I'd Love to Turn You On #208 - Dead Can Dance – Within the Realm of a Dying Sun

          I’m not exactly proud of what I’m about to tell you. But, there are certain bands that I cannot think about without also thinking about this particular time in my life. When I was in high school two of my best friends and I used to walk around downtown Dubuque, Iowa from pawn shop to pawn shop, shoplifting CDs, cassettes, VHS tapes and just about anything else you can think of. Not to brag, but over time, we got really, really good at it. We did it just about every weekend for what seems like two or three years straight, never getting caught and always coming away with a huge bounty. We even called ourselves the Pawn Shop Bandits, because we had so many foolproof ways to steal shit. We would steal so much in one day that I look back and truly don’t know exactly how we hid it all on our bodies. Again, not my finest accomplishment, but these thieving sessions gave us a unique opportunity to collect complete catalogs of albums by bands we were interested in. Think internet piracy but before there was an internet. So each week, the three of us would come home with entire discographies of bands like the Cure, the Ramones, R.E.M, Ministry and so many more.

            I bring this up because whenever I think about Dead Can Dance, I think about those days. They weren’t really one of “my bands” exactly (I think I maybe had one or two of their albums then), but one of my fellow PSB’s got really into them at the time and managed to collect just about all of their albums from these weekend outings. So I heard them a lot growing up and eventually they became one of my very favorite bands. My band, New Standards Men, even covered one of their songs for a spell. The album that grabbed my attention the most was their third album, 1987’s Within the Realm of a Dying Sun.

            To be honest, I think what finally brought me around to Dead Can Dance was the fact that many of the death and doom metal bands I was listening to at the time cited them as a huge influence. And this is absolutely the most evident in the sound of Dying Sun. It’s ominous without being too gloomy. It’s dark without being heavy, which at 14 years old I didn’t know was possible.

            Recorded in 1985 when the band was essentially just the duo of Lisa Gerrard and Brendan Perry (with drummer Peter Ulrich filling in), Dying Sun feels almost like a split solo record between the band’s two members. The A side is made up almost entirely of Perry compositions, while the B side is made up predominantly of Gerrard’s work. Some think that this song layout is a detriment to the album, adding a sudden and jarring shift between the two’s vastly different singing styles. I actually think that this works in the album’s favor, giving it an interesting diversity between sides. The result is both savagely beautiful and darkly ethereal. While I think the album is near flawless, personally, I probably prefer Gerrard’s songs over Perry’s. Gerrard’s vocal range is incredibly vast and she really showcases that on this album, able to go effortlessly from a deep, low range like in the gorgeous “Persephone” to a high, atmospheric pitch as in “Dawn of the Iconoclast.”

            Another thing I love about Dying Sun is that it seems to mark a kind of change in direction for the band. Gone now were the days of the simple gothic post-punk sound of their self-titled debut, as the duo began using odd instrumentation and time signatures to create a blend of neo-classical and chamber pop added to their post-rock base, a sound they hinted at on their previous album, Spleen and Ideal. Also, the band seemed more eager to take musical chances on this album, even writing songs like their iconic “Cantara,” that are, dare I say, “upbeat.”

            Again, the Pawn Shop Bandits days was admittedly not my finest hour, but I do look back on those days rather fondly. It was perhaps the time in my life when I discovered most of the music that I would later come to adore. And the way I see it, pawn shops are kind of known for ripping people off so maybe ripping them off was my way of getting even with them. Or maybe I’m an awful person. Either way, I’ve made peace with it.

-         Jonathan Eagle

I’d Love To Turn You On At The Movies #194 - Festival (1967, dir. Murray Lerner)

It is hard to imagine a music documentary that is more historically important than Festival. Filmed over three years (1963-1965) at the Newport Folk Festival, this documentary not only offers life-changing glimpses of three generations of American musicians, but it actually captures some of the moments that see the American cultural, social and intellectual landscape shifting from 1950’s black and white to 1960’s technicolor. Hard to believe, right? When the movie opens on a scene of Jim Kweskin’s Jug Band performing casually backstage and director Murray Lerner begins to question them on the importance of folk music and the meaning of the festival, harmonica player and future cult leader Mel Lyman launches into some wild-eyed rapping about this music’s place in current society, and in those few minutes you can almost see the scales falling from society’s eyes as one generation of highly educated, idealistic youth takes the baton of cultural relevance and runs akimbo toward an uncertain finish line and the mushroom cloud that lay beyond it. It, and so many other moments in this incredible documentary, provides insights of such societal prescience that it is almost forgivable to forget the multi-generational panoply of great American music also playing out on screen. That, ultimately, is what makes Festival different and better than so many music documentaries; it is the fact that Murray Lerner took years of work to get the balance between music and society just right.

Other than Bob Dylan’s historic first electric performance of “Maggie’s Farm” from 1965, there are no full songs presented in Festival. Rather, Lerner skillfully allows us to float through three years of festivals - the music, the crowd, the conversations, the styles, the unreal cars (if you love cool cars from the 60’s, it’s worth watching the movie for the brief glimpses of Corvettes, Mustangs and Jaguars that the seemingly endless sea of middle-class white kids arrive in), and the overall gestalt of the times. It is an inescapable fact that the audience is almost entirely white, collegiate and representative of all the historical advantages post WWII America has come to represent. The seeds of the mid- to late-60’s cultural revolution awaiting are blowing throughout this film. There are no hippies, no revolutionaries (except on stage), no bomb throwers, but the potential to become just that is clear in each earnest pronouncement the post-beatnik audience members mouth with heartbreaking innocence. Because the film jumps around so willfully and with such artistic intent (largely thanks to editor Howard Alk, who would go on to work on a number of important music films), it avoids most of the traps of other concert films, remaining interesting and unpredictable throughout. No obligatory drum solos, sycophantic journalistic talking heads or music video collage tricks to take the realism and grit out of the music. And ultimately, the beautiful music is what makes this film so special.

