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Vol 3 No. 3 ///// Mar 2011
BEATS ON THE
SILVER SCREEN
OSCAR
PICKS
2011
REVIEWS FOR
RADIOHEAD
CUT COPY
& MOGWAI
80 Minutes
of Music that
Patronizes &
Degrades Women
LETTER
FROM
THE EDITOR
CONTENTS
Vol 3 No. 3 ///// Mar 2011
FEATURE
A: EURIPIDES.
EUMENIDES.
06
Analyzing the Beats' recent film
comeback, plus our Oscar picks
Q: What the Grecophilic tailor
REVIEWS
said to the clumsy client with
torn pants.
I know it's only been a couple weeks,
but the March issue includes our
Oscar predictions and personal
choices, which explains the early release. In this month's feature story,
Quin Slovek looks at the recent Beat
film craze and how it effects the
respective legacies of the movement's major poets. We also talked
to Milwaukee funk band Kings Go
Forth frontman Andy Noble about
the group's unexpected popularity
and his love of obscure soul 45s. Reviews include the new surprise Radiohead record, Cut Copy, Mogwai,
and more. We also welcome two
new writers to the squad (Omahans
Katie Cook and Anna LaHood) and
a new assistant designer (Jessica
Teel). It should be nice to have a
few more females on board, but if
they ever act up, I will kindly direct
them to his month's playlist...
32
Read reviews for Cut Copy, Drive-By
Truckers, Lykke Li, Mogwai, PJ Harvey,
and Radiohead
INTERVIEW
An exchange with Andy Noble of
Milwaukee funk/soul band
Kings Go Forth
24
PLAYLIST
38
80 Minutes of Music that Patronizes
or Degrades Women
james passarelli
02
03
OUR STAFF
ISSUE CONTRIBUTORS
Editor-in-Chief
James Passarelli
Copy Editing
Layout
Pat Passarelli
Ainsley Thedinger
Kathryn Freund
Jessica Teel
Featured Writers
Anna LaHood
Katie Cook
Rob DeStefano
James Passarelli
Asif Siddiqi
Quin Slovek
Ryan Waring
Web Design
Greg Ervanian
Rob Schellenberg
Photography
Ankur Malhotra
James Passarelli
Sandy Sharkey
Stark NY

We gladly welcome
any criticism or
suggestions. If you
have any ideas for
the magazine, or if
you would like to be
a part of it, please
contact us at: info@
inflatableferret.com.
CONTACT US
via Email
via Interweb
GENERAL INQUIRIES
info@inflatableferret.com
WEBSITE
www.inflatableferret.com
TOM KUTILEK
tom@inflatableferret.com
HANS LARSEN
hans@inflatableferret.com
JAMES PASSARELLI
james@inflatableferret.com
RYAN WARING
ryan@inflatableferret.com
04
Copyright © 2011 Inflatable Ferret
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06FEATURE
OSCAR
PREDICTIONS
2011
WORDS: Rob DeStefano / James Emerson /
Anna LaHood / James Passarelli / Ryan Waring
AT A
CHRISTMAS
GET-TOGETHER,
a family friend asked me if I thought, for the
most part, the academy awards the deserving films. When I expressed my general contempt toward recent Oscar presentations, he
requested a list of years in which the Best
Picture winner was undeserving. Hm…1990
(Dances with Wolves over Goodfellas), 1994
(Forrest Gump over Shawshank Redemption
and Pulp Fiction), 2000 (Gladiator over Traffic), 2002 (Chicago over The Lord of the Rings:
The Two Towers and Gangs of New York), 2005
(Crash over any other film made in 2005). And
those are just the painfully obvious ones! But
before this takes the path of an outright tirade (oh no, am I too late?), I will express my
satisfaction with this year’s nominees. And
I will not downplay the difficulty of this year’s
decisions – each category this year is likely to
at least produce a respectable winner. Still,
we cannot leave you without our thoughts—
here are our picks and our Oscar predictions.
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Best Picture
Actor in a Leading Role
NOMINEES
Black Swan
The Fighter
Inception
The Kids Are All Right
The King’s Speech
127 Hours
The Social Network
Toy Story 3
True Grit
Winter’s Bone
WINNERS
OSCAR'S PICK:
The Social Network
OUR PICK: Black Swan
A Golden Globe isn’t cool. You know what’s
cool? An Oscar. The Social Network built its
dedicated fan and critic followings with the
same memorable lines that invited lampoon.
Without David Fincher’s vision to support them,
they might be lost in the hype, but the veteran
director ties together the many talents behind
the film in the Mark Zuckerberg biopic. Though
The King’s Speech is the clear favorite with
twelve nominations, we have a sneaking suspicion Fincher’s impressive digital age comedic
drama will pull of the upset.
Still, the true number one has yet to be mentioned. Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan brings
new meaning to the words “movie experience,”
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combining Clint Mansell’s brilliant transformation of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake, Matthew Libatique’s awesome cinematographic luster, intermittently delicate and nauseous camera work,
and a solid cast. Its superior finale alone is
enough to merit its nomination. Considered by
many to be too jarring or sexually exploitative,
Black Swan has been unfairly cast into the art
film pigeonhole. Observed apart from such aspersions, however, the film stands not only as
the best film of the year, but also one of the best
of the decade.
*Special honors to the wonderful Winter’s
Bone for our own new category, Best Use of a
Ferret in Motion Picture. JP
Laura Sparham
Colin Firth was our “should be”
pick last year for his riveting performance in A Single Man. He lost to an
equally deserving Jeff Bridges, but
Firth seems to have attracted more
than just our support in 2011, as all
accounts suggest that his stammering George VI in The King’s Speech
might make for one of the least suspenseful envelope openings since
the Pony Express. Firth is certainly
overdue for the award, but a win
here does not at all indicate a reward
based on his body of work. His King
George is astonishingly accurate
(although co-star Guy Pearce is the
historical monarch’s spot-on doppelganger) and especially unique,
despite Firth’s previous shy roles.
Javier Bardem and Jesse Eisenberg
are close behind, and James Franco’s
performance in 127 Hours is a distant
fourth, distant as in Buckingham Palace to Bluejohn Canyon. RW
NOMINEES
Javier Barden
(Biutiful)
Jeff Bridges (True Grit)
Jesse Eisenberg
(The Social Network)
Colin Firth
(The King’s Speech)
James Franco
(127 Hours)
WINNERS
OSCAR'S PICK: Colin Firth
OUR PICK: Colin Firth
Actor in a Supporting Role
Sebastian Mlynarski
Christian Bale finally proved that
his weight-fluctuating method acting
is no gimmicky compensation. The
high-flying critical momentum of his
performance as the eccentric boxing
has-been-turned-trainer should withstand the hiccup at the anglophillic
BAFTA’s and deliver him the Oscar.
His only competitor is Triple Crown
winner (Oscar, Tony, Emmy) Geoffrey Rush as Lionel Logue, George’s
speech therapist in The King’s Speech.
Why is no one talking about John
Hawkes? The lone small-name actor of the group, Hawkes brings
added backbone to an already exquisite Winter’s Bone as Teardrop,
Ree Dolly’s hard but caring uncle.
With sparing dialogue Hawkes lets
his eyes speak for him, and, having
little knowledge of his background,
we nonetheless share an intimacy
with him like that of a real uncle. The
scene in which Teardrop stares down
the craven town sheriff with a rifle in
his lap sends chills down the spine. I
commend the academy for the nomination, but it’s a shame that it will be
nothing more. JP
NOMINEES
Christian Bale (The Fighter)
John Hawkes (Winter’s Bone)
Jeremy Renner (The Town)
Mark Ruffalo
The Kids Are All Right)
Geoffrey Rush
WINNERS
OSCAR'S PICK: Christian Bale
OUR PICK: John Hawkes
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Actress in a Leading Role
Actress in a Supporting Role
NOMINEES
NOMINEES
Annette Bening
Amy Adams (The Fighter)
Helena Bonham Carter
Melissa Leo (The Fighter)
Hailee Steinfeld (True Grit)
Jacki Weaver (Animal Kingdom)
(The Kids Are All Right)
Nicole Kidman (Rabbit Hole)
Jennifer Lawrence
(Winter’s Bone)
Natalie Portman (Black Swan)
Michelle Williams
(Blue Valentine)
WINNERS
OSCAR'S PICK: Melissa Leo
OUR PICK: Melissa Leo
WINNERS
OSCAR'S PICK: Natalie Portman
OUR PICK: Natalie Portman
Niko Tavernise
Natalie Portman’s portrayal of the
tormented Nina Sayers in Black Swan
gives a beautifully disturbed take on
the intensely competitive world of
professional ballet. Portman’s fragile
brilliance rides on her wholesome talent to evoke a range of emotions from
the audience as her sanity wanes.
Her stunning dedication—which demanded significant weight loss and
tireless dance practice—s shines
through, as she encompasses an aggressive edge while still maintaining
a naïve clarity. In the end, Portman’s
struggle with good and evil leaves
viewers with a rare glimpse of a thor-
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oughly unraveled character that is so
physically and emotionally crippled,
it’s frightening.
Michelle William’s heart wrenching role in Blue Valentine is the only
nomination for the film, and the
young Jennifer Lawrence was the
solid base of Winter’s Bone, but neither has enough to overcast Portman.
The only foreseeable upset would be
Annette Bening for her depiction of a
kind-hearted yet overbearing lesbian
doctor, mother, and wife in The Kids
Are All Right. Bening has been nominated twice before, but never taken
one home. AL
Ordering a fight on Pay-Per-View should be
a different experience than watching a movie
about boxing. Generally speaking, the effective
sport movies articulate either the rise or the
downfall of an athlete by means of the utmost
human perspective: This Sporting Life and Raging Bull. The Fighter takes an interesting approach to the genre by focusing its attention
on the family involved; this isn’t to say we don’t
see Wahlberg or Bale undergo a character arc.
