakers and critics can hurl all the slings and arrows they like at him, questioning his identity or his legitimacy, and I will still be a fan. In other words, the play’s the thing. His work is so universal that it can be adapted into nearly any situation and still have relevance and connection. Cases in point, the following three films from the 60s, which took the classic works to entirely new levels.

The Bad Sleep Well (1960, Akira Kurosawa)

There have been many great portrayals and adaptations of Hamlet over the years: Olivier, Branagh, Tennant, Sons of Anarchy, Strange Brew… Yeah, you read that right. But, one of my favorites of all time is Akira Kurosawa’s take on the classic tale of revenge, The Bad Sleep Well. Toshiro Mifune certainly deserves to be considered alongside the best that have portrayed the tragic Prince of Denmark, though he was playing a businessman of Japan. Mifune plays Nishi, a young man who, at the start of the film, is getting married to Yoshiko, the daughter of a wealthy executive. In this way, we can already see how the story differs slightly from the classic tragedy. Hamlet never got married, though Ophelia’s grief-inspired dementia is symbolized in the fact that Yoshiko is hobbled. Reporters and police, the latter of which arrest one of the company men, Wada, for bribery, interrupt the wedding. As it turns out, this scandal was previously hushed up conveniently through another businessman’s suicide, and this is just one aspect of an untouchable corporate culture in which lower level employees sacrifice themselves for the higher-ups. Sound familiar?

Nishi seems at first to be complicit in the goings on, guiding Wada to the top of a volcano. Incidentally, this scene is how I always imagined the setting of the transformation of Anakin Skywalker to Darth Vader as opposed to the ridiculous and overblown result. Anyway, Nishi ends up saving Wada and secreting him away as ammunition against the company that ‘killed’ his father. While he tries to find a use for Wada, he leaves a photo of the office building in the company safe, with a red ‘X’ over the window from which his own father jumped. That same building figures prominently throughout the film, taking the place of Elsinore Castle. Eventually, Nishi cleverly enacts scenarios in which Wada appears as a ‘ghost’ to scare the top executives, one by one. Nishi becomes an obsessed character, as any Hamlet model should, even becoming somewhat creepy as he whistles down the street, much like Omar in The Wire. There are great subplots with Yoshiko’s brother and Nishi’s best friend, all of which wrap up nicely in the end, but like Hamlet, there is indeed a tragic ending.

The Bad Sleep Well is one of those adaptations that is usually said to be “loosely” based on the original. In this case, there are several subtle changes. For one, the despicable union of uncle and mother is replaced by a corrupt corporation, but one is still a father-in-law. The brilliance of this change is to turn a revenge tragedy into one that also has social commentary on the state of corporate culture, an institution that did not exist in Shakespeare’s time. Kurosawa showcases something that we are seeing even today, a kind of Stockholm Syndrome, in which those being held down by their superiors still curry their favor. As Nishi says, “They starved you and my father with scraps from their table, killed you as scapegoats, and still you can’t hate them.” As we have learned from history, the only way change occurs is either through revolution or protest that alters minds, and eventually laws. As is said in the film, “It’s pointless trying to use the law against evil people.”

West Side Story (1961, Robert Wise)

There was a long period in which any high school class reading Romeo & Juliet was made to watch West Side Story as a way to bring the classic romantic tragedy more up to date. While the language of Ernest Lehman and Stephen Sondheim might have been more accessible to teens than Shakespeare’s, the language of musicals, at least before Glee, was seemingly foreign to those same youngsters. Now, Glee has performed a majority of the songs from the production and has made it somewhat more hip than it was in my time. In my previous survey of 60s musicals, I made a point about the logic of musicals, the difference between diegetic and non-diegetic sound, and how these affect my enjoyment of the films. West Side Story is one of those films in which people, and in this case incredibly unlikely people, spontaneously break out into song and dance.

We are introduced first to the Jets in the basketball courts of the projects of New York City. (Interestingly, this is now the location of Lincoln Center, which I recently saw as a location in The Changeling). Anyhoo, it’s fairly difficult for toughs to look…well…tough when snapping fingers in unison and then performing highly choreographed dance moves. This is exacerbated by the declaration of “Cokes all around” during the gang tête-à-tête. Nothing says a gang means business like an order of a round of sodas. While at first skeptical and put off, I was soon trying to suspend my disbelief and enjoying the mixture of dancing and fighting, seeing the dance as an artistic expression of anxiety, anger, fear, racial tension, and even love. In case you were wondering, no, I had not seen this film until recently, despite the fact that my parents had the original cast album on vinyl. While I don’t remember them every playing it in my presence, I found that I actually knew most of the songs, most likely due to their huge presence in the canon as musical classics. “America,” “Maria,” “Jet Song,” “Tonight,” and “I Feel Pretty” were all completely familiar to me.

West Side Story holds the distinction of being probably the most faithful adaptation of Shakespeare, up to a point. The Montague and Capulet families are smartly transformed into rival New York gangs, one white and one Puerto Rican. Like The Bad Sleep Well, it successfully adds a new social element, in this case being race relations and the inanity of gang/race/class warfare. “America” also nicely sums up the reason for immigration and the arguments between preserving culture and the concept of the melting pot. The lyrics and themes throughout the film are nothing short of brilliant. Add in the gorgeous cinematography, color, and wardrobe, and you have the reasons this film won 10 Academy Awards, is now a classic, and why I had to wait for about six months for a copy from Netflix. Luckily, in the midst of that wait, the Blu-Ray version was released and I was able to see the film in the way it was meant to be seen, sharp, vivid, and with glorious sound. The ending may be drastically different from its source material, but it is still more than a worthy adaptation, and indeed, all are punished.

All Night Long (1962, Basil Dearden)

To round out the trio of Shakespeare adaptations, we have another one of Bill’s most well-known works, Othello. I supposed the only other tragedy that would have been more infamous is the Scottish play. Basil Dearden’s All Night Long, like the previous two films surveyed above, places the familiar characters in a modern setting, in this case the London of the swinging 60s jazz set. Dearden even goes as far as to include actual jazz musicians in the film, including Dave Brubeck and Charles Mingus. Paul Harris plays Aurelius Rex, our Othello, married to Delia, our Desdemona. The great Patrick McGoohan plays Johnnie Cousin, our conniving Iago. We also have a Roderigo and a Cassio, Rod and Cass respectively, but most of their character traits are bundled up into Cass exclusively.

Like West Side Story, All Night Long is fairly faithful in its translation, up to a point. It, too, changes the ending. Whether this is done to make it “less” tragic, or to put a director or writer’s stamp on the story, I do not know. Regardless, the performances in this film are magnetic. It is perhaps not a classic film in the way that the previous two are, but it is entertaining, especially for those who are fans of jazz. The jazz slang seems a little cartoony now, but the drug and alcohol use is at least accurately portrayed. There are no “Cokes all around” in this film. And, while the choreography dulls the sting of the violence in West Side Story, the violence in All Night Long is fairly brutal. When Aurelius shows his anger, it is palpable.

Aside from McGoohan and Harris’ great performances, there is also a young Richard Attenborough playing Rod, a music promoter. He toes the line nicely, bridging the gap between the English and the Americans, and also between warring “friends.” This film also adds a new element, that being one of not just stealing a lover away and ruining a great man with violent tendencies for power and wealth, but also of stealing away a musician from one band to another, or out of retirement. Jealousy is still one of the central theme here, as well as Johnny’s (Iago’s) desire for the limelight. The added element may not be as heavy as corporate malfeasance or race relations, but the original story of Othello is powerful enough to survive in any setting without another substantially important point. However, this might be what leaves it out of “classic” status.

Saturday's Playlist: 12-3-11

2011-12-03T19:15:00.001-08:00

Bangles – “Hit Medley Mix”
Spacemen 3 – “Walkin’ with Jesus”
Japandroids – “To Hell with Good Intentions”
Megafaun – “Carolina Days”
Q-Tip – “Feelin”
Kasabaian – “Velociraptor!”
A Tribe Called Quest – “Oh My God”
Big Pink – “Crystal Visions”
Liturgy – “Generation”
Van Morrison – “Caravan”
Megafaun – “Eagle”
Tommy James & the Shondells – “Crimson and Clover”
Prince – “Beautiful Ones”
Here We Go Magic – “Hands in the Sky”
Dum Dum Girls – “Hold Your Hand”
Digable Planets – “9th Wonder (Blackitolism)”
Little Dragon – “Please Turn”
King Khan & BBQ Show – “Do the Chop”
Twin Shadow – “When We’re Dancing”
The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion – “Brenda”
Austra – “The Noise”
Faunts – “Alarmed/Lights”
Wilco – “Black Moon”
Big Boi – “Night Night”
Castanets – “Thaw and the Beasts”
Luscious Jackson – “Beloved”
Peter, Bjorn and John – “Young Folks”
Smashing Pumpkins – “The End is the Beginning”
The Weird Sisters – “Magic Works”
Blondie – “Dreaming”
Fleetwood Mac – “Hold Me”
The Sundays – “You’re Not the Only One I Know”
Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds – “Soldier Boys and Jesus Freaks”
Otis Redding – “My Girl”

Wednesday's Playlist: 11-23-11

2011-11-23T14:39:00.001-08:00

Aloe Blacc – “Miss Fortune”
Mew – “Beach”
St. Vincent – “Surgeon”
Mew – “Special”
AC/DC – “Back in Black”
Kate Bush – “Why Should I Love You”
Squeeze – “Heaven”
Flight of the Conchords – “Friends”
.38 Special – “Hold on Loosely”
Kate Bush – “Love and Anger”
Blondie – “Rapture”
Cake – “Comanche”
Amerie – “1 Thing”
Fountains of Wayne – “Denise”
Ramin Djawadi – “Small Pack of Wolves”
Robyn – “None of Dem”
LCD Soundsystem – “Tired”
Interpol – “Hands Away”
Titus Andronicus – “A Pot in Which to Piss”
Big Boi – “Turns Me On”
Happy Mondays – “Hallelujah”
Fleetwood Mac – “Wish You Were Here”
Thomas Dolby – “Dissidents”
Gorillaz – “Starshine”
White Denim – “Through Your Windows”
Bon Iver – “Perth”
Jimi Hendrix – “Fire”
X – “Your Phone’s Off the Hook, But You’re Not”
Blueprint – “Automatic”
Echo & the Bunnymen – “Read it in Books (Peel Session)”
Stevie Wonder – “Where Were You When I Needed You”
Beach House – “Norway”
Caribou – “Sun”
Bachelorette – “Generous Spectre”
Greg Kihn Band – “The Breakup Song (They Don’t Write ‘Em)”
Kvelertak – “Ordsmedar av Rang”
Franz Ferdinand – “What She Came For”
No Age – “Switches”
Suede – “This World Needs a Father”
Black Mountain – “Buried by the Blues”
The Cool Kids – “Sour Apples”
The Feelies – “When You Know”
Broken Social Scene – “Shampoo Suicide”
The Autumn Defense – “Back of My Mind”
The Go! Team – “Ready to Go Steady”
Oneohtrix Point Never – “Learning to Control Myself”
The Smithereens – “Strangers When We Meet”
Jellyfish – “Baby’s Coming Back”
Hooray for Earth – “Bring Us Closer Together”
Vetiver – “Another Reason to Go”
Art Brut – “Is Dog Eared”
A Camp – “Golden Teeth and Silver Medals”
Def Leppard – “Another Hit and Run”
Queens of the Stone Age – “Auto Pilot”
Real Estate – “All the Same”
Broken Bells – “Trap Doors”
Twin Sister – “Spain”
Clint Mansell – “A Room of Her Own”
Metric – “Gold Guns Girls”
Simian Mobile Disco – “Thousand Year Egg”
Suede – “Squidgy Bun (Introducing the Band) (Demo)”
Iron & Wine – “Upward Over the Mountain”
Johnny Gill – “Rub You the Right Way”
Feist – “Mushaboom”
Tom Waits – “Jockey Full of Bourbon”
Jawbreaker – “Lawn”
Tears for Fears – “The Hurting”
Phoenix – “Rome (Neighbours with Devendra Banhart)”
The Motels – “Suddenly Last Summer”
Pelican – “Strung Up from the Sky”
The Smiths – “Pretty Girls Make Graves”
Antony & the Johnsons – “Violetta”
Prince – “Hot Thing (Extended Remix)”
Little River Band – “Reminiscing”
Stillwater – “Fever Dog”
Sigur Rós – “Festival”
Plumtree – “Scott Pilgrim”
The Knack – “That’s What the Little Girls Do”
The Mission – “Dream On”
Eels – “Trouble with Dreams”
The Smiths – “Reel Around the Fountain”
Sleeper – “Inbetweener”
Howard Jones – “Why Look for the Key”
The Decemberists – “January Hymn”
New Order – “Every Little Counts”
The Old 97’s – “Crash on the Barrelhead”
The Verve – “Bitter Sweet Symphony”
Dusty Springfield – “Do Re Mi”
Howard Jones – “Total Conditioning”
The Romantics – “Talking in Your Sleep”
Frankie Goes to Hollywood – “Ferry Cross the Mersey”
Broken Social Scene – “Forced to Love”

Tuesday's Playlist: 11-22-11

2011-11-22T15:38:00.000-08:00

Cheap Trick – “I Want You to Want Me (Live)”
Maxence Cyrin – “Dance (Justice)”
Stevie Wonder – “I Was Made to Love Her”
Blondie – “Rapture (Special Disco Mix)”
Life Without Buildings – “Daylighting”
Tears for Fears – “Shout”
Luscious Jackson – “Bam Bam”
Sufjan Stevens – “Vito’s Ordination Song”
The Rosebuds – “Without a Focus”
Toni Basil – “Mickey”
Sufjan Stevens – “Sleeping Bear, Sault Sainte Marie”
Zola Jesus – “Vessel”
Cass McCombs – “Hermit’s Cave”
Bryan Ferry – “Tender is the Night”
Curtis Mayfield – “Ghetto Child”
Sigur Rós – “Dauðalagið”
LCD Soundsystem – “You Wanted a Hit”
Luce Drayton – “To Be Loved (Disco Citizens R+D Edit)”
Wilco – “A Shot in the Arm”
Red Sparowes – “A Mutiny”
The Black Keys – “These Days”
Kings Go Forth – “Fight with Love”
Ryan Adams – “Shakedown on 9th Street”
British Sea Power – “Glitter (Remix of Kwh)”
Crash Test Dummies – “God Shuffled His Feet”
Destroyer – “Suicide Demo for Kara Walker”
Peter, Bjorn and John – “Lies”
Mariachi El Bronx – “Spread Thin”
The White Stripes – “Let’s Shake Hands (Live)”
Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros – “Come in Please”
Paul Simon – “Train in the Distance”
Brendan Benson – “You Make a Fool Out of Me”
Bee Gees – “Love You Inside Out”
Brightblack Morning Light – “Everybody Daylight”
Leonard Cohen – “Everybody Knows”
U2 – “’Baby’ Love is Blindness”
Clint Mansell – “A Swan Song (for Nina)”
The Waterboys – “Sweet Thing”
Washed Out – “Untitled”
Cass McCombs – “Memory’s Stain”
Red Fang – “Wings of Fang”
Nirvana – “Lithium (The Devonshire Mixes)”
Tom Waits – “I Wish I Was in New Orleans (Live)”
José González – “Teardrop”
A Sunny Day in Glasgow – “West Philly Vocoder”
Les Savy Fav – “Appetites”
Aretha Franklin – “Bridge over Troubled Water”
Her Space Holiday – “Anything for Destruction”
Wilco – “I’m Always in Love”
Nine Inch Nails – “Sin (Short)”
Robyn – “Include Me Out”
R.E.M. – “Bad Day (Demo)”
Tindersticks – “City Sickness”
Peter Schilling – “Major Tom (Coming Home)”
The Corin Tucker Band – “Thrift Store Coats”
The Moody Blues – “Nights in White Satin”
John Cale – “Sylvia Said”
U2 – “Beautiful Day”
Smog – “Teenage Spaceship”
Childish Gambino – “Bonfire”
Jenny & Johnny – “White Men are Dreaming”
How to Dress Well – “Escape Before the Rain”
Glasser – “Apply (Chairlift Remix)”
Squeeze – “F-Hole”
The Walkmen – “All My Great Designs”
Paul Simon – “American Tune”
Portishead – “Requiem for Anna”
Jellyfish – “That is Why”
PJ Harvey – “Rid of Me”
Björk – “Dark Matter”
Jawbox – “Iodine”
Hall & Oates – “You Make My Dreams”