Festival, by the simple act of letting events play out before the camera, manages to capture and contrast three distinct generations of American musicians. First are the heritage acts that have always inhabited this festival. However, because this was the mid 60’s, those acts were primarily made up of musicians whose history stretched back to the pre-war age of American regionalism. Thus artists like The Blue Ridge Mountain Dancers, Eck Robertson, The Swan Silvertones and most importantly, the bluesmen like Howlin’ Wolf, Son House and Mississippi John Hurt provide a priceless glimpse into a lost America. There isn’t really one authentic bit of this “old weird America” as Greil Marcus called it left in 2018 - not one bit! That fact alone makes these images indispensable. The second, and most prevalent category of performer represented, is the one that most closely mirrors the audience - the contemporaneous stars of the folk and infant folk-rock boom. Peter, Paul & Mary, Joan Baez, Judy Collins, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Johnny Cash, Odetta and Pete Seeger among others offer proof of the sincerity of their music and their message. It is clear why each would go on to forge distinctly important careers. They are young and at the peak of their powers. The sight of Johnny Cash’s profile or the sound of Odetta’s powerful voice are enough to take your breath away. And these moments happen over and over in this film.

Of course the unspoken but clear sub-context is the fact that all this “real,” “homespun “ music was about to come crashing up against the cultural tidal wave that that the next five years of American history would prove to be. That wave is represented in the person of one Bob Dylan, whose appearances at all three festivals provide increasing levels of hysteria amongst the audience, and culminate with his 1965 electric set. Director Murray Lerner later went back and created a full-length documentary on just Dylan’s part called The Other Side of the Mirror. I highly recommend watching it as well; however, there is a magic poignancy to Dylan’s appearances within the context of the other two categories of performer outlined above. Having hindsight, knowing what we know now, it is indeed touching and fascinating to see Dylan paying tribute to and breaking the mold in the same moment. It adds the perfect air of suffocating inevitability to the seemingly joyous proceedings. Optimism ruled the day, but dark clouds gathered on the horizon. Completely essential viewing!

-         Paul Epstein

I'd Love to Turn You On #207 - Cat Power – You Are Free

After living outside of the United States for three years, I went back home to upstate South Carolina in 2003 and worked at the independent record store I shopped at growing up. Following that lengthy break from U.S. pop culture, I spent a lot of the summer catching up on recent developments in pop and independent music. Although I may have had a passing awareness of Cat Power (the stage name of Chan Marshall) in the late 1990s, I felt like she became an unavoidable entity in indie rock in the summer of 2003. I kept drifting into conversations with coworkers and customers about a recent Cat Power show in the region characterized by an exhilarating, yet unpredictable performance. Earlier in the year, Cat Power released You Are Free, an album that provides an excellent entry point for the work of this exceptional, vital artist.

 You Are Free opens with “I Don’t Blame You,” as a stately piano figure structures Marshall’s sensitive and direct address to a musician who struggled with the cost of success. The song highlights Marshall’s skill at evocative songwriting as it blends equal parts elegy for a kindred spirit and personal declaration of defiance. “I Don’t Blame You” introduces the album’s theme of Marshall reflecting on the notion of success, the life of an artist, and her choice to pursue this life. At this pivotal stage of Cat Power’s career, Marshall draws out this conflict between wanting to be a rock star and dealing with the consequences of the attendant success. This conflict has defined Marshall’s work and has often played out in real time in front of audiences all over the world. In this context, “I Don’t Blame You” feels like an act of bravery and a commitment to go forward despite the risks. The second song, “Free,” continues with the topic of songs about music, but breaks away from the thoughtful character study of the first song and jumps into a hypnotic guitar rhythm that sets the stage for lyrics that feel like free association about the unfettered joy music can bring into our lives. Up next, “Good Woman” offers the point of view from one side of a love that has begun to fall apart. Although the speaker states her resolve to leave, the song echoes with her confession, “I will miss your heart so tender.” The song begins with a sober guitar line that Warren Ellis soon accents with an aching and beautiful violin performance. As Marshall’s voice grows from fragile to confident, “Good Woman” blossoms into one of the album’s finest moments complete with a children’s chorus and backing vocals from Eddie Vedder. “Evolution,” the album’s final song, features a piano part reminiscent enough of “I Don’t Blame You” to provide the album with bookends of a sort, but this song delivers something far more elusive than the straightforward narrative of the first song. This haunting, enigmatic final note confounds as much as the first song invites and it ensures that the listener will soon return to this collection of songs.

A year and a half after the release of You Are Free, Chan Marshall worked with Handsome Boy Modeling School on their sophomore album, White People, and contributed the album’s most enchanting and surprising collaboration in the form of the sultry R&B workout, “I’ve Been Thinking.” The song’s polished production and nonchalant sex appeal hint at the kind of territory Marshall would explore in greater depth a couple years later on her next studio album and career breakout, The Greatest. In 2012, Marshall finally released a proper follow-up to The Greatest with Sun, a restless and adventurous studio album of original material that finds her embracing both her rock star charisma and her weirder inclinations with confidence and joy. You Are Free strikes an excellent balance between Cat Power’s spartan and engrossing early recordings and the richer, more nuanced sounds Marshall would delve into in the second half of her career.

-         John Parsell

I’d Love To Turn You On At The Movies #193 - Q: The Winged Serpent (1982, dir. Larry Cohen)

Poking around other reviews of this 80’s horror/comedy cult fave I found one written by Jason Hernandez on his site The Constant Bleeder that starts out “Writer/director Larry Cohen is a huge weirdo. So is lead actor Michael Moriarty.” And though I don't generally like quoting other reviews in my own, it’s hard to get around the fact that he’s zeroed in on the key thing I like about this film, and Cohen’s work in general - this guy’s a weirdo. He’s a funny weirdo. He’s a smart weirdo. And a weirdo who understands cinema. And a weirdo whose approach to filmmaking - rough and loose as it is - is like nobody else’s.

