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Thursday, July 29, 2004

 

Sonic Youth in Concert


I caught Sonic Youth in concert at the Vic in Chicago Thursday night, my first time seeing them live. They were amazing!

Opening act Hair Police were a boring noise band on the surface, but with their Fuck You!s to the audience and their silly personas they were clearly doing some kind of art school performance art. I was embarassed for the few members of the audience who rose to the bait. Next up were a slightly better mediocrity named Wolf Eyes who I was told "had some buzz." Though the band has some noise potential, their performance was absolutely lousy. They played for about 15 minutes (Hair Police had played barely more), so most of the time from 8 o'clock to a few minutes after 10 when Sonic Youth took stage was spent waiting, so I was actually in a foul, angry mood when they started.

They were immediately so good, I instantly forgave them for foisting such bad bands on us and making us wait 45 minutes more before they went on. (They went on to play until a few minutes before midnight, including two encores.) I don't know their catalog as well as I should, but according to some people who wrote in to the SY message board (and comparing it to what I remember), their setlist looked something like this (album title abbreviations in brackets):

I Love You Golden Blue [SN]
Stones [SN]
Pattern Recognition [SN]
Unmade Bed [MS]
Skip Tracer [WM]
Kim Gordon and the Arthur Doyle Hand Cream [SN]
White Cross [S]
New Hampshire [SN]
Paper Cup Exit [SN]
Bull in the Heather [EJTANS]
Dude Ranch Nurse [SN]
Burning Spear [?]

(1st encore) Rain On Tin [MS]
Pacific Coast Highway [S]

(2nd encore) Sugar Kane [D]

(I think there was actually more, though.) I've always liked the Sonic Youth sound, but my enthusiasm for their albums has waxed and waned. Their new album (Sonic Nurse) is excellent, and I like the previous album (Murray Street) quite a bit. Clearly, Jim O'Rourke has reenergized the band. He was on fire at the concert, absolutely attacking his guitar. Everything about Sonic Youth came together for me at this revelatory show--the beat influence, the improv, the experimentation, the Branca stuff (which I am now very motivated to hear). It's all served to make this band stronger and more cohesive musically and, above all, masters of rock texture. (At times I closed my eyes and just lost myself in the sound, a feeling that took me back to the best rock concerts I've ever attended.) With four guitarists on stage, I spent a lot of the time trying to pick out the individual voices. At least once during the show, they lined up for a unified frontal assault on the audience that utterly blew me away.

Kim Gordon acted, basically, as the lead of this awesome band, which was only appropriate, as her material dominates the new album. At one point, teasingly thanking us for coming out to the concert rather than staying home to listen to Kerry's convention speech, Thurston referred to Bush as fuckface (cheer!), a bit later saying, "As a wise man once said, 'Women of the world, take over,'" a sly reference to a Jim O'Rourke song from Eureka. It also seemed like an acknowledgement of Kim's excellent front-woman skills. I was surprised how sexy (and sexual) Kim and Thurston were on stage. Thurston rubbed his guitar all over his body at one point like it was some strange sextoy, licking it, straddling it. It'd be stupid if most people tried that kind of over-the-top cockrock stuff, but it worked Thursday because they had the guitar chops (and vocals, not to mention drumming) to back it all up. I've heard/read that Sonic Youth hasn't been this good in years, so I feel lucky to have seen the band at their very best. I'm almost afraid to see them again, out of fear that they could never again live up to this concert.

- posted 7/29/2004

Friday, July 23, 2004

 

Jerry Goldsmith, Musical SF hero, Rest in Peace


It's sad to read of the death of composer Jerry Goldmsith. I can't pretend I ever followed his career the way I did star-composers John Williams or Danny Elfman, but his music was often a key, enjoyable part of films and tv shows. Most people would recognize his work for the Star Trek franchise when it returned from the dead starting in the late 70s. In my early teen years, I was much more taken with James Horner's more lush, melodramatic work for Star Trek II and III--they were some of the first LPs I ever owned and, along with William's Star Wars music, primed me for classical music long before I started buying rock/pop. But now, thinking of his work for the first film (which became the theme for ST The Next Generation) and for ST Voyager, I can appreciate now how he helped give Star Trek a consistent character. (If only Enterprise had used a Goldsmith theme instead of that awful song! The whole idea of singing a drippy song with lyrics just seems so wrong after Goldsmith's stately, brass-empasizing orchestral themes which had a somewhat regal flavor.) Looking at the list of film scores he composed, I have to admit I can't remember a lot of them, but most of them are movies I saw only once. I do remember his lovely music for The Trouble with Angels, a family favorite I saw several times growing up. There his music was almost a character in its own right, a melancholy, sweet theme that expresses the theme of adolescent growth and which is used in contrast to the comic hijinx of Hayley Mills and June Harding's characters. Other highlights include A Patch of Blue, Chinatown, Planet of the Apes, Patton (talk about memorable music!) and the Alien movies.