The dysfunctional family is a refreshing bunch
to observe; they’re comical, angry, vulnerable,
desperate, and distressful. I accredit the matriarch, Leo, as the dictator of these emotions.
She delivers an often-loud performance—and
the academy does love these—but her family’s
blue-collar woes and the film’s subject matter
warrant such an energetic display. Leo succeeds at thinning the line between the character and the performer, making Alice Ward
intensely believable and captivating.
Additional recognition goes to Hailee
Steinfeld for her committed performance in
True Grit, though she doesn’t support so much
as she does lead—academy voting procedurals
and studio executives landed her here. More
importantly, the greatest snub award in this
category goes to Dianne Wiest for Rabbit Hole.
Over the years she’s collected three nominations and two wins for best actress in a supporting role, but this doesn’t discredit her unchanged talent in the recent performance. I say
swap out H.B. Carter. RD
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feature
Animated Picture
Achievement in Cinematography
NOMINEES
Matthew Libatique (Black Swan)
Wally Pfister (Inception)
Danny Cohen
Jeff Cronenweth
Roger Deakins (True Grit)
WINNERS
OSCAR'S PICK: Roger Deakins
OUR PICK: Matthew Libatique
Niko Tavernise
If revenue were the primary criterion for film criticism, then Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen would
be bounds above Citizen Kane on the greatest films
list. But money has to count for something. Not that
Toy Story 3’s number five position on the list of highest grossing films has much to do with our decision.
Its box office numbers simply evince its charm as an
animated movie suitable for all ages and its ability to
find everyone’s soft spot. Not even its weak villain, eerily similar to Toy Story 2’s Pete the Prospector, or its
superfluous use of 3D are enough to detract from the
epic sequel. In a rare instance of scale over artistry, Toy
Story 3’s Hollywood hoopla outflanks Sylvain Chomet’s
heartfelt drama, The Illusionist. JP
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NOMINEES
How to Train Your Dragon
The Illusionist
Toy Story 3
WINNERS
OSCAR'S PICK: Toy Story 3
OUR PICK: Toy Story 3
Roger Deakins’ collaboration
with the Coen brothers has produced
remarkable aesthetics; ranging from
the stagnant, oppressive filming of
Barton Fink to the technical brilliance
and color alterations of O Brother,
Where Art Thou?, Deakins is one of
the best in the industry. His abilities
allow films—Fargo for instance—to
exude incredibly unique and specific
tones, a technique the Coens capitalized on once again in this year’s
Wild West interpretation, True Grit.
In this second adaptation of the 1968
novel, it is Deakins who displays his
mastery of the camera, capturing
vast landscapes, snowy wilderness,
twilight departures, and horseback
gunslinging. It all sounds familiar, but
it’s done with tremendous regard for
the medium. This is his ninth Oscar
nomination—is he due for a statue?
Despite his aptitude for style,
there is another cinematographer
who has treated us to a more vi-
sual experience this year; it might
have been a different story if it was
one of Deakins' earlier films in the
race. Modeling the camerawork
and schizophrenic mood of Polanski’s Repulsion, Matthew Libatique
heightens these techniques by combining them with images of modern
horror and realism—a cocktail that
succeeds in the best possible way.
Similar to The Wrestler, the handheld
form guides the audience through the
balletic world of Black Swan. These
performers exist in a world of mirrors:
the camera was digitally removed
from each, authenticating reflections
and identities. When the story calls
for discomfort, Libatique fills the
frame with the image, trapping his
subjects. When the story calls for the
opposing freedom, the camera mimics the steps of the liberated dancers.
The photography of Black Swan suggests the crowning point of artistic
and mechanical prowess. RD
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Achievement in Directing
Documentary
NOMINEES
NOMINEES
Darren Aronofsky (Black Swan)
David O. Russell
(The Fighter)
Tom Hooper
David Fincher
Joel and Ethan Coen (True Grit)
Exit through the Gift Shop
Gasland
Inside Job
Restrepo
Waste Land
WINNERS
OSCAR'S PICK:
Exit Through the Gift Shop
WINNERS
There is no doubt that Fincher’s hand in
The Social Network is anything less than extraordinary. The onset of the film’s inception
—here’s the snub plug for Christopher Nolan—was all but promising: Jesse Eisenberg
would co-star with Facebook. It was a premise that seemed excessive and somewhat revolting, but its release proved to derail these
misconceptions almost instantly. The performances, score, and acerbic script culminate
under Fincher’s direction, crafting a socially
relevant film with themes as universal as human nature.
His win wouldn’t be a disappointment; it’s
that Darren Aronofsky may be more deserving of an award titled “Best Achievement
in Directing.” He is an artist who delicately
crafts his own interpretation of a world, then
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pulls the viewer deep into it. His ability ranges from the stylish kineticism of Requiem for
a Dream to the raw and passionate vision of
The Wrestler. The atmosphere of a prima ballerina in his latest, twisted fairytale is also
fully realized, benefiting from the best of his
skills. Similar to The Social Network, all the
elements of Aronofsky’s Black Swan function
in unison: the cast, the images, the sounds.
Aronofsky takes an absurd idea and makes
it his own breed of psychosis. In doing so,
he drags his audience into a world so unfamiliar, so claustrophobic, so unnerving… so
Aronofsky. He’s establishing himself as an
auteur, and although he may not receive acknowledgement from the academy this year,
his time will come. RD
OSCAR'S PICK:
David Fincher
OUR PICK:
Darren Aronofsky
In a recent New York Times article, Melena Ryzik characterized
the Best Documentary Feature as
the most open-ended category this
year. The category is neck and neck
between five highly topical films: the
recession (Inside Job), energy policy
(Gasland), the validity of street art
(Exit Through the Gift Shop), Afghanistan (Restrepo) and Third World junkyard scavengers (Wasteland). Speculation that Exit Through the Gift Shop,
about infamous British street artist
Banksy, might be a hoax doesn’t really detract from the fact that it’s fascinating, likeable and will probably win.
Exit more than deserves a golden
statuette, but the same could be said
for the risky war-portrait, Restrepo,
directed by journalists Sebastian
Junger and Tim Hertherington. When
the primary concern of two filmmakers is simply not getting killed, it’s
very hard to say they aren’t deserving. The upset, however, might come
from economy exposé Inside Job, for
its impeccable critical credentials
and timely subject matter. Then again
there’s Gasland, a movie the natural
gas companies literally don’t want
you to see—at the very least, they
don’t want it winning an Oscar. QS
OUR PICK:
Exit Through the Gift Shop
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Original Score
Adapted Screenplay
NOMINEES
Aaron Sorkin is something of a byword for snappy,
quip-heavy dialogue. So it might be a bit of a cliché to
say his script for The Social Network not only will win the
Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay but should win it—
but there’s a reason clichés become clichés, and in this
case it’s because Sorkin’s work actually is the standout
of the year: the dialogue is witty without being studied,
and the script speaks to the zeitgeist without affecting a
preachy tone and a desperation to be relevant. It manages
to hold the audience rapt while depicting the founding
of a website—programming code, financial statements,
and all. Most importantly, The Social Network subtly and
masterfully tells an age-old tale. “We lived on farms,
then we lived in cities, and now we're going to live on the
Internet!” excitedly envisions Justin Timberlake’s Sean
Parker. It is in part because of Sorkin’s story of loyalty,
creation, isolation, and the universal need to fit in that by
the time this line is spoken, it is fraught with significance,
and gives the viewer a shudder. JE
John Powell
(How to Train Your Dragon)
Hans Zimmer (Inception)
Alexandre Desplat
A.R. Rahman (127 Hours)
Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross
WINNERS
OSCAR'S PICK:
When the Academy hands out its
Oscar for Best Original Score, let’s
hope it follows the high standards
set by the Golden Globes (has that
sentence ever been written before?),
which anointed the soundtrack of The
Social Network as the best of the year.
Trent Reznor’s and Atticus Ross’s
electronic-heavy music pervades the
tale of ambition and connection in
the age of the online life, providing an
alternately seething and melancholy
counterpoise to Jesse Eisenberg’s
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stolid and tight-lipped Zuckerberg.
But don’t count out the score for the
twelve-times nominated The King’s
Speech, which, besides accompanying the sort of British historical drama that the Academy adores, has the
solid Alexandre Desplat (Fantastic
Mr. Fox) behind it. Nor can you ever
ignore the master Hans Zimmer, who
lent his hand this year to Inception.
