Film Notes

Caught Lightning in a Bottle on cable recently. This is a recording of a 2003 blues tribute staged at Radio City Music Hall to benefit the Blues Foundation. Performers include Buddy Guy doing Jimi (Red House, Voodoo Chile with Angelique Kidjo), Bonnie Raitt, Ruth Brown/Mavis Staples/Natalie Cole both soloing and as a trio, Shemekia Copeland and Robert Cray doing – among other things – “I Pity the Fool”, old-timers like Hubert Sumlin and Honeyboy Edwards, and sitting down for the most part (but still dominating the stage) BB King and Solomon Burke. It’s not a seamless show - it tries to “theme” more than it needs to; but there are far more hits than misses, and you should catch it if you have the chance.

I also caught two good movie music bios in close succession. On cable, I finally got around to seeing Ray, and yesterday, Mrs. DjStan and I saw Walk The Line. Both films were anchored by fine performances all around, particularly Jamie Foxx’s Ray Charles, Joaquin Phoenix’ Johnny Cash, and – not the least of the three – Reese Witherspoon conveying all the hardcore spunk, the honesty, and the country music aristocrat's noblesse oblige of June Carter. Musician bios follow a general pattern – struggling background, harsh truth of the business of music, drugs/booze, rise and fall and rise again through the redemptive love of a good woman. Both Ray and Walk follow the basic storyline, but they do it well.

Interesting side notes – both movies root much of the protagonist’s psychological problems in the loss of a brother (for Ray, a younger one; for Johnny, a much-loved older), both musicians need to be told (by a prescient producer – Sam Phillips for Johnny, Ahmet Ertegun for Ray) to “stop imitating [X] and make your own music”. Then there’s also the traditional drug division – Ray falls victim to the jazz drug (heroin) while Johnny gets caught up in the C&W thing (pills & booze). One common warning from both films: watch your ass carrying drugs across the border; both Ray and Johnny get nabbed by customs.

Final thought: both musicians are told that they're facing eternal damnation because of their music - Ray by a pair of prophetic hecklers, and Johnny by the hell-bound Jerry Lee Lewis. To paraphrase The Righteous Brothers, if there's a rock 'n roll Hades, you know they've got a heavenly band!

How She Got Over

Listening to some church music recently and had a chance to compare versions of the gospel classic, “How I Got Over”, as performed by Aretha Franklin, Mahalia Jackson, and Clara Ward. They’re all great singers and powerful performers, but the winner is definitely Aretha, filled with passionate joy and reaching notes – with power – beyond the capability of mere human beings. It’s on the Amazing Grace set, and I recommend it to all fans of gospel, soul, and transcendent musical experiences. You know who you are.

A Call for Action!

Recently, the Republican leadership refused to allow a resolution to reach the floor of the Senate. The bill, sponsored by New Jersey’s Senators, sought to honor Bruce Springsteen on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of Born to Run. At last, have Frist & Company no decency??? Write, phone, or email your Senator now, and in the name of political fairness and justice, demand a straight up and down vote for the Boss!

Voices

I was listening to Blind Willie Johnson (the Dark Was The Night CD). His “normal” singing voice is actually a pleasant tenor, but he sings most of his songs in a growling, raspy baritone. It reminded me of Tom Waits, whose voice seems as consciously constructed as his songs (which - when it comes to Tom, at least - is not a bad thing). Compare the lighter timbre of Closing Time, say, with Small Change. We’re not talking Jim Nabors or Crazy Guggenheim here (the distorted and wacky talking voice coupled with an angelic singing one), but the intentional construction of a rough-toned singing voice. I wonder if Waits was listening to Blind Willie J. when he started experimenting with his voice? And then I was listening to Marianne Faithfull’s 20th Century Blues (her cabaret act, featuring Brecht/Weill songs) – now there’s one whiskey and smoke voice that sounds like it was earned.

On the general subject of voices, I was recently gifted with Garcia Plays Dylan – a two disc set of Jerry Garcia’s interpretations of Dylan songs. The tracks are all live, and assembled from a variety of Garcia sources; mostly the Jerry Garcia Band with a few Dead tracks, some work with Merle Saunders, and even a cut from The Legion of Mary. Truth to tell, I’m not a big Dead fan. I don’t believe there are more than a handful of artists capable of improvising on a song effectively for more than 10 minutes, and the vast majority of those are jazz musicians (there are others, like John Fahey and Sandy Bull, and musicians from other traditions, including raga and gamelan); by and large, the Dead don't make my list. The Dead’s playing has always struck me as being far too self-indulgent AND their voices are uniformly undistinguished (this isn’t to say they’re not good; their two peak studio albums – Workingman’s Dead and American Beauty – have long been favorites of mine; their voices work far better in close harmony, which they can do very well; their songbook is outstanding).