            Cohen began his career in television, writing for many genre-based series - westerns, detective/cop shows, thrillers, sci-fi, courtroom dramas - often creating episodes or entire series from eccentric blends of genres that undercut generic conventions. And though well-paid as a writer, he wanted to direct features. But feature films are expensive, and his eccentricity made it difficult to slot his concepts into niches that would be easy to advertise and to sell. Take his first feature, Bone, in which Yaphet Kotto plays a man who insinuates himself into the home of a Beverly Hills couple who are falling apart already partly due to the fallout of their Vietnam vet son who’s become an addict. Kotto demands that the husband retrieve money (that he believes they have but they don’t because the husband has squandered it unbeknownst to the wife) while he holds the wife hostage. The husband sees an opportunity to get out of his marriage and life, the wife waits at home with her kidnapper while her husband is off attempting retrieve money they don’t have (little knowing that he may not return), and she talks to and gets to know and perhaps even fall for Kotto’s kidnapper. What kind of film is that? It’s a drama, but can hardly be put into the more exaggerated superhero types of the then-new “Blaxploitation” genre; it’s comically satirical, but not laugh-out-loud funny; it comments side-wise on Vietnam but isn’t a Vietnam film. As the studio marketing person, how do you sell this film to audiences?

            And so it is with the rest of his work - he puts so many different things in them that they never fit neatly into a niche, they’re hard to pin down, and they don’t often satisfy those coming to them looking for the simple, straightforward genre pieces they appear to be. However, those who appreciate the way he confounds category, mixes up genres, elicits great performances from actors, and generally works intelligence and humor into every frame find much to enjoy in his films. And that’s where Q: The Winged Serpent comes in. On the surface, this is a simple monster movie – the artwork shows a sinister flying serpent hovering over the Chrysler Building holding a bikini-clad beauty – but it’s so much more than that. Taking off from ideas of 50s/early 60s horror films like It Conquered the World, The Amazing Colossal Man, Monster of Terror and the like, Cohen interjects a story of would-be-lounge-singer-turned-petty-criminal Jimmy Quinn (played beautifully by Michael Moriarty) into the mix.

The film opens with an Empire State Building window washer (played by an actual window washer on the Empire State Building, naturally) getting his head chomped off by the flying lizard. Quinn then sits down with mobsters to plan a jewelry store robbery. We get more chomping action from the lizard (which rains blood down on to unsuspecting NYC pedestrians) then we see perhaps why Quinn isn’t working as a singer as he bombs an audition (with a jazzy number improvised by Moriarty himself) that Captain Shepard (David Carradine) happens to catch. Next, Quinn is off with his mob acquaintances for the robbery, which of course goes disastrously wrong, and he flees the pursuing police, running into the Chrysler Building where he discovers a giant nest at the top of the building. Shepard and his partner Powell (Richard Roundtree) meanwhile, are investigating a murder committed in what appears to be a ritualistic style reminiscent of ancient Aztec sacrifices in which the victim gives himself willingly to bring forth Quetzalcoatl, a flying serpent god. Is it possible that the ritualistic murders are connected to the flying lizard plucking victims off of New York City’s rooftops? If so, can Captain Shepard convince his superiors that an ancient Aztec serpent god has been raised and is wreaking havoc on 1980s New York City? Can Jimmy Quinn extricate himself from the mobsters who are looking for the stolen diamonds? Will there be a half dozen more absurd questions like these that raise themselves when you actually watch the film? The answer is a resounding YES for the last one, but I don’t wanna spoil any of the others for you! Watching the plot unfold in many directions at once is part of the fun of the film, but the real fun is watching the actors play it deadpan serious.

According to writer/director Larry Cohen’s hugely entertaining (and highly recommended) commentary, Moriarty got more interested in the film after learning Cohen’s way of working on the fly – only a few notes would be written about a scene to shoot, with dialogue often laid down on the spot and allowing for maximum improvisation; finding a location, showing up with cast and crew at the ready and knocking on the door to ask if it was available to shoot at – in ten minutes – and blocking out the action as soon as the location was secured, and so forth. It’s the exact opposite of every-shot-planned-out-to-the-last-detail directors like Kubrick and Hitchcock and gives Cohen the room to change things, improvise (and improve) scenes, dialogue, and ideas as the film is being created. Everywhere Moriarty seems smaller than his 6’4” frame as he inhabits this slouchy, hunched-over loser who’s very much an echo of the can’t-win characters Richard Widmark played in Night in the City and Pickup on South Street. David Carradine agreed to work with Cohen again (they’d worked together in Cohen’s TV days) sight unseen, and arrived direct from the airport for his first day of shooting knowing nothing about his character or the film he was about to make, only having been told by Cohen “Wear a suit.” And this film, with its special effects, many interlocking story threads, was put together in about a week, and shot in less than three – after Cohen was fired from a bigger budget production of I, The Jury he turned around, knocked out this script he’d been holding on to and made Q. Cohen found an ideal producer in Samuel Z. Arkoff, producer of all three of the 50’s horror/sci-fi “classics” above, and for whom the idea of a flying lizard god over Manhattan was right up his alley (upon meeting Rex Reed after a screening at Cannes and hearing him gush: “All that dreck--and right in the middle of it, a great Method performance by Michael Moriarty!” Arkoff deadpanned “The dreck was my idea.”). And the New York of 1981 is as much a character in the film as any actor – it’s as much a New York piece as any Lou Reed album.

Films like this just aren’t made any more – it’s simply not possible to get together a film for just over a million bucks and get it into mainstream theaters anymore. It’s a continuation of the B movies of the 30s – 50s –cheaper, shorter films meant to support a big budget “A” film on a double feature – that were largely given over to the “exploitation film” boom of the 50s and 60s. By the 1970s, producers like Arkoff and Roger Corman had brought these films to mainstream theaters – manufactured at a fraction of a mainstream film’s cost – but by the 80s this style of film was already being pushed out following the blockbuster successes of Jaws and Star Wars with studios’ eyes firmly set on massive money, not modest, well-crafted, profit-turners like Q. And now it’s big budget, big studio versions of films like this that seem to dominate the box office and mainstream theaters, and in this field Cohen seems to be forgotten, not having written or directed a film in over 8 years after a hugely productive 70s and 80s. But these newer films almost never have the verve, love, guts, brains, or humor of Cohen’s best work – and they *never* have the low budget!