But IF is putting its money on Reznor
and Ross. JE
OUR PICK:
Merrick Morton
NOMINEES
127 Hours
(Danny Boyle
and Simon Beaufoy)
The Social Network
(Aaron Sorkin)
Toy Story 3
(Michael Arndt)
WINNERS
True Grit
(Joel & Ethan
Coen)
Winter’s Bone
(Debra Granik &
Anne Rosellini)
OSCAR'S PICK:
The Social Network
OUR PICK:
The Social Network
Original Screenplay
David Seidler’s The King’s Speech certainly fulfills every criterion the Academy
considers in naming a best original screenplay. Its trenchant story and nimble dialogues
might be its finest showcases, but Seidler,
who also suffered from a stammer, supplements the King's historical debility with
convincing psychological anguish that really personalizes the story. However, its win
might be more the result of the film’s recent
Mario star power. We prefer The Fighter, the
more convincing true story depiction, which
lent to Melissa Leo’s and Christian Bale’s dynamic performances and grounded the film’s
gritty social realism. Further respect goes
to the screenplay for The Kids Are All Right,
which chose a mature and tactful approach in
dealing with homosexuality and parenthood;
it’s structural shortcomings and disregard to
conclude the children’s subplots kept it from
receiving IF’s pick. RW
NOMINEES
Another Year (Mike Leigh)
The Fighter (Scott Silver,
Paul Tamasy, and Eric Johnson)
Inception (Christopher Nolan)
The Kids Are All Right
(Lisa Cholodenko & Stuart Blumberg)
The King’s Speech (David Seidler)
WINNERS
OSCAR'S PICK:
The King's Speech
OUR PICK:
The Fighter
17
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Beats on the
Silver Screen:
Exploring the
Recent Craze
in Beat-Based
Film
WORDS: Quin Slovek
ILLUSTRATION: Ed Moorman
(inspired by Charles Burns)
NO MATTER
HOW YOU
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define the term “hipster,” both
its etymology and spirit relate to
the Beats or their stereotypical
spin-offs, the beatniks. “Hipster”
meant something completely different to the Beat Generation
—something more like “jazz aficionado.” The Beats, themselves
hipsters and 1950s bohemians,
are mostly read today by commercialized post-2000 bohemians. Somewhere right now in Williamsburg or Wicker Park some
kindred soul is reading Howl right
now and thinking that the line
“angel headed hipsters burning
for the ancient heavenly connection” applies to him.
The legacies of the Three
Kings (William S. Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, and Jack Kerouac)
straddle the required reading
lists of both young literati and
aged hippies. The Beats have enjoyed this status for several decades, but now their kingdom is
expanding into the world of film at
an increasingly faster rate. Sixty
years removed from the Golden
Age of Beat, those three typewriter-punching
heavyweights
are just as celebrated now as
ever, and film treatments of authors or their work are the highest and most problematic form of
literary flattery.
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Howl,
or How Allen Ginsberg was Lucky Enough
to Know Bob Dylan.
The Beatniks movie poster
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A Beat movie could be one of
three things: an adaptation, biopic,
or a discussion of influence. Any of
those would be hard to pull off with
fidelity to the writer, the prototype being David Cronenberg’s Naked Lunch
(1991), which successfully integrated
Burroughs’ biography with his controversial work. Hollywood rarely shows
this type of consideration to writers, either in biopics or adaptations.
When dealing with the Beats’ complicated and ultra-specific personalities, I’m skeptical that Hollywood
can even juggle three authors without
mangling the legacy of at least one.
Ever since William Faulkner went
west in search of whiskey money,
Hollywood has been a desert mirage
for writers. It has also historically
enjoyed stereotyping writers, particularly Beats. Hollywood B movies
(and, to a lesser extent, television)
had an important role in the creation
of the image of a coffee-sipping,
goatee-stroking, beret-wearer. In the
early 60s, beatniks and bohemians
were seen by the society outside
North Beach or Greenwich Village
as gibberish-spouting jokes. For the
first decade of their legacy, before the
wave of hippie culture picked them
up, Beats were seen as little more
than material for trashy movies, pulp
novels and general parental concern.
Movies like The Beat Generation
(1959), The Beatniks (1960) and Beat
Girl AKA Wild for Kicks (1960) played
up beatniks as dangerous juvenile
delinquents and were considered by
Kerouac and others as grave misinterpretations of their poetic-spiritual
scene. One promotional poster for
The Beatniks read: “exploding from
the alleyways and ivory towers . . . living by their code of rebellion and mutiny! The Beatniks!” Which is it: alley
or ivory tower? What direction are the
godless beatniks coming from?
It’s time to reconsider the scene,
this time focusing on the Beats, not
the beatniks. Each of the Three Kings
is the subject of a recent or upcoming
film project, either just out on DVD
(Ginsberg in Howl), currently in art
houses (Burroughs in A Man Within),
just announced (Burroughs in Queer),
or coming to theaters soon (Kerouac
in On the Road).
These are the only Beat writers
that you will see celebrated in the
Cineplex, and those four films alone
may compose one of the most significant streaks of Hollywood interest in
poetic or experimental literature. Poetry or non-traditional fiction is not
great movie material, for obvious reasons; young and eccentric poets who
romanticized hip disillusionment,
drugs, and road-trips are a different
story. The Beats have remained relevant for more than fifty years, both
through myths and stereotypes.
The Beats work in Hollywood
because they romanticized the underworld’s frustrations with a whitepicket era and thus embody an everhip sense of spiritual and societal
disillusionment. A Beat movie doesn’t
really need to be about poetry, or even
literature, to attract an audience. A
biopic, or documentary that focuses
on the essence of their coolness suffices. At their worst, these films reduce the Beats to black-eyeglass ancestors. At best (as in Naked Lunch),
they show them as idiosyncratic authors and flawed humans.
The Beats work best when they
accentuate a sense of sub-cultural
interconnectedness, and thus, they
are connected to the hippies of the
1960s and 70’s sneering punks, as
well as gay and queer culture, environmentalism, leftism, Zen Buddhism
and rock ‘n’ roll. The Beat legacy is
broad enough to give Hollywood various themes to explore, but intense
focus on Burroughs, Ginsberg, and
Kerouac perpetuate the misleading
notion that these figures “made” their
literary era.
Ginsberg and Dylan in 1975
(Elsa Dorfman)
Howl was both critically and popularly well-received after it appeared
in art houses last autumn, no doubt
due to the involvement of James
Franco, an inspired choice to play
Ginsberg in Howl, if only because
he’s “cool” enough to play him. The
role came just after Franco’s unsuccessful attempt at short fiction and
just before his Oscar-nominated performance in Danny Boyle’s 127 Hours.
Franco was a solid, if calculated,
casting choice, not nearly as enjoyable as the strange supporting role
Ginsberg played via comedian David
Cross in the surrealistic Bob Dylan
ode I’m Not There (2007). It’s not a
Beat film, but it does depict a few
moments in Ginsberg’s and Dylan’s
infamous friendship.
Cross plays the middle-aged, potbellied hippie Ginsberg for laughs,
and it works. In I’m Not There, Ginsberg is allowed to be funny, strange,
and exuberant, qualities that come
across quite clearly in Ginsberg’s
documentary, The Life and Times of
Allan Ginsberg (1994). I’m Not There
recalls the cultural overlap between
late-era Beat and early-era rock and
roll. After all, Ginsberg did stand in
the background for Dylan’s “Sub-
terranean Homesick Blues” music
video, doing little more than inflating Dylan’s cred. Kerouac inspired
Tarantula, Dylan’s one attempt at experimental fiction, and Ginsberg and
post-Beat apprentice Anne Waldman
toured with Dylan and Joan Baez in
the infamous Rolling Thunder stint of
1975-76. And, most notably, there was
the Beatles’ decision in the early 60s
to stop rocking as the Quarrymen and
start playing as beetles with an “a.”
21
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On the Road,
Again
William S. Burroughs:
An Eccentric Within
If Kerouac is the sexed-up Zeus at
the center of the Beat Pantheon, then
William S. Burroughs is its Hades.
He’s the lord of subculture’s darker
elements; as A Man Within puts it,
“Ginsberg was the hippie, Burroughs
was the punk.”
This is a problematic theory for
many reasons, most of them ignored
in A Man Within, the effort of young
Chicago-based documentarian Yony
Leyser. Luckily, talking head Iggy
Popp steps in and makes an obvious point: William Burroughs did not
like punk, no matter how much he
may have encouraged or befriended
musicians. Instead his relationships
probably stemmed from his love of
younger men and heroin. Add to this
a shared distrust for the establishment, and you begin to see how Burroughs became the elderly salonniere
of the 70s punk scene. Yes, he was an
“inspiration,” but his primary acclaim
was that of crash pad host and creepy
uncle.
There are dozens of labels for
Burroughs: groundbreaking author,
experimental artist, failed doctor, exiled wanderer, murderer (he killed his
“cover” wife, Joan Vollmer, in a drugheavy game of William Tell), absent
father, queer cultural icon, brilliant
lecturer, visceral satirist, decadent
millionaire’s kid, and, most morbid
and astonishing, a man who frequently shot heroin between his toes and
still lived to be eighty-three years old.
Of his many titles, “punk’s spiritual
grandfather” might be the lamest and
most misleading.
Burroughs changed postwar and
postmodern writing so deeply that
it forever altered the role of the authorial voice with his wild structural
and formal experiments. That and the
stranger-than-fiction life are what
make Burroughs cool, not the useless
fact that when Iggy Pop’s line “here
comes Johnny, yeah,” referred to a
character from Burroughs’ 1971 novel
The Wild Boys.
Give Leyser credit for capturing some of Burroughs’ fascinating
personality issues, especially his
conflicts with sexual identity (he
was a homosexual cultural pioneer
who nevertheless despised the term
“gay”) and his terribly strained relationship with his son. Yet it’s hard
to turn a blind eye when a documentary about an author hardly explores
his upbringing, education, writing,
or critical reception. The more relevant talking heads (Cronenberg,
Burroughs’ last lover, and a handful
of post-Beat writers) don’t enjoy as
much screen time as the punks, gay
icons, and assortment of musicians
with whom he had formed relationships in the last few decades of his
life.
In short, Leyser, by consciously
avoiding Burroughs’ postmodern
writing, made a documentary with a
dubious selection process, a mix of
who was alive, who was available,
and, apparently, who Leyser liked.
When asked at a screening about
his choice not to include much of
Burroughs’ actual writing, Leyser
described his project as more about
Burroughs personality, stating, “his
books are out there.” Yes, Burroughs’
books are out there and have been for
decades, but now that A Man Within
is out there the question ultimately
arises: if you choose to celebrate an
author apart from his work, aren’t you
only celebrating celebrity, or perhaps
in this case, eccentricity?