Monday's Playlist: 11-21-11

2011-11-21T15:48:00.001-08:00

Tori Amos – “Thank You”
Blueprint – “The Clouds”
Hot Chip – “Ready for the Floor”
James Brown – “Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag, Pt.1”
Suede – “Trash”
DJ Shadow – “Sad and Lonely”
Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti – “Little Wig”
Tori Amos – “Angie”
Matthew Herbert – “May 2011”
The Twilight Singers – “Get Lucky”
Bear in Heaven – “Deafening Love”
Passion Pit – “Better Things”
Bobbie Bare – “Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright”
The Smiths – “The Queen is Dead”
Kate Bush – “Walk Straight Down the Middle”
James Brown – “I’m Real”
Bob Lind – “Cool Summer”
The Alarm – “Only the Thunder”
Holly McNarland – “Stormy”
Ian McCulloch – “Start Again”
Howard Jones – “What is Love (Extended Version)”
Massive Attack – “Splitting the Atom”
Ghostface Killah – “Nutmeg”
Black Kids – “Hurricane Jane”
Oneohtrix Point Never – “Returnal”
The Jesus & Mary Chain – “April Skies”
Depeche Mode – “Personal Jesus (Kazan Cathedral Mix)”
Ra Ra Riot – “Too Dramatic”
BLK JKS – “Summertime”
Smashing Pumpkins – “Spaceboy”
Laura Veirs – “Summer is the Champion”
Goldfrapp – “Head First”
Of Montreal – “Enemy Gene”
The Cool Kids – “GMC’s”
Doves – “Black and White Town”
Ariel Pink – “Helen”
Patrick Park – “You’ll Get Over”
Missing Persons – “Words”
Caribou – “Barnowl”
Echo & the Bunnymen – “Heads Will Roll (Summer)”
Obits – “Spot the Pikey”
Band of Skulls – “Death by Diamonds and Pearls”
Gene – “Haunted by You”
David Bowie – “Let’s Dance”
Stephin Merritt – “Scream (Till You Make the Scene)”
!!! – “The Hammer”
RJD2 – “A Beautiful Mine”
Low – “Majesty / Magic”
Dntel – “(This Is) The Dream of Evan and Chan”
R.E.M. – “Mystery to Me”
Foals – “Cassius”
Bruce Springsteen – “Born to Run”
The Smithereens – “Behind the Wall of Sleep (Live)”
Cath Carroll – “Moves Like You (Remix)”
Baroness – “Ogeechee Hymnal”
Kaiser Chiefs – “I Predict a Riot”
John Maus – “Hey Moon”
Underworld – “Louisiana”
Atlas Sound – “Amplifiers”
Bruce Springsteen – “Secret Garden”
Eric Olsen – “Annie’s Song”
Iggy Pop – “Nightclubbing”
Jungle Brothers – “J. Beez Comin’ Through”
John Cale – “You Know More Than I Know”
Eagles – “Teenage Jail”
George Thorogood – “Blue Highway”
The Beach Boys – “Psycodelic Sounds (Brian Falls Into a Piano)”
Public Enemy – “Night of the Living Baseheads”
Tom Waits – “Rain Dogs”
The Cool Kids – “Rush Hour Traffic”
Titus Andronicus – “Richard II”
The Antlers – “Rolled Together”
Leo Sayer – “How Much Love”
George Thorogood – “As the Years Go Passing By”
Cymbals Eat Guitars – “Another Tunguska”
Sigur Rós – “Starálfur”
Ladytron – “Moon Palace”
Death Cab for Cutie – “Some Boys”
Elton John – “Bennie and the Jets (Live)”
Spoon – “Nobody Gets Me But You”
The Books – “A Wonderful Phrase by Gandhi”
Serge Gainsbourg – “Melody”
Phosphorescent - "The Waves at Night"

Weekend Playlist: 11-19-11 & 11-20-11

2011-11-20T13:18:00.000-08:00

Sufjan Stevens – “Detroit, Lift Up Your Weary Head! (Rebuild! Restore! Reconsider!)”
Kansas – “Portrait (He Knew)”
The Cure – “The Love Cats”
Wilco – “Summer Teeth”
The Beach Boys – “Heroes and Villains (Prelude to Fade)”
Shabazz Palaces – “Swerve… the Reeping of All that is Worthwhile (Noir Not Withstanding)”
Jesu – “Sedatives”
De La Soul – “Stakes is High”
De La Soul – “What We Do (For Love)”
Bright Eyes – “One for You, One for Me”
KISS – “Cold Gin”
Air – “Playground Love”
Antony & the Johnsons – “Ghost”
Mother Love Bone – “Stardog Champion”
Caribou – “Desiree”
Valient Thorr – “False Profits”
Blondie – “In the Flesh”
Oneohtrix Point Never – “Emil Cioran”
The Black Keys – “240 Years Before Your Time”
Ra Ra Riot – “You and I Know”
Fugazi – “Bulldog Front”
Ben Folds Five – “Brick”
Wild Beasts – “Through the Iron Gate”
39 Clocks – “Psycho Beat”
Robyn – “Be Mine!”
Broadcast – “Black Umbrellas”
Boston – “Feelin’ Satisfied”
The Specials – “Ghost Town”
Billy Bragg – “Greetings to the New Brunette”
Fountains of Wayne – “Bright Future in Sales”
Future of the Left – “Chin Music”
The Cure – “Play for Today”
Oneohtrix Point Never – “Woe is the Transgression I”
Andrew Bird – “Bein’ Green”
Camper Van Beethoven – “Surprise Track”
Akron/Family – “Fuji I (Global Dub)”
Jesu – “Opiate Sun”
Pretenders – “Back on the Chain Gang”
Duran Duran – “Faster than Light”
Rick Springfield – “Easy to Cry”
M83 – “Reunion”
Bert & Ernie – “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas”
Howard Jones – “Pearl in the Shell”
Foo Fighters – “My Hero”
Espers – “Trollsända”
Regina Spektor – “Apres Moi”
The Beach Boys – “I Wanna Be Around / Workshop”
Ra Ra Riot – “Boy”
Morrissey – “The Never-Played Symphonies”
U2 – “Spanish Eyes”
Aloe Blacc – “Mama Hold My Hand”
Nine Inch Nails – “The Day the World Went Away”
Ghostface Killah – “Daytona 500”
Tears for Fears – “Mothers Talk (U.S. Remix)”
Bon Iver – “Beth/Rest”
Billy Squier – “Catch 22”
Orange Juice – “I Guess I’m Just a Little Too Sensitive”
Male Bonding – “Year’s Not Long”
New Order – “Ultraviolence”
Twin Sister – “Kimmi in a Rice Field”
Naked Eyes – “Always Something There to Remind Me”
Jungle Brothers – “Jbeez Rock the Dancehall”
Fleetwood Mac – “Sisters of the Moon”
Plexi – “Peel”
Explosions in the Sky – “Six Days at the Bottom of the Ocean”
Boston – “Foreplay / Long Time”
Mötley Crüe – “Dr. Feelgood”
Fran Healy – “Rocking Chair”
Fleetwood Mac – “Angel”
The War on Drugs – “City Reprise #2”
Cass McCombs – “Saturday Song”
Red Fang – “Good to Die”
Mastodon – “Spectrelight”
Thompson Twins – “Hold Me Now”
Neil Young – “Only Love Can Break Your Heart”
Sleeper – “Sale of the Century”
Adele – “Rumour Has It”
The Pixies – “Dig for Fire”
New Order – “Thieves Like Us”
Cannibal Ox – “The F-Word”
Laura Veirs – “July Flame”
Ryan Adams & the Cardinals – “Users”
Van Morrison – “Brand New Day”
Jay Reatard – “Always Wanting More”
Suede – “Trash”
Alice Coltrane – “Journey in Satchidananda”
Depeche Mode – “Never Let Me Down Again (Remix)”
The Fray – “Trying to Throw Your Arms around the World”
Laura Veirs – “Little Lap-Dog Lullaby”
Ariel Pink – “Hardcore Pops are Fun”
The Field – “Burned Out”
Gorillaz – “Glitter Freeze”
Blondie – “Maria (Live)”
Les Savy Fav – “Lips n’ Stuff”
Menomena – “Five Little Rooms”
A Winged Victory for the Sullen – “Requiem for the Static King, Part Two”
Def Leppard – “Photograph (Live)”
Feist – “1 2 3 4 (Chilly Gonzales Solo Piano)”
Duran Duran – “Khanada”
Kaiser Chiefs – “Child of the Jago”
Deee-Lite – “Groove is in the Heart”
Little River Band – “The Night Owls”

Friday's Playlist: 11-18-11

2011-11-18T15:18:00.000-08:00

Scritti Politti – “Scritlock’s Door”
Christopher O’Riley – “Everything in its Right Place”
The Swell Season – “Leave”
Godspeed You! Black Emperor – “Storm: Lift Yr. Skinny Fists, Like Antennas to Heaven… / Gathering Storm / Il Pleut á Mourir / Welcome to Arco AM/PM / Cancer Towers on Holy Road Hi-Way”
Kings Go Forth – “Now We’re Gone”
The Elected – “When I’m Gone”
Smashing Pumpkins – “Siva”
My Morning Jacket – “You Wanna Freak Out”
Frida – “I Know There’s Something Going On”
Jaydiohead – “99 Anthems”
The Mountain Goats – “Birth of Serpents”
Paul Simon – “Kodachrome”
Finn Brothers – “Where is My Soul?”
Pat Benatar – “Fire and Ice”
ELO – “Here is the News”
Sufjan Stevens – “The Transfiguration”
Nirvana – “About a Girl”
Les Savy Fav – “Rome (Written Upside Down)”
Yeasayer – “Rome”
Torche – “Shine on My Old Ways”
Stephin Merritt – “The Song from Venus”
Mike Ness – “All I Can Do is Cry”
Sunny Day Real Estate – “5/4”
The Mountain Goats – “The Autopsy Garland”
Beck – “Loser”
Moonface – “Loose Heart = Loose Plan”
Twin Sister – “Eastern Green”
Kansas – “Questions of My Childhood”
Mike Ness – “Send Her Back”
The Antlers – “Corsicana”
U2 – “Discothèque (Hexidecimal Mix)”
Rwake – “Souls of the Sky”
Still Corners – “Endless Summer”
Vampire Weekend – “Walcott”
Gorillaz – “All Alone”
Loggins & Messina – “Nobody But You”
The Knack – “Don’t Look Back”
Los Campesinos! – “I Just Sighed. I Just Sighed. Just So You Know”
Valient Thorr – “Problem Solver”
Finn Brothers – “Paradise (Wherever You Are)”
Queens of the Stone Age – “Never Say Never”
The Dears – “Lamentation”
Mogwai – “George Square Thatcher Death Party”
Finn Brothers – “Mood Swinging Man”
Godspeed You! Black Emperor – “Providence”
Howard Jones – “China Dance”
Jay-Zeezer – “My 1st Song’s Name is Jonas”
Genesis – “Tonight, Tonight, Tonight”
Lush – “The Childcatcher”
The Beach Boys – “Heroes and Villains Sections”
The 88 – “After Hours”
The Beach Boys – “Surf’s Up”
Bad Lieutenant – “Summer Days on Holiday”
Frightened Rabbit – “Man / Bag of Sand”
Shudder to Think – “Hot One”
Serge Gainsbourg – “Ballade de Melody Nelson”
Oingo Boingo – “No One Lives Forever”
Blondie – “The Tide is High”
Deltron 3030 – “Battlesong”
The Pretenders – “Don’t Get Me Wrong”
The Romantics – “Talking in Your Sleep”
The Delgados – “Coming in from the Cold”
Iceage – “Eyes”
Robyn – “We Dance to the Beat”
New Order – “Confusion”
Bryan John Appleby – “The Lake”

Thursday's Playlist: 11-17-11

2011-11-17T15:50:00.001-08:00

Minus the Bear – “Summer Angel”
The Rapture – “Come Back to Me”
The Futureheads – “Dart at the Map”
Cake – “Mustache Man (Wasted)”
Black Tusk – “The Ride”
Luscious Jackson – “Electric”
King Khan & BBQ Show – “Anala”
New Edition – “I’m Still in Love with You”
Jens Lekman – “Maple Leaves”
Squeeze – “Black Coffee in Bed”
Japandroids – “Heart Sweats”
Laura Veirs – “All the Pretty Little Horses”
Phantom Planet – “California”
The Clientele – “Since K Got Over Me”
Janet Jackson – “State of the World”
Todd Rundgren – “It Wouldn’t Have Made Any Difference”
Heart – “Dreamboat Annie (Fantasy Child)”
Destroyer – “Bay of Pigs”
Jawbox – “Cooling Card”
DJ Shadow – “Circular Logic (Front to Back)”
Scritti Politti – “Is and Ought the Western World”
Fleetwood Mac – “Goodbye Angel”
The Postal Service – “We Will Become Silhouettes”
Randy Newman – “I Think It’s Going to Rain Today”
Split Enz – “Iris”
Castanets – “Ignorance is Blues”
Owen Pallett – “Don’t Stop”
Duran Duran – “Tel Aviv”
Soul II Soul – “Feel Free”
The Jayhawks – “She Picks the Violets”
Woods – “Wouldn’t Waste”
Thomas Dolby – “Radio Silence”
Toro Y Moi – “New Beat”
Beulah – “Matter vs. Space”
British Sea Power – “Luna (Extended Mix)”
The Pains of Being Pure at Heart – “Everything with You”
Nirvana – “Drain You (Devonshire Mix)”
Yello – “Oh Yeah”
Billy Idol – “Shooting Stars”
The Waterboys – “The Whole of the Moon”
The 88 – “It’s a Lot”
Rilo Kiley – “Xmas Cake”
The Pixies – “Motorway to Roswell”
Beastie Boys – “Long Burn the Fire”
Lucy Pearl – “Everyday”
Kasabian – “Days are Forgotten”
Ryan Adams – “Do Miss America”
Beulah – “Emma Blowgun’s Last Stand”
The xx – “Fantasy”
PJ Harvey – “England”
Blondie – “The Beast”
The Kinks – “Rainy Day in June”
!!! – “Jamie My Intentions are Bass”
Tom Waits – “Lonely”
Thomas Dolby – “Hyperactive!”
Suede – “Starcrazy”
Sigur Rós – “Ný Batterí (Live)”
They Might Be Giants – “Ana Ng”
Broken Social Scene – “Late Nineties Bedroom Rock for the Missionaries”
Gavin Friday – “The Fly”
The Allman Brothers Band – “One Way Out (Live)”
The Kinks – “Ev’rybody’s Gonna Be Happy”
Siouxsie & the Banshees – “Happy House”
Eisley – “Lost at Sea (Remix)”
Robyn – “With Every Heartbeat with Kleerup”
Iron Maiden – “The Number of the Beast”
OMD – “Pulse”
Feist & Ben Gibbard – “Train Song”
Childish Gambino – “Bonfire”
Zola Jesus – “Skin”
White Denim – “I’d Have it Just the Way We Were”
Janelle Monae – “Faster”
The Smiths – “This Charming Man”
Stricken City – “P.S.”
Rosebuds – “Boxcar”
Mister Heavenly – “Pineapple Girl”
Pete Townshend – “Let My Love Open the Door”
Little Dragon – “Little Man”
Yeah Yeah Yeahs – “Gold Lion”
BLK JKS – “Bogobe”
Death Cab for Cutie – “This Temporary Life”
Torche – “Grenades”
Women – “Eyesore”
Echo & the Bunnymen – “I Want to Be There (When You Come)”
Tom Vek – “World of Doubt”
Stereolab – “So Is Cardboard Clouds”
Echo & the Bunnymen – “All My Life”
Bruce Springsteen – “Atlantic City”
Split Enz – “Six Months in a Leaky Boat”
KISS – “Do You Love Me”
Dexys Midnight Runners – “Come On Eileen”
Blonde Redhead – “Futurism vs. Passeism Part 2”
Superchunk – “Keeping Track”
OK Go – “What to Do”
Suede – “Graffiti Women”
Ryan Adams – “This is It”
Ryan Adams & the Cardinals – “Ice-Breaker”
Mystery Jets – “Too Late to Talk”
Sigur Rós – “Von”

