Anatomy of a Performance

Well, this won't be all that. But I did catch Heath Ledger's movie Batman Begins yesterday. It was my first viewing. And I was not disappointed.

As with everyone else I'm sure I experienced that strange, woe feeling. You admire the performance, but ask "Is this what killed him?" And is it worth it to always put 1,000 percent of your energy into a work for which you will be known? For this I admire him still and can use as fuel. As can you.

It was like watching a stand up comic who is really, really good. And the way they push you and push you until you are completely in their arms waiting for the next weird place you were going to go. I cannot explain it any other way. Seeing that Dent campaign sticker on Joker's nurses outfit was especially great.

As a fellow viewer pointed out...He could have worn anything, but he chose a nurses outfit.
The method, indeed, he will be missed.

For director's address I'm with Manohla Dhargis who called that sunrise shot of Heath flapping his mop into the bright light purple air out of a police car is a masterpiece of the framing kind.

I did notice something in the voice characteristics that seemed like he may have gotten from seeing Tom Waits live. The way Tom Wait's nerdy, sooty, adolescent deepness quirkily navigates a joke in On The Road from his latest collection Orphans. There are a lot of strange ticks in his, as I've read it from clever critics, punk rock performance, of which the Waits influence may be one. There's a little androgyny, a little Clockwork Orange, a little Deniro in the stalking moments.

We can call Heath's Joker the ultimate Orphan, or juvenile delinquient. A mad genius boy who has been kicked too many times, shunted to the back of the pizza line, neglected by his parents, and fallen into the aegis of unsupervised academia and devious strategy. There is always something of the boy in his performance. And those are the boy who take guns to school and pore over maps to make it effecient and to put the indifferent layman in these horrible, ethically compromising situations.

Never did I feel like I was watching a comic book character, but a very real and sad unwanted byproduct of hostile American society. Those other Batman films succeeded in caricature. This in the gruesome reality of times we, it seems, can't shy away from anymore.

THAT is no country for old men

Okay for all you Yeats heads out there...

W.B. Yeats is one of those old poets that lend resonance to the word protean. He went through phases and rolled with the times, adapted..fixed his mind...changed it. He was enthusiastic and crazy prolific as a result. And he was the author of those very catchy words "That is No Country for Old Men," a sobering, yet lyric musing on old manhood.

In America we tend to give a lot of credence to the art that burns young and dies before it can get old. But Yeats offers us a refreshing contrast. All through his life, Yeats was hitting literati with interesting angles and duplicities. His nationalism is otherworldly in the collection The Wind Among the Reeds. In the famous 1902 uprising poem where a he manages to sound cold, scientific and a believer at poem's end. As layman, guys you couldn't pay Yeats to have a stout with on a normal day, become martyrs for the new Irish state, Yeats realizes that "A Terrible Beauty is born..."

I think of Yeats the way I do because of my travels in Ireland. Yeats loved that land. It created the wild weather that blew any sense satisfaction away from him. It was the home of the woman who never returned his love for her. It was where his plays were booed...

I was talking to a musician/young idealist from Illinois at Galileos tonight and we talked about how we embrace new media, but like to hold the object as well. He wants to work in zines and likes to have one to carry around. I was reminded of the strengths of the online option. The NYTimes ran a story about Yeats, and they found this learned woman to dissect Yeat's whole process in slide shows and audio. This is what online journo is doing that's so great. It may be tough to handle with all 10 minutes, but it's nice to probe for a bit. I'll link it here...

http://video.on.nytimes.com/?fr_story=1d933b7a401812e13341edb76287c6574ce321a8

I don't have an ounce of Irish in me, but that place and its people still have enormous weight in my mind. Can one's nationality be transformed through the alchemy of words?.... That's a question Yeats probably couldn't answer if he had lived on miraculously until today. He might say that it's okay to like a little bit of them all.

Return of The Chainsaw Kitten

Wrestled with Blogger for two hours yesterday to try to get a video a file of my first podcast uploaded. Videofile you say? We cut the thing on Final Cut Pro. As you can see, we are beating in the bushes here. And when we get out, we'll have four good tunes and some 'eh' narration.

Yesterday I grabbed Tyson Meade (former lead singer of The Chain Saw Kittens, Defenstration, Norman alterna power pop cult Godfathers) from a house he's staying in wait for his flight back to Shanghai and for one last show before then. The occaision was for an interview with The Gazette for an upcoming solo show that I found story worthy.
Tyson is the champion of Philip Rice, lead singer of The Neighborhood. The two will play solo sets.
I talked with both of them and let them talk to each other. Meade gave advice. Kind words all around and talks of the future and of this show coming up at Opolis July 26. Should be a good mix of folks there. The Norman hipsters of today, and the Norman hipsters of yore (whom I always assumed were a little crazier).

http://www.starlightmints.com/opolis.html

I took a break from transcribing to watch a video from The Kittens. I'm just coming to their music, and I find it invigorating, and sad and fun and everything that life in rock is supposed to be I think. Especially Loneliest China Place. Soaring guitars, sad topics.