Considered a postmodern pioneer with an admitted influence in
several branches of art, Burroughs
was more than a talented, ubiquitous eccentric with a cool group of
friends. Though it is entertaining, A
Man Within certainly falls within the
“special interest” category, an occasion to use a singular literary mind
as little more than a support pole at
the center of a wide circus tent of hipness. At the screening Leyser also
discussed what he found the hardest
thing as a documentary filmmaker:
“learning to listen for what a subject
is not saying.” A Man Within speaks
volumes in what it fails to address.
I do hope Cronenberg’s Naked
Lunch was not the first, last, and
greatest Burroughs movie, but if it
is, it got there by being faithful to its
author. Steve Buscemi’s new directorial project, Queer, based on the early
novel by William S. Burroughs, looks
to take this same route, and one can
only hope that the straightforward
adaptation will bring clarity to his
dubious and cultish legacy. That is
the burden of Queer scriptwriter
Oren Moverman (The Messenger,
2009), and it’s a tall task considering
even documentaries have a hard time
pinning down the enigmatic eldest
Beat. And, unlike Cronenberg, Buscemi and Moverman do not have the
advantage of a living Burroughs to
weigh in.
Burroughs’ strange, multi-faceted personality will always hold a
place in the art world. He continues
to be seen in strange, dark art projects of every stripe, just as he did
when he was alive. Death cannot diminish the legacy of man whose motto was “life is a killer.” If A Man Within
is good for one thing, it’s showing just
how many different ways a man can
be remembered after life kills him.
William S Burroughs
by Christiaan Tonnis
Burroughs’ work was often considered so graphic and stylistically
bizarre that it was considered unfilmable, but Jack Kerouac, the Beat
that is easiest to picture on the silver
screen, has proven to be un-filmable
for different reasons.
Actors from Marlon Brando to
Brad Pitt have pondered playing
Kerouac, the rare role that’s both
romantic and macho, both brooding
and sympathetic. Unlike Burroughs
and Ginsberg, Kerouac didn’t identify himself as gay or queer. On the
Road is even a road-movie buddy picture, so what has been the hold up?
It seems Kerouac missed his chance
to get On the Road in cinemas around
1960, when he wrote an unanswered
letter to Brando offering the young,
already iconic actor the role of the
book’s protagonist, Sal Paradise. Later Kerouac’s agent was almost set to
sell the rights to Paramount Pictures
(who happened to have Brando under
contract) when he began fighting with
the studio heads over a few thousand
dollars in rights. The deal fell through,
but when Kerouac discovered how
close he had come to working with
Brando’s studio, he promptly fired his
agent. Was it egotistical to insist the
greatest actor of his day play Sal Par-
adise? Perhaps, but regardless, On
the Road went into production limbo.
Now that the Beat trendiness has
spanned its third generation, Hollywood can risk large amounts of money
and high-level talent on something as
ambitious as a fully formed Kerouac
project.
If Francis Ford Coppola couldn’t
get an On the Road movie financed,
then no one could have. After the
turmoil of shooting the enormously
expensive Apocalypse Now, it’s likely
the godfather lost his taste for chaos,
but he nevertheless bought the rights
to Kerouac’s chef d’oeuvre. Coppola
clung dearly to One the Road for over
thirty years, but the project never
came to fruition due to script-related
problems and financial concerns. The
adaptation was written and re-written
several times (by Coppola and his son
Roman) and was even cast at least
once in the 1990s, starring Brad Pitt
and Ethan Hawke.
Now Coppola’s long awaited On
the Road movie is finally happening,
fifty-five years after Kerouac’s famous Benzedrine-fueled typing session set the famous spiritual road
novel into motion. It hits theaters this
Christmas.
Coppolla handed the directorial
reigns to Walter
Salles Jr., best
known for his
beautiful 2004 film
The
Motorcycle
Diaries, a film with
a similar concept.
Thoughtful
and
visually
gifted,
Salles is ideal for
the complicated
mul t i-loc a t ion
project, and in December of 2010, On
the Road wrapped,
after filming in lo-
22
feature
cations as diverse as Canada, New
Orleans, Arizona and Argentina.
Coppola had at least two important wishes fulfilled with Salles’ On
the Road—that it be filmed in black
and white and that it prominently feature young actors. While actors Garret Hedlund (Tron: Legacy) as Dean
Moriarty and Kirsten Stewart of Twilight seem like dubious decisions,
Amy Adams, Viggo Mortensen (as
William S. Burroughs!), Alice Braga,
Steve Buscemi, and Terrence Howard
look to bring depth to the film with
their respective minor roles. After a
half-decade of setbacks and disappointments, one can finally see Kerouac’s landmark novel on film. In the
wake of a largely disappointing run
of Beat film representations, Walter
Salles’ On the Road will be the ultimate litmus test as it attempts to portray both minor and major characters
with depth.
With The Jack Kerouac School for
Disembodied Poetics at the Naropa
University in Boulder, Colorado, The
Beat Museum in North Beach, San
Francisco and Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s City Lights, the famous bookstore almost caddy-corner to the Beat
Museum, all in their honor, the Beats
don’t need Hollywood any more than
it needs them.
Yet since these movies do (or
will) exist, let them be judged not by
how much they focus on their superfluous coolness, but rather how the
celebrate, or criticize, the singular
minds within the various heads that
were put together in the mid-1950s to
generate the most organic, intuitive
and short-lived scene in American
history. In the end, the Beats were not
so much about rebellion, spirituality,
road travel, sex, or drugs as they were
about that most elusive and complex
“ism”; not hipsterism but humanism,
though the latter is harder to film.
Above: Hedlund and Stewart during
filming of On the Road
23
feature
On the set of On the Road
24INTERVIEW
Photo by Sandy Sharkey
IF Chats with...
KINGS
G
FORTH
INTERVIEW: James Passarelli / at Southpaw / Brooklyn, NY
ANDY NOBLE
could have been rich. At the age of nineteen,
he turned down a multi-million dollar opportunity to work on Wall Street for a chance to
make the music that he loves. No, I’m just
pulling your leg. That’s just the kind of nonsense Noble can’t stand. And he’s right. Why
should his past—inspirational or mundane—
make us approach his music any differently?
In reality, Noble is the founder, bassist, and
songwriter for the Milwaukee-based funk/soul
group Kings Go Forth. Behind the winsome
lead vocals of Black Wolf, a fifty-something
Milwaukee soul singer, the band’s focus is
group harmony, although there are plenty of
instruments amongst the ten-person outfit to
keep you dancing well into the night. Their debut album, The Outsiders are Back, came in at
number twenty-one on our list of Top Albums
of 2010. I met up with Andy before a gig at
Brooklyn’s Southpaw to talk about the beast’s
new burden (the band) and his longtime passion (collecting and selling obscure soul 45s).
“
I think it’s really good to
judge music exactly for what
it is and to have a clear mind
about it going into it. And you
can’t beat digging for records,
because...you’ve never heard
of it before, and sometimes
no one’s ever heard it
before. It’s a very pure
way to discriminate.”
INFLATABLE FERRET:
IT OCCURRED TO ME RECENTLY
THAT
THERE
AREN’T A LOT OF BIG
BANDS FROM MILWAUKEE.
Andy Noble: Well, historically there’\s
been a number, but there’s not a million. In proportion to the size of the
city, it’s probably about par for the
course. It’s just that people don’t
always think of those groups as being from Milwaukee—like, Violent
Femmes are from Milwaukee, and
Die Kreutzen…then some really not
cool ones too. But some people have
done well—the guitarist for the DapKings is from Milwaukee.
IF: Do you think there’s something
about being from Milwaukee has influences you?
AN: If you’re from some place, everything about it influences you.
IF: Anything specific?
AN: Yeah, I could point out specif-
26
interview
ics in relation to this group. Soul
music was a very regional thing
in that different areas of the
country had really different
sounds. Detroit was very
distinctive, and Chicago
and Florida, and even
California. Chicago being the closest to Milwaukee, most of the soul
music from Milwaukee
was Chicago-influenced.
And you can hear that in
our stuff. As far as popular soul groups from Milwaukee, the Esquires and
Harvey Scales & the Seven
Sounds were the two biggest groups. The Esquires
specifically are a pretty direct
influence on a lot of our vocal
harmonies.
IF: You used to own a record store
in Milwaukee.
AN: I owned a record store for about
nine years, and I just closed it a year
ago. Maybe when people think about
record stores where you go to buy
new records, those might be affected
by the economy. The kind of store I
had, where you sell rare, old records,
you can stay in business as long or as
little as you want. So it wasn’t really
economics so much as it was logistics for me in two different aspects.
One is my life with the band—obviously being able to travel around.
But it was also kind of cramping my
style to get records. You’d think having a shop would be the best way to
get records, but the way I get records,
I need time, I need to be mobile and
be able to go out to people’s houses.
So I just figured I could make more
money by just doing everything out
of my house, which is what a number of my friends have been doing all
around the country.
IF: You met Black Wolf through the
record store?
AN: Yeah, he came to the store a
couple of times. And I get asked that
question all the time, but the fact of
the matter is, I met a million guys
from a million soul groups through
my store, and I didn’t really end up
doing anything with them—some of
them I did. It’s just that a lot of guys
in their mid-fifties are tied down with
families or they just aren’t really that
active anymore, whereas he’s still really active and energetic. He’s also
a writer. A lot of those guys were
just performers, but he can write and
help arrange, which is nice.
It was just a natural fit. We had made
a couple of recordings under different guises years before Kings Go
Forth came together, so I had known
him. He was just one of the people in
the fold, and Kings Go Forth was just
a project—it wasn’t really a band. I
didn’t try to make a really popular
band that traveled around. I didn’t really care about it that much, and I still
don’t really care about it that much.