-          Patrick Brown

I'd Love to Turn You On #206 - Gang Starr – Hard to Earn

If I explain what I love about rap it would be captured in “Mostly Tha Voice.” Take some great drums, add a James Brown bass line from “Give it up or Turnit A Loose,” insert a great voice and some masterful rhymes, and let the DJ scratch and add some flavor - it’s a magic combination. “It’s mostly tha voice, That gets you up/ It’s mostly tha voice, That makes you buck/ A lot of rappers got flavor, and some got skillz/ But if your voice ain’t dope, You need to chill.” Guru had one of the most incredible and instantly identifiable voices in rap. His raspy style never felt rushed or uncertain, and he always delivered great lyrics. DJ Premier would often use a spoken word phrase from another rap song and scratch it up as a chorus or an intro, as he does at several points on this record. Hard to Earn was the fourth Gang Starr record and it was released in 1994.

The first full length song, “Alongwaytogo,” is set up in an interesting tension/release cycle by DJ Premier. He starts out by using a springy sample taken from the Quincy Jones song “Snow Creatures” along with a vocal sample from A Tribe Called Quest’s “Check The Rhime.” When Guru is rhyming in the verse DJ Premier sustains a long, tense tone over the beat. This suspended tone provides pressure which can be released at the chorus. Once the chorus arrives he releases the sustained tone and slices up one of his trademark vocal samples (“How far must you go to gain respect?”). These clearly marked sections are not only a hallmark of Gang Starr’s style but also a sign of how well designed the songs are.

“Code Of The Streets” starts out with a sample of Monk Higgins’ “Little Green

Apples.” It is a descending chord progression that loops throughout the song. DJ Premier has reprogrammed the drums underneath the sample to have a more bouncy and lilting feel than the original Blue Note record. The lyrics explore stealing cars. “Take this for example young brothers want rep/ Cause in the life they’re living, you can’t half step/ It starts with the young ones doing crime for fun/ And if you ain’t down you’ll get played out son.” “Brainstorm” is a pure exhibition of rhyme and DJ skill. The beat is very stripped down and Guru is throwing out rhymes as DJ Premier scratches records and fades them in and out. It is another example of Gang Starr’s strength and cohesiveness as a duo stripped down to the bare boned essentials.

Currently “This Is America,” Childish Gambino’s hit single/video, has millions of views on YouTube addressing many of the same issues that “Tonz O Gunz” presented in 1994. This song contains a sample of the Isaac Hayes song “Breakthrough” and starts off with an excerpt from a Malcolm X speech. “Tonz O Gunz” is about guns flooding into poor neighborhoods and the black on black violence that happens as a result. “The Planet” uses Steve Davis’ “It’s All Because She’s Gone” as a rhythmic and melodic bed for Guru’s story of moving to New York. Once you hear the original sample it’s amazing to hear what it is transformed into. It is sped up slightly and the drums are reprogrammed underneath it giving it a springy and bouncy feel. Guru tells the tale of his moving to Brooklyn and the challenges that it presented in a cohesive narrative that is wrapped around a catchy chorus. “Boom bash dash, I had to break, I had to getaway/ Packed my bags, to leave for good, it was a Monday/ Kissed my mother, gave my Pops a pound/ Then he hugged me, then he turned around.”

Another high point for the record is “DWYCK.” It features the duo Nice & Smooth and the sample of the drums is a simple bed of bass, snare and high-hat from the first few seconds of Melvin Bliss’ “Synthetic Substitution.” “Mass Appeal” loops a guitar lick from the Vic Juris record “Horizon Drive” to be the recurring motive for its melodic content. Once again DJ Premier breaks up the verse by scratching a spoken word version of the chorus. This time he is scratching a vocal sample from Da Youngsta’s song “Pass Da Mic.” One of the impressive things about DJ Premier’s sample selections is the variety. Jazz records, blues records, and R&B all make appearances, but in addition how about the Malcolm X sample, Gong, or even sampling a line from one of their own records? This record is dense with samples and lengthy at 17 tracks. I wish I could go into detail about each song but that would make this brief essay too long. Instead I’ll try and impress upon you that the basis of each song is a choice sample or three, and that the rhyming is top notch. Guru has a voice that is one of the best in rap, and the chemistry and cohesiveness of this duo should not be missed. The song topics may fall solidly within a predictable genre and variety of topics, but it should be taken into consideration that this is prototypical New York rap in the 1990’s. The listener must contemplate the execution and the atmosphere. DJ Premier takes classic samples, often combines them with then contemporary influences of peers, and tailors beats for Guru to inhabit and show his skills within.

-         Doug Anderson

I’d Love To Turn You On At The Movies #192 - A Serious Man (2009, dir. Joel & Ethan Coen)

          Joel and Ethan Coen have been my favorite filmmakers for almost my entire life, whether I knew it or not. I’m pretty sure that I had watched 1987’s Raising Arizona around fifty times when I was a kid, before I had any interest in who created it. Later, I became obsessed with their nineties films. Fargo, which came out when I was in high school, was a real stepping stone for me as it was probably the reason for my interest in the deeper aspects of filmmaking and for my eventual foray into film as an academic pursuit. And, as cliché as it may be for a male of my age, 1998’s The Big Lebowski is one of my all-time favorite films, if not my all-time favorite. My point is, the Coens have been with me for the better part of my life, seemingly putting out a new film for every phase I’ve gone through. I’ve studied them closely over the years and almost consider them friends that I grew up with. And for this reason alone, I feel qualified to talk about their work.