Wednesday's Playlist: 11-16-11

2011-11-16T14:53:00.000-08:00

R.E.M. – “Begin the Begin”
Washed Out – “Echoes”
Yuck – “Rose Gives a Lilly”
DJ Shadow – “Going Nowhere”
OMD – “The Right Side”
Gillian Welch – “Six White Horses”
Josh Rouse – “Winter in the Hamptons”
…And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead – “The Wasteland”
Paul Simon – “That’s Me”
Alphaville – “Big in Japan”
The Go! Team – “Secretary Song”
Christopher O’Riley – “Exit Music (for a Film)”
The Pains of Being Pure at Heart – “Belong”
Stevie Nicks – “Soldier’s Angel”
Richard Hawley – “Soldier On”
The Temper Trap – “Sweet Disposition”
Band of Skulls – “Bomb”
Daft Punk – “End of Line”
Sufjan Stevens – “Get Real Get Right”
Frankie Goes to Hollywood – “Relax (Chicane Radio Edit)”
Echo & The Bunnymen – “Run, Run, Run (Live)”
Billy Idol – “Daytime Drama”
Duran Duran – “Anyone Out There (BBC1 Radio Session)”
Brian Reitzell and Roger J. Manning, Jr. – “On the Subway”
Hum – “Stars”
Phoenix – “Lasso”
Echo & the Bunnymen – “People are Strange”
Plexi – “Change”
Sweet Apple – “Flying Up a Mountain”
The Field – “It’s Up There”
Braids – “Lemonade”
Supertramp – “Downstream (Live)”
The Rolling Stones – “Beast of Burden”
Neil Sedaka – “Going Nowhere”
Fran Healy – “Fly in the Ointment”
Twin Shadow – “Shooting Holes at the Moon”
Laura Marling – “Don’t Ask Me Why”
Cymbals Eat Guitars – “The Current”
Howard Jones – “Natural”
Suede – “Duchess”
The Swell Season – “The Moon”
Digital Underground – “Doowutchyalike”
Smashing Pumpkins – “Siva”
James Blake – “I Never Learnt to Share”
The Smithereens – “Green Thoughts”
Robyn – “U Should Know Better”
Stevie Wonder – “I Love Too Much”
Final Fantasy – “Keep the Dog Quiet”
Glasser – “Glad (Delorean Remix)”
A Flock of Seagulls – “Standing in the Doorway”
Glasser – “Learn (YACHT Remix)”
Echo & the Bunnymen – “The Cutter (Alternate Version)”
Galaxie 500 – “Listen, the Snow is Falling”
Childish Gambino – “Difference”
Vampire Weekend – “Giving Up the Gun”
Sebastian Tellier – “Fantino”
Calexico – “The Guns of Brixton”
The National – “Runaway”
Steel Breeze – “You Don’t Want Me Anymore”
The Frames – “Falling Slowly”
Mew – “New Terrain”
Tom Waits – “Rain Dogs”
Broken Social Scene – “Water in Hell”
XTC – “Generals and Majors”
The Maldives – “Goodbye”
Baroness – “Ogeechee Hymnal”
Cymbals Eat Guitars – “Shore Points”
Hüsker Dü – “Celebrated Summer”
The Kinks – “This Man He Weeps Tonight”
The Smithereens – “Yesterday Girl (Live)”
The Smiths – “The Queen is Dead”

Sunday's Playlist: 11-13-11

2011-11-13T13:46:00.000-08:00

The Go-Go’s – “I’m the Only One (Live)”
Devo – “What We Do”
Luscious Jackson – “Christine”
Ocean Colour Scene – “Riverboat Song”
James Murphy – “Photographs”
Bon Iver – “Woods”
Robyn – “Call Your Girlfriend”
The Beach Boys – “Heroes and Villains (Part 2)”
Nite Jewel – “White Lies”
Jungle Brothers – “Because I Got it Like That”
Echo & the Bunnymen – “New Direction”
Jenny and Johnny – “My Pet Snakes”
Krallice – “Telluric Rings”
Janelle Monae – “Many Moons”
My Morning Jacket – “Movin Away”
Dirty Projectors – “The Bride”
Red House Painters – “Mother”
The Tallest Man on Earth – “Thousand Ways”
Sufjan Stevens – “All Good Naysayers, Speak Up! Or Forever Hold Your Peace!”
Smashing Pumpkins – “Tonight, Tonight”
R.E.M. – “Wolves, Lower (Fast Version)”
Duran Duran – “Night Boat (BBC Radio 1 Session)”
The Tallest Man on Earth – “Troubles Will be Gone”
M83 – “Year One, One UFO”
Roxy Music – “More Than This”
AC/DC – “Thunderstruck”
Pretenders – “Everyday is Like Sunday”
Les Savy Fav – “Reformat (Live)”
Hooray for Earth – “True Loves”
Beulah – “Warmer”
Little Dragon – “Crystalfilm”
Obits – “Shift Operator”
Nirvana – “Polly (Live)”
The Cool Kids – “Summer Jam”
Mew – “She Came Home for Christmas”
Cut Copy – “Corner of the Sky”
The Chameleons – “One Flesh (Demo)”
Loggins & Messina – “Trilogy”
Oingo Boingo – “Only a Lad”
Matt Pond PA – “Winterlong”
Eddie Money – “Take Me Home Tonight”
A Place to Bury Strangers – “In Your Heart”
Mumford & Sons – “Timshel (Live)”
Crooked Fingers – “I Am Not Willing”
Papercuts – “I’ll See You Later I Guess”
Avey Tare – “Heather in the Hospital”
Animal Collective – “Summertime Clothes”
Icicle Works – “Whisper to a Scream (Birds Fly)”
New Order – “Age of Consent”
Eagles – “The Best of My Love”

Saturday's Playlist: 11-12-11

2011-11-12T15:03:00.001-08:00

Public Enemy – “Fight the Power”
The Specials – “Ghost Town”
Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers – “You Tell Me”
Violent Femmes – “Blister in the Sun”
Suede – “Electricity”
Mariachi El Bronx – “Norteño Lights”
Les Paul & Mary Ford – “In the Good Old Summertime”
Alice in Chains – “Rain When I Die”
Mogwai – “I’m Jim Morrison, I’m Dead”
Björk – “Crystalline”
KISS – “Cold Gin”
Camper Van Beethoven – “(I Was Born in a) Laundromat”
Childish Gambino – “Be Alone”
Shudder to Think – “No Rm. 9 Kentucky”
Falco – “Der Kommisar (Jason Nevins Radio Mix)”
Prince – “Computer Blue”
Childish Gambino / MC DJ – “Chitown”
The National – “29 Years”
The Beach Boys – “Feel Flows”
Health – “Before Tigers (CFCF Remix)”
Aaron Neville – “Tell It Like It Is”
Air – “La Femme D’Argent”
Robyn – “Dancehall Queen”
Massive Attack – “Paradise Circus”
Califone – “Bottles & Bones (Shade & Sympathy)”
Future Sound of London – “Tired”
Black Kids – “I’m Not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend How to Dance with You”
The Other Two – “Feel This Love”
Blue Scholars – “Marion Sunshine”
Liliput – “Die Matrosen”
Echo & the Bunnymen – “Lips Like Sugar (12” Mix)”
John Cale – “Buffalo Ballet”
Sufjan Stevens – “All For Myself”
Heart – “White Lightning & Wine”
Camper Van Beethoven – “Cattle (Reversed)”
New Order – “Subculture”
Matt Pond PA – “Specks”
The xx – “Stars”
Echo & the Bunnymen – “Run, Run, Run (Live)
Thomas Dolby – “White City”
Frightened Rabbit – “The Wrestle”
Gillian Welch – “The Way the Whole Thing Ends”
Marvin Gaye – “Flyin’ High (In the Friendly Skies)”
Destroyer – “Bay of Pigs”

Thursday's Playlist: 11-10-11

2011-11-10T16:22:00.000-08:00

The Twilight Singers – “On the Corner”
Mercury Rev – “Holes”
My Morning Jacket – “The Day is Coming”
The Go-Go’s – “Living at the Canterbury, Party Pose”
Foo Fighters – “Bridge Burning”
Jane’s Addiction – “Jane Says (Live)”
U2- “Lady with the Spinning Head (Extended Dance Mix)”
The Beach Boys – “Surf’s Up 1967 (Solo Version)”
Blondie – “Fan Mail”
Danger Mouse & Danielle Luppi – “Her Hollow Ways (Interlude)”
The Decemberists – “The Wanting Comes in Waves (Reprise)”
Matthew Herbert – “August 2010”
…And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead – “Summer of All Dead Souls”
Missing Persons – “Windows”
Suede – “One Hit to the Body”
Dirty Projectors – “Wave the Bloody Shirt”
Gorillaz – “Dare (Soulwax Remix)”
Happy Mondays – “Kinky Afro”
Concrete Blonde – “Everybody Knows”
Little Dragon – “Precious”
John Cougar Mellencamp – “Crumblin’ Down”
Q-Tip – “Heels”
The Clash – “Rock the Casbah”
Massive Attack – “Babel”
Cake – “Teenage Pregnancy”
Spoon – “Someone Something”
Thompson Twins – “You Take Me Up (High Plains Mixer) (US 12” Remix)”
Sons & Daughters – “The Beach”
Damien Jurado – “Last Rights”
Billy Squier – “My Kinda Lover”
Midlake – “Rulers, Ruling All Things”
No Age – “Sorts”
Frankie Goes to Hollywood – “Relax”
A Sunny Day in Glasgow – “Passionate Introverts”
Siouxsie & the Banshees – “Happy House”
Radiohead – “Lucky”
Porter Wagoner – “The Rubber Room”
Paul Simon – “Kodachrome”
Bon Iver – “Brackett, WI”
Squeeze – “Slap and Tickle”
Beck – “Ramona”
Caribou – “Hannibal”
Braids – “Little Hand”
Elbow – “The Fix”
Childish Gambino – “Nowhere to Go”
The Alarm – “Deeside”
Blondie – “Forgive and Forget (Live)”
Sigur Rós – “Sæglópur (Live)”
Camper Van Beethoven – “Form Another Stone (Replacement Version)”
X – “Surprise Surprise”
The Jesus & Mary Chain – “April Skies”
Elbow – “Dear Friends”
Life Without Buildings – “Philip”
John Cale – “Cable Hogue”
No Age – “Skinned”
Stars – “Your Ex-Lover is Dead”
Gang Starr – “Jazz Thing”
Prince – “Somebody’s Somebody”
TV on the Radio – “Keep Your Heart”
Billy Idol – “Untouchables”
Ramin Djawadi – “Kill Them All”
Hall & Oates – “I Can’t Go For That (No Can Do)”
The Decemberists – “Isn’t it a Lovely Night”
Run-D.M.C. – “Roots, Rap, Reggae”
Gang Gang Dance – “∞ ∞”
Altered Images – “I Could Be Happy (Dance Mix)”
The Drums – “The Future”
Eagles – “Those Shoes”
Babybird – “You’re Gorgeous”
Jay-Zeezer – “I Swear It’s an Interlude”
The Cult – “Revolution (Instrumental)”
Wolf Parade – “What Did My Lover Say? (It Always Had to Go This Way)”
Lansing-Dreiden – “Cement to Stone”
Sigur Rós – “Untitled #7 / Dauðalagið”
Red Fang – “Hank is Dead”
Blitzen Trapper – “Girl in a Coat”
How to Destroy Angels – “A Drowning”
Echo & the Bunnymen – “Shroud of Turin”
Prince – “U Got the Look”
The Drums – “We Tried”
R.E.M. – “The Flowers of Guatemala (Instrumental)”
The Raconteurs – “Steady as She Goes”
Sigur Rós – “Samskeyti”
Gruff Rhys – “Take a Sentence”
Thompson Twins – “Doctor! Doctor!”
Gomez – “Equalize”
Gillian Welch – “The Way the Whole Thing Ends”
Kasabian – “La Fee Verte”
Suede – “Beautiful Ones”
Crowded House – “Even If”
Beastie Boys – “Long Burn the Fire”
The Feelies – “Here Before”

Tuesday's Playlist: 11-8-11

2011-11-08T15:29:00.000-08:00

Les Savy Fav – “The Sweat Descends”
Surfer Blood – “Slow Jabroni”
Bon Iver – “Calgary”
Better than Ezra – “Cry in the Sun”
The Smithereens – “All My Loving”
Sufjan Stevens – “The Lord God Bird”
The Waterboys – “The Whole of the Moon”
James Brown – “Think”
Depeche Mode – “Personal Jesus”
Scott Walker – “The Big Hurt”
The Mountain Goats – “Outer Scorpion Squadron”
Broken Bells – “Meyrin Fields”
Nick Drake – “Things Behind the Sun”
Elton John - "Rocket Man"
A Tribe Called Quest – “Footprints”
Oingo Boingo – “Only a Lad”
Little Dragon – “Precious”
Broken Social Scene – “Capture the Flag”
Thompson Twins – “Hold Me Now”
Dead Confederate – “By Design”
Herbie Hancock – “Rockit”
Childish Gambino – “(?)”
Ramin Djawadi – “The Wall”
The 88 – “At Least I Was Here”
Jawbox – “Savory”
Travis – “Indefinitely”
The Corin Tucker Band – “1,000 Years”
Martha Reeves & the Vandellas – “Dancing in the Street”
Sunny Day Real Estate – “Red Elephant”
Liturgy – “Helix Skull”
Raphael Saadiq – “Movin’ Down the Line”
The Field – “Arpeggiated Love”
The Killers – “Change Your Mind”
Bernard Herrmann – “Vertigo: Prelude and Rooftop”
Greg Kihn Band – “The Breakup Song (They Don’t Write ‘Em)”
Better Than Ezra – “Summerhouse”
Blitzen Trapper – “Love the Way You Walk Away”
Jaydiohead – “No Karma”
Blondie – “Do the Dark”
No Age – “Valley Hump Crash”
Junior Senior – “Move Your Feet”
The Go! Team – “Yosemite Theme”
Suede – “Tiswas (Starcrazy) (Demo)”
The Beach Boys – “Gee”
Crowded House – “Amsterdam”
Camper Van Beethoven – “Vampire Club”
Matthew Sweet – “Winona”
LCD Soundsystem – “Live Alone”
Camper Van Beethoven – “Wasted”
The Corin Tucker Band – “It’s Always Summer”
Women – “Bells”
The National – “Theory of the Crows”
Ted Leo & the Pharmacists – “Where Was My Brain?”
Fountains of Wayne – “No Better Place”
Squeeze – “Heaven Knows”
The Antlers – “No Windows”
PJ Harvey – “One Time Too Many”
Childish Gambino – “Put it in My Video”
Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers – “Even the Losers”
Small Sins – “Tonight”
Shudder to Think & Angela McClusky – “Day Ditty”
Billy Joel – “Don’t Ask Me Why”
Echo & the Bunnymen – “Watch Out Below (John Peel Session)”
Suede – “Read My Mind”
Pearl Jam – “Be Like Wind”
Black Mountain – “Wilderness Heart”
George Throrogood – “It’s a Sin”
Les Savy Fav – “Blackouts on Thursday”
Aimee Mann – “Satellite”
The Mountain Goats – “Age of Kings”
Hall & Oates – “Out of Touch”
John Maus – “Cop Killer”
Geneva – “Into the Blue”
Mirah – “Nobody Has to Stay”
Kvelertak – “Fossegrim”
The Durutti Column – “Messidor”
Otis Redding – “A Change is Gonna Come”
Psychic TV – “Just Drifting”
St. Vincent – “Hysterical Strength”
Those Darlins – “Mystic Mind”
The Decemberists – “Days of Elaine”
Dusty Springfield – “You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me”
Serge Gainsbourg – “Ah! Melody”
Fleetwood Mac – “Stop Messin’ Around”
Moonface – “Fast Peter”
Van Morrison – “Caravan”
Jacques Slade – “I Never Die”
Ryan Adams – “Note to Self: Don’t Die”
John Cale – “I’m Not the Loving Kind”
The 88 - "They Ought to See You Now"

Sunday's Playlist: 11-6-11

2011-11-06T13:19:00.001-08:00

Panda Bear – “Tomboy”
Shudder to Think – “No Rm. 9 Kentucky”
Red Hot Chili Peppers – “Naked in the Rain”
Sia – “Breathe Me”
Sara Watkins – “Too Much”
Architecture in Helsinki – “Desert Island”
The Smiths – “Stretch Out and Wait”
The Field – “Sweet Slow Baby”
Falco – “Ganz Wien”
The Pixies – “Narc (Theme From)”
Explosions in the Sky – “A Song for Our Fathers”
X- “Los Angeles”
They Might be Giants – “Tippecanoe and Tyler Too”
The Dears – “Warm and Sunny Days”
Boston – “Peace of Mind”
A Place to Bury Strangers – “I Live My Life to Stand in the Shadow of Your Heart”
ceo – “Come with Me”
Wild Flag – “Romance”
Obits – “I Blame Myself”
Obits – “Everything Looks Better in the Sun”
Eric B & Rakim – “What’s on Your Mind (Extended Vocal Version)”
KISS – “Hotter than Hell”
Little Dragon – “When I Go Out”
Galaxie 500 – “Oblivious”
Thomas Dolby – “Windpower”
Sufjan Stevens – “Chicago”
Def Leppard – “Die Hard the Hunter”
We Were Promised Jetpacks – “Hard to Remember”
Transcenders – “Animal Instincts”
Genesis – “In Too Deep”
…And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead – “Introduction: “Let’s Experiment””
BLK JKS – “Taxidermy”
Phoenix – “Armistice”
Ivy – “Edge of the Ocean”
Mariachi El Bronx – “Norteño Lights”
Battles – “Dominican Fade”
Engineers – “Twenty Paces”
Girls – “Darling”
The Jayhawks – “Ann Jane”
Viva Voce – “Analog Woodland Song”
Gorillaz – “Kids with Guns”
De La Soul – “Me Myself & I”
Luscious Jackson – “She Be Wantin’ it More”
Falco – “Maschine Brennt”
Wye Oak – “Fish”
Noel Gallagher – “To Be Someone”
Japandroids – “I Quit Girls”
Public Enemy – “Bring the Noise”
Feist – “When I Was a Young Girl (Live)”
The White Stripes – “Jumble, Jumble”
Tin Machine – “I Can’t Read”
Run-D.M.C. – “You’re Blind”
First Aid Kit – “Pervigilo”
Pharcyde – “Passin Me By”
The Pains of Being Pure at Heart – “A Teenager in Love”
ELO – “All Over the World”
Ladytron – “Ace of Hz”
Peter Gabriel – “That Voice Again”
Flying Lotus – “Do the Astral Plane”
Dan Wilson – “All Kinds (Live)”
Kvelertak – “Ulvetid”
Can – “One More Night”

Films of the 60s, Part 24: The Man Ain't Got No Culture!