It was a project for us to make basement recordings, and I just wanted
to do something that was based off
harmony vocals. All the other new
funk and soul stuff that was around
that I had known about since the mid90s—nobody had really done harmony stuff. I’ve always been interested
in group harmony soul, so I thought,
somebody should do that.
And then what happened was the
recordings got really popular, and
the band had to turn into a real band
just by popular demand, not because
I wanted to go on the road and not
make any money. People really rate
live music, but I don’t. I can’t stand
it. I never go to see live bands, even
ones that I like. But I’ve realized that
I’m in the minority—most people are
really into live music.
IF: But I assume you still have fun
when you’re playing.
AN: I have fun when we play now, because now we’re pretty good. At first
we weren’t really that good, so no, I
didn’t have fun. But now the band’s
pretty good. Playing the show is still
the best part of the day when we’re
on tour.
IF: But it’s not a passion in the sense
that it is for most musicians?
AN: We’re a much better live band
than most bands, so I would say that
we are passionate about it. You’ve
got to understand, man—it’s so hard
27
interview
to bring out a band of this size with
that disparate of elements and cultural backgrounds. It’s just a bitch.
So once you’re out there doing a
show, it’s not like you’re going to
do it half-assed. So we throw down
pretty hard, and that makes it feel
good. I have a lot of animosities
about having been dragged into a
band at this time, and I think I kind
of work them out on stage. Plus,
like I said, I’m so cynical about live
music, I don’t think it’s really that
hard to be better than most groups
live because I don’t think they even
try. I don’t go see live music because it’s terrible. I think it takes a
lot more out of a person to make a
really good record than it does to
go play a show, especially ones that
I see bands play. I’m talking about
platinum artists. At some of these
festivals, we’re playing with some
of these really huge bands, and they
just suck—they’re terrible.
I go out to see music all the time,
but I just go see DJ events. The DJ
is over there, the dance floor is over
there. If they’re playing great stuff,
you can go dance or talk to the DJs
about the records. If they’re playing
shitty stuff, you can catch a beer in
back. But when a band’s playing,
you’ve just got to leave if you don’t
like it, it’s just so loud. So I just figure, if you’re going to do it, do it right.
IF: So do you try to bring as many
elements of the recording process
onto the stage as possible?
AN: I do, but I can’t always do it. The
equipment that the guys are bringing
is nice stuff and as close as possible
to what we used on the recording.
We can’t afford to bring our soundman around right now, but when he is
there he brings a lot of the old cheap
delays and reverbs that we used on
the record. But in a way I feel like
we’re trying to surpass that first record. When we first started, I felt
like we were worse than the record,
then I kind of think we tied it about
six or seven months ago, and now in
the last two or three months we have
been pushing that material past
where it was.
28
interview
IF: I’ve read that it’s a compilation,
or is that wrong?
AN: Not really. I can tell you exactly
what it was, and then you can figure out what you want to call it. We
made a 45, then we made another 45,
and another 45. And then we turned
them all into a record. I had about
five songs, and we needed about five
more to make a record, but when I
was making the last five songs, I
tried to make them fit together to
make an actual album. By the time I
signed off on it, it was not a compilation. And if I would have been making an album all along, it would have
happened at the same pace anyway,
because it’s so hard to get them together in one space, even once a
week. The way the format works, it’s
like, you record songs—especially in
this day and age, how important is
that really? People download one or
two songs or buy a 45 from a band. I
guess people still think about things
in these epoch moments—like, you
put out an album and that’s this era
for the band or whatever. But I think
it’s not that simple—you’re just always kind of writing and recording,
and then there are hot spots. And every once in a while, a record company
will need one CD to put out. So that
will be what you’ve done for the last
two years. So in the way that people
refer to our album as a compilation, I
would actually say that every album
is a compilation.
IF: Where are you at for your second
album?
AN: Nowhere. I shouldn’t say nowhere—I’ve been writing for it for a
while. But we’re not anywhere on it
because we’re getting flogged out
on the road so hard that we can’t
do anything back home. And what
happens is, since people have kids
and families and careers and stuff,
once we go back everybody has to
“
jump back into that really hardcore.
We’re going back to Milwaukee on
Tuesday, and it’s not like we’re going to be in the practice space on
Wednesday working on a new song.
We won’t be in the practice space
for another two weeks because we
have to get our lives back together.
And then, by that time, we’ll have to
go on the road again.
that being a soul group right now, everybody wants to see it live, so we’ve
got to go out there. We’re still playing
our first show in a lot of places—like
we played in Philadelphia last night,
and it was our first show there ever.
For all intents and purposes, for everyone who just saw us last night in
Philadelphia, we just started to exist.
So it’s really hard to balance it.
I can’t make an album like
this right now. I would
have to impose a
purposeful
and
well-thought-out
mor a torium
on shows for
a
decent
amount of
time
to
get anyt h i ng
done on
another
re cord,
which
I ’ m
probably going
to
have to
do sometime.
I’ve been talking to friends of mine
who have been in touring bands and
who have consistently put out records and asked them how they do
it. Usually how you do it is that everybody in the band is a professional
musician—when they go home, they
just jump back in the studio and
start practicing and recording again.
But for us it’s not even close to that
simple.
It’s not like I’m a fisherman
who has one secret spot that
nobody else knows about—
it’s definitely not that simple. It encompasses the whole
country, and sometimes
the whole world.”
IF: But at the
moment the demands so high?
AN: Yeah, and I think
Left and above:
Kings Go Forth
performing at
The Union Terrace in
Madison, Wisconsin.
(Ankur Malhotra/
Madison Music Review)
So the second record’s going to be
tougher, and I probably will have to
make it like a more traditional record
where you say, “Okay, this is a month
when we’re going to have to do another record,” which will probably
make it not as good. But maybe it will
make it better—I mean, I’m openminded to that. The band’s definitely
good enough. There’s enough talent
in the group that we could maybe
make a semi-off-the-cuff record and
have it surpass the first in certain
aspects.
I like to think about the songs individually like a kid or a dog or a cat.
29
interview
album
rth's 2010
Kings Go Fo
e Back.
Outsiders ar
release The
I don’t record the same
drum sounds in every
song—I know this song
has to be fancier than
this one, and this one
has to be rougher, this
one needs to have
strings, this one needs
to have vibraphone,
or this one needs to
have a bigger room.
So it’s not my preferred method to do a record in a
short period of time, but I may have
to do it.
IF: Other than loving music, what
draws you into finding obscure music?
AN: Well, that has a lot of different
angles to it. Some of them are very
altruistic, and some of them are
very selfish and competitive. When
you’re a DJ in my scene, you need to
have records that nobody else has to
distinguish yourself, so that part I
selfish and competitive.
Part of it is just the thrill of discovering great music that no one has heard
of, and many times helping those
artists to get the songs licensed to
compilations or reissues to get them
some money, which I’ve been involved with for about ten years now.
I had my own label, and I’ve helped
Numero Group and Jazzman with a
lot of that stuff.
30
interview
Also, and this is a little it loftier of
a concept—what I really hate about
new music is that it’s really tough to
judge things for yourself these days
because you get so plowed over by
press and hype. And when you’re
just out there in attics and basements and stuff, it’s just you and the
music. Something looks interesting,
and you listen to it, and it’s good. It’s
a very direct way to find music without any bullshit or spin being put on
it before you get it. Because that’s
how the music industry works. Usually by the time somebody buys a CD,
there has to be a story—“Oh, they
found this guy in the Bronx, and he
used to play the piano-“ And people
buy the story, and I just think that’s
bullshit. You should just listen to the
music, and you shouldn’t be clouded
with those things before you see it. I
think it’s really good to judge music
exactly for what it is and to have a
clear mind about it going into it. And
you can’t beat digging for records,
because you’ve just never heard of
the shit before. You’ve never heard
of it before, and sometimes no one’s
ever heard it before. It’s a very pure
way to discriminate.
IF: How do you go about searching
for records?
AN: I’m not really going to say, to tell
you the truth. There are too many
other people who try to copy it. So I
can’t really say much about it, except
to say that I do many different things.
It’s not just one technique. It’s not
like I’m a fisherman who has one
secret spot that nobody else knows
about—it’s definitely not that simple.
It encompasses the whole country,
and sometimes the whole world.
And I will say this: the best way to
find many of these obscure records is
to go to the people who made them,
the bands themselves, the people
who were involved in booking bands,
promoting bands, running small record companies in that era.
IF: So would you even tell me who
your top five artists are if you could
think of them?
AN: No, that doesn’t have anything
to do with that. And that changes
everyday. People who are into rock
might really like Rush, and they’re
into a group from beginning to end.
They may like some albums better
than others, but they really buy into
a group wholesale. With 45s, a lot of
these groups only put out one. And
it’s a 45, so it’s two songs. Sometimes the b-side is an instrumental,
so it’s just one song, you know what
I mean? So the loyalty factor is a lot
lower, but yeah—I could easily name
you five people who have multiple
releases that I enjoy. But even that
would change everyday. But I could
rattle some off for you.
IF: Could you?
AN: Sure. People that I consistently
play records by: Lee Moses, Lee Williams & the Symbols, The Impres-
Photo by Stark NY
sions—they’re not obscure, but I still
love them…obscure groups that have
a really good track record…Apple &
the Three Oranges from L.A. They’re
had just a small amount of 45s, but
they’re all really amazing…The Montclaires, The Young Mods from Ohio.
Harvey Scales and The Esquires are
two groups that put out tons of great
45s. So that’s like seven.
There’s millions though. Like I said,
it changes everyday. And most of the
artists you play, you probably only
play one title from. Getting into 45s
was an extension of collecting LPs. I
collected LPs first, but after a while,
I realized that on every LP I was
grabbing, I just liked one song, and
it ended up being a waste of space.