            Writing about A Serious Man technically breaks the rules of this blog as it’s just under 10 years old. But of all the brothers’ works, I wanted to write about this film the most because it’s not only possibly the most overlooked film in the Coens’ oeuvre, it’s also a film whose subject matter I simultaneously relate to yet know very little about. More on that later. A Serious Man revolves around a Jewish family living in a small Minnesota suburb in 1967, all details that pertain directly to the Coens’ upbringing. So while not strictly autobiographical, these are characters and surroundings that are familiar to the brothers. The always phenomenal Michael Stuhlbarg plays the film’s protagonist Larry Gopnik, a college physics professor whose life begins unraveling when his wife announces she is leaving him for his best friend. This forces him to take a closer look at his life and notice the flaws that he hadn’t previously seen. His son is acting out in Hebrew School, his daughter steals money from him all the time, his unemployed brother-in-law is leeching off of him and he is being simultaneously bribed and blackmailed by one of his students for a more satisfactory grade. When everything goes wrong for Larry, he seeks the guidance of three rabbis to help him get through his crisis and gain a better understanding of his place in the world. The rabbis unfortunately are no help to him, as one lacks the life experience to relate to Larry’s problems, one just offers irrelevant parables that confuse more than they teach and the last one refuses to even see Larry. He begins questioning his faith and wondering whether God is testing him.

            I think part of what makes this film such an underappreciated part of the Coens’ filmography is that, coming out on the heels of Best Picture winner No Country for Old Men just two years prior, A Serious Man is more of a labor of love than their usual undertaking. While the film’s dark humor is pure Coens, it seems like it could be a story that the brothers have had kicking around for years, perhaps dating back to their own days as young Jewish Midwesterners. The cast is made up of largely unknown actors, relatively speaking, and even the way it’s shot seems different than that of their usual cinematography, almost more like a thriller than a comedy. While these facts may deter some from seeing the movie, opting for one of the Coens’ more critically acclaimed titles instead, I think these are reasons to see the film, reasons that A Serious Man might be one of their best. It’s the film that most mirrors what their own lives may have been like, which is fascinating in and of itself. But it also seems like a film they’ve always wanted to create and show the world, and perhaps winning the Best Picture Oscar finally afforded them the creative freedom to do it.

            As I said, I really wanted to write about this film because even though I am not Jewish and do not identify with really any religious customs, I understand reaching crisis mode. As I approach forty next month and have recently gone through a break-up of my own, I’ve done a lot of reflecting recently myself. I do know what it feels like to question whether the universe is testing you or punishing you and the Coens’ have eloquently written this feeling into the character of Larry Gopnik. Larry is just an average guy, trying to be “a serious man” while the world continuously shits on him. Yet he takes it all in stride because of his faith. A Serious Man is also a story about when those limits are tested and where the breaking point is in each person. One doesn’t have to be religious to identify with that.

-         Jonathan Eagle

I'd Love to Turn You On #205 - Sly & The Family Stone - There’s A Riot Goin’ On

There are certain records that for a variety of reasons fall into the category of inexplicable. Something in the writing or the recording process makes it live outside the rules by which we normally judge albums. What are some examples? Can’s Tago Mago, Brian Eno’s mid-70’s vocal albums, Bob Dylan’s Time Out Of Mind, Spiritualized’s Ladies And Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space, D’Angelo’s Black Messiah to name a few (although admittedly these albums are few and far between, which is ultimately why they are inexplicable). The king daddy of this type of record though is Sly & The Family Stone’s 1971 masterpiece There’s A Riot Goin’ On.

From the very first notes, we realize we are in an alternate universe. Thick, warm, analogue (this is an album to listen to on vinyl if you can get it) notes burble out like velvet, pouring from your speakers, as Sly straddles the universes of soul and rock, essentially inventing funk as we listen (we’ll let James Brown and George Clinton in there too). The songs all seem like clouds passing in front of Sly’s window that he is trying to grab, but they dissipate just as he gets his arms around them. The hits on this album – “Family Affair,” “You Caught Me Smilin’,” and “Runnin’ Away” – clock in at about 3 minutes each, yet each one feels like an epochal leap forward in the evolution of conscious soul. That’s part of the inexplicable nature of this album - time seems to come unglued; there is no sense of normal song length and structure, even though most of the actual songs (save two) are short. By all accounts the recording process was chaos, with Sly, rolling in dough and high as a kite, inviting friends (like Miles Davis, Bobby Womack and Billy Preston) to his rented home studio for days-long sessions that seemingly were producing nothing but enormous studio bills. Credits were not kept, tapes were erased, Sly himself overdubbed other people’s parts. However, Sly was indeed sly and as one of the most experienced and talented producers of the 1960’s, he took this molten insanity and turned it into a cohesive work of startling originality. There are no credits on the album, just a bunch of photos that capture the era, and this just adds to the inexplicability of the album.

Every single song on this album is worth inspection, so let’s look at each one:

“Luv N’ Haight” – a wink-wink to the counterculture - it was issued as a single, and it sets the stage beautifully for this album. Disembodied vocals and keyboard jabs punctuate the roiling bass line. Like many of the songs on the album, it lacks traditional song structure, but rather takes a pounding beat and turns it into a statement.

          

“Just Like A Baby” - a bit more conventional structure, but still way out. A ballad with a classic slow funk burn. It highlights Sly’s incredible sense of restraint and subtlety. He doesn’t let the languid beat out of his sight for one second. And he resists every temptation to rev the song up into something other than what it is: perfection.

           

“Poet” - Sly was using a primitive drum machine on some tracks, and it is remarkably effective in combination with the airy sense of the songs and his spare keyboard parts. Again he shows amazing restraint in keeping a lid on this track. It feels like it could explode at any second, but instead it keeps an amazing shuffle groove going under the self-referential lyrics.

           

“Family Affair” - One of Sly’s greatest hits, it touches on issues of race and love and relationships in a poetic and beautiful way. The backing track boils along like a coffee percolator, with Sly giving a great vocal and his sister Rose providing amazing counterpoint vocals. A true classic.