2011-11-06T10:23:00.000-08:00

“I been Norman Mailered, Maxwell Taylored.
I been John O’Hara’d, McNamara’d.
I been Rolling Stone and Beatled till I’m blind.
I been Ayn Randed, nearly branded
Communist, ‘cause I’m left-handed.
That’s the hand I use, well, never mind!”
- Simon & Garfunkel, “A Simple Desultory Philipic”

Counterculture is somewhat a loaded term. While it was originally meant to denote a group that went against a cultural norm, today it has somewhat lost its definition as the country has, over time, become more of a cultural mélange, making it hard to find anything “counter” to it. Occupy Wall Street is probably the closest thing to a true counterculture I have seen in my time, at least as compared to the fight for Civil Rights, the Feminist Movement, the Hippies, the Beatniks, and the anti-Vietnam movement. Some would say that between the 60s and now, we have been complacent. Some would say that counterculture took different forms, usually artistically, in the form of punk, hip-hop, heavy metal, pop art, graffiti, etc. The three (or four, depending on how you look at them) films I am featuring today were the epitome of counterculture, one (two) at the core of the sexual and political revolutions in Sweden, one an example of political and social expression in a repressive English boarding school, and one that is probably the most recognized counterculture film of all time.

I Am Curious (Yellow) & I Am Curious (Blue) (1967-8, Vilgot Sjöman)

Director Vilgot Sjöman asked for a certain amount of money in order to make a film with complete creative freedom and no script. That film ended up to be the two-part study that is I Am Curious, split into the two colors of the Swedish flag, blue and yellow. People are on the fence about this film, and I don’t really get it. I take that back. I do somewhat understand, but time and distance has let us take a second, more studied look at what Sjöman was trying to do here. Back in 1969, Roger Ebert, two years into writing for the Chicago Sun-Times, wrote a scathingly negative review that seemed to miss the point entirely on what these revolutionary ideas were all about. Looking at that review, with all due respect to Mr. Ebert, he seems to be the epitome of the uptight “square.” He seems to miss the point that the sexual revolution was one that celebrated nature and the human body despite a variance from any “norm” of beauty.

This pair of films is a mixture of a true to life love of the director for his “star,” a young Lena Nyman, her search for answers in love, sex, and politics, a film within a film, and interviews with Swedish people about the political system. One idea that resonates with today’s America is the question of a class system and a system that favors those with privilege and wealth. My favorite part of these two films is the appearance of the then 39 year-old Swedish Minster of Transport, who later became Prime Minister, leading the Swedish Social Democratic Party. Despite the number of people interviewed in the streets, who seem to resist change and are oblivious to reality, Palme speaks the truth, even as someone with power, admitting that there is a class system, gender inequality, and problems with the educational system. The director also interviews Martin Luther King, Jr. in a refreshing and revealing scene in which he talks about the concept of non-violence. Sjöman exposes the ignorance of the majority of the public by showing a citizen saying that she doesn’t understand King because he doesn’t “fight for what he believes in.” Ugh. The tragic part of the whole thing is, a month after the second film was released, Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated, and Olaf Palme was assassinated in 1986, a true Swedish and global hero, having stood up to injustices, not only in his home country, but around the world.

The point of these films, which is couched in the title, is that curiosity of all types is the only way to get at the truth of any issue, whether sexual dynamics, politics, or social justice. The second film, Blue, which was released about six months after Yellow, features some negative viewer reaction to the first film, which somewhat resembles Ebert’s take. In a way, it is a genius move on the part of the filmmaker to include these letters as they reveal the hypocrisy and out of touch nature of the public. With no script, these films are more of an experiment and exploration into ideas rather than a narrative. Going into it with this knowledge, I think more people might be inclined to understand it. This is something I am learning in my studies to become a teacher. You get a better result if you let your students know what your goal is ahead of time. Without it, you get mixed and varied results. As one last example of the interesting and truly counterculture messages we find within these important films is a scene in which soldiers are being trained. The trainer tells them that fraternization with the enemy is a good tactic as the point is to get the two sides to understand each other, not annihilate each other, a completely alien concept in most foreign policies.

if… (1968, Lindsay Anderson)

This film is just as, if not more controversial than the I Am Curious films. Set at the beginning of a new term in an English boarding school, this film explores a repressive microcosm and a possible reaction to that repression. A young and charming Malcolm McDowell plays Mick Travis, a student at the school who is somewhere in the middle, not a newbie by any means, but not one of the “elite.” There is a definite social hierarchy going on within the school, and we see a lot of abuse from not only headmasters, but also student prefects. It’s as if we are seeing the non-magical, dark side of Harry Potter. Throughout the film, we see Mick and his friends trying to escape, sometimes physically and at others imaginatively, from the overbearing structure of the school and the injustices within. His room is papered with pictures of foreign revolutionaries and he often plays African music to set a mood.

This is most definitely a surrealist film. At several junctures, the scenes alternate between color and black and white. While this certainly evokes a reaction in the viewer, making us wonder whether we should be seeing these scenes differently, they were done as a combination of cost-saving measure and necessity due to the light coming into the large boarding school halls and rooms. Even so, certain scenes, such as the one in the diner after Mick and his friend steal BSA motorcycles, blur the line between reality and fantasy, between what is and what is in the imagination. This is the point that many critics miss about this film, taking its violent imagery too seriously and not as a warning to the causes of such violent imagery, namely the repression inherent in certain hierarchical systems. The inevitable rebellion is foreshadowed in Mick's first appearance, showing up to school in a long black coat, a black scarf around his face, and a black hat, causing one of his schoolmates to call him Guy Fawkes.

Mick and his friends seem to be seeking some kind of realistic experience or feeling outside of their school environment. They steal motorcycles, flirt with townie girls, suffocate themselves with plastic bags, and revel in the drawing of real blood during a playful swordfight in the gym. This form of escape, however, is made all too real by the violence inflicted on them, especially on Mick, by the cruel prefects. Mick gets caned an excessive number of times by his nemesis, Rowntree, and, according to school protocol, must then shake his hand and thank him for the abuse. Meanwhile, the actual headmaster of the school is near absent, never involved, and seemingly oblivious to the actions going on within his own school. In a hyper-surrealist ending, one that will certainly make some uncomfortable given some school shootings in America, Mick and his friends take to the roofs and open fire upon the school children, their families, and the teachers. At the close of the film, the title, if…, appears in red on the screen. It is a chilling reminder of what can happen if people are abused and pushed far enough. These messages are highlighted, and perhaps somewhat undercut, by others that come up during the course of the film, such as “There’s no such thing as a wrong war. Violence and revolution are the only pure acts,” and “One man can change the world with a bullet in the right place.” Again, chilling.

Easy Rider (1969, Dennis Hopper)

Despite several people having told me that they thought Easy Rider was overrated and perhaps didn’t hold up over time, I ended up absolutely loving it. It could be argued that it is the ultimate counterculture film. We all, at some time or another, at least us liberal types, connect with these types of artistic portrayals of rebellion and exploration, such as in On the Road, or perhaps books by Hunter S. Thompson, Tom Wolfe, Ken Kesey, and Tom Robbins. What these books and films show us, and can be easily seen in Easy Rider, is that these counterculture expressions are not just an empty rebellion against society, but instead an existential search for meaning and a code of ethics to live by that may not jibe with the codes of others. This is best expressed by Wyatt, played by Peter Fonda, who is often remarking on the things he admires on his journey.

Wyatt and Billy, the latter played by Dennis Hopper, are named after Wyatt Earp and Billy the Kid. The original intention was to make a modernized western, and the film still somewhat follows this model. Names and images mean everything in the film. Wyatt, like his namesake, is more attuned to find a code, more of a lawful person. His bike, helmet, and jacket are all draped in the American flag, and he is often called Captain America throughout the film. In essence, he represents a portion of Americans who are looking for an alternative to the Vietnam War fighting, unequal, and repressive society that existed at that time, and still somewhat exists today. Billy, on the other hand, is more of an outlaw. He wears the fringe leather jacket that represents an America that has been near eliminated, that of the Native American. He is often more paranoid, angry, and rebellious, wary of his surroundings.

As they begin their journey, Wyatt throws his watch away, signifying that they are no longer subject to any rules, even the rules of time. They spend time with a subsistence farmer who inspires Wyatt. He likes that he lives a somewhat simple life, supported by hard work and family. They encounter a hippie commune that exposes Billy’s pessimism as much as it reveals Wyatt’s unbridled optimism. They are two sides of counterculture America, opposite faces of the same coin. Through this journey, they are not only presenting themselves, but also different faces of America. We see the deserts of the west and the gorgeous creepers in the trees of the South. We also see the ugly side of America and its horrible prejudices, which ultimately results in a tragic fate for our counterculture heroes. Jack Nicholson, in one of his first roles as George Hanson, says it best, recounting what they represent to those who disparage and do violence against them:

George: Oh, no. What you represent to them is freedom.
Billy: What the hell is wrong with freedom? That’s what it’s all about.
George: Oh, yeah, that’s right. That’s what it’s all about, all right. But talkin’ about it and bein’ it, that’s two different things. I mean, it’s real hard to be free when you are bought and sold in the marketplace. Of course, don’t ever tell anybody that they’re not free, ‘cause then they’re gonna get real busy killin’ and maimin’ to prove to you that they are. Oh yeah, they’re gonna talk to you, and talk to you about individual freedom. But, they see a free individual, it’s gonna scare ‘em.

In a shocking scene of brutality, George is killed, a terrifying example of reality, in which those who tend to speak the truth are often punished for it. Easy Rider was a film that pretty much changed the landscape of filmmaking and ushered in a decade of realism and grittiness that will not soon be forgotten. Oh yeah, and it has one heck of a great soundtrack.

Saturday's Playlist: 11-5-11

2011-11-05T16:58:00.001-07:00

White Town – “Your Woman”
Veronica Falls – “Come on Over”
Mumford & Sons – “The Cave (Live)”
Weezer – “Island in the Sun”
Ministry – “Thieves”
A Tribe Called Quest – “Jam”
Marcy Playground – “Poppies”
Nirvana – “Lithium”
The War on Drugs – “Your Love is Calling My Name”
Drive Like Jehu – “Here Come the Rome Plows”
Mariachi El Bronx – “Spread Thin”
John Cale – “Rollaroll”
John Maus – “Believer”
Jeff Buckley – “Lilac Wine”
King Curtis – “Memphis Soul Stew (Live)”
Spoon – “Written in Reverse”
The Corin Tucker Band – “Half a World Away”
Jay-Z – “99 Problems”
Galaxie 500 – “Spook”
Billy Idol – “It’s So Cruel”
Dr. Dre & Snoop Dogg – “Nuthin’ but a ‘G’ Thang”
The Dismemberment Plan – “Automatic”
The Books – “Free Translator”
Dum Dum Girls – “Bhang Bhang, I’m a Burnout”
Red Fang – “Wires”
Fleet Foxes – “Ragged Wood”
Dirty Projectors – “Temecula Sunrise”
Vampire Weekend – “Oxford Comma”
Stina Nordenstam – “I Dream of Jeannie”
Hans Zimmer – “Half Remembered Dream”
Ben Kweller – “Jerry Falwell Destroyed Earth”
LCD Soundsystem – “I Can Change”
Califone – “Bottles & Bones (Shade & Sympathy)”
A Tribe Called Quest – “1nce Again”
Suede – “Modern Boys”
De La Soul – “Stakes is High”
The xx – “Stars”
Plexi – “Forest Ranger”
ABC – “The Look of Love, Pt.1”
Queens of the Stone Age – “Go with the Flow”
Suede – “The Wild Ones”
Russian Circles – “Praise Be Man”
A Flock of Seagulls – “The Traveller”
Jesu – “Fools”
Fountains of Wayne – “You Curse at Girls”
The Tough Alliance – “Untitled Hidden Bonus Track”
Camper Van Beethoven – “Change Your Mind”
Her Space Holiday – “Anything for Destruction”
The Bird and the Bee – “Polite Dance Song”
Explosions in the Sky – “Look Into the Air”
The Black Keys – “I Cry Alone”
The Boxer Rebellion – “Step Out of the Car”
The Stone Roses – “I Wanna Be Adored”
Clem Snide – “Denise”
The Cranberries – “Liar”
Beastie Boys – “Multilateral Nuclear Disarmament”
Surfer Blood – “Swim”
Kvelertak – “Ytrydd dei Svake”
The Dandy Warhols – “Plan A (Are Sound version)”

Thursday's Playlist: 11-3-11

2011-11-03T15:44:00.000-07:00

Hum – “I Hate it Too”
The xx – “VCR”
The Decemberists – “Down by the Water”
Little River Band – “Happy Anniversary”
The Twilight Sad – “At the Burnside”
The Jayhawks – “I’d Run Away”
U2 – “North and South of the River”
Ryan Adams – “Do I Wait”
John Cougar Mellencamp – “Ain’t Even Done with the Night”
Destiny’s Child – “Bills Bills Bills”
Black Mountain – “Rollercoaster”
Ladytron – “White Elephant”
Neil Finn – “Twisty Bass”
LCD Soundsystem – “Pow Pow”
No Age – “Glitter”
Blondie – “Island of Lost Souls”
The Boxer Rebellion – “Semi-Automatic”
The Black Keys – “The Flame”
No Age – “Shed and Transcend”
Matthew Sweet – “Evangeline”
New Order – “Sunrise”
The Jesus Lizard – “Mouth Breather”
Orange Juice – “Falling and Laughing”
New Order – “Fine Time (Silk Mix)”
Fleetwood Mac – “Never Make Me Cry”
The Bird & the Bee – “Man”
The Books & José González – “Cello Song”
Mystery Jets – “Lady Grey”
Ryan Adams – “Sweet Lil Gal (23rd / 1st)
Loggins & Messina – “Angry Eyes”
Alphaville – “Big in Japan”
Gravenhurst – “Damage”
Best Coast – “Honey”
Scritti Politti – “Perfect Way”
Girl Talk – “Triple Double”
Pearl Jam – “Why Go Home (Live)”
Fleetwood Mac – “The Chain”
Camper Van Beethoven – “Might Makes Right”
U2 – “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For”
The Flowerpot Men – “Beat City”
The Breeders – “Cannonball”
Deftones – “To Have and to Hold”
Suede – “Still Life (Orchestral Version)”
Prince – “Do it All Night”
Engineers – “Clean Coloured Wire”
Iron & Wine – “Your Fake Name is Good Enough for Me”
Fruit Bats – “Wild Honey”
Jay-Zeezer – “Say it Ain’t December 4th”
Bob Dylan – “Buckets of Rain”
Arcade Fire – “Rebellion (Lies)”
Shudder to Think – “X-French Tee Shirt”
The Smiths – “Pretty Girls Make Graves”
Paul Simon – “Graceland”
Björk – “Hollow”
Throw Me the Statue – “That’s How You Win”
The National – “The Perfect Song”
José González – “Lovestain”
Nik Kershaw – “Wouldn’t It Be Good”
The Thermals – “A Reflection”
Heart – “Sing Child”
Surfer Blood – “Catholic Pagans”
The Killers – “All These Things that I’ve Done (Peter Hook Remix)”
Mike Ness – “Let the Jukebox Keep on Playing”
David Bowie – “Word on a Wing (Live)”
The Mission U.K. – “Black Mountain Mist”
Robyn – “Hang with Me”
Lynyrd Skynyrd – “Simple Man”
Yeasayer – “2080”
Talk Talk – “Talk Talk”
Thompson Twins – “Let Loving Start (12”)”
Sigur Rós – “All Alright”
TV on the Radio – “Staring at the Sun”
Falco – “Rock Me Amadeus”
The Mountain Goats – “Age of Kings”
Pearl Jam – “Times of Trouble (Demo)”
Bright Eyes – “Motion Sickness”