45 rpm single, I’ve heard called the
greatest form of American art, or
something like that, but it really is
very succinct. It’s just the best. I got
into that and the portability of it. Another thing you have to realize about
45s is that if you were a small group
that didn’t have a lot of money or a record label behind you back then, you
couldn’t afford to put out an LP. And
you couldn’t even afford to record
enough songs to comprise one. So
many more musicians recorded just
one or two 45s than put out LPs, and
I mean many many more. There are
probably ten independently released
soul LPs from Milwaukee, tops. And
there are probably three hundred to
five hundred independently released
45s. So there are all these musicians
and singers and bands you’d never
heard if the LP was the only format.
So you really get to hear a lot more
of a cross-section of what was actually going on in a city during one era
through 45s. IF
31
interview
REVIEWS
“ They
Drive-By
Truckers
The King is Dead
Radiohead
(XL Recordings/ATO)
Go-Go Boots
(ATO)
32
The conversation piece of this
weekend more than likely included
the release of Radiohead’s new album, The King of Limbs. Not to stray
too far away from their groundbreaking free digital release of 2007’s In
Rainbows, the digital download was
made available on Friday for $9.00—
torrenting such a cheap piece of art
is just wrong, as most music lovers
can attest to. The band pulled the
wool over our excited eyes by releasing a day earlier than reported, because sometimes a good thing just
can’t be held back from the masses
any longer (if there is anything that
Radiohead has not mastered, it’s
the art of the tease). For those who
didn’t partake in the online purchase, their eyes were filled with a
spastic Thom Yorke in the video of
“Lotus Flower.” Either way you went,
Radiohead was all a buzz.
Similar to pre-existing Radiohead work, the entire album is impossible to comprehend in a short
amount of time. With each new listen opinions will change. Their music is so malleable with your own
emotions as a listener that no one
will have the same feelings for the
same album. Upon first listen, The
King of Limbs is melancholy or can
even be called rainy day music. No
jittery “15 Step” or intense “Bodysnatchers” to be found, which is disconcerting at first. Never judge an
album by the first listen, especially
a Radiohead album. These songs are
sad yet dense. It is likely that a fan
of Thom Yorke’s lone solo album The
Eraser will be more accepting of The
King of Limbs than an “Amnesiac”
fan. Short and sweet with only eight
songs in thirty-seven minutes, there
is still no easy cut through all that’s
going on in these tracks. Gone are
the days of innovative and accessible rock. What lies ahead is meticulous evolving and redefining of their
electronic talent.
“Morning Mr. Magpie” is an easy
favorite for veteran Radiohead fans
for its angst: the beat is bouncing;
the high-pitched synth is alarming
and whirling. The last third of the
song grows louder only to leave off
with Yorke making his last point, and
ending with the white noise of a TV
and birds outside. The song leaves
the listener out of breath.
“Feral” continues Radiohead’s
longtime theme of anxiety. Bass—
which plays a massive role in the
album but has been left out in others—sneaks in to progress into
the disjointed and garbled lyrics.
Aronofsky would surely utilize it in
an overdose scene, one that emphasizes loss of placement in reality. As
the only instrumental track on the
album, it does a fantastic job of shattering the sadness.
“Codex” is the most haunting
track of the entire album. The slow
beat is similar to a pulse, the lyrics are clear and chilling: “no one
around/no one gets hurt.” The background is filled with ghostly calls
into the echo chamber, making for a
soothing lullaby for the downtrodden.
When the time arrives to whip
out a “recovering after a breakup”
playlist, “Give Up Ghost” will fit in
perfectly. The sweet guitar melody
and Yorke’s cooing gently wraps
around the heart in a calming embrace. The song is simply beautiful. Snap out of it by listening to
“Bloom,” and get lost in the thicket
of loops of beats.
Keep listening. The album will
grow on you just as Kid A and In
Rainbows managed to do. The King of
Limbs may just become the masterpiece that was missing all along. For
a wild experience, listen to the album
in alphabetical order. Trust me.
katie cook
A friend of mine once showed
me a 64-song bracket of the best
Grateful Dead songs. Its creator,
whose name escapes me, argued
that the Dead, while being lauded as
the jam band granddaddies, rarely
get due credit as songwriters. I
can’t help but think that the Driveby Truckers suffer from the same
oversight. Drive-By Truckers are an
anomaly - pop-tinged country rock
for people who don’t like terrible
music. Their catalogue bleeds blue
collar, or at least a sky blue mixture,
and their instrumental forcefulness
makes them one of the more exciting
live rock acts in the country, both key
factors in the popularity of their last
four albums. But just as they offer
respite to the tasteful country-minded, they give a grounded alternative
to the often pretentious, over-constructed compositions that dominate indie rock. Simplicity can easily be confused with deficiency, but
make no mistake: Drive-by Truckers
are deft lyricists and cunning musicians.
They are nothing if not dexterous; Go-Go Boots, the Athens
band’s ninth LP, is the greatest testament. They spread themselves as
thinly as possible on the hour-long
record without sounding desperate for variety, sharing vocal and
instrumental duties.
Sometimes
the results are traditional, but they
aren’t always what you would expect. “Cartoon Gold,” for instance,
sounds bare bones despite its full
instrumentation (drums, banjo,
bass, piano, dobro, and two guitars).
Pianos and organs play their humble parts in the late Muscle Shoals
Sound Rhythm Section guitarist
Eddie Hinton’s grand “Everybody
Needs Love,” one of the album’s few
uplifting tracks.
As for the general mood of the album, here’s primary vocalist Patterson Hood on the matter: “If [2010’s]
The Big To-Do was an action adventure summertime flick (albeit with
some brainy and dark undercuts)
this one is a noir film.” His words
strangely resemble those of a critic
rather than an artist, but they’re spot
on. Go-Go Boots’ strength lies in its
darkness. Perhaps the words “religiously themed” would have shed
a little more light on it. John Neff’s
cool, ominous slide guitar on the
title track is the perfect canvas for
the story of an adulterous Southern
preacher and the pain his hypocritical actions cause his family. The
eight-minute “The Fireplace Poker”
has a similar, though more concentrated, story, also revolving around
a preacher’s vices. Even less conspicuous lyrics, like the use of “Jesus” as an intervention, spring up
throughout the album. The theme
helps draw together the ambitious
fourteen-track record (or fifteen, if
you buy the vinyl).
Of course, it drags at times, as
is expected, but it doesn’t cause too
much of a problem. As with many
albums by artists as prolific as the
Truckers, in the short run, it’s not
about the album as a whole. Instead, we seek isolated gems, and
they come right on queue, in “GoGo Boots,” “The Fireplace Poker,”
and “Where’s Eddie,” the second
Hinton cover. Then there’s “Used
to Be a Cop,” Hood’s quietly frantic
narrative of a man who has lost everything, who “used to be a cop but
I got to be too jumpy/used to like to
party till I coughed up half a lung…I
spread
themselves
as thinly as
possible on
the hourlong record
without
sounding
desperate
for variety.”
got scars on my back from the way
my daddy raised me/I used to have a
family but then I got divorced…Used
to have a car but the bank came
and took it/I’m paying for a house
that that bitch lives in now.” It’s as
heavy as they come and their most
powerful song to date, Go-Go Boots’
greatest payoff.
At the present moment, those
payoffs come in small doses, but
the album still has a deep impact.
Keep it stored away for sometime
a couple decades down the road.
That’s when you’re bound to receive its greatest rewards.
james passarelli
33
reviews
“ An
Lykke Li
Wounded Rhymes
(LL Recordings)
34
reviews
I suppose I must address the
inexorable threat to my journalistic
integrity that composing this review
presents. See, Lykke Li and I are lovers… In one of my erotomaniacal mental constructs. So please appreciate
the difficulty with which I mask my
limerence in the name of wholesome,
objective journalism.
Screw it. A review that doesn’t
address Lykke Li’s sex appeal omits a
serious part of her craft. I feel terrible
admitting it, but when I saw Li live
shortly after she released her 2008
debut, Youth Novels, I left without remembering any of the set list. Every
song might as well have been Hot
Chocolate’s “You Sexy Thing” as far
as I was concerned. The teen movie
bombshell, backlit and front-fanned,
strutting down the high school hallway in slow motion suddenly became
something more real than a cliché.
But Youth Novels succeeded independent of any onstage gyrations. The
combination of her soft, airy voice,
playfully fragile lyrics, and heartaflutter rhythm and bass also teased
until frenzied.
Wounded Rhymes shows a role
reversal of sorts. Rather than coo
like a seductive siren to lure in her
prey, Lykke Li plays a much more active, confident Maenad, whose best
weapon is a communicable love fury.
Provocative lead single “Get Some”
best showcased the metamorphosis last December. Off the heels of
subdued, melancholic “Unrequited
Love,” the track’s voracious timpani
and Li’s D&S lyrics epitomize the
shift from “Little Bit” Betty Boop to
black widow. So too do the forceful
keys of opening track “Youth Knows
No Pain” show a much more focused,
controlled, calculating artist.
But don’t let that lead you to believe Lykke Li has aligned with the latest wave of misguided, pseudo-feminist divas like Rihanna and Lady Gaga.
Li’s plight is of a transgender nature
and far too personal for her to assume any Rosie the Riveter carnation
anyway. Wounded Rhymes captures
the process of her self-discovery, as
Li constantly oscillates between her
damaged and witchy personae. The
former naturally resurfaces on slower
takes conducive to lover-scorned,
meditative soliloquies, particularly
“Unrequited Love” and “Sadness Is
A Blessing,” both more thoughtful diary entries of self-improvement rather
than male-loathing, girl power rhetoric such themes often elicit.