“Africa Talks To You ‘The Asphalt Jungle’” - Side one closes with this almost 9-minute titanic shot of funk. All the parts lock together like some crazy psychedelic jigsaw puzzle, amazing bass playing up front competes with Sly’s woozy vocals as guitar scratches and tasty keyboard fills lurk around every corner. Like a Miles Davis cut, this sounds like it was extracted from some other endless jam, and in its own context succeeds magnificently as mountain of rock-solid funk. Once again, the theme of this album is restraint. For someone taking mountains of drugs, Sly had an incredibly cohesive vision for what this album was going to sound like. And as such, it stands as an album like no other he made. It isn’t a collection of songs - it is a sound statement.

“Brave & Strong” - Side two starts upbeat with a lurching bass line playing hide and seek with punchy horns and a typically indescribable Sly vocal. More than any singer I can think of Sly influenced a new generation of singers. He, like James Brown, reveled in his own unique ethnic brilliance. He wasn’t trying to fit in mainstream society, he was pointing to a place of pride in who you actually were.

“(You Caught Me) Smilin’” – The most irresistible track on the album, it also jumps like an actual hit single. Slap bass, one of his best “up” lyrics, horns that seem to come from the heavens like heralding angels, and classic Sly keyboard work. When I want to turn somebody onto this artist, this is one of the first songs I play them.

“Time” - Another slow, one might even say torturous, ballad. This song again shows off Sly’s vocal mastery above a simple drum machine beat and subtly placed keyboards, proving that less is more.

“Spaced Cowboy” - The most fun track on the album, and possibly in his entire catalogue, this song contains one of the most hilariously deranged vocals (including the great “soul-yodel”) placed squarely over a driving funk beat. An absolute must for mix tapes.

“Runnin’ Away” – irresistible, guitar-driven little ditty that is deceptive in its simplicity. It is actually an incredibly clever bit of writing that might not have sounded out of place on a Fifth Dimension album. Prescient lyrics that seem more relevant today than ever.

“Thank You For Talkin’ To Me Africa” - A monster! This is the demo version of Sly’s earlier hit “Thank You For Lettin’ Me Be Mice Elf Agin.” It is over seven minutes of pounding, perfect funk. Poppin’ bass, funky clavinet, a loping beat and Sly giving his best half-lidded hipster vocals. It is a foundation piece of all funk.

The overall effect of this album is like getting in a time machine and ending up in 1970 Los Angeles, wandering down a street at dusk, soul music blares from a window here, the thud of a truck there, raw emotional feelings of race, sex, drugs, politics seems to bubble up from the pavement. You drop to one knee, stick your ear to the ground and the inexplicable sound you hear is There’s A Riot Goin’ On.

-         Paul Epstein

I’d Love To Turn You On At The Movies #191 - Brazil (1985, dir. Terry Gilliam)

Just before my senior year in high school I kept coming across references to a relatively obscure, yet influential movie from 1985 called Brazil. I didn’t know a lot about it, but I knew that Terry Gilliam had directed it and that musicians I liked and people I respected spoke highly of it. At the time, I had become familiar with some of Gilliam’s work and I had enjoyed movies of his like The Adventures of Baron Munchausen and The Fisher King. However, none of this prepared me for what I was about to see. Brazil bursts forth with an unbridled visual creativity while telling a story of dystopian horror that savors details of mundane beauty and absurdity. The summer I turned seventeen, Brazil exploded my expectations of what a movie can be, affirmed my love of art that surprises me, and reminded me of what we all stand to lose in a technology-addled society that prizes conformity and obedience above all else. 

In the performance of a lifetime, Jonathan Pryce combines a guileless charm with a sometimes frantic physicality for the lead role of Sam Lowery, who is part everyman and part Walter Mitty. In his job as a lowly records clerk, Sam discovers an error in the system that sets in motion a series of events that takes him far from the routine drudgery of his nondescript life up to that point. Veteran character actor Ian Holm showcases his strong comic abilities with the role of Sam’s inept and spineless superior in the records department, Mr. Kurtzmann. Michael Palin (Gilliam’s Monty Python colleague) plays upon his intrinsic good-natured amicability to deliver a devastating portrayal of Sam’s friend and professional rival, Jack Lint, who specializes in the deceptively titled practice of “information retrieval.” Best known for irreverent, matronly roles on TV shows like Soap and Who’s the Boss?, Katherine Helmond brings charisma and gusto to her depiction of Ida Lowery, Sam’s outlandish, vain, and controlling mother. Sam’s path crosses with Jill Layton, a truck driver who witnesses the results of the system’s error, and Sam begins to confuse her with a gauzy, angelic figure who floats through his recurring dreams. As Jill, Kim Greist injects an unorthodox, tense energy into what could otherwise remain a thankless love interest role. One of the screenwriters’ best inventions in the entire film is the character of Harry Tuttle, an anarchist heating engineer who serves as the story’s valiant rogue and ignites within Sam a notion of resistance. As Tuttle, Robert De Niro almost steals the show with a robust and droll performance that endures as one of the most captivating, distinctive supporting roles of his career. The cast also includes two memorable supporting turns from longtime character actors who would both go on to much greater notoriety: Bob Hoskins as a dubious Central Services agent and Jim Broadbent as the star plastic surgeon of Sam’s mother’s social circle.

Terry Gilliam put everything he had into making Brazil and because of this, it’s a movie that rewards repeated viewings (I watched it twice in one day in preparation for this post and to be honest, I kind of want to watch it again right now). Working with playwright Tom Stoppard and actor Charles McKeown (who also plays a minor adversary of Sam’s), Gilliam created a totalitarian culture tilted just enough from our own reality that we can still laugh at the absurdity of it all. This trio of writers had a field day with exploring the way euphemisms, bureaucracy, and propaganda can define our relationships, values, and lives. Brazil has inspired a lot of movies over the last thirty plus years, but I’ve never found another one that comes close to reaching the same range of comedic heights and emotional depths.