Wednesday's Playlist 11-2-11

2011-11-02T14:55:00.001-07:00

Sebastian Tellier – “Fantino”
Justin Timberlake – “Cry Me a River”
Eels – “I’m a Hummingbird”
Childish Gambino – “My Girls”
John Cale – “Ski Patrol”
World Party – “Show Me to the Top”
The White Stripes – “I’m Bound to Pack It Up”
Blondie – “(Can I) Find the Right Words (to Say)”
Hot Chocolate – “You Sexy Thing”
Los Campesinos! – “A Heat Rash In the Shape of the Show Me State; Or, Letters from Me to Charlotte”
Childish Gambino – “Look at Me Now”
Journey – “Send Her My Love”
Echo & the Bunnymen – “In the Midnight Hour”
Luscious Jackson – “Ladyfingers”
Mark Mulcahy – “Hey Self Defeater”
Pretenders – “Brass in Pocket”
Alphaville – “Sounds Like a Melody”
Thomas Dolby – “Hyperactive”
Squeeze – “Messed Around”
REO Speedwagon – “Keep on Loving You”
Len – “Steal My Sunshine”
Marvin Gaye – “God is Love”
Little Dragon – “Feather”
Childish Gambino – “Riffs”
LCD Soundsystem – “One Touch”
Admiral Fallow – “Subbuteo”
The Field – “Looping State of Mind”
TV on the Radio – “Will Do”
The Morning Benders – “Excuses”
Depeche Mode – “Just Can’t Get Enough”
Pretenders – “Middle of the Road”
Phantom Planet – “California”
Jónsi – “Animal Arithmetic”
White Denim – “Anvil Everything”
Pete Shelley – “Homosapien”
Gruff Rhys – “Honey All Over”
Tom Waits – “Small Change – Big Spender”
Elvis Costello – “Shipbuilding”
Muse – “Time is Running Out”
The Cure – “Lovesong (Instrumental)”
Prince – “Partyup”
Bright Eyes - "Poison Oak"

Sunday's Playlist: 10-30-11

2011-10-30T12:33:00.001-07:00

The Smiths – “Shoplifters of the World Unite”
New Order – “Hurt”
Air – “Cherry Blossom Girl”
John Cale – “Helen of Troy”
Aimee Mann – “Just Like Anyone”
The Like – “Walk of Shame”
Camper Van Beethoven – “Civil Disobedience”
The Pixies – “Nimrod’s Son”
Hall & Oates – “Rich Girl”
Akron/Family – “Light Emerges”
Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers – “Nowhere”
Grizzly Bear – “Knife”
The Killers – “Jenny Was a Friend of Mine”
Bomba Estéreo – “Música Acción”
Jónsi – “Tornado”
SWV & Wu-Tang Clan – “Anything (Old School Version)
The xx – “Crystalised”
Fujiya & Miyagi – “Sixteen Shades of Black and Blue”
Echo & the Bunnymen – “The Puppet”
English Beat – “Rotating Head”
Patrick Park – “You Were Always the One”
Superchunk – “Fractures in Plaster”
M83 – “Raconte – Moi une Histoire”
Bon Iver – “Beach Baby”
Rick Springfield – “The Light of Love”
Sons & Daughters – “Breaking Fun”
The Head & the Heart – “Ghosts”
Cults – “Rave On”
Les Paul & Mary Ford – “In the Good Old Summertime”
Supertramp – “Give a Little Bit (Live)”
Portugal. The Man – “Floating (Time Isn’t Working My Side)”
Ladytron – “White Elephant”
Swans – “Little Mouth”
Howard Jones – “Hunger for the Flesh”
Ikara Colt – “Wake in the City”
The Birthday Party – “Release the Bats”
Elbow – “Fugitive Motel (RJD2 Remix)”
The Avalanches – “Since I Left You”
The National – “Murder Me Rachel”
Erykah Badu – “On & On”
Urban Dance Squad – “Good Grief”
Janelle Monae – “Suite III Overture”
Band of Skulls – “Blood”
The Sundays – “Can’t Be Sure”
Simian Mobile Disco – “Casu Marzu”
Rick Springfield – “Taxi Dancing”
Valient Thorr – “Con Science”
Ryan Adams & the Cardinals – “Star Wars”
Kings Go Forth – “Now We’re Gone”
Spiritualized – “Ladies and Gentlemen, We Are Floating in Space”
Kim Carnes – “Bette Davis Eyes”
John Cale – “Coral Moon”
Mumford & Sons – “White Blank Page”
Stricken City – “Five Meters Apart”
TLC – “Creep”
Galaxie 500 – “When Will You Come Home”
Explosions in the Sky – “Your Hand in Mine (Goodbye)”
Oneohtrix Point Never – “When I Got Back from New York”

Films of the 60s, Part 23: I'm Running Scared

2011-10-30T11:31:00.000-07:00

“That final design, that self-destruct,
That condescending critic that’s out for blood,
The dark at the top of the stairs
I’m running scared.”
- Dead Moon, “Running Scared”

It’s the day before Halloween and I feel I have no other choice than the write about some more horror films. It’s certainly not that I’m disappointed in that result. In the past few months I have started on a journey of becoming a connoisseur of scary films. I’m not quite there yet, but give me some time. I’ve written about horror films from the 50s and 60s before on this blog and I still have quite a few more I’ve seen and about which I have not yet written. The three I’ve chosen below are due to their particular creepiness. In my quest to become a horror movie connoisseur, a side effect has been an inurement to being scared. It doesn’t happen as easy or as often. The three films I have chosen for this installment may not have had me jumping out of my skin or throwing my popcorn in the air, but they stick with you. Plus, they are just great stories, well told, which is usually the deciding factor for me on the likability of a film.

Carnival of Souls (1962, Herk Harvey)

Herk Harvey (what a great name) made this movie for only $33,000. Today, you can’t get catering for that amount of money. Despite its shoestring budget, Carnival of Souls is a captivating film. It is also proof that budget cannot constrain concept. Though effects and ADR may be primitive and clumsy, they do not detract from the final product, especially as the film moves on and ensnares you in its mystery. The story begins with a drag race. Mary, who we come to realize will be our main character, is in the girls’ car, racing the boys’ car. A slight bump throws the girls off of a bridge and into the water below. Only Mary survives. She becomes despondent and leaves her job at the organ factory, heading for Salt Lake City to take a job as a church organist. Her despondency and, well, the fact that she sees freakish ghouls make us begin to wonder about her sanity.

When Mary sees her first “ghoul,” shown in the passenger window of her car, it is quite shocking, even if primitively done. This made me realize that you don’t need gore, blood, hair over the face, or any other now stock imagery for a real scare. Just the idea of someone being where they shouldn’t be, and watching you is creepy enough. Mary moves into a small apartment that comes complete with a lecherous and brutish neighbor who preys on her, all the while she consistently has visions of the ghoulish man in her mirror. A new wrinkle is thrown in when she begins to experience moments when people around her cannot see or hear her. This, more so perhaps than the ghoulish visions, would be unnerving to me. In one instance, you would think you are hallucinating or seeing things, but in another, is there any way that you wouldn’t think you had somehow crossed over into the land of the dead?

Throughout the film, Mary is inexplicably drawn to the Saltair Pavilion, an old abandoned amusement park in Salt Lake City, and hears organ music that is distinctly different than the hymns she tends to play in church. The music she hears is wild, psychedelic, and unsettling. So, let’s recap: we have scary organ music, an abandoned amusement park, ghoulish figures stalking our heroine, and the occasional bout with invisibility. Yes, those are the perfect ingredients for a nightmare. The signature scene of the film comes when Mary somewhat lets the strange goings on influence her. Rather than being scared, she surrenders to it. In a mesmerizingly shot scene, Mary seats herself at the church organ and begins to play the eerie music that has been haunting her. She succumbs to the rapture of the music, and it is physically apparent. As her fingers somewhat suggestively stroke the keys, her bare feet are pressing down pedals. She is a woman possessed.

I won’t give away the ending, despite it being near fifty years old. It is too good and a predecessor for the later wave of “twist” endings that would be de rigueur for modern horror films. The scares that Harvey evokes with simple, low budget filming should be a lesson for all those filmmakers trying to get big scares with overdone effects. Of course, one can point to the success of The Blair Witch Project and the Paranormal Activity films as proof of this, but I’d be hesitant about putting all of these in the same bucket. Carnival of Souls ended up inspiring the likes of George A. Romero, whose low budget zombie films became the standard for that genre, and David Lynch, whose atmospheric and unsettling scenarios became his signature style. I can see elements of Carnival of Souls in work he’s done, Twin Peaks to Lost Highway and beyond. Don’t let its budget fool you; this is a wonderful and highly influential film.

Black Sabbath (1963, Mario Bava)

Black Sabbath (yes, from whence Ozzy’s band took its name) is, in actuality, three short films in one, all different in tone, but each a lesson in terror. I would expect no less from Mario Bava, the master of Italian horror. I’m still trying to get over one particular scene from Black Sunday. Depending on which version you see, the stories might appear in a different order, but I will recap them in the order I viewed. The horror pedigree doesn’t just stop with Bava; the narrator is horror legend Boris Karloff! He introduces each segment, in a somewhat Serling-ian fashion, and even appears in one of the stories. In this way, it is somewhat reminiscent of one of Corman’s Poe films or a Freddie Francis portmanteau film. However, Bava’s film is somewhat more terrifying.

Case in point is the opening story, “The Drop of Water.” Structured like a Poe tale, it involves a “beyond the grave” revenge and the slow, steady torture of a person’s sanity. In a way, I suppose it is a rip-off of “The Tell-Tale Heart,” but it is still entertaining and frightening. A nurse is asked to tend to the newly deceased body of a medium. As the nurse is doing her duty, she sees an attractive ring on the finger of the corpse and relieves her of it. Immediately, she starts to become pestered by a fly. Though this is innocuous enough, it is when Nurse Chester returns to her apartment that the terror is ratcheted up to the Nth degree. She begins to hear water dripping from her bathroom faucet, echoing the drips of water she heard from a glass that was tipped over at the medium’s apartment. The fly also returns, continually buzzing around her. However, that is nothing compared to the images she sees of the medium, alternately in her bed, and walking toward her, with the most terrifying rictus grin I’ve ever seen. Though you can probably guess Nurse Chester’s fate, the nice capper on the story is the suggestion that this cycle will continue.

The second story is “The Telephone,” a revenge play that is a bit Hitchcockian in nature. Rosy is a Parisian escort (let’s be classy about this, shall we?) who begins to receive haunting telephone calls from her ex-pimp (ok, not that classy), Frank, who has just been released from prison. You see, Rosy was the one who was responsible for Frank going to prison, and he is now out to get her! Rosy calls her ex-lesbian lover, Mary, to comfort her, only to find out that it was a trick played by Mary in order to be reunited with Rosy. Of course, Frank actually does show up to have her revenge on Rosy, but kills Mary by mistake, leading to a final confrontation between Rosy and her assailant. In this simple story, Bava presents psychological and stalking terror at its best, all isolated in one location, and exploring the depths of evil that some will go to in order to either have companionship or revenge. Apparently, the cut American version removes the lesbian subplot, showing the hypocrisy that prostitution and murder is just fine, but love in a different form is taboo. Ridiculous.

The final story is “The Wurdalak,” adapted from an Aleksey Tolstoy tale (Leo’s cousin). Bava faithfully sets the scene in 19th century Russia, in which a young gentleman on a long journey comes across a headless corpse with a dagger in its chest. He removes the dagger and continues on, finding a cabin and a family inside. It turns out that the dagger belongs to the patriarch of the family, played by Boris Karloff, who had left previously to hunt the dreaded Wurdalak, a term that they define as a walking corpse who feeds on the blood of the living. In other words, this is a vampire story, though it shares certain elements with zombie tales as well. The father returns, having been turned into a Wurdalak himself, cleverly and heartlessly preying on the members of his family, one by one. This segment combines many standard elements of great horror, including the supernatural, undefeatable monster, the idea of that monster being someone close to you, the stranger caught up in accidental terror, the isolated cabin in the woods, and people being picked off one at a time.

Kwaidan (1964, Masaki Kobayashi)

First of all, let me say this: Kwaidan is a gorgeous film. This is apparent from the first few frames of the credits, with images of ink in water, creating an ethereal atmosphere. The rest of the film is just as mesmerizing. Like Black Sabbath, Kwaidan is made up of a series of short stories, these based on traditional Japanese ghost stories as told by Lafcadio Hearn. The first story is called “The Black Hair” and is not one that is easy to forget. A samurai leaves his wife and an existence of poverty because he simply wants more out of life. He marries again into wealth and status, but his second wife is selfish and awful. He goes back to his first wife, having somewhat realized his error, and while everything seems fine at first, he wakes up to find that his original companion has turned into just a skull and hair. In payback for his selfishness, he finds that he too has become older, and ghoulish in appearance. Though the story is simple, it takes its time to set a tone and an atmosphere, making the payoff that much more satisfying. Additionally, like the Hammer Horror films of the time, it uses a magnificent color palette for a genre that doesn’t generally use them.

The second story in called “The Woman of the Snow” and may seem familiar to those who have seen the 1990 film, Tales from the Darkside, which was originally intended to be Creepshow 3. A terrible snowstorm hits two woodcutters and they take shelter in a small hut. The titular woman of the snow comes, kills one of the woodcutters, then spares the other, telling him that he cannot utter a word about what happened, or she will know and punish him. The spared woodcutter later meets a pretty young girl and they fall in love. He, of course, tells her the story of the woman in the snow and his young wife reveals herself to be that woman. But, rather than killing him, due to their having children, she decides his punishment is simply leaving him. Due to their happy existence, the punishment seems to be enough, though she does say that if the children complain about her absence, she will come back to kill him. Again, the greatness of this story is how it is drawn out, much like a great story that is told around the campfire, as well as the amazing color and imagery presented throughout the telling.

“Hoichi, the Earless” is the third story, and it is a doozy. It begins with the epic poem, “The Tale of the Heike.” A young, blind monk has been secretly performing this epic poem at the behest of the ghosts who actually fought in the battle as portrayed in the song. The elder monks, sensing the danger of the situation, punish him, but also tattoo the young monk’s body with protective kanji. This, in effect, leaves him invisible to the ghosts who seek his singing and storytelling. By mistake, they leave the young monk’s ears unmarked. In a clever bit of special effects work, the ghosts come looking for the monk and see a pair of floating ears, which are soon cut off by the warrior ghosts.

The final story is “In a Cup of Tea,” which finds a samurai haunted by the image of a man in his, you guessed it, cup of tea. Even more samurai later haunt him and they eventually drive him mad. This tale becomes a two-fer as it stops in the midst of a battle between the haunted man and his ghostly assailants, revealing that it is being told by a heretofore-unseen writer who has decided to let the readers determine their own ending. The writer’s wife returns to find her husband has disappeared. She screams as she looks into his cup of tea and you can guess the rest. Kwaidan is definitely an expressionist film, with realism being put on the back burner for effect and atmosphere. Kobayashi uses artificial backdrops, images of eyes appearing in the simulated sky, and created landscapes in order to make the point that these stories are mythologies, fairy tales, or campfire stories, to be taken as artistic presentations. In this way, the film works on two levels, as moralistic mythology and as entertaining terror. Again, it is a gorgeous film and well worth the time.