- posted 7/23/2004

Monday, July 05, 2004

 

Feeling Listless?


It's List Day! Oh, boy! Who doesn't love lists?!

A friend forwarded me a fun list of "The greatest intros in Rock and Roll" from the Palm Beach Post, of all places. A very classic, as opposed to contrarian, sensibility is at work here.


Then, there's Magnet Magazine's list of the TOP 60 ALBUMS 1993-2003, which apparently saw print some time ago but is new online. Since this is really my area of strongest interest, I was surprised how many CDs are on here that I hadn't even heard of--Jawbox's For Your Own Special Sweetheart? Grifters' Crappin’ You Negative? But there are some outstanding choices on here: The Shins, Pulp, the Wrens, Stereolab, Air, PJ Harvey, Interpol, Spoon (an album I just recently bought and love), and many others. R.E.M.'s New Adventures In Hi-Fi is a great choice, as it is such an underappreciated album and may be their best. I hate the choice for #1, but, isn't that often the case with these kinds of lists?


Lastly, a list announced some time ago, the American Film Institute's 100 Years 100 Songs list of top movie songs. Lots and lots of obvious choices, that oddly mixes songs from musicals and songs that were soundtrack hits. I'm happy they included "I Could Have Danced All Night" from My Fair Lady, but, as with several other musicals on the list (Grease, Chicago) you could include several more numbers. Of several songs included from West Side Story, I wish they'd included found room for "Officer Krupke," a brilliant song. Having seen more Westerns in recent years, I think there are much better Western theme songs (and Westerns) than the perennially overrated High Noon (#25). "Thanks for the Memory" is only associated with Bob Hope, and though he was a movie giant, I don't think it's a great song. "Put the Blame on Mame" from Gilda (#84) is a superb choice--great song, integral to the movie, an iconic movie, and a movie that is very much underseen. Lists like this should champion lesser-known classics! One of the criteria was to consider "songs that have captured the nation's heart," which is only going to tell us what we already know, amounting to a popularity contest. I was surprised and happy, then, to see a song from Cover Girl, "Long Ago and Far Away" (#92), an uneven film with great musical moments. ("The Show Must Go On" is a brilliant satire of wartime sacrifices made on the homefront.) But I wish they'd made room for "I Can't Give You Anything But Love," a key and great song from the great screwball comedy, Bringing Up Baby. And how could they overlook The Music Man? Maybe they should have limited it to 1 song per movie. Then there would have been room for some more provocative choices, like Hedwig and the Angry Inch, a strong rock musical made into an even stronger movie with an oustanding soundtrack. As is, the list reeks of Oscar and all he stands for.


- posted 7/05/2004


Thursday, July 01, 2004

 



Last week I saw a local production of Stephen Sondheim's Anyone Can Whistle. It was strange, very strange. The first third just seemed...bad, like an unsuccessul mix of Urinetown (subversive musical set in a metaphorical dystopia) and Hairspray (big, brassy woman character; gay camp elements). Of course, Anyone Can Whistle was written in the 60s. It was also a flop.


However, once you adjust to the musical's inner logic, its broad non-conformity themes expressed with asylum patients let loose amongst the larger population of a run-down town run by comically archetypal politicians, it begins to work a little bit. Actually, what happens is that the large cast is pushed off stage and you get some intimate time between
two likable characters (a heroic nurse and a heroic doctor), and the songs start to improve.


I like the themes, and I like the fact that the piece showcases two fun, flashy women (the hero and villain). The heroine, a nurse at a mental institution, can only lose her inhibitions when she dons a crazy red wig and takes on a racy French persona--an interesting drag theme. Was someone inspired by a friend who did drag? In the end, though, as unfair as it is to say regarding a show about nonconformity, the musical suffers for being just a little too weird. And though tuneful and interesting, these are not Sondheim's best numbers, not by a long shot.


*


Relatedly, today I read that Nathan Lane is writing for and starring in a production of The Frogs, a Sondheim effort that is based on a comedy by Aristophanes. The NYTimes article says, "He was already a Sondheim fan: 'Are you kidding?' he said. 'I'm a homosexual — it comes with the starter kit.'" Wow. I wish I'd gotten that kit when I came out. Must have gotten lost in the mail. It took me too many years to discover this great talent (unless you count West Side Story, which I don't, because that's Bernstein's music, even if the lyrics are amazing). Oh, and all kidding aside, you don't need to be gay to love Sondheim. Yes, he's that good.


I still haven't seen Passion, Assassins, Into the Woods, Follies, or Sweeney Todd, among others. The shows I have seen so far have been small productions--what I think of as true Chicago style, where, at their best, budget limitations elicit ingenuity, intimacy and purity of vision. Hey, an excuse for a list! I love lists. And I'll toss in ratings of the shows on a scale of 0 to 5 stars:



- posted 7/01/2004


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