-          John Parsell

I'd Love to Turn You On #204 - Nellie McKay - Normal As Blueberry Pie: A Tribute to Doris Day

Nellie McKay is a jazz-schooled, showtune-raised singer-songwriter whose stylistic tour-de-force debut double-album Get Away From Me was recorded when she was only 21 (or possibly just 19, depending on what reports you read), released by Sony Music after a bidding competition with other labels, with the Beatles’ engineer Geoff Emerick producing. That’s a lot to live down on future releases. And sure enough, the failure of the album to go gold despite the record’s widespread acclaim and dazzling diversity (or maddeningly hyperactive eclecticism, depending on your point of view) meant that she wouldn’t coast as readily into a music career as her talents deserved.

And talented she definitely is - a multi-instrumentalist and piano player with jazz chops, a singer of pure and natural ease and a big voice, a lyricist with sarcastic wit and strong feminist and progressive ideas, a songwriter who knows jazz, Broadway, varied styles of pop from classic to modern, and yet isn’t averse to dropping rock and rap into her music when it suits her. But her métier is the classic pop vernacular where songsmiths use whatever means they choose to get their point across - melded, of course, with her interest in jazz and pre-rock era pop music.

After fighting her label to release her first album a double album, she fought yet again to make the second a double album and Sony balked – one double album that could’ve fit on a single CD was made by the label under duress, but they weren’t about to do it again and they dropped her, so she released it on her own label. The next time out she tightened things up to an excellent single disc, Obligatory Villagers, tightened the arrangements as well, and traded in pop guests from the last album, like Cyndi Lauper and kd lang, for jazz cats, like saxophonist Dave Liebman and the sadly, recently deceased pianist/vocalist Bob Dorough (best known nowadays for his work on Schoolhouse Rock). And it seemed like a perfect fit – her crafty, jazz-school arrangements and witty, smart lyrics were tailor-made for musicians like these, but the album still didn’t break her through.

It was after the release of this album that I saw McKay live at the now-defunct Trilogy Lounge in Boulder. After three albums of her eccentricity I wasn’t sure what to expect, and I got this (if memory serves): McKay with keyboard and ukulele only, a great voice, great song selection across all three albums, and a kookiness that bordered on ADD behavior, her mind and between-song banter flitting from topic to topic until she lost her train of thought and got back on with the next song where she focused her energy until the next break. During one break she called her brother on her cell to wish him a happy birthday – or pretended to maybe as a piece of performance art? Hard to say for sure, but it’s what she does – jumps from idea to idea, never sitting still long enough to get pigeonholed. So what came next in her career? A tribute to Doris Day, naturally, released by the jazz-associated Verve label, which had put in a bid for McKay’s contract in the first place.

How does Doris Day’s image as a mild and complacent Midwestern housewife fit in with McKay’s world of parental advisory stickers, hip-hop influence, and explicit feminism though? Aside from a love for the verbal wit of classic pop (as well as a longtime commitment to animal activism), McKay’s got a basic love of melody and the voice to pull off the kinds of tunes that Day wrapped her big voice around. Taking on a dozen songs that Day recorded during her long career (only one of them, “Sentimental Journey,” was a big hit for Day) and adding one original, McKay tackles tunes from such lauded songsmiths as Rodgers and Hammerstein, George & Ira Gershwin, Johnny Mercer and others, and, unexpectedly enough, plays it straight throughout. She’s not here to mock, but to celebrate the direct beauty of these melodies, the craft and (sometimes) sentimentality of these words. In short, she’s playing it “normal as blueberry pie” here and it sounds great. If you compare to Doris Day’s versions, Nellie McKay’s are sleeker, wilder and looser, unburdened of Day’s orchestral backings and given jazzier, more rhythmically exciting readings, but readings where McKay shares Day’s clear diction and enunciation and, of course, her big voice putting the songs across. So from love songs like “The Very Thought of You” (on which McKay plays every instrument), “Mean to Me” and the album-highlight “Wonderful Guy” over to dance tunes like “Crazy Rhythm” and “Dig It” to a novelty tune like Calamity Jane’s “Black Hills of Dakota,” Nellie McKay doesn’t update, undercut, or do anything but sing (and arrange, and perform) these tunes. Maybe there’s a wink here and there, as in the sotto voce asides in “Dig It” but she’s never making fun – she’s just loving the songs. This puts the focus on the songs and the words themselves, which means that those coming to this expecting a sendup can learn not only what made these songs popular, but also what made Day popular – there’s a smart, strong woman performing them and she’s easy to identify with. And though McKay’s arrangements may go further than Day could or would have gone with them at the time, they do no disrespect.

            And where has Nellie McKay gone since then? Another album of originals for Verve (Home Sweet Mobile Home) followed in 2010, then McKay disappeared for a bit, returning in 2015 on yet another label with an excellent album of renditions of 60’s classics, My Weekly Reader. She was quiet again for a while but I got inspired to write this up only to find while I was writing that her new album, Sister Orchid (a collection of jazz standards on, again, another label), comes out in three weeks. Be sure to check it out, but start here with what may well be her best album.

-         Patrick Brown

I’d Love To Turn You On At The Movies #190 - Pink Floyd - Live At Pompeii

     When first released in America in 1973, Pink Floyd Live At Pompeii was a moderate success, playing in art theatres, on campuses and at midnight movie showings. That was where I first saw it - at the Vogue Theatre on old South Pearl Street (now condos) at a midnight showing. Beginning with a heartbeat pulse in blackness, the scene finally opens with a camera shot above the ancient ruins of the amphitheater at Pompeii. The title wasn’t hyperbole or poetic nonsense -this was actually psychedelic, art-rock rock band Pink Floyd playing in the audience-free remains of a 6^th Century Italian ruin – an absolutely mind-blowing conceit from the word go. The ruins themselves make for the most cosmic of backdrops, yet director Adrian Maben goes further, filming Pompeii’s famous active volcano spewing lava and boiling mud, and having the members of Pink Floyd stroll through this alien landscape. Maben also includes shots of the world-class statues, tiles and frescos (some highly erotic) found in the ruins of Pompeii. These elements, along with some additional footage of the band playing in a French studio are masterfully woven together to encapsulate everything that Pink Floyd was at this time; inventive, powerful, ambitious, and uniquely standing on the precipice of world superstardom. Yes, remember, this was before their groundbreaking Dark Side Of The Moon album. In fact, in some ways, the overwhelming success of that album blunted some of the movie’s impact on public consciousness. The director’s cut of the movie includes extended scenes of the band working on Dark Side in the studio, which, while fascinating, change the vibe of the film.