Those two songs also best exemplify the marked doo-wop pop influence throughout the album. Wounded
Rhymes is a Swedish-filtered revival
of 50’s malt shops, 60’s Motown and
the specter of Phil Spector (though
he’s not officially dead). At times
slightly ham-fisted (the “shoo-wopshoo-wop” on “Unrequited Love”
seems a little superfluous), the effect
is certainly effective, particularly the
intense wall-of-sound choruses on
“Youth Knows No Pain” and “I Follow
Rivers” and lush harmonies on closer
“Silent My Song”. Lykke Li makes a
nice modern day Ronette.
Granted the album is much indebted to the production of Bjorn Yttling, who hollows out a cavernous
niche through which Li’s vocals either
shake each anthem or quiver through
sparse space. As is the case on her
debut, the arrangements are richly
diverse and give layered choruses an
electric jolt of energy once all the instruments converge. Most prominent
still is percussion. Aside from the pro-
impressive
sophomore
performance
from a
Swedish
siren on her
way to more
American
exposure.”
fuse timpani are more organic beats
on “Unrequited Love” and the bubbly
ecstasy of “I Follow Rivers”. With
such a prolific catalogue of rhythmic
devices, the absence of any percussion on “I Know Places” underscores
its serene lyrics.
But Lykke Li’s soft murmur too often shields her lyrical content, which
though solid, still has its cringeworthy moments. “Rich Kids Blues”
is definitely the “Complaint Department” of the album, but there’s a lot
less to criticize than on what was still
marvelous debut. Wounded Rhymes as
a whole is an impressive sophomore
performance from a Swedish siren on
her way to a wave of American exposure, which is both a blessing and a
curse. More people should hear Li’s
nuanced craft: pop that’s emotional
without being sensationalist. But that
will most certainly mean a teeming
fan base of threatening males. Lykke,
your love is requited.
ryan waring
“ By the
Mogwai
Hardcore Will Never Die,
But You Will
(Rock Action Records/Sub Pop)
Hardcore Will Never Die, But You
Will, the seventh studio album by
Mogwai, combines the many phases
of the band’s career into one coherent whole. This is both good and bad.
Good because it’s a potent distillation of what Mogwai does best, and
bad because if you’re expecting the
band to make a radical break from its
past, you will be disappointed.
Before I move on, a brief history
lesson: some dumbass rock critic (I’m
looking at you, Simon Reynolds) back
in the 1990s coined the equally dumbass phrase “post-rock” to describe a
certain brand of electronic music from
the period that dispensed with the
conventional structures of pop music—think Stereolab, Laika, Seefeel,
and the sort. Somehow the term was
then applied to more guitar-oriented
bands like Slint, Tortoise, and Labradford. Before you knew it, lazy critics
were throwing around the term to describe any bands that were doing instrumental music with cinematic aspirations—soundtrack music, if you will,
but not ambient. Godspeed You! Black
Emperor, Sigur Ros, and Explosions
in the Sky were trotted out as exhibits A, B, and C. But no band seemed
to be associated with post-rock more
than Mogwai, our erstwhile heroes
from Scotland who blew a hole in the
indie music scene with the monumental instrumental masterpiece Mogwai
Young Team in 1997. If you could hook
up the monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey to a bank of Marshall stack amps,
this is what it would sound like: majestic, overpowering, profound, dirty,
ugly, and beautiful.
Over the years, Mogwai has
treaded the instrumental rock path
with some notable variations. Occasionally, there are lyrics. But they
seem to zigzag between two main
stylistic approaches: the heavy as
fuck monumental ten-minute orgy
of metal sound, and the deeply disconsolate (and often meandering)
numbers perfect for afternoon melancholia. Hardcore Will Never Die,
But You Will combines all of this into
a neat fifty-three-minute whole but
adds a more accessible bent, and
I don’t mean that in a bad way. Despite Mogwai’s reputation as a nonmainstream music operation, there’s
also something of a pop sensibility in
action here. Here, Mogwai embrace
melody without reservation, and fortunately they are killer ones.
Like the best Mogwai albums,
Hardcore combines pop with adventure: every track begins at one
place and ends up at another, often
in unexpected places. The first track,
“White Noise,” begins with staccato
guitar notes punctuated by thundering drums, sounding a little like those
Steve Albini-engineered drums from
the Pixies’ Surfer Rosa. As instruments pile on, we get full-blown Mogwai in rock mode—soaring above you
somewhere. “Rano Pano” ups the
guitar distortion with an eerie refrain
right out of a 1950s horror movie. Both
“San Pedro” are “George Square
Thatcher” are urgent, continuously
moving, Mogwai on some crazy shock
and awe mission. The latter is one of
the few tracks on the album with vocals—albeit processed sufficiently
that the words seem unobtrusive.
There are signs here of the old Mogwai—“Letters to Metro” harks back
to the slow and world-weary tones of
their late nineties work—instrumentals built on languid piano and guitar
figures that could be soundtracks to
that transitional scene in your favor-
time it's all
over, you are
back at the
beginning
and wiping
perspiration
off your
upper lip.”
ite but forgotten British indie film.
The final track, “You’re Lionel Richie,”
heads into metal territory, perfect
for late night solo head banging. My
favorite track here is the six-and-ahalf minute “How To Be A Werewolf”;
over a driving drum pattern, the band
builds mood and tone, minute after minute, adding different flavors,
increasing tension, uncoiled about
halfway into it until it explodes. By the
time it’s all over, you are back at the
beginning and wiping perspiration off
your upper lip.
Hardcore Will Never Die, But You
Will sounds completely unified, meant
for a complete listen. There are no
missteps here. It is Mogwai in total
control, flying at cruising speed, having oiled its cylinders and engineers
into a heavy, beautiful, and frightening machine. Mogwai may never get
back to the halcyon days of Young
Team, but this is still a welcome highpoint in their discography. To get the
full benefit of the record, buy and
crank it up to eleven.
asif siddiqi
35
reviews
“ Zonoscope
Cut Copy
Zonoscope
(Modular)
36
reviews
It’s funny how much a few
words—one article—can change.
I’m talking about my great disappointment at learning that one of the
songs on Cut Copy’s latest album is
titled “Blink and You’ll Miss a Revolution,” instead of “Blink and You’ll
Miss the Revolution,” as singer Dan
Whitford had announced on stage
during their summer tour. A lot is
in a title, but if titles were of great
significance, Cut Copy would be
at the zenith of mediocrity. Most of
the new album’s song names could
be Jennifer Lopez singles (“Need
You Now,” “Take Me Over,” “Where
I’m Going”). In fact, without Jenny’s discography on hand, I would
be shocked if at least one of them
wasn’t. On the other end of the spectrum are the garish “Blink” (a good
name no matter what article it uses)
and “Strange Nostalgia for the Future,” a possible reference to IF
writer Asif Siddiqi’s obsession with
the many facets of nostalgia. Speaking of titles, how about Zonoscope? I
say it’s fabulous.
At times the Melbourne group’s
third LP sounds more like an 80s
electronica revival album than either
of their first two releases, but that’s
not always a con. Stuttering synth
dominates the album in the layered
opener, “I Need You Now,” the first
Cut Copy track that I have ever had to
listen to multiple times to like (three
times, to be exact). Yes, many of the
songs take a while to get used to,
and that might say something about
how much the band has grown since
2008’s In Ghost Colours. The music
is instinctual as ever—it’s just that
the new Cut Copy has noticeably different instincts, and they’re bound
to draw different instincts from lis-
teners. Some songs, like “Need You
Now” and “This is All We’ve Got”
sound rhythmically constrained and
linear, but never calculated, one of
the most common perils of a band’s
second or third full-length.
Zonoscope mixes trademark
techniques like seamless segues
and traditional love song lyrics with
bold, if not quite daring, changes.
“Where I’m Going” is the most
radical departure, complete with
hopscotch big beats, triumphant
background “YEAH”s, and a “Baba
O’Riley” key break, and it’s a success. Even the fifteen-minute epic,
“Sun God,” is impressively exciting
and durable, though it might serve
better as background or workout music when it’s not in climax or in the
middle of its extravagant pseudophilosophical questions (“You got to
live/you got to die/so what’s the purpose of you and I?”). Plastic bell effects on “Pharaohs & Pyramids” and
“Blink and You’ll Miss a Revolution”
lead Cut Copy away from their usually organic electronic atmosphere,
and again it works. They are the album’s two best songs.
Cut Copy are still best when
they don’t stray from their groovedependent foundations. Solid bass
lines, the band’s most fierce weapon,
hold together the ethereal synth and
drum armies of “Corner of the Sky”
and “Blink and You’ll Miss a Revolution.” Expert acoustic/electric blends
on “Hanging Onto Every Heartbeat”
recall early dance melodies and remind us that Cut Copy can still record in the spirit of their brilliant
past. “Sun God” solidifies their title
as the mega-stellar Proto Zoa’s nonfictional counterparts.
And for all Zonoscope’s soaring
contains quiet moments
not quite as
danceable
but sometimes just as
fulfilling; you
can certainly
find gratification in every
nook.”
moments, it cannot escape its dull
moments. And nothing on it compares to the timeless “Lights and Music” or “Hearts on Fire” off In Ghost
Colours (which I included in my list
of top ten albums of the decade, an
honor that still stands). But just like
some moments on their first two albums, Zonoscope contains quiet
moments not quite as danceable but
sometimes just as fulfilling; you can
certainly find gratification in every
nook. Probably somewhere between
Cut Copy’s first and second albums
in pure quality, Zonoscope seems
to be just the record they were looking for. And with its obvious hints of
progress, it’s probably just the one
they needed.