Saturday's Playlist: 10-29-11

2011-10-29T14:47:00.001-07:00

Ani DiFranco – “Gravel (KCRW)”
Cat Power – “Ye Auld Triangle”
Camper Van Beethoven – “One of These Days”
MF Doom – “Saliva”
The Jayhawks – “Two Hearts”
Neil Young – “Everybody Knows This is Nowhere”
Crooked Fingers – “Gentle on My Mind’
Feist – “Where Can I Go Without You?”
M. Ward – “Chinese Translation”
New Order – “Thieves Like Us”
Okkervil River – “Show Yourself”
Small Black – “Invisible Grid”
Longpigs – “She Said”
The Jesus & Mary Chain – “You Trip Me Up”
Nick Drake – “Fly”
Sufjan Stevens – “The Dress Looks Nice on You”
The Lonely Island – “Shy Ronnie 2: Ronnie & Clyde”
New Order – “Confusion (Instrumental)”
Twin Shadow – “Shooting Holes at the Moon”
Soul II Soul – “Back to Life (However Do You Want Me)”
Styx – “Mr. Roboto”
Childish Gambino – “Nowhere to Go (Disaster Babe)”
The Cure – “Plainsong (Live)”
John Cale – “Pablo Picasso”
Hugo Montenegro – “I Dream of Jeannie”
Ted Leo & the Pharmacists – “One Polaroid a Day”
Chris Cornell – “You Know My Name”
Low – “Done”
Suckers – “It Gets Your Body Movin’”
Matthew Sweet – “I Wanted to Tell You”
Oingo Boingo – “Dead Man’s Party”
The Rolling Stones – “Start Me Up”
Battles – “Inchworm”
Crystal Castles – “Doe Deer”
Smashing Pumpkins – “I Am One”
ABC – “How to Be a Millionaire”
Galaxie 500 – “It’s Getting Late”
Titus Andronicus – “The Battle of Hampton Roads”
Bee Gees – “To Love Somebody”
Dead Confederate – “Sugar”
Allman Brothers Band – “Melissa”
Obits – “I Want Results”
Suede – “Can’t Get Enough”
World Party – “Sweet Soul Dream”
Mew – “Tricks”
The Black Angels – “True Believers”
The Innocence Mission – “Bright as Yellow”
Saint Etienne – “Mario’s Café”
X- “How I (Learned My Lesson)”
The Chameleons – “Perfume Garden”
Childish Gambino – “So Fly”
Sweet Apple – “Hold Me, I’m Dying”
The Chameleons – “Looking Inwardly”
The Bird & the Bee – “Heard it on the Radio”
Grant-Lee Phillips – “Under the Milky Way”
Depeche Mode – “Never Let Me Down Again (Digitalism Remix)”
The Tallest Man on Earth – “Steal Tomorrow”
Angelo Badalamenti & Julee Cruise – “Falling”
Wild Beasts – “Underbelly”
The Boxer Rebellion – “Evacuate”
Prince – “Raspberry Beret (12” Version)”
Ryan Adams – “Boys”
Battles – “Africastle”
Red Sparowes – “The Great Leap Forward Poured Down Upon Us One Day Like a Mighty Storm Suddenly and Furiously Blinding Our Senses”
Ryan Adams – “1974”
Washed Out – “Untitled”
Sigur Rós – “Hjartađ Hamast”
Eksi Ekso – “Rein, White Sun”
ESG – “Parking Lot Blues”
Suede – “Motown (Demo)”
Suede – “My Insatiable One”

Thursday's Playlist: 10-27-11

2011-10-27T15:38:00.000-07:00

The Go-Go’s – “Mercenary (Live)”
Billy Squier – “It Keeps You Rockin’”
Q-Tip – “You”
Mariachi El Bronx – “Litigation”
Tom Waits – “Temptation”
Dolorean – “Hannibal, Mo.”
Mumford & Sons – “Thistle & Weeds”
Dirty Projectors – “Still is the Move (Jimmy Douglas Mix)”
New Order – “True Faith”
The Silencers – “Blue Desire”
Gorillaz – “Welcome to the World of the Plastic Beach”
The Pixies – “Where is My Mind?”
Howard Jones – “Bounce Right Back”
Smith Westerns – “Be My Girl”
Warren G – “Regulate”
Suckers – “Black Sheep”
The Smiths – “That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore”
Wolves in the Throne Room – “Woodland Cathedral”
The Rapture – “Children”
Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers – “Century City”
Mariachi El Bronx – “My Brother the Gun”
Sufjan Stevens – “The Upper Peninsula”
Blondie – “A Shark in Jets Clothing”
Gang Starr – “Mass Appeal”
Delta Spirit – “Devil Knows You’re Dead”
The 88 – “Lost and Found”
The Cure – “Babble (Instrumental)”
M83 – “Soon, My Friend”
Glen Hansard – “Trying to Pull Myself Away”
Led Zeppelin – “The Rain Song”
Scritti Politti – “OPEC-Immac”
Cults – “Most Wanted”
LCD Soundsystem – “Us v Them”
Bachelorette – “Digital Brain”
Stevie Wonder – “You Met Your Match”
The Dandy Warhols – “The Last High”
Red Fang – “Whales and Leeches”
No Age – “Life Prowler”
St. Vincent – “The Strangers”
Childish Gambino – “Break”
Battles – “Futura”
Blondie – “Hanging on the Telephone”
The Go-Go’s – “Get up and Go”
Band of Horses – “Compliments”
Japandroids – “Darkness on the Edge of Gastown”
Dusty Springfield – “Mama Said”
Felt – “Primitive Painters”
The Magnetic Fields – “Always Already Gone”
Christopher O’Riley – “No Surprises”
The National – “Squalor Victoria”
Kyuss – “100° / Space Cadet / Demon Cleaner”
Luscious Jackson – “Space Diva”
The Knack – “That’s What the Little Girls Do (Demo)”
ESG – “About You”
Mates of State – “At Least I Have You”
Lush – “Starlust”
Future Sound of London – “Lifeforms (Path 1)”
Rilo Kiley – “American Wife”
Flying Lotus – “German Haircut”
James Blake – “The Wilhlem Scream”
Wilco – “Summer Teeth”
Jawbox – “Breathe”
My Bloody Valentine – “Honey Power”
James Brown – “Soul Power (Live)”
Male Bonding – “Dig You Out”
Fleet Foxes – “Quiet Houses”
Yeasayer – “Love Me Girl”

Wednesday's Playlist: 10-26-11

2011-10-26T14:51:00.001-07:00

John Cale – “China Sea”
Billy Squier – “Don’t Say No”
Psychedelic Furs – “Pretty in Pink”
Robyn – “Get Myself Together”
Oingo Boingo – “I’m So Bad”
Blueprint – “So Alive”
Ryan Adams – “Dirty Rain”
The Drums – “Skippin’ Town”
Jellyfish – “Now She Knows She’s Wrong”
Spoon – “I Summon You (Demo)”
Four Tet – “Smile Around the Face”
Dirty Projectors – “Remade Horizon”
Owen Pallett – “Lewis Takes Action”
Prince – “Raspberry Beret”
REO Speedwagon – “I Wish You Were There”
Deee-Lite – “Groove is in the Heart”
Opus III – “It’s a Fine Day (Edit)”
Magnetic Fields – “Nothing Matters When We’re Dancing”
Sleigh Bells – “Kids”
Bell Biv Devoe – “Gangsta”
Sigur Rós – “Njósnavélin”
X – “Blue Spark”
Lily Allen & Mick Jones – “Straight to Hell”
Nine Inch Nails – “No, You Don’t”
Bad Audio Dynamite – “E=MC2”
Fleetwood Mac – “Not that Funny”
The Human League – “Don’t You Want Me”
A Tribe Called Quest – “Check the Rhime”
José González – “Time to Send Someone Away”
Iron Maiden – “Rime of the Ancient Mariner”
Def Leppard – “Bringin’ on the Heartbreak”
Peter, Bjorn and John – “Second Chance”
The Shins – “We Will Become Silhouettes”
Robyn – “None of Dem”
Junior Boys – “High Come Down”
Flight of the Conchords – “Carol Brown”
Peter, Bjorn and John – “Down Like Me”
Suede – “Asda Town”
Bomba Estéreo – “Fuego”
Bad Brains – “Jah Calling”
Loch Lomond – “All Your Friends are Smiling”
Cut Copy – “Where I’m Going”
Psychedelic Furs – “Here Come Cowboys”
Portugal. The Man – “Once Was One”
Ryan Adams & the Cardinals – “Let it Ride”
Jimi Hendrix – “Fire”
The Coconutz – “Nothing Compares 2 U”
Soul II Soul – “Fairplay”
Duran Duran – “The Reflex”
The Pixies – “Planet of Sound”
Alphaville – “In the Mood”
Kvelertak – “Blodtørst”
Ella Fitzgerald – “Slap that Bass (Miguel Migs Petalpusher Remix)”
The Cure – “Untitled”
We Were Promised Jetpacks – “Picture of Health”
Hothouse Flowers – “Lonely Lane”
Fruit Bats – “Dolly”
Prince – “Lavaux”
Interpol – “Slow Hands”
Van Morrison – “Crazy Love”
Digable Planets – “9th Planet (Blackitolsm)”
The Silencers – “Painted Moon”
Altered Images – “I Could Be Happy (Dance Mix)”
The White Stripes – “300 MPH Torrential Outpour Blues (Live)”
Fennesz & Sakamoto – “0320”
John Cale – “Bamboo Floor”
Christopher O’Riley – “I Can’t”
Café Tacuba – “El Fin De La Infancia”
Suede – “She’s Not Dead”
Journey – “Send Her My Love”
Dum Dum Girls – “Jail La La”
Massive Attack – “Paradise Circus”
Smashing Pumpkins – “Rocket”
Stevie Nicks – “Secret Love”

Tuesday's Playlist: 10-25-11

2011-10-25T15:25:00.000-07:00

Esben & the Witch – “Hexagons IV”
Passion Pit – “Swimming in the Flood”
Sufjan Stevens – “I Want to Be Well”
Shudder to Think – “Airfield Dream”
X – “Arms for Hostages / Country at War”
Feist – “Bittersweet Melodies”
Foals – “Hummer”
Twin Shadow – “Yellow Balloon”
Twin Shadow – “Shooting Holes at the Moon”
Nine Inch Nails – “Get Down Make Love”
Bluetones – “Slight Return”
Foo Fighters – “Everlong”
The Cult – “Electric Ocean”
ABC – “The Look of Love, Pt. 1”
Art Brut – “Modern Art”
Rogue Wave – “Postage Stamp World”
The Wake – “Talk About the Past”
The Long Winters – “Delicate Hands”
Tears for Fears – “The Conflict”
Thomas Dolby – “Mulu the Rain Forest”
Glasvegas – “Stronger than Dirt”
Gorillaz – “Man Research (Clapper)”
Flying Lotus – “Nose Art”
Hi-Five – “I Like the Way (The Kissing Game)”
Thompson Twins – “Hold Me Now”
Leftfield – “Open Up”
Billy Squier – “Whadda You Want From Me”
James Blake – “Lindisfarne II”
The Killers – “Jenny Was a Friend of Mine”
The Smithereens – “Blues Before and After”
Mogwai – “Like Herod (Live)”
The Other Two – “Tasty Fish (O.T. Mix 12”)”
Oneohtrix Point Never – “Ships Without Meaning”
Blondie – “Call Me (Original Long Version)”
David Bowie – “Hole in the Ground”
Cake – “Federal Funding”
Eksi Ekso – “West of Rize”
Aimee Mann – “I’ve Had It”
Smashing Pumpkins – “Rhinoceros”
The Stepkids – “Legend in His Own Mind”
Concrete Blonde – “Everybody Knows”
Matt Pond PA – “Brooklyn Fawn”
Jaydiohead – “Dirt Off Your Android”
Wilco – “A Shot in the Arm”
Ringo Starr – “It Don’t Come Easy”
A Flock of Seagulls – “Wishing (If I Had a Photograph of You) (Extended Version)”
Wilco – “Jesus, Etc. (Live)”
New Order – “Kiss of Death”
Robyn – “Fembot”
Mekons – “Darkness and Doubt”
George Thorogood – “John Hardy”
Black Mountain – “Buried by the Blues”
The Boxer Rebellion – “Lay Me Down”
Modest Mouse – “The World at Large”
Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds – “(Stranded on) the Wrong Beach”
Mew – “Start”
Rush – “Tom Sawyer”
Funkadelic – “Super Stupid”
Okkervil River – “Walked Out on a Line”
Mogwai – “How to Be a Werewolf”
Howard Jones – “Always Asking Questions (12” Version)”
Nirvana – “Drain You (Live)”
Liars – “The Overachievers”
Modest Mouse – “Trailer Trash”
Admiral Radley – “Lonesome Co.”
Fountains of Wayne – “Utopia Parkway”
Future Sound of London – “We Have Explosive”
Spoon – “Don’t Let it Get You Down”
Caribou – “Jamelia”
The Knack – “(She’s So) Selfish”
The Twilight Sad – “That Room”
Pearl Jam – “Say Hello 2 Heaven (Temple of the Dog Demo)”
Girl Talk – “Let it Out”
The Cure – “Cold”
Aimee Mann – “This is How it Goes”
The Rapture – “In the Grace of Your Love”
Sufjan Stevens – “Sleeping Bear, Sault Saint Marie”
Oneohtrix Point Never – “Behind the Bank”
Daniel Martin Moore – “Softly and Tenderly”
Stephin Merritt – “You Are Not My Mother and I Want to Go Home”
Dan Wilson – “Honey Please (Live)”
Squeeze – “Woman’s World”
Destroyer – “The Sublimation Hour”

Sunday's Playlist: 10-23-11

2011-10-23T13:45:00.000-07:00

Nada Surf – “Question”
Bat for Lashes – “Daniel”
Free Energy – “Light Love”
The Other Two – “Ninth Configuration”
The Pixies - "Alec Eiffel"
Pete Townshend – “Let My Love Open the Door”
The Police – “Every Breath You Take”
Kurt Vile – “Puppet to the Man”
Fleetwood Mac – “Bermuda Triangle”
Jawbreaker – “Want”
KISS – “Love Theme from KISS”
The Jayhawks – “Pray for Me”
Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers – “It’s Rainin’ Again”
De La Soul – “The Magic Number”
The Smithereens – “Not a Second Time”
Tom Waits – “Martha”
Paul Simon – “Learn How to Fall”
Karen Elson & Donovan - “Season of the Witch”
Ian McCulloch – “The Flickering Wall”
OK Go – “This Too Shall Pass”
Dum Dum Girls – “Coming Down”
Hot Chip – “Boy from School”
Sondre Lerche – “Mr. Bassman”
Childish Gambino feat. Garfunkel & Oates – “These Girls”
Christopher O’Riley – “Motion Picture Soundtrack”
Small Sins – “Pot Calls Kettle Black”
A.C. Newman – “The Cloud Prayer”
Neutral Milk Hotel – “Holland, 1945”
Marvin Gaye – “What’s Going On”
Bangles – “If She Knew What She Wants (Extended)”
Future Sound of London – “Lifeforms”
Fugazi – “Burning Too”
Childish Gambino feat. DC Pierson – “Different (Feel it All Around)”
Red House Painters – “Down Through”
Anamanaguchi – “Danger Mountain”
Scritti Politii – “Perfect Way (Edited Version)”
Calexico – “Stray”
Foals – “Two Steps, Twice”
Fountains of Wayne – “Everything’s Ruined (Acoustic)”
Black Kids – “Hurricane Jane”
Morrissey – “Ouija Board, Ouija Board”
Depeche Mode – “When the Body Speaks (Karlsson & Winnberg Remix)”
Thomas Dolby – “The Flat Earth”
Delta Spirit – “Vivian”
Interpol – “Obstacle 1”
Modest Mouse – “Education”
Blondie – “Little Girl Lies”
The Cult – “Judith”
X- “Yr Ignition”
Swans – “No Words / No Thoughts”
A Flock of Seagulls – “Transfer Affection”
Howard Jones – “Like to Get to Know You Well”
The Lonely Island – “Rocky”
Valient Thorr – “Rezerection”
Mötley Crüe – “Bitter Pill”
Kanye West & Jay-Z – “Murder to Excellence”
Antony & the Johnsons – “Hope There’s Someone”
ESG – “Dance”

Films of the 60s, Part 22: When We Laugh Indoors

2011-10-23T13:07:00.000-07:00

“When we laugh indoors,
The blissful tones bounce off the walls
And fall to the ground.”
- Death Cab For Cutie, “We Laugh Indoors”

It’s been said that stand-up comedians are the new philosophers. This was certainly true of Lenny Bruce, George Carlin, Bill Hicks, and more current comics, such as Louis C.K., Marc Maron, and Greg Proops. Pointed and profound messages can be cleverly, but perhaps not easily, couched in humor. That’s not to say that all comedy has to be incredibly deep, philosophical, or political. It can just as easily be absolutely absurd. The three comedy films discussed below are all groundbreaking in some way, but what they all share is that they are hilariously funny.

What’s Up, Tiger Lily? (1966, Woody Allen)

Having just come off of writing and starring in What’s New Pussycat?, Woody Allen made his directorial debut with another film whose title asks a question. Long before the Mystery Science Theater gang started their meta commentary project, Woody Allen was breaking new ground in postmodern comedy. What’s Up, Tiger Lily? was certainly a unique project at the time. Allen took footage from two Japanese films, called International Secret Police: A Barrel of Gunpowder and International Secret Police: Key of Keys, and essentially made a remix / dub. So, instead of a taut spy thriller, we get to see Woody enmeshed in a mob battle over the hunt of the best egg salad recipe.

Any essay or article about the content of the film could not do it justice. Woody Allen’s writing, acting, scene construction, and jokes are so meticulous that they have to be seen and heard in context. For instance, his early nebbish delivery of how death is his bread and danger is his butter does not come over well in print. But, out of his performance, I was laughing out loud. I could be wrong about this, but this film seems to me to be the first of its kind, certainly influencing MST3K and perhaps even such Bond spoofs as Austin Powers. And, even though some wildly funny films had been made during the 60s and before, I don’t think the general public had seen anything as absurd as this, especially the non-sequitur ending featuring China Lee.

Woody Allen would go on to make not only some of the funniest films ever made, in Bananas, Take the Money and Run, and Sleeper, but he would also start to make films that were poignant, deep, philosophical, and related to the human condition. I’m not sure one can make that claim about Tiger Lily, but sometimes funny is just funny. Okay, so there are some Asian stereotypes that are played with a little fast and loose for today’s politically correct and progressive audiences, such as the sisters with the names Suki Yaki and Teri Yaki, but overall it is fairly unobjectionable. It has been said that The Graduate has every type of humor in it, from farce to puns, slapstick to sight gags, and I would argue that What’s Up, Tiger Lily has this wide range of elements as well. Had anyone else shown a visual of a supposed hair caught in the projector, and then a silhouetted hand trying to remove it? In this film, plot didn’t matter and the jokes were everything.