For me, it is the original hour-long version of the film that I go back to over and over. It is an important milestone in my personal understanding of why, ultimately, rock music matters. To see one of my favorite bands, and one that has stood the test of time, in this context, shoulder to shoulder with the great artifacts of Western art and culture was both humbling and thrilling. Musically, Pink Floyd play some of their most adventurous music with authority and improvisational abandon. Numbers like “Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun” and “Careful With That Axe Eugene” are the perfect combination of musical convention and cutting-edge, avant experimentation to match the timeless setting. The scene during the song “A Saucerful Of Secrets” where Roger Waters stands in front of and strikes giant gong as the sun sets behind him in the ruins of an ancient stadium while guitarist Dave Gilmour sits barefoot and shirtless in the ancient dirt of Pompeii drawing the most extraordinary sounds out of his instrument are about as memorable and historically impactful as any scene in any music movie.

The musical heart of Pink Floyd Live At Pompeii are the three numbers drawn from their 1971 masterpiece Meddle. The film is bookended with their side long epic “Echoes” which pretty much defines forward-thinking ambition in modern music at this point in history. Again, the historical surroundings meld perfectly with Floyd’s intense, throbbing composition. “One Of These Days” finds the production team down to one working camera, thus the shots revolve around drummer Nick Mason, providing a dizzying swirl of movement that beautifully illustrates the excitement of the song.

I definitely recommend watching the entire director’s cut of this film, because it offers such a rare glimpse into the studio magic (and sometimes tedium) that goes into making a classic album, but, ultimately, it is the actual footage of Pink Floyd playing in the ruins of Pompeii that provides the life-altering experience in this movie. I’ve never gotten over it. To this day, every time I hear that heartbeat opening I am transported back to the body of a 16 year-old sitting in a darkened theatre about to be shown that popular music could be about something deeper than “ooh baby I love you.”

-         Paul Epstein

I'd Love to Turn You On #203 - Jamie Lidell - Multiply

        The only thing I knew about Jamie Lidell in 2005 was that he was on Warp Records and he made a lot of bleep-bloop electronic music that was not for me. I liked a few artists on Warp at the time (like, Autechre and Aphex Twin and that’s pretty much it), but for the most part, that style of electronic music did nothing for me. Still does nothing for me, really. So when Multiply came out in that year, I decided to put it on for in-store play at the record store where I worked at the time. I figured that it would be filled with random computer noises that I could easily ignore, and maybe we’d sell a copy in the process. Little did I know that when I hit play that day that it would become one of my most listened to albums of all-time.

      

Allow me to explain: Multiply is not just a change in direction for Lidell. With one prior solo full-length under his belt and a handful of releases from his duo Super_Collider with fellow electronic artist Christian Vogel, Lidell had already made a name for himself in techno and electronica circles. However, on Multiply, he makes a complete 180-degree turn into a new genre with the addition of vocals to these new compositions. What makes this addition so striking is that the man had evidently been hiding an incredibly soulful crooning voice and a knack for writing clever lyrics all these years, giving this album the soul and spirit of classic Motown or Stax. He puts these hitherto unknown skills to use with a dynamic blend of acoustic and electronic instrumentation, while still retaining his unique ear for modern dance styles.

            It takes a minute. The opener, “You Got Me Up,” is a short little dance number with some effective disco-style vocals. But it’s not enough of a departure to really predict what’s in store with the rest of the album. It’s only when the second track, the stellar and infectious title cut, kicks in with its abrupt drum break intro that you realize that this guy is decidedly not fucking around. The influences here span across decades and across genres. There are elements of Funkadelic (“When I Come Back Around”), Otis Redding (“What Is It This Time?”), Night Beat-era Sam Cooke (“Game for Fools”) and Prince (“New Me”). Where his prior talent as a turntablist/laptop artist really comes into play are in tracks like “A Little Bit More” where he effectively uses a loop of his own vocals to act as a layer of percussion throughout the song. The Motown-esque “Music Will Not Last” showcases his uncanny ability to harmonize (albeit, with himself), and the closing track “Game for Fools” is quite possibly a better version of an Al Green ballad than even the Reverend himself could do these days.

            And let’s back up a second. Again, a mere three years before the release of Multiply, Lidell was pretty much doing straight-up IDM exclusively and playing second stage on festivals like Sonar with no name DJs. Since Multiply, he’s released four more phenomenal neo-soul records that would put Harry Connick Jr. to shame. On his most recent, 2016’s Building a Beginning, he’s even ditched the electronic instruments altogether in favor of a live band.

These days, you can’t spit without hitting a nerdy-looking white guy trying to sound like a classic soul singer.  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard a new release within the last few years that sounded like Rufus or like Cameo, and then looked up the artist and found that he was a bespectacled white dude mugging to the camera like a total asshole. It would be kind of funny if it wasn’t so infuriating, even more so when I find myself actually digging some of these artists. I’m not saying that in 2005 there wasn’t any of this. Hell, Sean Tillman was doing his Sean Na Na/Har Mar Superstar thing long before 2005. Nor am I saying that Jamie Lidell was the first to successfully mix electronic music and R&B. There was a time in the 90s when I couldn’t get away from that shitty Jamiroquai song to save my life. What I am saying is that Multiply spoke to me in a way that I hadn’t to been spoken to before. And I am forever grateful that I gave this album a chance and didn’t see the Warp Records logo on the back of the album and ignore it like I’d done so many times before.

-         Jonathan Eagle