I hear Meade's solo material is something to hear as well. Here's a video from the Kittens's good years.

http://isis67.multiply.com/video/item/336/Chainsaw_Kittens_-_Pop_Heiress_Dies

Scott Hiram Biram/Woody Fest

Scott Biram ratcheted up some street (or trucker) cred for actually getting hit by a truck in a 70mph collision and living to tell about it. He's tough I think. It takes one to grow up and out of a place like Kingsbury, TX. His songs about that place are vivid and entertaining.


Talking with him he's pretty soft spoken which comes in handy during some of his softer songs like Lost Case of Being Found.


In addition to being a good stomper and a yeller he handles traditional American songs like The Rock Island Line and Wabash Cannonball.


He'll be at Opolis..Next Monday at the Hillgrass Bluebilly show with Bob Log.


I wrote him up here....May post a full transcript soon.





http://www.okgazette.com/p/12853/a/2291/Default.aspx?ReturnUrl=LwBEAGUAZgBhAHUAbAB0AC4AYQBzAHAAeAAslashAHAAPQAxADIANwA0ADgA








It'll be a good punctuation for a sweaty weekend with the old timers at Woody Guthrie Fest in Okemah, which every one should go to because it's free. One of my coworkers complimented the nil entrance fee with a Kristofferson quote. "Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose....."

For specifics on this event jump to http://www.woodyguthrie.com/

David Amram will be there playing with his son the drummer. He was the cat playing Keyboard in some documentary they made about Kerouac spitting poetry at a New York museum for the first time. He wrote the score for Splendor in the Grass and the original Manchurian Candidate. Composed with Bernstein. Farmer. Cosmic traveler. He has recently written a symphony with Woody's songs and loves coming down here, especially for the Saturday morning Pancake Breakfast. He'll talk to you about his French horn jazz and beats all day and he wrote about those times in two books, one called Vibrations. The spirit lives.

John Fullbright is probably 20 now. He plays at the brickstreet grill basement at noon Friday. He's the real deal, a voice scratching sandpaper that's 30 years older than him. Excellent picker. He sings songs about his brother in Iraq and other heavys in the outlaw country style. He covers Earl Keen and Don McClean in a real easy way. He sounds like a natural. He's from this ghost town. I'm hoping he's kept up the skills.




My 2006 trip to Woody Fest is still my one Google worthy moment...Just riding on the tail of Woody's ramblin' legacy.





http://www.popmatters.com/music/features/060804-okemah.shtml

There will be camping. I'm told there are more peaceful spots out by the little Okemah Lake so any crew that jumps on with us may have that to look forward to....

End of an Era

I've been a bit slow on the digital music. I download it. But then I immidiately burn it to CD. Compact Discs are disposable, easily scratched, yes. But they were there for me (used and new) when I needed them. And it's kind of hard to say goodbye to them.

Selfish nostalgia aside this New Yawka saw his community CD shop go under, and his "rock star" life disappear. I see a loss of community, and luckily here in Norman the kids have a place to talk about music matters with knowledgeable clerks. Market and rent aint' like it is in New York.

At any rate, here's Sal's story told in one of my favorite little features in Newsweek, My Turn.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/143754

OKG Cover Story

If you are in the Oklahoma City area I encourage you to pick up a copy of the Gazette. It's my first cover story and a worthy one. It's on Jabee.

Well Jabee was worthy of a bigger story. If I'd a known when I set out on this one that it had a chance at the cover I would have tricked it out with some more sources and some language. But, no bodder, Jabee will tell it best Saturday night at the Conservatory with an LA artist who I hear from credible sources is grrrreat. His name is Blu.

See you there.

The link: http://www.okgazette.com/p/12857/a/2247/Default.aspx?ReturnUrl=LwBEAGUAZgBhAHUAbAB0AC4AYQBzAHAAeAAslashAHAAPQAxADIANwAzADAA

Coming Soon

I began work today at my co-producer's house on a No More Yesterday's Papers music podcast. I probably won't have time to record one once a week. So we might shoot for every other week (tentatively). What we'll have is 4 songs with narration from me. These four songs will be good ones organized in streamline fashion across a larger theme. The first theme, not to give too much away, has a Coming Soon theme. Meaning you will be able to hear all of the podcasted artists live and loud in Oklahoma.

I don't want this to be just letters and symbols and pictures and things when we have the potential for more.