The Fearless Vampire Killers (1967, Roman Polanski)

After the truly disturbing films Repulsion and Knife in the Water, and before the equally disturbing Rosemary’s Baby, Roman Polanski made a farce, though it might be hard for American viewers to make any kind of attribution to Roman Polanski. What am I talking about? Well, apparently, an editor at MGM reedited Polanski’s film and made it even more kooky and cartoony than the director had originally envisioned. I couldn’t tell you which version I saw. From all the research I have gathered, it appears that the American recut of the film is now rare, and the original version must be the one I screened. (Yes, I don’t watch films, I “screen” them.)

In this film, we follow the titular “vampire killers,” one old and exceedingly eccentric, Professor Abronsius, played by Jack McGowan, the other young, shy, and enormously excitable, Alfred, played by Polanski himself. Like with Tiger Lily, there are different types of humor on display here, from Polanski’s physical humor, to the broad slapstick of a high speed coffin / sledding chase, to the abstract silliness and stupidity of the two spying on a hunchback building a coffin with the memorable exchange, “What’s he doing?” “He’s woodworking!”

Polanski had not really been known for comedy before this film and hasn’t really since, but this film is certainly not to be dismissed. It is not only funny, it also retains some of Polanski’s hallmark dark undertones, especially in the fact that the vampires end up defeating out heroes and evil wins out in the end. A scene that stands out as one that certainly inspired such later films as Young Frankenstein, the two hunters try to fit in with a group of vampires, participating in an elaborate dance, and try to have a conversation while being constantly interrupted by the movements and changing of partners. The vivid colors also make it a near-perfect Hammer Horror homage. Of course, this film is now notorious for featuring the gorgeous Sharon Tate, just one year before she married Polanski, and two years before her tragic murder.

Putney Swope (1969, Robert Downey, Sr.)

The aforementioned Louis C.K. has gone out of his to praise Putney Swope and how it directly influenced his comedy. The film, written and directed by Robert Downey, Sr., (yes, that Robert Downey, Sr.) is at once uproariously funny and socially as well as politically potent. The idea is simple: the CEO of an advertising agency dies, and in the pursuit of becoming his successor, the rest of the board vote for the one African-American member, as they can’t vote for themselves. Putney Swope becomes the new CEO and drastically changes the direction of the company, to hilarious results.

At first, Swope is dead set against the firm’s involvement with companies that produced alcohol, tobacco, and war toys. As such, he renames the company “Truth and Soul, Inc.” and tries to align the company philosophy with his own, replacing every white board member in the process. We are treated to some of the commercials they make, intercut throughout the film, and they are some of the funniest things I have ever seen, surely influencing later likeminded films, such as the Zucker and Abrahams movies. As the company grows in success, and profits, we see the new militant members of the firm become just as corrupted by money as their predecessors, including Putney, who has to come to some kind of reconciliation with himself.

Downey dubbed in his own voice over that of the actor who portrayed Swope, Arnold Johnson, claiming that the actor had a hard time memorizing his lines. The resulting effect is jarring, but also adds to the humor. The film was somewhat before its time in its skewering of Capitalism and modern advertisement, but right on time for its incisive commentary on the misunderstanding of the Black Power movement. I tend to think that those who gave this film a bad review, claim it isn’t funny, or that it misses the mark, just didn’t get it. It’s well beyond time that Putney Swope was reevaluated as one of the funniest films of the 60s. Appropriately enough, Downey’s son was later criticized in much the same manner for his portrayal of method actor Kirk Lazarus in Tropic Thunder, which was equally funny.

*Note: The poster for Putney Swope is the DVD cover, as the theatrical poster is somewhat more risqué.

Saturday's Playlist: 10-22-11

2011-10-22T13:37:00.001-07:00

David Bowie – “Wild is the Wind”
AC/DC – “Back in Black”
Mötley Crüe – “Without You”
Here We Go Magic – “Fangela”
Little Joy – “Brand New Start”
Loggins & Messina – “Back to Georgia”
The xx – “Infinity”
Marvin Gaye – “Inner City Blues (Makes Me Wanna Holler)”
Future Sound of London – “My Kingdom”
Gang Gang Dance – “Mindkilla”
The Smiths – “Oscillate Wildly”
Fences – “Boys Around Here”
Robyn – “In My Eyes”
Deerhunter – “Revival”
Blonde Redhead – “Spain”
Billy Joel – “The Stranger”
Flying Lotus – “Clay”
Gravenhurst – “The Ice Tree”
Alexi Murdoch – “Orange Sky”
Vampire Weekend – “Mansard Roof”
Gorilaz – “19-2000”
Baths – “Rafting Starlit Everglades”
The Jayhawks – “Nothing Left to Borrow”
Phosphorescent – “A Picture of Our Torn Up Praise”
Foo Fighters – “These Days”
Elbow – “Some Riot”
Vampire Weekend – “I Stand Corrected”
Girls – “Ghost Mouth”
Public Enemy – “She Watch Channel Zero”
The Pixies – “Manta Ray”
Loch Lomond – “Carl Sagan”
Loggins & Messina – “Danny’s Song”
Nick Lowe – “Cold Gray Light of Dawn”
Flying Lotus – “Drips // Auntie’s Harp”
Squeeze – “If I Didn’t Love You”
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah – “Yesterday, Never”
Supertramp – “Casual Conversations”
Björk – “I Go Humble”
Bright Eyes – “Ladder Song”
D’Angelo – “Brown Sugar”
Arctic Monkeys – “Library Pictures”
Eels – “My Beloved Monster”
Cake – “What’s Now is Now”
Missing Persons – “Words”
Matthew Herbert – “November”
Destroyer – “Bay of Pigs”
Torche – “Little Champion”
Def Leppard – “Stagefright (Live)”
Jens Lekman – “Black Cab”
Blondie – “For Your Eyes Only”
David Essex – “Rock On”
Sigur Rós – “Straumnes”
The Jesus & Mary Chain – “Inside Me”
Supertramp – “Gone Hollywood”
A Flock of Seagulls – “The Fall”
Damien Jurado – “Sheets”
No Doubt – “Hella Good”
Wolf Parade – “Palm Road”
Les Savy Fav – “One Way Widow”
Marvin Gaye – “What’s Going On (Rhythm & Strings Mix)”
Mission of Burma – “That’s When I Reach for My Revolver”
Edith Piaf – “La Vie en Rose”
Liturgy – “Veins of God”
Tom Waits – “Tom Traubert’s Blues”
Caribou – “Sun”
ESG – “I Can’t Tell You What to Do”

Thursday's Playlist: 10-20-11

2011-10-20T15:43:00.000-07:00

Crystal Castles – “Pap Smear”
Duran Duran – “To the Shore”
TV on the Radio – “Staring at the Sun”
Of Montreal – “I Feel Ya’ Strutter”
Depeche Mode – “But Not Tonight (Extended Remix)”
Echo & the Bunnymen – “The Cutter”
Franz Ferdinand – “What She Came For”
Blue Scholars – “Marion Sunshine”
Gorillaz – “Welcome to the World of the Plastic Beach”
The Bird & the Bee – “The Races”
Dan Wilson – “Willie the King (Live)”
Of Montreal – “Hydra Fancies”
Kansas – “Sparks of the Tempest”
Laura Veirs – “Make Something Good”
Alphaville – “Summer in Berlin”
Blitzen Trapper – “Street Fighting Sun”
Valient Thorr – “The Recognition”
Orbital – “P.E.T.R.O.L.”
Dirty Projectors – “Cannibal Resource”
Falco – “Der Kommissar”
New Order – “Hurt”
Suede – “Together”
Explosions in the Sky – “Magic Hours”
Galaxie 500 – “Hearing Voices”
Bad Lieutenant – “Poisonous Intent”
Ministry – “So What”
Def Leppard – “Too Late for Love”
Kaiser Chiefs – “Take My Temperature”
Talking Heads – “Listening Wind”
David Bowie – “Ashes to Ashes”
First Aid Kit – “Pervigilo”
Radiohead – “Paranoid Android”
Eels – “I’m Going to Stop Pretending That I Didn’t Break Your Heart”
Fruit Bats – “The Banishment Song”
The Album Leaf – “Landing in Snow”
Hall & Oates – “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin”
Carissa’s Wierd – “You Should Be Hated Here”
Foo Fighters – “White Limo”
Orange Juice – “Rip it Up”
The Black Keys – “Have Love Will Travel”
New Order – “Fine Line”
Gene Pitney – “24, Sycamore”
Music Go Music – “Just Me”
Oneohtrix Point Never – “Laser to Laser”
Anamanaguchi – “Dawn Metropolis”
Propellerheads – “Spybreak!”
Hothouse Flowers – “Christchurch Bells”
Eagles – “In the City”
M83 – “Kim & Jessie”
White Denim – “Incaviglia”
White Denim – “Through Your Windows”
Torche – “Meanderthal”
The Smiths – “Barbarism Begins at Home”
Real Estate – “Kinder Blumen”
Suede – “Metal Mickey”
Thomas Dolby – “I Scare Myself”
David Bowie – “TVC15 (Live)”
The Polyphonic Spree – “Light & Day / Reach for the Sun”
The Fray – “Mahna Mahna”
Troy & Abed – “Somewhere Out There”
Sleater-Kinney – “Dig Me Out”
M83 – “Train to Pluton”
Scritti Politti – “Wood Beez (Version)”
The Strokes – “The Modern Age”
Nite Jewel – “Falling Far”
Q-Tip – “Do You Dig”
Tombs – “Black Heaven”
David Bowie – “This is Not America”
New Order – “Blue Monday”
Nik Kershaw – “Wouldn’t It Be Good”
The Black Keys – “Do the Rump”
Phantom Planet – “California”

Tuesday's Playlist: 10-18-11

2011-10-18T15:25:00.000-07:00

Superchunk – “Fractures in Plaster”
Heatmiser – “Get Lucky”
D’Angelo – “Untitled (How Does it Feel)”
Tom Vek – “On a Plate”
Squeeze – “If I Didn’t Love You”
British Sea Power – “Baby”
Ted Leo & the Pharmacists – “Even Heroes Have to Die”
No Age – “Common Heat”
Tommy James & the Shondells – “Crimson & Clover”
Clearlake – “Treat Yourself with Kindness”
Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds – “There She Goes, My Beautiful World”
Galaxie 500 – “King of Spain, Part Two”
The Power Station – “Some Like it Hot”
Jawbox – “Savory”
Ladytron – “Tomorrow”
The Antlers – “Epilogue”
Alice Cooper – “Unfinished Sweet”
Fennesz & Sakamoto – “0330”
ABC – “Vanity Kills”
Blitzen Trapper – “American Goldwing”
Eagles – “My Man”
Explosions in the Sky – “The Only Moment We Are Alone (Live)”
Orlando Cachaito Lopez – “Mis Dos Pequeñas”
Born Ruffians – “Jimmy Jimmy”
Kate Bush – “The Red Shoes”
Owen Pallett – “A Man with No Ankles”
Raphael Saadiq – “Radio”
LCD Soundsystem – “Too Much Love”
The National – “Mr. November”
XTC – “I’d Like That”
The Go-Go’s – “Good for Gone”
Future Sound of London – “Lifeforms (Path 3)”
Morrissey – “The Last of the Famous International Playboys”
Deerhunter – “Earthquake”
Yuck – “Sunday”
Jonathan Rice – “My Mother’s Son”
Luscious Jackson – “Here”
Underworld – “Between Stars”
Broadcast – “Echo’s Answer”
Marvin Gaye – “Save the Children”
Brendan Benson – “You Make a Fool Out of Me”
Blue Scholars – “George Jackson”
Ministry – “Dream Song”
Thomas Dolby – “Weightless”
Tom Waits – “Way Down in the Hole”
Julianna Barwick – “The Highest”
Travis – “Flowers in the Window”
Marvin Gaye – “What’s Happening Brother (Live)”
U2 – “Numb (New Mix)”
Fleetwood Mac – “Oh Well, Part I”
Red House Painters – “Mistress”
Iron Maiden – “Mission from ‘Arry”
Spoon – “Is Love Forever?”
Echo & the Bunnymen – “Heroin (Live)”
Björk – “Hyperballad”
The Autumn Defense – “Step Easy”
New Order – “Elegia”
…And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead – “Spiral Jetty”
Ryan Adams & the Cardinals – “Typecast”
Led Zeppelin – “The Rain Song”
tUnE-YarDs – “Gangsta”
Crooked Fingers – “Big Darkness”
Aimee Mann – “Red Vines”
Broadcast – “Distorsion”
Michael Jackson – “Billie Jean”
Arctic Monkeys – “All My Own Stunts”
Wilco – “Hate it Here”
The Tallest Man on Earth – “I Won’t Be Found”
McLusky – “To Hell With Good Intentions”
Björk – “Dark Matter”
Björk – “Mutual Core”
Red Sparowes – “Truths Arise”
Tom Waits – “Jersey Girl”
Orange Juice – “Lovesick”
Lush – “I’ve Been Here Before”
First Aid Kit – “Ghost Town”
Interpol – “NYC”
The Other Two – “Selfish (The East Village Vocal)”
The Go! Team – “Buy Nothing Day”
Sigur Rós – “Heysátan”
Suede – “Cheap (Demo)”
Flesh for Lulu – “I Go Crazy”
A Tribe Called Quest – “Mind Power”
The Chameleons – “Perfume Garden”
John Cale – “Leaving it Up to You”
Morrissey – “Happy Lovers at Last Reunited”
Carl Cox – “The Joker”
Camper Van Beethoven – “Eye of Fatima, Part 2”
Austra – “The Noise”
The Field – “It’s Up There”
Creedence Clearwater Revival – “Lookin’ Out My Back Door”
Wild Flag – “Black Tiles”
Iron Maiden – “Children of the Damned”
Finn Brothers – “Eyes of the World”

Weekend Playlist: 10-15-11 & 10-16-11

2011-10-16T13:26:00.000-07:00

Girls – “My Ma”
Crowded House – “Elephants”
Les Savy Fav – “Poltergeist”
Chevy Chase – “The Way It Is”
Surfer Blood – “Harmonix”
The Twilight Singers – “The Beginning of the End”
Baroness – “War, Wisdom and Rhyme”
Modest Mouse – “We’ve Got Everything”
Jónsi – “Boy Lillikoi (Live)”
Orbital – “Speed Freak (Moby Remix)”
New Order – “We All Stand”
A Tribe Called Quest – “Youthful Expression”
Danger Mouse & Danielle Luppi – “Season’s Trees”
The Clientele – “Since K Got Over Me”
Ladytron – “Runaway”
Sigur Rós – “Hoppipolla”
Foster the People – “Warrant”
Stevie Nicks – “Moonlight (A Vampire’s Dream)”
Sunny Day Real Estate – “8”
Dum Dum Girls – “Just a Creep”
Jellyfish – “Bedspring Kiss”
The Decemberists – “Valerie Plame”
The Smiths – “The Boy with the Thorn in His Side”
Duran Duran – “Girls on Film (Extended Night Version)”
Blue Scholars – “Marion Sunshine”
Richard Hawley – “Don’t Get Hung Up In Your Soul”
Cake – “Friend is a Four Letter Word”
Curtis Mayfield – “Miss Black America”
The Smiths – “Girl Afraid”
Cymbals Eat Guitars – “Wavelengths”
Of Montreal – “Disconnect the Dots”
Billy Idol – “Dancing with Myself”
En Vogue – “My Lovin’ (You’re Never Gonna Get It)”
Eels – “Baby Loves Me”
Les Savy Fav – “Reformat (Dramatic Reading)”
Bomba Estéreo – “Juana”
Big Star – “Take Care”
Death Cab for Cutie – “Information Travels Faster”
Tom Waits – “Clap Hands”
Spoon – “Vittorio E”
The Bangles – “Manic Monday (Extended)”
Journey – “Any Way You Want It”
The Mission – “Beyond the Pale”
Eagles – “Journey of the Sorcerer”
Foreign Born – “Blood Oranges”
Suede – “By the Sea”
Black Mountain – “Rollercoaster”
X – “Hungry Wolf”
Bon Iver – “Skinny Love”
Alice Cooper – “Sick Things”
Gruff Rhys – “Christopher Columbus”
Suede – “Golden Gun”
The Antlers – “Shiva”
Wilco – “Dawned on Me”
Better than Ezra – “Circle of Friends”
Dum Dum Girls – “Oh Mein M”
The Cure – “Closedown (Live)”
Maximum Balloon – “The Lesson”
Crash Test Dummies – “In the Days of the Caveman”
The Decemberists – “The Wanting Comes in Waves (Reprise)”
Janelle Monae – “Cold War”
Van Morrison – “Into the Mystic”
Magnet & Gemma Hayes – “Lay Lady Lay”
Beethoven – “Ninth Symphony, Fourth Movement”
Explosions in the Sky – “Let Me Back In”
Maxence Cyrin – “Where is My Mind”
Explosions in the Sky – “Trembling Hands”
The Jayhawks – “Tomorrow the Green Grass”
The The – “The Beat(en) Generation”
Flight of the Conchords – “Angels”
David Bowie – “Life on Mars (Live)”
Placebo – “Bigmouth Strikes Again”
The Smithereens – “Especially for You (Live)”
Sons & Daughters – “Rose Red”
Architecture in Helsinki – “Denial Style”
Ryan Adams – “Breakdown into the Resolve”
Future of the Left – “Yin / Post-Yin”
Split Enz – “Hard Act to Follow”
DJ Shadow – “Tedium”
Minny Pops – “Dolphin’s Spurt”
The Decemberists – “O New England”
Neil Finn – “Don’t Dream It’s Over (Live)”
Run-D.M.C. – “Rock the House”
Elliott Smith – “Everything Reminds Me of Her”
The Dodos – “Fools”
Blue Scholars – “Seijun Suzuki”
The Cool Kids – “Swimsuits”
Gillian Welch – “Look at Miss Ohio”
Those Darlins – “Boy”
Damien Jurado – “Everything Trying”
X- “Beyond and Back (Live)”
Little Dragon – “Scribbled Paper”
Baths – “Aminals”
Little River Band – “Cool Change”

Films of the 60s, Part 21: We Gotta Get Out of This Place

2011-10-16T13:10:00.000-07:00

“We gotta get out of this place
If it’s the last thing we ever do
We gotta get out of this place
Girl there’s a better life for me and you.”
- The Animals, “We Gotta Get Outta This Place”

Many of the films of the 60s could be described as being stories of escape of some kind, including everything from Holly Golightly’s escape from country life and a loveless marriage in Breakfast at Tiffany’s to Marion Crane’s escape from low / middle class drudgery and harassment into a life of crime and eventual doom in Psycho. One could even describe some of the 60s films as audience escapes in such films as the James Bond series or exuberant movie musicals. These three films are more literal in definition, the first two being escapes from prisons of some sort, being the French prison of Le Trou and the German prison camp of The Great Escape, and the final, Dead Ringer, an escape not only from poverty, but also from identity.