PJ Harvey
Let England Shake
(Island)
PJ Harvey has had two careers
neatly divided by the turn of the millennium. In the nineties she began
with all rage and sexual anxiety with
the agro guitar-punk of Dry (1992) and
Rid of Me (1993). Still tortured about
love and sex, but now adding death,
she embraced the swampy blues with
To Bring You My Love (1995), turned
down the volume with the emotionally tortured Is This Desire? (1998),
and then circled back with a suite of
love songs to both New York and her
lover(s) in the lush guitar pop of Stories From the City, Stories From the
Sea (2000). Each of these records was
a bonafide classic, and each progression seemed surprising yet entirely
natural at the same time. Probably
more than any other solo artist of the
time, she communicated a sense of
movement in her oeuvre—she arrived,
she submerged herself, and then she
moved on.Then came the second part
of her career: two albums in the 2000s
that seemed underwhelming, skeletal, and hard to hold on to: Uh Uh
Her (2004) in which the songs seemed
like demos, and White Chalk (2007), in
which she forsook the guitar for the
piano and sang in a higher register.
Now, four years after her last album,
we have Let England Shake. Much has
been made of the fact that the album
is her comment on war and its toll on
England. This is not an insignificant
fact, for it signals a major departure
for Polly, who had always been interested in the internal world of love and
sex. Here she takes a giant step into
the outside world.
Let England Shake is first and
foremost a “serious” meditation on
the traumatic (and costly) results
of war throughout England’s history.
Harvey’s point of reference is the
Great War, and particularly the horrific battle at Gallipoli in 1915. The
lyrics are heavy with regret but have
a personal intimacy—the songs here
are populated by young men and their
laments, and you imagine a child
writing a letter home while stuck in
a trench in France. Death is everywhere on the album, but the music
is light, sometimes even jaunty, and
often pretty (as in “Hanging in the
Wire”). Where her last two albums
were musically spartan, sometimes
sounding incomplete or brittle, the
music here is lush, full of reverb, not
unlike Is This Desire? At the same
time, this is a pop album, as accessible as the guitar-based Stories
from the City, but nothing like it. She
expands her musical palette with
plinks of electric piano, xylophones,
trumpets, saxophones, and strange
samples (such as reggae singer Niney the Observer’s “Blood and Fire”
on “Written on the Forehead”) but
it sounds all part of a unified whole,
totally organic and not a bit gratuitous. The melodies are relentlessly
gorgeous, and not a chord is wasted
or superfluous; it’s undeniably beautiful music. The pop centerpiece of
the album is “The Words That Maketh
Murder,” a creepy song constructed
out of a skip-dancing beat wrapped
around a simple descending autoharp and a saxophone. She sings,
“I’ve seen and done things I want to
forget / I’ve seen soldiers fall like
lumps of meat / Blown and shot out
beyond belief / Arms and legs were
in the trees.” At the end, Harvey’s
long-time collaborators John Parish
and Mick Harvey hypnotically chant
a line from Eddie Cochran’s 1958 hit
“Summertime Blues”: “What if I take
my problems to the United Nations?”
It’s the most appropriate, ghastly, and
comical ending to this soldier’s song.
If on one level, the album is a
pained love letter to England and its
wartime follies, it’s also meant to be
universal. In a recent interview with
Spinner, she noted, “Some of the
songs are taking a look at England
and the attraction and repulsion
that one feels with one’s nation, and
disappointments as well as love, a
rootedness in it. But although I’m
singing as an Englishwoman in England, I wanted to find language that
was also connecting with wherever
you live…. No matter where you are
people suffer great disappointments
in what their governments are doing,
or what wars are being waged in their
name.” Those are pretty heavy issues
for a pop singer.
Over the years, as she’s moved
away from her early experiments in
aggressive rock, Harvey’s music has
become more serious, and you get the
sense that she takes very seriously
the notion that she creates “art.”
There is of course a danger in that
approach, and it’s easy to see why
some would call Let England Shake
ridiculously pretentious. How many
great poets (not to mention rock
icons—Pink Floyd’s The Final Cut anyone?) have tackled the human costs
of the insanity of war? How many
have fallen flat on their faces? Luckily for us, Harvey shows in Let England
Shake that being earnest and serious
are not liabilities, that you can be
serious and subtle, especially if you
have the musical chops to back it up.
This is the best war-themed album in
a long time, but its greatest power is
that even if you don’t care about any
of those serious issues, it’s still just
as powerful and moving. That is quite
an achievement for an artist two decades into her career.
asif siddiqi
37
reviews
80 MUSIC
MINUTES
OF
05 10 20
THAT PATRONIZES
OR DEMEANS
WOMEN
10
Sexism has always pervaded rock ‘n’ roll, and it sure as hell has its place in
5:18
FRANK SINATRA – “Luck Be a Lady”
Remember how Sinatra loves sexist
songs? Well this Frank Loessner
love song, originally recorded by
Marlon Brando, and then Jack Jones
(of “Wives and Lovers” fame), fits
just perfect.
rap. But let’s be honest. Some of the best songs in history were less than
kind to that subspecies of a man, often called a woman. Even though the
writers of most of those songs could barely pay Beyonce’s automo-billz.
IF decided to look back on a variety basket full of patronizing and
sexist songs throughout history. Here’s what we came up with.
11
1
3:10
LOOKING GLASS –
“Brandy (You’re a Fine Girl)”
Clever wordplay always did define
Looking Glass’s career. Using the
drink as a woman’s name is one of
their best, and what a good wife she
would be.
2
3:15
ELECTRIC LIGHT ORCHESTRA –
“Evil Woman”
In all honesty, though, she does
sound pretty evil.
3
2:30
JACK JONES – “Wives and Lovers”
Jack Jones’s velvet voice is perfect
Burt Bacharach’s delightfully sexist
song about how all wives should be
lovers (hence the title).
38
4
2:41
CORNELIUS BROTHERS AND
SISTER ROSE –
“Treat Her Like a Lady”
How exactly does one go about
doing that? Well, you know a woman
is sentimental and so easy to upset.
So make her feel like she’s for real,
and she’ll give you happiness.” In
their defense, scientific studies
confirm this.
5
5:03
LUDACRIS – “AREA CODES”
Ok, Luda. You had us at 205, but you
had us suspicious at 317. We might
need to see some proof.
6
2:37
TAMMY WYNETTE – “STAND BY
YOUR MAN”
Solid proof that women are perfectly
capable of singing songs that belittle
their own sex. Oh, the irony.
7
2:10
COLE PORTER – “I GET A KICK OUT
OF YOU”
Patronizing in every sense, this piece
from 1934’s Anything Goes is sexist
enough for Frank Sinatra to decide to
cover it.
8
3:34
AC/DC – “T.N.T”
“Lock up your daughter, lock up your
wife, lock up your back door, and run
for your life.” Bon Scott sounds more
like a serial rapist than a playboy, but
either way, women are his prey.
9
2:59
BO DIDDLEY – “I’M A MAN”
Like many of the master’s
compositions, this 1955 Checkers
Records b-side has been heavily
covered. And that man is on a
mission.
2:39
LED ZEPPELIN –
“Living Loving Maid
(She’s Just a Woman)”
As Daniel Craig as James Bond
would say, “Women are disposable
pleasures.” This one is dedicated
to Nick Alitz.
12
3:41
THE ROLLING STONES –
“Under My Thumb”
If there are four men in the world who
have absolute power over all women
on Earth, one of them is Mick Jagger.
If there are two, one of them is Mick
Jagger. If there’s one, well, that’s
probably The Rock.
13
2:33
PAUL ANKA –
“You’re Having My Baby”
You heard the man.
14
3:17
GILBERT O’SULLIVAN –
“A Woman’s Place”
“Call me old-fashioned,” sings the
unapologetic Irish pop star in his
1974 song, “so what if I am?...I’m not
one of those who look for blood from
a stone, but I believe a woman’s place
is in the home.”
15
3:47
DONOVAN – “House of Jansch”
This one's a shocker for everyone
who remembers Donovan as a peaceloving Dylan rip-off (not my own
opinion). Let’s just hope I’m reading
sexism into a drug reference (or
nonsensical poetry) when he sings,
“Girl ain’t nothing but a willow tree,
weep for me, willow tree.”
16
6:23
EXTREME – “He Man Woman Hater”
Can’t think of a band with a more
fitting name, and this, like all their
songs, is over the top with hatred of
the female race, and “eargasmic”
riffs (not my word).
17
4:29
KID ROCK – “Bawitdaba”
Of course Kid Rock has far more
offensive songs – the man breathes
sexism. This one just happens to be a
personal favorite, largely because of
the title/chorus.
18
3:17
BLIND ALFRED REED –
“Woman’s Been After Man Ever Since”
“What a shame it is that women try
to be so much like men. They will run
for office if they get a chance.” A true
prophet from the 1920's.
19
2:48
BOBBY SHERMAN – “Little Woman”
’61 was a great year, wasn’t it? And
there’s nothing like this classic Dion
song, packed to the brim with sexism.
20
2:29
DEAN MARTIN –
“Not Enough Indians”
If you thought it was impossible to
mix sexism and racism, think again.
Dean Martin will take you for the ride
of your life, even if he can’t say the
same for his beloved.
21
3:20
GARY PUCKETT & THE UNION
GAP – “This Girl is a Woman Now”
GP & the UG tell the story of a girl
whose life was transformed by one
man’s tender touch. Now she’s a
woman, and things will never be the
same again.
22
5:34
LIL’ JON & THE EAST SIDE BOYZ
(FEATURING THE YING YANG
TWINS) – “Get Low”
Lil’ Jon makes the Ying Yang Twins
look like David Banner, which isn’t
really saying much, considering
I usually can’t tell the difference.
Needless to say, they have no qualms
with degrading women. How did they
make a five-minute song out of this?
james passarelli
39
playlist

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