Garcia’s voice in particular is wispy and lacks an edge. This makes it hard for him to put across a lot of Dylan’s work; his take on “Positively 4th Street”, for example, is almost apologetic when it should be searing and bitter. He’s better off sticking to material like “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door” or “I Shall Be Released” …and a little more discipline on the instrumental breaks would also be welcome.

And then it was Neil Young’s 60th birthday – lots of airplay on my commute. Young is another artist whose work I respect deeply – ace guitarist, fine songwriter – but whom I don’t listen to much because of his voice. I just don’t dig it. I wouldn’t call it nails on a blackboard, but it’s close. Even so, there are some Young songs that I’ve included in sets, like “Unknown Legend”, his bolero, “The Ways of Love”, and “Needle and the Damage Done”. I even own Harvest and Mirror Ball, but I can only take him in small doses most of time. It's just a personal thing though, so happy 60th Neil, and long may you run.

Rhapsodizing

Every night (well, almost every night) I walk about 2 miles on a treadmill. I bought it because I knew that I’d never be committed enough to go the gym 5 or 6 times a week, but that I stood a good chance of actually exercising if the equipment was in the house. It’s been over a year now, and I’m still at it. I bought it because basically I like to walk – always have. The treadmill faces a TV with a DVD player, and I watch while I walk. Since I walk in roughly half-hour sessions, I wanted to watch something that came in discreet segments and was entertaining. The solution: cartoons!

I’ve always been a fan of classic (and not so classic) animation, which probably started back in my early childhood when kid’s fare on the tube consisted of strange black and white cartoons from the 20’s and early 30’s intermixed with old serials (Don Winslow of the Coast Guard, Tim Tyler’s Luck) and obscure westerns. The cartoons included a lot of output from the Fleischer studios (Betty Boop, Koko the Clown, etc.) and an inexhaustible supply of Farmers besieged by infinite numbers of mice (these usually ended with mice pouring out of faucets, pumps, refrigerators, etc.) in a world where any object – toasters, washing machines, houses, trees - might suddenly spring into animated life. I loved them and still do.

I don’t purchase many DVD’s, but most of the ones I buy are animation in one form or another. My tastes grew to encompass Disney (of course), the wonderful Warner Brothers, and others. In later years, I got into Jiri Trnka (whose version of The Emperor's Nightingale haunted my dreams), George Pal’s Puppetoons - he also did special effects for movies like When Worlds Collide – and later still, people like John and Faith Hubley, the Brothers Quay, Jan Svankmeyer, and – more recently - Hayao Miyazaki.

So I walk, and I watch, and – often – I laugh. Not all of these are funny, for sure (the fascinating Disney On The Front Lines collection has some hard-core anti-Nazi propaganda shorts, to say nothing of Victory Through Air Power), but most of them are, especially the Looney Tunes of the 30's and 40's. The time passes amiably, the exercise is accomplished, and as a bonus, it seems that laughing out loud is actually an aerobic exercise as well as a mood elevator.

Which brings us to Fantasia 2000, which I was watching while walking the other night. This attempt to recapture the magic of the original Fantasia has its ups and downs. It has far too much celebrity introduction material – totally unnecessary – and most of the segments are flat and not particularly inspired. There are some good moments, though, and one unqualified masterpiece that belongs up on the shelf with the best of Disney animation (and almost anyone else’s) – the studio’s take on Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue.



The brilliance of the high concept was to take Gershwin’s justly popular piece and use it to tell a series of interlocking stories set in 1930’s New York and done in the artistic style of master caricaturist (and seminal New Yorker), Al Hirschfeld. Somehow the animators worked out a method of catching the fluidity, grace and wit of Hirschfeld’s line, added a large dose of humor, painted the action in a blue-heavy pallet, and set it all to Gershwin’s Rhapsody. The result is a gem that makes the whole overblown Fantasia 2000 production worth seeing.

I watched it twice in a row while pounding out the paces, and was captivated both times. There’s even a brief moment when the “camera” pans up and looks through an apartment window to catch sight of George Gershwin himself playing the piece on the piano. I don’t know enough about the man’s life to know whether or not he’d have appreciated this, but I’d like to think he would have. The piece certainly appreciates him, his time, his city, and the music he created.