Le Trou (1960, Jacques Becker)

I had never heard of Le Trou before I placed it in my Netflix queue (poetry unintended), but it ended up to be a film I will never forget. The title translates to “The Hole,” a word that is generally known as a slang term for a prison, but in the case of this film is also a literal reference to a hole that inmates dig in a corner of their cell in an attempt to escape. Le Trou is based on a true story, as it seems most prison escape films are, save The Shawshank Redemption and a small handful of others, and the director truly makes an effort to capture the realism of the tale. Becker, in fact, goes to great lengths in this endeavor in a few ways, one of them being the hiring of non-actors to fill the roles of the inmates, regular looking fellows one would perhaps expect to see in a prison environment. One of the actors is actually an inmate from the real life escape attempt from the La Santé prison in 1947. This “actor” introduces the film.

The film begins as we follow a young inmate, Gaspard, being put into a crowded cell with four other prisoners. The four are facing incredibly long sentences. However, we don’t know much else about them, allowing us as viewers to perhaps confabulate or ignore whatever their crimes may have been in order to curry our sympathies. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter what they have done in order to fuel the plot and action. Quickly, these prisoners must decide whether or not they can trust Gaspard. In a brief enough time, they determine that it is, if not wise, at least necessary in order to complete their goal. The prisoners are nothing if not resourceful, volunteering for “box-making” duty, not only to keep themselves busy, but to have their stack of flattened boxes to use as a convenient cover to place over the titular hole in the corner of the cell.

Some of the more realistic aspects to this film, aside from the non-actors, are the absolutely meticulous scenes and the lack of a score. We see close-ups of the hands of prison guards as they slice up sausages into small segments, plunge their hands into soaps and cheeses, systematically going through every care package in the search for contraband. The first actions involved in the escape are equally detailed, with long, unbroken shots of the prisoners using a rod from a bed frame to start hammering into the concrete floor and not resorting to a montage until nearly five minutes later. In this way, we sense the arduousness, the anxiety, and the difficulties that these prisoners face in this endeavor. We are escaping with them. It is brilliantly put together. As mentioned, the only music that appears in the film is in the closing scene and credits. Otherwise, throughout the rest of the film, we are left to feel a realistic tension that is not “dramatized” or escalated by the presence of a score. There’s a twist at the end, one I won’t reveal, but the line that comes from one of the characters in response to the turn of events is profound.

The Great Escape (1963, John Sturges)

Whereas Le Trou is atypical as far as most Hollywood films go, after all, it was made in France, not Hollywood; The Great Escape is absolutely typical of the Hollywood film, and the antithesis of Le Trou in style and atmosphere. Instead of “real” looking people, we have the chiseled, blue-eyed Steve McQueen and the slightly less-chiseled but still attractive James Garner, along with our requisite tough guys, Charles Bronson and James Coburn. Instead of a music free tense atmosphere, The Great Escape is packed with a rousing score by Elmer Bernstein, which has since gone on to become one of the most recognizable pieces of film music in history. Further, the civility shown between the warring sides here is most likely fiction, even though it, too, is (somewhat) based on actual events, at least historical certainties of POW camps in WWII. Though, I suppose the POW camps could have been different than the concentration camps.

This is not to say that The Great Escape is a bad film, but rather just a different one as compares with Le Trou. With such big Hollywood and international film stars, the events tend to become more glamourized by default. Yet, the planning, choreography, and dangers in the escape are palpable and riveting. And, lest you think that this is an overly sanitized version of events, there are moments of cruelty and arguable unwarranted shootings. In a mirroring of heist films, each prisoner has a duty or an area of expertise. As such, they also get memorable nicknames such as “The Ferret,” “The Scrounger,” or “The Tunnel King.” But our main point of focus is “The Cooler King,” so named because of the time spent in solitary, played by McQueen. If there is one thing to truly criticize in the adaptation from real life events to novel to screen, it is the focus of Americans as the more cunning escapees and stars of the film. In reality, American prisoners had little to nothing to do with the actual escape attempts.

But, with those things in mind and set aside as mere annoyances in storytelling fiction as opposed to truth, this is an enjoyable film. McQueen’s performance is one that surely cemented him in Hollywood legend and perhaps elevated him to the status of icon, especially with his motorcycle stunts. The music helps to establish a dramatic tone throughout the film as one of hope amidst diligence, as opposed to what it could have been, which is incredibly dour and despairing. As an action film, the right decisions were made, but it is definitely interesting to see the comparison which a film as diametrically opposite as Le Trou, despite covering similar topics.

Dead Ringer (1964, Paul Henreid)

Dead Ringer is another film that was a pleasant surprise, as one that I had not heard of, despite its star director and legendary star. Bette Davis is magnificent playing twin sisters, Margaret and Edith, a feat she had performed eighteen years earlier in A Stolen Life. Karl Malden is equally magnetic and engaging as Police Sergeant Jim Hobbson, the man in love with Edith, the poor sister. While Edith is poor, living in a squalid apartment above a jazz club in an alley (albeit a Hollywood studio alley, nearly sterile), her sister, Margaret, is extraordinarily wealthy, living in a mansion that has been used in over 81 films and television shows, including The Social Network, The Big Lebowski, X-Men, and There Will Be Blood. Margaret’s husband dies and Edith, three months’ behind on her rent and about to be evicted, concocts a plan to eliminate her sister and take her place.

Whereas some of today’s thrillers might focus on the tension leading up to the murder, this film gets to it in a hurry, as the more interesting part is how Edith psychologically deals with the guilt (if any), smartly maneuvers through this new life, and ultimately is found out. Please, how else could it end? The murder itself is tastefully done, cutting quickly from the seated Margaret’s face as she turns to face the gun creeping in from the side of the chair to the jazz drummer’s sticks hitting the snare from the club below. At first, Edith’s plan seems flawless. She cleverly ensures that the murder looks like a suicide based on poverty and depression, and has the real Margaret’s arm fall from a position that would match a self-inflicted gun wound. She later uses subtle and sly tricks to make sure that the mansion’s staff doesn’t let on to her lack of knowledge about the geography. When it comes to a point at which she must learn to sign her sister’s signature, she cunningly, but perhaps insanely, picks up a hot poker with her right hand in order to be forced to sign with her left to mask the discrepancy.

Ultimately, a few unexpected wrinkles do her in. For one, Duke, the Great Dane that belonged to her late husband, hated Margaret, but loved Edith. Duke, the only non-human character in the film, is the first one and the only for quite a while, to know the difference. The maid and the butler seem to be taken aback by her unorthodox behavior, in opposition to the behaviors of the real Margaret, but remain in the dark. Peter Lawford, who plays Margaret’s boy toy, eventually tricks her into revealing her true identity, but his harsh treatment of her leads the dog to attack and kill him. As Edith is tried for the crime of killing Margaret’s boyfriend, she makes one desperate attempt to convince Sergeant Hobbson that she is, in fact, Edith, but he cannot believe that the woman he fell in love with could commit such heinous acts. She, somewhat unbelievably, gets the death penalty, and Hobbson asks if what she said was true, if she truly was Edith, but she denies it, knowing that she had truly succeeded in escaping her previous life, yet could not escape her resultant fate. One of the more moving moments of the film comes when the butler approaches her and asks her what she would like him to say at the trial. “You knew the whole time?” she asks him. It appears that Edith was much better to the staff than Margaret was, and that means something to them. It is a truly memorable moment.

Friday's Playlist: 10-14-11

2011-10-14T15:47:00.001-07:00

Christopher O’Riley – “Fake Plastic Trees”
Morrissey – “It’s Not Your Birthday Anymore”
The Weird Sisters – “This is the Night”
The Smithereens – “Drown in My Own Tears”
Tom Waits – “I Don’t Wanna Grow Up”
Mew – “Owl”
The Black Keys – “Countdown”
Dan Wilson – “Across the Great Divide”
Torche – “Hideaway”
Blueprint – “Go Hard or Go Home”
The Doobie Brothers – “What a Fool Believes”
Kurt Vile – “Peeping Tomboy”
ABC – “Tower of London”
Low – “$20”
Jawbreaker – “Fine Day”
Mogwai – “Tracy”
Here We Go Magic – “I Just Wanna See You Underwater”
Danger Mouse – “Justify My Thug”
José González – “All You Deliver”
Engineers – “What It’s Worth”
Women – “Venice Lockjaw”
De La Soul – “Thru Ya City”
Oingo Boingo – “Weird Science”
The Cure – “Fear of Ghosts (Instrumental)”
The Like – “Trouble in Paradise”
Fujiya & Miyagi – “Pills”
Sufjan Stevens – “Sister”
Matt Pond PA – “Starting”
Gorillaz – “Last Living Souls”
The Smithereens – “Any Other Way”
King Khan & BBQ Show – “Invisible Girl”
The Pixies – “Heaven (Lady in the Radiator Song) (Live)”
Eels – “Love of the Loveless”
Morrissey – “Children in Pieces”
Hoodoo Gurus – “What’s My Scene?”
Morrissey – “Everyday is Like Sunday”
The Morning Benders – “Sleeping In”
Phoenix – “Love Like a Sunset Part II”
The Pixies – “Tame (Live)”
Happy Mondays – “Donovan”
Allman Brothers Band – “Melissa”
The Weeknd – “Thursday”
The Duke Spirit – “Everybody’s Under Your Spell”
Interpol – “Slow Hands”
DJ Shadow – “Midnight in a Perfect World”
Here We Go Magic – “Tulip”
The Pains of Being Pure at Heart – “Too Tough”
LCD Soundsystem – “Time to Get Away”
Propellerheads – “Spybreak!”
Smashing Pumpkins – “Snail”
Duran Duran – “Friends of Mine (Demo)”
Loch Lomond – “Carl Sagan”
Matthew Sweet - “Good Friend (Demo)”
Rufus Wainwright – “This Love Affair”
Hum – “Why I Like the Robins”
Fujiya & Miyagi – “Ventriloquizzing”
Mew – “Repeaterbeater”
Goldfrapp – “Voicething”
The Smithereens – “Only a Memory”
Girl Talk – “Get It Get It”
Galaxie 500 – “King of Spain”
Prince – “Let’s Go Crazy (Special Dance Mix)”
The Black Angels – “Entrance Song”
Radiohead – “Lucky”
Level 42 – “Something About You”
New Order – “Vanishing Point (Instrumental)”
Cults – “Rave On”
Morrissey – “Death of a Disco Dancer”
Lansing-Dreiden – “Part of the Promise”
Psychedelic Furs – “Love My Way (Acoustic)”
The Go! Team – “Rolling Blackouts”
Mister Heavenly – “Bronx Sniper”
Mike Ness – “Misery Loves Company”
Woods – “Pushing Onlys”
Best Coast – “The End”
Flying Lotus – “Recoiled”
Shabazz Palaces – “An Echo from the Hosts that Profess Infinitum”
The Antlers – “Hounds”
The Future Sound of London – “Lifeforms (Path 2)”
Idlewild – “Out of Routine”
The Pixies – “Weird at My School”
Megafaun – “Bonnie’s Song”
Otis Redding – “Respect”
Hooray for Earth – “Last Minute”
Fiona Apple – “Never is a Promise”
Stereolab – “Leleklato Sugar”

Thursday's Playlist 10-13-11

2011-10-13T16:12:00.000-07:00

Stevie Nicks – “Edge of Seventeen”
Lush – “The Invisible Man”
Kings Go Forth – “You’re the One”
Engineers – “The Fear Has Gone”
Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros – “Up From Below”
Fleetwood Mac – “Over My Head”
Tears for Fears – “The Conflict”
!!! – “The Most Certain Sure”
Wild Flag – “Endless Talk”
Surfer Blood – “Catholic Pagans”
Bee Gees – “Love You Inside Out”
That Dog – “Never Say Never”
Glasser – “Glad (Lucky Dragons Remix)”
Dexys Midnight Runners – “Come On Eileen”
The Tallest Man on Earth – “Honey, Won’t You Let Me In?”
Echo & the Bunnymen – “Proxy”
Nirvana – “On a Plain (Devonshire Mix)”
New Order – “Weirdo”
Suede – “Positivity”
Future Sound of London – “Just a F#$%in’ Idiot”
Jawbox – “Nickel Nickel Millionaire”
Yeah Yeah Yeahs – “Date with the Night (Live)”
Fleet Foxes – “Your Protector”
Blitzen Trapper – “Fletcher”
The Blood Arm – “Suspicious Character”
Spoon – “Before Destruction”
Weezer – “Velouria”
Engineers – “Emergency Room”
Flying Lotus – “Kill Your Co-Workers”
The Pretenders – “My City Was Gone”
Psychedelic Furs – “Shock”
The Kinks – “Shangri-La”
Fatboy Slim – “Right Here Right Now”
Male Bonding – “Year’s Not Long”
The Kinks – “Most Exclusive Residence For Sale”
Bomba Estéreo – “Camino Evitar”
A Flock of Seagulls – “(It’s Not Me) Talking”
Fleetwood Mac – “The Ledge”
The Cult – “She Sells Sanctuary”
U2 – “Sunday Bloody Sunday”
The Tough Alliance – “Take No Heroes”
Pelican – “March to the Sea”
No Age – “Katerpillar”
HEALTH – “USA Boys”
Clem Snide – “Denise”
Sonic Youth – “Teenage Riot”
Aimee Mann – “Calling It Quits”
The National – “All the Wine”
Jawbox – “L’il Shaver”
The Morning Benders – “Excuses”
Iron & Wine – “Glad Man Singing”
Danny Elfman – “Cool City”
Gorillaz – “Demon Days”
Bryan John Appleby – “Noah’s Nameless Wife”
The Kinks – “Nothing to Say”
Camper Van Beethoven – “At Kuda”
New Order – “Ceremony (Alt. Version)”
Smashing Pumpkins – “Never Let Me Down Again”
Supertramp – “Give a Little Bit”
Falco – “Rock Me Amadeus”
Janet Jackson – “Love Will Never Do (Without You)”
The Feelies – “Nobody Knows”
Mew – “Hawaii”
Wayne Newton – “Danke Schoen”
Interpol – “PDA”
Japandroids – “Sexual Aerosol”
Smith Westerns – “Smile”
Panda Bear – “Benfica”
Cake – “It’s Coming Down”
LCD Soundsystem – “Sound of Silver”
Finn Brothers – “Suffer Never”
Camper Van Beethoven – “Wasting All Your Time”
Peter Salett – “Heart of Mine”
Feist – “Comfort Me”
Small Black – “Hydra”
Belle & Sebastian – “I’m a Cuckoo”
Liturgy – “Son of Light”
Black Tusk – “The Takeoff”
The Cure – “Primary”
The Rosebuds – “Worthwhile”
Jason Forrest – “My 36 Favorite Punk Songs”
Radiohead – “Give up the Ghost”
The Cure – “Fascination Street (Instrumental)”
Pearl Jam – “Say Hello 2 Heaven (Temple of the Dog Demo)”